“Pure Courage” based on Esther 4

November 21, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the beginning of the book of Esther we get the story of Vashti, Queen of Persia, who simply refused. She’d been told to show up in the midst of a drunken party wearing only her crown, and she didn’t. The king and his advisors recoiled in horror that a woman could use her power to say no, thus she was banished and a decree went out to the entire empire letting them know that men were in charge. She scared them, a lot.

The story continues, and at some point after that, the king got lonely and regretted over-reacting. His advisors then suggested that he’d be less sad if he rounded up all of the beautiful women in his empire, put them into a harem, and enjoyed them while deciding who the next queen should be. Wow. Aren’t those great advisors? It really is terrifying what ideas advisors can come up with that weak-minded kings decided to implement.

So, within the story of the book of Esther, they did. This serves as your reminder that the book of Esther was written as historical fiction for the sake of building up the Jews living in exile, and it was never meant to be taken as real history. We can mine this story for metaphor and hope, but not for historical facts.

In this story, Esther is one of the beautiful maidens chosen for the king’s harem. She is a Jewish woman, an orphan, who has been raised by her cousin Mordecai. At Mordecai’s suggestion, she does not reveal her Jewishness within the harem. After a year of beauty treatments, she gets her night with the king and he happens to like her best. She becomes the new queen! It is a precarious position: she is queen to a king who disposed her predecessor on a whim, who also has a back-up harem for both sexual pleasure and a queen “bull pen.” (<–Intentional decision not to gender-neutralize made here.)

Meanwhile, her cousin Mordecai has been spending most of his time standing outside the palace gates, trying to glean information about Esther and determine if she is being treated well. In his station there, he overhears a plot to murder the king. He lets the authorities know, they investigate, it is founded, and the king is pleased (to be alive). During this time, the king also appoints a man named Haman to be his right-hand guy, and Haman is given so much authority that others are expected to bow down to him whenever they see him.

Mordecai does not bow down. For a story that doesn’t mention God, the book of Esther has a lot of implied Jewish theology. Jews through the ages have refused to bow down to foreign rulers, claiming God alone is their king. Haman, the king’s favored advisor, is just as much of a narcissistic, ill-tempered, short-sighted xenophobe as his king. He FREAKS OUT when Mordecai refuses to bow down, and he decides to execute all the Jews in the empire because of it.

Haman brings up his plan to the king, nuancing it just so – pointing out that there are a bunch of people in their country who aren’t fully assimilated. They have different customs, values, and rituals. They did not follow (only) the laws of the empire. Therefore, he said, let’s kill them. He even offers the king money for the honor of killing all the Jews. The king, being presented as a weak leader, immediately agrees, but declines the money. A decree goes out that on one particular day all the people of the empire are to kill any Jews in their midst.

That’s what it took to get us to this chapter. Mordecai knows about this plan, as do the Jews around the empire, but Esther does not. Mordecai has moved into mourning, perhaps in the tradition of the Ninevahites trying to change God’s mind, perhaps in mourning for a country where they believed themselves to be safe, perhaps in mourning for himself and his people at their imminent death with fear that no one would be left to mourn them. His mourning is sort of a problem though, because it means he can’t enter the palace and that means he can’t easily get word to Esther.

Her servants know that he is her family though, even if the palace doesn’t know the connection nor her heritage. They see him in mourning and tell her. She sends him clothes, presumably so that he’d wear them and come tell her what’s wrong. He refuses them, which means they have to have their whole conversation via messenger, and with Mordecai at the gate for lots of people to overhear!

Mordecai has a plan, and he sends it to Esther through her eunuch: she should go before the king and beg him for mercy for her people. Esther’s first response is… less than enthusiastic. She is queen, but she is in a precarious position as queen, there is a harem waiting to take her position, her predecessor got deposed, and the king hasn’t called for her for a month, meaning she’s not particularly in favor. She doesn’t think she’s likely to be able to change his mind, and anyway, even showing up before him without being called held an automatic death sentence – unless he absolved it. That is, Esther appears to like being alive, and suggests they work on another plan. She isn’t suicidal.

Many a preacher and scholar have condemned her for this response. They’ve called her weak and self-serving. They’ve called her privileged and prissy. I think she’s wise. If there had been another way, it would have been wiser to go with it. The likelihood of success in this plan was LOW. Mordecai thinks Esther is their best chance, and he pushes her – HARD- to go forward with it. He points out that if this law is followed they’ll both die. He says the now-famous words, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Those words have haunted anyone with any power or privilege since this story was written. They refuse any excuse we throw at them, and make real the importance of using power for good.

With that, Esther decides. She wasn’t suicidal, but she was courageous and willing to act. She wasn’t impetuous either though! She asked for prayer support, for the community to fast and pray on her behalf for 3 days and she offers that she and her servants will too. She wants to be prepared, to have a plan, to do it right, to give it her best shot. And she says words as famous as Mordecai’s in response to him. Her final words to him are, “If I perish, I perish.” I’m not clear how anyone could accuse Esther of lacking courage.

Now, I particularly love something about Esther’s courage. Esther got to the position she was in because she was PRETTY and PLEASING, which likely means that she was compliant. Her access to power came through traditionally feminine means. However, her use of her power came through her pure courage – which hasn’t always been attributed to the feminine. I love this because often women are told that either they can pretty or they can be smart and courageous. Esther is all of the above, and no one can take any of it away from her.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, after this chapter Esther goes before the king, and he does ofter her the pardon of the golden scepter. She uses his good will to invite him to a banquet in his honor, along with Haman. He comes. He has a great time. She uses his good will to invite him to ANOTHER banquet, just the three of them again. In the meantime the king OUT OF THE BLUE remembers that Mordecai had saved his life and decides to honor him, and does so. This manages to infuriate Haman all the more, which is fun. The second night the king asks Esther what she wants again, and she finally tells him. She says that someone has been trying to kill her people, and she’s terribly sad. The king is horrified, she accuses Haman, and the tide turns. The people are saved, Haman and their oppressors are not, and the Jews survive.

In The Interpreter’s Bible, White Crawford says, “Lacking public power, women have historically been able to gain individual or private strength only by successfully exploiting the male power structure around them, as Esther does so well, ”¹ and “Esther is a human heroine for a human situation and, as such, speaks powerfully to all oppressed people through the centuries.”² Esther’s power, and her subversiveness are profoundly different from Vashti’s. Esther shows up to gain power, Vashti refuses to show up for the same reason. Vashti’s powerful “no, I won’t” stands in contrast to Esther’s powerful “yes, I will.” Esther is, perhaps, not a traditional feminist heroine in that her beauty gains her access to power. Yet, she is a perfect subversive heroine in that she uses WHATEVER SHE HAS for the sake of what is necessary. What she needs is justice for her people.

Esther’s story exists to motivate people: to stand up for what is right, no matter the cost; to have courage; to use what we have for the sake of good; and to call each other to account. It reminds us that the work of building God’s kin-dom requires courage, and sometimes risk – and I appreciate that it doesn’t celebrate risk for risk’s own sake nor call on us to be suicidal. Esther doesn’t JUMP at the chance to risk her life for the sake of her people, she only does it when she is convinced it is strictly necessary. Sacrifice isn’t celebrated for its own sake, only for its strategic usefulness in achieving worthwhile ends.

It is not terribly common to face a situation like Esther’s, where the needs of the world require putting our own lives directly on the line. It is much more common to face little tiny decisions where our instincts for peace and being well-liked compete with our desires to speak truths and protect people in vulnerable situations. Courage isn’t just about facing external oppressors and those who can do us bodily harm, first and foremost it is about facing our innermost fears of who we “should” be and how we “should” act. It is often as much about being who we are as anything else! “For such a time as this” indicates using all that we are, all that we have become, and the fullness of our experiences to face the present. It speaks to becoming our fullest selfs, as an exercise in developing our “courage muscles.”

Or, as the author Marianne Williams puts it,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”³

Esther walked into that throne room beautiful, courageous, centered, and as a beloved child of God. She knew who she was, what she was about, and what she cared about enough to risk herself. She became liberated from fear, and in doing so has liberated others from fear into courage as long as the story has been told. May we follow in her footsteps. Amen

1Sidnie White Crawford “The Book of Esther,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999): p. 872

2Ibid, 872.

3Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles.”

–

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

November 20, 2016

Sermons

“A Powerful No” based on Esther 1:1-20

November 13, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In 1802 a heterosexual, white, protestant couple got married – and the church freaked out. You want to know why, I promise. They freaked out because she…wore….a red coat! The couple was Abigail and Daniel Harkness, and Daniel was a part of the Society of Friends. They officially censured him for marrying her, both because she wasn’t a part of the Society of Friends and because of her coat (which they said made her a “worldly woman”). She refused to give up her coat. He refused to apologize for her coat. So they became Methodists.

Thank goodness they did. I sometimes have some feelings of envy for the peace-loving Quakers, but that one action they did all those years ago was really good for Methodists. Abigail and Daniel’s great-granddaughter was fond of telling that story, and made it a part of her story of formation. Their great-granddaughter was Georgia Harkness, the first woman to be a full professor at a theological school in the United States of America, a feat she accomplished as an active Methodist theologian. She was, truth be told, the first RECOGNIZED female theologian, and she was a member of the Troy Annual Conference. She had local ordination, but fought for women’s full ordination rights in the Methodist Church.

I do not have enough time to tell you Georgia Harkness’s full story today (I’m still learning it), but there are a few other details you need to know. She graduated from Cornell in 1912, after which she taught high school in Schyllerville and Scotia for 6 years (yes, OUR Scotia), but she got restless. After reading an advertisement in The Christian Advocate she went to Boston University (also a Methodist school) for her masters degree and then a PhD in the philosophy of religion. She then taught at Elmira College for 15 years. In 1939 she was hired by Garrett, breaking the stained glass ceiling. She was part of the movement toward full ordination rights for women in the Methodist Church, the social gospel, the creation of the World Council of Churches, and was eventually a General Conference delegate from the Troy Annual Conference (although Junice tells me this happened while she was a professor at Pacific School of Religion in CA and not everyone was thrilled about it.)

While she was teaching in Scotia, she was very active in her “local church” teaching Sunday School and working with youth groups. We haven’t yet verified which church was that was. Most likely, Scotia UMC, right? Given our history though, maybe it was us. (We’re looking!) In any case, a Methodist Church in the Albany District and Schenectady County sent Georgia Harkness off to her graduate education and to change the face of Methodism, academia, and the world.

Dr. Georgia Harkness attributed her courage to her great-grandmother, Abigail. When women graduate from Garrett-Evangelical Theological school, a United Methodist Seminary north of Chicago, they wear red shoes. They do it to remind themselves of their place in the world as courageous, outrageous women and to celebrate the rich tradition of female scholarship at Garrett-Evangelical.”¹ They do it because of Abigail Harkness.

