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Uncategorized

“Love in Community” based on Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew…

  • September 6, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

There is a truly great Facebook group for “Young Clergy Women
International,” and this summer one of the members said, “Hey,
I’m single and live alone, and I’m really lonely in this pandemic.  I
know the grass is always greener, would those of you who live with
people tell me what is really annoying about that right now?”  Let
me say, there were A LOT of responses, including people living alone
saying it helped them to know and people living with others saying it
helped them not feel so bad about being annoyed.

A few years ago now, I came across a rather radical idea:  churches
are places of spiritual growth not IN SPITE OF disagreements,
pettiness, and annoyances with each other, but because of them.  Now,
every church I’ve ever met would prefer to be seen as made up
entirely of agreeable people who are never petty nor annoyed with
each other.  It feels like better advertising.  After all, churches
want to be expressions of God’s love in the world, and it seems like
it would be best to AT LEAST like each other.

And yet, and forgive me if you didn’t know this yet, sometimes people
are annoying.  To be fair, often the things other people do that
annoy us say a lot more about us than about them, but the point
remains – being in community means being in relationship with
people who will annoy you, people you will disagree with, and quite
often the work that people find important, you won’t.  This applies
to the people we live within the pandemic, and the people we go to
church with.  There is no perfect church.  They are all comprised of
people.

This radical idea, though, was this is the POINT.  Because if
spirituality is just about “God and me” it is really easy to
think you are doing well, growing, becoming sanctified.  However, if
you are active in faith community, then it becomes imperative that
you get better at loving REAL PEOPLE in order to know you are growing
spiritually.  If you aren’t occassionally annoyed, and getting
practice being loving about it, you aren’t growing (says this
theory.)

I love this idea.  It is in our humanity, our brokenness, our
disagreements, even our pettiness, that we grow – and this is the
POINT of community, not one of its weaknesses.

In the past year, the most spiritually helpful idea I’ve come across
came from Brené Brown
suggesting that we assume that “other people are doing their best.”
That is, this is the idea that has most helped me to be more loving,
more patient, and more kind.  This does NOT MEAN that someone else’s
best is OK – sometimes it is not, and cases of abuse are clearly in
this category – but in terms of my response to others, it is
helpful.  I’d also like to note here that while churches are full of
annoyances and disagreements by necessity, there are REAL harms done
by faith communities that need to be taken seriously.  Many of those
involve rejecting God’s beloveds, and/or functioning as an arm of the
status quo when it comes to racism, sexism, heterosexuality,
transphobia, ableism, and other hierarchies.  The work of the church
includes CHANGING so that those harms don’t keep happening.   Yet, it
also involves knowing that we are going to have to keep working on
each of those things, and never become complicit.

Paul suggests that we owe one another nothing but love, and I suspect
this is a far more radical idea that it appears at first.  The
Ancient Roman economy, just like ours, was based on debt.  People
made money by having money and loaning it out for interest.  People
who were poor lost money by being without money.  And much of the
world was motivated by trying to pay off debt.  

To step out of that system, to owe no one anything, kept the rich
from getting richer.  However, I think it also required the support
of community.  Because most people wouldn’t have been able to take
care of themselves without acquiring debt, unless the community was
working together.  So, that suggests that being debt-free meant
participating in the sort of the community that exemplified the
kindom – with people mutually caring for each other.

Then, it makes sense that all that is owed is “love to one another”
because such a community has to have deep bonds of love.  And the
reminders of what good community behavior look like follow in Paul’s
instructions.

The gospel lesson from Matthew comes to similar points – we need to
have ways of caring for our community in order to be well,
relationships matter, God based community looks different,  and we
grow in faith hand in hand with others.

Another way to think about this can be found in a quote by Ann
Voskamp, “Shame
dies when stories are told in safe places.”  Churches
are meant to be those safe places, and for now our Bridging the
Distance Groups are intentionally trying to create those spaces.  The
world uses our shame to control us, to get us to buy things, to
convince us to be or live certain ways.  But God is interested in our
full and abundant lives, free to be and to LOVE.  So God is
interested in making spaces for us to share our stories, and let go
of our shame.

Interestingly, like foregoing debt, foregoing shame requires
community support and enables kindom building.  It also tends to help
us be less petty and deal better with annoyance 😉

So, wherever two or three Jesus followers are gathered, may we learn
to make safe space.  And, in the meantime, may we learn to do it in
alternative ways 😉

Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 6, 2020

Uncategorized

“Life” based on Romans 12:9-21

  • August 30, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

My
normal preaching style is to argue with the text, but I can’t do it
with this one.  Romans 12 speaks for itself.  That is, it preaches
for itself.  It doesn’t need to be argued with, just amplified.  It
preachers better in the Message, paraphrased by Rev. Eugene Peterson.
Hear it again1:


Love from the center of who you
are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear
life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing
second fiddle.


Don’t burn out; keep
yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master,
cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the
harder. Help needy people; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless
your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy
friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get
along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with
nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t
hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get
along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not
for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take
care of it.”

Our
Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that
person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity
will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of
you; get the best of evil by doing good.

This
is one of those passages that doesn’t speak the name of God – but
tries to speak about what it means to be followers of
Jesus.  Its good news that following God means being good
friends.  Modern theologians and scholars spend a lot of time working
on the idea of a “relational God.” which is to say that God is in
relationship with us and cares deeply about our relationships with
others.  To take it a step further even, God is in the midst of all
of our relationships with others.  To be in relationship with God IS
to be in good relationship with those around us.  To harm those in
our lives IS to harm God.

So
we hear that we should be good friends who love deeply – and thus
we become better friends with God.

The
next line is one of the best pieces of advice in the Bible.  As
Peterson puts it:  practice playing second fiddle.   Imagine if we
did this.  Imagine if we could practice and perfect second fiddle.
If we didn’t dream of having the top seat, but dreamt of being as
supportive as we can be from the place we are.  Imagine if we all saw
ourselves as important people because of the ways that we play the
harmonies….. and not for the ways we play the melodies.  To
practice playing second fiddle is also to put emphasis on God as the
band leader who knows how to make the music – it is to be willing
to play the role most needed instead of the role most prestigious.
There are people who do this, and do it well – you probably know
some.  Think of how precious they are….  It
is good advice– practice playing second fiddle.

“Don’t
burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame.”  We hear so often
about burn out.  People throw themselves wholeheartedly into their
jobs, and their bosses take advantage of their willingness, and there
is more work than any person can handle, and eventually they have
nothing left to offer.  We know this happens in the church too.
People get excited about being in a place where they can serve God –
and where they can feel God’s love through the people around them –
and they want to help however they can.  Yet the meetings can get
tedious.  And the excitement can fade as things don’t go as they’d
dreamed and maybe it seems like nothing ever changes – or like
everything has changed – and there is burn out.  But this passage
tells us, as it continues, how to avoid it…. “ be cheerfully
expectant.  Don’t quit in the hard times! Pray all the harder.”  (I
would suspect, as well, that constancy of prayer and mediation would
guide each of us to be strong and wise enough to say no to roles in
the church that are currently dragging us under instead of lifting us
up.  So prayer really is the answer!)

I
love the line:  “Be inventive in hospitality.”  That feels like a
task we are particularly called to right now, when all the forms of
hospitality we’re used to have suddenly become moot.  What does it
look like now?  How can we practice it?  How do we experience it?

“Bless
your enemies, no cursing under your breath.”  Oh that we might all
become people really able to do that.  It is true that praying good
for our enemies, blessing them, changes them and us.  Sometimes we
have to be careful about how we say it – its not real to say “May
every blessing fall on the person who annoys me most in the world.”
but its usually real to say “may the person who annoys me most AND
I manage to be more civil today.”  And transformation happens –
particularly when we work hard enough that we don’t leave a piece of
ourselves behind muttering nasties.  

We
have another piece of God caring about how we are with one another:
“Laugh with your happy friends when they are happy; share tears
when they’re down.  God along with each other; don’t be stuck – up.
Make friends with nobodies; don’t
be the great somebody.”  We are to be with those we love – and
share lives with them.  What helps neighbors and families to share
tears and laughter today?  It takes more intentionality to be
“present” with people right now, and it has always been
challenging for many of us not run away at the first show of emotion
(especially grief
and anger.)  Also,
it is to try to be “THE GREAT SOMEBODY” – but we already know
we’re supposed to try to play second fiddle.

“Don’t
hit back, discover beauty in everyone.”  You know, I have found,
especially over that when I let God show me what God loves about a
person, the beauty of the person is really visible.  There is
stunning beauty in everyone.  Mary
Lou Kownacki says, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once
you’ve heard their story.”  I buy it.  Of
course, it takes some serious work to let go of my own annoyances and
do so – but there is beauty in EVERYONE.  “If you’ve got it in
you, get along with everybody.”  I love how this is phrased.  It
acknowledges that it won’t work for all people.  Particularly because
getting along with some people means giving up who you are – and
that’s not the point.  But WHEN ITS POSSIBLE, for WHOM its possible,
get along with everybody.  Its a worthy goal!

