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January 23, 2022
by Sara Baron

“To a People Called Hope” based on Isaiah 62:1-5 and John 2:1-11

To a generation that calls themselves Forsaken, to those who have lived years they call Desolate, to those who would name themselves Abandoned, to those living in a place they call Forlorn, to those who think of themselves as Discarded… (to a people in a pandemic?)…

It is to you that God speaks.

It is to you that God has been speaking.

You are not how you have known yourself. Your past is going to be behind you, and no one will call you by those names again (least of all yourself.)

You will be known for your inner radiance, for your joy and laughter, for the inspiration of your loving relationships, for the delight you bring, and the fullness of your lives.

God is taking care of you, and there is joy to come.

Take heart.

Take hope.

(Thus ends my interpretation of the Isaiah reading for us today.)

In the Hebrew Bible, one of the signs of the Messiah who was to come was an abundance of food and drink. That is, if the scriptures tell us there was A WHOLE LOT OF WINE, we would be wise to be thinking, “that’s a sign of God’s work among us.”

A CAVEAT: In The United Methodist Church, we use grape juice at communion as a means of care for those who live with an addiction to alcohol. This “first sign” of John’s seems to be a similar possible trigger. For those who are especially tender, let this serve as a content warning, and invite you to find another sermon to hear. For those who are feeling OK, but might need some space, I’d invite you to translate “wine” to “bread” as needed. GOOOOOD bread is a wonderful thing and the same connotations can be attached as to “good wine.”

Back to the main story: the Gospel of John, which tends to super-infuse meaning into the stories it tells, suggests that Jesus creates about 120 GALLONS of GOOD wine. That’s a lot of wine. It seems that this is being used as a fulfillment of those prophecies that with the messiah comes an abundance of good food and drink, and this abundance is being used to draw people in to notice who Jesus is.

I keep thinking that making wine was a good way to care for people’s practical needs (I’m told water usually wasn’t safe to drink), but making GOOD wine was a way to share in the joy and hope of God. The things that bring pleasure matter. Jesus wasn’t against enjoying life, and part of the Gospel narrative is telling us that we too, are allowed to enjoy our lives. This, too, I think is part of the messianic promise. What is the point of a messiah if the people don’t get to live GOOD lives?

On that basis, the good wine is a sign of God’s work among us, a sign of God’s care for the people, a sign that God is WITH the people, and they have reasons to have hope. Of course, the Jewish people in Galilee at the time of Jesus had been through about 8 centuries of difficult times and were pretty used to both hopelessness of circumstances and hope in God anyway.

Where do we put our hope, is, I think, a theological question. It tells us what we think is holy. We often put hope in institutions, which will dismay us because they care about themselves, not people. Other times we put our hope in each other, which can be quite lovely, as long as we keep people off pedestals, and allow each other the space to be human. But, of course, sometimes we put all of our hope in ONE person and that tends to be unstable. We’re encouraged to put our hope in the economy, or in the next great thing we will purchase, but those are clearly unstable. Often we’re taught to put our hope in education (I’ve been tempted to do this many times), and maybe there is SOME truth to that, but I think the student loan crisis provides enough reasons to have concerns there.

My hope is in God. Really and truly. I believe that God is with us, on our side, patient, able, and going to stick with us no matter what. I believe God is working towards the kindom in many people and in many places, and that God’s vision for the world is the most likely outcome over the long run.

And, I am aware that hope feels like a limited resource right now.

But, I think God plays a long game, so I’ll keep my hope there.

Where is hope right now? It isn’t in “going back” because that era has ended. But it also isn’t in staying the course, because this isn’t sustainable. (Note: the great resignation). But, perhaps there is hope in the fact that having been shaken up and taken off course, we have a chance to decide what course we want to take next.

The Isaiah passage uses the metaphor of marriage to indicate how significant the change of fate for the ancient Israelites will be. God is claiming the people, and their lives won’t be the same afterwards.

That, too, I think is true of our lives since the pandemic began. While there has been an obscene amount of death and destruction, and I don’t mean to minimize that, the upheaval has also made space for some hope. We have a chance to let go of the things that were holding us back from a fuller life. We have a chance to grab on to the things that move us towards a fuller life.

Or to say it another way, the wedding ran out of wine (boo) but somehow there is an abundance of Good Wine anyway, because God is with us. What do we want to do now?

I don’t have many answers, but I do have some medium term dreams for this church community. I hope that we will be able to gather, eventually without distance or masks, and we will be healed by being in each other’s presences. This week I was reminded of the power of “co-regulation” – when the physical and emotional processes of mammals join together to ease the struggles of both. Co-regulation means we can breath easier, keep our temperatures in the right range, AND let go of panic when we are near someone else we trust, who responds to us with warmth. Being a community that is trustworthy and warm, and that in doing so is able to help people in their human journeys sounds VERY hopeful to me. So, I hope we able to be together and co-regulate again, and I hope when do it is SLOW and SWEET and we notice how good it is.

I have a hope that someday we are going to have coffee hour again, with real coffee, and maybe some snacks, and mostly with people milling about chatting with each other and crying in relief to be together.

I have a hope that we might eventually create a regular practice of “listening groups” to do the holy work of hearing each other, and allow God’s healing to enter each other’s lives by being known and loved.

I have a hope that we might look for signs that we are growing as a faith community by seeing how compassion and empathy are growing within us.

I have a hope that we might judge ourselves, in part, by how much FUN we are having together, by how much delight is in our midst, by our contagious our joy is – that we may be signs of the goodness of God.

AND I have hope that some of things we’ve developed over the past almost two years will form us in the future: that we might keep intergenerational faith formation because it is GOOD, that we will always have an online presence because it connects us whenever we are apart, that we may always take seriously the needs of those who can’t be physically present.

So, dear ones, in your lives, in your work, in your play, and in your church I invite you to consider: what is the mediocre wine? What isn’t worth drinking, or doing, or fighting for? And, what’s the GOOD stuff? What makes life worth living, what brings wholeness and healing, what brings compassion or joy? Feel free to answer in the comments, or bring some answers to the Sunday Check in ;).

God is a God who can be trusted, and there is hope through God, and we might as well take stock of where hope is flowing through us. 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 23, 2022

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January 16, 2022
by Sara Baron

“Two Big Questions” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I’ve been told that human beings have two big questions in life, ones that are in tension with each other, ones that motivate much of what we do. They are: “Do I fit in?” “Am I special?” I think that together they add up to “Do I matter?” because both fitting in and being special are about mattering. We matter when we have a group who claims us, a place we can be real, an identity formed with others. We ALSO matter when we know we are making a contribution, that we are doing what WE in particular can do, when we are seen for being ourselves and not just another face in the crowd.

Or maybe when I was told this it was just about kids, as it came from a theory in my Children’s Literature class 😉 So, it seems, I’m the one who has expanded this to all humans. Mostly because it seems true to me.

We are always looking for clues about if we fit in, and adapting our behaviors to what we see around us. Think about masking at different kinds of gatherings and how uncomfortable it is to be in the minority in whatever decision you make.

We are also always looking for clues that we are special, and often we seek to show it by what we do, or say, or wear. This is part of why it can feel good to be thanked for sharing a musical gift, or visual display, or sharing a helpful thought. We want to stand out, in some ways, even as we want to fit in, in others.

So, they’re in tension, they motivate A LOT of what we do, and they add up to “do I matter?” Or maybe, “do I matter RIGHT?” Sometimes we even get stuck in old ways of fitting in or old ways of being special and struggle to adapt to new places or expectations. This stuff is deeply and profoundly correlated with IDENTITY, and for human-being-meaning-makers, our identity MATTERS.

I have been told that “Your community is the place that accepts your gifts.” Talk about intersecting the two questions! The place you fit in is the place that accepts you in your specialness. Hmmm.

Similarly, there are studies that say that we get a little burst of happiness hormones when we get a text message or a response on social media. These are ALSO related to our core questions: they tell us “I’m special enough someone is wanting to connect with me” AND “I fit in.” I find it interesting to pay attention to when I am doing things to get those little floods of positive hormones, and when I’m able to let go of them and be more present where I am.

