To Be Set Free

August 24, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“To Be Set Free” based on Psalm 103: 1-8 and Luke 13:10-17

I’m going to preach on Luke. But, before I do, can we take just one more moment to be grateful for the Psalm? It is magnificent. The words echo throughout history, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” It contains those universal truths that God’s steadfast love endures forever, that God is a healer and forgiver, that God is satisfying and satiating. It is pretty rare for me to read scripture and not fight with it, to instead just sigh with relief to hear good truths. This is one of the texts that does so for me. It is truth-filled, grace-filled and wise. If it is what you need today, you may want to just pick it up and read it over and over letting the wonder of it flow through you. 😍

Now, Luke.

The story seems simple. Jesus was teaching in a Synagogue on the Sabbath, and a woman showed up who had been crippled for 18 years. She was unable to stand up straight. “When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”

And, just like that, I have a lot of questions. I think the biggest one is: why her?

It seems impossible that she was the only person struggling who was there that day. Groups of humans always include people who are struggling, including with health. Was she the one who struggled the longest? The most severely? The most visibly?

Or was it just that she was the one he was ABLE to heal? Was she “ready” (whatever that might mean)? Was she open to it? Were his particular gifts well matched for that particular healing?

Or did she grab his attention in some particular way? Did she smile at him? Did she grimace so quietly no one was able to notice? Was it that she was there in the community of faith despite it all? Did he know her from before? Was it how others responded to her that he could tell if he healed her he’d heal then all?

That’s the thing about healing, they’re even larger than they seem. The diseases and illnesses and chronic pains of life separate people from their communities, and from the fullness of their lives. When a person is healed of any of it it not only heals their bodies but their whole being and heals the community they’re part of.

Maybe the whole community needed healing and by healing her he could bring them all to wholeness. Maybe that’s why it was her.

We aren’t going to know. But we are allowed to wonder.

I also end up wondering: what ails us? What has bent us over and kept us from being able to stand upright for all these years? If Jesus were here and ready to heal us, what would Jesus pick to heal here?

Maybe it would look the same… an injury, an illness, a chronic pain. But maybe those end up being the easy ones and Jesus would look more deeply. Maybe the healing some of us need is forgiveness. For something that happened years ago that we’ve been guilt-ily dragging along with us ever since. Perhaps Jesus would be looking for places healing would be in the capacity to let go of the guilt, and live in the now.

Maybe we need healing from the nagging worry that we’re not enough: not good enough, not kind enough, not something or another enough. Perhaps, then, the healing would be Jesus reminding us that we’re Divinely-made, Divinely-loved, and not required to be or do anything to earn it. A time of being able to “rest assured” that the God loves us and we’re not alone.

Maybe the healing we need is from grief that aches in us for years on end without changing. A healing that would help us move from simply aching to also remembering the sweetness of who or what we lost.

Maybe the healing Jesus would offer would be the hardest kind of all – the healing of the traumas we hold. To hold us safely and tenderly and heal us from the inside out, starting with the hurts that are most tender and long-held within. I think that kind of healing would make the crippled woman standing up seem mundane. To reassure those of us who have experienced the unthinkable that it wasn’t our fault, that we didn’t do anything to deserve it, it didn’t taint us, that we are perfectly lovable as we are, and we are really and truly safe.

Imagine how that could impact our lives and our community, if the deepest, most traumatic wounds we carry were healed! Some among us might be unrecognizable with the burdens lifted off their shoulders. Hmmm. I guess they might be able to stand up straight, for the first time in a really long time.

I am under the impression that God is pro-healing. I am so under the impression that healing is much harder than any of us wish it was, including when it comes to the guilt, emotions, fears, and traumas we carry.

So I invite us to imagine. To take this story as our own, and imagine Jesus here, teaching away, blowing our minds with his loving insights, and then one by one turning to each of us with God’s own love for us and setting us free from our ailments. What would Jesus chose to free you from so you can be whole, reconnect more fully with your community, find and share peace?

[Pause for pondering]

Perhaps some of the answers we’ve named in the silence of our hearts ARE things that we are ready to let go of and able to be healed from. Others of them them are just bigger than our capacity to let go at this point. But what would it feel like to take seriously God’s wish for us to be well? To be whole? To be freed from what we carry? And to consider how that might impact others around us?

