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Sermons

Lifting Eyes to the Hills

  • March 1, 2026March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Lifting Eyes to the Hills” based on Psalm 121 and Preface to Social Principles “Community of All Creation”

I am told that the Ancient Israelite temples were creation themed. I love that. I love how it connects our faith tradition to other traditions that were and are more earth based. I think about a tour I once took of a cathedral in Ecuador where the tour guide pointed out places the builders of the cathedral snuck in their own faith symbolism. The people doing the actual building had not been building of their own free will, and they’d not been converted to the faith that forced their labor. The symbols they added, though, were symbols of Mother-earth. And it is interestingly full circle that the “inserted” symbols were also a part the ancient Temples that pre-date our Christian tradition.

I also love that the Temple was creation themed because I think my own faith is creation themed and I like reminders that my faith is a valid expression of a long standing tradition – since sometimes I get messages that I’m too far out of the norm to count. Knowing God as Loving Creator is the foundation of my understanding of the Divine. Seeing glimpses of God in creation is a constant affirmation of my faith itself. Gleaning wisdom from creation has always been at least as important to me as gleaning wisdom from ancient patriarchal texts (the Bible, I’m talking about the Bible – I love it and struggle with it).

I’ve always read Psalm 121 and resonated with “I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” I’ve done that. A lot. When I’m driving on the interstates or country roads, I’m pretty constantly lifting my eyes to the hills and soaking in their beauty and wisdom. They speak to me of God. This is for me a comforting Psalm, a reminder of the ways that Creation speak truths to our souls, an affirmation that God is with us, a reassurance that all will be well.

Which means, if I’m honest, that I love it and savor it and inherently distrust it. Because, dear ones, not all is well and not all has EVER been well. This fact doesn’t even require keeping up to date on the news. So I looked this Psalm up in the Word Biblical Commentary and discovered some new ideas. The first is that there is significant debate if the opening line reads the way I always read it, “I lift my eyes up to the hills – this beautiful piece of creation that soothes my soul – from where will my help come? From the God of creation of course!” OR if it means something more like “I lift my eyes to the hills – those mountains I must climb, where dangers abound in my path, from where will my help come in having to traverse them?”

Well then, I’d always missed THAT possibility. But, its valid. And in both cases the answer is the same “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” Which is kinda great, that whether the hills are soothing or terrifying, the answer is that the God of Creation is with us.

The commentary suggests that in this Psalm the speaker has been at a Temple festival, and has been fed by being in that worshipful place and experience. The festival is ending, and the Psalmist is trying to find a way to live out the wonder of the Temple experience in day to day life. I can’t quite tell why they assume all this is true, but neither can I find a reason to disagree with it, so I’m going with it. The question of the Psalm then is how to trust in God in the day to day, and the Psalmist expresses convictions of how trustworthy God is. That said, I feel like the Psalmist goes overboard. The commentary explains, “Life is full of dangers, but Yahweh’s help is a match for them all. … In practical terms life cushioned from all unpleasantness was never the lot of the Israelite… but believers in any age hear this message deep in their hearts and are encouraged thereby to bear the heat and burden of the day and to sleep with contentment.”1

By the end of that, I hear the famous words of Julian of Norwich, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Julian found those words after decades of prayerful consideration of a single deathbed vision. They come out of pain, fear, and isolation to speak to the truth under it all.

Beloveds, there are all kinds of things that are not well. We could spend days making the lists of what is not well. Hmm, maybe months?

And at the same time, God is with us all. They’re both true. The worst things happening in the world, God is with the people experiencing them. They are not alone. Even more so, God is at work to care for God’s people, all of them, all the time. But quite often people get in God’s way.

God may be trying to shade us from the sun, but sometimes people cut down the trees! God has created plenty for us to eat, but we don’t distribute it well. God wants full and abundant lives for all of us and sometimes we humans drop bombs and missiles on people.

And STILL God is with us all.

God, the creator, dreams good dreams for us where we share in the abundance of God’s resources and take loving care of each other. And, in the meantime, in this world we live in, our help comes from God, who made heaven and earth.

Thanks be to God who is always with us. Amen

1Leslie Allen, Word Biblical Commentary Psalms 101-150, ed. Bruce M. Metzger et al (USA: Zondervan, 2002), p. 154

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

March 1, 2026

Sermons

The Beloveds

  • January 18, 2026March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“The Beloveds” based on Matthew 3:13-17 and The UMC Social Principle on Racism, Ethnocentrism, and Tribalism

Into a world obsessed with those who have power over others, comes this little story about John and Jesus. The story is a fight to the bottom of the power structure. It is clearly told by early Church to tell us things about Jesus, as it doesn’t really fit the realities of his life. But it is, nevertheless, a rich little story.

While Luke goes to great pains to set up John and Jesus as cousins, that doesn’t happen in Matthew. In Matthew, John is a prophet in the wilderness calling the people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” and baptizing the people in the River Jordan. John was functioning as a prophet, and he acquired students who learned from him and taught his ways. Students are also known as disciples, and the way one became a disciple of a teacher or prophet was to be baptized by him.

Which is to say, that by the best guess of the best historical scholars, based on what we know, Jesus was a disciple of John. He was baptized by John and learned from him. Later on, when John is killed, Jesus continues the ministry of John INCLUDING taking on his theme “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” as Jesus’s main theme. He does, eventually, make it is own.

So we have this historical detail that Jesus was baptized by John, adapted a bit by the early Jesus movement to make sure it is clear that the point of this story is JESUS and not JOHN. So they have John objecting to it, which probably didn’t happen. And they have the voice of God show up… and I have to say I’m less willing to fight about that one.

Why?

Because at every baptism I have ever been present to it has been as if God has been speaking saying, “this is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” So while I’m not about to claim that this voice of God was objectively heard by all present or anything, I think it is one of the fundamental truths of the universe that is especially noticeable at baptism and it seems feasible to me that people could have sensed it at the baptism of Jesus.

In Latin, the phrase is “imago dei” which translates to “in the image of God” and it is the church shorthand for “people are made in the image of God which means that each and every person is holy.” This is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. We share it with other faith traditions, it is a truth that cannot be easily contained.