For me, the story of Jesus’s baptism, and the ways it resonates in our lives today, correlate with all of this: being accepted and fitting in, being special and unique, and being affirmed as mattering. God saying, “You are my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” is the crux of what most of us need to hear most of the time, and a statement we struggle to believe and thus push back against.

We worry we aren’t worthy. That something we said, or did, or didn’t say, or didn’t do makes us unlovable. We worry that we aren’t sufficiently pleasing God, that we aren’t good enough, or we aren’t doing enough. This may be why we constantly seek affirmation that we are special and we do fit in. We need it, but we don’t trust it from the Source.

In the United Methodist Church we rather firmly hold that baptism is a one-time deal. Our reasons are sound: because baptism is a gift from God, humans can’t mess it up, so it doesn’t ever NEED to be redone. That “can’t be messed up” applies both to the person who does the baptizing – it doesn’t matter if they’re imperfect because God is the actor, not the pastor AND it applies to the baptized – it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, you can’t shake off God’s love. (It seems worth admitting that I believe in ONE exception to the “baptized once” rule, which is that if someone is baptized with a name and gender that do not match who the person has come to know themselves to be, then I am willing to make sure that they receive the blessing of inclusion with their actual name and actual gender. God still hasn’t messed up, but any ritual of inclusion should include the ACTUAL person.)

Of the many explanations for what baptism is, the one I most resonate with is that it is a ritual of inclusion. When someone is baptized we welcome them into the Family of Faith. Now, OF COURSE, we believe that God’s love is for all people and God works for the good of all people. So, the difference is that we, as the Family of Faith, acknowledge that love and spend our lives seeking to expand its impact in the world. We commit to work together to expand that love, to be loving to each other, to encourage each other in the work, and to recognize the sacredness of each person both within the Family of Faith and beyond it. To be baptized as a baby is to have promises made to teach you these things, to be confirmed or to be baptized as an adult is to claim this God of Love for yourself and the aim of expanding love in the world as your shared goal. (We often call this “the kindom”, MLK talked of the Family of Faith as being the “beloved community.”)

When Jesus was baptized by John, he was committing himself to John as his teacher, and becoming a “disciple” of John’s. He, too, was joining a movement committed to a Godly way of life and a vision for how the future should be. Later on, after John died, he claimed his own vision (similar to but similar to John’s) and started doing his own baptisms, claiming his own disciples. As disciples are learners, one of the phrases still used for people of faith in the Christian (Jesus following) tradition is “disciples.” In this church we seek to learn so we can understand both the world as it is and God’s vision for a just future for all of creation.

Baptism incorporated Jesus into his chosen community, and then incorporated his disciples into theirs, and incorporates us into ours. We are, at least we seek to be, that place that receives the gifts that people are willing and able to offer. This is a place where we “fit in” and try our hardest to make it possible for others to do so well. AND, that means it is also a place where we get to be special – to offer particular skills and gifts for the wellbeing of the whole.

There are so many loud and constant narratives in the world at large telling us that we aren’t enough, that some people matter more than others, that injustice is unavoidable, that fear should motivate us (to buy things), and that we should work harder to protect ourselves – no matter the cost to others.

And then there are the narratives of God. God says to the people (Isaiah 43):

Dear Ones, I created you, I formed you, and I like you.

You can let go of fear, you are already enough,

You can let go of worry, you are mine and that is identity enough.

You are beloved children of God. And it is good.

When you face floods, I am with you.

When you face droughts, I am with you.

You are precious to me.

I love you.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.

Come home to me.

I created you for goodness,

and I call you by your name.

NOW, integrity requires me to point out that this song of Isaiah is COMMUNAL, it was written to the nation of ancient Israel, promising that the Exile wouldn’t have the last word. The you is the whole, not the individual. And, I would say, that sometimes we need to hear it as it was written and be reminded of the power and sacredness of the whole. AND sometime we need to hear it as individuals and be reminded that we too are special to God.

The Spirit guides our reading and hearing of holy texts.

Dear ones, in God’s house, you fit in. AND, in God’s eyes you are special. When humans create God-centered spaces, they’re able to offer a genuine welcome God’s uniquely wonderful beings. And we try to do that, together.

May you rest assured, beloved child of God, you are already enough, and you need not struggle to matter. You already do – you are God’s beloved, and that IS enough. 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 16, 2022

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January 9, 2022
by Sara Baron

“Another Road Home” based on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

I really like the idea that the Christmas stories in the gospels are “Gospels in Miniature” that highlight the major points of each gospel writer, foreshadow what is to come, and even tell the whole story in a nutshell.1

Given the Gospel in Miniature idea, it is really easy to see why Luke tells us about shepherds in the field at night watching their sheep: he wanted us to know that the birth of Jesus was good news for the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely and he made his point early and often. Luke is spiffy though, and you should never underestimate him. With the shepherds he ALSO manages to tied Jesus to David one more time, in case we’d missed the point previously.

But, why does Matthew tell us about Magi from the East, with the power to access King Herod, impractical baby gifts, and only a fleeting encounter with Jesus?

Ironically, I believe that this was because Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience, and he was making the point he’d make again at the end of the gospel, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” namely that the good news of Jesus expanded past even the community of the faithful Jews.

The Magi from the east are outsiders, others, non-Jews. They have access to other wisdom, other traditions, other power. By having them perceive the spiritual earthquake of Jesus’s birth tells Matthew’s audience just how BIG this story is, and how profound it’s impact will be.

I think “the east” is particularly significant as well. To the east is the land Abraham left when God called him. Also, to the east is Babylonia, where the exiles had once been taken, and lived in captivity. That means to the east is where their release came, and like Abraham, the exiles returned home “from the east.”

By the time Jesus was born “to the west” was the power center of Rome, and the local power center of the Judea was also to the west. The powers to the west are the ones that Jesus will be organizing against in his life, and they are the ones with the power to end his life. So, it is from the east that Jesus is recognized for who he is, and that makes sense. This feels like a foreshadowing of Palm Sunday and Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem from the EASTERN gate too.

So these EASTERN foreigners discern that there is something new and amazing happening and they come to see it for themselves. When they stop to ask for directions at the palace, the paranoid and power-hungry King Herod (who historically really was known for being incredibly bloodthirsty and insecure) decides to use them for his own purposes, to take out any threat to his kingship with haste.

The Magi are being used as the King’s spies.

But when they arrive and discover the humanity and vulnerability of Jesus, and of Mary, and (maybe) of Joseph, something shifts in them.

That may sound minor, “something shifts in them” but it is the best explanation I have for Easter too. Somehow, the very frightened disciples who were hidden away trying to save their lives had “something shift in them” and they weren’t afraid anymore, and they lived as Jesus lived, and were even willing to die as Jesus died.

A little shift inside can have HUGE consequences.

Something shifts in the Magi, maybe at meeting Jesus, maybe in a dream, maybe both, “and they left for their own country by another road.” This suggests that even meeting Jesus as a baby/toddler was significant enough to help people refuse the power of the Empire 😉

They refuse the power of King Herod, and they change their plans and find another way.

That does sound like an epiphany. Epiphany means a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being OR a moment of sudden revelation or insight.2 This sounds like both. They saw the divine in Jesus, or they experienced the Divine in a dream (or both) AND it was for them a moment of sudden insight leading to a shift within.

They went to their own country by another road. They went home, but they went home changed.

One of the fun parts of the Christian tradition is that we assume that the Magi showed up more than a year after Jesus’s birth. That is, this Epiphany celebrates the Magi showing up for last year’s Christmas. (Hmmm, given pandemic time warps, that sounds right, doesn’t it?) Given that, it is always a little bit the Christmas season, because the Magi are always journeying to Jesus – AND I think always journeying home by another route. The travel, and the change, are constant.

It could be tempting, right about now, to give up hope. It is 2022, and COVID 19, named for 2019 is STILL sending shock-waves through our lives, despite vaccines, despite prior infections, despite all we’ve given up for nearly two years. We’re back at trying to protect the capacity to keep schools open and trying to keep hospitals from being overrun (and neither are going terribly well.) In my house this week, we heard about more people testing positive for COVID than any other week of this pandemic.

It is scary.

AND we have to make decisions all over again about what is safe and what isn’t and where to spend our risk tolerance and what impact it will have if we get it wrong.

And it exhausting.

And people are SICK, some of them really sick, some of them dying.