Perhaps, as well, it makes sense to focus on the ways Jesus acted to heal the community, even by healing one person in it. Maybe we need healing as a whole community too. Healing from the pain of being in homophobic denomination for 50+ years. Healing from the pain of misdeed and abuse from clergy. Healing from the pain of misdeeds and abuse of fellow church members. Healing from disagreements and dis-enchantments and ways we mistrusted or misused each other. Healing from the pain of being able to see what the world is supposed to be and what it is. Healing, maybe even, from the times when the church seemed strong and powerful and full and now doesn’t. Or, on the contrary, the pain of yearning for others to be at peace with the miracle that is church now. There is plenty of shared communal pain.

What would it be like to see the love of God transforming that pain, freeing us from it, letting us stand strong? What would it mean for us to hear God calling and hear Jesus tell us we are free from our communal ailments? How might we respond differently? Where might there be more flexibility, more patience, more joy, more hope?

I often fear that there is a pain in churches in America in the 21st century that relates profoundly to decline. There were many people in pews in the 1950s are there is a fear that the fewer people sitting in them now is a sign of failure (of some sort.) Having looked at it historically, I don’t think that’s the case, but it is a place I hear Jesus calling us to healing and freedom anyway.

In this community of faith, we tend to rather love science. Most of us are inclined to trust doctors and medicines too, although plenty of have concerns about some aspects of Western medicine while we’re mentioning it. 😉 Nevertheless, we may struggle to understand what it means that Jesus healed someone’s crippled back with his words. That question may distract us from other meanings of the passage.

One of the most important facets of Jesus’s healing was that by healing the physical ailments of individuals he healed whole communities. He took away what separated people from life-giving relationships. He re-united them. He took seriously the needs people have to connect.

The ancients didn’t separate body and mind like many of us have been taught to, which is probably good because they were likely right! Bodies and minds and spirits are all intermingled and impact each other – just like all of us impact each other along the way. Healing a body, or a mind, or a spirit heals the person and the people around them. Healing has ripple effects.

We also can hear in this passage and all healing passages God’s desires for our wholeness and well being. Which is where I think we are led today. God yearns for our healing, our wholeness, our well-being. Likely, for most of us, there are things we can let go of and be free from and thereby be healed. Let today serve as an invitation to to hear, “beloved child of God, you are set free from your ailment.” And know that as you are freed, so too are we all.

Thanks be to God. Amen

August 24. 2025

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

Untitled

April 30, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

On
April 4^th several of us went to the University of Albany
to hear Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Very early
in the evening she explained that she likes to be up and moving, and
she started wandering around the room while speaking. The wandering
wasn’t random. She systematically worked her way around the entire
room, stopping at every row of every aisle, and walking across any
front row entirely. While talking coherently. she allowed every
person who reasonably could do so to touch her. She just offered her
hand, and people in the outside 3-4 seats were able to physically
connect with her.

She
was clear from the outset that this is her preferred way of engaging,
but I was also aware that it was a remarkable way to fulfill the
needs of those who come to hear her speak. She is the third woman
appointed to the Supreme Court, and the first Hispanic/Latinx. She
is an inspiration to an enormous percentage of the population, and
her choice to let people touch her seemed like a way to take that
inspiration role seriously.

In
all the wisdom Justice Sotomayor has, knowing the importance of touch
seems like part of it, as does taking seriously the role of being a
bearer of hope. She offered her hand as a beacon, letting her touch
defy some of the brokenness of the world.

–
– – –

The
first gospel lesson today also centers on the power touch. Two
women, in very different life stages are transformed by it. The two
stories, told together, are intended to reflect on each other and
enhance the meaning of each other. The young girl was 12, the
anticipated age of maturity. The woman had suffered for 12 years,
emphasized as long enough for a baby to reach maturity. The young
girl was believed dead. The woman’s was in a living death of
isolation, poverty, and extinguished hope.

The
young girl wasn’t able to speak for herself, so her loving father
begged for Jesus’s help. The woman
wasn’t to touch anyone, and anything she sat on or laid down on (as
well as her touch) would make others unclean. This should have
impeded her capacity to speak for herself too. The story seems to
suggest that she doesn’t have family to care for her, because they
refer to her dissipated wealth as her own. No one could do it for
her. She definitely wasn’t supposed to spend time in tight crowds.