“Don’t
insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do.
I’ll do the judging’ says God, ‘I’ll take care of it.”  I
like this translation way better than the NRSV 🙂  It is in any case
a good reminder that the world is God’s, and justice is God’s, and
our goal is to do the blessing of our enemies, not the seeking of
retribution.  I also like that it acknowledges our DESIRE to get
even, which is honest, without making space for us to act which is
moral.

“Our
Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that
person lunch, or if he’s thirsty get him a drink.  Your generosity
will surprise him with goodness.  Don’t let evil get the best of you:
get the best of evil by doing good.”
It is so true that evil never overcomes evil, just like hate never
drives out
hate, and violence doesn’t bring peace.
Peace brings peace.  Goodness brings goodness. Love
brings love.  Love and goodness and peace transform evil.  I hope
you’ve all seen it.  I’ve seen it time and time again, particularly
in faith community.  People who are afraid of being hurt come to camp
or church with a chip on their shoulder, ready to pounce at the first
person they see.  With gentle love for a few days or weeks or years,
a sweeter and gentler person emerges, ready to soak in the goodness
and affirmation.  People change more when you welcome them for who
they are and what they do well than when you disparage what they do
wrong.  People change a lot – and you change a lot – when you
have lunch with your “enemy.”  

Romans
12 teaches us a lot about how to be – how to be human, how to be
Godly, how to follow the way of Jesus.  May we live our lives guided
by it.  Amen.

Questions
for Reflection

How
do these instructions seem to you?  Do they feel like useful
guidance?  Do they feel different from or similar to the 10
commandments or the greatest commandments?

Which
piece strikes you the strongest?

What
part is hardest for you?

Where
do you hope to be able to do better?

What
DOES it mean to “love from the center of who you are” and how can
you do so more fully?  

1  I
fixed one word, FYI.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Uncategorized

“Journey and Stability”based on  Genesis 12:1-4a and Psalm 121

  • March 8, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

It
is commonly said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step.  It seems, in this story of Abram, that this is true.
God says “go” and Abram takes the first step.  By the accounts of
the Bible, it will be about 2000 miles, this journey he goes on.
Which is about the same distance as walking to Atlanta, Georgia –
and back.  

Or,
its the same distance as walking the Appalachian Trail (AT) as it
wanders from Maine to Georgia.  Thru hikers on the AT are able to
make the hike in 5-7 months.  Abram and Sarai will take quite a bit
longer than that.

Thru
hikers on the AT, however, usually have lives to go back to.  They
take time off, hike the trail (with food mailed to them along the
way), and then return to their houses, jobs, families, friends, and
former lives.  Its said that 3 in 20 people who start out on the AT –
usually with the best hiking boots, water sanitizers, backpacks, and
tents – will complete the journey.

Abram
and Sarai will eventually complete their journey, albeit with
different names by the time they are done. They and Lot and their
servants and their animals traveled for 2000 miles and even when they
“arrived” where they were going, they would never settle.  The
story claims that Abram was 75 when he left on the journey, and 175
when he died. The land where he and Sarah were buried – purchased
at Sarah’s death – would be the only land they would call their own
again.  There were no more houses that they lived in.  The rest of
their lives would be lived in the tents of a nomad.  Once the journey
moved them from the city of their home, they wouldn’t hear their own
language ever again.  And, maybe it was important, and maybe it
wasn’t – but the religion of his birth – the gods that the people
worshipped in the Land of Ur – were left behind as well.  Abraham
left on this new journey called by a God who, as far as we know, had
not spoken to him until God said, “Get up and go.”  And he left.

Abram,
Sarai, and Lot model listening to God’s call and trusting that God
goes with us on our journeys.    That said, sometimes God calls us to
stay put too.  God’s calls can’t be predicted, we aren’t all Abrams
and Sarais.  And while God will call where and how God will call, we
all also have yearning for both journey and for stability.  (Which
sometimes matches God’s call and sometimes doesn’t.)

We
want stability (like
Psalm 121): to have a routine, to have deep connections to people
we see on a regular basis, to know and understand the systems and
institutions around us, to have some predictability to life, to sing
songs we KNOW, to eat familiar food, to have our view of the world
unperturbed.  I have been in Schenectady longer than anywhere else
since I graduated from high school, and I can assure you that there
is a magic and a wonder to knowing where you are going without
needing a map, to learning a grocery store well enough that you can
make a shopping list in the order of the store’s aisles, to having
your doctor actually know your medical history, to having colleagues
with whom you’ve built deep trust over time.  

We
also want change though: we want new experiences, we want to travel
and see new things and learn different ways of being, we want to meet
people who teach us about seeing the world differently, we want
better than what we’ve already known – systems that WORK for
everyone, we want to sing new songs that resonate with our beings, to
eat new delicious food, to have our worldview expanded.  We want to
grow, and change, and become.  We want things to be BETTER.

The
tension between stability and change, between journeying and staying
put is a major tension in life.  Immigrants and refugees live lives
of the journey, Abram and Sarai among them.  

Years
ago I heard this poem, and its been playing around in my head ever
since:

The
Call of Abraham by Kilian McDonnell1

(“Now
the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country.’” Gen 12:1)

Talk
about imperious.
Without a by-your-leave,
or, may I presume?
No
previous contact,
no letter of introduction,
no greeting,
just
out of the blue
this unknown God
issues edicts.

This
is not a conversation.
Am I a nobody
to receive decrees
from
one whose name
I do not know?
And at our first encounter!

I
have worshipped my own god.
To you I had addressed no
prayers,
offered no sacrifices.
asked no favors,
but
quick,
like sudden fire in the desert,
without the most
elemental ritual,
I hear “Go.”

At
seventy-five,
am I supposed to scuttle my life,
take that
ancient wasteland, Sarai,
place my thin arthritic bones
upon
the road
to some mumbled nowhere?

Let
me get this straight.
I will be brief.
I summarize.
In ten
generations since the Flood
you have spoken to no one.
Now,
like thunder on a clear day,
you give commands:
pull up my
tent,
desert my home,
the graves of my ancestors,
my friends
next door, leave Haran
for a country you do not name,
there to
be a stranger,
a sojourner.

God
of the wilderness,
from two desiccated lumps,
from two parched
prunes
you promise to make a great nation.
In me all peoples of
the earth
will be blessed.

You
come late, Lord, very late,
but my camels leave in the morning.

I
love the tension in the poem, the anger, the annoyance, the worry,
the fear, the humanity of it.  The ending is perfect, because despite
it all or because of it all, he goes.  Abraham is the father of
faith, the beginning of the monotheistic tradition.  Christians,
Jews, and Muslims look to him as father.

I
looked at Genesis chapter 11 this week, and noticed something
important. Abram’s father, Terah is the one who starts the Journey.
We say that Abram went from Ur to Shechem, BUT REALLY his father
seemed to make the decision to go from Ur to Haran, which is the
longer part of the journey.  Abram heard the call and left Haran for
Shechem.  That changes things.

See,
if Abram was called out of no where and nothing to do this, with no
prior relationship with God, and he did… and he is the father of
faith, then we might conclude that we’re called to do that too.  But
really it wasn’t like that.  Whether or not Terah knew it, he started
the journey.  Whether or not Terah knew God, he started the journey.
Abram had already experienced migration, and move, he had already let
go of some of the things you have to let go of to leave.  Further,
despite the poem, we don’t really know how long God and Abram had
been talking, it may have been a lot longer.  

The
scripture says, “Now the LORD said to Abram,
‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the
land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I
will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a
blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses
you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed.’”

But
it actually doesn’t say, “Suddenly, out of no where the LORD
said….”

If
Abram hadn’t done it, would we be here today?  I don’t think so.
BUT, if Terah hadn’t gone, we also wouldn’t be, and if Isaac hadn’t
been faithful we also wouldn’t be….

Abram
was ONE PART of a journey.  His part was spectacular and still
startles us today with its faithfulness.  But the journey started
before him, and it was 500 years or more before the promise he heard
was fulfilled.  

Its
not ALL on us, my friends.  We’re called to do our part, but God is
patient, and has long range plans. We aren’t going to solve world
hunger or bring world peace, or even just transform poverty in
Schenectady by ourselves.  We’re just a part – an imperative part,
but not the only part.  The calls to stay, and the calls to go,
they’re all a part of a larger picture – and when we are faithful,
we enable God’s work in the world to grow ever more complicated and
beautiful.  

So,
I couldn’t help but counter the Call of Abraham poem.  I just don’t
buy that it was sudden, as beautiful as the first poem is.  Nor do I
think Abram’s version is the whole story. So, having considered it
from another angle, here is the Call of Sarah.

The Call of Sarah by Sara Baron
(“Now, the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country.” Gen 12:1)

When you’ve been a failure, an outcast, a useless lump,
an ancient wasteland, like I have -which is to say:
a barren woman –
for your whole life, you learn the things others do not.

You learn how to hold your head up,
when there is no reason to be proud.
You learn how to find peace,
when there is no peace to be found.
And ever so slowly,
so slowly indeed that you don’t notice it coming,
you learn that your value is not
what everyone else believes it to be.
You learn that you are not just a failed child-bearer.
You learn that you are alive and good and loved and worthy as just a person, even without being a mother.

I heard it first.
I heard it many decades ago.
I heard it when we were still in Ur.
It took me a decade to admit it to myself.
And another to admit it to Abram,
sweet husband though he is.

