Untitled

September 22, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Who We Are” based on Exodus 3:1-14a and Mark 9:30-35 (Homecoming Sunday)

I was once lucky enough to spend a term studying at Oxford, specifically at Magdalen College, where a portion of the campus was referred to as the “New Quad” and dated to about 1733. The day after I arrived back in the United States I heard on the radio about a “great historical find” of a 100 year old Buffalo Bill poster. I remember wondering what the people at Magdalen would call something so new as to be only 100 years old.

This congregation was founded in that same century as the new quad… although a little later. We were founded in 1789, and our current church building dates to almost a hundred years later, in 1872. We’ve now been in this building for 152 years, although like Americans, we don’t refer to it as the new church anymore 😉

Our history books tell wonderful stories of the faithfulness of our fore-bearers in faith, and their commitment to God and each other. They also tell stories of change! This is the 3rd church building this community built – 4th location, and as it was being built the first worship space as over the fellowship hall in a space we mostly don’t use anymore. The now Wesley Lounge was the original church office, and the education wing didn’t come along until the 1950s. Bill Isles once said he’d been fighting leaks in the roof since then.

I’m often awed as I look at the long list of pastors who have served this church – found on the walls just before you enter the Narthex. It is also notable how many years of one-year service there was in those early days. Maybe the biggest change in the list of clergy is the relatively recent inclusion of women, staring 45 years ago with Rev. Eileen Demming.

I also think about the technological changes that have happened over the course of this church’s history. When the church began the US Postal Service was brand new and Post Offices were just beginning to be build. This church saw the advent of the telegram, the radio, the telephone, electric lights, television, fax machines, the internet and email, cell phones and text messages, social media, and even Zoom. Thanks Thomas Edison and GE! These all impacted how life was lived, and thus how ministry played out. Honestly, 5 years ago we lacked live-streaming and Zoom meetings – can you even remember that??

This week we had a meeting to plan our fall retreat – and it was so interesting to hear the beloved traditions of the past meet the needs and values of the present day. I loved it because that’s pretty must the gist of everything. In Christianity we talk about the “Living Tradition” where we honor and respect the past, and use its wisdom, while bringing it into the present day and leaving behind what no longer serves us while adding in what we now need. Everything in church is Living Tradition as I see it – from the church retreat to the worship liturgy, from coffee hour to the church library.

We have this constant awareness of and gratitude for the past, while also holding the present and the future together. Over the course of the past year we’ve made some plans for more change. While this building was bustling with ministry activities in the 1950s, it is now more building than we really need. The maintenance and upkeep of the building take a lot of energy and resources, we love it, but it drains us. This church has decided to go forward, looking at ways this building can be a resource for the community while also becoming a source of financial stability.

I’ve was awed and amazed to watch the Holy Spirit at work in this community as this way forward was discerned. The part I loved best was watching various groups of people gather together with fear and trepidation about the future, and then think about what it could mean if our building could be used fo provide low-income housing AND financial stability, and see each group get excited and hopeful.

It is a huge change, and it is going to take a lot of work, but the decision is one that was made with incredible faithfulness. And, it is a continuation of the history of change and the reality of the living tradition.

In Exodus this morning we heard the familiar story of Moses encountering the burning bush and hearing God’s name. The New Interpreter’s Bible emphasizes the verbs of God in this passage. God says, “I have seen… I have heard… I have known… I will send…. I am.” It may just be me, but I hear the living tradition right there! God is “The Great I Am”, or “I Am Who I Am” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be” but God is also impacted by what God sees and hears, and acts accordingly. God’s nature is constant – loving mercy all the way through AND God is responsive to human needs and activities.

I loved that our “We Cry Justice” reading reminded us that after Moses saw the burning bush, and went to do what God directed, and the people were freed, and they came out to the wilderness, they returned to the burning bush. And it is there, in the place they are told that God heard them, saw them, considered them, cared for them, and that God simply was, that they work together to figure out the future as God’s beloveds.

In this story, the burning bush is sort of interesting in that it’s only purpose was to get Moses’s attention so that he’d listen to God. Also, there is an angel, but the angel does say or do anything, the angel’s only purpose is to get Moses’s attention so that he’ll listen to God. The bush isn’t the message. The angel isn’t the message. God just wants Moses to pay attention.

I suspect that God puts burning bushes in front of us multiple times a day. Thich Naht Hahn taught that in the communities he founded every time a bell rang the community members were to take a moment to stop, listen, and pay attention to the wonder all around them. He said that it changed the way they answered the phone. I believe there may be fewer bells and notifications in monastic life than modern life, but perhaps that makes it far MORE important for us to try that exercise. Every time a bell rings, a phone vibrates, or an app gives us a notification we too could stop, listen for a moment, and be grateful for the wonder around us.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of times a day for me. And that’s just BELLS. It is also true that in every other human being we encounter a beloved of God, and they may each be a burning bush inviting us to attend to the wonder of each human.