And it is horrible.

And I wonder where God is inviting us to take another road home. I wonder about epiphany, and God showing up and surprising us, and shifting things within us, and making new things possible. Because I believe that God is with us, and God shows us a new way when it seems there is no way, and God is able to bring life even out of death, and God is with those who are alone, and God is ultimately creative.

There are “other roads home.”

They’re new to us, we haven’t chosen them before (maybe for good reason), they come without good maps, and there are unknown dangers along the way. That said, the roads we came by are now impassable to us, and the way home is by another way. (Fair warning, home will be changed when we get there too, but you already knew that.)

May God help us to travel the roads we are now on, no matter how we got here, and may we find enough promise them to make it through another day, and another day, and another day. Amen

1Borg and Crossan “The First Christmas”, major theme.

2Apple Dictionary 1/6/2022.

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December 26, 2021
by Sara Baron

“The Narrow Way” based on Psalm 148 and Luke 2:41-52

Jesus was a pretty radical figure, maybe. I can’t always tell. On the one hand he messed with some really basic parts of religious norms of his day – like Sabbath keeping, and marriage laws, and the sanctity of the temple, and tithing. But on the other hand, all of what he taught can be found within the Jewish religious tradition of his day. He is a prophet calling people back to fidelity to God’s vision for a society who takes care of all people – just one doing it in the context of his own day.

As I try to figure out if Jesus was a radical or not, it becomes clear that the actual crux of it all is that following our God is a radical act, and that’s true throughout our tradition as well as in our lives. I read the Bible with a bias towards the narrative about Sabbath and distributive justice. (John Dominic Crossan suggests there are two major themes. That’s one, and a covenant / reward / punishment theme is the other. They’re interspersed in the Bible, but have very different worldviews.)

To seek to follow God’s ways, which are about distributive justice, adequate rest for all, and seeing the Divine Spark in every ONE and all of creation. And, it is a radical act to do so from within “domination systems” that prioritize some lives over the lives of others, and take the work of the many to enrich the few. I’m sometimes more than a little distressed to notice that the difference between Jesus’s time and ours is that he lived in a “pre-industrial agricultural domination system”1and we live in a post-industrial non-agricultural domination system. Both systems are maintained by violence and the threat of violence, exploit the poor for the sake of the very few on top, silence the many, and use religion to legitimize the exploitation.

So, in the face of the domination systems, God’s kindom of equitable distribution of rest, of labor, of food, of clothing, of shelter, of healthcare, and of education is RADICAL in the extreme. Anyway, I’m thinking about all of this because we have in our Gospel Lesson today a presentation of Jesus at age twelve being more than a little bit of a smarty-pants, but also showing that he UNDERSTOOD the point of following God. The story says he amazed the religious teachers of the day, and claimed the center of the faith tradition as his place in the world. This is, of course, a story told by later generations who were seeking to make sense of the wisdom of Jesus, but as a story overloaded with metaphor and meaning, it is definitely worth further examination.

The piece that often strikes me in this story is that it affirms once again how religiously faithful Jesus’s parents were. The travel to Jerusalem from Nazareth wasn’t minor, and doing it every year constituted a real burden. But those who were thinking about how Jesus came to be Jesus really believed that he had to emerge from a family deeply established in God-worship and God-living. Luke’s story does this in so many ways, and I tend to agree. The ways that Jesus spoke and reflected on the scripture of his own tradition, the faithfulness to the Holy One that he lived, and the teachings he offered could only come from someone who grew up steeped in faithful Judaism, AND in the difference between God’s vision and the world’s domination systems.

This year, perhaps because the First Sunday of Christmas is the day after Christmas, and the stories are all smooshed together in my head, I’m struck that this story about Jesus as a young wisdom teacher in the Jewish tradition comes very soon after Luke’s story of his mother at a similar age singing the Magnificat, and showing the depth of HER understanding of God’s radical ways. These 12 year olds are both said to know the faithful wisdom of the ages, and I think that’s intentional, because how could Jesus become Jesus unless his mother was as faithful and wise as she is presented as being.

We also have the repetition in this story that Mary, “treasured all these things in her heart.” (2:51a) which we also heard in verse 19, after the shepherds told their story, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” I’ve recently been reminded to look more holistically at Mary’s story. She agrees to bear the Messiah, even when it risks her life. Or, perhaps, she survives sexual violence, and gets pregnant, and then has to find a way forward with her son. And then, it seems, she has to figure out how to feed him, and how to keep him alive, and how to teach him about oppression while teaching him about nonviolence, and how to trust God. And, then in the end, she is said to watch him die. Mary’s life is incredibly faithful, but almost never easy, it seems. Her wisdom, her faith, her trust in God define her life, and become the background of the teachings of Jesus, but they don’t protect her from harm.

That’s true of Jesus too, but sometimes it seems like maybe he had more choice in the matter. He remained faithful to God and God’s teaching even when it was clear it would result in his death by the hands of the Empire. He could have stopped, right? I don’t know. But I think maybe his mother’s child couldn’t stop as long as anyone lived under oppression.

From where I sit, it isn’t always clear what decisions are following in the ways of God’s vision / Mary’s faith / Jesus’s life and what decisions are following in the ways of the domination system. It would be so nice if it were always clear, but life is muddy. Maybe that’s why the adult Jesus taught in parables. The answers aren’t in black and white, they’re in the struggle to find the meaning of the story in the context of the day and in the context of our day. The systems change, but God’s vision remains. And those who are faithful to it still seek wisdom to live the kindom and bring it further into being. The two systems are hard to disentangle rather on purpose – it benefits the domination system to look “righteous” and it tries hard to look like God’s way.

I think this is why following God’s way is sometimes called the “narrow way” – it is less traveled, and harder to find. Sometimes we get lost trying to find it. And yet, I deeply believe, worth seeking and walking or rolling on it. I think it is even worth the times we are lost.

In this Christmas season, may we commit again to following in God’s radical ways, to traveling the narrow path, and to seeking them with our lives. Amen

1 Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).

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

December 26, 2021

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December 12, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Soft Eyes and Third Ways” based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-18

As a matter of faith, whenever it is possible, I believe in refusing the binary and looking for a third way. I believe God is creative, I believe in win-wins, and I believe more goodness is possible than I can anticipate.

You, in this church, have affirmed this belief for me time, and time again. You have found third ways, you have shown me third ways, you have stayed with each other long enough to see past seeming binaries and found the shared values underneath. I believed this when I came here, intellectually, but I believe it in my body and soul now.

A few years ago, at a retreat, we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” It looked and sounded ridiculous. We were broken into sets of three, and one at a time each of us was asked to stand tall while the other two pulled as hard as they could on the arms of the person standing. However, each of us did this three different ways. First, we fought as hard as we could against the pressure. It was overwhelming. Then we just, let go, and let the pressure take us down. It was demoralizing. But, finally, we let the pressure come without fighting it. And, all of a sudden, the pressure felt like a good stretch. It was possible to withstand the pulling, and stand tall, indefinitely.

We then compared that to staring at something as hard as we could, to glancing and looking away, and to looking, but letting our eyes soften and see “through” what we looked at. This is third way stuff. This is refusing “all or nothing” thinking, and engaging in “both/and” thinking.

This is important, more now than ever. We have learned that our society has been under attack for quite some time by foreign countries that want to destabilize us by fanning the flames of cultural difference. We have also learned that social media sites, our email providers, our phones, and our web browsers are tracking our every move to try to understand us and our perspectives in order to make money off of us. And, they’ve discovered, telling us things that make us angry, and creating “us versus them” thinking (binaries!) is really great for business.

There is significant but mostly invisible pressure on us to enter into binaries and disregard the humanity of people on the other side. But, our faith teaches us that our shared humanity, the sacredness of every person that derives directly from God, is definitional. We seek to connect, not to disconnect. We seek to understand, not to dismiss. We seek to love, not to hate.

This is counter-cultural work, and it is emotionally challenging work. It is hard to be creative and find the third way, and it is nearly impossible when we’re riddled with anxiety or anger. It is hard to slow down and figure out what’s really going on, so a new solution might emerge, when everything feels urgent. And, too, it is hard to care when so much of what is live-giving and wonderful about life isn’t available right now.