After I told him, he looked at me strangely for a while.
Then, a few years later, he started to hear it too.
He looked at me even more strangely after that.

That was 20 years ago.
The call has become louder every day.
It has started to seems reasonable to us,
which just proves that we’re crazy.

We’re too old.

But then again the rituals of worship feel like lies now.
We’ve come to know this one who talks to us, this One-God.
The rest of them fade away as if to nothing in the light of the One-God.

I’m not sure when we decided,
it took so long, and we went back and forth and back and forth….
and then back and forth some more.
It was about when Terah died, that the back and forth line moved so we talked a bit more about going than about how crazy we were.
Then, later, we slowly eliminated our excuses.

After all, we’re old.
What do we have to lose?

I’m ready to leave the pitying eyes,
and move to the desert where I can be free,
To worship and to love the One-God,
To love and connect to my Abram,
To be a blessing, even without being blessed.

We come very late, One-God, very very late.
But our camels leave in the morning.  

Remember
dear ones, there is more to the story than meets the eye –
including the ones who started the journey and the ones who complete
it.  Our parts are imperative, but they’re just a part of what God is
up to.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

1http://www.saintjohnsabbey.org/mcdonnell/poetry.html#The%20Call%20of%20Abraham

Uncategorized

“The Garden of Eden in Context” based on Genesis…

  • March 1, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Six years ago I
shared with the worshiping community in this church my learnings
about the Garden of Eden story.  Some of you weren’t here yet, and
some of you don’t have perfect memories.  The challenge of serving
THIS church, though, is that some of you DO seem to have perfect
memories, and I don’t want to bore you.  So… if I do, I’m sorry.  I
promise I’m getting to new and different points, but we all need to
get there together, and that requires reviewing the information about
the story first.  

The Creation
story that starts in Genesis chapter 2 is the Yahwist version, which
means it is folk literature, aimed at explaining why things are they
way they are.  Folk literature and shared communal myths are pretty
deeply related.  While the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible never
comes back to mention the Garden, or Adam, or Eve again, the
Christian tradition has been quite obsessed with this story.  That’s
likely due to the work of Paul in Romans, and the way that Paul’s
understanding became a normal way of understanding the point of
Jesus!

However, the
story itself makes the most sense when we look at it in context, and
the context for the story is the Ancient Near East, and the creation
stories of the Ancient Near East.  For transparency’s sake, my
understanding about this text comes from the brilliant Roman Catholic
priest and scholar Addison Wright, who shared with “Ecumenical
Scripture Institute” in 2011.

The Canaanites,
neighbors and frenemies of the Ancient Israelites, have a creation
story centered around their tribal god, Baal.  Baal
was for them the storm god and fertility god. He fought Leviathan in
order to bring order out of chaos.  He dispensed well-being on the
earth.  He is called rider of the clouds, and much of this is
appropriated for YHWH.  Baal has a holy encampment on his holy
mountain after the intentional flood at the sea  – like YHWH with
Sinai and Noah.  Some text fragments of Baal’s creation story have
incantations against snake bites, with a story about a man in the
east near the Tigress called Adam who touched a tree he shouldn’t
have touched, and got bit by the snake, and by calling on the gods he
got the incantations to avoid death, and the enmity between humans
and snakes.  That tree was the tree of death.

OK,
so hopefully I’ve done my job in convincing you that the early
Genesis stories that the Yahwist tells fit into the Ancient Near
East.  Now, in the Ancient Near Eastern people believed that
you could EITHER be immortal OR reproductive.  You probably can see
the problem – if you let immortals reproduce, you get to infinite
people very quickly.  You can probably also see then, that for the
people who believed this, sexuality was inherently related to death
and mortality.  The capacity to procreate came WITH the reality of
dying.  And, lest we forget the rather long era of human history
before effective birth control, sexuality and children were tied
closely together.  So again, parenthood and death was one option and
immortal life without sexuality was the other.  One could not have
both, as they saw it.

Furthermore, in
Ancient Near East stories, paradise gardens are places that IMMORTALS
live.  Thus, children do not live there.  Given this assumption,
eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”
transformed Adam and Eve from being immortal, asexual beings into
mortal, sexual beings.  That knowledge seems like it may have had a
lot to do with sexual maturity.

Now, when I
first heard this, I liked it a lot.  Mostly I liked it because it
pulled us out of blaming women for everything, and out of a hyper
focus on sin.  I wasn’t really convinced by it though.

Then, Father
Wright pointed out that the punishments given in the story fit this
understanding.    After they eat, they see that they are naked, which
fits a burgeoning sexual awakening.  We stopped reading before the
rest of the punishments, but they are:  the couple is thrown out of
the Garden, the woman will have pain in childbirth, sexual desire
will complicate life, you will have to work to stay alive, and you
will now die.  Which it turns out, all fits.  Leaving the Garden is
what happens when you aren’t immortal.  Pain in childbirth is only
relevant when childbirth is going to happen.  Sexual desire IS
complicated, and wasn’t when they didn’t have any.  Having to work to
stay alive isn’t necessary when you can’t die.  Finally, being mortal
means death will come.   Perhaps most interestingly, at the end of
the list of punishments, the woman is named for the first time.  Adam
(whose own name means mud-creature) calls her “Eve, because she was
the mother of all who live.”  Eve means to breath, to live, or to
give life.

At that point,
I was convinced that Father Wright was not only onto a cool
interpretation, his interpretation was superior to any others I’ve
ever heard.  The only problem is that it doesn’t work with Paul’s
take in Romans, at least as it has been used through the millenia.
Paul argues that as death came into humanity through Adam, the sting
of death is removed from humanity by Jesus.  In fact, Paul is sort of
taking on the whole Ancient Near East, because he is claiming that
with God’s work in Jesus, one can have children AND be immortal, just
not an immortality on earth.  Paul is trying to make sense of Jesus,
and of the impact of his life, and this is how he does it.  I don’t
think Paul meant to create quite the firestorm of misogyny and
sin-guilt that he accidentally did.  

Which then
leaves us free to be rather grateful to Adam and Eve, since if they
hadn’t eaten of that tree, none of us would exist 😉  Moreso, it
gives us freedom to reconsider our understandings of both gender and
sin.  It feels like a good reminder that by “sin” the Bible means
“missing the mark” which always feels a lot lighter than what I
would otherwise assume.

One of my
curiosities is about why we’ve held onto this story so tightly.
Again, the ancient Jews did not, and while Paul makes this argument,
we could have rather ignored it as well.  Yet this story is still one
of the living folk narratives in our culture, for Christians and
non-Christians alike.

I’ve wondered
if it relates to a yearning for “paradise.”  It is all sort of
interesting, right?  Because once we bring Paul into it, paradise
comes back in the form of afterlife.  And I think people yearn for
paradise, quite possibly because the world we live in is so full of
suffering and we’d like to consider other options.  The Garden of
Eden itself though, according to the story, was quite small!  It was
small enough for one person to tend to it, and it contained only two
people.  That would be REALLY boring for ETERNITY.  Exiting
definitely seems like the right option.

And yet, the
world is not as it should be.  We know this in our bones.  And we
YEARN for it to be better.  Sometimes our yearning takes the form of
remembering the past in a way that cleans it up and makes it seem
closer to perfect than it was.  Sometimes our yearning encourages us
to close our eyes to the pain and suffering around us.  Sometimes our
yearning for better closes our eyes to the harm we are doing, and the
shame we live with.  Sometimes our yearning for better erupts in
anger for how things are.  Sometimes our yearning for better makes us
afraid of what is and what might come.

AND, sometimes
our yearning for better is how God works with us to make the world…
better.  Isn’t it complicated that the same yearning can do harm and
do good?  Oh, human life.  I think there are two best ways to respond
to our shared yearning for a better world.  One, as you might guess,
is to work with God and each other to make the world better.  The
other is to put our energy on noticing the things that are already
good.  There may be a natural desire for paradise, and we don’t live
in one, but we do live in a world filled with wonders, and when we
forget to attend to them, we can miss out on all the goodness that is
already with us.  The kindom, they say, is already here in part and
is coming in completion.  Let us pay attention to both parts – as
they are the work of co-creating that paradise with God.  Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 1, 2020

Uncategorized

“Mountaintop Views” based on  Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9

  • February 23, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

When
I was 13 I read the Chronicles of Narnia.  They were good, not my
favorites, but easily kept my attention to finish all the books.
However, it was not until MANY years later that I learned that the
books were written as intentional Christian metaphors, and I was
floored.  Nothing, at all, in the books had felt like Christianity to
me.  I didn’t go back to reread them, but I did get peer pressured
into seeing some of the movies, at which point I was able to see
both: 1. How the story could have been written and understood as
Christian and – at the same time – 2. How I entirely missed it.

(The
key really being that I was raised in a Christianity that centered on
“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me” while
those narratives are inherently violent.)

It is
a little bit embarrassing though, to have missed the entire point.
However, I just didn’t see it.  I couldn’t.  There is a deep truth to
the fact that we can’t see things that we don’t have the context to
make sense of.  The Chronicles of Narnia didn’t look to me the way
Christianity looked.  Now, there are 2.3 Billion Christians in the
world, and I don’t think it is reasonable to assume we all understand
our faith in the same way.  Sometimes it is a little bit startling to
realize just how wide Christianity is and how often it contains its
own opposites.  