Sometimes God calls us to sit still, and just be. Sometimes God calls us to move, and just be. (I think all of us are called to both at various times.)

I suspect we all could get better at listening to those calls. How do you get them? What is your burning bush? Could it be bells? Notifications? Other people? An internal sense of unease? Maybe just hungry – it may be that we want to think anew about the tradition of table grace, and face each time we nourish our bodies as the true and wonderful miracle it is, and take a moment to be grateful to God and all the people who make it possible for us to eat and drink each thing before us.

I wrote in the August newsletter about my hopes that we would take this election cycle and time of uncertainty as an invitation to deepen our spiritual practices so that we can respond out of being centered in God’s grace. I intended to keep talking about it through August but… well, life went ahead and changed on me and here I am back in the pulpit as of today.

It is so easy to be pulled off kilter by the truly concerning realities around us.

I believe the question for us today, the question of who we are becoming, is how we can care as deeply as ever, while also being able to hold our center. Psalm 1 talks about the people who delight in God as being like trees planted by streams of water, “which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” It is my conviction that God is a constant source of love, hope, peace, and joy. God is always with us, God is calling to us with our own burning bushes, God is accessible. We are able to connect to the source of love, hope, peace, and joy. We are able to be like trees planted by the streams – with deep roots in God’s goodness. And when do so, we are able to be stronger in our compassion for others AND our centeredness that cannot be shaken.

Many of us are worried about what will happen. We are also, of course, worried about what is happening and what has happened. Things are not as they should be, and even the most optimistic outcomes aren’t going to solve issues like hungry, homelessness, war, and violence. We are people of faith in the midst of a broken AND beautiful world.

The Bible is full of stories of being in a beautiful and broken world, and finding God in the midst of it. This is just how things go. We don’t get to wait for things to be OK before we deepen our faith. Faith happens in the midst of reality.

In Mark, we hear the line, “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus saw the hierarchies of his world, and he had no patience for them. He inverted everything he could, and led people to question the very idea that someone should be at the bottom (or top) of a hierarchy.

This is one of the core messages of our faith. This is part of who we are becoming as we connect more and more deeply with God. God’s unconditional love for all people becomes the most important truth and everything else fades away. Along with changing how we see others, this also changes how we see ourselves and loosens the grip of the narrative that we are supposed to compete to be “good enough to be loved.” We are loved. That’s the first thing we teach each other in faith. God loves us. All. That’s where it all begins, and I think even where it all ends.

We have a long history of sharing God’s love with each other and the world. And the changes that are coming are yet another expression of love. And, no matter what the world throws at us – let’s deepen our roots into God’s goodness so we are ready to respond with love and love alone. Amen

September 22, 2024

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

Uncategorized

Untitled

September 17, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Our Prayer” based on Psalm 71:1-6, Matthew 6:9-13

In June, after we celebrated the life of Walter Grattidge, I was walking through the sanctuary with the intention of putting my microphone away. Three people were in the sanctuary, seemingly admiring the stained glass, which was a little unusual because Dottie Gallo’s cooking creations were available at that time in Fellowship Hall.

I believe I said something incredibly profound, like “I’m putting my mic away, but while I’m here, can I help you with anything?” The answer was unexpected.

The three people turned out to be a mother, a daughter, and the daughter’s husband. The mother was raised in this church, and was a teenager in the 1940s when Rev. Dr. Lee Adkins Sr. was pastor here. I’ve heard wonderful things about the ministry of Rev. Dr. Adkins Sr., but the story she told was the best one yet:

She was a curious and thoughtful young person, and she struggled with the stories she heard in Sunday School and how she was taught to interpret them. In her frustration, she went to Rev. Adkins to ask him some pointed questions. (Already, I’m loving this story – right? She’s feisty, she’s good at Biblical interpretation, and she has access to the Sr. Pastor as she should.)

She named her concerns, and in response he ask her to listen to a story. His story was this:

When he was a young man he was struggling to decide what to do with his life. One day, he was hiking, and when he got to the top of a mountain, and the sky opened up before him, he saw written in the clouds “Preach,” and he knew his life’s work.

He then told her to go home, think about his story, and come back in a week or two and explain it to him. She did. She thought long and hard about it. When she returned she said to him, “I do not believe that the clouds actually said ‘preach.’ I think you were moved by the beauty and sense of awe around you, and you found within yourself clarity on your life’s work, and the best way you can communicate that is to say that the clouds spelled out ‘preach.’”

