“Rejoice” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Philippians 4:4-9

November 20, 2022
by Sara Baron

I think gratitude is one of the
most important parts of our spiritual lives. I’ve experienced this,
AND I’ve seen the research, and I love it when both are true.

The challenge is, I’m not sure
what I have to say about gratitude that is new, and I’m rather afraid
of being trite. This tends to be my problem when I encounter
scriptures I rather agree with, rather than ones I can have a good
debate with. But, I’ve found time and time again that a conversation
with scriptures can take me to unexpected places, so let’s see where
they lead today.

We can start with Philippians.
With that lovely repetition to “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I
will say, Rejoice.” (4:4) I am always moved by the people I meet
who are living out this commandment. The ones attending to the good
God is doing, and speaking it with joy. The ones focused on joy, and
rejoicing, and celebrating God’s goodness.

I also love the next line,
inviting people to “let your gentleness be known.” That sounds
like the highest of callings, to be known by gentleness. I have
known some people to whom that description would apply, and it is a
gift simply to be in their presence. Their very self-hood changes
the world around them for the better.

But then we get to “don’t
worry, trust God.” And while it is very good advice, it is very
difficult to apply. Especially because the world isn’t fair. But
then again, those who I’ve known who live this are often the ones
with the least amount of worldly goods, who say they trust God
because God has provided. So, maybe I don’t actually know that much
about this, and I simply have a lot to learn.

Then, focus on the good. This
is the one that meets me where I am right now. This is the one
that calls for my attention, my reflection, my sharing. So, here we
are and here we are going to stay. In Paul’s words, “Finally,
beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if
there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.” (4:8)

Maybe it is because of the work
I do, but it often occurs to me that the resource I spend the most
time managing is my attention. This isn’t just about if I give my
attention to the good stuff or the hard stuff.

The daily questions start with:
Do I respond first to this email, or that one? To email or phone
calls? To texts or facebook messenger? Do I end this conversation
because I have a meeting, or do I make space for this because it is
more important? When do I know I’ve found the right poem, or hymn,
or sermon example and it is time to move on, or maybe it isn’t good
enough yet and I could keep searching. Which book should I read
next? Do I have time to read? Should I go visiting? Which
committee asked me which thing to follow up on? Which one of those
things needs the most immediate response? Which one of those things
will take the most preparation? Is reading the news important so I
know what is going on, or is it a distraction to what is REALLY going
on with God and God’s people? Do all of the staff have what they
need from me to do their jobs well? Is it OK to just sit and be with
God before I try to balance any of these things?

(If you found that list
overwhelming, please note that it applies ONLY to my work life, and
doesn’t even touch on other parts of my life. Also, if you found
that overwhelming, I’d appreciate knowing how you make such
decisions, cause it sounds like you may have wisdom I need.)

That last question about
sitting with God and just being before I try any of the things,
that’s the key one for me. I’ve known since my early twenties
that I’m at my best when I get quiet time with God, but I’ve
struggled to allow myself to have the thing I need when other things
also clamor for my time and attention. Someone recently asked me,
“if I already know what I need in order to be the best pastor and
person I can be, why am I not doing it?” And in the question, I
was thus reminded that connecting with God, and being centered, is
the thing that makes all the rest of what I do valuable, and it is in
EVERYONE’S best interest for me to nurture my connection with the
Holy and to have space to hear my own wisdom (even when the wisdom is
hidden under my fears.)

So, I’ve been doing it. Not
perfectly, but waaaayyyy more. Sometimes I still feel guilty.
Because I could be using my time and attention for so many other
things! But, I’m pushing through the guilt.

And the results have been
interesting. Mostly because my capacity to see the beauty of the
world, the wonder of people, and the mysterious goodness at hand has
changed. Being quiet in the morning (most mornings), softens me. It
slows me down. And it makes things easier. I’m get hurt less
easily. I have empathy closer at hand. I can see details and the
big picture, at the same time, with more ease. I’m just less
overwhelmed.

But the best part is being able
to see wonder again. I’m awed by text messages from people, because
they so often contain wisdom and I’m able to be thankful. The other
day – please don’t judge – I saw a dust particle floating in a
stream of sunshine and it was beautiful, and I had ENTIRELY forgotten
that dust can be awe inspiring and beautiful. I’m a little more
flexible (don’t expect immediate miracles people), which makes
everything flow easier in … well, parenting, and being a partner,
and in being a pastor.

For me, the key to being able to
bring my attention to “whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is
commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything
worthy of praise” isn’t in just trying harder to focus on
the good things. For me, at least, the way to bring my attention to
the good is to attend to what I need to be whole, and then the rest
flows.

Now, some of you are great at
letting yourselves have the things you need. I commend you, and
apologize for this mostly useless sermon as far as you are concerned.
However, for a wide range of reasons (including “capitalism”) a
whole lot of us aren’t great at letting ourselves have what we need.
Sometimes there are external factors that make it hard (or
impossible.) But often, there are internal ones. I can tell you
that I believe God wants you to have your needs met. I can tell you
that if you stop fighting what you need as too much, or too selfish,
or unreasonable, or … whatever you tell yourself… that other
goodness flows from letting yourself get what you need.

Now, I continue to believe I’m
likely not alone in needing quiet time with God, but I also think
that my need is a little different than other people’s. This week I
was given the gift of a GREAT descriptor of this church as a group of
people who love kinetic prayer. That is, many of us around here NEED
to give back. Some people NEED to hear gorgeous music and just feel
the wonder of it in their bodies. Some people NEED to move in nature
or their souls start to shrivel up. Some people NEED connections
with others, regularly. (I think we all do, but more so for
extroverts.) Some people NEED to create. I can’t tell you what you
need, but I suspect you already know.

The key is to let God help you
whittle away at the internal barriers to allowing yourself to
prioritize what you need.

So, a quick hot take on
Deuteronomy. This is the story of God giving the people what they
need. Land to work, food to eat, homes to settle into. And the
people give back to God of what they have. That is, they RECIEVE the
gifts of God, and they give back from what they have RECIEVED.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s
just me, and if so I’m sorry for wasting your time but I’m really
happy for you. That is, maybe I’m the only one still struggling to
receive God’s good gifts, and let myself have what I need. If not
though. If you still struggle too, may this be a moment of
assurance. We have to receive what God gives us before we do
anything else with it. It is hard, TRUST ME I KNOW, but God wants
goodness for you.

Please don’t stand in God’s way.

And when you let God’s good
gifts fill you up, the gratitude comes on its own. And it is
amazing. May you see it too. Amen

November 20, 2022

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

Sermons

“Opening Our Hearts to Gratitude”

January 23, 2019
by Sara Baron

Based on 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Our theme this Advent is “openness.” We are exploring it in worship, and it is the theme of our Advent Devotions – now available in the Narthex!! Today we’re starting with “Opening Our Hearts to Gratitude.” This may feel redundant to start with gratitude right after November and Thanksgiving, but I think there may always be more to say about gratitude. Or, at the very least, there is always more to be grateful for.

While I adore the season of Advent, I often struggle with the Advent texts the lectionary provides. The texts as a whole are cold, dark, scary, and apocalyptic. In them, one can hear Christian thinking about the SECOND coming of Christ because in the texts, one is reminded that officially Advent is at once a season of waiting for the coming Christ Child at Christmas and a season of waiting for the second coming of Christ.

The issue for me is that I have yet to be convinced about this whole “second coming” thing. It doesn’t fit how I understand Jesus, his message, his work, or the continued work of God with the Body of Christ. I’m perfectly fine with any or all of you being deeply committed to the second coming, because as always, I could be wrong!