Everyone is beloved by God. God wishes good for everyone.

And while I always I hear this truth reflected at baptism, let me state explicitly that it applies to people who are not baptized, people who are not Christian, and people who are not religious. Being beloved of God even applies to people who do great harm. That doesn’t mean God is in favor of people harming each other, God’s love for us is just so immense and foundational that it can’t be broken by human action.

(And, yes, sometimes we want to make lists of people who are JUST SO BAD that maybe they’re not included, but dear ones, EVERYONE means EVERYONE. And excluding people from God’s love is not how we practice our faith.)

This is one of the Sundays in the year where I think it is reasonable to engage in extended quotation, particularly of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In my favorite of his sermons, “Loving Your Enemies” he says:

I would like to have you think with me on a passage of scripture that has been a great influence in my life and a passage that I have sought to bring to bear on the whole struggle for racial justice, which is taking place in our nation. The words are found in the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew. And these words flow from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard it said of old that thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”5

These are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries men have argued that the actual practice of this command just isn’t possible. Years ago the philosopher Nietzsche contended that this command illustrates that the Christian ethic is for weak men, not for strong men, and certainly not for the superman.6 And he went on to argue that it was just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth.

But we have come to see today that, far from being the practical, the impractical idealist, Jesus is the practical realist, and the words of this text stand before us with new urgency. And far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, love is the key to the solution of the problems of our world, love even for enemies. Since this is a basic Christian command and a basic Christian responsibility, it is both fitting and proper that we stop from time to time to analyze the meaning of these arresting words.

There are many things that we must do in order to love our enemies, but I would like to suggest just three. Seems to me that the first thing that the individual must do in order to love his enemy is to develop the capacity to forgive with a naturalness and ease. If one does not have the capacity to forgive, he doesn’t have the capacity to love. …

The second thing is this. In order to love the enemy neighbor we must recognize that the negative deed of the enemy does not represent all that the individual is. His evil deed does not represent his whole being. …

The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy neighbor is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. …

Now for the moments left, let us turn from the practical “how” to the theoretical “why,” and ask the valid, the vital and valid question, Why should we love our enemies? …

I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.1

I commend the whole sermon to you, but I’m going to stop quoting now. While the evils of racism have never been defeated in our country, we are now – again – in a time when the “fierce urgency of now” is present. And, that means that as people of faith, we are once again called upon to reflect HOW we want to seek God’s work in the world. Are we people of love and of non-violence, who believe in the transformational power of love to change the world for the better? Are we willing to be people who practice forgiveness? Are we able to be people who believe in imago dei for those who are doing harm? Are we able to remember that people are more than their worst? Are we willing to reach out in love, over and over again, seeking the well being even of those who do us harm, even when they respond with hatred and violence? Are we willing to use our lives to show the power of meeting hatred with love? Are we strong enough to things God’s way?

There are people in this world, people with power, who don’t believe in imago dei. They believe that SOME people are more HUMAN than others, instead of believing that all people are sacred because all people are loved by God.

Beloveds, these are our “enemies.” And, they are people in need of transformation.

The work of responding to hatred with love changes everything. But it isn’t fast. This is the work of our whole lives. We are often going to be frustrated at backsliding and new incarnations of old evils. But we are people of God. We are people who believe in the power of love. We are people of HOPE. We are people who believe that God’s love is found in everyone and can be kindled into even the people most committed to wrongdoing.

We may not see visible progress right now, but I assure you God is at work. And every act of love matters.

We are called to love our neighbors, to love ourselves, and to love our enemies. Because it turns out all of those people are ones to whom God speaks saying “This is my child, my beloved.” Thanks be to God. Amen

1https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten

January 18. 2026

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

Hear the Dream

  • November 16, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Hear the Dream” based on Isaiah 12 and more so Isaiah 65:17-25

To the people who have been in exile, and the ones who were left behind at home to try to pick up the pieces that can’t be picked up. To the peoples who experienced different traumas, now reunited and horrified all over again at how things are. To the people who remember life with some stability and hope, who look around at the bleakness and wonder what is possible. To the people who see what is and start to wonder if it is all dry bones.

To the people, the prophet speaks God’s dreams:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” (Isaiah 65:17, NRSV) This moment of time will not last forever. There will come a time when the bleakness of now will be a passing memory, one no one lingers on.

There is a new thing coming, and it is good.

“But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight.” (Isaiah 65:18 NRSV) Even if you look around and there is nothing to delight in right now, settle in to hear God’s dreams and take joy in them. These are dreams worth living for. These are dreams that are good now and forever. When you can’t find delight on your own, sink into these.

“I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress.” (Isaiah 65:19, NRSV) The people will be WELL. All the people will be well.

Can you imagine?

“No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat, for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD– and their descendants as well.” (Isaiah 65:20-23, NRSV)

Walter Brueggemann says, “The first quality of the new city, stated negatively and then positively, is a stability and order than guarantees long life. As long as the city is both a practitioner and victim of violence and brutality, no life is safe and no one will last very long.”1 But, imagine a city of peace, of shalom. Imagine what it would be like if violence didn’t prevail. Dream with God, dear ones, of the impact of peace.

And then keep dreaming. Brueggemann again, “Moreover, it is possible to think that infant mortality is an index of community life. In a disordered, uncaring community, too many babies die too soon from neglect, malnutrition, from violence, from poor health and bad medical service – but no more!”2 Dream a world where babies and mothers LIVE. What would it be like?

Everyone would be nourished, so life could thrive. Violence would be no more. The practice of medicine could thive.

This would take even more though. Because, if we were have women and babies thriving, it would also mean the end of racism. Because our current maternal mortality rates vary widely by race, even more widely than differences in care can explain. Our current maternal mortality rates are impacted by the realities of microaggressions that women of color live with. And to think of mothers and babies living thriving means dreaming a world without aggression AND without microaccressions.