Now -get this – this is my favorite part. He said, “OK, go home and think about it for another week or two and come back again.” Now, she said that she was really wanting to give the “right” answer and it was quite distressing to be sent away to try again. But she did, and when she came back said to him, “I stand by my answer.” And he smiled and said, “good.”

He affirmed her capacity to think, to interpret, to use her reason, and in doing so gave her ways to approach the Bible and the world.

She said that she was taking her family on a tour of her life, and they were in Schenectady so she could show them the church. (They live in Western Canada I think.) The following day we were having our combined Pride services, and they’d known about that and just walked by hoping to get in. Her family had left Schenectady soon after the story she told me, her father’s job changed. But for her that conversation with her pastor opened up the world. She is now a great-grandmother, and she talked about being formed by that permission to be curious and reasonable, and how in her family there are now 4 generations of people who are who they are because she was given permission to THINK about her faith by her pastor.

I’ve been holding this story (not perfectly, sometimes it slips out because it is so good), but holding it for preaching for this day. Because when we think about Homecoming and what it means to come home to this church, I think that story has some pretty central themes about who this church has been and who this church is.

This is a place where faith and reason are welcome together. This is a place where curiosity is welcome. This is a place where people know that the Bible’s truths are often shared in metaphor. This is a place that seeks to form people with permission giving, rather than limitations.

Which gets me to a second central piece of how I know you, First Schenectady United Methodist Church. Some years ago now when asking parents about what color blanket they wanted for their baby’s baptism, their response was “We’d like a rainbow blanket, because we want our child to know they will be loved as whoever they are.” I completely copied them when it was my turn 😉

One of the many joys of being the pastor here has been the chance to get to know people who were raised in this church as I have worked with them to prepare the Celebrations of Life for their parents. I know of any stories of the church’s children of the 20th century being wrapped in rainbow. However, as I’ve gotten to know those who were raised in the church, I’ve been astounded to find some deep similarities.

The men who were raised in this church are unusually kind, considerate, empathetic, gentle, and thoughtful. The women who were raised in this church are usually self-assured and able to be appropriately assertive. Let’s be honest, those things both break gendered stereotypes, but fit the fullness of the human experience. This church raised people with the space to be the best and most authentic version of who they were, and made space and capacity to reject the norms of society that put people into boxes.

I was able to put my finger on what was so extraordinary several years ago now, and it has been really fun to see my theory confirmed over and over again since.

Dear ones, the impact of this church in the world is HUGE – even if all we count is how the people raised in this church were given the love, space, and capacity to become fully themselves. This church has been a counter-cultural force for good for a VERY LONG TIME.

This church has been doing God’s work for a long time.

Thank God.

And thank you.

I have been reminded this week of how beautiful and delightful this world really is. And it is beautiful even while it is broken. The beautiful and the broken are simply both true.

As people of faith, we are given the great gift of being reflective about how we respond to the world. So much of what we do together is reflecting on what is good, what is God, and how we can respond. We have the chance to think about, and practice, centering down with God, centering down to relationships, centering down to simply enjoy the goodness of life – and then using the energy we have gathered in the centering down to seek justice for God’s people. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to get to do??

The Lord’s Prayer is full of layers of meaning, has been examined with rich study, and there are translations of it that make my heart stir. We can’t get into most of that in an even vaguely reasonable time frame, so I just want to focus today on the last line in our reading, “and do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from that which is evil.” The rescue is sometimes deliverance, and deliverance is interesting in the Bible because it is the original meaning of salvation. As Dr. Gafney says, “Salvation in the Hebrew Bible is physical and material deliverance or rescue of an individual or community from enemies.”1

The rescue that we need, the deliverance that we need, changes with time, changes with the communities we live in, changes with our own needs. But the reason this prayer still resonates all these years later in all kinds of different places is that a need for rescue is a pretty common human experience.

Yolanda Norton translates that line as “separate us from the temptation of empire and deliver us into community.”2

Thank God that God HAS delivered us, into community, into THIS community, beautiful and broken as this one is, it helps us be a part of rescuing the world. Thank God. Amen

1Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), 284.

2Gafney, 285

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

September 17, 2023

Uncategorized

“Are We Lost?” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

In
simpler times I have heard the parables of the lost coin and the lost
sheep in simpler ways. One can take the perspective of the 99 sheep
or the 9 coins and be rather irked at the ways the 1 is celebrated.
One can take the perspective of the seeker, and join in the joy of
finding the one. One can take the perspective of the outside
observer and wonder if leaving 99 sheep unattended is really the best
way to move towards having 100 sheep, or if throwing a party worth
more than the found coin is the best use of money.