Yet, my understanding of the second coming is this: the early Christians claimed Jesus as the Messiah. The faithful Jews who did not become Jesus followers responded by pointing out that Jesus did not do the things that they’d expected a Messiah to do, in particular to establish a kingdom on earth with political, military, and economic might. The Christians had trouble refuting this argument (because it was true), but they worked on it together and decided that Jesus was going to come back and do those things. This idea has taken a stronghold in the Christian tradition.

It doesn’t fit with the way Jesus lived, which had NOTHING to do with wanting to establish a powerful kingship. Nor does it have to do with how Jesus acted, which was all about empowering people without power to work together for the common good. It also misses the resurrection narrative itself, in which the followers of Christ are enabled and empowered to continue his work to transform the world.

I don’t think Jesus is coming back, at least not as a single, human, physical figure to establish a kingdom on earth. RATHER, I believe the shared work of the Body of Christ is to be the continuation of the work of Jesus to build the kindom of God. I believe that we are the continual way that Jesus is “back” although I more commonly think of it as the way that Christ continues to live.

So, I tend to get frustrated with the Advent texts. However, I still think my take could be wrong, and I don’t think I have more wisdom or knowledge than thousand of years of shared tradition, so I try every year to find my peace with the Advent texts. This year I’ve made my peace by picking two Pauline epistle texts (this week AND next week) and attending to them. These are lectionary texts, but not the apocalyptic ones. It is a balance. I think it is going to work out, they’re really excellent.

I wish we started Advent with Creation – as a way of remembering the start of our faith story with the start of the new year. So, I want to try it. My favorite “story” of creation in the Bible is Psalm 104. Read it here: Psalm 104, NRSV.

As it turns out, creation is a great starting point for gratitude. For many of us, being in the wonder of Creation is the easiest way for us to connect with the Divine, and I think that is in part because we are so overwhelmed with gratitude for the wonder and mystery of it all. The Psalm meditations on how each creature is cared for within creation, by God’s good gifts. The gifts for humans are like a communion set PLUS –“wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.” The Psalmist is not only practiced at noticing the wonders of creation, the Psalmist is also masterful at naming them with gratitude.

Another of the major access points to gratitude meets us in the opening verse of our reading from 1 Thessalonians. Paul asks, “How can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel before God on your account?” I have been meditating on this verse all week, thinking of individual people I know and love; considering how incredibly grateful I am for their lives, their wisdom, their actions, their prayers, their BEING; and then trying to consider what it would take to adequately put together words to express my wonder.

How can we thank God enough for you? It actually feels impossible – even if I just pick one person, and even the one I pick isn’t someone I see all the time or know exceptionally well. How could I adequately thank God for the support of my high school chemistry teacher, or my junior high Sunday School teachers, for a college friend I’ve lost touch with but once had thought provoking conversations with? I’m SO grateful. But the words don’t feel like enough. And then there are ones I know better, and the ones I see more: how I could I ever thank God enough for my beloved partner, for my parents, for my dear friends, for the leaders, and members and participants of this church, for the staff I work with who make so many things possible?

The possibilities of things to be grateful for is (or approaches) infinite. I see where Paul gets his exuberance. There is so much joy to be found on account of God’s beloved people. There is so much to be grateful for. If you are needing the gift of opennness in your life, if you are willing to play with letting gratitude soak into your heart, I encourage meditating on this exuberant verse. “How can we thank God enough or you, for all the joy we feel before God on your account?” There is plenty to be found in that one little verse.

Paul’s exuberant gratitude for the people was writing to is, of course, not the final point. He also offers blessings to them, and one of them is particularly striking, “May Christ increase to overflowing your love for one another and for all people, even as our love does for you.” Scholars believe that this is the first letter of Paul, making this the first book written in the New Testament. Thus it reflects the earliest recording we have of the faith of the early Christians. I was stuck by this passage because it is more outward looking that much of the New Testament is. I suspect that as Christianity developed, and did so in a world that was hostile to it, it became more concerns with internal survival. Here though, early on, there is a balance between the relationships of the people of faith and those beyond the faith.

Love is presented as expansive. God’s love flows to all people, God’s love flows to and through Paul, God’s love flows to and through the early church in Thessalonia – as does Paul’s love, and Paul prays that it will increase to overflowing with them – allowing the love to be shared within the church and beyond to ALL people.

The joy isn’t the final point – love spreading to all people is the final point. But that end point goes through abundant gratitude. Love itself is a reason to be grateful. So is the expansiveness of love, the healing nature of love, the fact that God’s nature is one of love, the reality that we can share love, the reality for any of us that we have ever felt love, that it comes in so many forms.

How can we ever thank God enough?

Now, having focused on the wonders of creation and the incredible power of love, I want to take a step back. Gratitude is very important, it feeds our hearts, changes our perspectives, and allows a deepening of our spiritual lives.

That said, not everything is wonderful, or even good. There is deep pain the world including grief in its many forms, depression and anxiety, illness and injury, abuse and neglect. There are things we are not grateful for, and there are time when we are not filled with gratitude.

What then?

I think honesty and integrity are in order. When we are not grateful, it is worth paying attention to what emotions we are feeling. Whether it be anger, sadness, despair, frustration, exhaustion, confusion, or something else entirely, our emotions deserve some space to BE in the world without judgment. They’re even worth exploring. WHY are we angry, or sad? What ELSE do we feel? How strong are those feelings? Have they had a chance they need to be expressed?

THEN, and only then, it is worth considering IF there is space for gratitude too. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t, there is no right answer. If so, there may be a silver lining that can be a source of gratitude. Perhaps you can’t be grateful for a terrible experience you had – but you can be grateful that it is over. Perhaps you are homeless and can’t be grateful for homelessness – but you can be grateful for those who see your humanity and support you. Perhaps you can’t be grateful for the death of a loved one – but you can be grateful for the time you had with them.

You don’t have to force gratitude on yourself if this isn’t the right time for you. It will come again when it is ready.

However, if you in a place and time in your life when it is possible to feel gratitude, I encourage you to take the time to notice the multitude of possibilities for gratitude around you – from creation to people and beyond – and to express it as well as you can. I suspect it will open your heart – to God, to others, and to even more gratitude as well. Amen

Preached by Rev. Sara E. Baron on December 2, 2018

Sermons

“Lillies of the Field” based on Joel 2:21-27 and Matthew…

November 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A few years ago, at a retreat entitled “Courage to Lead,” we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” We learned it in a very physical way. We were put in groups of threes, one person was to stand tall, and the other two knelt on the ground, holding onto the standing person’s hands. We tried it three ways. The first way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person fought it as hard as they could. The second way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person let them. The third way, however, was neither fighting nor giving in. In the third way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down and the person standing allowed the pulling – without fighting it nor giving in to. In that case, it felt like those pulling on my arms were helping me stretch. While I’d fallen both of the first two times, the third time it was pretty easy to stay on my feet. It felt like mountain pose in yoga – strong and steady.

The exercise, were told afterward, was really meant to be a metaphor about our choices in how we respond to others. We can look and listen with judgement and fight other as they tell their stories; we can receive other people’s stories without reflection or connection; OR we can allow another person’s story to be their truth and something that reflects truths in us. We can learn from and grow with another person, simply by listening to them, in the same way that other people pulling on me could feel like a stretch instead of like an attack. Soft eyes see, but see without to judging.