As I hear Luke telling us about the preaching of John the Baptist though, I’m struck that in his shocking ways, he calls us to exactly this sort of work. John calls the ones who have come to hear him “a brood of vipers” which was super insulting, and not how polite people spoke to each other. I notice that it is a violent image. Vipers are a danger to life.

I also notice that John the Baptist calls out three groups of people, and they’re surprising. First he calls out anyone wealthy enough to have more than enough. Two coats, more food than they need. That feels like a pretty low standard of wealth, but since many people in that day (and ours) weren’t sufficiently clothed and even more didn’t have enough nourishment, anyone with too much was seen as hoarding what others needed. Then he calls out tax collectors and soldiers, and that feels REALLY weird to me. Of course, Jesus will do some work with a tax collector too, but both tax collectors and soldiers – in an occupied state – were part of the system of oppression that kept the poor in poverty and used their labor to enrich the already rich.

And John the Baptist doesn’t tell any of these people that they have to quit their jobs or change everything about their lives. He JUST tells them that they need to stop hurting other people. Take the two cloaks, give one way. Take the extra food, give it away. Don’t take more tax money than what you have to, even if you are allowed to. And, don’t extort people or act out violently against them. Take what you have and let it be enough, even if other people have more.

That is… refuse to participate in oppression, which in essence is refusing to participate in violence because violence takes a lot of forms and one of them is keeping food from those who need it to live.

This theme unites John the Baptist and the one he would baptize, Jesus. They created movements of people who refused to participate in violence. Their words and actions echo through the ages, asking us to do the same.

What does non- violence look like? Well, it is seemingly simple and difficult enough to engage us for our whole lives – like faith. For some it takes on pacifism, a big one. But it also is in the little every day things. It looks like intentionality with words we use and don’t use. It is in how we treat those in our households, and those in our inner circles, and those in our church family. It over looks like speaking in “I-statements” and taking responsibility for our emotions, and thinking more than once before we pass along information that we don’t know to be true. And, it means not kicking people when they’re down – OR UP. It means paying attention to our buying habits and how people were treated when they made the things we buy. It means paying attention to investments if we’re lucky enough to have them, and considering which companies are engaged in violence. Perhaps most challengingly, it also means treating ourselves without violence, including in the ways we speak to ourselves inside ourselves!

AND it means disengaging from binaries, and finding deeper truths about people, groups, and ways forward.

One big piece of refusing to participate in violence is engaging in compassion. Letting compassion take a bigger and bigger space in our lives. Learning how to be compassionate to ourselves and then letting that extend to others and then letting that expand even further.

And I’m here to tell you that this is really, really hard, and I don’t particularly enjoy it. My heart is more tender than it used to be, and the brokenness everywhere hurts me more than it used to, and it constantly threatens to overwhelm me.

But that same exercise on “soft eyes” and letting pulling turn into stretching was fundamentally about standing in the “tragic gap” between what IS and what SHOULD be, and letting it break us open without letting it break us. Because there are (at least) three ways to respond to the suffering around us. We can ignore it and push it away because it is too hard, but that doesn’t change anything. We can let it in and let it break us, but that actually doesn’t change anything either except that there is a little more brokenness. OR, we can let the brokenness break us open, and be present to it without drowning in it.

This is what we aim for, and we’ll fail both ways much of the time. But, on this third Sunday of Advent, I want to be sure to remind all of us about what can keep us upright in the Tragic Gap, and how we can be with brokenness without breaking, and let compassion hurt but not drown us.

There are two keys to this: God, and joy. They’re related. (Pretty deeply.) Finding spiritual practices that get you centered are imperative to life-long kindom building. They keep us upright. They keep us compassionate. They also tell us when it is time to take breaks. AND they keep reminding us that there is ALSO joy.

We live in a broken AND beautiful world. There is violence AND wonder.

An article I read in The Atlantic this week suggested thinking of things you used to do just because you liked them, and figuring out what you liked about them, in order to find what you might like doing now. This was intended to apply to those of us who have forgotten how to play and have fun.1

Let joy in. Play! Laugh! Have fun! Giggle if you possibly can. Fill yourself up. It is good in and of itself to enjoy life, AND it is NECESSARY to have joy in order to be able to do the work to build the kindom, a place of profound joy. We can’t build it if we don’t know it, we need to have joy to make space for joy. So dear ones seek God and joy… they matter on their own and they help us be compassionate and nonviolent. Thanks be to God for joy! Amen

1https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/how-care-less-about-work/620902/

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

December 12, 202

Uncategorized

“Protest Parade and State Sponsored Violence” based on Psalm…

March 28, 2021
by Sara Baron

Because
of the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Cross in “The Last
Week” I have been convinced that the first “Palm Sunday” parade
was an intentional protest in response to increased military presence
in Jerusalem of the Roman Empire for Passover.

Those
who have been listening to me preach for years are familiar with this
concept, and this year I’ll be taking it in a new direction, but
first I want to bring everyone else on board with this idea, as it
can sound quite different from what I learned in Sunday School as a
kid.

I
think the key to understanding the protest is to think about
Passover, and what it is. Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrating
God’s work to free God’s people from oppression from a foreign
government when they felt powerless to help themselves.

So
it might not be surprising that the Roman Empire, which had power and
control over the Ancient Jewish lands, got a little bit uncomfortable
when the city was overrun with devout Jews celebrating Passover. Nor
would it be particularly surprising that Passover was a time when
people tried to reclaim autonomy, the faith of their ancestors, the
sanctity of their Temple, and the right to the fruits of their labor.
After all, the Hebrew Bible itself sets a rich vision for a just
society, and the ways that wealth flowed from the poor to the rich in
the Roman Empire (and every empire before, during, and since) was the
OPPOSITE of that vision.

It
might even be good to remember that in 66 CE the was a revolt by the
Jewish population that lasted for 4 years. The final result was the
destruction of Jerusalem along with the Second Temple, and hundreds
of thousands of deaths. So the Roman Empire’s perception of threat
wasn’t actually wrong. The city and its many many Passover pilgrims
were primed for revolt.

And
that’s why the Roman governor came to Jerusalem from his normal digs
on the Mediterranean along with horses, flags, music, and a
significant number of soldiers prepared to take down riots. It was an
intentional show of force, meant to tamp down revolutionary
enthusiasm as well as efficiently deal with anyone who dared to start
anything. All of this is not unlike crucifixion itself which was a
particularly horrid form of capital punishment done in public to
those who lead VIOLENT REVOLTS against the Roman Empire to attempt to
discourage others from doing so.

The
Governor’s procession came in the West gate, as the Governor’s home
was to the west of the city. The big shiny military parade was an
annual event, something easy to anticipate. So, Jesus and his
followers staged a counter-parade coming in from the East gate.
Instead of flags with the golden eagle of Rome, the people waved Palm
branches – the symbol of ancient Judea. Instead of “Hail Caesar,
prince of peace” the people shouted “Hosanna” which means “God
save us!” And let’s be clear, “God save us from our oppressors.”
(The name Jesus and the word “Hosanna” come from the same Hebrew
root. Jesus literally means “God saves.”) They went on to say,
according to Mark, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna
in the highest heaven!“ Instead of being passively awed by the
display of violent capacity as in the western parade, the people put
their lives on the line by laying their outer garments (often the
only protection they had from the elements) on the road for Jesus’s
colt to walk on.

So,
to cut to the chase, Jesus appears to be staking a claim to the
rightful kingship of Israel, which suggests that then the Roman
Empire is not the rightful king. Jesus is having a protest against
the Empire. BUT, it was a NONVIOLENT one, just so we’re clear.

According
to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus also engaged in a protest at the
Temple complex. Both protests appear to have been wildly popular,
and the people were following Jesus and claiming him as God’s
deliverer (read: save-r). Thus, the authorities got scared. Thus,
they started to work to take him down, disperse his movement, and
threaten any who would try to follow in his footsteps as leader.
Thus the death on the cross even though the protests were NONVIOLENT.

Not
to give the ending away, but the presence of Jesus followers
remembering and embodying this story 2000 years later is a good
indication that the Roman Empire may have had the power to kill
Jesus, but it didn’t have the power to stop the Body of Christ. But,
alas, I get a week ahead of myself.