Abigail Harkness refused to do what was asked of her, and in doing so she inspired great change. Her courage laid the foundation for Georgia’s. I think Abigail Harkness was to Georgia Harkness what Vashti was to Esther. Now, let me be clear. The book of Esther is a work of fiction. It was written down (no oral tradition) as a work of fiction, for the purpose of encouraging Jews living in the Persian empire to have hope and stay faithful. This story did not happen. History knows too much about the era. This is intentional historical fiction! As Sidnie White Crawford (professor of Classics and Religious Studies at University of Nebraka Lincoln) puts it in The New Interpreter’s Bible, “This is also a hopeful message to Jews living in diaspora; the status quo is never such and things can always change.”²

John Dominic Crossan likes to help people understand the Bible by saying, “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens,” by which he means that he doesn’t think that there was an actual embodied living Christ who walked with the disciples to Emmaus and explained the Jesus movement to them and then disappeared as he became known in the breaking of the bread at dinner. Rather, he believes that it is in reflecting on history that we come to understand our present, and it is in the communion table that Christ is known. The literal pales beside the metaphorical. Similarly, the book of Esther didn’t happen, and yet Esther tells truths of humanity that keep happening.

White Crawford says, “The book, which was written for Jews living in exile, consistently lampoons their Gentile overlords. Ahasuerus is less an awe-inspiring ruler than an easily manipulated buffoon.”³ Obviously the Jews living in ancient Persia were the only people in the history of the world who need to make fun of their ruler to feel safe in the world, so we can’t understand it, but we can try ;).

The story starts out describing the excessive opulence of the King’s palace and grounds and his outrageous 6-month party for all of his officials. Granted, travel was harder in those days and he was king over a really big empire so you might want to take advantage of opportunites to be together, but who can really afford to both stop their government for 6 months AND have a ridiculous party at the same time? Clearly, he could! And he thought it was worth it. He was clearly very excited to show off his power and wealth.

Now, the author is very wise and quite intentional. The attention to detail wasn’t an accident. White Crawford says, “Through the description we get a glimpse of the Persian character: ostentatious, showy, unbridled. This is in direct contrast to the usual Jewish values of modesty and self-restraint (see Prov 11:2-4). Although disapproval is never directly voiced, the message is clear: Such opulence, while immediately awe-inspiring, hides an empty and probably corrupt core.”⁴ So, after this showy 6 month party, the King decides that he needs a new audience to show off to, and he invites everyone in the city to come to a 7 day party.

It is very clearly stated that at this party people were allowed to drink how they wanted, because usually the expectation was that everyone drank when the king drank. “The author is letting the reader now that everything in this court, including drinking, proceeds according to the whim of the king,” including allowing people to drink as much (or as little) as they wished!⁵

So, 187 days in to a drunken stupor, the king calls for his wife who is throwing a party of her own with the women. This isn’t particularly historical, but it does work for historical fiction! We’re told that, “Historically Persian women and men could eat together, but the women left when the drinking began. It suits the purposes of the author to have the men and women separate when the story begins.”⁶ It fits the story, because then the king can call for Vashti.

She is told to show up in her crown. She isn’t told what else to wear. Assumptions have long been that she’s not supposed to wear anything but her crown. So, the story sets it up: the king has has been having a six month long drinking party to show off all his wealth, his wife is with her female companions, and he beckons her to come out naked to be shown off before all of the officials of the land and every man in her city.

Now, we don’t know a darn thing about Vashti (mostly because she never existed) but I want to play with this idea a little bit. I have, at times in my life, been in the exclusive company of women. During those times, if a particularly inappropriate “request” were to come to one of those women from a man, a certain amount of shared indignation would erupt. The woman who received the “request,” who might have simply hung her head in shame and complied if she were alone, would be motivated to respond differently in the presence of other women. The atrocity of the “request” would be named. Other options would be raised. An assessment of the risk involved in refusing vs. the risk involved in responding would be done. Perhaps, if there were some, particularly powerful women in the group might offer their own resources as protection.

That is to say, that when oppressors make horrible demands of members of oppressed groups, they’re less likely to have their dictates followed when the demand comes to the individual while the individual is supported by other members of the oppressed group. Um. Duh. But, the king is presented as an idiot. So, he doesn’t know that. And I’m not trying to be subtle here. I’m encouraging all of us to act like the women that Vashti was with – naming injustice when we see it, assessing damage, coming up with alternative plans, using our resources for the vulnerable, and supporting whoever needs the support. I’m reminding us all that there is power in being together, and not in allowing anyone to be isolated. I’m particularly encouraging stand together in the face of unreasonable decrees by unjust rulers.

Vashti says “no.” The story doesn’t REALLY tell us what happens to her. She’s said to be banished. For most of history that’s thought to include being killed. However, I’ve had a hard week and I’m going to claim that some of those women she was with in her banquet took her in and she lived a lovely life of freedom and access to great books in her exile. It IS a work of fiction after all, and this is my fan-fiction addition for the sake of having some darn hope. 😉

However, before she gets banished a few things happen. First of all, her husband who just spent 187 days showing off his power and wealth can’t figure out how to respond her “no” and convenes a war council to try to figure out how to respond. The king’s councilors are also freaked out and horrified that once the story gets out (which it WILL when all the women were present to hear her “no” and all the men were present to see her not show up) all the other women in the empire won’t obey their husbands either. (May. It. Be. So.) The scholar reminds us, “the character’s reactions to events lead the reader to laugh. For example, Vashti’s refusal to obey one order is thought to threaten the stability of the empire and leads to a decree declaring, of all things, that husbands should rule in their own houses and speak their own languages.”⁷ Which happens. The greatest mail service ever known on the face of the earth to that time was put to the task of telling men to be the masters of their houses – in a society that was already a patriarchy – because the men were so freaked out that one woman would say “no.”

That’s a powerful no.

It also set up Esther to replace Vashti as queen and save her people from genocide. Vashti and Esther didn’t know each other, but we can guess that Esther knew Vashti’s story, and learned from it. She did her subversiveness in different ways, but she learned from the one who came before her. Vashti set up Esther to succeed. Abigail Harkness set up Georgia to succeed. Even the failures of one woman who seeks power can inspire the next woman to succeed.

And, beloved people of God, like Vashti and Abigail, we are not powerless. We have the power to say “no” to things that are wrong, and “yes” to opportunities for justice. Furthermore, we can act like the women at the banquet in counseling each other toward courageous acts and outrageous refusals of unjust demands. We are powerful. God is powerful. We can, and we will continue to move the world toward good. NOTHING and NO ONE, not even a narcissistic power-hungry “king” can stop us. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“Red Shoes” by “preacher mom” http://preacherparents.blogspot.com/2010/05/red-shoes.html, accessed 11/10/2016

2Sidnie White Crawford “The Book of Esther,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999): p. 858.

3Ibid, 858

4Ibid, 880.

5Ibid, 879.

6Ibid, 880.

7Ibid, 858.

–

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

November 13, 2016

Sermons

“Making a Way Forward”based on Genesis 16:1-6

November 1, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Have you heard that old conundrum about God’s omnipotence? It asks, “Can God make a boulder so big that God can’t move it?” If you ever need it, the correct response to that is, “I don’t care, that has nothing to do with helping us be more loving.” Today’s story raises a similar concern: are we humans capable of screwing up so badly that God can’t bring good out of it? Please hear that question with caution. I fully believe we humans are capable of screwing up BADLY and ruining each other’s lives. The question is, once the damage is done, is there anything that God can’t make better?

Sarai, is the matriarch of both Judaism and Christianity. You may remember her as Sarah. She is the matriarch of ONLY Judaism and Christianity while her husband Abram/Abraham is the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Neither of them do good in the this story.

Let’s go over the name thing to get confusion out of the way. In the next chapter of Genesis (17), God changes their names to Abraham and Sarah – which is how most people remember their names. The name changed signified God’s promise changing their lives. However, at this point in the story they are still called Abram and Sarai, so that’s what we’re going to call them today.

Abram was one of three sons born in land now called Iraq, whose family had moved to land now called Syria, and continued to reside there until he was quite elderly. The book of Genesis says that when he was 75, God spoke to Abram and said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3) The book of Genesis rarely seems to understand how numbers work or what a reasonable human lifespan is, but it is clear that it is saying Abram and Sarai were old.

Phyllis Trible has done great work with these stories. She writes about this first promise made to Abram, pointing out that:

“The Divine imperative requires Abram to break with all that identifies a man in his ancient world, from the large category of native land through clan to the small unit of ‘father’s house.’ In effect, Abram must relinquish his past and present and go forth to an unknown future in an unspecified land. Although the command does not require him to give up Sarai, his wife, of what value for life, family, and future is barren property?”¹ (35)

So that you don’t think Trible is actually supporting the Biblical assumption about people unable to procreate, let me also quote her saying, “However we may view barrenness, within the biblical narrative it is a tragic flaw. It robs a woman of her labor and her status. It undercuts patriarchy, upsets family values, and negates life.²” Sarai is introduced to the Bible as a barren woman, it is her defining characteristic, and her barrenness is the central issue of their story for 9 chapters.

Abram goes as he is told to go in that first encounter with the Divine. He goes to the land of Canaan and he lives there for a while until there is a famine and he and Sarai go to Egypt. On their way, Abram decides that Sarai is too beautiful and if he admits that she’s his wife they will try to kill him to get to her. So, while the Bible is messed up about the inherent value of women whether or not they can procreate, at least it recognizes the attractiveness of women in their 70s. Score one for Genesis.

Abram is self-protective and thereby lets his wife Sarai be taken into the Pharoah’s harem. He is paid VERY well for Sarai. Eventually the Pharaoh learns what Abram has done and both Abram and Sarai are kicked out of Egypt for it. When they get kicked out, Abram left a wealthy man with all his possessions. That is, his lie and use of his wife made him wealthy. Likely Hagar, Sarai’s slave, was part of the wealth they left with.

They went back to Canaan and lived peaceably there for 10 years. It has been a long time since God’s promise came… 15 years? 20? The Biblical chronology is messy, conflicting, and obviously untrustworthy, but suffice to say, according to the internal logic of the story it has been more than a generation’s time since God promised Abram offspring and nothing has happened. Sarai is just as barren as ever and nothing seems to be changing. The promise was reliant on a 2^nd generation, and wouldn’t work without one.

So Sarai decides to take this into her own hands. Clearly the 2^nd generation wasn’t going to happen through her, and yet she didn’t want to give up on the promise. Abram had to have descendants. She wasn’t to bear them. They’d waited years and years…. so she found a way. This passage contains the first words Sarai speaks in the Bible. Sarai speaks to Abram and makes the action happen. She uses her voice to change their reality.

Now, Sarai has been condemned through the ages for this action – but I don’t think she’s been condemned for the right things. Usually, she’s condemned for lack of faith. People suggest that if God said it would happen then God would make it happen and Sarai taking it into her own hands showed that she didn’t truly trust God.

That perspective implies that God’s ways make human action irrelevant. It fails to acknowledge that we work to be a part of building the kindom. It ignores free will. It depends on the supernatural. It suggests that humans have no responsibility for creating the world into a place of justice and peace, and that any action we take would be trying to take over God’s exclusive work of changing the world. That is to say, I think condemning Sarai for taking actions into her own hands is theologically unsound and STUPID.