If I were to take a guess at what meaning is really at the core of the Gospel Lesson today, it would be the message of soft eyes. But to explain WHY, we need to start with Joel. That passage contains words of comfort and hope, of ease and restoration. But, if you listened carefully there is only one theme: a promise of enough food. The soil will rejoice, the animals will be able to eat green grass, the trees will bear fruit, the vines will yield grapes, the rain will come and let the crops grow – and it will come at the right times. The central promise is, verbatim, “”The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” Or, in other words, “there will be enough food.” While there is plenty of metaphorical value in these words, I suspect their first meaning is quite literal.

Food, and food in abundance, in the ancient world, meant life. For the people trying to live after the exile, when what they had known was destroyed, the idea of a return to good life almost meant a vision of the land being able to be productive again. It meant a restoration of a stable, sustainable life. In some ways I find this passage shocking, when I realize that the whole dream of comfort and goodness is simply “you’ll be able to eat!” In fact, it says that the capacity to eat, and eat enough, is the reason that the people will trust in and praise God. “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”

The idea here is that if you have food, God is with you, and if you don’t have food God isn’t. I don’t agree with this premise, but I CERTAINLY see how people could come to that conclusion. And, it helps us understand the oddities of our Gospel passage.

We need to look at the Gospel Lesson on its own first. I’m struck by the difference presented within the Gospel lesson between the natural world and human society. The examples of creatures whose well-being is cared for by God are from the natural world: birds, lilies, grasses. They’re complimented, they’re functional, they’re cared for. The birds don’t have to hoard food because they keep on finding enough. There is a subtle contrast with human societies that have the capacity grow and store food. There should be an abundance of food, yet the people are hungry.

The second natural example, it also ends up being a bit of a critique of human society. The lilies of the field don’t work for their lives, they don’t make cloth, “they neither toil nor spin.” Yet the epitome of wealth and wisdom in Jewish history – Solomon himself, wasn’t able to use all the wealth and all the knowledge he had to make himself as beautiful as those flowers who don’t work at it all, nor seek to acquire wealth. The lily is a regular symbol of beauty in the Bible. In Song of Songs the beloved is compared to a lily among brambles. When the Bible tells us of Solomon building the temple, (1 Kings 7), lilies were used to decorate the space. Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like a lily, and he seemed to know it! He valued their beauty!

The final natural example in Matthew is that of the “grasses of the field.” I can hear in them the refrain from Ecclesiastes, that “all is vanity and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes has a lot to say about work, toil, food, and drink, including a fairly well known passage , “What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. [God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” (3:9-13) It to me seems like Jesus may be continuing that conversation here!

What does it mean when workers toil, and yet do not have enough to eat and drink, to be clothed, or to take pleasure in life? What does it mean when people are stuck in the needs of the present and therefore can’t give any attention to the future? And what does it mean, in the midst of those challenges, to hear Jesus say, “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink , or about your body, what you will wear?”

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in “The Social-Science Comment on the Synoptic Gospels” point out that “For members of any culture (such as the United States), to have a future orientation requires that all one’s present needs be consistently taken care of. Such was never the experience of the preindustrial peasant.”¹ The people Jesus was in ministry with were people who usually did NOT have enough – they were people whose circumstances were dire. Most people did not have enough to eat, many people died earlier than they would have otherwise because of malnutrition.

It is a really weird thing to say “don’t worry about food” to people for whom staying alive means figuring out how to acquire enough bread “not to worry about food.” It seems like the equivalent of saying to a person who is homeless “not to worry about money.” But, I don’t think that Jesus is callous or unfeeling. So, while he is SAYING that, I don’t think it is likely to be his final point.

Thus, I wonder, WHY is Jesus telling people not to worry? Is the purpose of “don’t worry” really that you can’t change it anyway, so it isn’t worth the effort to worry? Or, is the purpose of “don’t worry” that anxiety is simply counter-productive? And/or is the purpose of “don’t worry” that moving out of the status quo and into creative solutions requires the letting go of fear and anxiety? Is Jesus telling people not to worry because worry keeps them from getting what they need???

I think so. ( I might hope so.) I think Jesus wanted the people to have enough to eat, but he thought the best way to make that happen was for them to work collaboratively, and being collaborative requires some letting go. Jesus is saying that worrying isn’t helping, “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” He also says that worrying is the way of the world. He asks his followers to do something else entirely, to work for the kindom instead of working for the necessities of life.

This is where the soft eyes come back in. I think the people were working WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT to survive. The common misconception of this passage would be the opposite of that – that people are to be entirely passive and wait for God to act on their behalf. But I think Jesus is really talking about a middle way. Jesus is telling the people not to worry, and not to be passive, but to work together for everyone’s good – with God.

As a reminder, he kindom is the goal of Christian faith. It is what we are working towards, and what we believe God is working towards in the world. It is a time and a place of abundance. Perhaps today it would make sense to think of it as staring with Joel’s vision of soil, water, trees, vines, and grains that produce enough for everyone to be satiated. But the vision actually goes further. It is not just food that is abundant and distributed so that all have enough, but also clothing and shelter, healthcare and human connection, meaning and purposeful work, comfort and hope. The kindom comes when we treat each other as beloved children of God, and work towards a world when all have enough to be satiated in all of our needs.

This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving in the US, we remember a historical example of the sort of generosity that can build the kindom. The early European settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony had not learned enough to about this land to have food in abundance, but the Native Americans shared what they had to feed those who didn’t have enough. Because of the food they shared, that day and that winter, the colonists survived, and because they survived we remember their generosity on Thanksgiving.

There are other ways to respond. We are not stuck with only the choices of fighting for survival, or passively giving up. We are not stuck with the choices of listening to the 24 hour news cycle or simply staying in bed and ignoring the world. There are middle ways! One of the most powerful is gratitude. When we feel stuck, (and a lot of us feel stuck a lot of the time) we can notice what there is to be grateful for – and there is almost always a lot! It pulls us out of false binaries and into the complicated possibilities of life – gratitude works to soften our eyes and let God and humanity in. Thanks be. Amen!

1 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Matthew 6:19-7:6” p. 50.

–

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 18, 2018

Sermons

“Noticing What Has Gone Well” based on Deuteronomy 8:7-18

November 20, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

As far as I can tell, gratitude is imperative to a holistic spiritual life. It might be the most important component. While this is something we know intuitively, recent research has emphasized its importance. Gratitude practices can change our perspectives, lighten our moods, and help us feel more at peace in the world. (This seems good, right? We might need this, especially now.)

One of you had a friend who had a wonderful practice: every day she took a moment to write down the thing she was most grateful for on a slip of paper and put it in a vase. On New Year’s Eve she read them, one by one, and reflected on her year. I love the double blessing of this: both the practice of paying attention each day and the opportunities to review the good parts of a year.

At the core, I am aware of two very different motivations for faith. It seems to me that many people are motivated by fear, and that sort of religion has never been interesting to me. The other choice seems to be a motivation of gratitude: that because of being loved by God, and being grateful, we choose to love in return (because that’s what God asks of us.)

Indeed, I think gratitude is at the very core of faith itself. Which is why I want to spend today looking at its ugly underbelly. Gratitude matters too much to be blind to how it can be misused.

The Deuteronomy text gives us a way to look at some of the underside of gratitude. This is a text suggested for the celebration of Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and it cuts off the chapter two verses from the end. When it is read as suggested, it makes some important points. Like the rest of the book of Deuteronomy, this text is concerned about the complacency that comes with wealth and well-being.