Most
years I like to contrast the ways of God from the ways of Rome, and
to clarify that there was nothing particularly wrong with the Roman
Empire – it is the way that pre-industrial agricultural domination
systems work – and at the core it is the way ALL domination systems
work, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand, humanity was WAY
into domination systems.

But
this year, the story of Jesus engaging in acts of public protest, and
as a result having the authorities of the day send a violent guard to
grab him in the middle of the night, convict him based on false
testimony, and kill him in a way the State itself said was unjust
(PEACEFUL revolt) is all just hitting too close to home.

Last
summer the Governor put in place an executive order, in response to
Black Lives Matter protests, requiring each local government in N.Y.
State to adopt a policing reform
plan that will maintain public safety while building mutual trust and
respect between police and the communities they serve. I have been
paying attention to what has happened in Schenectady and it is NOT
GOOD.

Here
in Schenectady, well after activists had release 13 demands¹
that included an end to knee holds on people’s heads or necks, a
video was released of a police officer using a knee hold during an
arrest.²
In response to outcry, the police banned knee holds.

What
followed was a fraught process that added up to the police pushing
through the police department’s OWN ideas of what police reform
should look like. Which a problem. No one can claim things are OK
here. We are not, after all, a city without a record of our own –
Andrew Kearse was a man of color who died in police custody in 2017.
We know we have parts of our city that are profoundly over-policed.
We know that the police end up being called into situations with
mental health crises, and are not trained or capable of responding,
and things go very badly. That is why there is a desire to move some
of the police funding to social workers who can respond with
training!

This
past week, our city council passed the police reform report put
forward by the police department. Upon careful inspection the ban on
knee holds on people’s heads and necks …. as been revoked. Knee
holds are, apparently, back in. Similarly, there is something called
“pain control” that I didn’t even want to google, but refers to
controlling people by hurting them. I’m quite confident that this
isn’t the way humans treat people that they see as fellow humans,
much less God’s beloveds.

It
all feels to me to be far too familiar to the Jesus story. Jesus was
inconvenient to people in authority. He empowered “nobodies.”
He helped the community work together. He questioned authority,
including questioning economic practice. He stood up for God’s
visions, God’s people, God’s dreams of justice. And it was so
threatening that they killed him to silence him.

Friends,
I have on some of my worse days, had to hold down a person who was in
the midst of a crisis to prevent the person from harming self or
others. I hate it. It turns my stomach, even years later, to think
about it. But we were able to stop him without harming him, or
putting pressure on his head or neck.

And
many, many, MANY times in my life I have responded to people in the
midst of crises, people hijacked by their amygdalas, people out of
their own control. And 99.something% of the time, people can regain
control with just TALKING. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to dehumanize
anyone, accused of any crime, by seeking to control their actions
with pain or with a knee on their head or neck. EVER. We need to
keep talking about this – to each other, to the police chief, to
the mayor, to city council, AND to the governor’s office. The plan
submitted by our city is NOT sufficient police reform for our
community.

Next
week we will be celebrating Easter, God’s incredible powers of life
that overcome even death. But this week we need to be unsettled by
the world’s powers of death, and violence, and who they’re used
against.

Jesus
was the victim of state sponsored violence. Who else is like him,
today? Amen

1 http://www.allofusuntitledandfree.com/

2 https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/us/schenectady-police-officer-knee-on-man-video/index.html

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

Sermons

Untitled

January 19, 2020February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Two
years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas: Harry Potter,
Hogwarts Battle. We usually spend New Years together, and it is a
great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with
our niece and her mother. It is now fair to say that this is our
favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond
the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game
design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative
game. The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the
end either everyone wins or everyone loses. Which also means that no
one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost.
Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play
have winners and losers, and I’m generally OK with that, but there is
something really great about a collaborative game. It is especially
engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we
have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each
person’s strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of
their strengths.

The
game is hard, and we lose sometimes. Really, we lose about half of
the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing
just because the starting conditions are too difficult. But the
collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn’t THAT
bad. (Most of the time.)

I
find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun. When
I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was
mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive,
and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was
the least fun game imaginable. Yet,
there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is
inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and
competing against each other – and I’m really, really glad that
there are now super fun games that don’t buy into that model.

Collaborative
games seem more like the model of working for the common good. Maybe
it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word
“commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening
for me. I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways
of speaking about the kindom.

Over
the past 3+ years we’ve talked about Intersectional Justice and
Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy
for you, here is MFSA’s definition of its “intersectional
organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization
and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is
tied to concepts of power and privilege. Intersectional organizing
recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels.
Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is
imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space
for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework
led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of
resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical
intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and
relationship building.

To
bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means
acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as
possible so you can make some gains really doesn’t help that much.
For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to
vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women.
That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of
women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing. There have
been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time
it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During
an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically
about power. That is, we all know what traits are most associated
with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English
speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness,
educated, tall… etc, right? In each case, there is an opposite to
the description that is disempowered. I’m expecting you are
following thus far. Well, because the people who have the traits
connected to power control the resources, they use most of them! And
then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up
fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful
are willing to share. There are two
REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those
resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have
power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight
AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.

That
is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves,
and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to
play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance
themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and
needed. And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality
is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the
complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways
and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while
working for good. It is really, really hard.

It
is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week. The
passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you
should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore
the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“ The way I
heard that was, don’t just work for the benefit of a few, even if
they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of
ALL. And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational
work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better.
Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was
organizing around poverty. As several of the past year’s
Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers
that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to
divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and
impoverished people of color wouldn’t start working together against
their common oppressor. Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign was
designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly
for every’s good. As King once said, “In your struggle for
justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to
defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that
he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking
justice for him as well as yourself.” Because, truly, oppressing
anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today,
other’s have picked up Dr. King’s mantle, and there is an active Poor
People’s Campaign underway. While their “Fundamental Principals”
are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I
couldn’t edit them down. I want you hear, and be filled with hope,
and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they
are:

We are rooted
in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and
constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is
necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.
We
are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those
most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and
ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of
division.
We
believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that
exploit poor communities and communities of color and the
transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy”
that values all humanity.
We
believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.
We
believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the
richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the
United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome
poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic
exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.
We
recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic
oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally
and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be
understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.
We
aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by
religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in
school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how
our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of
these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and
the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire
for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.
We
will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve
as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to
transform the political, economic and moral structures of our
society.
We
recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many
of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level,
and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even
executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.
We
will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or
candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee
of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or
Republican but about right and wrong.
We
uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a
way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We
are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues
and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that
are affecting us all.
The Campaign
and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent
tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This
campaign is DEEPLY good news. I encourage you to look them up, their
demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read.
There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the
Poor People’s Campaign, and I’d be happy to connect to to those who
are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.

Working
towards justice for all is really, really hard work. It can even be
overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of
the whole world. Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind
you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is
called to do all the work. In fact, we’re called to trust each other
and each other’s work, and to carefully discern what our work is to
do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good
people are at work. We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations,
and with God at our backs, we can and we will. And it is possible
because of collaboration. Thanks be to 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

January 19, 2019

Sermons

“Thesis Statement”based on Psalm 65:5-12 and Mark 1:14-20

January 22, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Sometimes it seems like my entire adult life has been about realizing that nothing works the way I thought it did, and everything is more broken than I had been lead to believe. Like the Psalmist, over and over again it has become clear what has seemed good, fair, and just wasn’t even basically trustworthy upon further examination. In addition, I’ve learned that what people or organizations claim to be about often isn’t directly correlated with what they actually DO.

One scholar summarizes Psalmist as saying, “No matter how weighty their social standing, we cannot depend on other people to provide security or stability in our lives.”¹ Another scholar takes it a step further, adding commentary to the Psalmist’s ideas, “Every human effort, finite cause, and mortal relationship is an unsuitable object for our absolute trust and final hope. The career that shows so much promise, the children that seem so exceptional, the nation that appears so strong: they are like shifting sand which offers no security, no permanent purchase.”²

I don’t think the Psalmist and I are alone in our desire to find trustworthiness in what can’t offer “permanent purchase.” Often, when I hear people in their deepest struggles, they are struggling with a change they didn’t foresee – something they thought was more permanent than it was – and the harshness of reality adds a significant sting to something already plenty difficult. Something in human nature expects more permanence than there is, and wants to trust in that permanence.