On the other hand, this story says that Sarai is culpable of getting Hagar raped, and that seems worth condemnation. Sarai was likely raped by the Pharaoh herself, but that doesn’t excuse her. I would hope it would have brought her to a place of compassion rather than condemnation of another woman. Trible explains it this way:

“As Abram schemed to save himself by manipulating Sarai and Pharaoh, so Sarai schemes to promote herself by manipulating Abram and Hagar. As Abram tricked Pharaoh into manhandling Sarai, so Sarai would persuade Abram to manhandle Hagar. Like husband, like wife. Altogether, Sarai would treat Hagar in Canaan much as she herself was treated in Egypt; the object of use for the desires of others. Like oppressor, like oppressed.”³

Now, according to custom, Sarai was in her rights to do this. Her slave belonged to her, including her reproductive function, and the baby born would be understood to be hers. It is a projection of 21^st century morality to object, and yet I’m doing so. Thus, it IS morally reprehensible AND it didn’t work out. Something fundamental changes when Hagar gets pregnant. The dynamic has been, according to Trible that, “Sarai the Hebrew is married, rich, and free but also old and barren. Hagar the Egyptian is singe, poor, and a slave, but also young and fertile. Power belongs to Sarai; powerlessness marks Hagar.”⁴But Sarai’s greatest weakness is being barren when child-bearing was the single most important factor in a woman’s life, and the power dynamics switch when her otherwise powerless slave is carrying her husband’s child.

Trible continues:

“As the story moves into a crowded marriage of three, the focus rests on Hagar. ‘She conceived’ (Gen 16:4) The news is precisely what Sarai wants, but it leads to an insight on Hagar’s part that her mistress has not anticipated. ‘And [when] she [Hagar] saw that she had conceived, her mistress became slight in her eyes’ (Gen 16:4*). In the Hebrew syntax, words of sight, connoting understanding, begin and end this sentence: the verb ‘see’ and the phrase ‘in her eyes.’ Structurally and substantively, new understanding encircles Hagar’s view of herself and her mistress. Hierarchical blinders drop. The exulted mistress decreases, the lowly slave increases. Not hatred or contempt but a reordering of the relationship emerges.”⁵

But Sarai’s view of Hagar does NOT change, and she feels slighted by the move toward equality. She wants to return them to their previous, hierarchical relationship. She wants to regain her power.

Sarai does not talk directly to Hagar, she doesn’t attempt to fix the relationship, and she surely doesn’t try to understand Hagar. Instead she turns to the biggest source of power: Abram. She brings her problem to him and demands that he fixes it. Abram refuses responsibility, and gives her back the power she needs to do harm to Hagar. Hagar HAD BEEN Sarai’s slave, but when she became a secondary wife to Abram, she was no longer a slave. Yet, Abram returns her to the status of slave, permitting Sarai to do her harm, and Sarai does. After demanding that Abram rape Hagar, Sarai “treats her harshly” – which is the same phrasing as how the Hebrew people were treated as slaves in Egypt.

Sarai is an undeniably strong woman who charts the course of Biblical history. She got the ball rolling. She took the power into her own hands. She did it. And she did an enormous amount of damage in doing so. Her actions are HORRIFYING and yet it was a subversive choice to claim her own power and use it to make sure that Abram got an heir. Her choice not to claim Ishmael as her own is also HORRIFYING and yet again subversive by claiming her own power.

In the metaphors of the world, the child Hagar bears, Ishmael, becomes the father of the Muslims. Hagar is their matriarch. In the continued narrative of Genesis, Sarai bears her own child, Issac, and through him becomes the matriarch of the Jews and Christians. Three world’s major religions emerge from this set of messed up people in broken relationships. I’ve often wondered why the Bible is comfortable as presenting them as so HUMAN, but the Bible doesn’t seem to be under the impression that God is looking for perfect humans in order to act.

More so, out of these atrocities: the barrenness of Sarai, the willingness of Abram to sell his wife, slavery, the willingness of Sarai and Abram to use Hagar as an un-consenting wife and surrogate mother, and Sarai’s harsh treatment of Hagar comes GOOD. Doesn’t make any sense, does it? I think that’s one of the mysteries of God. We can mess up, but God doesn’t just leave things be and allow brokenness to stand. God works through the realities of life, the horrendous brokenness in lives, and the pain we cause each other and finds a way to transform it all. My answer? There is nothing we can do that God can’t bring good out of. The net result may still be harm, but God is creative, powerful, and good. We can’t stop that. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Phyllis Trible, “Ominous Beginnings for a Promise of Blessing” in Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, editors, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian PerspectivesTrible, (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2006) p. 35.

2Trible, 34.

3Trible, 38.

4Trible, 37.

5Trible, 39.

–

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 30, 2016

Sermons

“How Not to Treat the Family Idols” based on Genesis…

October 16, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
characters in this story don’t emerge from a vacuum. Their story has
been going on for quite a while by the time we get to this part of
Genesis. Jacob, you may remember, was the second born of a set of
twins who infuriated his brother by stealing both his brother’s
birthright and their father’s final blessing. In order to avoid
being murdered by his twin brother, and at their mother’s advice, he
went to live with her family.

The
first person he encountered when he arrived was a beautiful woman at
a well (which is Biblical foreshadowing for …. marriage) who
happened to be his cousin Rachel. Her father Laban was his mother’s
brother. This is not presented as an issue. Jacob wants to marry
Rachel, and Laban says he has to work for him for 7 years in order to
pay off her bride-price. So, besotted, Jacob does. After seven
years there is a wedding and a wedding night, and when he wakes up in
the morning Jacob discovers that it is Rachel’s sister Leah in his
bed. He objects – rather strongly. Laban comes up with some weak
explanation about not being able to marry off the younger sister
first and then suggests that Jacob can marry Rachel too, if he’ll
simply spend one week with Leah first and agree to work for him for
another 7 years.

It
turns out, in case you couldn’t figure this out yourself, that
sisters make super terrible sister wives. I bet you were able to
figure that out on your own though. Leah and Rachel spent years
trying to fight with each other for Jacob’s attention, and that
included a fairly elongated “baby war” in which each tried to
outdo the other in producing offspring for Jacob. If you wanted to
know, Leah won, although Rachel remained Jacob’s favorite. After the
next 7 years of labor had been completed, Jacob made a deal with
Laban to stay on for a while longer in order to leave with some herds
of his own. At that point both Laban and Jacob did everything they
could to trick each other into getting the worst possible deal.
Jacob was a trickster, Laban was a trickster, and neither of them
treated each other well. On the whole, Laban treated Jacob more
roughly than Jacob treated him.

Finally,
about 21 years after arriving on his uncle’s doorstep – and
apparently while his uncle was as far from home as possible, Jacob
packed up his wives, his children, his herds, and his possessions and
headed back home (uncertain about if his brother still wanted to kill
him).

So
now we’re caught up – as long as we remember that when they packed
everything up to leave, Rachel took the family idols with them and
Jacob didn’t know about it. What were the family idols? Well,
they’re also called the family gods. They were physical
representations of gods used in some sort of ritual worship, usually
at an at-home altar. In addition to being items to which one
directed one’s prayers, they were also thought to protect the family
and its good fortune. That is, if they were lost or stolen, it was
assumed that the LUCK of the family went with them. While the Bible
suggests that Jacob and Laban prospered because God was with Jacob,
Rachel may not have shared that assumption.

In
the story that precedes this one in Genesis, Leah and Rachel discuss
how their father cheated them by not giving them their portion of
their bride prices, and it is also possible that Rachel just took the
idols to counteract that, or to bother her father, or because she was
scared and wanted their protection, or maybe she was just greedy. I
do think, on the basis of the stories of Genesis and what they say
and what they don’t say, that Laban was probably an abusive parent
and employer. Furthermore, by the story Genesis tells, Jacob himself
isn’t really converted to YHWH worship yet. That will happen on this
journey back into the land, on the night when he is said to have
“wrestled with an angel” and gets renamed Israel. It thus seems
unlikely that Jacob’s wives would be monotheistic at this point, and
whatever other reasons Rachel had for taking the household idols,
likely she thought they’d be a source of protection for their family.

Laban
was furious when he found out and he brought a war party with him to
go after the family. It isn’t clear if he would have gone if it were
not for the family idols, but it sort of sounds like he is most upset
about the idols and not the loss of his children and grandchildren.

The
story gives us just enough geography to know that the place Jacob,
Leah, and Rachel were staying was INSIDE the boundaries of what would
one day be ancient Israel. It was just far enough inside that the
place Laban slept the night before he caught up with them was inside
too. This is significant because it tells us this is both an OLD OLD
story and one that got edited as they years went by. In the early
development of understanding YHWH, there was a time when it was
assumed that YHWH’s powers only existed within the boundaries of the
Promised Land. Genesis tells us that Jacob had a dream involving a
message from God on his way out of the land, and Laban has one right
after he crosses into it. It is as if God is limited by those
boundaries. The understanding of where the boundaries would BE
however was defined by political boundaries that existed centuries
later, and the clues the text gives us imply those boundaries. Isn’t
the Bible fun?

OK.
So Laban has a dream in which he is warned not to speak harshly to
Jacob which is most significant because it reminds us that people
used to think that God had boundaries. Although, let’s be honest.
People still think that. It is remarkable how people think about
churches and other places of worship as more “holy” or more
“filled with God” than other places. When he does catch up with
the next generation of his family, Jacob is HORRIFIED as his
accusations and responds with surety that no one has done what he is
accusing them of. That is, Jacob thinks Laban is falsely accusing
them – with good reason based on their history – and grandiosely
offers a death penalty for the one who has the idols because he is SO
SURE they don’t have them.

This
is a problem for Rachel. Nothing of her motivation is explained in
the text but it seems clear that she decided she didn’t want to die.
She thinks fast and she comes up with a plan, she enacts it, and it
works. She lives, her father goes home, and all is well, except
maybe for the idols. The plan itself, however, is proof of how
little power she otherwise had. She used what she had – her
femininity and how it was treated in her culture – to save her own
hide.

The
plan was super simple: she put the idols underneath her and she told
her father she was menstruating. Was she? That’s completely unclear
and likely irrelevant. However, she SAID she was. By the customs of
the time, no man shouldn’t have been in her tent while she was
menstruating, and he violated that cultural expectation by examining
the rest of her tent. He wasn’t going to push any further though,
and he left. By putting the idols underneath her AND coming up with
a valid reason not to get up, Rachel saved her own life and got to
keep the idols she’d wanted to begin with. She used what she had –
fear of menstruating women and an assurance that no one would check
her on that – to subvert the power of her father.

However,
she also desecrated the idols. It sort of doesn’t matter if she
actually was menstruating on them or not, the implication is enough.
It may be that this story has multiple intentions and denigrating the
power of idols is one of them. By the time this story was written
down the people knew the Ten Commandments, including the one about
not making idols. It was clear that YHWH was not to be represented
in physical form, and Walter Brueggemann says that this is so that
people can’t pick up the idol, move it around, put it where they want
it, and have the sense that they control YHWH. YHWH is not a God who
is controlled by humans. This story, which discusses menstruating on
idols seems like a very effective reminder to those who weren’t YHWH
worshippers about the relative weakness of their gods.