The idea is that the people learned to depend on God in the desert, when all they had to eat was manna, and even access to water limited and based on God’s will. (This is their story, I might choose to tell it differently, but it is their story.) Once they got into the land with its abundances of gifts, they might forget that they are just as dependent on God in the Promised Land as they were in the desert. From manna to wheat and barley, vines and fig trees and pomegranates, olive trees, and honey and an abundance of water! As Ronald Clements puts it in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “It is precisely this richness and abundance that is seen as a temptation to forget God and the divine commandments.”¹ Or, as Walter Brueggemann puts it in his commentary on Deuteronomy, “A gift kept long enough begins to seem like a possession.”²

The text is deeply concerned that having access to wealth will lead the people to think they’ve earned the good lives they have, and that it will lead them away from God. Now, I think Deuteronomy is concerned about complacency because of the Exile. That is, the book was written down in the form it is is now after the people had lost the land, their power, and many of their people. They were trying to figure out what they could have done differently to prevent that from happening, and when they looked backward, they were concerned that they’d become complacent. They thought they should have remembered the desert, and the dependence on God, and remained grateful.

However, the text doesn’t really end where we left it. The final two verses in this section are, “If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.” These lines raise much deeper concerns about gratitude for me. You see, the story of the Bible is that God gave the Promised Land to the ancient Israelites.

Furthermore, the Bible acknowledges that there were ALREADY PEOPLE living in the land when God decided to give it to “the people,” and the Bible says that God lead the ancient Israelites to kill them off so the ancient Israelites could have the land instead. Believe it or not, there is both good news and bad news on this front.

The good news is that the killing off of all the people in the land didn’t actually happen. We know this in at least two important ways: the first is that for the rest of the Bible’s history we hear the challenges of living intermingled with the people of the land, the ones who didn’t follow God. That indicates they weren’t all killed off. Secondly, archeological research has looked at the cities that existed in the land at that time, and they simply weren’t concurred or destroyed. (So, no, Joshua did NOT fight the battle of Jericho, but that’s a story for another day.) Addison Wright, a Catholic Biblical Scholar, thinks it was most likely that a very small band of nomadic people had an exceptionally profound experience of the divine in the desert – a God who cared about how people treated each other; when they got to a land they wanted to settle in they told their story; and the people in that place were moved by the story and choose to claim it as their own. Thus the origins of ancient Israel was a mixture of the native people of the land and those who entered it with the God-story.

That’s the good news. Now for the bad news. The history of North and South America was formed by the Bible’s meta-narrative about God’s Promised Land and the right of those with might to take it from those who already lived on it. The Bible speaks of God giving the land to God’s people, including God giving the people military victory. It sounds horribly like Manifest Destiny, doesn’t it? While the mass killing of ancient Palestine didn’t happen, the mass killing in the Americas most certainly did, and it was justified with these Biblical stories.

(The Bible is a very scary weapon.)

This week, as our nation celebrates Thanksgiving, we remember with gratitude the Native people’s generosity in sharing their food to keep the early European settlers alive. Our country’s narrative usually ends there (or at least that’s how I learned it as a child), and ignores that the European settlers responded to this generosity with mass murder, justified by the Bible. According to A People’s History of the United States, “The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalm 2:8, ‘Ask of me and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’ And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2, ‘Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.’”³

Personally, I am grateful for the Native Americans who fed those settlers, and helped them make it through the winter. At the same time, gratitude alone seems insufficient when looking at the larger story. Telling the story as I was taught it as a child glosses over a much larger story of genocide, one justified with our faith tradition, one whose impacts are still very much alive in the Native American people and their descendants today.

As a descendant of those Pilgrims, how can I claim gratitude for the actions of the Native people without letting that gratitude turn into complacency for the profound harm that was also a part of the story? As a faith descendant of those ancient Israelites, how do I make sense of their stories of violence in the name of God, and the justification of violence that has come from those stories? And how do I hold that in tension with my gratitude for the text itself and the stories of faith? As a person of relative wealth in the world, how do I do more than justify complacency with gratitude?

There are even DEEPER questions under all of this. As people of faith, we often talk about the good gifts God has given us: people who love us, abilities we have, food, shelter, etc. Yet, when we attribute those good gifts to God, how do we make sense of people who are lonely, those with disabilities, people who doesn’t have food or shelter? Does our gratitude for what we do have blind us to the fact that God loves people without just as much as God loves us? How can we be grateful without being blind to the struggles of others of God’s children? How do we make sense of the different struggles people face? And how much do we attribute to God?

Do we want to claim that God gives all good gifts and that bad things in life are our own fault? Or the fault of society? Or of evil? Do we want to claim that God “has a plan” and that plan includes some people having and some not? Does all good come from God? And if so, why didn’t God attribute it more fairly? And where does the bad come from?

Furthermore, when does gratitude for one thing become a chain that binds people? For example, a person who is grateful to have enough income in their family is thus stuck in an abusive relationship by that very income?

All of this is to say that gratitude that is, I still think, the very core of our faith, can have a very complicated and noxious underbelly. While I worry about gratitude being a source of complacency, I also think that at its best gratitude can move us out of complacency. When we pay attention to what is GOOD in the world, we make space for more good. Sure, the good is often complicated, and needs further investigation. That needs to happen too. Nothing is pure, and we have to live in the complicated, even with gratitude. So, despite all the complications, may we pay attention and respond with gratitude! Amen

1Ronald Clements, Deuteronomy in the New Interpreter’s Bible Vol 2, (Nashville: Abingdon,1998) p. 356

2Walter Brueggemann, Deuteronomy (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 109.

3Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: First Perennial Classics, 2001), p. 14

–

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 19, 2017

Sermons

“Strive for Gratitude” based on Matthew 6:25-33

November 22, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Jesus was a Middle Eastern refugee, according to the Gospel of Matthew. Abraham was a Middle Eastern refugee – specifically a Syrian one- according to the Torah. The entire Exodus narrative is the story of the people who would become ancient Israel as refugees wandering in the desert. And the entirety of the Bible obsesses over welcoming foreigners and offering hospitality to strangers.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, “Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this were the population of a country, it would be the world’s 24th biggest. ‘We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before,’ said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.”¹ And, sadly, it appears that many US politicians are responding to terrorist attacks around the world with fear of refugees themselves – instead of with a desire to adapt to the needs of the displaced and to change the realities of our broken world.

It is hard, initially, to talk about “don’t worry about what you’ll eat or drink or wear” when the world has never seen so many displaced people who don’t have access to food or water or clothing. It is ALSO hard to talk about it after having been at our Community Breakfast, and seen the beautiful faces of our guests, who don’t have adequate access to food or water or clothing either.

This is a hard text to preach while acknowledging the realities of the world, but I think it started out that way. The Jesus Seminar, who are pretty picky about what they think Jesus did and didn’t say, wrote this about the passage, “Among the more important things Jesus said are a series of pronouncements on anxieties and fretting. It is possible that we have before us the longest connected discourse that can be directly attributed to Jesus, with the exception of some of the longer narrative parables.”²They also aknowledge the assumed audience, “The string of sayings is addressed to those who are preoccupied with day-to-day existence rather than with political or apocalyptic crises.”³

That is, Jesus was talking to people who were struggling to have enough to eat and telling them not to worry about food. (But he wasn’t talking to refugees.) The aspects of this passage that make it difficult to preach are inherent to it, not a modern challenge of it. Furthermore, it is consistent with how Jesus spoke and what he taught. To go back to the Jesus seminar, and their reasoning for believing in the authenticity of this passage, “these formulations betray the stamp of Jesus’ speech and connect with other sayings stemming from him: congratulations to the hungry (Luke 6:21), petitions for the day’s bread (Matt 6:11), and the certainty that those who ask will receive (Luke 11:10), to cite but a few examples.”⁴ This SOUNDS LIKE Jesus.

Jesus tells hungry people not to worry about bread.

What the heck, Jesus?