The Psalmist concludes that only God is as sturdy, steadfast, and worthy of hope and trust as we need. God is able to be our refuge, time and time again. God doesn’t disappoint, and God is as permanent as we need. Best of all, God’s nature is steadfast love, and it is on God’s steadfast love as a platform, that we can build our lives.

Thanks be to God for that.

The thing is, I’m not sure it is all that easy for us to figure out what it means to trust God while remembering the impermanence of everything else. How do we balance the concepts that God is worthy of trust, but that doesn’t mean our loved ones will all live long happy lives, our jobs will treat us fairly, our bodies will remain strong and healthy, our homes remain in tact, or that our spouses will always treat us well. (To name a few.) God is good and trustworthy, but life remains complicated. I think that this seemingly obvious reality is really hard to master!

Figuring out how to trust in God while being realistic about the world, and without becoming cynical about everything is pretty difficult. It is also very important, in fact, I think it IS adult faith development! That is, adult faith development is: trusting God, seeing the world clearly, and holding hope – all at the same time. Marcus Borg gives a model of how faith develops, and helps clarify the process all people have to go through:

Precritical naiveté is an early childhood state in which we take it for granted that whatever the significant authority figures in our lives tell us to be true is indeed true. In this state (if we grow up in a Christian setting), we simply hear the stories of the Bible as true stories. …

Critical thinking begins in late childhood and early adolescence. One does not need to be an intellectual or go to college for this kind of thinking to develop. Rather, it is a natural stage of human development; everybody enters it. In this stage, consciously or quite unconsciously, we sift through what we learned as children to see how much of it we should keep. …

Postcritical naiveté is the ability to hear the biblical stories once again as true stories, even as one knows that they may not be factually true and that their truth does not depend upon their factuality. … Importantly, postcritical naiveté is not a return to precritical naiveté. It brings critical thinking with it. It does not reject the insights of historical criticism but integrates them into a larger whole.³

These ideas are larger than simply how we read the Bible. They apply to life in general. Pre-critical naiveté then, is trusting that God will make everything OK. Critical thinking comes when we acknowledge that lots of things aren’t OK at all. And then post-critical naiveté is the time of trusting in God and seeing the world clearly and holding onto hope.

Now, I think that during his ministry, Jesus was clearly living in post-critical naiveté. He knew EXACTLY how broken things were AND he trusted in God and worked to make them better. If I’m honest, I tend to think of Jesus as being born in post-critical naiveté, but that’s probably not really true! Mark says that Jesus came to Galilee (the location of the majority of his ministry) and started talking. He said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Throughout all of my study of the Bible, I have come to believe that Jesus’ words here are the thesis statement of his ministry, and thus of both the New Testament and the Body of Christ.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Because it can easily get confusing, let’s review what repentance is. Repent most literally means, “turn around” or “change direction.” I love my friend Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green’s take on it; she says it means to “turn around, look at God, look where God is looking, and refocus attention where God is looking.” In context, then, repentance is calling people to turn away from the ways of the world (domination, oppression, competition, hierarchy, etc) and turn TO the ways of God (cooperation, collaboration, mutuality, support, solidarity, etc).

Because it is the key to everything about Jesus, let’s review the idea of the kindom of God. The kindom of God is the world as God would have it be, when all people are able to survive and thrive, when abundance and sharing define the ways of life, when justice comes naturally to people, when things are exactly as they should be. That is, when we can look reality squarely in the eye and see nothing wrong at all. Building the kindom of God was the work of Jesus, and is the work of the Body of Christ today. Our theologians tell us that it is both “fulfilled” and “not here in entirely yet.” It is what God is working WITH us in creating, and it exists in moments and instances, but not yet as the earth’s reality.

To be fair, I think this whole thesis statement, and in fact this whole kindom of God thing is a form of circular logic. That is, repenting and refocusing on God and on God’s kindom IS the thing that builds the kindom – it doesn’t happen unless people do it. Believing that God’s way is good news, thus taking on the good news itself as a way of life is the way of making the good news into reality. Living as though the time is now is what fulfills the time.

I’m OK with it being circular logic though. Mostly because I believe it 😉 I also think this means that paying attention to the stuff in life that ALREADY is a glimpse of the kindom is one of the ways that we build it. And I think it is fitting, somehow, that this system only works if we trust that it works – it feels like the rest of faith.

Or, to put it more sufficiently, one scholar wrote, “Right away Jesus not only talks about the reign of God but enacts it.”⁴ This scholar explains himself saying, “Mark’s brief account of the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry links Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel with his calling of a band of disciples. These activities are by no means unrelated. Jesus’ proclamation is not just a solo recitation of informative words but is an efficacious action that creates community and is taken up and continued by that community.”⁵ Now here is the key to it all. This same scholar says, “wherever Jesus was active, the time was fulfilled and the kingdom was present.”⁶

Now this caught my attention. If wherever Jesus was active, the time was therefore fulfilled and the kindom was therefore present, then does that mean that when we are truly acting out the ministry of Jesus – sharing God’s love with our neighbors – that the kindom is present with us too? Are we able to, together, create the kindom of God – at least in small times and places?

I think we ARE!!!

I see it often enough. I see love being shared in extraordinary ways, I see transformation happening that doesn’t really seem possible, I see hope created in the things we do together, as well as laughter and healing. I see the kindom when we are together as the Body of Christ, it really IS present and the time is fulfilled.

This is humbling to realize, although it is also inspiring! It does lead me to some new questions: when and how are we most successful in having kindom moments? When aren’t we? How can we attend to them well so that we can appreciate them? What keeps us from creating even more kindom moments? How can we change those realities? Is the creating the kindom more work, or play? Is it about authenticity? Does it require community or can it happen with just one? Does it have to happen AND be noticed to have the most impact, or if we miss it, is it OK?

And finally, how is it that the kindom of God can co-exist in the world with the brokenness that is our current reality? (I think that’s just a reality of non-linearity.)

If Jesus, in his life, made the kindom into reality in his present; and if we as the Body of Christ continue his ministry in our shared lives; then we get to make the kindom into reality in our present. How cool is that???

During the passing of the peace today, I ask that you talk to each other about the kindom – when you’ve seen it, felt it, heard it – I think talking about it makes it even more real. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And, keep on paying attention when you see the kindom. Not only does it take away disillusionment, it also builds the kindom itself. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Marsha Wilfong, Exegetical Reflections on Psalm 65:5-12 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 275.

2 Timothy A. Beach-Verhey, Theological Reflections on Psalm 65:5-12 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 274.

3Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (HarperSanFransicso: 2001) 49-50.

4Lee Barrett, Theological Reflections on Mark 1:14-20 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 286.

5Barrett, 284.

6Barrett, 286.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

January 21, 2018

Sermons

“How to Love God” based on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-19…

October 29, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Sometimes
things are complicated, things like trying to build the kin-dom of
God for example. This feels especially complicated when trying to
hold together awareness of many people, with many different needs,
and may varied experiences of oppression. When Rev. Dr. Traci West
was here talking about “Grace and Race” she reminded us that when
we look at things intersectionally, the same people can be both
oppressed and oppressor, in different roles or realities they live.
Actually, it is more that we are all both, which we have to keep in
mind while also trying to get clear on how the systems work that
create and enforce the oppressions, so that we can be part of
changing them.

Sometimes
things are really complicated, like when we try to identify the
driving forces that are important in building a more just society,
and when we look at how deeply embedded how intricate the forces that
keep the status quo in place are. Sometimes things are really
complicated, like when we try to imagine a world without hungry
people, and then we think about all the changes that would require.

And
then, in the midst of all the complications, come the simplest and
clearest commandments of the Bible. They can easily be remembered.
They leave minimal space for interpretation, and there isn’t any
wiggle room in them. Love God, and love your neighbor. Follow up
question: who is my neighbor is easily answered: everyone. Done

The
commandments offer a very simple explanation of the sort of love that
God wants from us: to love God the way God wants to be loved is to
love God’s people. Its all very simple.

Yet,
every one of us who has tried to live these commandments knows they
get very complicated to live out, very quickly. How is it that
something so simple and understandable is also so very difficult?