(Two
thoughts about this. As damaging as such a life would be for a
person, I think it makes some sense in context. The ancient Jews
believed that blood was the life force in a body, that’s what made it
sacred. They would be understandably concerned about continual
bloodflow. Secondly, in an era before germ theory or antibiotics
about all people knew for sure about medicine was that you could get
sick from sick people. In order to care for the community, you kept
people from passing along illness. It is awful for the individuals,
but better than letting the whole community die. I don’t want this
story to be heard as implicating ancient Jewish society as unloving.
It seems to me they were doing the best they could.)

This woman, whose 12 years of
life had been without human touch or connection, as well as without
without successful treatment, and was now without resources because
she’d tried to fix it; broke the rules. She moved in a tight crowd,
touching others as she went. She sought, intentionally, to touch
Jesus, EVEN THOUGH her touch would make him ritually unclean. Some
scholars suggest that such an action made her eligible to be stoned.
No one could speak for her, the laws made it impossible for her to
speak for herself, so she broke the laws, taking a huge risk, seeking
life again. She reached out to touch Jesus, not knowing what
would happen next, if she’d be healed or stoned, accepted or
violently rejected.

– – –

On Tuesday the Judicial Council
of The United Methodist Church met in Newark, New Jersey to hear oral
arguments about the election of Bishop Karen Oliveto. Bishop Oliveto
was elected this past July by the Western Jurisdiction of the United
Methodist Church in an unanimous vote that was uncontested. She’s a
gifted spiritual leader, a joy-filled human being, a natural church
leader, and a living example of grace. The issue is very simple:
Karen is married to Robin, and both Karen and Robin are women. The
Western Jurisdiction knew this when they elected her, Karen’s
decision to run happened after the Pulse Nightclub massacre. She was
reminded of all of the violence done to the LGBTQIA¹
community, and thought it was important to use her ministry to
visibly change some of the narrative (in the church and the world.)

The
United Methodist Church is officially a homophobic denomination. It
intentionally and structurally oppresses the queer community. By
putting herself forward for election, she offered the possibility of
giving hope to the queer community in the midst of its grief and the
multitudes of harms. This particular United Methodist Church, along
with 836 other United Methodist churches and communities, has taken
an official stance declaring that we believe that The United
Methodist Church is WRONG and that God’s love and the churches doors
should be open to people without consideration of their sexuality or
gender identity. This church, and 836 others, advocate for the full
inclusion of LGBTQIA people in the church and the world. The Western
Jurisdiction agrees, and they elected Bishop Oliveto because of the
gifts and graces she has for the episcopacy.

Despite the systematic
oppression of the church, as Kevin has explained in 20 page brief
(one of many filed) what they did was legal and appropriate. (The
fact that the Judicial Council ended up sort of disagreeing doesn’t
in any way make me doubt Kevin’s analysis.)

The Judicial Council meets twice
a year, and they always have several items on their docket. Two
other pieces this April related to the commissioning and ordination
of out queer clergy. Unfortunately, while there are MANY in our
denomination who agree with us about God’s love extending to all
people, there are also many willing to engage in witch hunts to
prevent the church’s blessing from falling on queer people. The
conservatives wanted to invalidate the ordinations of out queer
clergy!!!

On
Tuesday, as I woke up, people had already gathered in Newark. Bishop
Oliveto, her wife and her mother, queer clergy from across the
denomination, queer laity, and allies of all sorts were present,
visible, singing, and connecting to each other. I watched it on live
feed. Tickets were given to two rooms: one the room in which the
Judicial Council sat and the arguments would be made, and one for
overflow connected via a live stream. Laity and allies exchanged
tickets with queer clergy so that they could be together, sitting in
solidarity with Bishop Oliveto.

As I watched the live stream, I
saw the Queer Clergy Caucus²
enter the Judicial Council room, and kneel to pray. It took my
breath away. It looked like the hemorrhaging woman reaching her hand
toward Jesus. That group of beloved and beautiful people of God have
stayed in a denomination that has called them names and declared
their lives “incompatible with Christian teaching.” They have
courageously refused to leave, refused to be silent or invisible, and
continued to ask for the church’s blessing on their whole lives and
ministries. They have reached out to touch Jesus, knowing that the
laws stand in the way, that the crowd will judge them, that the
disciples would try to stop them, and needing to touch Jesus anyway.

They knelt to pray, to reach out
and touch Jesus and hoped the church wouldn’t stop them this time.
They’ve done it before. They’ll do it again. But every time it is
an act of courage. So far, every time they reach out, the church has
TRIED to stop them.