The
story also functions as a story about the formation of the national
boundaries. It claims that the Eastern boundary of Israel was first
created by a covenant between Laban and Jacob, and that as such it is
almost inherent.

It
is also a good story – it keeps our attention pretty well. Sadly
though, this is the last interaction that Leah and Rachel have with
their father. Rachel is left sitting alone in her tent while the
covenant is formed and her father leaves again. While Jacob and his
family are safe, and while Laban was likely an awful father, there is
some lingering sadness at the end.

The
biggest clue in this story that something is WRONG isn’t that Jacob
decides to leave while Laban is far away, and no one in the household
tells Laban for THREE DAYS. That would indicate they thought they
were protecting the vulnerable from the one who was doing them harm.
Jacob got Rachel and Leah, as well as his family, out of an unsafe
home for them.

Rachel
tried to take something with her for protection along the way, and it
became the excuse by which her father almost killed them all. In
that moment Laban sounds like an abusive partner who will kill their
partner rather than let them leave, and Laban’s dream is the only
thing that held him back. Rachel survived, and likely they ALL
survived, because of her quick thinking and willingness to use what
she had.

Many
women throughout history have been used and abused by powerful men.
Furthermore, many PEOPLE throughout history have been used and abused
by those with more power than they had. Some, like Rachel, use
everything they have, everything in their power, every subversive
action in the world to get out. Sometimes they succeed. May God
continue to guide those who seek safety, and may those who need
safety keep Rachel’s wits about them! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 16. 2016

Sermons

“Allowing the Boys to Live” based on Exodus 1:8-22

October 9, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the people are reminded that they were once slaves in Egypt. It is used to explain the Sabbath, or maybe just to explain why servants get to have Sabbath too in Ancient Israelite society. It is used in the commandments to take care of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner as well. Basically, the people are reminded time and time again to have compassion for the vulnerable because they were once a vulnerable population.

However, there aren’t many stories about the people being enslaved in Egypt, this is one of the few. The ones that exist all revolve around Moses, and this story is the prelude to the story of Moses’ birth. It is very difficult to tell if there is any authentic memory underneath this story, because it is an old enough story that there really shouldn’t be and yet there are such epically profound truths in it about what it means to be an oppressed people and what subversiveness looks like from within oppression that it feels more true than most stories in the Bible. This story may not be a factual accounting of a particular incident in history, but because it contains so many larger truths, I’m going to treat it as if it is, and let it speak for itself.

According to the end of Genesis, the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob had all moved down to Egypt during a famine after Joseph had become the right hand person to the Pharaoh. Joseph had urged them to come down, where he could ensure that they would have sufficient food and land to be safe. The story explained that Joseph had interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream and predicted 7 years of excellent harvests followed by 7 years of famine. Pharaoh was so pleased that he elevated Joseph to the 2^nd highest office in the land, and while there Joseph reigned over an agricultural policy that completely impoverished the entire nation and brought their wealth into the Pharaoh’s hands. The people ended up selling their livestock, their land, and then themselves for access to Joseph’s grain stores.

So the same guy who “saved” his family did so while utterly destroying the people of the nation he was – supposedly – serving. The new Pharaoh “didn’t know Joseph” (the Bible suggests this story happened 400 years later, so that would be reasonable). However, it is a bit ironic that the Hebrews were enslaved by the people who one of their forefathers had masterminded enslaving.

Perhaps that suggests that oppression breeds oppression, and oppressors should be careful. In any case, by the premises of this story, by this time the Egyptians were in full fledge oppressor roles and the Hebrews were enslaved by them and oppressed by them.

In our Bible Study we were struck by the similarities between the story in Exodus and the experiences of slaves here in the United States. There is something universal about this story, and it strikes cords through the eons.

Puah and Shiphrah are midwives who are given an immoral order. They are to kill all the baby boys of their people. The names Puah and Shiphrah are classically Hebrew names, and the text reminds us that they’re Hebrew as well as mentioning twice that they are in awe of God. (The “awe” is often translated “fear” but “awe” is a much better translation.) We are not supposed to miss that they’re Hebrew, or that they’re being ordered to kill the boys of their own ethnic group.

It took me entirely too long to figure out why the boys were to be killed. I was thinking of males as especially strong laborers in the fields, and wondered why you’d want to have fewer of them. If you wanted fewer descendants, I thought, why not kill the girls who have the babies and leave the workers? Our Bible Study participants responded that the death of the male babies meant that the females would be sexually available to the Egyptians, and they’d presume that as half-Egyptian – the next generation would be more pliable and “better.” The participants in the Bible Study figured this out by considering American slave history.

We also noticed the language of fear created around the oppressed group, and the dehumanization of them. The Hebrews are called “powerful” and “numerous” and the myth is that they would do harm for the Egyptians, a myth used to justify enslaving them. It is suggested that they could be spies, or fight against Egypt in a war, or abandon their posts of much needed labor. Therefore, the myth of the oppressors says, we must enslave them and double down on the harm we do to them to keep them below us.

Oppression is very powerful, and human oppressors are capable of extensive harm, but there is a resiliency to life itself, and it fights back when life is oppressed. This story says that the more the Hebrews were oppressed the more they multiplied. I think we’re supposed to believe this was God’s hand at work; I think it is more the myth of the Egyptians continuing to justify evil. In any case, both the Hebrews of this story and the African American slaves oppressed in the United States suffered great losses as a community – losses of life and identity, language and culture, dignity and hope. Yet, the communities found ways to fight back, reform, and try again and again. This story suggests that the power to do so came from God, as do many of the songs and stories that remain from the American slave era. God supports the experience of the oppressed in overcoming oppression.

The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, were unusual women. It doesn’t seem reasonable that only two midwives could have been sufficient for all the births of the Hebrew women, so more likely they were the LEADERS of the midwives. It may even be that they were also midwives to the Egyptian women, as they imply they know the difference between each set of women giving birth. They are BRILLIANT, DEFIANT, and seemingly FEARLESS (although I’d stake a bet that they were terrified even while they kept their cool.)

They are given a direct order by the most powerful man in their country to kill the baby boys of their community and they don’t! If it is true that they were the leaders of the midwives, they give counter instructions. In any case, the voices of all the midwives are united in the shared voices of Puah and Shiphrah, and their voices respond to this immoral command with “no.” They just don’t! It makes me wonder how they had been formed as humans, and what empowered them to know better. The text says it was that they knew God, and I hope it is true for all who know God that our relationship with God empowers us to refuse to follow unjust orders, but I’ve seen it go other ways. How is it that knowing the Holy One can form us into people who more deeply believe in the sacredness of life? How is that being present to God helps us overcome our fears of the powers of the world? How were the midwives able to be so brave? I wish I knew, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God can help us overcome our fears and resist the power of oppression.

Did the midwives refuse the Pharaoh because he was Egyptian? Because the order was so atrocious? Because someone had already been training them on resisting oppression? Was it about who gave it, how terrible it was, or about who they were? How were they strong enough to simply refuse? And how were they wise enough NOT to say “no” to the Pharaoh (who would have killed them and replaced them with someone who would do what he said) but instead to simply not to it? I’d love to know, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God helped them overcome the power of the oppressor.

When they get called back to account for the live baby Israelite boys, they have a crafty answer in hand. They give a compliment to the femininity of the Egyptian women while using the fear of the Hebrews and assumptions about them to their benefit. They respond along the lines of “your women are more feminine and fragile while ours are more like animals.” To be precise, they say, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” You see? The answer they give manipulates the Pharaoh by complimenting his ethnic group and denigrating theirs, and it is believable to him. They save their boys. To do it they have to imply terrible things about the lack of humanity of the women they were related to, and they did because it was totally worth it.

Puah and Shiphrah aren’t the only ones in history who have played the assumptions of oppressors against the oppressors to gain freedom for the oppressed, but they did it as well as anyone.

Now, the incredible actions of these subversive women to save the lives of Israelite boys ended with things worse off than they started – sort of. The midwives had been told to kill the babies, the tactics then were supposed to be somewhat hidden and covert. Their actions forced his hand to make the death sentence to baby boys OVERT and visible. He continues to order the death of the baby boys, and he makes everyone responsible for it, since he hadn’t been able to control the midwives. In the short term, that meant more babies died.

But in the long term, it meant that the Hebrews lived. The overt action of the Pharaoh led to more subversive actions – by Moses’ mother and sister – and by Pharaoh’s own daughter. The fear of Pharaoh that led to his orders for murder resulted in Moses being raised in his own house – an Israelite boy who he had ordered killed. When Pharaoh raised the stakes it ended up backfiring on him and he eventually lost all his slaves.

It seems important to take note of how it must have felt to be Puah and Shiphrah in the moment when Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew babies to be thrown into the Nile. It would have felt like failure, right? They took risks with their own lives and likely the lives of those who worked with them to save the babies. They took morality and the love of God more seriously than the power of the Pharaoh/King. They fought with their wits about them for the well-being of their people and they won…

Until the Pharaoh made it worse and raised the stakes. They tried to save those baby boys and allow them to live, and then Pharaoh orders everyone to kill the baby boys and the organizational methods of the midwives can’t protect the babies anymore. Puah and Shiphrah must have been dismayed. Yet, the tactics they used ended up in one generation with the freedom of their people – instead of the death of the males of a generation and the rape of that generation’s women. Yes, things got worse. That’s what happens when you fight back against oppression. The oppressors make things worse first. Which means that when women – and men – are forced to use subversive tactics they have to be prepared for things to get much worse before they get better.

In The United Methodist Church right now, things are getting worse. The many brave people who have refused to follow unjust rules in the church have upset the status quo. Those who are committed to excluding LGBTQ people from full participation in the Body of Christ are furious that they can’t make people follow the rules. As they double-down on exclusion and tightening rules and punishments, they push the UMC toward schism. This weekend in Chicago a group of 1700 people deeply committed to exclusion gathered, and formally launched a para-Church structure they are calling the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Their first demand is that the Church end the resistance to exclusion once and for all. Since we all know that the progressives fighting for inclusion will not be silenced that is not possible. They suggest, that if resistance can’t be silenced that a plan needs to be developed to divide the denomination. Things are getting worse.

That means we are on the road to ending oppression. Thanks be to God for the midwives and all those willing and able to follow their lead. What a joy it is, in God’s holy name, to be part of ending oppression in any form. 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

October 9, 2016

Sermons

“Persistent” based on Luke 18:2-5

October 2, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I recently heard a story,
it was the story of the person who told it to me, but it struck me
that it was also many peoples’ story. There was much to celebrate
in the story, and also a lot to be frustrated by. The person who
told me the story was someone who lacks access to sufficient
financial resources. That is, in the colloquial – he is poor –
although I think poverty is more complicated than that! The man is a
father, and his daughter got into a VERY good college, despite the
challenges the family faced and the challenges their school district
faced. As you might hope, the very good college offered this young
woman a financial aid package to make it possible for her to attend
the school. However, when the young woman got the financial aid
package and read it over carefully, she realized that the loans she
was being offered were predatory loans that would be verging on
impossible to ever be able to pay back! She contacted the school.
They ignored her. She kept pestering. They kept ignoring her. Her
father started calling, and he started calling up the chain of
command. He was told to stop calling. When I heard the story,
that’s where it ended – they were unsure if the young woman would
attend the very good college because she was WAY too smart to do so
at risk to her financial future.