At
the same time, that’s sort of the beauty of it all.  People from an
incredibly wide range of worldviews, life experiences, and
backgrounds are all able to find meaning in our tradition because it
is quite adaptable to variation.

The
scriptures this week have led me to thinking a lot about perspective,
as they both have to do with changing perspectives.  Mountaintops
themselves are places where people see things differently.  Some part
of that has to do with the effort expended to get to the top, and
another part has to do with seeing things from a different angle.
From the top of the mountain, it is easier to see the forest than the
individual trees.  It is also easier to understand how various parts
of the landscape related to each other.

Additionally,
both of these stories have transformational experiences occur at the
tops of those mountains.  Moses has been called up the mountain by
God, and leaves behind the people he is leading in order to follow
God’s instructions.  As Moses ascends, a cloud descends.  For the
people left behind, that may have created a sense of mystery or
distance from Moses on the mountain, or perhaps anxiety for his well
being.

But
for Moses, alone on the mountain in the midst of a dense fog, for 6
days without further instruction, that was likely INTENSE, like a 6
day silent retreat with visual sensory deprivation.  When I had a 6
hour drive home from college in the days before cell phones, the time
alone with myself was enough to be disconcerting and clarifying.  6
days alone on a mountain in deep fog would be plenty of time for
reflection – to say the least.  There are many people who can’t
handle 30 seconds of silence – for good reason.  Probably most
people in our society get squirmy well before 30 awake minutes
without distractions.  But 6 days!!!  Yet, the people I know  who
have gone 6 days or more away from distractions all describe it as
holy and perspective changing, although not usually easy.

The
six days are a passing note in the story, but my goodness I think
they matter.  On the seventh day, God calls Moses and the cloud
dissipates to reveal the “glory of God” which was so intense the
people at the bottom of the mountain could see it.  After 6 days of
dense fog, that also must have been a new and different sort of
intense.  AND THEN, Moses enters the cloud WITH God and they spend 40
days and 40 nights together.    

This
is one of the stories of Moses receiving the 10 Commandments, and it
seems to emphasize the holiness and uniqueness of the experience.
Moses got A LOT of time with the Divine – way more than his
preparatory 6 days.  

This
story is cleaned up to fit into a good, faithful telling, but there
is an incredible core to it.  As Addison Wright once pointed out, the
faith traditions in the Ancient Near East at this time were all god
and goddess centric.  That is, people sacrificed at Temples or
engaged in behaviors meant to please the gods, with the goal of
gaining favors from the gods.  Favors like fertility for people and
and flocks, rain for the fields, etc.  Thus faith, worship, and
offerings were largely transactional.  Wright believes that something
entirely new emerged in the Sinai desert, and that something new is
the core of this story.  

That
something new was the concept of a God who cared how people treated
EACH OTHER rather than simply being interested in
self-aggrandizement.  That is, the faith traditions of the area
really saw gods and goddesses as being like powerful people –
selfish, greedy, and needing to be manipulated into helping out.  But
somehow, a small group of desert wanderers came to understand a God
(possibly singular, more likely this started as a primary or tribal
god for them) whose PRIMARY CONCERN was moral behavior.  And that’s
the story of the rest of the Bible, right?  The people try to claim
that they’re all about God and God keeps on responding, “then take
care of the vulnerable among you and build a just society.  THAT is
what I want.”

This
new idea of a God interested in moral human behavior and a just
society is the core message lurking under this cleaned up version
about Moses, a mountain, a fog, a fire, and a lot of waiting.  It is
impossible to tell where the original story lies and where it has
been adapted, but the core is powerful and the current version is
powerful and they’re both worthy of consideration.

The
mountaintop experience being such a powerful part of the Jewish
story, it makes a lot of sense that the Gospel writer Matthew tells
the Transfiguration story as another mountaintop story.  In this
case, rather than a dense fog, it is as if a fog has been lifted and
the disciples are finally able to see clearly.

From
the Gospel writer’s perspective, people were confused into thinking
that Jesus was just another teacher/healer, but on the mountaintop
they saw just how holy and special he really was.  The experience of
being close to God on the mountaintop is repeated, with God’s own
voice speaking.   “This is my child, the beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.” It doesn’t get much better than that!  Yet those are
the words that whisper through the ages, being shared time and time
again, because those are the words that God speaks to each of us.
“This is my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Imagining being on mountaintop seeing God’s delight in Jesus reminds
us of why we continue to work in the world as the Body of Christ.  

The
perspective change on the mountaintop is interesting.  In these
stories, new insights are gleaned, ones that change lives.  I’ve been
thinking about when those perspective shifts can happen for the rest
of us.  Climbing mountains remains a good option 😉 but what are
others?  Some of the most common in the church are mission trips, or
participating in new-to-you ministries of the church.  Anytime we
meet and engage with people who are different from us, we gain
valuable perspective.  And, the more we listen to people, the more we
learn.  Sometimes I think perspective shifts are just direct gifts
from God.  Other times they come after long term spiritual practice
or prayer.  Some require those 6 days of silence in dense fog (or
variations thereof).  Julia Cameron in “The Artists Way” says the
way not to get stuck is to write 3 pages of longhand every day and
have a date with yourself to do something new every week.  Her
particular goal is to keep creative juices flowing, but it turns out
those are related, aren’t they?

One
other intersecting piece comes to mind.  When our anxiety is UP, we
tend to see the world more in black and white.  So, rather than
developing increasing capacities to see many perspectives in the
world, we will tend to pick one and STICK WITH IT AT ALL COSTS.  The
challenge is, that for most of us today, anxiety is high.  Of course,
the  current power structure (of any time and place) benefits from
the increased anxiety that leads people to either/or thinking and
doubling down into opposing camps.  It maintains the status quo.  The
status quo is generally the compromise between two opposing camps,
right?  But what is really great for people are win-win situations,
which require creative thinking, the capacity to see multiple
perspectives, and openness to new ideas.

Now,
it turns out we can’t spend our whole lives on mountaintops, and we
all exist within some parameters of perspective that we can’t just
will our ways out of.  Furthermore, we LITERALLY can’t see things we
aren’t expecting to see, which makes it SUPER hard to break out of
our perspective when it is… in fact…. wrong.

My
favorite idea from John Wesley is this, “Sometimes each of us are
wrong.  Clearly, if we knew when we are wrong, we would correct
ourselves and not be wrong.  So, sometimes when others disagree with
us, it is actually a sign that we are currently wrong.  Since we
don’t know which times those are, we should approach all
disagreements with humility.”  

What
would have happened if Moses came back down the mountain with a new
conception of the Divine and people said, “naw, that doesn’t sound
right?”  Where would we be today?  Where would the world be?

Transfiguration
Sunday is the final Sunday before Lent.  It foreshadows for us the
perspective shift of Easter, and by giving us a foretaste of it,
gives us the motivation to engage in reflection for Lent to prepare
ourselves for Easter.  It turns out that Lent is also meant to give
us a perspective change.  It slows us down, offers us time to think,
and reflect, and consider.  

There
are a lot of ways to expand our worldviews, to glean a better
understanding of what is going on all around us.  None of them are
perfect, and our capacities to see and understand will be limited,
but thanks be to God, we can grow and become.  May we take the view
from the mountaintop and let it change us from the inside out.  Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 23, 2020

Uncategorized

“High Standards?” based on Deuteronomy 30:15-20 (really) and Matthew…

  • February 16, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Choose
the things of life, not the things of death.  That’s the gist of our
Hebrew Bible lesson today.  Following the ways of God is choosing
life.  Turning away from God is choosing death.  In the passage,
these are seen as communal decisions.  The desire of God is that the
people choose life, but the passage admits it is their choice.

Deuteronomy
is written from the perspective of the Exile, where the big question
was “why did this happen to us?”  The answer Deuteronomy gives is
“because we weren’t faithful to God and to God’s vision for our
society.”  Thus, when they look back on their communal life, they
yearn to have made better choices, to have been more faithful, to
have chosen the way of life rather than the way of death.  

I
have no idea if more faithful choices on the part of Ancient Israel
would have prevented the Exile.  It seems a bit unlikely, but who
knows.  It is clear that Ancient Israel was not faithful to living
out God’s vision, but it is also clear that the emergence of
mega-empires and being a little country at an intersection of major
trade routes was a dangerous reality.

Nevertheless,
the questions of what way we choose to live still resonate.  It seems
useful to point out that although the words “choice” and “life”
have particular connotations in the debate over whether or not women
have the right to control their own bodies, the phrase “choosing
life” has nothing to do with that.   Rather, it is about the
patterns of decisions that either turn towards God or away from God.
To put it another way, it is about living in a way that enhances life
for everyone and everything, or …. not.

Choosing
death, in terms of Deuteronomy was oppressing the poor, the widows,
the orphans, and the foreigners.  It was wanting a king and creating
wealth differentiations.  It was allowing the justice system to
become unjust for the poor.  It was putting God second and personal
prosperity first.

While
all of that has resonance today, I think there are also personal
aspects to this metaphor.  They may make the most sense from the
perspective of a person who is nearing the end of their life.  What
are people yearning for more of at the end of their lives?  What do
they regret?  What are they grateful for?  