– – – –

In the Gospel, Jesus’s response
is grace-filled. He calls out the woman (who must have been
TERRIFIED), and by doing so publicly he is able acknowledge her
healing and restore her relationship with the community at large.
She was able to touch others again, she was able to connect, she was
able to be a part of the whole. She was afraid that by touching him
she’d bring him shame, but she took the risk anyway, and instead all
that separated her from the community was lifted from her.

That’s
what the queer clergy caucus was hoping the church could replicate.

The young girl brought back to
life when Jesus grabbed her hand becomes a metaphor for the life that
Jesus has to offer, and gave as well the hemorrhaging woman. The
touch of Jesus brings life – and hope – as well as healing.

– – –

In our second Gospel lesson,
people are also walking with Jesus, and their lives are also changed
by it. The story ends with people more alive than when they began.
The theologian John Dominic Crossan³
often says, “Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”
That is, he doesn’t think that it is a story reflecting actual
historical events, but instead reflecting deep Christian realities.
This year it occurs to me to wonder how literally the story is
intending to indicate that a third person actually showed up.

Perhaps, instead, the Holy
Spirit was with the two walking together, and together they started
piecing together the teachings of Jesus and the meanings offered.
Perhaps the collective (even of two) felt so much more than one and
one that it was as if there was another one leading their
conversation. I’ve had conversations like that. (I’ve had
conversations like that this week at the “Change Leaders Summit”
hosted by the General Commission on Religion and Race as we dreamed a
less racist church). I could metaphorically say that the some
moments of talking to another have been so sacred and eye-opening
that it was as if Jesus was the third person in the dialogue.

If that is one of the
metaphorical meanings of the gospel lesson, the it is potent. The
disciples are running away! They’re going in the wrong direction,
and even then Jesus is with them and guiding them. In the end they
turn back and return to the place they’d been frightened away from.
They move from fear back to life. In connecting with Jesus they
connect with their hope, their meaning, and the purposes of their
lives. They were reconnected to Jesus, and perhaps via the power of
the Holy Spirit to guide sacred conversations.

– – –

Returning
to face the fears is part of the inherent Easter story. So is the
transformation of the Body of Christ from the historical Jesus to his
followers throughout time. We are now expected to respond to the
world with his courage and grace, to respond to all the ways he
responded to the hemorrhaging women, the powerless girl, and –
however it happened – the frightened disciples

Those Queer Clergy praying in
the Judical Council hearing room were living out the Easter story.
They faced the fears of rejection, and went anyway. Others may want
to cut them out of the Body of Christ, but they believe that Jesus
responds to them with grace. They know enough to reach out for Jesus
and know that Jesus will see them and bless them, even if the church
will not.

It turns out that today Bishop
Karen Oliveto IS still a Bishop. Thanks be to God. Furthermore,
none of the commissionings or ordinations of our out queer clergy
siblings were overturned. Thanks be to God. Unfortunately, there is
also a lot of bad news that came from the decisions. The church has
attempted to crack down to gain control offer the resistances
movements that seek to include ALL of God’s people fully in the
church. (They seem to forget that their methods NEVER work over the
long run.) There are many in our church who are hurting and there
are many in our world who are hearing from our denomination that they
are not worthy of love.

– – – –

The denomination is wrong. It
can’t control or limit God’s love. Nor can it control or limit the
queer community and its allies. The people of God will keep reaching
for God, whether the church tries to stop them or not. When people
reach out, Jesus responds with grace. When people reach out we can
follow the lead of the Spirit who will guide us to bring hope and
grace to each other. God is faithful, whether the church is or not.
For that, I am mightily thankful to God. Amen

1 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual

2 https://www.facebook.com/UMQClergy/

3 Coming
to First UMC Schenectady on September 23-24. SQUEAL.

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

April 30, 2017

Sermons

“Listening and Receiving”based on 2 Kings 5:1-14 and Luke 10:1-11

July 3, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

70
people are sent out by Jesus, two by two. 70 is a symbolic number. In
Exodus, Moses was assisted by 70 elders and in Genesis 10 there is a
listing of all the nations of the world: they number 70. While all
the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell the story of
Jesus sending out the 12 disciples 2 by 2, only Luke includes this
story of sending out the 70 (which in some ancient manuscripts is 72,
but we’re going to just live with 70).