But, there is more. Because what does it take “to have houses and inhabit them; plant vineyards and eat their fruit?” Brueggemann says “The loss of one’s economic gains might indeed happen by foreign invasion and occupation, for such occupiers brazenly and indiscriminately seize everything; that is, they ‘devour’ the land (Jer. 8:16, 10:25). It may also be that such usurpation happens internally by confiscation or tax policies whereby the “big ones” arrange the economy to take, in an exercise of “eminent domain” what the “little ones have. … Against such social conditions and economic practices, the new city will leave people free of threat from outside aggression and inside confiscation, especially the confiscation of ‘widows and orphans.”3 “Yahweh will be the guarantor of a viable, community-sustaining economy.”4

That is, according to Bruggemann this dream says that “There will be a reordering of resources so that all may luxuriate in life as the creator intends.”5 “Nobody is threatened. Nobody is at risk. Nobody is in jeopardy because the new city has policies, practices, and protective structures that guarantee what must have been envisioned as an egalitarian possibility.”6 And, there is “an agenda of well-being for children in the new city.”7 Truthfully, there is an agenda of well-being for PEOPLE in the city.

The kingdom of God, beloveds of God. It is mighty beautiful, isn’t it?

I can’t read these passages without tears welling up, tears of grief for what is and tears of relief to hear the dream of what should be. These passages are so tender, so holy, so imperative.

Dream it. No violence. No poverty. No mold-infested basements, no apartments without hot water, no one unhoused, food distributed to everyone. No fear of invasion from insiders or outsiders. No threats that if you lose your job you could lose everything. Not even a need to carefully plan for retirement, because the people are all cared for. People work for each other’s good, and their work bears fruit. There is stability. There is space for joy and delight, for connection and rest. The common good takes care of everyone according to their needs. No one is broken, no one is passing down their trauma to the next generation, no one lives in fear of abuse, no one lives in fear of hunger nor being unhoused. The resources of the earth are used for everyone’s good and… as was said, the resources are used “so that all may luxuriate in life as the creator intends.”8

Imagine. Dream. Breathe.

It is a big spacious dream. One with art and music, dancing and delicious food. One with quiet moments and raucous gatherings, one where nature is close at hand and so too are people. Things are distributed well. People are housed, in good safe healthy housing. People have food, and it is satiating and delicious as well as abundant. People wear clothes that feel great, and they’re diverse in style and patterns. Work is distributed well, even, so that all who want to can contribute, but no one is burned out by what is asked of them. Education is available, and is aimed at sustaining good and abundant life. Science can thrive and we can all benefit! Just imagine what progress could be made in each and every field if every child was well fed and safely housed and able to be find their way to using their God-given gifts for everyone’s well being!?!?!?

A new heaven and a new earth indeed.

Imagine. Breathe. Let it settle into you. Let it heal you, even a little bit. Take a break from fighting the world that is and just dream this one.

And, of course, God is easily accessed. No more dark nights of the soul, no more experiences of God’s silence. No more fear of individual nor communal punishment. Just the wondrous, loving, holy, sparkling, divine One close at hand, guiding us and sustaining us. “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24, NRSV)

And yet even that’s not it. “The dream concludes, The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the serpent–its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.” (Isaiah 65:25, NRSV) This is not just a dream for a new Jerusalem, but indeed a new ordering of the world. The wolf and lion, those whose lives depend on eating the vulnerable will CHANGE and be able to sustain their lives peacefully. The lamb doesn’t have to be afraid. It is now a companion of those who were once its predators.

The predators find other ways of being, and discover they too can be well when all are well. The predators aren’t destroyed, they’re transformed.

No one and nothing will engage in violence: not the violence war, not the violence of the threats of war, not the violence of abuse, not the violence of rape nor murder, not the violence of taking away people’s food, not the violence of making people live in fear. “They shall not hurt nor destroy.” That is, “there shall be space for life to thrive.”

The dreams of God for the people of God, to sustain the people of God in the work of God. Thanks be to God. 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), 247.

2Brueggemann, 247.

3Brueggemann, 248

4Ibid

5Ibid

6Ibid

7Brueggemann, 249.

8Brueggemann, 248.

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

Nov. 16, 2025

Sermons

Hear This

  • September 21, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Hear this…” based on Amos 8:4-7 and Luke 16:1-13

It is Homecoming Sunday! I am always grateful for the slower pace of summer, and then excited to watch the energy rise back up in the fall. On Homecoming we remember that God is our home and this church is too. Also, because this is First Schenectady United Methodist Church there is an expectation that I preach a good just-y sermon!

Apparently, on the Parable of the Dishonest Steward. (FACE PALM) To be fair, my go to commentaries had useful notes on this parable. Truly. The Jesus Seminar colors the passage red, indicating they think it goes back to Jesus even though it shows up only in Luke. They say, “This story does not moralize, unlike so much edifying teaching in both hellentistic Judean religion and early Christianity and that exceptional quality became a large factor in the decision to attribute the parable to Jesus.”1

The Jewish Annotated New Testament points out “some commentators, but not the parable, suggest the manager was removing the interest charge.”2

The Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels makes it clear that the amount the manager releases from the contracts is NOT his fee, he wouldn’t have charged that much and he wouldn’t have written his fee into the contract.3 It also says explains that “It is a scheme that places the landowner in a particular bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks serious alienation in the village, where the villagers would have already been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the manger for having made the ‘arrangement’’ as a noble and generous man. It is the latter reaction upon which the manager counts.” 4

The only issue after having read all that was what on earth to make of the parable. Particularly if it doesn’t have a moral theme. So, I guess, for me, the primary question was “Why did Jesus tell this story?” And along with it, “why did Luke tell us about Jesus telling this story?” And at that point I was completely stumped.

In essence, to moralize the story, one has to decide if they want to celebrate or condemn the steward/manager. If it is cerebrate it is tricky because the manager is clearly acting in a self-serving way. Or, one could condemn the manager, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that without celebrating the systems that enrich the rich and impoverish the poor. I’m fine with hearing a parable as a description of the world as it is or as a description of the kindom of God as it should be. This is neither. Mostly, I was looking for an understanding of this passage that first with God’s passion for justice like we hear in Amos.