Of
course, there is the most obvious option of taking the perspective of
the lost sheep and being grateful for the shepherd who comes looking
and rescues one from peril (or perhaps pulls you out of a great
tasting meadow, who knows?) Identifying with the sheep is a little
easier than the coin, but nevertheless, the awareness that when we’re
lost we need help is an easy one to turn to.

These
times, beloveds, are not simple times.

In
this time when I read the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin I
think to myself, “are we lost or found?” and I find that the
answer is “I don’t know.” Or, more honestly, the answer is “Yes,
we are lost. Yes, we are found. Yes.”

I
remember preaching in 2016 about the articles I was seeing about how
the 2016 election cycle was doing heavy damage to our country’s
mental health, and therapists were urging people to engage in breaks
from the news, in meditation, in breathing exercises. They were
worried about the stress destabilizing us individually and
collectively. I remember seeing what they were talking about, in
myself and in this church. Tempers were shorter, nuance got lost,
there was more right/wrong and us/them thinking. Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate grew out of that the time, because of the radical
increase in hate crimes.

Here
is the bad news. At this point I think of 2016 as a simpler time.

Sure,
there were oodles of stress. Sure I saw myself, others, and the
church community get worse at basic functioning. Sure, The United
Methodist Church was a dumpster fire. Sure, polarization was at all
time highs. But, that level of communal chronic stress was at that
point relatively new. (We didn’t know it then.)

For
me, the Trump presidency was a daily kick in the gut, or more
specifically in every value I hold dear. And, because I’m not
actually interested in dismissing people because they think
differently from me, I’m aware that for those whose values were
upheld by the Trump presidency, the squeals of horror and outrage
about everything he did ALSO shook them to the core. And, let us
never forget, that foreign adversaries have taken advantage of
differences between us to further polarization, because it benefits
THEM for us to have more HATE in our society.

So,
the stress of the election didn’t settle down. Things kept getting
worse. Then there was the 2019 General Conference of The United
Methodist Church when our denomination doubled down on homophobia and
it became clear that our church at large is not centered in the love
of God. That was a blow, at least to me.

Then
the COVID pandemic began, and we’re sure sick of talking about it,
not to mention living it, I know. But it is relevant here. The
pandemic shook every single part of our society and our lives. And
nothing is the same.

And
quite often we HATE that. Fine, quite often I hate that. It is
disconcerting. It is depressing. It is overwhelming. And then
there are the STILL present challenges of determining where the right
balances are between risks of infecting others with a serious illness
and risks of disconnection and loneliness (which itself can also be
deadly), and the simple deciding is exhausting.

The
stress level has been rising since 2016, sometimes just a slow steady
beat upwards, sometimes in leaps. There are PHYSIOLOGICAL facts
about stress. It makes us less creative. It makes us less
compassionate. It pushes us into black and white thinking. It leads
us into in-group thinking, and making enemies of others. It makes us
selfish.

None
of which look anything like following Jesus. Right?

That’s
a little squirmy for me. That the impacts of stress impede the
capacity to follow Jesus. Because I don’t really get to control
the world and the stresses it throws at me, nor at us. All
of which gets me around to why I think the answer is “yes, we’re
lost.”

But
perhaps you’d like to hear why I think the answer is ALSO, “yes,
we’re found?”

The
starting and ending point of “we’re found’ are quite simple: I do
not believe it is possible to wander away from God. Or, at least, it
is not possible to wander beyond the reaches of God’s love. And, as
God is everywhere, anywhere we are is with God, and God knows where
we are, so we are found. (By God.)

But,
in case that isn’t actually enough for you (although, it is rather a
lot), I’d like to point out what you are doing RIGHT NOW. You are
listening to a sermon. Now, I don’t know all of your personal
reasons for why you do that, but I know some things. I know you have
lots of other things you could be doing, and when you do this you are
making a choice. There seems to be strong evidence that you would
listen to a sermon because you are interested in what makes a good
life and/or in how to live a Godly life and/or in considering how to
get from the world as it is to the world as God would have it be. It
could be you are looking for reasons for hope, or looking for
analysis of what’s going on, or to make meaning of the world, or to
make meaning of life, or maybe you are mostly doing this because
other people you like also do this and you want to connect with them.

Those,
dear ones, are really beautiful reasons to do a thing.

I
remain shocked that this thing we know as church exists. Hear me
out! So, a bunch of people connect with each other and are connected
by their shared commitment to God and living as followers of Jesus.
So they create spaces to work together and worship together. They
give significant gifts of time to caring for the needs of the church
and the community, to learning together and playing together and
doing important things together.