It
is possible that this feels a bit repetitive, since Luke says in
chapter 9 that Jesus sent out the 12 disciples in a similar manner.
However, there is something really strange about this story, MUCH
more interesting than the version a chapter before. That is, Jesus
sends out the 12 disciples in Galilee, the area that he spent most of
his life and most of his ministry. However, in chapter 10 he is in
SAMARIA, on his way to Jerusalem. He sends out these 70 people to
EXACTLY the communities that most people at the time found most
distasteful.

This
is possibly the most Jesus thing I’ve ever heard. He sends out this
massive group of people to places they’d be radically uncomfortable,
AND refuses them any comforts: they can have no purse or bag nor
(extra?) sandals. They’re on their own dependent on the hospitality
of people they’ve never met and are likely terrified of. They’re
told to go into people’s homes, receive their hospitality, and eat
their food and drink their drinks.
When he sent out the 12 in Galilee he didn’t bother specifically
telling them to eat and drink what they are given. This only happens
when he sends them out in Samaria.

You
remember, right, the Samaritans were so hated that people FREAKED OUT
at the idea that Jesus would receive a cup of water from one? The
Samaritans were so hated that the whole point of one of the most
well-loved parables is the unexpected twist that a Samaritan could be
the hero. (Ironically, and to keep things confusing, in the 2^nd
Kings reading the word Samaria is used interchangeably with Israel.
That’s because it predates the first exile. That is, it was from a
time when Samaria, Israel, and Judah were all united, well before
Jesus.)

At
the time of Jesus, Samaritans practiced faith differently. The
followers of Jesus were Jews, I think very traditional Jews, part of
a recommitment to orthodox practice sort of Jews. The Samaritans
were NOT CONSIDERED Jews (although that’s yet another example of the
bias itself.) To make this a bit clearer: good, deeply faithful Jews
at the time were very careful about what they ate, when they ate it,
and how it it had been prepared. That was part of how they expressed
their faithfulness to God. Being sent out into Samaria to be welcomed
into people’s homes as strangers and to EAT THEIR FOOD …. wasn’t
kosher. (giggle) Literally. 😉 But the story says Jesus sent out 70
people into Samaria anyway, and specifically told them to eat and
drink what they were given to eat and drink.

This
relates to the vision of Peter in Acts 10, where Peter has a vision
of God telling him to consume food otherwise thought unclean. The
fact that the stories reflect each other isn’t a surprise, as Luke
and Acts are really the same book by the author: Part 1 is Luke and
Part 2 is Acts (the fact that they are not one after another in our
Bible is an atrocity.) It does make me doubt the veracity of this
story, but only the “I don’t think the facts add up to be terribly
like to have ACTUALLY HAPPENED” way. I think the story reflects a
deep and abiding set of truths about God, about Jesus, about the
Jesus movement, and about breaking open barriers that would otherwise
divide people, and that’s WAY more important than it actually having
happened. However, as I find this story to be completely and utterly
delightful, I sort of hope I’m wrong.

Going
back into the story as it’s own narrative again, Jesus
doesn’t just send them out to eat and drink. He sends them out to
heal
and to give a message, “The
kingdom of God has come near to you.”
That message is the one that Jesus shares over and over again.
Really, the combination of healing and that simple message are the
THEMES of the Gospels, everything else is an expansion on those
ideas.

The
Gospels are full of healing narratives, usually done by Jesus
himself. In our passage today though, we see the expansion of the
work from Jesus to his followers, a reminder that the expansion
extends all the way out to us. Healing, of course, takes on many
forms. It can be physical, emotional, or spiritual, and at times the
most appropriate healing is death itself. Our work as followers of
Christ is to participate in the healing, in a holistic way. This is
good, as not all of us are medical professionals, but all of us can
participate in healing ourselves, each other, and the world.

My
friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green suggests that the power
of Jesus to heal was located in his ability to really truly SEE and
HEAR people, and to LOVE THEM as they really are and show them how
loved they were. She suspects that much of what harms us would be
healable if we knew that we were seen, heard, and loved as we are.
The work of healing, then, is also the work of loving – work we are
all called to do whether it is easy or hard for us.

To
see, to hear, and to share love with a person is also known as the
work of LISTENING. Listening is a profoundly healing act. This
isn’t just something that Jesus could do. It is passed on to us
along with the rest of the work of the Body of Christ. If you’ve
been playing along with my sermons over the past year or two, you may
already know that I’m excited about Nonviolent Communication as a
means of grace.