So what does one do when the first 8 books one looks at aren’t helpful? Well, I suppose different people have different answers, but mine is “find a 9th.” This turned out to be a good thing, because I’d forgotten how much I like the 9th. The actually helpful book in this case is Rev. Dr. William Herzog’s “Parables as Subversive Speech.”5

Herzog accepts all the wisdom already offered, and then finds something to actually DO with it to make sense of why this is a story we’re still listening to. That said, he’s dense, so please know I’m glossing over most of the wisdom he offers. First, Herzog points out that the dishonest manager is condemned by rumor. We don’t know if they were true. “Charges were brought that he was squandering” the property of the landowner. This is a really normal situation. Landowners were wealthy elites who derived their wealth from the land they owned and the labor of the peasants working it. But usually they didn’t live on the land, they lived in the cities where they could spend their wealth and engage with their social circles. So they entrusted the land and the work of squeezing all the possible wealth of out of it to managers. The landowners wanted to gain LOTS and LOTS of wealth, and if they got less than what they wanted, they’d blame the manger. So, landowners distrusting their managers was normal. And since they weren’t around, they were often reliant on rumors to tell them what was happening.

But, this is a story told by a Jewish man to his Jewish followers. These are people who knew Amos and the other prophets and had heard, “Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” (Amos 8:4-6) They didn’t trust the wealthy landowner, they thought the wealthy landowner was taking their wealth from them. (They were right.) They also didn’t trust the manager.

Amos 8:5 - Shekel (sheqel)

Second, the Hebrew Bible condemns the charging of interest within the community of faith. If the landowner was also Jewish, he would have been prohibited from charging interest on debts. This was a pretty firm rule, but there were common work arounds. Mostly, it happened that the contracts around debt were written in such a way that the repayment amount required simply too into account both the principal and interest. AND, the MANAGER would be responsible for writing the contracts, leaving the owner with plausible deniability. That is, the manager is doing the landowner’s dirty work and the peasants wouldn’t trust him at all either. He is an active participant in oppression, even though he has less power than the landowner.

Dr. Herzog reads this parable in terms of the “weapons of the weak” and people using the tools they have available to take down the powerful. He says, “Because they are virtually powerless, peasants must find ways of resisting their oppressors that do not subject them to the jeopardy of open revolt.”6 Basically, he thinks the peasants started the rumor so to try to take down the manager.

He also points out that:

“There is no monolithic moral system to which everyone consents and by which everyone is judged. The entire system of which the steward is a part is exploitative and predatory. The steward represents the interests of a greedy and oppressive elite; the peasants are struggling to hold on to every bit of subsistence they gan get. … The moral economy of the peasants views the master as exploitative and ruthless; the master’s code treats peasants as resources to be squeezed to get a profit; the steward’s code is to survive while making a profit large enough to secure a lucrative honest graft, yet small enough to avoid attracting the master’s attention and reasonable enough to gain the peasant’s consent.”7

The steward lowers the debts by the amount that represented the hidden interest. By agreeing to this, the peasants have indebted themselves to him and would be obligated to repay the favor. The master is still going to make money, the interest is only a part of his profits, and those debts that are forgiven are now a favor owed to the master (via the steward). And the steward has effectively cornered the master, by easing the lives of the peasants – at least for the present.8

By lowering the debt amounts by exactly the amount of hidden interest, “the steward reminds the master just who has been taking chances to accumulate his wealth, including the questionable practice of charging de facto interest in spite of the prohibitions of the Torah and oral torah.”9 Which is presumably why he is praised for his shrewdness and is likely KEPT ON by the landowner after all.

In this story, despite his power and wealth, the master is outsmarted. I think, that maybe, this is one of the reasons the story is told. Because in the time of Jesus, much like to day, it was far too easy to just give up and assume the powers of the day were unmovable. The rich landowner was untouchable, right? He had more power than all of the peasants combined. His greed endangered their lives.

This was reality as they knew it, I think as everyone knew it. The rich and powerful seeking ever more wealth and power was the way of the world in the Empire and it shortened the lives of most of the people in the Empire.

So, to tell a story where the master landowner is diminished, cornered, and outsmarted helped. It humanized him. It reminded them that his power was limited, that he could be corrected or taken a notch. That the way things were was not the way things had to be. The nearly invulnerable turns out to be vulnerable.

I did not expect it when I started with this text, but it is in a way another version of the resurrection story. In resurrection the Empire uses its final and ultimate too, the power over life and death, to stop the work of God in the world. And it fails because you can’t stop the work of God in the world. Here, again, the powers of the world turn out not to be all that.

Instead, the prophets calling out “hear this…” and calling for justice for the peasants turns out to be louder and more powerful. The real power, the truly unbreakable one is, in love and relationships. It is shared.

In the end, I think this parable told its first hearers that there was hope. Luke shared it, including to his wealthy listeners, maybe to tell them that the powers that ruled their lives weren’t as impenetrable as they thought either! I wonder how many of them were able to hear it as good news. It is good news. The system that requires oppression benefits no one. Systems that take the abundance of God’s resources and share them benefit everyone.

Those who have the power, especially those who have power and use it to amass wealth, consolidate power, and vanquish their perceived enemies, they’re vulnerable. The power can be broken. Life doesn’t have to be like this. God isn’t for having things like this. It isn’t time to give up hope.

Thus says the parable. I think. Its a parable. This is my best work but they’re slippery.

Thanks be to God for the chance to struggle with a story until a meaning emerges. Amen

1Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 359.

2 The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) page 134.

3Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” page 292.

4Malina et al, 293.

5William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech, (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994).

6Herzog, 252.

7Herzog, 253.

8Herzog, 255 in summary.

9Herzog, 257.

September 21, 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

100 Sheep

  • September 14, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“100 Sheep” based on Psalm 14 and Luke 15:1-10

These parables don’t make any sense. For some of us they’re familiar, so we’re used to pushing them into a framework of meaning and then mostly ignoring them. That framework is often the one that Luke imposes onto them, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” But it is clear to scholars that the whole sinner/repentance angle is Luke’s and isn’t what Jesus was doing with the stories. It is also likely the stories actually go back to Jesus.

And, when they stand alone without Luke’s interpretative help, they’re really quite weird.