I figure there are a few ways to understand this:

We could assume that Jesus doesn’t care about human life and thinks the whole purpose of everything is the spiritual realm and/or access to heaven.
We could assume that God does take care of God’s people, that Jesus’ teaching is true, and that if people are dying of starvation it indicates that God actually doesn’t like them. (Or that they sinned or some other justification for God’s lack of affection.)
We could explain it all away with a conversation about the lack of human capacity to understand Divine Will.

(Please note that I don’t find these options valid enough to bother refuting them. If you need help with that though, let me know, and we can go through them.)

Personally, I’m going to go with the fourth option.

4. Maybe Jesus means it. Maybe paying attention to what you don’t have and worrying over how you’ll get it is a waste of life. Maybe worrying is more of a problem than even hunger and maybe this applies to a lot of aspects of life. Maybe, even, focusing on what you do have and being grateful for it will make more of a difference than having more. (Not to say I’m not still at “What the heck Jesus?” but MAYBE…)

Studies say that we gain more from giving than we do from keeping. In one of my favorites, researchers gave college students $5 and either instructed them to spend it on themselves or on others. They nearly universally went to Starbucks, which would make an interesting study in itself. In any case, in spending the money on themselves, there was a burst of happiness that lasted for a few minutes. The burst of joy that came from spending a gift on others lasted several days.

In concentration camps the power of that phenomenon showed up more powerfully. The people in concentration camps were given starvation level meals. They didn’t have enough to live, and yet the people who choose to share their INSUFFICIENT food with others (usually ones who needed it more) ended up living LONGER. Food, it turns out, is not the most important thing. It may be that hope is. It may be that connection is. It may be that making a contribution to someone else’s well being is. It may be that caring enough to try is. I don’t know. I don’t know how it works, but it does.

And I’m pretty sure that Jesus’ ministry, which happened among people who didn’t have enough to eat anyway, was mostly about freeing people from fear so that they could share and work together and although it doesn’t really make sense if you look at it economically: when a whole group of people who don’t have enough combine their resources, there is MORE than enough. That seems to prove economics wrong.

But I think that may have been the truth that Jesus was getting at. There really is more to life than food and clothing. And, obviously, worrying doesn’t help ONE LITTLE BIT. And, clearly, God wishes for us all to have enough. Yet we know that not everyone does – not every close. And yet, there are also many people in the world who have enough food, water, and clothing and live entirely meaningless lives. I think building a just society and a just world is the responsibility of us as the followers of Jesus (and as people of faith more broadly.) I think we have failed in many ways, just as we have succeeded in many ways. I don’t think everyone is going to have enough to eat – this year. But maybe the year will come when we all will.

In the any case, life IS more than food, and the body IS more than clothing. And there are many, many things to be grateful for. This week I read a book by Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams entitled Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia For All That Is. One of the chapters is on gratitude and singing alleluia for poverty, which is not something I’d spend a lot of time thinking about. Apparently, Socrates said that the richest person is the one who is content with the least and Epicurus said “Wealth consists in not having great possessions but in having few wants.”⁵ Joan Chittester says:

Poverty brings with it a spiritual vision the lack of which may in the end underlie the final corrosion of this wealthy society in which we live. Poverty stretches us to a vision of life that extends beyond the countinghouse, beyond the glutting of our lives with things. Poverty enables a person to see life in all its dimensions, to taste it in all its sweetness, and to recognize its vacuousness. It enables a person to choose between what is real and what is not about a life lived in midst of plastic and sparkles, of the lasting and the ephemeral, of the dehumanizing and the excessive. It reminds us of what is necessary and what is nothing but fluff, nothing but indulgence, nothing but consumption for the sake of show. Poverty keeps us real.

I do not applaud poverty or recommend it or justify it or minimize its struggles and its cruelty. I do not glorify the “happy poor.” But I do see that a bit less engorgement and a bit more sufficiency in a society long ago surfeited and satiated by the unnecessary could, would, make the whole world richer. ⁶

It isn’t all about feeding physical hunger, because physical satiation isn’t enough for us as humans. We are more. A lack of food is a problem – a justice issue – a thing to try to change. But food isn’t enough. Food, water, and clothes aren’t enough. Maybe Jesus was just telling the truth.

So even now, when the world sometimes feels like it is falling apart at the seams, when so many are hungry, when so little justice is to be found, we still hear Jesus saying, “don’t worry about it!”. What do we do?

We can notice what we have – whatever it is and be grateful. It will multiply the effect of whatever we have – both in our lives and in the lives around us. Gratitude is an antithesis of fear and worry, it is a sister of hospitality and care, it is a way of following Jesus’ commands:

Strive to respond with gratitude; pay attention to the goodness. It all matters. It changes you! Thanks be to God. Amen

___

1“Worldwide displacement hits all-time high as war and persecution increase”http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html accessed on November 21, 2015.

2Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 152.

3Funk et al, page 153.

4Funk et al, page 153.

5For the first, I got rid of male language, it is thus not a true quote.

6 Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams entitled Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia For All That Is(Liturgical Press: Collegeveille, MN, 2010.) page 28.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 22, 2015

Sermons

“NOT Worthless”based on 1 Samuel 1:4-20 and 1 Samuel 2:1-10

November 15, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I spent a lot of time thinking about what to say about the terrorist attacks in Paris, before I realized that there were also terrorist attacks made by the same group in Baghdad and Beirut which the news cycle had not taken quite so seriously. Then I realized that there were also deadly natural disasters in Japan and Mexico on Friday. Then I worried that there were likely other tragedies that I didn’t know about. Then I thought of the 200,000 deaths in Syria that have motivated 4 million refugees to leave their homes. Then I remembered that there are lots of refugees NOT from Syria. On Facebook I kept seeing these words, written by a poet named Warsan Shire from Nairobi, Kenya:

“later that night

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere.”1

I asked Drew Vickery, who was here this weekend for the CCCYM (Conference Council on Youth Ministries) event what he thought I should say about the attacks on Paris, and after a few hours he got back to be and said, “Nothing. I think you should focus on hope.” #fromthemouthsofteens. I don’t have words to take away the pain of the world, I don’t have words that will stop or transform extremist militants, and I surely don’t have words that will bring any of the lives tragically lost.

The hours I spent reading up on the terrorist group last night brought one imperative sentence to light, “For certain true believers—the kind who long for epic good-versus-evil battles—visions of apocalyptic bloodbaths fulfill a deep psychological need.”2 This clarified my role for today: to offer a form of faith that is not about defining “good” or “evil” but rather about seeking wholeness for ourselves that can encourage others into wholeness. So, here we go…

Hannah is surprisingly resilient. It isn’t that painful things don’t seem to hurt her – they do – a lot! They don’t overcome her. We see it twice in her story. The first thing that we know about her is that she’s barren. Now, people in the ancient world did not think that barrenness COULD be a male problem, but even if they had, Hannah’s husband’s OTHER wife was distinctly not barren. A woman’s value came in her childbearing capacity, and to be barren was to be worthless. To be barren was to be ashamed. Hannah was barren.

And yet…her husband loved her. This is not particularly normal, nor expected for marital relationships at the time. In fact, it looks like it was true in only one of Elkanah’s marriages. He loved Hannah, and he gave her preferential treatment because of it. His words indicate that he doesn’t even care that she’s barren, which I think supports the case that he really loves her and not just her “value” in his life.

This was not sufficient for Hannah. She wanted to have a child. We are completely incapable of determining if this is about her maternal instincts or if it is about a desire not to be in shame, but let’s assume it is some of both. Her husband’s love did not take away her shame, although it may have helped her have resilience to it.