Thanks
goodness for Leviticus (things you might not have expected to hear –
ever). As it is written in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “Leviticus
19 is one of the grand chapters of the whole book of Leviticus. In
American Reform Judaism it is one of the most quoted and most often
read chapters, especially since it is assigned as the Torah reading
for Yom Kippur afternoon in that tradition.”¹
If you are not familiar with Yom Kippur, it is the Holiest day in
the Jewish tradition, and is focused on atonement and repentance.
The Yom Kippur prayer of atonement is so vast and inclusive that I
find it exceptionally healing, by the time it is over it truly feels
as if the slate of past wrongdoings is wiped clean and we can start
anew.

The
part of the chapter that we are focusing on today reflects on what it
means to love one’s neighbor, and the commandments it contains seem
to clarify what tends to go wrong! By noticing how people are
instructed to do right, we can see what has gone wrong too
frequently.

The
first part of the set of instructions are about how to care for
people who live in poverty, and they are consistent with other
passages in the Torah. As one commentator puts it, this set of
instructions

“seeks
to help poor people by legislating that the three chief products of
agriculture – the grain, the product of the vine, and the fruit of
the trees, are not to be harvested entirely; some is to be left for
poor people to glean. … the Lord is the ultimate owner of
everything; thus the land is a gift from the Lord. If the landowners
are only stewards of the land and all that it produces, there is no
reason to be selfish and stingy. … Disadvantaged persons have a
right to harvest the edges of the fields; they are not to depend on
voluntary gifts alone.”²

In
modern terms, I wonder if the comparison is to be made to welfare,
and other assistance that comes through the Department of Social
Services. The comparison isn’t perfect, gleaning the field was seen
as a human right, however it does compare well to the idea that there
needs to be a way to provide for the basic needs of life for all
people, and that on top of those very basic needs there will be need
for further support. (Please note the video on Sustain and the idea
that those who are getting help from DSS are still struggling to
access basic necessities of life.)

That
idea that all that is, is God’s, and that we are to use it
appropriately is one of the most humbling ideas in our faith. Do we
do it? How well? What would God have us be doing with our resources
that we aren’t doing? How have things gotten to where they are?

The
second bit of instruction deals with truth; there are commands not to
steal, not to deal falsely, not to lie, and not to swear falsely in
the name of God. Apparently these are also common issues in all of
humanity, the temptation to take what isn’t ours or tell untruths for
our own benefit. Their inclusion in this passage is notable though:
to seek a benefit from an untruth means taking that benefit from
someone else. It is not to act as we would wish others would act
towards us.

The
third set of instructions seems to focus on balancing power. In
particular the instructions are against fraud and against stealing.
Then comes yet another instruction that seems to be timeless: “you
shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.”
Laborers were usually living day to day, using the labor of the day
to buy the day’s bread. By keeping it for just a bit longer, the
person who didn’t pay on time would be keeping a person from their
daily food. This has compassion for the poorest workers. Finally,
the instructions condemn taking advantage of a person’s disability
(and I’d expect this expands to any weakness). Specially it says not
to speak harshly to a deaf person nor attempt to trip a blind person.
In summation, this part of loving our neighbors as ourselves seems
to be about not taking advantage of anyone just because we can.

The
fourth part of this set of instructions
worries about “just judgements” and in particular the
availability of justice to people who are poor. This is practically
an obsession of the Torah. It is as if there is something inherent
in human nature that biases people toward partiality, towards giving
the rich and powerful more wealth and more power while taking it away
from the impoverished and disempowered. I don’t much like thinking
about humanity that way, but I can’t see any other reason why the
Bible would spend SO much effort trying to correct for it.
Furthermore, I suppose, that when dealing with justice in combination
with wealth and power, any human could come face to face with a
self-preservation instinct. A wealthy person who is displeased might
be capable of significant harm. Perhaps it is just self-preservation
that makes it possible that all justice systems need constant
reminders and corrections to ensure that justice serves the poor and
the wealthy equally well. It is distributing however, that the
issues that exist today in our nation’s justice system are neither
new nor unique, but reflect a problem with humanity itself. That may
mean it is will be quite reticent to correction.
#Schooltoprisionpipeline #privateprisons

The
final set of instructions about neighborliness in Leviticus 19 is a
bit surprising. It explicitly states that to love your neighbor
means you can’t hate them. That may be a lot harder than it sounds.
It also says that you have to call them to account when their
behavior isn’t loving. That’s definitely harder than it sounds.
Then we’re told not to seek revenge AND not to hold grudges. Then
this part of the passage seamlessly draws itself to a conclusion, the
one we already knew was coming, “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.”

One
thing seems true, the last few millennia haven’t seen much change in
human behavior. The explicit instructions in Leviticus about what
loving our neighbors looks like hold up well to the test of time.

So
what do we do with these easy to understand, difficult to enact
commandments? We could discuss further instruction, but that hasn’t
yet proven productive. We could offer inspiring stories, but I think
that’s been done enough. I wonder if our time is better spent
considering what holds us back from loving our neighbors, and what we
might do to overcome those barriers.

Now,
this list is just my best guesses (I’m a little sad we don’t’ have a
sermon talk-back so I can hear what you’d add or remove), the things
that make it hard for us to love our neighbors: fear of our own
deaths (“existential anxiety”) and an instinct toward self
preservation, combined with believing in the myth of scarcity;
in-group thinking and fear of others; and finally a lack of love for
ourselves. (If the commandment is to love our neighbors AS
ourselves, it implies we are also supposed to be good at loving
ourselves!) That isn’t a terribly extensive list, I was attempting
to be as clear like the commandments themselves 😉

If
you are willing to take a homework assignment, I’d encourage you to
spend some time considering if the list above feels true in your
experience, and then to consider what things make you more
susceptible to those challenges to loving our neighbors and which
make it easier for you to overcome them and love your neighbors well.
The answers to those questions are pretty important, especially if
we’re all willing to work on them.

For
me, there are two key pieces to overcoming those challenges, two
things that help me truly love our neighbors. The first is quiet
time to soak in God’s love and hear my own inner voice, and the
second is having opportunities to learn about the world and to
connect with people – especially those whose lives have been
radically different from mine. To start at the beginning for this,
when I’m tired, or drained, or anxious, I’m not very loving –
including to myself. While sleep and also good food matter, the key
to keeping myself from getting drained is taking time for my
spiritual well-being. For me, at my best, this means an HOUR a day
spent in contemplative prayer, although the particular form of the
prayer isn’t consistent. When I stop all the doing and just listen –
both to God and myself – I’m more centered, more loving, more
focused, and waaaaaaaaaay less anxious.

At
the same time, one of the great dangers of trying to “Love our
neighbors as ourselves” is misunderstanding what love looks like
for a particular person or group of people. If I don’t understand
the problem, and if I don’t take the time to listen to the one(s)
struggling, then the love I try to share may end up doing more harm.
Also, I really like learning, connecting, and trying to understand
the world and its people.

What
guides you? What helps you be more loving? I know some of you need
forests, others need music, others need exercise – and for many of
you, I don’t know! If you do know what you need to be more loving
the next question is: are you DOING it? I think God would appreciate
it if we spent our time doing the things that help us be more loving
toward our neighbors, in fact, I think that’s how we best love God.
Amen

1Walter
C. Kaiser, “Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections on
Leviticus” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume One
, Leander E. Keck, editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1994) p. 1131.

2Kaiser,
1133.

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

October 29, 2017

Sermons

“Nope, We’re Not Doing That” based on Jeremiah 44:11-19

August 13, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

After she retired, my friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green spent a year away from organized religion so that she could open herself to thinking about the Sacred in new and different ways. Her year off resulted in poetry that became the book “Calling God She? Reflections and insights of a great-grandmother, retired clergywoman, and doctor of theology.” This is one of my favorite poems in it:

Perhaps God is a quilter,

The quilter creates something warm and beautiful

out of bits and pieces of fabric,

using a variety of colors and designs.

The quilter takes things apart and puts them together again

creating something new, unpredictable, unique,

and perhaps never envisioned.

The quilter uses what is at hand

to create a blessing, sometimes planned,

sometimes created in the process.