“Supposed you had 100 sheep.” And…we’re off on the weirdness already. First, we’ve got the bias against shepherds going on, people didn’t want to imagine themselves as shepherds because shepherds were a disrespected group of people. In particular, shepherding required being with the sheep all the time, and so required a man to be away from his family. “Being away from home at night, they were unable to protect their women, hence considered dishonorable. In addition, they often were considered thieves because they grazed their flocks on other people’s property.”1 But, also, we have a romanticization of shepherds in the Bible, including with King David, we have Psalms celebrating God as a shepherd, and this is the book of Luke which informs us that it was shepherds keeping their flocks at night who were first told the good news of Jesus’ birth.

So, the shepherd thing is complicated. But so is the 100. Because 100 sheep is a lot of sheep. It is more sheep than a shepherd would be expected to have, they represent an unusual amount of ovine wealth. It is likely, at a flock that size that we’re dealing with a family of shepherds rather than a single shepherd because one person simply didn’t take care of 100 sheep. Well, in real life. But this is a parable of Jesus, and it’s weird, so we don’t know.

OK, so we’ve established that Jesus is asking people to consider having wealth, derived from a hated occupation.

Huh. Rather despite myself, this is starting to make a little bit of sense. Because the OPENING of the Gospel story isn’t a walk straight into the parable. Instead, it says, ‘Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable:” (Luke 15:1-13, NRSV) This whole thing is set in the context of responding to those who are grumbling about Jesus hanging out with tax collectors and sinners.

Amy Jill Levine explains this really well.

“The problem with ‘tax collectors’ is not that they denied the covenant; it is that they work for Rome and so would be seen by many within the Jewish community as traitors to their own people.

Sinners are not ‘outcasts’; they are not cast out of synagogues or out of the Jerusalem Temple. To the contrary, they are welcome in such places, since such places encourage repentance. The Gospels generally present sinners as wealthy people who have not attended to the poor. That is a dandy definition of the term. Thus, in a first century context, sinners, like tax collectors, are individuals who have removed themselves form the common welfare, who look to themselves rather than to the community.”2

She goes on:

“As for sinners – that is those who think about themselves and not of others- Paul provides the standard instructions. In 1 Corinthians 5.11, Paul advices his fledgling church, “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or who is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one.” They are the ancient drug pushers, insider traders, arms dealers, and, especially, colonial collaborationists. And yes, Jesus eats with them – that’s part of his genius, that he recognizes that they are part of the community and goes out to get them.”3

So, Jesus takes the grumbling about his eating with sinners and tax collectors and invites people to consider being a wealthy shepherd. OK. We’re caught up. What happens next again? "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’” (Luke 15:4-6, NRSV)

But, here is the thing. The question, about who would leave 99 really vulnerable sheep alone in the middle of no where to go find one lost one… generally speaking, one should not leave 99 vulnerable sheep alone to go get one sheep. If you did that, you’d come back to maybe 80 sheep, and then if you went to get another sheep, you’d have maybe 60 and truthfully it just wouldn’t work. Sheep without a shepherd get lost easily, they fall, they get snagged, predators get them, they can fall in water and sink or fail to find “still waters” and get dehydrated. Grazing sheep are intensive, and you can’t leave the group to go get one.

Unless, of course, the shepherd works in a team, like we might think given how many sheep there are, in which case it makes sense to go get the one. So that’s one good point – that it is better to work in a team when caring for the vulnerable – but Jesus doesn’t set it up that way. Jesus has the ONE person go do something ridiculous. And succeed. And throw a party. AT WHICH, given the number of people have been invited, it would be reasonable to assume that there may be a need to butcher a sheep.

Have I established my point that these stories are weird yet?

The second story is a bit of a retelling of the first. A woman has 10 coins, which isn’t an obscene amount of wealth, but is a pretty lovely nest egg. The coin referenced is the standard daily wage for a laborer. Two of the coins would feed a family of four for 5-7 days at 3000 calories a day, or for 9-12 days at 1,800 calories a day. We don’t know who is in the woman’s household but we know it is her house and her coins and relative to the truly impoverished people of that era, she was doing relatively well. She loses a coin, she finds it, she throws a party for her female friends, which probably cost more than the coin.

These two stories build up to the Parable of the Lost Son, but they also stand on their own.

What on earth do we do with these weird stories? They are stories of people making financially bad decisions. The people are overly generous in their gratitude. They’re unrealistic. Perhaps they’re living kingdom values and not the world’s values. That’s probably worth some consideration.

But the crux of a parable is to make us think. To help us see how things are, and help us consider if we’re happy with how things are. A single shepherd wouldn’t leave 99 sheep. A party shouldn’t cost more than what it celebrates. That’s not how things work.

And yet…. What are the exceptions? What are things that exist in the world where if you had 10 of them, lost 1, and got that one back, you’d throw a part regardless of cost?

I think one important answer is: people. If I had 10 kids and lost one, and found that one again, I’d throw a party. If I had 10 friends and lost one and got one back again, I’d throw a party. If I lost a person and got them back again, I’d throw a party. If a child, or anyone really, was lost, I’d go after them.

I will say, as a camp person, that I get back to that team idea on this. If a camper is having a problem, we always have two counselors with a group. So one counselor takes care of the rest of the campers and the other counselor sits with the camper and talks through what is going on. They’re both imperative. You can’t risk the 99 for the 1, but you can’t ignore the 1 if the 1 has infinite value either! Which definitely means we have to work together.

And, kingdom math doesn’t math like capitalistic math. Capitalistic math says people are expendable and wealth matters. Kingdom math says wealth is dispensable and people matter. That’s really the crux of the weirdness of these parables. They’re in kingdom math.

I’ve never lived in fear that God’s love is insufficient for any person, so I don’t worry a whole lot about the mechanisms of traditional sin, repentance and forgiveness. But the Gospels aren’t really working with mainstream Christian teachings either;) To repent is to turn around. My favorite image of it is of a person who is veering down a difficult path, who hears God’s gentle whispers, and turns around to see God and God’s love. When turned around, they attend to where God is looking, and decide to follow that path instead.

In practical terms, that turning around often happens when we’re hurt and tender and someone listens to us. It happens when the women sweeps for the coin or the shepherd goes after the lost sheep, and the tenderness of being sought out and cared for changes our lives.