She sounds like the
persistent widow. I’ve been told that the persistent widow is a very
strange character with which to start a sermon series on subversive
women – and not just because the Bible presents her as fictional.
The bigger issue is that her subversiveness isn’t very obvious. To
the naked eye, she just looks like an annoying nag! Actually, even
that may be projection. This is a SHORT story, there isn’t that much
to it!

In our study of the text
though, we found a lot to discuss about this short-storied,
fictional, persistent widow. It is helpful to remember that the
Torah, the laws of community life that the Jewish people understood
to have come from God, were very clear about the care for widows,
orphans, and foreigners. That would be, people who did not have the
protection of an adult male who was a member of society and were thus
vulnerable. The system was designed so that even the vulnerable
could find ways to survive. The Torah was also very clear about the
threat to society created by an unjust justice system, and
articulated frequently, in no uncertain terms, the need to have
judges who made rulings based on JUSTICE and not on who had more
money or influence.

That is, the persistent
widow is stuck in a situation she shouldn’t be in. She should be
cared for. She isn’t! It is likely that her “opponent” is the
person who should have been taking care of her and providing for her
livelihood, and wasn’t! The justice system was supposed to help her
find a way to justice. It didn’t. She was stuck in a situation
which was untenable for her survival without a means of recourse
because of the immorality of the judge. There was no other means by
which she could get justice. The system was closed to her, and the
only option left to her was to agitate the system.

The judge is presented
very simplistically. He doesn’t care about justice, people, or
God… and it sounds like he just does what he wants to do. He is a
negative caricature of a person abusing power or authority, someone
who isn’t easy to move toward justice.

The persistent widow won
though! I suspect that she could have taught the courses I took this
spring on non-violent direct action! Jesus says that the judge
thought to himself,
“because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice,
so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (v. 5) The
persistent widow didn’t have much power to use in the world, and she
didn’t have ANY power that could be used without being annoying. So
she used what she had. She was annoying. She didn’t give up. And
she annoyed him into doing what was right!

That’s
what I think is so subversive about the persistent widow. She can’t
have been the only widow in that city who was impoverished by a lack
of justice, she likely wasn’t even the only one to bring it to the
judge’s attention. MANY of the widows might have been in similar
situations. However, in cases like that, most people give up.
That’s what people are counting on, and that’s part of why injustices
sometimes win out.

I
think about that young college bound woman, and how carefully she
read the details of her financial aid package to determine that the
offer wasn’t fair. How many other people in the same situation come
with some trust that the college they want to go to won’t do them
harm, don’t read the package, or don’t yet have the math skills to
interpret the implications? How many people would decide to take the
package and hope for the best? How many people would try to call and
ask if there was another loan, but give up easily? I don’t know how
many people would get as far as the young woman I heard about, and
consider giving up their dream school, but I do know that her
persistence is NOT what the predatory loan company is counting on.

The
predatory loan company is expecting people not to pay attention, to
trust, to take a leap of faith, not to run the numbers, and to sign
on the dotted line – no matter how high the interest rate turns out
to be. The predatory loan company is able to get away with their
loans because few people are as persistent as that young woman. The
college, as well, choose to work with that predatory loan company,
and in doing so to keep this young woman and those in similar
situations IN poverty, while pretending to help them out of it. It
makes me wonder what they might be getting out of it.

Keeping
our eyes open to see
the injustices of the wold and REFUSING to be quiet about them once
we do is wildly subversive. I’m claiming the persistent widow was
subversive because she was a nag, and she didn’t stop nagging until
justice was found. It isn’t the wildest story in the Bible by any
means, but it may represent the most frequently successful mechanism
of accessing justice: refusing to give up!

One
of the challenges of acting like the persistent widow, though, is
that there are a lot of injustices in the world and none of us can
give attentiveness to all of them. That level of nagging can’t be
multi-tasked! This is one of the reasons I am so grateful for the
image of the Body of Christ. I come back to it time and time again,
reminded that if I do my part faithfully, and trust the rest of the
Body to do their part (and God to do God’s part), the whole world
gets better. Most often justice comes through collective action
(think Montgomery Bus Boycott, Women’s Suffrage, blocking the
Keystone XL pipeline), but sometimes they’re smaller or individual as
well. On occasion we can successfully seek justice alone, but no one
of us can seek ALL justice. If any of us try to
all the work of the Body of Christ, nothing gets done
at all!

My
college thesis was on John Conway’s “Game of Life,” which is a
set of rules governing a grid. On the grid, at any given moment,
each cell is “alive” or “dead” and then, from there, things
change. The status “alive” or “dead” is represented visually
by two different colors, and those statuses are able to change with
time, based on the relationships they have with other cells who are
also “alive” or “dead.”

One
night, deep in the trenches of trying to write up my thesis and
struggling with a decision about where to go to seminary, I went down
to the river to pray. I sat on a dock and watched the water flow by.
As might make sense if you’d spent as many hours and months staring
at colored boxes on a graph as I had, I started imagining the river
as the graph – and imagining the graph spreading out to cover all
the water of the world. I’d stared at colored boxes for a LONG time,
and I was tired 😉 Then, as I continued to pray, ponder, and be
overwhelmed, I started imagining one of those boxes as representing
MY life. To my horror, the box that represented my life was
blinking! I took this to mean that sometimes my life was
contributing to the well-being of others, but sometimes it WASN’T! I
found myself sitting on that dock on the Connecticut River, aware
that sometimes I wasn’t benefiting the kin-dom of God and wishing
with all that I was that I could ALWAYS be good.

It
was at that point that another thought entered my mind, one that was
outside of the particular ways my thoughts tend to cycle around.
That process has been one I’ve associated with the Divine, and I have
since thought of that prayer time by the river as a vision of sorts
-but I’m also giving you the details to consider it so that you can
assess how you’d like to think about it. The thought that entered my
mind, seemingly from beyond me, was that if I could manage to be a
blessing that contributed to the well-being of the kindom 51% of the
time, that was ENOUGH for God to be able to expand the goodness out
into the world and to be a net gain to the kin-dom.

It
was certainly a new thought to me then, I’d leaned more towards
perfectionism than toward an idea that offering more good than bad
was a net gain! It is a thought I’ve gone back to in the years
since, particularly when I’ve found myself being extra rough on
myself. It helps me to consider that God is able to make things work
with what we’re able to offer.

If
we do our best, and especially if we are able to offer a bit more
good into the world than harm, then God can use what we offer in
combination with the rest of the Body of Christ. The world becomes a
safer, fuller, more just place. The kin-dom becomes. We don’t have
to do all the work! We can’t! We’d burn out. That means that
sometimes we have to work through the process of figuring out which
things are ours to do and which things we leave for the rest of the
Body of Christ. Together, each of us offering the love, compassion,
and persistence that are our gifts from God, we can follow the
widow’s course and create the world that the Torah dreams and God
wants – the kin-dom of God! And it doesn’t even require perfection
😉 Just persistence. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 2, 2016

Sermons

“Shewdly” based on Luke 16:1-13

September 18, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Most Biblical scholars are utterly perplexed by our Gospel parable of the week, they tie themselves in knots trying to make sense of a story they perceive to be a moral out-lier. The ones who are able to make sense of it do so by making it sound a bit like this little story. The story MIGHT be true, and it goes like this:

Henry Ford made a trip to Ireland to visit the place of his ancestry. While he was there, two trustees from the hospital in the town he was visiting came to him asking for a donation. He agreed to give them five thousand dollars, which at the time was no small gift. In the paper the next morning, Ford saw the headline proclaiming that the generous American philanthropist Henry Ford had given fifty thousand dollars to the local hospital. As you can imagine, Ford was shocked and called the hospital to track down the two trustees he had met with. When they got to his hotel, he confronted the men about the massive mistake printed in the paper. The trustees apologized, and said they would be calling the paper immediately to correct the mistake and print a retraction, letting everyone know that Henry Ford had not given not fifty thousand, but only five thousand. Instead, Ford promised to give them another forty-five thousand. But, he gave them a stipulation: that a marble arch be erected at the hospital entrance with a plaque that read, “I was a stranger and you took me in.”¹

To be fair to most of the scholars, today’s text is complicated: it is a confusing story, it is a convoluted passage, and it has many layers of meaning. The author of the gospel of Luke – who for the sake of ease from this point forward we’ll call Luke- creates some issues for us. According to the Jesus Seminar, Luke merged together a combination of source material: 1) a parable Jesus is highly likely to have stated (vs. 1-8a); 2) a saying that probably comes substantially from Jesus’ lips (vs. 13)–neither of which is repeated in any of the other gospels; and 3) explanatory material provided by the Luke, which includes further statements placed on Jesus’ lips (vs. 8b-12, and 14).

That is, the parable likely ends with “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly”. The Jesus seminar puts the parable in RED, indicating that they think it was likely authentic to Jesus. They put the final saying, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.“ in pink, thinking it likely reflects something Jesus would have said. They distrust it a bit because of the way that Luke is using it. The stuff about trusting people to be honest in small and large matters, and using ill-gotten gains are all LUKE. It is OK to hear things from Luke, I love Luke, but it is important to separate out what Jesus was likely doing with this parable from what Luke was.

In order to understand what Jesus was likely talking about, it would be helpful to understand more about the laws and economic systems in Roman Palestine. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh in Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels help us out with this and win the prize as our favorite commentators of the week! They say, “Rich landowners frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and liquidate debts in the name of the master …”²The manager in the parable was such an estate manager. We’re figuring he wasn’t a slave, since he has to worry about where he’d live after he loses this job. It also seems worth pointing out that the landowner is TOLD that the manager has been mismanaging, but we don’t get any evidence of the truth of the statement, nor is the manager given the chance to defend himself. It could be hearsay, but the manager is vulnerable to the accusation and now has to fend for himself.

Back to Malina and Rohrbaugh, “Traditional Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss incurred by his employer for which he was responsible. He could also be put in prison to extort the funds from his family. If the dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been seen as damaging the reputation of the master. Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply dismissed.”³ That is, the landowner is being unusually generous with the manager. Remember this because we’re going to come back to it. The commentators make it clear that the timing was IMMEDIATE, “In the case of the dismissal of an agent, this dismissal was effective as soon as the agent was informed of it, and from that time forward nothing the agent did was binding on the person who employed him. The plan worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his dismissal got back to the village.”⁴ The manager had to act with the element of surprise as well as with haste.

And act he does! He gives away A LOT of money!! Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest one amount saying, “The size of the debts involved is extraordinary. Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of wheat.”⁵ The Jesus seminar translated this as 500 gallons of oil and a thousand bushels of wheat.⁶ In any event, it was a tremendous amount. Malina and Rohrbaugh continue, “Storytelling hyperbole may be involved or, as recent investigations have suggested, the debts are large enough that they may be the tax debts of an entire village. The amount of debt forgiven, though different in percentage terms, is in both cases approximately 500 denarii.”⁷We know from other parables and stories of Jesus that a denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer, so we’re talking about each of these amounts being 1.5 years worth of a laborer’s wages, or about $28,000 based on today’s minimum wage in New York.