While
people and their answers are different, patterns certainly emerge.
An article on the topic from Business
Insider
offers 5 of the most common regrets of people at the end of their
lives:

1. I
wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life
others expected of me.

2. I
wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I
wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I
wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.1

These
give us some really good answers as to what are the things of life
(courage, authenticity, feelings, friends, joy) and what are the
things of death (expectations, overworking, fear, distance, and
disconnection.)

The
only thing I think is actively missing from the list is the choosing
death of distractions.  So much of modern life is just a wide-ranging
smorgasbord of things willing to distract us from our feelings, from
discomfort, from our authentic selves.  Many of these distractions
come in the form of screens, but not all do.  It is EASY to numb our
selves out, rather than face our feelings, and (oh my!) respond to
what the feelings tell us about how we need to change our lives.  

Some
of you have heard me say that during my renewal leave I disconnected
from social media and email.  It was GLORIOUS.  I still found myself
picking up my phone more than I expected,  and I eventually got
curious about why.  Quite often, I pick up my phone to play Sudoku
(the only game I permit on my phone).  And so then I got curious as
to why I was doing it. Two reasons:  either because I was feeling
anxious and wanted to be distracted from it or because I was feeling
overwhelmed deciding between things and wanted to procrastinate the
decision.  Those motivations have held true since then as well.  The
smorgasbord of distraction options that keep us from making hard
decisions, or from dealing with our emotions are things of death.   I
suspect they are also things we may regret on our deathbeds, when
time feels precious and like a thing not be wasted away.

In
an attempt to change that pattern, to be more at ease with myself and
less worried about making the “wrong” decision, since coming back
from leave, I’ve been slowly working my way through Brené
Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection.”   This week I read the
section entitled “Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of
Perfectionism.”  Brown says “Where perfectionism exists, shame is
always lurking.”2
Now many of us are trained to think that perfection is a GOOD goal,
that it is about striving to be one’s best or self-improvement, but
Brown disagrees.  She says, “Perfectionism is the belief that if we
live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid
the pain of blame, judgement, and shame.  …. Perfectionism, at it’s
core, is about trying to earn approval and acceptance.”3
(OUCH.)

Now,
if I’m honest, I have had an unusually difficult year.  Almost a year
ago now, the Church (big C) to which I have committed my life
declared itself morally bankrupt, and that has been …. heavy.  

At
the same time, this church (little c) has been struggling through
incredibly difficult decision making that has resulted in much higher
anxiety in the system than usual.  And, as family systems predicts, a
lot of the anxiety got passed to
me
as the leader.  That’s to be expected.  That’s what happens when
there is anxiety in a system, it gets focused on the leader.

Now, I
know that pastoral ministry is an impossible task to do perfectly.  
There is a reason why there is no universally agreed upon definition
of perfect pastor.  Context matters a lot in ministry – so do
people and their expectations.  Each person in each church has
different expectations of what a pastor IS and should be doing, and
most of those aren’t even conscious.  So those expectations aren’t
clearly articulated, and yet there is a hope that they will be met –
all of them, from all of the people, all the time, all at the same
time.  My own expectations are that I should spend about half my time
on each of the following: visiting the hurting and keeping in touch
with all the people, sermon and worship work, administration and
meetings, keeping up to date with great research and scholarship and
teaching it, considering structural reorganization and systemic
change, making change within our communities, meeting people and
bringing them to church, maintaining a deep and profound prayer life.
At a minimum.

As the
anxiety has risen, my fears of my own failures have gotten sharper,
and the critiques coming at me have kept pace with my own fears.  Yet
my capacities haven’t changed – I still can’t meet my own standards
in any aspect of ministry, and I don’t know that I can meet anyone
else’s either.  

Now, my
suspicion is that I’m talking about something more universal than
pastoral ministry, or even leadership.  I think that most of our
lives have times when we feel like what we’re doing isn’t enough, and
even worse there are times when others agree with us about that!  It
feels awful, and it can be a really ugly downhill spiral.  This is
the stuff Brown is talking about as perfectionism, and boy oh boy
does it make sense to me that perfectionism is about avoiding the
awful feeling of being judged lacking.

Brown
shares about people who are less stuck in perfectionism, and she says
two attributes make them different, “First, they spoke about their
imperfections in a tender and honest way, and without shame and fear.
Second, they were slow to judge themselves and others.  They
appeared to operate from a place of ‘We’re all doing the best we
can.’  Their courage, compassion, and connection seemed rooted in the
ways they treated themselves.”4
She concludes that people were operating from self-compassion, and
that it is LEARNABLE.
It has 3 parts:

“Self-kindness:
Being warm and understanding towards ourselves when we suffer, fail,
or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating
ourselves with self-criticism.

Common
Humanity:  Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of
personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience –
something we all go through rather than something that happens to
‘me’ alone.

Mindfulness:
Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are
neither suppressed nor exaggerated.  We cannot ignore our pain and
feel compassion for it at the same time.  Mindfulness also requires
that we not ‘over-identify’ with thoughts and feelings, so that we
are caught up and swept away by negativity.”5

So,
difficult as it is, authenticity and choosing LIFE are about facing
shame and failure, being vulnerable, and letting go of perfection.
I’m really quite sure that our self-judgments don’t happen in vacuums
like we think – most
of us believe that it is OK to be harsher with ourselves than we’d be
with others, but the truth is that judgement itself slips out
unaware, and the only way to be truly kind to other people in their
vulnerability is to become more gentle with ourselves in ours.  

Perfectionism
is choosing death.  Compassion is choosing life.  May God help us all
as we strive to choose life.  Amen

1Susie
Steiner, “The 5 Things People Regret Most on Their Deathbeds”
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-things-people-regret-on-their-deathbed-2013-12,
Published December 5, 2013. Accessed February 13, 2020.

2Brené
Brown, “The Gifts of
Imperfection” (Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden, 2010), p. 55.

3Brown,
56.

4Brown,
59.

5Brown,
59-60.  Please note, the same researcher offers other great stuff at
www.self-compassion.org

February 16, 2020

Sermons

“The Work of the Kindom” based on Matthew 5:13-20…

  • February 9, 2020February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I
often hear it said, “Like a fish in water,” reflecting the idea
that a fish isn’t aware of water, which is meant to help us notice
our own contexts.  During a wonderful and life giving conversation
with a person from a FAR more conservative Christian upbringing, that
person said to me, “Your Christianity sounds exhausting.”  I was
unclear about the meaning of that and asked about it.  The person
replied, “All I have to do to be right with God is profess my
belief in the right things and then trust that all is as God wills it
to be.  But you think that you are responsible along with God, so you
think you have to fix all the things that are broken, and so you
never get a break as long as the world is still broken.”  I sat
with that for a minute and then admitted, “Yes, it is exhausting.”

I
hadn’t seen it until it was pointed out to me though, and I remain
very grateful for that conversation and that person’s willingness to
be in those conversations with me.  

As
much as I adore Isaiah, and as much as I adore Isaiah for passages
like this, the temptation towards exhaustion is certainly raised.
Walter Bruggemann1
does wonderful work with this passage, pointing out that it
criticizes “feel good worship” that doesn’t lead to action,
worship done to manipulate God, worship without humane economic
practices, and a lack of neighborliness.  Three things are asked of
God-worshippers: “(a) shared bread, (b) shared houses, and ©
shared clothing.”2
Food, shelter, and clothing being imperative for life, worshippers
of God are to see those who are struggling as beloved members of
their own families and provide for them.

Doris
Clark told me once about her childhood in rural Western NY.  Her
family, like all the other families around, lived on a small family
farm.  Their lives were sustainable, but not wealth producing.  One
of the nearby families was impoverished because they’d had many
children and the resources they had didn’t stretch far enough for all
the mouths they had to feed and bodies they had to clothe.  Doris
reflected on the fact that her family, like all the other families in
the area, shared their excess with that one family and were able to
keep them afloat.  She also reflected that what had seemed possible
with one family out of many, when all were interconnected felt VERY
different from responding to poverty and need in this place and era.

That
was another fish noticing the water conversation for me.  I knew I
was overwhelmed by the needs around us, but I hadn’t ever experienced
anything different in order to be able to make sense of it.  As of
the last census, more than half the kids in our city live under the
poverty rate, and recent administrative changes to social service
programs has made that far worse.3
The Schenectady City School Districts puts it this way, 79% of our
school children are “economically disadvantaged” which translates
to “eligible for free or reduced lunch.”4
On these statistics alone, it feels like a different world than the
one Doris grew up in.

And
the challenge is that these aren’t the only problems we are aware of.
Just to put it into perspective, we are aware of gross injustice at
our borders, including nearly 70,000 children in cages and
deportations of integral members of communities; we are are of gross
injustice in our so-called justice system, which has the impact of
decimating communities of color with imprisonment, probation, and
life-time bans on social service supports for crimes that are
committed equally by people of all races; we are aware of a gross
injustice to our the youngest members of our society when parents
don’t have paid leave and aren’t able to spend the time with their
infants that is needed; we are aware of a raging climate crisis that
has one of our continents burning and then flooding at unprecedented
levels, seas rising, extreme weather events becoming normal, and mass
migration pressing the capacities of nations; we are aware of
governmental instability around the world, of dictatorships and wars
and genocides…. and I just picked SOME of the big issues floating
around us today.  