Jesus seems to be telling the religiously faithful that the tax collectors and sinners needed to be loved back into community. Not to be judged, or ostracized, not to be condemned or even ignored. To be loved back into community.

I think the people of the day would have had plenty of objections to this. I think we have plenty of objections to this if we’re honest. But, if we took the powerful people who are living out greed rather than seeking the well being of all God’s children, and we thought of them like lost sheep in need of tender care, that would be listening to Jesus. That is the way of peace, and the story of the power of love, that is the kindom values at work, that is the profound rejection of the world’s violence and tendency to dehumanize.

Hmmm.

Help us all, Holy One. Amen

1 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p, 232

2 Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (USA: HarperOne, 2014), p 33.

3 Levine, 34

September 14, 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

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

Grounded Hope

  • January 5, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Grounded Hope” based on Luke 1:39-55

Somehow I messed up the order of the Advent Candles this year. They’re supposed to be Hope, Peace, Joy, then Love, but we did Peace, Love, Joy, and now hope. Truthfully I copied from a prior year, which likely copied from some lovely liturgy of yet another year, and didn’t notice until Louis asked me why on early we were doing Love on week 2. By that point it was too late to change so we left it.

So perhaps I’m just justifying things here, but I also have been thinking that it feels right this year to end on hope. I’m not disparaging love! It is, after all, “the greatest of these things.” It is just that this year, hope seems like the hardest one to come by.

To speak plainly, there are already a whole lot of problems in our country and our world, and we’re facing a future with a government who will do intentional harm to the vulnerable. Usually when we think about hope, we think about hope for building the kindom, for making things a little bit better, piece by piece. But right now, we’re facing everything getting worse, and it isn’t even entirely clear what we hope for.

I’m a big fan of Dr. Emily Nagoski, a writer and pod-caster who thinks deeply and writes clearly. Dr. Nagoskisends out a regular email newsletter that I get, and this July she sent out one on hope. Emily struggles with depression, and she shared that while she’s delighted when other people can resonate with Emily Dickinson’s poem “hope is the thing with feathers” where nothing can hurt hope, she can’t actually access that hope.

Here is an excerpt from that email:

Moral philosopher and author of “How We Hope” Adrienne Martin developed an “incorporation model” that formulates hope as “a desire for an outcome and the belief that the outcome is possible but not certain” and you use your assessment of its possibility as justification for feelings, thoughts, and plans.

Got that? Hope is justifying your feelings, thoughts, and plans based on your assessment that a desired outcome is possible.”1

This definition of hope, where the desired outcome is “possible but not certain” may be why hope see so hard right now. I’d like to hope for an end to hopelessness, but that is a whole lot less likely then “possible but not certain.” I’d like to hope for an end to hunger, but that, too, is a whole lot less likely than possible but not certain.

For Dr. Nagoski, living with chronic depression, assessing what was possible with an optimistic viewpoint became so hard that from her perspective hope died. But, she says, that’s not the whole story:

Hope is a sustaining energy, it keeps us working through trials when we’re being challenged, but it is contingent on that assessment of the probability of that desirable outcome.

But there is a noncontingent sustaining energy, which cannot be interfered with by any assessment, no matter how dire, of the probability of a desired outcome.

That noncontingent sustaining energy is an unimaginable hope.

What’s it called, when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference? What’s the name for that emotion, when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?

Adrienne Martin calls it faith.2

Now, to be clear, Dr. Nagoski is an atheist, so her faith may look different than ours, but I found this reflection so startlingly helpful. Because what we are doing now, when we hope for good care for those with disabilities, when we hope for compassionate responses to immigration, when we hope for changes of heart around medical options for trans kids in red states – that’s the stuff of “when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference” That’s the stuff of, “when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?”

Now, as people of faith, maybe we still get to call this hope, but more like “faith-hope” or “God-hope” or “we’d have no hope in this without trusting God” or just “hope grounded in love” or “grounded hope”? Or some other nuance. But it isn’t practical, pragmatic, having assessed the likelihood and deemed it possible sort of hoping we’re doing now, when we try to build the kindom of God on earth in this day and age. What we’re doing is continuing to love because the world needs love, is practicing peace because only peace begets peace, is seeking joy because joy is resistance, and continuing to work towards building the kindom of God because God has done crazier things than bring justice out of THIS HOT MESS. That is, we hope.

And to a significant degree, what I hear in Luke is pretty similar. Mary and Elizabeth, the too young and the too old, pregnant and shocked and processing, and speaking hope in the faithful God in the midst of the world that was a hot mess.

The Roman Empire at that time had highly concentrated wealth and power, most people felt vulnerable in their positions, so tried to press harder on those below them to stabilized themselves, the masses of people were struggling in life threatening poverty, and the government was trying to control the religious narrative to make itself look good. I know it is all hard to imagine, but do your best. 😉

This young, vulnerable, faithful Mary speaks her faith, her grounded hope, to Elizabeth. She speaks of God’s mercy – God’s compassion shown to those God could instead choose to punish. She speaks of God’s strength – God’s capacity to make things happen.

And then she talks about what God does with God’s mercy and compassion. Which is, inverses the fortunes of the world. For many people at that time, especially those who were not a part of the Jewish faith (but probably many who were too), it was assumed that those who had power and money had it because they were favored by the gods and “good.” And those who didn’t’ have things were being punished. Right? That way it looks like the world is fair, if everyone gets what they deserve. (You realize people think this now too, right? Sigh.)

The book of Job, I would say, is one of the ways the Bible fights back against that idea, because even in the Bible there is this tendency to want to justify things by saying all is as God would have it be, so don’t mess with the status quo. But, luckily, there are also A LOT of narratives that say God isn’t’ happy until justice comes, and that’s the tradition Mary is drawing on here.

Mary speaks of God lifting up the lowly, bringing down the powerful, filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, scattering the proud, and fulfilling God’s own promises. To have that happen would overthrow the empire, and install in it’s place God’s own kindom on earth. She is talking about leveling, about making it so everyone can eat, and no one lords over anyone. She is talking about building the kindom on earth.