Every year when she had the chance, she went to the house of God and prayed there. We’re told that she asked God to open her womb, and even tried to strike a deal with God about it. This is imperative to her story, she eventually gave birth to the prophet who would anoint the first kings, and it better be clear how faithful his mother was in order to establish his faith.

This is the first place that I see Hannah’s unusual resilience. By most accounting, if a woman’s womb was barren, it was barren because of divine punishment. Yet, as one scholar put it,

“Hannah at once embodies both the patriarchal constructions of her worth and a deep assumption that God is concerned about her. … When Hannah seeks out God’s presence in this state of anguish, her prayer signals that she is aware of a divine concern for those who are questionable worth. She does not come to God with formal petition. She does not come with traditional sacrifice. She comes in loneliness, isolation, and despair. She lays bare all the emotion and pain.”3

She believes that God cares about her, despite her barrenness, despite her shame. She is resilient to her own shame. It doesn’t stop her from seeking the Holy One AND making requests of God and EVEN bargaining with God (which is a dangerous idea). She doesn’t let it stop her, and that indicates that she thinks God might listen to her.

That’s some GOOD theology for a mostly powerless, shamed woman 3000 years ago.

There is a repetition of her resiliency as well. Eli, the priest, is often presented as not knowing a whole lot about God. He isn’t a bad guy, he just hasn’t had much contact with the Divine. So, when Hannah was praying with all her heart, Eli confused this with a drunken stupor, and decided to come up and shame her about that.

She might have slinked away.

But not Hannah. She, a lowly, barren woman corrected him. She is such a delight! She wasn’t mean about it, she correct his assumption. She has NOT been drinking. She explains that she was PRAYING (we don’t know if she gets this out with or without sarcasm in her voice), and she makes a request of him, “Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” She not only asks favors of God, she asks one of the high priest.

And we should know something is going on by now, because Eli receives her correction and grants her request. Then God does too, and she gives birth to a child and names him Sam-u-el, “God has heard.”

I wish more people were like Hannah, refusing to be put in their place, denying the capacity of anyone else to define their value to the divine. I wish more people took the mantle of shame that other people tried to put on them and simply refused to wear it because they KNOW that they are worthwhile to God.

The Magnificat of Mary which celebrates God’s mighty acts is song that fell from Mary’s lips when she was pregnant with Jesus. It is based strongly on Hannah’s song that she sang to celebrate God’s mighty acts when Hannah was pregnant with Samuel. Hannah’s song, just like Mary’s, focuses on God’s power to care for the poor, the broken, and the vulnerable. It also emphasizes God’s capacity and willingness to bring down the high, the mighty, and the rich. They are songs of celebration of God’s work for the disenfranchised. They are RADICAL claims about God that anyone with a vested interest in the status quo should worry about.

Hannah is the Biblical predecessor to Mary. She’s a big deal, in large part because she knows that God cares about the people that the people don’t care about – including her.

Hannah is a model of shame resilience on the basis of God’s grace, a model we desperately need in modern day Christianity. This week I read Karen McClintock’s book Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations, and she had a lot of wisdom to share about shame and grace. Early on in the book she points out that, “We are encouraged by the dominant culture to self-improve rather than self-affirm and to strive for more rather than to be content with what is and satisfied with ourselves. The pervasive and soul-defeating presence of cultural shame leads to perfectionism, addition, and self-hatred.”4 Later, she clarifies that, “Shame is not a course-correcting emotion. While guilt says, “I made a mistake,” shame says, “I am a mistake.‘”5

At two point she offers the words that make SO MUCH sense of the world, “Shame is often the first tool grabbed off the workbench by those entrusted to maintain the status quo,”6 and, “Because shame feels so terrible, we avoid it through the use of blame.”7 But it wasn’t until she said, “You can never be satisfied with yourself if you are constantly striving to be as wise, good, kind, or as generous as God,”8 that I knew she was preaching to me. She continued that point with a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor who said, “I thought that being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.”9

Finally, since this is a quick run through of an excellent book, I want to offer one of her stories:

“I had the opportunity to mentor a clergyperson I’ll call Sam during his first few years as a parish pastor. … To help him integrate his adult self and his ashamed little boy, I had him spend a few weeks between our conversations thinking of himself as ordinary. I encouraged him to ask himself, ‘What would an ordinary person feel right now? What would an ordinary person want, do, say? The exercise provided him with a reflective distance between his idealized self and his ordinary self. Once he accepted his ordinariness, he could balance service with replenishment and encouragement with separation."10

I think Hannah knew how to do that. She was just an ordinary woman, so was Mary, and they knew God to care for ordinary people.

With the possible exception of Jesus, every character in the Bible is visibly and deeply flawed. This clarifies that God works with and through real people, not perfect ones. They called on their actions sometimes, but God doesn’t ask them to “shape up or ship out” when it comes to their flaws. They’re just accepted as they are.

Dear ones, God created you as you are and loves you are as you are. You need not be perfect, you need not be particularly GOOD, you need not be extraordinary. You are enough.

May that knowledge fill the world.

I suspect it will help. Thanks be to God and may God help us ALL. Amen

____

1 Accessed at http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/812310-later-that-night-i-held-an-atlas-in-my-lapon 11-14-15.

2 Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants” in The Atlantic March 2015 Issue. Accessed athttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ on Nov. 14, 2015.

3 Marcia Mount Shoop “Theological Perspective of 1 Samuel 1:4-20” in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 292.

4 Karen A. McClintock, Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations (Herndon, VA: The Alban Intitute, 2012) p. 4.

5 McClintock, 22.

6 McClintock, 52.

7 McClintock, 67.

8 McClintock, 95.

9 McClintock, 101, quoting Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), 218-219.

10 McClintock, 107-109.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

November 15, 2015

Sermons

“Generous Gifts of Poor Women” based on Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17…

November 8, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Usually, the educated elite of a society receive more praise an attention than society’s impoverished widows, but usually doesn’t apply to the Bible. The scribes were religious scholars, but they were also more. By Jesus’ day, the Temple high priest was appointed by Rome and the priests and scribes were benefiting from the Empire’s system of taking the wealth of the poor and giving it to the already wealthy. Many of them, I suspect, meant well. They thought they were keeping the peace. They were doing the best they could with what they had. But they were participating in a system of oppression.

Rodger Nishioka is a contributor to Feasting on the Word, and a professor of Christian Education at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. He writes regarding the gospel:

Together, these two sections read as a lament for and an indictment upon any religious system that results in a poor widow giving all she has so the system’s leaders may continue to live lives of wealth and comfort. The attack is not on Jewish religious practice. The attack is on any religious practice that masks egotism and greed. The scribes are like leeches on the faithful, benefiting from a religious system that allows poor widows to sacrifice what little they have.¹

The little narrative is ripe for interpretation, despite its brevity. As a child I always imagined this widow to be an old woman, a connotation associated with widowhood that often makes life very hard for young women who are widows. But many artists have portrayed this scene, and more often then not they show her as young, sometimes even holding a baby. Then, instead of an older woman sacrificing her own food, that suggests a young mother sacrificing her family’s food.

We don’t know her age, we do know that the “collection plates” of the temple were metal. Since all money was coins, and the bigger coins were worth more, this particular set up insured that people could HEAR how large the donations were. This meant that the big givers got big praise, and the small givers – got shamed.

Jesus upset that system. He didn’t sit there praising the big givers for their big gifts. He noticed the woman giving small gift, a shameful gift, a gift so small it would be tempting not to show up and give it, and he noticed. He noticed that her gift was big IN COMPARISON to what she had, and that the other gifts had been small IN COMPARISION. He took the person most likely to be ignored, disregarded, unimportant, and shamed (because, after all, the MAN of the family should have been giving the gift), and he praised HER. He saw.