Nonviolent
communications is a system of both listening and speaking meant to
bring healing and wholeness into the world. It
is an act of love with power.
It happens in 4 parts, whether it is an act of listening or of
speaking. When it is an act of listening, a person practicing
Nonviolent communication: listens for observations of what happened
(which may involve asking some questions), then listens for feelings
about what happened (this may also involve some questions, or even
making some guesses), then listens to what the person’s deep need is
that connected the experience itself to the feeling that emerged
(yes, yes, this too might involve questions or guesses), and finally
seeks to understand what the person would want in order to make life
more wonderful after being heard about the experience, the feeling(s)
and the need(s). This last bit is listening for a request. Often the
request is really just to be heard!

I
wonder if the work of healing that the disciples and the 70 were sent
out to do had to do with deep listening and thereby sharing the
wonder of love itself. I’ve seen that work system, rather well and
quite frequently.

In
Nonviolent Communication Theory, there is a concept of universal
human needs. One of the lists of these needs includes 90 of them,
under the categories: connection, honesty, play, peace, physical
well-being, meaning, and autonomy. All of us have all the needs, all
the time, and this theory suggests that what we say and do is always
related to getting our needs met. Some of the ways we seek to get
our needs met are more effective than others, and some cause less
harm than others. Knowing our needs, and making direct requests tends
to help us get the needs met, and do it without impeding anyone
else’s capacity to met their needs!

(It
may also be helpful to note that not all needs are equally important
to everyone. For example, I have noticed that a lot of what I do is
about meeting my needs to contribute to the world, experience
efficacy, and keep things in balance. Everyone else probably has a
different subset of needs that they tend toward most strongly.)
Also, FYI, we are offering another class on Nonviolent communication
this fall! Stay on the lookout for more information.

We
can see listening like this (and nonviolent communication) in the
Hebrew Bible text, if we read into it a little bit. The Israelite
slave girl observes
that Naaman has leprosy. She seems to feel
sad about that, and finds in herself a need
to contribute to his well-being. So she suggests (this is an
indirect form of a request)
that he might find healing through Elisha. She seems to be
suggesting that her life would be more wonderful if his was as well!
And she is heard!

I
think the most interesting example of nonviolent communication comes
when Naaman gets a response from Elisha to “’Go,
wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and
you shall be clean.’“ That’s what happened (observation), and he
feels ANGRY. It turns out his expectations weren’t getting met. He
expected to be healed in person, something he very well may have
associated with being RESPECTED as an important person. So, I’m
thinking his need TO MATTER wasn’t being met!

When
his servants heard him, and heard him well, they were able to respond
to his need and help him reframe the possibilities. They helped him
meet his need to matter in how they listened to him and responded to
him, and that freed him up! Once his need to matter was being met,
he was able to give the washing in the River Jordan a try.

Truly,
in this story, people do a lot of good listening (and some good
speaking) that ends up making a big difference:

The
slave girl listens to the issues of her masters – and with a tender
heart.
The
mistress listens to the advice of her slave.
A
spouse listens to the advice of another spouse.
A
king listens to a general.
A
king listens to a prophet (that almost NEVER happens in the Bible).
And
then the general listens to his servants, and to the prophet.

All
in all, this whole story is extraordinary, more so in the listening
than in the healing that ensues. Repeatedly
people listen to others who would normally be considered below them,
and are blessed by the wisdom imparted.
It is a case where listening to seemingly strange advice leads to an
unexpectedly good outcome. Namaan’s listening is imperative to his
healing. It allows others to bless him with their knowledge and
wisdom! He was able to receive the gifts they wanted to give him
because he listened to them. They were able to give him the gifts he
needed, because they listened as well.

Between
the gift of prayer itself, which is (among other things) the
experience of being listened to with love by the Holy One’s Own Self,
and the ways we are gifted by being able to be listened to by each
other, there are many opportunities for healing in our lives.
Assuming the veracity of the sending out of the 70, I still don’t
really know what they did. But I rather love the idea that they
might have been listening to people and thereby connecting them to
the love of God! It could have been very healing for everyone
involved, especially when it happened across boundaries that weren’t
supposed to be crossed!