Then,
and this is the one that keeps on shocking me, they give MONEY to the
church. Enough to PAY STAFF even (AND take care of the building,
another miracle). Staff to help take care of the resources (sexton,
building), staff to take care of the community (breakfast cook),
staff to take care of the communication and connections
(administrative assistant), and even staff to take the time to listen
to the world and the Bible and the people and try to help make sense
of things (pastor.)

I
am amazed that you all do this. It is INSANE.

You
realize how much time, energy, money, and frustration you’ve given to
this place right? When people say “church family” they may in
fact be reflecting that some of the demands family puts on our lives
is similar to the demands church puts on their lives.

But
this is also GOOD NEWS. Because in the midst of this world, people
are giving of themselves in hope that what we do together is part of
building better lives and a better world. Lives are changed here, by
friendship, by theology, by study, by singing, by hope. We are more
together than we could ever be apart.

And
even now, even when everything is different, even when showing up is
in multiple mediums and often feels SO strange compared to what we
knew in the past – even now, you all keep on caring enough to
listen, to try, to work towards good. And that’s about as “found”
as I can imagine existing. I am, quite honestly, profoundly moved
that you exist and keep on keeping on.

There
is a final piece to this though. It isn’t just that we are lost and
we are found, as two separate pieces. It is also that we are lost
and found, both at the same time, and that has its own truth. This
week I got an email from a clergy coach who talked about this, and
while I want to share everything Rev. Lauren Stephens-Reed said, I’m
condensing to this:

leading
innovation is about getting people to co-create the future with you.
This
kind of approach is warranted when your purpose is clear but the
future is not. Is there any better descriptor of – any greater need
in – this time in the Church, in the world?

I
do believe our purpose is clear. We are co-creating the kindom of
God with God. We work together to promote the idea that the kindom
and its values are important, to help each other learn in order to
build the kindom, and to help each other live its values. We don’t
know everything, but we do know that some of the prime values of the
kindom are love, justice, compassion, and inclusion, so we work on
those. We are going it TOGETHER because we believe we are more
together than apart.

So,
we don’t know how to get to the future.

That’s
OK.

God
does, and God will lead us, TOGETHER.

We
are lost dear ones, and we are found, dear ones. And it is hard but
it is OK. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

September 11, 2022

Sermons

“Central Goal of Life” based on Rev. 21:1-6 and Matthew…

September 15, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
original meaning of the word “believe” didn’t have anything to do
with what we think or what we mentally affirm. It had to do what
what we “belove” – how we act. We’re looking at beliefs right
now, for the purpose of considering what we belove, and to check and
see if our lives are lined up with what we belove.

We
are comparing three different believe systems: Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism, the Christian Right, and “Jesus Following”. Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism was identified by sociologist through a large
research project with US teens, and is the actual belief system of
most teens, despite any religious tradition they claim. Furthermore,
as teens are most heavily influenced by their parents when it comes
to faith, we have reason to believe that a rather large segment of
the population actually believes “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
So, we are looking at it, and finding where it does and doesn’t match
our actual faith tradition.

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points.

“A
god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
life on earth.”
“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in
the Bible and by most world religions.”
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
“God
does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
God is needed to resolve a problem.”
“Good
people go to heaven when they die.”

This
week we are going to take a closer look at the third of the them:
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel
good about oneself.” For me, at least, this is a complicated
statement. I don’t disagree. However, before you get your hopes up
for a really short sermon, I don’t actually agree either. I have no
objection to happiness or feeling good about yourself – I’m all for
that – but I still think it falls short as the CENTRAL goal of life.
So, YES, we are meant to be happy and it is great when we can feel
good about ourselves BUT….

And
the BUT has three parts. We’re gonna take two of them together. So
first,… BUT we don’t really know how to seek our own happiness and
actually find it! And, secondly, … BUT we are not called to be so
individualistic. We are meant to increase joy in the world, yes, and
to increase the ways that people notice goodness and God-ness in
themselves, but not JUST for ourselves – for each other! More
interestingly, most studies suggest that the best way to make
yourself happy is to bring joy to others.

In
one of those studies, they gave people money with instructions.
Those told to spend it on themselves did, and those told to spend it
on others did. And who was happier the next day? Those who spent
the money on others. The boost in their joy was bigger and longer
lasting – having given someone ELSE a gift. They tried it with
various amounts of money, in a few countries, under different
scenarios, and it held. Further, they also found that if people were
given money and instructed to spend it on a team member, the success
rates of the whole team when up! (True of sports teams and business
teams.)

Studies
also say that the happiness of our friends friends friends impacts
our own! We are social animals, impacted deeply by one another, and
the best way to increase our own happiness is to increase the
happiness of others. On the converse, self-indugence doesn’t bring
happiness.