And
so when I hear Isaiah speaking for God saying, “Is this not the
fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of
the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is
it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless
poor into your house, when you see the naked, to cover them, and not
hide yourself from from your own kin?” I admit to some feelings of
utter exhaustion, and sometimes even hopelessness. I know God is big,
but humanity isn’t terribly faithful to God and our problems are
ENORMOUS.

So,
a person might say, pick one problem, one close to home and work on
that!  I’m game for that, let’s look a childhood poverty in
Schenectady?  Where does it come from?  This one I know the answer
to!  People who are the caregivers of children in Schenectady don’t
have enough money.  (Mathematical proof complete.)

So,
why don’t the caregivers of children in Schenectady have enough
money?  Well, that gets complicated.  Some of it is because there
aren’t enough jobs; some if it is because there aren’t enough jobs
that pay a living wage; some of it is because people don’t have the
knowledge, training, or skills to get the jobs that exist; and some
of it is because people aren’t able to participate in the workforce
get so very little money to live off of; some of it could even be
because people don’t have good skills in financial management.  But
that’s only the beginning.

When
we root down deeper in these questions we get to a lot of other
issues.  Schenectady definitely deals with impoverished people of
color being being imprisoned – with the greatest impact being in
the African American community, and a person in prison can’t make
money while in prison and is profoundly impeded from doing so
afterwards (not can they get the support they need.)  Schenectady
City Schools have been underfunded by the state for decades, making
it exceptionally difficult to provide the services our students need
to thrive, ESPECIALLY given the struggles students have when they
grow up in impoverished neighborhoods.  This also means that many of
our graduates aren’t prepared for the job market.  We clearly also
have struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, which is complicated
by drug companies that have decided to make profits off of people’s
lives.  We in this community are deeply impacted by the cost of
medical care, which has impoverished many and prevents even more from
getting the care they need.  We also struggle with old housing stock
and a high water table that results in some of the highest asthma
rates in the country.  

There
are also the complicating aspects of poverty – the part where
everything in poverty is more expensive: the cost to cash a check
without a bank account, bank fees if you don’t have a high enough
balance, buying things on credit and paying much more with interest,
INSANE interest and fees, trying to eat cheaper food and paying for
it with health, the pure cost of eviction and then the increased cost
of housing after eviction, the increased cost of buying food near
one’s house when that isn’t where the grocery store is but the store
is far away and costs too much to get to, the smaller earning power
of women – with larger impact when men are imprisoned, the impact
of stress on the body and the family, and the list goes on and on.

Right,
so everything is intersecting and it isn’t easy to change.  A few
years ago I went to TEDx Albany and heard some great speakers offer
wonderful inspirational stories.  Most of them that year were about
the speaker’s intentional work to change the lives of people living
in poverty, and that was great!  But I was a little horrified to
realize that all of them were working on poverty on an individual
level.  That is, “if I help this person (or these people) in this
one small way, it increases the likelihood that they’ll be able to
get out of poverty.”  Excellent, for sure, and a great use of
compassion and capacity.  What scared me was that no one seemed to be
looking at poverty on the larger scale.  Because in our society,
when one person or family fworks their way out of poverty, someone
else falls in.  

Our
capitalist system depends on there being a lower class and an
impoverished class… because all those ways that poverty is
expensive are ways that other people are able to make money of of
people’s suffering.  

This
isn’t new, it isn’t news, and it definitely isn’t just the USA.  One
of the things that is most helpful about the gospels for me are that
they are based in a very similar economic system, and so the analysis
of Jesus is particularly applicable for us today.  The context of
Isaiah is a little bit more complicated, and that’s good too.  This
passage is from Third Isaiah, reflecting the struggles of the
community newly back from exile.  So, they were still a vassal state
to an external empire, but they also had some freedom, and were
trying to rebuild their society.  Thus, the normal struggles of “what
does justice look like” were relevant for them.  During the exile,
the people left behind were defenseless and struggled mightily for
generations.  And, during the exile, the people taken into exile were
used as slaves and struggled mightily for generations.  That’s a hard
place to start rebuilding from!  And it might be an easy place to
become individualistic.  After all, everyone has had a hard time,
there aren’t a lot of resources, it might make sense to gather what
you can and share it sparingly.  

But
also, the people were FREE, and they were REBUILDING, and they were
grateful to God for this new era were particularly faithful to their
worship and religious rituals.  Which is where we find this passage.
The people are worshipping, yes, but aren’t living out God’s values.
God’s values are ALWAYS for the well-being of the whole, the care for
the vulnerable, and the acknowledgment of shared humanity with those
who are struggling.

And,
yes, sometimes this is really hard, and it is almost always
overwhelming.  And these problems are big, and complicated.  There
are three pieces of good news here though:  1.  God is on the side of
vulnerable, and God is a really really good ally, 2.  The Body of
Christ works so that if each of us do our part, big changes happen,
but we only have to do our small part, 3.  The Poor People’s Campaign
is working on all of this and they’re amazing.
(Copies of my sermon have the NY state fact sheet attached.)5

Actually,
there is a 4th
piece of really good news, and this is one I should talk about more.
One of the most valuable ways to change the world is to settle into
God’s love for us.  Because when we are TRYING to be lovable, we tend
to get really defensive about our errors and then that leads to us
judging others to protect ourselves, and things can go downhill
quickly.  But when we TRUST that God loves us, and also that God has
good work for us to do in the world, THEN we can participate in the
world as expressions of that love, and things just go far better.  As
we allow ourselves, and our humanity, and even our weaknesses and
failures to be acceptable to ourselves and visible to others, we tend
to get better at letting other people be human too.  And as we do
that, we increase our capacity to see other people as fully human and
fully beloved by God – and THEN we have the best possible
motivation to work towards bettering the lives of those around us.  

So,
dear ones of God, I invite you to do what you can do to settle into
God’s love for you, and also to follow God’s will in the world: to
create more justice, to break more yokes, and to bring freedom to the
oppressed.  May God help us all.  Amen  

1Yep,
it is paragraph three and I’ve now cited Isaiah and Brueggemann.
#ProgressivePastorCredentials.  Also, if you were wondering, my
computer knows how to spell Brueggemann.

2Walter
Bruggemann, Isaiah
40-66
(Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 187-189

3https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Census-Most-Schenectady-kids-live-in-poverty-3925563.php

4http://www.schenectady.k12.ny.us/about_us/district_dashboard/demographics

5https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/New-York-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Sermons

“Requirements” based on Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12

  • February 2, 2020February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

By
my records, this is the 4th time I’ve preached on the
Beatitudes here, and the 7th time overall.  To be honest,
this makes things a little bit challenging.  To be a responsible
preacher, I think I have to go over the basics each time, but to be
an INTERESTING preacher I need to offer you something new.  The
Beatitudes, however, have been around for a while and they aren’t …
well…new.

In
fact, they’re so not new to those of us with lifetime exposures to
Christianity, that I’m not sure we can hear them anymore.  Bruce
Malina and Richard Rohrbough wrote the “Social-Science Commentary
on the Synoptic Gospels” which is one of the most useful books I’ve
ever met.  They put the Gospels into a social context, and use it to
explain how things would have made sense in the stories and to those
first hearing the stories.

Their
commentary on the Beatitudes is particularly helpful, as they
DISAGREE with the general consensus that “blessed” can be
translated as “fortunate” or “lucky” or “happy.”  Those
are all good translations of the Latin version of the text,
but they miss the social context of Jesus’s day.  Instead, they point
out:

The language used here, i.e. ‘blessed’ is
honorific language. … Contrary to the dominant social values, these
‘blessed are…’ statements ascribe honor to those unable to defend
their positions or those who refuse to take advantage of or trespass
on the position of another.  They are not those normally honored by
the culture.  Obviously, then, the honor granted comes from God, not
from the usual social sources.1

The
honor bit of this isn’t simply honor like we understand it today.
One of the primary points of the book is that honor and shame were
understood as a zero-sum reality in the Mediterranean region at that
time.  One was born into a certain amount of honor or shame and the
only way one gained honor was by gaining it FROM someone else and
that person then experienced an increase in shame.  Honor was the
FUNDMENTAL value in society, and it was a “limited good.”  In
fact, the “poor” and the “rich” in the New Testament are not
actually economic terms to begin with.  Rather, to be “poor” was
to be a person living with less honor than one was born to, and to be
“rich” was to have gained honor from others.  Malina and
Rorhrbough put it this way, “The ancient Mediterranean attitude was
that every rich person is either unjust or the hair of an unjust
person,” one who had stolen from others what they had.2
They conclude that,”The terms ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ therefore, are
better translated ‘greedy,’ and socially unfortunate.’”3
(This isn’t to say poverty wasn’t an issue, it was just such a
UNIVERSAL issue that it wasn’t actually the focus.)

This
understanding of honor, and the connection of honor to “blessed
are…”, is the key to understanding the Beatitudes in their
original context.  The challenge is that sometimes the text has been
used to mean the opposite of it’s intention.  When “Blessed are…”
is translated “lucky” it can SEEM like the beatitudes are saying:
“Lucky are the ones who struggle, don’t worry about them, they’re
better off than you think.”  Thus the social order of the day,
whatever day it may be, is upheld and people’s suffering is
justified.