The manager IS shrewd. He doesn’t panic at the idea of being homeless and without resources, whether or not he was guilty of the dishonest management he was accused of. He uses the landowner’s softness against him, and for the common good! Back to our commentators, “Having discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or demanding repayment, the manager depends upon a similar reaction in the scheme he cooks up. It is a scheme that places the landowner in a particular bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks serious alienation in the village, where villagers would have already been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the manager for having made the ‘arrangement’) as a noble and generous man.”⁸Now do you see how it is like the Ford story? The rich man ends up being far more generous than he intends to be, in large part because he couldn’t easily take back claims others made of his generosity.

In vs. 8a, Jesus reflects the landowner praising the manager, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly.” By extension, Jesus was praising the actions of the manager as well–actions that brought debt relief to an entire village. The first listeners would have had an easy time identifying the themes of mercy and debt jubilee in the story, and knowing what Jesus was praising. Still, the praise given to the manager for his shrewd (and likely illegal) actions would have made the parable challenging. Jesus praises someone for tricking someone else out of a large some of money. The common good was met, but standard economic thinking suggests the landowner was cheated. Perhaps it is worth noting the the softness of the landowner, his preference for his employee, made space for his unintentional generosity. It might suggest that God is able to work with whatever softness we do have to create greater good!

Given the social-science context for the story, it sounds a lot like others of Jesus’ parables! In fact, it sounds a lot like the instruction to turn the other cheek (which happens to be the saying of Jesus that the Jesus seminar MOST believes to be authentic.

Luke records that saying this way, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also”. Scholars have taught us that this was a fantastically subversive action. Superiors hit inferiors with a backhand, while a front hand slap was indicative of hitting an equal. Because the left hand was used to wipe in ancient times, only the right hand was used for everything else. To turn the other cheek was not to become a doormat – it was to requires that if another hit happened, it was one that acknowledged you as an equal! It rejected the system of oppression.

It seems that the “parable of the shrewd manager” is another expression of this philosophy of rejecting systems of oppression (here including undue tax burdens and interest) and creatively turning them on their heads!! The shrewd manager found a way to care for himself, take care of his village, and make his former boss look good. Talk about a win/win! However, it took disregarding some rules/laws to make it happen, and the greater good was worth it. That’s what we think Jesus was trying to communicate with this passage. We are still left with the question of what Luke was trying to communicate with this passage–not just with the parable but with the passage as a whole.

According to Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, commentator in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, an important contextual piece to be aware of is that Luke was likely writing to a wealthy Greco-Roman Christian audience. Likely Luke-Acts was written to and for his patron, Theophilus, named at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. In this part of the narrative of Luke-Acts, Jesus was attempting to teach his disciples and followers all that was most important for them to know before his “date with destiny"in Jerusalem.⁹

Vs. 8b-14 speak to Luke’s interpretation of this parable. A key theme in this interpretation is money/wealth and the wise use of it, which is so central to Luke’s understanding of Jesus that it shows up no fewer than 8 times in the Gospel.¹⁰ This was raised by Alan Culpepper who wrote the brilliant commentary on Luke in the New Interpreter’s Bible.¹¹

This was an audacious message for Luke to deliver to his benefactor and his benefactor’s rich friends. To the end of making a fateful choice about whether or not to follow Jesus, Luke pushed them hard on the use of their wealth. Luke challenged them in a way that we don’t often get today. The line about not being able to serve two masters tends to either get ignored by modern day audiences when they have wealth or misinterpreted by others to mean that accumulation of money is inherently sinful. On the contrary, Luke’s audience was challenged into decisive, bold, creative actions–not a theological position on whether money is good or bad.

Unlike perhaps most of us, they were more likely to identify with the landowner and his experience of being manipulated into generosity. Luke pushed them to consider the steward, who in our parable faced not only the loss of his position but of his livelihood! He acted decisively, boldly, and creatively! He acted in a way that would have brought mercy and jubilee to an entire village and love to his master, while costing his master a LOT of money. Luke’s audience faced a situation that required bold, decisive, creative actions: whether or not they would follow the way of Jesus. This choice was encumbered with life-altering implications for how they used their wealth. Hanging onto it meant rejecting Jesus, rejecting God, and rejecting eternal life. Following Jesus meant something more and other than just giving their money away. It meant using wealth as a tool for mercy and jubilee, for bringing about God’s kin-dom on earth. It meant upending an economic system of usery and exploitation. It meant upending the fabric of the existing social contract.

Today, we face the same choice. Today we are relentlessly bombarded with messages about being consumers and needing to shop now and later today and tomorrow and every day so we can consume and needing to work in the highest paying jobs possible so we can support that consumption. Our society and economic system compel us into lives built on the exploitation of the poor, the marginalized and of this planet until they have nothing left to give us. The myths of our society are designed to silence objections: the cries for relief of the poor are said to be class warfare, global climate change is called a “theory”, the well-being of the economy is used as a proxy for the common good, and – of course – we’re told that any real change to our economy or the abuse of our planet would cost jobs, bankrupt businesses, and waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. That is, we’re told in many ways (large and small) that we can’t afford to be a just society because it would upend our society as we know it. This misses the point that not only can’t we afford to continue life as we know it, and upending society is going to have to happen to create an actually just society, but we are called to a higher way of being and a higher way of living in relation to each other.

Are we bold enough to follow Jesus? Are we willing to rock the boats of stability that keep the oppressed down? Are we decisive enough to follow Jesus? Are we willing and able to differentiate between the desires of consumerism and the needs of the kin-dom? Are we creative enough to follow Jesus? Can we see through the claims the economic system makes clearly enough to see how the system steals from the poor to give to the rich?

Finally, are we shrewd enough to follow Jesus? Given the broken systems that oppress, are we shrewd enough to mess them up? Jesus praises the shrewd and rewards bold, decisive, creative action. Let’s go and do! Amen

—

1Story told by Nichole Torbitzky in “September 18, 2016-Proper 20 (Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost)” on the website “Process and Faith”http://processandfaith.org/lectionary-commentary/september-18-2016-proper-20-eighteenth-sunday-after-pentecost/” accessed on 9/17/16.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292.

3^{Malina and Rohrbaugh, 292.}

4Malina and Rohrbaugh, 292.

5Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

6Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), pp. 557-9.

7Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

8Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

9Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, “Luke-Acts, Propaganda for World Mission: The Church’s Internal and External Relations” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Howard Clark Kee, et. al. (Cambridge University Press: USA, 1997) pp. 519-523.

10Jesus denounces the greed of Pharisees in Luke 11:39-41. A rich fool forfeits his soul in 12:13-21. Jesus speaks of a prudent steward in 12:42-48. Jesus tells a parable in which the outcasts are called to a great banquet in 14:15-24. Jesus speaks of the cost of discipleship and giving up all possessions in 14:33. And finally, the parable of the prodigal son in 15:11-32 immediately precedes today’s reading.

11^{R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1995).}

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron and Kevin M. Nelson

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 18, 2016

Sermons

“Utterly Ridiculous Actions” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m
going to start by answering Jesus’ presumptive questions, because I
know the answers. It is really exciting to know the answers to
questions Jesus asks, because they are usually trick questions, but I
have these. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one
of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after
the lost sheep until he finds it?”

NO.
– What are you crazy? Have you met sheep? They are seriously the
dumbest creatures God ever created (ok, fine, they are tied with
deer). If you leave 99 sheep behind while you go look for one that
got lost, when you come back, you’ll have 70, if you are lucky. I
mean, I was a camp counselor, and we went over the “lost camper
plan” and step one as a counselor is that you STAY WITH THE CAMPERS
YOU STILL HAVE. (The support staff looks for the lost camper, you
work on not losing another.)

NO,
you don’t go after that sheep. Not unless you have a really good
team backing you up, and it doesn’t sound like you do.

Next
question? “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses
one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search
carefully until she finds it? When she has found it she calls
together her (female) friends and neighbors …” Um. No one.
Because a silver coin is a days wage for a laborer and it is
basically enough to buy half a loaf of bread, and no one can afford
to throw a party for their neighborhood because they just found a
coin that would cover 1/20^th of that cost. I’ll agree
that she’d search for the coin, it is after all 1/10^th of
her life savings, but NO she wouldn’t throw a party. Are you nuts?

These
two parables feel like Jesus is doing a really bad Childrens’ Time
with all of us, waiting for us to object with the most basic of
reasoning, and then laughing at his presumed stupidity.

The
problem is that I’ve been preaching regularly for 10 years now, and I
know not to trust it when Jesus appears to be an idiot. I’ve learned
that he only plays dumb to get our attention. So, what is really
going on here? It seems that the key to understanding Luke 15 is in
paying attention to the opening paragraph. “Now
all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This
fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’“ (Luke 15:1-2,
NRSV)

Curious.
The New Testament seems to assume that some people are sinners and
others aren’t. Modern Christianity seems to assume that all people
are sinners (although if we look at actions and not just words, there
is an assumption that some people are WORSE sinners than others, but
no one cops to that). What did it mean to call some people sinners
in those days? R. Alan Culpepper, who wrote the commentary on Luke
for the New Interpreter’s Bible says “Those designated as ‘sinners’
by the Pharisees would have included not only persons who broke moral
laws but also those who did not maintain ritual purity practiced by
the Pharisees.”¹
I’m mesmerized by the idea of sin being finite enough that many
people wouldn’t qualify as sinners. It might take some of the guilt
off of life if, at least once in a while, we “weren’t sinners.”

The
so -called sinners are set up in contrast to the Pharisees and
scribes, people who were religious insiders. (To be precise,
Pharisees weren’t religious insiders at the time of Jesus, but they
were when Luke was writing his gospel, so we’re going to live with it
for today.) The religious insiders were concerned about the access
the religious OUTSIDERS were getting.

I
chose to use this text this week because I didn’t understand it at
all, and I took a leap of faith that some commentators would be able
to help me with it. Sometimes life works out exactly as planned, and
I discovered AMAZING work in the commentary series Feasting on the
Word by Charles Cousar (Professor Emeritus of New Testament at
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.) and Penny Nixon
(Senior Minister at Congregational Church of San Mateo, United Church
of Christ). The rest of this sermon is indebted to their genius, and
largely to their words 😉

“Often
this parable unfolds in a way that emphasizes the redemption of the
‘lost,’ but it is the ‘already found’ that the parable is meant to
bring to repentance.”²
Issues arise because in verse one the tax collectors and sinners are
coming near, and the ones who think they have an exclusive right to
be there are getting antsy. Jesus seems to respond that the ones who
are “lost” are already a part of the flock. They are lost out of
the flock, or in the house. They already count.