You can see yourself as a piece of fabric

being used as part of the whole,

or you can envision the various times of life

as the fabrics and yourself as the end product.

Of course more will be added tomorrow

and the next day.

The quilt of our lives is ever changing.

Fabrics we would never chose

often add interest and character.

There can be many shapes and designs

as well as many fabrics in a quilt.

Each quilter has her own style

and way of being and doing.

The marks of the quilter

are everywhere on the quilt.

Hours of labor are required.

The results are always different,

yet in the end there is warmth and comfort.

When God is the quilter,

working internally and externally

Her marks are everywhere

creating beauty, warmth, and comfort.¹

For me, Barb’s work offers freedom and respite. The ways it offers to conceive of God make space for a broader and fuller picture. I’ve spent years thinking about Barb’s assumption that she couldn’t make space for the feminine aspects of God while being connected to the institutional church – because the church’s God is too masculine. I’ve always wanted to be able to argue back at that point, but I’ve yet to find a truly valid point to use 😉

Institutional religion promoting a masculinized version of God is not new. Unfortunately, it may be a particular facet of OUR faith tradition, to start with. The ancient near eastern neighbors of the ancient Jews liked to keep their deities in gender balanced pairs. Judaism’s monotheism was particularly odd because it proposed a stand-alone MALE deity. (We may want to acknowledge that God isn’t gendered, but that’s not the same as saying that the way the ancients saw God lacked gender.) Jeremiah seems to be speaking of a masculine deity in 585 BCE, in today’s passage. He is speaking to Judean refugees, people who escaped Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege in 587-586 BCE and are residing in Egypt. These are traumatized people, as is the prophet, who have all seen the destruction of their homeland and way of life.

Jeremiah is sometimes called the prophet of the Exile. He is believed to have lived and prophesied before, during, and right after the Babylonian siege that started the exile. His early work was an attempt to convince people to change their behavior something terrible happened. In Bible Study we wondered if he got stuck in that message and forgot to update it after the terrible things all happened.

I cut most of his diatribe from our reading this morning, it is particularly miserable to listen to. His speech makes God sound like an abusive spouse. Jeremiah is angry that the Egyptian refugees are worshiping a Goddess. Now, seemingly every commentator in every Bible commentary in existence takes Jeremiah’s side in this argument, supporting the idea that worshiping a Goddess is idolatry and God had a right to act like a jealous (raving lunatic) spouse.

So, I’m going take on all of them! (Although not just for fun. I think they’re all wrong.) The women respond to Jeremiah’s furious accusations in a quite unexpected way. They respond, “Nope, we’re not doing that.” Actually, their words are even better than my summary. They respond, “‘As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.” GIGGLE. I love the contrast between Jeremiah ranting and raving and expressing fury (I imagine him spitting a little bit at the sides of his mouth while he speaks) and the women calmly denying his authority over their lives.

The women go on to say that they’d worshiped the Goddess for generations, and that she’d always taken good care of them. The women say that things were going fine for them until they stopped worshiping the Goddess, and that everything went to hell when they stopped. Thus, they say, they’re going back to what worked.

Now, early in Jeremiah’s ministry, he got the young King Josiah to listen to him and they instituted serious reforms. The reforms including monotheism, which most scholars think is the first time it was practiced in the history of ancient Judaism. (I could proof text this for you, but I’m not going to. Let me know if you want references later!) Monotheism mean that only YHWH was to be worshiped, and that meant that the long term worship of the Goddess was suppressed. (More on this theory of the long-term worship of a Hebrew Goddess to come.)

Now, I think the theology of both Jeremiah AND the women is flawed. Judea sat on land that was the cross-roads of the ancient world and every empire that existed wanted to control it. Both groups assume a Deity who micromanages and who punishes the people for lack of faith by destroying their nation. I don’t believe in such a Deity, rather I think it stunk for the Jewish people that the “Promised Land” was such a highly prized crossroads. But, to be fair, I think that both Jeremiah and the women’s arguments are EQUALLY problematic.

All those Biblical commentators who take Jeremiah’s side claim that the real issue here was the people’s idolatry and that the response of the women shows the hard-heartedness of the people. They claim that the Jewish women were worshiping some sort of Canaanite or Babylonian Goddess, or perhaps a hybrid of the two. The Biblical commentators seem to think that God is justified in the abusive, violent language of a jealous spouse.

Ironically, they seem to miss that the presentation of God made by Jeremiah is HYPER masculine. To be fair, the origins of YHWH are in a warrior God, so there has always been a hyper masculine tone there. But Jeremiah claiming that this masculine warrior is angry and ready to kill and shame is really the very worst stereotype of masculinity imaginable, right? That’s toxic masculinity. Masculinity can be so much more and so much better than that, and it almost always is! But Jeremiah is speaking of God who is violent, jealous, and murderous, as a warrior – he is presenting God in the very worst of masculine ways.

The women are claiming that there is more to life, and more to the Divine than that. So, I’m on their side. In 1967 Raphael Patai wrote seminal book entitled The Hebrew Goddess². It has been summarized this way, “Raphael Patai argues that the Israelites experienced the same Goddess-hunger that can be found in peoples and cultures all around the world in every age – and Patai insists, too, that the worship of a female deity by the Israelites was not an act of apostasy but rather an integral part of the religion of the Hebrews.‘”³ Patai,and those who have followed in his footsteps in looking for clues about folk religion, think that many ancient Hebrews worshiped a female Goddess they saw as YHWH’s spouse and counterpart. I think this is pretty reasonable. If you conceive of God purely in the masculine, the human need for balance well find a way to also understand God in the feminine.

The Women’s Bible Commentary thinks so too, and take it a step further. They say, “It seems certain that the Israelite women worshiped the queen of heaven. Women were excluded from full participation in temple worship, and the predominate Israelite conception of God was masculine. The queen provided them with a female deity who offered them protection and prosperity.”⁴I think this passage is the most overt place we can see the women’s faith. There are other places that traces of it can be found (and Patai’s book explains them all), but this is the one where it is in plain sight.

The women admit to worshiping a Goddess, and they think it is not only good, it is imperative. They reject the prophet who claims that only the male version of God can be worshiped. They just won’t! In fact, Patai mentions a letter from 419 BCE written by a military man about the Judean colony in Egypt. The collections given to the Jewish priest are enumerated. 123 people donated in the name of YHWY, 120 donated to the Queen of Heaven.⁵ Jeremiah appears to have lost this argument.

Now, as a 21^st century Christian, I don’t think God is male, nor female. I prefer to think of God as existing beyond gender, but I also recognize that our minds are limited and metaphors are often more powerful with more specificity. Sometimes I need to imagine God as a Latina grandmother, in order to remember God’s fierce protection and love. Sometimes I need to remember my own paternal grandfather and use his unfaltering affection as a way to access God’s acceptance. I suspect most of us need metaphors for God that have gender, but that whenever we limit God by holding one image alone (particularly an image that reflects only one gender expression or only one ethnic identity), we end up missing much of God’s nature. The institutional church has often done this, and as a result, splinter groups have left in order to see God more fully. Particularly, when the conception of God that institutional religion propagates fits in with the authority figures of society (ahem, white supremacy and the patriarchy) we know that religion is NOT reflecting God, but rather its own values.

I do, vehemently, support thinking about Goddess imagery sometimes. (And thinking about God as genderqueer sometimes too.) I think those women in Egypt were right to refuse Jeremiah’s decree and to trust their own experience. I’m so thankful that their voices refuse to associate violence and abuse with the Divine! It really matters that they saw more to Holiness than what Jeremiah was claiming! It also matters that they worked together and trusted themselves more than an external authority figure! Finally, I think it matters that they choose to worship the Sacred they know to call them to life and wholeness, not the one who punished and threatened. Those women knew a lot. May we be wise enough to listen to their wisdom. Amen

1 Barbara Thorington Green, Calling God She (Middleton, DE self-published), 84-85. Used with permission.

2 Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967 first edition, 1990, 3^rd edition)

3 Jonathan Kirsch, The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997) p. 224.

4 Katheleen M. O’Connor, “Jeremiah” in Women’s Bible Commenatry edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992, 1998) p. 182

5 Patai, location 1149 in Kindle version (end of chapter 2).

–

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

August 13, 2017