That
sounds sort of like what a STANDARD set of honor and shame statements
would have been – the ones describing society as it was in Jesus’s
day:

Honorable
are those born into good families.

Honorable
are those who are spoken well of in the town square.

Honorable
are those who own large estates.

Honorable
are the elected officials who make the rules.

Honorable
are those who have many servants.

Honorable
are those who have the status to control others.

Honorable
are those who have the ear of power.

Honorable
are those who can enforce their will with violence.

Honorable
are those who speak, and others have to listen.

That
is, honor belongs to and is used by those are are already powerful,
important, and wealthy.  So, shame belongs to the powerless, the
unimportant, the poor, and those who lose status.  This clarifies
just how different the statements in Matthew’s gospel really are.
Because those that society shames, God does not.

Given
the information we have, the Beatitudes might be heard as:

Honorable to God are those who have lost the
honor of society, while they do not own the kingdoms of earth, they
are part of the kindom of heaven.

Honorable to God are those who are mourn, while
they have lost that which matters, loss is not the final word.

Honorable to God are those who refuse to harm
others, while they may lose out on power and wealth, they will end up
with everything that truly matters.

Honorable to God are those who hunger and thirst
for fairness, righteousness, and justice – it is coming.

Honorable to God are the merciful – those who
do not demand what they have a right to and shame others – they
will also receive mercy when they need it.

Honorable to God are those who are pure in
heart, the kind, for when they look in the world, they are able to
see the hand of God at work.

Honorable to God are the peace-able people, the
ones who reject violence and seek win-win situations, they are like
God.

Honorable to God are the ones who are shamed by
society for making the right choices, they also are a part of the
kindom of heaven.

Jesus
is describing an ENTIRELY ALTERNATE values system, one that ignores
the things that society cared about and instead focuses about caring
for each other, building each other up, not being willing to do harm,
and inverting the assumptions about how honor and shame work.

The
work of Jesus in this Matthew passage tracks well with the questions
posed in Micah.  In this passage God reminds the people what God has
done for them, and they respond with a wish to show appropriate…
well, honor and difference to God.  This leads to the question, “With
what shall I come before the LORD?” and the initial thoughts are
the sorts of gifts one might bring a king to indicate that one
understands oneself to be a vassal – that the approval of the king
is important to your own continued life.    But the answer is that
God does NOT work like that.  God isn’t looking for bribes, like the
kings of the world.  God is looking for something else entirely.

You
may well know this answer: to do justice, and to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God.  Sounds a bit like the Beatitudes,
doesn’t it?

I
asked a question last week about how we as Christians are supposed to
be in relationship with the world.  I think, perhaps, this is a large
part of the answer.  We are to exist within an alternative value
system, one that sees the world with different eyes.  We are to see
the values of justice, and of kindness, of humility, of peacefulness,
of humility, of mercy  – and let those values guide our lives.  How
we relate to the world at large is not in rejection or complicity –
it is with seeing it with different eyes.  

In
the video for the Living the Questions study last week Rev. Winnie
Varghese suggests that as Christians we should be dreaming dreams so
big that the world thinks we are CRAZY, and the dreams are
impossible. The reason, she says, is because God dreams of a truly
just society, and we’re supposed to be dreamers with God.  I think
that both Micah and the Beatitudes point us in the direction of God’s
dreams – of value systems that value compassion, collaboration, and
kindness.  May we dream right alongside of God, and act accordingly.
Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rorhrbough Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Matthew 5:1-12” p. 41.

2Malina,
400.

3Malina,
401.

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

02-02-2020

Sermons

“Dawn Light” based on  Isaiah 9:1-4 and Matthew 4:12-23

  • January 27, 2020February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I’m
going to enter into the Bible’s metaphors today about darkness and
light, but before I can do so, I need to differentiate Biblical times
from current times.  In particular, today metaphors of light and
darkness reinforce racial stereotypes with claims that light skin
tones are related to lightness which are related to goodness while
dark skin tones are related to darkness which are related to badness.
These correlations are false and harmful, yet they are significant
in our society and have to be named.

The
Bible, however, isn’t racist.  There are a whole lot of problems with
the Bible and I’d be happy to list them with you in a personal
conversation, but racism actually isn’t one of them, because racism
was created well AFTER the Bible was completed.  Any claims of the
Bible supporting racism are, inherently, false.  

When
the Bible is talking about light and darkness I think it is fair to
assume it is talking about light like sunlight and darkness like
cloud covered nights.  It is probably worth remembering that electric
lights are also a feature of modernity that the Bible lacked, and so
light and dark were more constant and impermeable features of life
during Biblical times.

So,
we’re going to talk about light and darkness, and I’m going to follow
the Bible’s lead in acknowledging that humans yearn for light.  But I
want to be very clear that we are talking about lumens and not skin
tone.  After all, none of the people in the Bible were white.

Of
course, there are many positive traits of darkness.  Since reading
about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” I’ve been entirely convinced
that darkness is a gift to us.  A “Dark Night of the Soul” is a
time of discombobulation, and/or confusion, and/or grief – when the
faith a person has doesn’t work anymore and the faith a person will
have isn’t there yet.  It has been described as womb-like, when the
framework of understanding the world, and God, and even one’s self
collapses and then in silence and darkness takes on a new form.  The
new form doesn’t come into the light until it is ready.  Many
Christians have been through Dark Nights of the Soul, some have been
through multiple.  It is a normal and important part of faith, even
if it is profoundly uncomfortable and can be scary.  

So
it isn’t that darkness is bad, darkness is an important part of the
journey.  However, after a time of darkness, light is a precious
gift.

Isaiah
is talking about an experience of light after a prolonged darkness.
He is talking about dawn breaking after a particularly long night.
Isaiah is talking about a dark night of the soul for the whole
community, the whole nation of Ancient Israel, when everything they
had known and depended on was overturned… and then what would
happened afterwards.

After
the gloom, after journeying in the darkness, after living without
light or hope, the light dawns.  The sense of isolation from God and
each other lifts.  The fear and hopelessness that have permeated life
dissipate.  The heaviness of grief grows lighter.  Things start to
make a little bit of sense again, in a new way.

In
place of that heaviness, there is JOY.  The things that were dragging
the people down are broken, and they are able to stand tall and move
freely.  Hope and light abound.

The
narrative of Isaiah, and indeed of the entirety of the Hebrew Bible
is that bad things may come – and do – but they’re never the
final word.  The people are enslaved in Egypt, but God sets them
free.  The people are lost, wandering in the desert, but God shows
them the way home.  The people are oppressed under their own kings,
but God sends prophets to restore justice.  The people are taken back
into captivity in the exile, but God sets them free again.  The
people are oppressed by large empires, but God works towards freedom
time and time again.

Yes,
the darkness, comes, says the Bible.  But the light comes too.  The
darkness is never the final word.

Matthew
decided to use this passage from Isaiah to explain Jesus.   In fact,
he uses it to INTRODUCE the theme of Jesus’ ministry, which was his
teaching of “Repent and believe, for the kin(g)dom of heaven has
come near.”  That is, Jesus was part of God’s work of the light
dawning yet again.  Furthermore, the light and the kin(g)dom are
related.  

We
sometimes shy away from the word “repent” because of the ways it
has been misused around us, but the word itself is just fine.  It can
be understood as “expressing regret or remorse about one’s
wrongdoing”1
or more traditionally to Christianity, as “apologizing AND changing
couse so the harmful action isn’t repeated.”  My friend the Rev.
Dr. Barbara Throrington Green says that to repent is to realize that
you are headed in the wrong direction, to look around to figure out
where God is looking, and then to reorient yourself to look in the
same direction God is looking.  That’s my favorite definition.

I wonder
sometimes if I really understand Jesus’ message yet.  It always feels
like a work in progress.  “Repent and believe, for the kin(g)dom of
heaven has come near.”  I think this is an invitation to leave
fear, hopelessness, and isolation behind and to join with Jesus in
the work of the kin(g)dom – which is work done in community, for
the well-being of all, in faith that with God’s help the kin(g)dom
will come.  But I also think it is about letting go of the things “of
the world” that do harm in order to make space for the things “of
the kin(g)dom” and that is much harder to sort out.  There is a
big, long-standing question in Christianity about what our
relationship is to be with “the world.” Do we stand against it?
Do we ignore it?  Do we recognize it’s gifts?  Do we think of it as
sacred?  Do we call it into more wholeness?  Do we accept it as it
is?

And
that ends up really mattering.  How much do we reject?  How much do
we celebrate?  Why?  How do we even figure out what things are of the
world and what things are of the kin(g)dom when we ourselves are in
both and most people we know are too?  Purism doesn’t happen much in
real life.  I think some of the things “of the world” are
competition, tribalism, greed, pulling ourselves up by pushing others
down, and violence.  Yet, I’ve definitely seen those things in the
church too!  I want to think of the things of the kin(g)dom as being
about the common good, shared resources, the full humanity of all
people, spirituality, holistic well-being, peace, hope, and joy.
Yet, in reality there aren’t clear lines between the two, or at least
not as clear as I’d like most of the time.