The
two parables are the same idea, they repeat for the sake of getting a
point across, or maybe because it is fun to have God as both a
shepherd (hated by Luke’s time) and a woman – and make most people
anxious at once. The Pharisees and scribes are said to be mad
because Jesus ate with sinners, which according to Luke he’s done all
of once by this point. They’re annoyed, “especially because the
sinners are ‘hearing’ Jesus. ‘Hearing’ for Luke is a sign of
repentance and conversion. Like the prophet Jonah in the Hebrew
Scriptures, the Pharisees and scribes do not take kindly to
the possible repentance of those who lie outside their definition of
the redeemable.”³

I
fear they’re not the only ones who feel that way. Have you
heard about the Wesleyan Covenant Association? They’re an emerging
group within the United Methodist Church who are trying to take
Luke’s “Pharisees and scribes” as their models for behavior.
Emerging as in their initial meeting is in October in Chicago. Their
stated goals start with “Connect
evangelical, orthodox United Methodists with one another in a common
ministry of the gospel,” and culminate with “To uphold and
promote biblical teaching on marriage and human sexuality.” (You
might be shocked to learn that they don’t actually mean “biblical
teaching on marriage and human sexuality” as I understand it.
They mean excluding the LGBTQ community from the Body of Christ.) The
Wesleyan Covenant Association is designated to be an alternative
structure that can become a new denomination, based on the litmus
test of believing that excluding God’s children from the church is
the best way forward. That is, they
do not take kindly to the welcome of people who lie outside of their
definition of worthy of God’s love, and they are willing to break a
denomination over it and define themselves by it.

⁴

Unfortunately,
the Wesleyan Covenant Association is NOT the only group of people who
immediately come to mind as trying to mold themselves after the
scribes and Pharisees rather than after Jesus. On this 15^th
anniversary of the attacks of September 11^th,
2001, we live in a country where many people are calling for the
exclusion of Muslims, the registration of Muslims, and closed doors
to the refugees of the world. We have a repeat of the ideology that
existed before World War II and kept many Jewish families from
receiving the welcome they needed to stay alive, except this time
with Muslims. Instead of learning the lesson that violence begets
violence and the world needs food, peace, and hope from the attacks
of September 11^th,
we have people calling for greater violence, less humanity, and
thereby the creation of more and more desperate people willing to
join extremist groups. Our sisters and brothers in faith who know
God through the teachings of Mohammad are particularly vulnerable
today, as they grieve with the rest of America.

Getting
back to the deceptively complicated parables, both the sheep and the
coin are passive. As one commentator explains, “A
lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do
so, out of fear. Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild
brush, hiding from predators. It is so fearful in its seclusion that
it cannot help its own rescue. The sheep is immobilized, so the
shepherd must bear its full weight to bring it home.”⁵
Furthermore according to Cousar, “Neither a sheep nor a coin can
repent. The issue of the
two parables, therefore, is not to call sinners to repentance, but to
invite the righteous to join the celebration.”

Let
me say that again. “The issue of the two parables, therefore, is
not to call sinners to repentance, but to invite the righteous to
join the celebration.” He goes on to quote Alan Culpper who said,
“’Whether one will join the celebration is all-important, because
it reveals whether one’s relationships are based on merit or mercy.
Those who find God’s mercy offensive cannot celebrate with the
angels when a sinner repents. They exclude themselves from God’s
grace.’ The Pharisees and the scribes put themselves outside of the
circle of divine grace by the way in which they grumble at Jesus’
fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. There is no joy or
celebration, no partying or delight, among Pharisees and scribes.
Even though invited to the reception given in behalf of the joyous
shepherd/woman, they cannot bring themselves to come; thereby, like
the elder brother (15:25-32), they are exposed.”⁶
Indeed, when Amy Jill Levine was in Schenectady speaking on the
Parable of the Prodigal (which immediately follows these parables),
she said that the point of the parable is the question of if the
older brother will accept grace or reject it after all. It therefore
raises the question about ourselves as well.

*Cough*
Wesleyan Covenant Association *Cough* (Seriously, this is so easy I
feel guilty about it.)

I
have one more gem to share with you from these wise commentators.
Nixon asks about the sheep and the coin, “Is it a search to save or
to welcome? It is one thing to ‘save’ and another to ‘welcome.’
Religious insiders are more comfortable with saving the lost than
welcoming those whom they perceive to be lost. Saving is
about power, whereas welcoming is about intimacy.
Saving is primarily focused on the individual, whereas welcoming is
focused on the community.”⁷
*SNAP*

These
texts present God as the hound-dog of heaven, searching out anyone
who would for any reason believe they are not welcome or not worthy
and proving that person wrong! All we are asked to do is
celebrate with God when goodness transforms the lives of those
who desperately need it! All we have to do is rejoice with God! And
apparently, sometimes, that’s too hard. It is easier to think of
people as needing to be saved (and assimilated into our way of doing
things), and harder to make space to truly welcome all of God’s
children and allow them to impact our lives in deep ways.

But
that’s the call: to be welcoming and open to intimate friendship and
relationship with all God’s children, and to rejoice when the welcome
is received. May God’s grace guide us to be the ones who are able to
rejoice! Amen

1R.
Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New
Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon Press: 1995), 9: 295.

2G.
Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

3Charles
B. Cousar, “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in Feasting
on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

4 http://www.wesleyancovenant.org/purposebeliefs
accessed on 9/10/16. The access date is especially important as the
wording has already been known to change without notice 😉

5Helen
Montgomery Debevoise “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 70

6Cousar
(quoting Alan Culpepper in “Luke” in the New Interpreter’s
Bible, 1995).

7Nixon,
71.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 11, 2016

Sermons

“Scary Stuff” based on Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Luke 14:25-33

September 4, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Our texts today are SCARY. Or at least they are to me. There is ONE well-known hymn that reflects the Jeremiah reading today. Also, as far as I am aware, there really is only one hymn that works with our Jeremiah reading today. Sorta like the issue around “We Three Kings” – you know, that the so-called “wise men” weren’t kings and there is no particular reason to think there were three of them – the hymn “Have Thine Own Way Lord” seems to have taken over how people think about this text without accurately reflecting it. It guides their thinking more than the actual text does.

For example, the people who make suggestions of hymns to match the lectionary often do an excellent job. This week they offered variations on a theme: letting God have control over our individual lives. That’s a big problem because they text is COMMUNAL. It is about how a group of people (in this case a nation) are living out their covenant with God. The premise is not that one person’s actions are molded by God, although that is what that darn hymn says. For those blissfully unaware, “Have Thine Own Way” verse one says:

1. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will,
while I am waiting, yielded and still.

The hymn is about PERSONAL holiness, and yielding one’s power to God. For the time being I’m going to lay aside the questions about if that’s valid at all, to focus on what the text actually says. Jeremiah, it might be useful to remember, was the prophet of the exile. He experienced his call when he was a boy, and many scholars believe that the same prophet spoke warnings of the exile, spoke during the exile, and he spoke of the possibility of restoration. In the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, in the story of his call, it is said, “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,
‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’” (Jeremiah 1:9-10, NRSV) Jeremiah wasn’t born in an era when it would have worked to be soft and fluffy. It wasn’t the work that was needed at that time. He did manage to speak some of the most profound words of hope in the Bible, but mostly he spoke of death and destruction.

The text today is a challenging one. I don’t think it is challenging to UNDERSTAND, but it raises big scary questions. The prophet goes to a potter’s house and watched a potter for a while. Then he has an insight drawn from the metaphor of making pottery. The metaphor suggests that God is the potter and the people are the clay. It suggests that if God is displeased with the nation, God can knock down the clay and start over again. It further suggests that God is judging the people on communal faithfulness to their covenant.

The text actually says, “At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,” (18:7) and then it makes it quite clear that God can and will change God’s mind on the basis of the people’s behavior. What does it mean to assume that God steps into human affairs and takes down nations as God sees fit? If the implications of that aren’t scary enough on its own, it makes God a monster when we look at what has happened in recent human affairs. If God can and will step in to stop evil, then why didn’t God stop Germany before the concentration camps, or Russia before Stalin took over, or any society before they moved to genocide???

This perspective, this image of God as potter shaping the fate of nations, fit well in the time of the prophet Jeremiah. It fit his worldview and the worldview of those to whom he was speaking. It made sense of the political environment around them. It doesn’t fit for us anymore. We don’t see that God sweeping in to intervene at random moments fits the arc of history NOR our belief in God who is good. Rather, it appears that God works through individuals and communities who are open to the guidance of the Holy One, and through them seeks to bless the world. Free will exists. We get the leaders we empower.

There is still plenty of goodness in this text though! First of all, there is the direct claim about God being willing and able to change God’s mind in response to human activity. That seems like good news because it reminds us that we are truly important to God and that our RELATIONSHIPS with God and each other have real impact on God’s well-being.

Secondly, there is the reminder that comes from applying the pottery metaphor to communities who ARE seeking God’s guidance. Like ancient Israel, many faith communities today seek out the wisdom of the Holy One, and are open to some molding along the way – which likely makes it possible for God to do some molding along the way. Potters rework clay and are able to use the same clay to make a variety of different shapes before anything is fired. It doesn’t actually hurt the clay to be reworked, and the moisture level may need some fine tuning along the way to build a solid pot. The suggestion that we are still plastic, and that God is willing to work with us can be rather positive. In this era of exceptional cultural change, and profoundly different responses to institutionalized religion, this may be REALLY good news for us. Perhaps God is getting ready to knock down the UMC and build it back up as a source of greater justice and love in the world! (May it be so!) The plasticity of the clay allows for the reworking to happen without brokenness or pain – although it does require a certain openness to the guidance of the Spirit. We’re still working on that ;), especially as a denomination.

OK, so, fine, maybe Jeremiah isn’t such scary stuff, but certainly Luke is! This whole cost of discipleship thing is tough. Did you hear the opening threat? “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) HATE? What????? To keep us on our toes, the Jesus seminar thinks that only this verse is authentic to Jesus, and several scholars point out that this is consistent with the rest of Luke’s message. Apparently, we are to assume that Jesus said it and Luke thought it was thematic.

Family Life Radio – I think maybe you should be particularly scared 😉

It is probably of use to remember that the basic unit of societal structure in the ancient world was family. Power derived from it. The head of household – the patriarch – had unilateral control over the other members of his household (the women, children, descendants, servants, and slaves), and only the patriarch would participate in public life with voice. To upset the family unit was to upset the entire society in which Jesus lived. I actually don’t think that we have a comparable understanding of this in our current family life. The nuclear family, known in our society to be fairly unstable, is not like families were in the time of Jesus.

Jesus was a revolutionary, at least as the writer of the Gospel of Luke understood him. He was interested in upsetting ALL the apple carts, and in order to do so, he started with the most basic. If you disregard the power and authority of the patriarch and the family unit in the time of Jesus, what are you left with? Anarchy and chaos.

Jesus really believed that the kin-dom of God was more important than societal order, and that in order to create a world where all people were cared for and able to thrive required utter devotion to such work. That is, one can’t have two masters: not God and money, not the kin-dom and the society, not Jesus and the family unit. The Jesus seminar does not believe that the rest of the words in the passage are attributed to Jesus, they sound too mundane. It is only the radical, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” that they take to be authentic. They attribute the final line of our text, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” to Luke. Other scholars point out that “possessions” isn’t a strong enough translation. It should be something more like “all that you have.”