Poverty can make people feel invisible. Being a woman in a patriarchy can feel invisible. Being a widow without support can easily feel invisible. But Jesus saw her in the midst of all that was going on in the temple. And he used her as an example of abundant giving.

The Torah sets up a system that is meant to care for widows, orphans and foreigners AND for the Levites who cared for the religious well being of the community. The Levites didn’t get a portion of the land allotted to them. Instead, one of the purposes of tithes was to feed them. They took care of the cultic rituals, and the rest of the tribes took care of them. They didn’t get all of the tithes though, because some of them went back to people’s hometowns to throw feasts for EVERYONE, which was one of the ways of feeding widows, orphans, and foreigners. Widows, orphans, and foreigners were cared for in other ways as well: there were laws about leaving the edges of fields and the second pickings for those who had no land, there was an expectation of levirate marriage which tried to keep family lines alive and widows cared for, and there were laws against the sale of family property and against interest which meant that poverty could exist but didn’t become an inherently downward spiral.

The Torah set up a system to care for the vulnerable AND to allow a set aside group of people to be able to devote themselves to religious practice by being given gifts by the rest. The issue in this passage is that those devoted to religious practice are not simply surviving, they’re thriving, and they’re doing it by taking away the livelihoods of the vulnerable. And Jesus was NOT happy.

The widow may have been paying her expected tithe to the Temple, or she may have been giving of her own expectations of herself. We aren’t told that, but we are told that she has given all that she has to the Temple. What sort of religious organization takes the last money of a poor widow?

Is this story told to praise the widow or to condemn the Temple? The widow’s generous gift is an indictment of the Temple system, and an even bigger one in the context of the scribe’s greed and egotism. Perhaps it is OK to take a poor widow’s last coins, because there is a human need to GIVE, and because contributing to something larger than ourselves matters, and because a person has a right to give whether they have a lot or a little. But it isn’t OK to take a poor widow’s last coins if the system in place isn’t going to take care of the widow. The system is making the clergy wealthy at the expense of the already poor. Or, to make it more simple, the Temple was functioning to take the meager wealth of the poor and redistribute it to the rich. No wonder Jesus was angry.

The widow gives an extraordinary gift that the Temple is not worthy to receive. A friend of mine asked a great question this week: what would it take to make the Temple worthy of such a gift, and what would it take to make our churches worthy of such gifts? That is worth pondering.

The poor widow, however, is not the only generous widow in our scriptures today. We also have Ruth and Naomi. This is a story worth knowing, here is a brief summary of the first two chapters:

Naomi and her husband and two sons left the holy land of Israel to live in in the hated neighboring country of Moab because of a famine. The famine lasted a long time, and both sons grew up and married Moabite women. Then both sons and Naomi’s husband died. She decided it was time to go back to Israel, to live as poor widow on other people’s generosity. As was expected at the time, her daughters in law went with her, but before they had gone far she turned to them and freed them from their bond to her. Custom said they were to stay with the family they married into. She urged them back to their own mothers to start their lives anew. One went, the other was Ruth, who pledged her life in a vow of commitment to Naomi’s. When they get back to Naomi’s village Ruth goes to glean the leftovers of the harvest and the owner of the fields instructs her to be treated with kindness.

That brings us up to the part of the story we read today, which is HIGHLY suggestive in a sexual way. As one scholar put it, “The word for ‘lie down’ in Hebrew often implies sexual intercourse. Moreover, feet are used as euphemism for genitalia in the Bible. Though the word translated as ‘feet’ in this passage is not the usual term, Naomi’s instruction to ‘uncover’ the lower extremities of Boaz is provocative. That this encounter happens at night makes the meeting even more suggestive.”² I generally enjoy it when I’m in on the joke, and I know it when the Bible is making sexual innuendos.

This, however, is not one of those times. The story is thought to end well. Ruth and Naomi are cared for by Boaz, Naomi’s line continues, and eventually King David well be born. Theologically it is magnificent, since the Israelites and Moabites were historic enemies and the Israelites were often vehemently anti-marriage with foreigners. The mere existence of this story is pretty remarkable. You’d think they wouldn’t want to say that their most beloved (no, I don’t know why) king was the great-grandson of Moabite woman, but they DO. And it seems to suggest that God’s ways are bigger than human ways, and God’s inclusion extends to even one’s enemies.

AND YET, I’m a really enormously big fan of the concept of sexual consent, and I’m not sure that Ruth had any of that in this story. I grant that she is said to have gone willingly to Boaz, but her economic circumstances called for desperate measures and she was willing to take them in order to ensure that both she and Naomi would survive. Is it consent when you and your loved one(s) would die if you didn’t? Was Naomi appropriate and wise in finding a way forward, or did she use Ruth’s young and sensually pleasing body for their gain? Who actually had power in this situation and why?

In some ways, and I don’t like of the the ways, holding the Bible up to the standard of sexual consent is unreasonable. Women didn’t often have the power to say “no,” and if you can’t say “no,” then your “yes” doesn’t count. But when a whole society fails to give women the right to say “no” then it becomes odd to call out the lack of consent in any particular story. But I’m doing it anyway, because I think it is wrong every single time.

At best, in this story, Ruth and Naomi choose to use Ruth’s sexual capacity to gain the means of survival. It is a gift much like the widow’s mite – one that is generous in the extreme and an indictment when it is necessary that it be given. Ruth is not alone, by any means, in the history of women, in becoming so poor that they only thing they have left to use towards survival is their own bodies. This is a story with nearly universal undertones, at least in market economies. It is proof yet again that the Bible is not naive about humanity, including the struggles of very poor women. At the same time, every retelling of this story should be a condemnation the society in which it happens.

The story provides evidence that Boaz was a very honorable man, likely even a good man. I like to think that despite all that happened out of necessity that Ruth may even have been quite happy with him, but that’s likely just wishful thinking. Ruth gave what she had, both for herself and for the woman dependent on her and unable to provide anything for herself.

Some generosity is too much.

One poor widow gave her last coins to the Temple.

Another poor widow gave her sexual capacity for the sake of male protection and therefore survival.

May these stop being common stories.

May we build a religious system that is worthy of the widow’s mite.

May we build a world where sex is ONLY mutual, consensual, and NEVER necessary for survival.

May we hear the stories of women and men who have given such gifts, and honor them.

And when we receive gifts of excessive generosity (of any size or type) may our receiving honor the givers. May God help us. Amen

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1 Rodger Y Nishioka “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44” in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009), page 286.

2 Frank M. Yamada “Exegetical Perspective on Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17” in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009), page 269.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 8, 2015

Sermons

“Gratitude in Action” based on Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 and…

September 6, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Four years ago last week, Hurricane Irene wrecked unprecedented damage in New England as well as in Schoharie and Middleburg and communities in this area. Four years ago this week, Tropical Storm Lee followed and with ground water and rivers already full, dumped another foot of water in 24 hours to the town I was living in. The damage was also unprecedented. Waters went 17 feet above flood level.

It rained on a Thursday. That Sunday was the 10 year anniversary on September 11^th, 2001. We’d planned an ecumenical service to be held at a neighborhood church. We canceled because we had no water, no electricity and the church we’d planed to use was instead being used as an emergency Red Cross shelter.

That morning, those of us who could, gathered in the Narthex of the church I was serving because there was more natural light there. We sat in a circle and checked in each other, and on those whose well-being we knew about. There was shock in our midst. There was also a lot of uncertainty. People just didn’t know what to do.