Which
worries me, because if I’m supposed to “repent and believe” and
I’m still not entirely clear on what I’m repenting of or believing
in, maybe I’m not helping much in the building of the kin(g)dom, even
though I really, really want to.  

This
Matthew passage is power packed.  It claims and then reframes
Isaiah’s dawning light, it offers Jesus’ ministry and its key ideas,
it includes the calling of the disciples, and then it describes the
work of Jesus during his ministry, “Jesus went throughout Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the
kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the
people.”

Perhaps one
doesn’t have to have a particularly good sense of where to draw the
line or how to understand the kindom.  Perhaps in the thin light of a
new dawn , one is only able to see a little bit, and yet that little
bit of light is enough to guide you safely one step at a time.  

We don’t
really have to have it all figured out – no one does, and no one
ever has.  But there is a need to trust God, and trust ourselves, and
trust each other, so that we can take a little bit of light and let
it lead us.

There is
deep goodness in the darkness, and I hope we’ve savored its lessons.
May we prepare ourselves for light dawning, and to take tentative
steps in the early morning light, moving as well as we can toward the
kin(g)dom.  Amen

1  Apple
dictionary

Rev. Sara E. Baron

 First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 26, 2020

Sermons

“The Call of Baptism” based on Isaiah 42:1-9 and…

  • January 12, 2020February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Last
weekend, Congregation Gates of Heaven hosted a service of unity for
the Capital Region after acts of anti-Semitism in New York made it
clear that a response was needed.  The event was jointly sponsored by
the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York, the Capital Region
Board of Rabbis, and Schenectady Clergy Against Hate.  By best
estimates over 800 people showed up!

(Interfaith Chapel at the University of Rochester)

The
event was particularly moving, even as the need for it was
distressing.  Schenectady Clergy Against Hate are well practiced in
pulling together community witnesses after attacks on faith
communities.  In our country today, that’s a good skill to have.
That said, I deeply wish we didn’t have the first idea how to respond
to violent attacks in faith communities.  I wish we’d never had a
violent attack to respond to.

Yet,
we have.  

And
while the acts of violence have often been perpetuated by individuals
acting as lone wolves, there is a disturbing connection between them.
Within a society, violence and the threat of violence act as means
of control, particularly of disempowered groups.  

I
would love to believe that in this forward thinking year 2020 we have
reached new heights of open-mindedness and equity, but evidence
proves me wrong.  Violence against people of minority faith
traditions, against people of color, and against women and non-men
continues, and indeed in some areas are expanding.  I believe this
violence functions as a way to maintain control over each of those
groups.  That isn’t to say that is a coordinated effort, but rather
the way that power works in our society impacts who gets attacked and
what impact is felt.  As each “lone wolf” acts, they function to
perpetuate the system of control.

And,
I believe this is against the will of God.

I
hope is is painfully obvious to say this:

God’s love is for Christians,
Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sihks, Pagans, Druids, Agnostics,
Atheists, and members of other faith traditions.  God’s love is not
determined by a person’s faith tradition nor faithfulness, and to
claim otherwise makes God very small and mean indeed.

Similarly, God’s love knows no
national boundaries, language barriers, or income requirements, nor
is it impacted conviction histories.  That just isn’t how God works.

And, consistently, God’s love is
for females, males, people who are intersex, and people who are
non-binary all the same.  

None
of this is news.  We KNOW this.  And yet, perhaps we have not been as
vocal as we need to be about sharing this.  It is painfully obvious
that the world around us does NOT know this.  There are a multitude
of forces around us that define who has value and who doesn’t, and
therefore imply that some people matter more than others – and GOD
DOES NOT AGREE.  

The
Intersectional Justice Book Club discussion yesterday was on Michelle
Alexander’s The New Jim Crow,
in which Alexander names the ways that the War on Drugs has created a
racial underclass by imprisoning mostly men of color and then
enabling discrimination of those with convictions.  She points out
that drug use and drug sales occur across racial groups equally, with
a little bit more happening among white people, and yet 90% of
convictions are of people of color (with the vast majority of those
people being of African American descent.)

She
names, quite directly, that if we cared equally about people of
color, we would not permit such a system in our society.

And
yet we do.  

At
the service last weekend, the speakers gave us work to do.  Their
messages included that we have to:  

Advocate
for religious freedom for each other.

Speak
respectfully and affirmatively of other faith traditions AT ALL TIMES

(For me, this works mostly as:
call out the problems in my own tradition before looking for others,
and I haven’t finished on my own tradition yet. 😉  )

Call
out anyone who doesn’t speak respectfully of a faith tradition

Repent
of the times we have contributed to messages of hate

Remember
the contributions of people of other faith traditions

Seek
legislation that makes attacks on faith groups hate crimes

Have
hope

Become
more loving

Rabbi
Rafi Spitzer, of Congregation Agudat Achim in Niskayuna, specifically
reminded us to attend to the things of the Spirit, as a means of
becoming more loving and more peaceful.  That’s the particular
role of those of us who are part of faith traditions: to become more
loving and more peaceful as part of contributing to the world become
more loving and peaceful.  (May it be so.)

This
got me thinking about how well we are doing at developing the things
of the Spirit.  There are lots of ways that things are going well –
we have many ways for people to meaningfully contribute to building
the kindom, we have space for people to be loved as they are, there
is beauty that feeds us, there is space for questions and for being.

I
think there are also ways we could be making more space for the
things of the Spirit.  The most historic Wesleyan question of all is
“How is it with your soul?”  Let me tell you, this is NOT an easy
question to answer, and it is not a question you can ask others if
you are unprepared to hear the real answers.  That said, it is a
great question.  “How is it with your soul?” invites us to think
deeply about the answer, and share it with someone else.  It brings
our faith journeying into contact with each other.  A course I taught
once invited participants to answer the question with weather
metaphors, which turned out to be amazing (“it is cloudy, with a
distinct change of tornadoes”, “it is bright and beautiful, but
bitterly cold,” “the fog is very, very thick”) but I think that
there is even more value in having to answer the question directly.
So, one tiny little thing we could do: we could ask each other “how
is it with your soul?”  

Perhaps
you might even be willing to ask someone this during the time of
passing the peace?  And, dear ones, if you don’t want to answer,
perhaps a weather metaphor might share the gist without being too
vulnerable?

On
a similar note, I don’t think we check with each other enough about
our spiritual practices.  During Lent two years ago we did a study of
a Richard Rohr book, and thus had a regular shared practice of
centering prayer.  It was amazing.  For many of the participants it
was the most regular prayer practice they had, and it was a wonderful
addition to their lives.  (I believe centering prayer is easier in a
group.)  My suspicion is that many of us in this community do not
have regular prayer practices.  Some of this may be due to not ever
having found a prayer practice that works, some of this may be due to
not being the sorts of people who want REGULAR practices, some of
this may be due to allowing other things to take precedence.  I will
admit to you that while I had INCREDIBLE prayer times during my
renewal leave, I allowed them to become lax again this fall and have
been struggling to pick them up again.  I adore prayer, but it is
very (VERY) easy to allow myself to get distracted with … well,
anything and everything else.

Yet,
I know that my own development as a person, and a person of faith,
and into being more loving and more peaceful is directly correlated
to the time I spend in prayer.  My prayer practices tend to be the
quiet and reflective sort, and thus the kind that let me see myself
clearly and make decisions at the right pace for me.  Without them,
I’m pretty anchorless.

So
that’s the second thing I can think of – we could be more
intentional about checking in with each other about prayer and/or
meditative practices – including sharing what works for us,
admitting what isn’t working for us, and being willing to talk about
what impedes us from practicing.  My personal experience says that
when I’m avoiding prayer, I’m mostly afraid of that some judgement
I’m making on myself is shared by God.  Thus far, it never has been.

Of
course, prayer practices are a WIDE range of things that can include
walking, or dancing, or bike riding, as well as sitting quietly,
writing, or coloring, and for many they even include conversation.
We as a church talk about and develop our prayer and meditative
skills more – I think it would benefit us and the world.  

For
the first time this year, when I read Isaiah 42, I didn’t get worried
about the servant like I always have before.  Instead, I heard it as
being all about the nature of God.  The passage tells us about God
who has joy in people, who wants justice for all the nations, who
doesn’t move us towards justice with violence, who is patient and
consistent and trustworthy.  This God, the very one who made all of
creation, is with us and working towards good with us.  What has been
and has been hurt and broken is NOT all that can be, there is new
goodness that can and will come with God.  Healing and hope are
possible.  

These,
you see, are things of the Spirit.  They are things of seeing clearly
what is, and yet seeing what can be.  And those things of the Spirit
are what our baptisms are all about.  Baptism welcomes us into the
community of the Spirit, so that we can work together towards love
and peace for all.  And baptism teaches each one of us that we are
beloved by God,  which means we don’t need to prove ourselves worthy
of love, and means that we have love in abundance to share.  

Dear
ones, there is a lot broken in the world, but God isn’t done with us
yet.  And as we share with each other and seek out the Divine, we
make it possible to bring more goodness into the world.  May we do
it!  Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 12, 2020

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  • First United Methodist Church
  • 603 State Street
  • Schenectady, NY 12305
  • phone: 518-374-4403
  • alt: 518-374-4404
  • email: fumcschenectady@yahoo.com
  • facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady
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