It makes sense, of course, that these words would be in Mary’s mouth to make sense of Jesus. The early Christian community saw all of this happen in Jesus’s life, and they used Mary’s words as a narrative device to tell people what to pay attention to in his story. (Also, I contend, it makes sense to think of Mary as one who had such faith and was able to teach it to Jesus.)

I think that from the perspective of Mary and Elizabeth, the Roman Empire was immutable. It couldn’t be changed, couldn’t be toppled, couldn’t’ be bested. This was probably even MORE true by the time the gospels were written and the destruction of Jerusalem occurred with mass causalities. Moving from that system to justice as God wills it would have looked….

Well, it wasn’t “possible but not certain.”

It was much more “when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference?” In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the primary points of Jesus’s teaching was that we have to work towards the future we want, the kindom of God on earth, as if it is possible because unless we work together on it – IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE. Jesus brought the people together and showed them that together they had enough where as apart they did not. Jesus taught them they had power, not the kind of violent power over of the Empire, but the amazing power of connection and love that can change things to make life BETTER.

Beloveds of God, the likelihoods are not in our favor right now. Very little that improves the lives of the vulnerable is going to happen on the federal level in the short run.

Oh well.

God is still God, God is a God of mercy who brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly and we’re working with God on that kindom building project. Our hope is grounded, faithful, and impractical. We do what needs doing even if it isn’t likely to bring the outcomes we want. We do it anyway, because we are the people who follow Mary’s son. Amen

1 “An Alternative to Hope Or, The Secret Medicine for When the Thing With Feathers Stop Singing” an email from Emily Nagoski on Jul 9, 2024.

2 ibid

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

  • November 24, 2024
  • by Sara Baron

“Don’t Worry!?!?!?!?!?” based on Psalm 126 and Matthew 6:25-33

So. Here we are. Back in the “sowing of tears,” and “going out with weeping.”

Again.

And once again, perhaps this is not the moment that you are in the mood to hear, “Don’t worry.” Perhaps, like me, you are prepared with a list of perfectly reasonable things that one could be worried about, and all of them without over-responding to reality.

Right?

And yet, once again, I have to admit that Jesus was talking to people who also had pressing concerns, life and death concerns, including about where their next meals were coming from. It was to people whose lives were being shortened by poverty, who lacked access to basic resources that Jesus said, “don’t worry.”

Which I think means we aren’t able to ignore it.

I find, when I stop fighting with this passage and listen to it, that Jesus is making some pretty pragmatic points. He isn’t actually saying, “don’t worry, be happy.” He is saying, “Don’t worry because worrying doesn’t get you anywhere. You don’t solve your problems by worrying about them.”

Which is just true. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked myself up into a lather about particular concerns just to have those particular issues never actually emerge in my life, or in the world. I always seem to worry about the WRONG things.

In the end, this gospel passage comes to an interesting conclusion. Strive for God’s kin-dom, and trust God, and you will be OK.

Now, take a breath. I know, and you know, that things aren’t going to be OK for everyone. We aren’t being hopelessly naive here. The world is a hard place and lots of people struggle profoundly. Like in the time of Jesus, lack of access to resources results in people’s deaths, even when there are enough resources to go around.

So, what was Jesus getting at? The man was not hopelessly naive.

I hear two really important points in what in Gospel lesson. The first is a point mostly to those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The people that society has deemed expendable. The ones whose lives are shortened by greed at the time. To those people, Jesus says, “God doesn’t see you as expendable. You matter.” To make this point Jesus reminds them that all the wealth and resources of the world can’t dress a person as beautifully as the flowers. And nature itself cares for the birds, and God loves you more than the flowers and the birds. Perhaps that sounds trivial, that people matter. But I think it isn’t. I think that’s everything. I think that’s in the core of the good news. God cares about EVERYONE, NO ONE is expendable, and whenever anyone is treated as expendable, that is against the will of God.

The other piece is equally central. “Strive first for the kindom of God and God’s goodness, and the rest will follow.” Here is the thing. It actually will. Because the more people are striving for the kindom, the more people are living out God’s goodness, the better things get. Even in the most impoverished places on earth, if people work together, they have a lot more than when they compete. And the more people buy into “everyone matters” the closer we get to sharing life-giving resources responsibility.

I’ve also noticed, in the past few weeks, that striving for the kindom of God and seeking God’s goodness is the one of the most inspiring things I can do. It is harder to worry about cabinet choices when one is face to face with a breakfast guest who is sharing about their life. It is hard to worry about what will come in a few months when sitting with someone at the end of their life. It is hard to maintain hopelessness when reflecting on lives well lived. It is in a whole lot of pretty small actions that hope gets rebuild. And, around here, we have plenty of small actions that need doing that end up building the kindom of God and seeking God’s goodness.

I remember learning eight years ago that I am lucky to have a pulpit, because working to find the good news keeps me focused on it. I’ve watched, even in the past few weeks, the ways that regular committee meetings can be sources of comfort and hope. Even just being in shared reality helps.

This time around, I don’t want to be as easily swayed. I don’t want to spend years being angry, or to be dismayed all the time. This time, we have a pretty good sense of what is coming. And I, for one, want to be grounded in God’s goodness and centered in community and ready to be able to stand in front of those who are vulnerable without wavering. To do that though, I can’t let myself drown in despair, let go of hope, or even burn with righteousness anger.

Luckily, we know about stuff that grounds us in God and community. Worship. Prayer. Mission. Ministry. Human Connection. Laugher. Joy. Play. (PLAY!) Humor. Music. Art. Bodily Movement. Nature. Sabbath.

And, a lot of that we’re pretty good at.

So, here is your permission: put on your oxygen masks. We are going to need to be able to take deep breathes to do this well. But with God, we can be love in even this world.

And, I’m not going to tell you not to worry. But, please remember: God loves everyone, and building the kindom helps build resilience to despair. Also, best of all God is still with us.

I think that’s plenty to be thankful for, how about you? Amen

Nov. 24, 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

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  • September 29, 2024
  • by Sara Baron

“Kindom Come” based on Luke 14:16-30 and Revelation 21:1-4

Last Sunday several people mentioned that someone has been sleeping under the window to the church office. They weren’t complaining, just mentioning. Mostly because it is a bit of an unusual place for someone to sleep on this property. We all bemoaned the reality that we live in a society that doesn’t HOUSE all people, despite our collective wealth.