So, is it possible to follow Jesus while also having loyalty to something else? Can we have bank accounts and be good Jesus followers? Can we value our family and be good Jesus followers? Can we have…. say…. an extensive collection of books and be good Jesus followers? Is there a way to follow Jesus without giving up EVERYTHING – all possessions, all finances, all relationships, and everything that matters to us? It may be Luke who raises the question, but it seems pretty valid to this Jesus-following-stuff.

I’ve been pondering this particular scary question for many years now. Reading the Bible, and in particular reading the Gospels, tends to bring it up. The Gospels are pretty clear that those of us who have two coats should be getting rid of one of them to someone who has none. The Gospels are RADICAL in their calls for us to care for each other and to build a world where all people have enough and can thrive – and they ask us to do it both individually and collectively. They stand against inequality and income differentiation. In some interpretations, ones I tend to believe, they stand against economics and markets themselves, staking a claim that money itself dehumanizes and the only way to live out the beloved community of God is to refute the most basic premises of economics.

I do think that the utter anarchy and chaos that would result from people following Jesus’ words, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,“ in the 1^st century can be matched by the anarchy and chaos that would emerge in the 21^st century if we refuted the principles of the market! Not just if we refused to charge interest, or to be charged interest, not just if we stopped “investing” in stocks and bonds, or if we functioned primarily through trade and barter and ignored money itself, but moreso if we REFUSED to accept the principle that the well-being of the economy was the basic good of our society. That could mess up EVERYTHING our society is based on.

And that’s what Jesus seems to be getting to in this speech. So, can we be disciples of we have possessions, family, and alternative priorities? I’ll give you the answer that lets me sleep at night. James Fowler, who was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, wrote a seminal book entitled “Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.” (It is one of my all time favorite books.) In it he outlines faith development in stages. He claims that the highest stage of faith development happens when a person stops experiencing a difference between their well-being and the well-being of the whole – and is therefore willing to give away ANYTHING (including their life) for the sake of the well-being of the whole.

That sounds like what Jesus is asking for, right? Fowler’s ultimate step in faith development – utter selflessness. Our goal as people of faith is to get get there, but it is a journey and we can’t get to the end unless we travel the path. (People do travel at different rates, and not all get to the end goal, and that’s OK.) Our contributions toward communal well-being are meant to fit where our faith is today, and our faith development is meant to lead us forward. We don’t have to pretend to be anywhere we aren’t. Our faith is made up of some scary stuff, but God walks with us on the way, and asks of us what we are able to give WHEN we are able to give it. May we be brave, throughout our faith development. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 4, 2016

Sermons

“Excuses That Don’t Work”based on Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 13:10-17

August 21, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Our mother read to us a lot as children, and all of us particularly liked Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series, so she read it to us several times. In those books the experience of the Sabbath sound TERRIBLE. I remember being really grateful that Christianity had given up on Sabbath by my time! 😉

For those of you who haven’t read the Little House books, or had them read to you, they describe Sunday as a day of quiet rest. They would sit on hard chair all day, unable to get up and play, or to talk to each other. Now, I’m going from my memory and not quoting the books directly, but what I remember is that they could only read religious books – the really long ones that were well over their heads – perhaps do needlepoint, but Laura hated needlepoint. It was hard, HARSH, boring, and basically terrible.

I saw why it went out of style.

I fear that when people hear “Sabbath,” that they think of it like that. They think of something boring, restraining, and harsh. That is, I fear many people miss the point of Sabbath entirely! The idea of one day off from work a week is profound, and was totally unique when it emerged. Walter Brueggemann, one of my favorite Biblical scholars and theologians, wrote a short and powerful book entitled, “Sabbath as Resistance: Saying NO to the CULTURE OF NOW”. Brueggemann believes that Sabbath is one of the defining characteristics of YHWH faith, and that it is utterly imperative to a full life.

His work has framed my thinking on Sabbath. For starters, it was in reading Brueggemann commentaries that I realized that Sabbath exists for the people to be fully human! It is a time set aside for relationship and reflection – time for families to be together, time for friends to visit, time for intimacy to flourish, time for human beings to have enough time to consider what truly matters and DO IT. Working 7 days a week doesn’t give people enough time to be fully human, but the world of economics wants productively and consumption ALL THE TIME. The first commandments for Sabbath come to a people recently freed from slavery. They knew what it was to work all the time, and YHWH instructed them NOT to continue.

In the US at least, there is an underlying myth that suggests that the well-being of the economy is the ultimate good. Sabbath resists that narrative, and claims that our identities are in being human and being beloved children of God – NOT in our capacity to produce or consume. I want to give you a better idea about what Sabbath really is by giving you access to some of Brueggemann’s work. He thinks Sabbath is central to everything. In fact, in his book he supports the claims that “the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the ‘crucial bridge’ that connects the Ten Commandments together.”¹ That is,

“The fourth commandment looks back to the first three commandments and the God who rests (Exod. 20:3-7). At the same time, the Sabbath commandment looks forward to the last six commandments that concern the neighbor (vv. 12-17; they provide for rest along side the neighbor. God, self, and all members of the household share in common rest on the seventh day; that social reality provides a commonality and a coherence not only to the community of covenant but to the commandments of Sinai as well.”²

In addition to seeing the Sabbath commandment as the central one, Brueggemann asserts that Sabbath teaches us about the essential qualities of God. Namely, that our God is not interesting in systems of oppression that dehumanize people. God rests, and that matters. He says, “the Sabbath commandment is drawn into the exodus narrative, for the God who rests is the God who emancipates from slavery and consequently from the work system of Egypt and the gods of Egypt who require and legitimate that system.”³

The idea of STOPPING WORK once a week was radical. It still is. When I have brought the idea up to youth in our society they have looked at me like I have two heads. It seems impossible to them. I’m with Brueggemann though. I think it is imperative if we are to be full humans. He says, “the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is an act of trust in the subversive, exodus-causing God of the first commandment, and act of submission to the restful God of commandments one, two, and three. Sabbath is a practical divestment so neighborly engagement, rather than production and consumption, defines our lives.”⁴ Remember, Sabbath was designed to be time for relationships!

It has always been hard. Brueggemann again, “Such faithful practice of work stoppage is an act of resistance. It declares in bodily ways that we will not participate in the anxiety system that pervades our social environment. We will not be defined by busyness and by the pursuit of more, in either our economics or our personal relations or anywhere else in our lives. Because our life does not consist in commodity.”⁵ I love how he contrasts the systems of the world as anxious and anxiety producing with the fullness of humanity gained from life with a God who rests! It is an important reminder that anxiety need not be the only way!! (Which is getting hard to remember for many people in our society.)

Brueggemann says, “Sabbath is the cessation of widely shared practices of acquisitiveness. It provides time, space, energy, and imagination for coming to the ultimate recognition that more commodities, which may be acquired in the rough and ready of daily economics, finally do not satisfy. Sabbath is variously restraint, withdrawal, or divestment from concrete practices of society that specialize in anxiety. Sabbath is an antidote to anxiety that both derives from our craving and in turn feeds those cravings for more.”⁶ Taking time off from the merry-go-round of consumption and production is the only way to figure out what really matters. Unfortunately today, with the minimum wage where it is, many workers simply cannot afford to take a day off! This is yet another reason why we need to fight for a living wage. People who work ALL THE TIME can’t live entirely full lives, and the ways that our society prevents full humanity are unacceptable.

In the final page of his book, Brueggemann offers this little reflection, “It occurs to me that Sabbath is a school for our desires, an expose and critique of the false desires that focus on idolatry and greed that have immense power for us. When we do not pause for Sabbath, these false desires take power over us. But Sabbath is the chance for self-embrace of our true identity.”⁷ He really believes that time OFF, that Sabbath itself, provides space for us to become more compassionate to ourselves and to others, that is, to become more fully human.

Now I offered ALL of this because I’m concerned that it is entirely too easy to face our gospel lesson with a blasé treatment of the Sabbath, and worst yet to use the gospel as another excuse to dismiss the Sabbath entirely. That wouldn’t be OK. So, now, a few notes on the particularities of our Gospel lesson. This is VERY Lukan passage. It is a story that only shows up in Luke. It is a story involving a woman. The setting is in the synagogue, and that should be our first clue that Jesus is about to cause trouble because Luke has Jesus start something every time he goes into a synagogue.

The woman enters, on her own. She comes to worship God on the Sabbath, even though she would have been separated from community because of her physical illness. She does NOT ask Jesus for help. He sees her and has compassion for her and seeks her out. He speaks to her, of forgiveness, and then he touches her. The touch would have made him unclean, and as per usual, he doesn’t care! His compassion for her is greater than his desire to avoid the uncleanness. Her response is praise God when she is healed. Then the story moves away from her. The leader of the synagogue gets mad at Jesus for breaking the Sabbath with the healing. If Jesus had been healing AND EXPECTING PAYMENT FOR IT, I think the leader of the synagogue would have had a valid point. He didn’t though. He gave it as a free gift.

Jesus makes a great point about freedom and the Sabbath, using a verb that means “loose.” He points out that in caring for animals on the Sabbath, they are loosed so that they can access water. Should not the woman also be loosed from her bondage to this physical illness – that kept her from community? That is, shouldn’t she be freed to celebrate Sabbath in its truest sense again by being a full member of community and participating with others in relationship??

Jesus praises her by calling her a “Daughter of Abraham” thereby acknowledging her humanity, her faith, her faithfulness, and her status as a beloved child of God. The crowd celebrates, which means they think he did right to heal on the Sabbath too!

So what’s the issue? As one commentator put it, “In their understandable concern for religious identity, marked by Sabbath-keeping, the religious leaders lost sight of compassion.”⁸ Ohh! In any organization, the leaders are responsible for maintaining the well-being of the institution. It is ‘their job.” Keeping the Sabbath was the central piece of religious identity for most people in those days, particularly in the time of Luke with the Temple had just been destroyed for the second time. The leader of the synagogue wanted to keep the people connected to God! The leader forgot that Sabbath exists to help people become human, to build up relationships – that is, to make space for compassion to grow. The leader missed that the point of the Sabbath was that people might make choices like the one Jesus made – to see another person fully, and be willing to do what you can do to make their life more wonderful. The leader got stuck in the rules, and forgot why they existed.

This happens in the church today as well. Institutional leaders get stuck on the rules, and forget that the purpose of any rule in the faith tradition is to build the kin-dom of God and expand God’s love in the world.

Sabbath is a gift from God for the people. It builds the kin-dom by making space for people to be fully human. It expands God’s love by giving people time to connect. Sabbath is a way to be alive, to be human, to reflect, to connect, to become more compassionate and whole. May today be such a day for us all! And may a day like this come every week – and may it eventually come for all God’s people every week! Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistence: Saying NO to the CULTURE OF NOW, (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2014) page 1.

2Brueggemann, 1.

3Brueggemann, 2.

4Brueggemann, 18.

5Brueggemann, 32.

6Brueggemann, 85.

7Brueggemann, 88.

8Tokunboh Adeyemo, General Editor, Africa Bible Commentary, Paul John Issak, “Luke” (Zondervan: Nairobie, Kenya, 2006) page 1231.

–

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 21, 2016