Dear
Ones, as you leave this place, I hope you will find ways to listen:
to each other, to strangers, to others you meet along the way, to the
Holy One, and to the deepest part of yourselves. The gift of healing
is as close at hand as our ability to listen. May we practice well.
Amen

–

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

July 3, 2016

Sermons

Untitled

April 17, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m cheating. The Acts reading is supposed to be the reading today according to the Revised Common Lectionary whose advice I tend to follow most of the time. The Mark reading is not. It simply made sense to me that we should look at these two stories together. In truth, the nerdiest option would have been to use Luke 8:40-56 as the gospel reading, because then we’d be dealing with two versions of a story from the SAME AUTHOR, but Luke edits out Mark’s verbatim, “Talitha, cum” and I wanted to include it, so I let story telling take precedence this week. So I’m cheating on the Lectionary AND on my inner nerd for the sake of this sermon.

In Acts Peter uses the woman’s name. Tabitha, which means gazelle, to say “Tabitha, get up.” In Mark, Jesus says “Talitha, cum” and texts tells us that it means, “Little girl, get up.” The characters are not the same. Tabitha in Acts is a faithful disciple, a follower of the way, well known and well loved for her generosity and kindness. The sweet little detail about her death – that as the people gathered around to grieve, they showed each other the articles of clothing that she had made them – seems to bring the story across time. Those who make handmade clothing still often have that impact on others. (ah hem. Needlework ministry.)

Talitha is not a name. We don’t know the name of the 12 year old girl in Mark. She’s the daughter of a local religious leader, and that’s all we know. In fact, her story is told around the edges of the story of the hemorrhaging woman. The woman had been bleeding for 12 years. The girl had been alive for 12 years. 12 isn’t usually a random number in Scripture, it tends to refer to Israel as a whole. Perhaps the suggestion here is that Jesus was healing all of Israel.

So, the people who are healed are not the same. Tabitha is a grown woman, the little girl is not. Yet, Tabitha and talitha, sound really similar. This leaves us with two options. One is that there is one story remembered in two variations. The other is that they’re told in similar ways in order to make a particular point. In that case, the point is that Peter was presented as being like Jesus. The power that Jesus had possess to heal, even to call someone back from (the brink of) death, now resided in Peter. That’s the story of resurrection – that the Body of Christ which was once limited to Jesus himself now becomes the shared reality of the disciples of Christ. The powers that Jesus once held are now shared among his followers. If the stories are intentionally similar, it is to make just that point. If not, it is worth wondering why this story so pervaded the collective consciousness of the early Christian movement to be remembered in multiple ways.

Now, as the three people who are healed in these two stories are all women, it is a excellent reminder that Jesus (and the early church) cared enough about women to spend time healing them. Unfortunately, to have integrity with these passages requires more than just pointing out that women matter too or that Peter was able to act as a healer as Jesus had acted as a healer. To have integrity requires acknowledging that while these stories made sense in a first century context, they’re quite challenging to faith today, especially faith that does not wish to ignore the gift of scientific knowledge.

Within the first century context in which they were written, it wasn’t so hard. Contemporary medicine was quite un-advanced and both sickness and healing were best understood as demons entering and leaving the body. So, faith healing was as good of an explanation as anything, and to associate Jesus/Peter with raising women assumed dead wasn’t particularly extraordinary, though it was certainly an affirmation of them.

We don’t exist in the same worldview anymore, and I don’t think we’re supposed to. We don’t associate illness with demons. We don’t associate healing with exorcisms. And, I suspect that if we take these stories seriously enough, we can start to get squirmy. They don’t make sense, and yet there are a LOT of healing stories in the Gospels and beyond. What are we to do with stories that present Jesus as having healing superpowers?

Taking the Bible seriously means we have to struggle with healing stories that don’t make a lot of sense to us as 21^st century Christians. So, what are our options?