If
you want to increase your happiness, spend more time with people you
love – engaging with them – and bringing them joy. These two
objections really end up being similar. We are called as Christians
to seek goodness together, and that’s how it really works.
Other studies also point out that when we are doing the work we love
best we are profoundly happy. This suggests a way of understanding
our roles in the world as our calls by God. Amazingly though, that
happiness that we have when we lose ourselves in a task we love –
we all tend to describe it as a way of NOT being in ourselves. There
is something to giving ourselves away that is deeply related to
happiness.

I
chose two scriptures this week to offer the Christian perspective on
happiness, mostly because either of them individually seemed
incomplete. The Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes,
the “blessed are they…” which are sometimes actually translated
“happy are they….” or could be translated “fortunate are
they…” but the blessing or the happiness are definitely NOT the
assumed ones.

The
beatitudes don’t say blessed are the rich because they can buy what
they want or blessed are the young because they don’t have aches and
pains or blessed are the aged because they have enough wisdom or….
or anything like that! They say, blessed are the peacemakers,
blessed are the humble, blessed are those who mourn! The beatitudes
turn upside the idea of who is lucky, and with whom God’s presence is
found, but they can be read, easily, as a means of social happiness.
This fits with the Gospel message itself.

Let’s
look at them: Blessed are the:

…the
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3) – those
who do not seek wealth for themselves, or well-being for themselves,
but for others.

…those
who mourn: for they will be comforted. (5:4) – those who have
loved.

…the
meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (5:5) – those who let
others get what they need.

…those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be satisfied.
(5:6) – those who care for the needs of others

…the
merciful: for they will be shown mercy. (5:7) – those who are
merciful and kind to others

…the
pure in heart: for they shall see God. (5:8) – those who love with
purity.

…the
peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. (5:9) –
those who bring wholeness to others

…those
who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. (5:10) – those who believe enough to be willing
to take on pain for others

Who
are the happy? The blessed? The fortunate? The ones in deep and
wonderful relationships with others – the ones giving themselves
away to others. The ones whose lives intersect.

The
second scripture is a vision of the completion of the kingdom of God
on earth, the coming of God’s spirit to dwell with the people, in a
time without death or pain or sorrow. Its the ultimate “happiness”
and its for the people as a whole. Its the goal toward which we aim,
as Christians, the completion of the kindom of God.

Which
gets us to the third objection. YES,
we are meant to be happy and it is great when we can feel good about
ourselves BUT….it is not the central point. The central point is
building the kindom of God. Because I believe these two things are
the same thing expressed in different ways, I can also say, the
central point is sanctification – creating space for the process of
growing in love for God, self, and others. Our Jesus-following
tradition says that sanctification is a gift from God, but there are
known “means of grace” that are likely to open ourselves to the
process.

I
think joy is a means of grace, and hope that people take their joy as
a source of wisdom about their particular roles in the world. I
think God wants us to be joyful both because God loves us AND because
each instance of joy in the world is a blessing to others and
increases the wholeness of joy. But in the end I agree with the
often shared (and regularly misattributed) quote , “The meaning of
life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
Yes, this bring joy and happiness, but it also blesses the world.
And, dear ones, we are blessed TO BE blessings. Not just so we’re
happy while others … aren’t!!

Thus
far I’ve left the Christian-Right out of this conversation. I’ve
argued only with the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism perspective, and
shared from the Jesus-follower one. In this case the Christian-Right
perspective is radically different from both. Within the
Christian-Right, suffering is seen as redemptive. This one has bled
into mainstream Christianity in ways I’ve often worried about. In
other churches I’ve served there has been an innate fear of too much
pleasure, as if it is unholy to enjoy the goodness of life. But in
the Christian-Right this goes deeper, suffering is assumed to be a
punishment from God, a “gift” in the form of a lesson to be
learned, a way of knowing that one needs to seek forgiveness from
God. I’m told, however, that this assumption is sometimes biased:
other people’s suffering is thought to be good for them, but in one’s
own life the goal is to be blessed through righteousness rather than
suffering. The idea that the righteous are blessed directly and the
unrighteous are blessed through correction is inherent in this
perspective.

The
part of this that REALLY concerns me is that if suffering seen as
redemptive, the desire to lift people out of oppression is hindered.
You see, if suffering is … necessary… then there isn’t a reason
to worry about people in poverty, or about people being mistreated by
employers, or about people being abused…. because their suffering
brings them closer to God’s desires for them so it is … sort of
anyway… good. And, since the Christian-right is focused on
afterlife, the idea is often presented that suffering in this life
will be rewarded in the next… another motivation to allow the
suffering of people or groups.