I’ve been thinking about it this week though. I’m simply aghast. The more I study the Bible and spend time with those who love God, the more the meta-narratives of capitalism lose their power. Because capitalism says life is a competition and you can win or lose. Worse, capitalism pretends it is an even playing field and blames those who can’t win for their burdens in life. Capitalism says the solution to hunger is to let hunger motivate people to work, the solution to people being unhoused is to let people get motivated to be housed, etc. Blame those who struggle. That’s the collective capitalistic narrative. Along with celebrate and praise those who “win” – even if the hoarding of wealth is exactly the reason so many people struggle so much.

In the face of the myths of capitalism, I am grateful to be a person of faith. I am grateful to spend time with people whose lives are defined by compassion. I am grateful to spend time with the Bible, and with the stories of Jesus calling out the “pre-industrial domination system” of his day so that we too can see the domination systems of our day.

More than anything though, I’m grateful to be able to hold a different vision of what things should be. It keeps me safe from those myths of capitalism that if we “just tweak it a little bit, everything will turn out fine.” I’ll admit it, sometimes it hurts to think about how things should be, because it clarifies how far we are from it. And yet, I’d rather dream with God of true justice than simply numb myself to the realities of the present.

In the end of Revelation, we are given an in depth consideration of the kin-dom of God on earth. That is, of God’s dream. The central idea is that there is no longer any distance between God and the people, and once that is true, all kinds of goodness flows. In fact, Revelation says sadness and even death will fall away. I guess, perhaps, the idea could be that if afterlife is union with God, then once there is no distance between God and people there is also no difference between life and death? I don’t know.

I do know that dreaming of life as God would have it be really matters. It grounds us. It aims us. It keeps us dreaming and hopeful. The Bible is full of clues about what God dreams for us. In the stories of the feeding of the 5000 we are reminded than when we trust enough to share what we have there ends up being more than enough for everyone. In the healing stories are are told that God cares about us being well – and being connected to each other so our communities can be well.

And in the gospel lesson today we are shown what it can look like to respond to violence with nonviolence. Jesus did set things off. He did. He was sharing God’s dreams and claiming them:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because The Holy One has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

The people respond, “isn’t this guy a poor man’s son, what right does he have to claim this dream as his to fulfill?” And then Jesus pushes their buttons by reminding them that God doesn’t care about human hierarchies – who is wealthy or important, who is powerful or healthy, who “matters or doesn’t.” God cares about PEOPLE, and Jesus claims God’s dreams as a person who also cares about people.

Time and time again we see that turning the world right side up is deeply threatening to those who hold undue power in the upside down world we know best. And those who hold undue power will keep it through any means necessary – usually starting with violence. So Jesus sets them off, they respond with violence, and he simply walks away.

How?

We don’t know. I mean, I like thinking of it like one of those cartoons where the people trying to harm someone are so chaotic that the intended victim just crawls out of the pile unscathed, but that’s probably only because I can’t think of any other way to conceive of it.

In a story that will become repetitive though, violence comes for Jesus. And violence is used to getting its own way. But Jesus sees through it all. He sees the violence for what it is, and what it intends to accomplish and he simply dismisses it. Maybe this story is really just foreshadowing his death and resurrection. Violence can bring its worst, and it can wreck incredible havoc, but God’s love CANNOT be stopped. Not even death stops God’s work in the world. You can’t beat it down. You can’t threaten it into obedience. You can’t stop God’s love.

You can take it to the top of the cliff intending to throw it off, and God’s love just walks away.

Violence is the domain of the empowered, but violence holds no power over God’s love.

I think, for me, remembering that nonviolence is the way of Jesus and the expression of God’s love is an inroad into understanding the kindom of God.

A place with no violence. No one is raped. No one is murdered. No one is abused. No one is neglected. No one is bullied. No one is threatened. No one is poked and prodded into being a smaller, weaker version of their full selves. No one lives in fear.

And to be without fear would imply that basic needs are being met. People are clothed, housed, medically cared for, fed well, and able to get good sleep. Because when you don’t have those things, fear creeps in.

I remember hearing Walter Brueggemann lecture on Pharaoh and the power of the Empire – and being surprised when he started to talk about the importance of universal healthcare. But for him, the Empire keeps people down with fear and violence, and to be free from that fear and violence includes being able to be healed when sick or injured. He then went on to talk about what would happen in our society if people weren’t obligated to work full time jobs to maintain and pay for healthcare. He talked about artists being able to make art, and parents being able to give attention to their children, about those who were sick being able to stop working to heal, those who had dreams for making things better being able to take the leap to follow their dreams. That all of that got easier if health insurance wasn’t tied to full time work.

The kindom. The fear-free kindom of God.

You see how nonviolence is an inroad, and once we start walking that path all sorts of wonders become possible? For me that idea of death and sadness going away is just hard to fathom, it is so far away. But the wonder that can come with each step towards nonviolence, that’s worth seeking.

What if society weren’t so scary? What if it wasn’t a competition to live? What impact would that have? I think perhaps it could improve everyone’s mental health, lower the desire to numb out with addictive substances, and make a whole lot of space for the true delights of life – chats with friends, games, walks in the woods, gardening, … laughter.

Jesus set things off. MLK Jr. did too. So, too, does this church. Its in your DNA. We travel the path of nonviolence, we travel guided by God’s unstoppable love, we travel towards fearlessness and resilience. We travel the way of the kindom of God, bringing others along with us and trodding down the path to make it easier for those who will follow us.

Dear ones, each and every time we choose love and nonviolence in our words and our actions, in our decisions and our values, we build the kindom of God. Our lives matter because we too are asked to turn the world right side up, and God is working with us to make what we do matter for the long run.

Imagine. Just imagine, what it will be like when fear can take the backseat and love can be in control! Its worth dreaming. 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 29, 2024

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  • 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

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  • First United Methodist Church
  • 603 State Street
  • Schenectady, NY 12305
  • phone: 518-374-4403
  • alt: 518-374-4404
  • email: fumcschenectady@yahoo.com
  • facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady
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