Obviously, we could simply throw the stories out as fiction, and ignore them. This would fit if we think of the miraculous healings as simply being included so that people would take Jesus seriously as a teacher.
My seminary professors believed that the Gospels were written in the context of the Roman Empire, and were therefore intentionally designed to present Jesus as “better than” the various gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman tradition. Thus, in any given miracle story, they’d find a similar story from Greek or Roman God and point out that the Jesus version was BETTER. Then the miracles and healings are a form of bragging about how great Jesus was, and are designed to bring people to the faith.
Just to be contrary, we COULD take the stories as factual truths. That would likely lead us to assuming that Jesus was categorically different than any other human who walked the face of the earth, and fits very well within the idea that Jesus was God-incarnate. God’s power existed in his human form and was able to bring healing wherever God/Jesus choose. This leads us down a very dangerous path though, because if God is able to step in and heal anyone at any time, and simply chooses not to, then God is responsible for much of the suffering in the world.
My dear friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green suggests another alternative. She believes that Jesus loved people with the love that God has for them. She believes that love – true, pure, unadulterated, unconditional love – is healing to bodies and spirits. She thinks that when Jesus looked someone in the eye or touched them while being connected to the depth of God’s love for them, they were profoundly changed, and often healed. More and more it seems that science shows us how connected our bodies and spirits really are… our stress impacts our heartrates, our sadness lowers our immune systems, our joy helps our digestion. It makes sense that experiencing deep pure love could provide healing to people. It doesn’t quite make sense out of raising people from death or comas, but it sure gets us closer. (And, of course, in this case it presumes that that love was then passed to Peter and therefore to us.)
I think there is one more option (beyond the option to take each of these with some seriousness and bounce between them as we see fit). I think there is an option to see the stories PRIMARILY as metaphor. Or, as John Dominic Crossan likes to say, “there are parables ABOUT Jesus” in addition to the “parables of Jesus.” The healing stories can be mined for their meaning without assuming that they happened as they’re said to happen. That is, think about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Did it happen? Well, probably not. There is no reason whatsoever to think that Jesus was telling a story that ACTUALLY happened, but it doesn’t matter in the least IF it happened, because the story itself is the point. It is possible to consider the healing narratives in the same way.

While leaving you the freedom to choose whichever of the options you like most today, I am going to focus on the last one. In the Gospel lesson two healings are woven together into a single narrative. In one case the young girl is restored to life, she had been (presumed) dead. In another case a woman was restored to life, she had been impoverished and weakened for 12 years, and connecting to Jesus restored her to full life. The two stories interweave, suggesting that the fullness of life restored is as valuable as life restored. Perhaps they suggest that Jesus offers a new way of life and fuller, more abundant form of life. Likely, because they are intersecting and because the both use the number 12, the indication is that the healing of God is both individual and communal.

In any life there are places of brokenness and hurt in need of healing. In most lives there are pieces of ourselves that are presumed dead – or have simply been bleeding for so long that it is unimaginable that they will ever stop. Yet, this story suggests that God’s creative life-force energy is not stopped in the places we presume it will end. Jesus called the young girl back to life. God calls us to a fuller and more whole life, including by healing the places within us that we’ve assumed are unhealable or dead.

I may be more aware of the places that we assume are dead communally than individually. While we believe in a God who calls forth life, and life abundant, taking a look at the world can be deeply troubling. Can God really heal racism when it is so entrenched? What about sexism and heterosexism? Can God really heal the multi-generational brokenness of communities? Is peace truly possible? What about justice? Economic inequality is at its all time peak today, and yet with the powers of the military and the threat of nuclear war, is it truly possible to think that it it can be peaceably rebalanced? More simply, given that corporations are now legally, “people” is campaign finance reform truly feasible? What will it take for people to stop making stupid laws about who can pee in what bathroom and instead focus on providing quality education and health care to all people? More locally, what sort of trust do we have that New York State will ever fully fund it’s own legal obligations to school districts – particularly urban districts with mainly students of color – and give students a fair chance in life? That is, what would it take for society to see that all of God’s people are are deeply and infinitely valuable? Can God really do all that? The stories, and our faith, tell us that God is loving, creative, powerful, and at work in the world in individual AND communal healing.

The continuation of the story in Acts, with Peter, suggests that we have powers of healing as well! The community of faith is able to be a source of healing in the world, and I have certainly known it to be so. I was a quiet and awkward child, but my church loved me as I was and saw potential in me. I was scared and self-conscious high school graduate, but church camp had a place to receive my gifts. When I came here, to this church, I was still aching from the loss of my beloved Annual Conference, and I was afraid that the gifts I had weren’t wanted in The United Methodist Church. Communal healing has also been visible in my life. The power of being loved by a community changes lives. That is, throughout my life, God has been a source of healing – individual and communal – and God’s people have been a source of healing – individual and communal.

Love really does heal. Thanks be to God. Amen

Sermon Talk Back Questions

Where have you seen God at work in healing in your own life?

Where have you seen God at work healing in our communities?

Which ones of the 5 options do you find useful in your life today?

Has that changed over the course of your lifetime?

Are there other options that you use that I’ve missed?

What do YOU make of these two similar stories?

–

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

April 17, 2016