Now,
I’m not entirely sure that the Jesus-following movement has a
fantastic theology of suffering. We tend to do one of two things:
ignore it and hope it goes away, or fight against suffering as
oppression as hard as we can. While the latter is something I value
in our believe/belove system, there ARE some sufferings of life that
are simply unavoidable. Making space for people to be in pain, and
to be heard and valued when they are in pain definitely matters to
making space for all of God’s people – and we can’t solve
everything. We can’t solve cancer, we can’t solve trauma, we can’t
solve grief. What we can do is be with people where they are, and I
hope that some of our work on sanctification/ kindom building is work
in increasing our capacity to sit with people who suffer.

I
think God is with people in suffering, and sometimes suffering can be
very holy work. However, I don’t think God ever GIVES people
suffering as punishment NOR as a lesson to be learned. That’s where
the Christian-Right and the Jesus-follower movements disagree.

So,
in the Jesus-follower perspective, happiness and joy are GOOD, but
they’re not everything. Suffering and pain are real, but they’re not
“gifts from God.” The central goal of life is not our own
happiness. Instead, the central goal of life is
sanctification/building the kindom. That is, the central goal of life
is increasing communal well-being – and with it communal joy and
happiness. God is working with us to bring more joy into the world –
for all. Thanks be to God. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 15, 2019

Sermons

“Blessings… We Hope” based on Isaiah 50:4-9a and James…

September 20, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the Isaiah passage, the suffering servant describes being attacked – hit from behind, beard hairs pulled out, and spit on. Yet, as he describes the attack, it becomes clear that the words said have done more harm than the physical attack. He speaks of being insulted. He claims it is only because of God that he is not disgraced, that he is not shamed, that he can stand strong. He will not be “found guilty” because God helps him. There are people who are attacking the suffering servant, and it is clear that their words hurt.

Most likely, the disagreement between the servant and his adversaries was a big one. This passage comes from the exile, when the leaders of the community of faith were residing in Babylon, trying to survive as slaves. Walter Brueggemann says, “It seems more likely to me that the abuse comes from other members of the exilic community who have worked out a sustainable compromise between Yahweh and the empire, who do not what to have the compromise exposed or questioned, and who do not want to be pressed to decide for Yahweh and for the disruptive venture of homecoming in a distinctive identity.”¹ It is easy to imagine that both sides of that argument – to conspire with oppressors or not – would have strong opinions and good motivation to attack the other side.

It is also easy, from 2500 years and half the world away, to see valid arguments on both sides. But it seems that in the midst of the disagreement, the ways it was approached did great harm. The suffering servant is known as just that – the one who suffers – and in this passage at least, he suffers because people disagree with him and make it personal!

The Isaiah passage is a case-in-point example of the argument that James is making. James uses a whole lot of examples to validate the two key verses 9 and 10, “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” James says that if we praise and bless God, it is INCONGROUS to curse seek harm to God’s beloved people. And just in case you had missed the memo, God’s beloved people and all human beings overlap are exactly the same groups.

James says that words have a whole lot of power, including power to do great harm, so we should be careful with them. Then he says that blessing God and cursing God’s people is utterly incongruous. It is like a grapefruit tree growing figs, or a fig tree growing olives. It can’t be. Or, at least, it ought not to be.

Understanding what James meant is not the difficulty. Figuring out how to live it is the hard part. Let’s get clear on what we’re trying to do first. To start with, I’m not certain what the text means by “blessing” nor by “cursing”. Don’t get worried about me, I looked it up in 5 books, they were just concerned with other questions so they didn’t answer mine. 😉 I THINK I know what each of those things means, but it always seems worth double-checking assumptions. Particularly on days when the scripture tells teachers to be extra-cautious.

The dictionary says that to bless is “to confer or invoke divine favor on.” The dictionary footnotes say that it got used to translate the words meaning “to praise” and “to worship” from Latin, which influences its nuance in English – and that helps us avoid a circular definition when it comes to understanding what it means to bless God.² Conversely, the dictionary says that a curse is “a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.”³

Not to be oppositional or anything, but it seems that the dictionary definition doesn’t exactly fit with what I’d expect. It seems to me that blessing has something to do with consecrating, that is, naming and acknowledging something for holy work. Cursing, as I think of it, has to do with wishing harm for another. This is why I wish the Bible commentaries told me exactly what it means, although I doubt they really know either. In any case, I think we have some shared sense – if broad – of what blessing and cursing are. You can go with the dictionary, with me, or with your own assumptions, I think they’ll all work.

So, what does it mean to bless God? Perhaps it just means to praise God or to worship God, perhaps it could be thought of as expressing gratitude to God for God’s goodness, mercy, and presence among us. What, then, would it mean to equivalently bless God’s people? Does it just mean seeing and remembering that each person is made in God’s image? Does it mean attending to the goodness within each one? Does it mean using our speak to build up one another? Does it require incessant praise, even if it is meaningless? Or is it more to see another, to listen to another, and to assume that the other’s being in the world is a sacred expression of the Divine – the each other person is made in the image of God and is thus infinitely beautiful??