I was among them, horrified and shocked and uncertain how to help. We sang a bit and discussed some scripture, but mostly we talked. Eventually one of the church members who was also a volunteer fireman said, “Can anyone come to the firehouse this afternoon? I have an idea, but I don’t have time to implement it.” It turned out, I was the one who could.

His idea was simple: there were people who needed help and there were people who wanted to help, and someone needed to match them up. The firehouse had a generator, and by Sunday it had dry ice and water (but nothing else yet). It was the place people came to, and so it was the perfect location to match people up.

People desperately wanted to help, it was natural in the face of that much destruction to want to do something, but they didn’t know what to do! By keeping a running list of things they could do, and sending them out in an organized fashion to help their neighbors, they were able to do something that mattered. They were SO grateful to me (and the team that emerged to work with me) for helping them know what to do. People whose homes had been flooded were overwhelmed. They didn’t know what to do, or where to start. When others came to help, it lifted the burden and made things seem possible again. They were so grateful for the help, and they ended up thanking ME. I just sat there and got thanked, for months.

(I would like to make it very clear that I didn’t lift anything heavier than a pen, nor get dirty at any point during the flood recovery. I had the easiest job of all, and I had a church who believed that the work of organizing flood recovery counted as my job.)

The gratitude, both to me and in general, was humbling. It was especially humbling to hear the gratitude of the people whose homes had been flooded. People would say, “Oh, we’re lucky, it was just a few feet in my basement.” (Truthfully, people who had less than a few FEET of water in the basement didn’t even mention it.) Others would say “Oh, I’m lucky, it didn’t reach the first floor.” Then, I heard, “Oh, we’re lucky, the second floor wasn’t even touched.” And, I kid you not, multiple people who had lost everything they owned and their home as well said, “We’re so lucky! We have friends who took us in and people are willing to help us clean up.”

Some of this was perspective, people knew others who had it worse, or had imagined it being worse. But a lot of it was actually just surprise at the generosity of those who helped them. I think many people expected to be on their own in recovering from an utterly overwhelming disaster. (Lest anyone think that gratitude was the only emotion, let me share a tiny story. There was a road that has been flooded at both end points, and two houses on it had burned to the water level because the fire trucks couldn’t get through. The rest of the people on the street were a bit jealous of those whose homes had burned because it was easier.) Any way and all ways that people helped and came together exceeded people’s expectations. They were relieved, they were held up, they were supported, and they were grateful. Things weren’t as bad as they might have been.

It was interesting how differences between people became trivial. Churches that didn’t usually talk to each other, or necessarily recognize each other’s existence worked together. Or, to be more forthright about it, I was sort of shocked that churches that preached against women in ministry still took orders from me 😉

Initially no one had water, nor electricity. The church I served realized that those who had electric stoves couldn’t heat dinner, so they started a free pasta dinner every night for anyone who wanted to come. People working on cleaning out their homes, those working on helping others clean out homes, those who were just lonely, those who were hungry, and those who just wanted a hot meal came together with no distinctions between them. The barriers of society: race and age, wealth and political view points just ceased to matter. People were just people for a bit.

Proverbs says, “Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.” Sharing has its own rewards. It has its challenges too. Simeon Weil was known to say, “It is only by the grace of God that the poor can forgive the rich the bread they give them.” There is not a lot of dignity, usually, in our society, in needing or asking for help. Those who don’t have enough money to make it on their own are told in innumerable ways by society that they’ve failed. This isn’t new. James hits the nail on the head when he calls out communities of faith for treating people differently because of wealth or status. Jesus very clearly aimed his ministry at the people in his society who had the least. Yet throughout the ages Christianity has struggled to follow. James. Marcus Borg dates the book to somewhere in the 70’s or 80’s, that is, after the Gospel of Mark was written but before the Gospel of Matthew was written.¹ We’ve been struggling with wealth for a while.

Actually, that’s not even fair. The Bible as a whole is obsessed with justice, by which it means being certain that people who are wealthy don’t get their way over people who are poor just because of money. Proverbs is part of this obsession. Saying, “Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the LORD pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.” (Proverbs 22: 22-23) Remember that the gate is where transactions occurred. That means that there is something OLD in humanity about treating people with wealth (or maybe just power) differently. We have hierarchy in us. Walter Wink thinks this is only a 8000 year old story, and not universal. I hope he’s right. But the roots of our Bible and of my ancestors is in this differentiation and hierarchy, despite the attempts to change it.

But during the flood, those who received help weren’t shamed by needing it, and that made it a lot easier to be grateful for receiving it. Similarly, there wasn’t a differential between the people who needed help and those who gave it. They were neighbors, whether or not they knew each other. Some happened to live in a localized low or closer to normally dry creek bed. The rich and the poor had a lot in common: their homes were flooded, their water wasn’t safe, their food was spoiled, and there no supplies to be found. It made it a lot easier to follow James’ commands and Proverb’s advice. (Until UMCOR showed up. Thanks UMCOR.)

What was so startling about the gratitude was that it felt so very much out of context. Isn’t gratitude for wonderful things and sadness, anger and horror for terrible things like losing everything you have and your home too? Recently I’ve been able to come up with a theory of what was going on. Nonviolent Communication has this fantastic list of universal human needs (https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf) and some amazing insights about them. For instance, the theory suggests that everything we do is an attempt to meet one or more need, although not everything we do is effective in doing so. Furthermore, there are actually a whole lot of human needs, and they’re not all going to be met at the same time.

BUT at any given moment, some of them are being met. So, the people I was getting to know during the flood had some really important and serious needs that were inherently not being met by during that time: for shelter, for safety, for order, for stability, for space, and often for rest. Yet, many needs that often go unmet WERE being met (and while these were clearly different for different people, I’m going to make some guesses): for community, for compassion, for interdependence, for support, for understanding, for celebration of life. The overwhelming gratitude wasn’t the only emotion going on (and as time went on, other emotions took more precedence), but it was terribly authentic. There were ways that the days and weeks right after the flood met people’s needs that often went unmet.

One of the harshest realities of our current society is that it isolates people from one another and from being a part of community. (This is one of the greatest needs that church is able to meet.) There is a myth that good people are self-sufficient and that independence is an appropriate life goal. The truth is that none of us are self-sufficient, in large part because we are social animals and we need each other in order to be full – and have our needs met!

I think it is possible to replicate some of the amazingly good things that I saw in the recovery from the Great Flood of 2011 without needing the Great Flood of 2011. While the gratitude I heard then was natural and authentic, I think it is also nurturable. If in any situation some of our needs are going to be met and some of them are not, then we CAN choose to pay attention either way. Sometimes it is really helpful to figure out what needs are wanting to be met, so that we can find a way to get them met! But sometimes we have a choice to change our focus. Instead of fussing, fuming, and building up resentment by telling and retelling ourselves stories of what is wrong (I’m sorry, is that just me? I didn’t THINK it was just me.) we can choose to pay attention to what is right. If people can do it in the flood, we can do it anytime we want.

And gratitude, I think, changes more than just our attitude. It is more like a muscle that can be built up with use. I hear people who are very strong in gratitude, and they’re rather enjoyable to be around! It is very important to be aware of injustice and brokenness in the world so that we can help change it. But it is just as important to be aware of beauty and wonder in the world so that we can enjoy it! Finally, I think gratitude is the great motivator! It turns out that obligations drain us, but when we act out of gratitude we are able to give without losing any part of ourselves. Gratitude is a game changer.

And there is a lot to be thankful for. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Marcus Borg Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written (HarperOne, USA: 2012), 193.

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Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady
September 6, 2015