I could ask the same questions about cursing God and cursing people, but I trust you to draw those conclusions without me knocking you on the head with them.

If, as James assumes, the response of the faithful to God and to God’s people should BOTH be words of blessing, how could we move towards that in our daily lives? How can we use our words for good? How can our tongues be blessings? When do we tend to mess this up??

One major issue to consider is how we respond to people who we think are wrong, as seen in the Isaiah passage!! I watched a TED talk about this recently, in which Karen Shultz outlines some common issues humans have when we disagree. Her talk was called “On Being Wrong” and she says:

“Think for a moment about what it means to feel right. It means that you think that your beliefs just perfectly reflect reality. And when you feel that way, you’ve got a problem to solve, which is, how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you? It turns out, most of us explain those people the same way, by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions. The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they’re ignorant. They don’t have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they’re going to see the light and come on over to our team. When that doesn’t work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they’re idiots. They have all the right pieces of the puzzle, and they are too moronic to put them together correctly. And when that doesn’t work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes. So this is a catastrophe.”⁴ (emphasis mine)

That sort of thinking is how we get to cases like the suffering servant. People simply disagree and then it grows into something MUCH larger. As a reminder, there are at least two more options for what might be happening when we disagree with someone: first that we might actually be mistaken (gasp!), and second that our worldviews lead us to different conclusions. Most of the time, I think disagreements come from different worldviews, and that’s a source of strength, when we let it be.

John Wesley, in his book “On Christian Perfection” says that all of us are wrong sometimes, and none of use know when we are wrong (or we’d have fixed it already!), therefore we should be humble when we disagree with another because it may well be one of the times we’re wrong. Between the two of them, Shultz and Wesley urge caution at the very least with speaking to someone you think is wrong. James, then, just adds a bit more – wish them well, and speak to them in ways that will lead to their well-being. It is a HIGH bar, but one worth seeking. So, when we start thinking someone is wrong is a VERY good time to consider how we might use our words as blessings, and not as curses!!

It is also very common to be in a position when we are feeling attacked and wanting to defend ourselves. I think most of the worst speaking I’ve ever done has been when I’ve been in that position. Both my words and my tone seem to leap out of my control! In those situations, we may identify with the servant in Isaiah, who was struck, had beard-hairs pulled out, was spit on, and insulted. That could raise most people’s defensive heckles, right??? Let’s be clear, it SHOULD. We are not people who advocate being passive in the face of harm. We are people who advocate being PEACEFUL in the in face of violence, but not PASSIVE in the face of harm. So, the servant says that with God’s help, he made it through and kept his dignity in tact through it all. He trusts that a reversal of fortunes is coming, and that the harm will end. He even suggests that those who have done harm might stand WITH him on that day.

The most practical wisdom teachers I know say that when we feel attacked we need to slow down and get curious. First ask: am I in harm’s way? If so, do whatever is possible to get away from it. Then ask: do I have the resources to hear and respond to this right now? If not, do all in your power to exit the conversation/experience safely. If, however, you are not in danger and you do feel like your internal resources are up to the task, then we get back to James’ teaching. Then we need to think about what it means to bless the person who got our heckles up, and how we can use our words – and tone – to seek their well-being and our own at the same time! That DEFINTELY requires keeping things slow, and staying with curiosity, and it tends to be a skill easiest to develop with those you already trust to like you, love you, and seek your well-being. Remember CURIOUSITY as a means of moving us to blessing, if you can!

Finally, the more I think about James affirming the importance of BLESSING and not cursing God’s beloved people, the more I suspect he was advising each of us on how we speak to OURSELVES. I don’t think I know anyone who speaks more harshly to other people than they do to themselves. In fact, most of the time when I hear people speaking harshly to others (myself included for sure), I suspect that the way they’re speaking is simply a toned-down reflection of how they speak to themselves. (By the way, this assumption helps me have a lot more compassion when people speak harshly.)

The ways most people speak to themselves sounds a lot more like cursing than it does like blessing. But James says we aren’t supposed to curse those made in the image of God, and that includes ourselves. It includes everyone else too.

So, dear ones, may we find ways to slow down our tongues, may we remember to be curious, and may our tongues be sources of blessings for God’s people, including ourselves. This world of ours is definitely in need of some blessings, and I hope we can be sources of it. Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 122.

2Apple Dictionary “bless” accessed 9/13/18.

3Apple Dictionary, “curse” accessed 9/13/18.

4 https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong/transcript?language=en, accessed 9/13/18

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 16, 2018