“Afterlife?” based on Job 14 and Mark 12:18-27

October 13, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

I want to start today by asking
for your trust – particularly from those who are here particularly
for the baptism. I do know that the first hymn and the scriptures
have been an odd match for a baptismal Sunday so far, and it is going
to get worse before it gets better, but it IS going to get better, I
promise.

The question of “what happens
after we die” is relevant to us for two separate reasons. One
reason is entirely personal: we want to know if we are simply mortal
and if we cease to exist when we die. The other may be just as
personal, in a different way: we want to know if the connects we
have to those who have died before us are still alive or if they only
feel that way.

Both of these are good reasons
to want to know, but nevertheless, we don’t know what happens after
death. And our believes about it end up being profoundly personal.
If we are looking at afterlife through the lens of the Christian
Tradition, there are three big questions people to disagree over:

Does afterlife exist?
If there is an afterlife, do
both heaven and hell exist, or just heaven?
If both heaven and hell exist,
how are people sorted between them?

While many people have deep
conviction about their answers to these questions, and believe their
answers to be the “normal” ones, the truth is that Christians
have disagreed about this for about as long as there have been
Christians.

For
centuries, Christianity has taught about afterlife and the existence
of heaven and hell, all while arguing about the means of sorting
people into each. Yet, there is also a large group of Biblical
Scholars who think that we’ve gotten those assumptions wrong. They
say that 1^st
century Jews, Jesus, and the earliest Christians did not believe in
heaven and hell the way we do. At best, heaven and hell were
temporary resting places while waiting for bodily resurrection that
would come along with the Kindom of God on earth.¹
More commonly, people believed that there was nothing until the
moment of universal bodily resurrection, which they expected to come
within the first generation after Jesus. For some others the
perspective of Job 14 was accurate: humans die but at least God
doesn’t.

For
the most part, I think afterlife is an aside to Christianity. The
goal is to build the kindom on earth, not in heaven. However, the
reality of deaths of those we love and the looming reality of our own
deaths don’t let us go. We really want to know, and for many people,
what they believe about afterlife profoundly connects to how they
understand God.

Now,
this is the fifth and final sermon in a sermon series
comparing the salient points of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the
tradition of the Christian Right, and what I’ve been calling
“Jesus-followers”. (That final group is us.) Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism was discovered through sociological research on the
belief system on teenagers, and we have reason to believe it is the
default belief system of most Americans. Unfortunately, as we’ve
found, its a rather problematic belief system, at least in my
opinion. It consists of 5 intersecting assumptions:

“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.”

Today we are looking at the 5^th
and final point, “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

Of course, if you asked most
people what Christians think, that would be a key part of the answer,
“good people go to heaven when they die,” but – of course – our
tradition is far more complicated than is generally known.

Historically,
I think the concepts of heaven and hell came into clarity in the 3^rd
or 4^th
century, as that’s when the fights over who went where really picked
up. So let’s look at our three questions:

Does afterlife exist?

Christians
of good faith disagree about this one. Some, including some in this
community, say, “no. This life is all there is, so let’s make the
best of it instead of pretending there is more.” Others, including
some in this community, say, “I think so. I’ve had some
experiences that lead me to that conclusion and/or it just feels
right.” Still others simply aren’t sure. Because the “word on
the street” about Christianity so profoundly conflates belief in
God with belief in afterlife, I feel the need to say this explicit:
all of these are faithful statements that are congruent with knowing
a loving God through Jesus.

So, the second question, which
presumes an answer of “yes” to the first one about afterlife
existing. The second question is:

2. If there is an afterlife,
do both heaven and hell exist, or just heaven?

I’ll admit that I nuanced this
one to lead to a particular answer. While I’m not always confident
about afterlife (and yet sometimes I am, it is a confusing place
inside my head), I never think there is a hell. It just doesn’t make
the tiniest bit of sense to me that over the long run anything but
God’s grace could win out. I read one time a suggestion that people
continue to have free will after death, and so if heaven is unity
with God, people can take AS LONG AS THEY WANT to get there, but in
the end, they will because grace wins. Put another way, I simply
don’t believe in a God of eternal punishment, it is incomprehensible
to me. That said, I think most modern Christians believe in a heaven
and a hell, and most of them think it is heresy not to. (oh. Well.)

I
think that for most people who believe that “good people go to
heaven when they die” and the unspoken but obvious corollary “bad
people go to hell when they die” there is a desire to believe that
there is fundamental justice in the world and that bad things are
punished and good things are celebrated and even if we don’t see
evidence of that on earth, it will get balanced out later. I can
understand a desire to believe that!

Now, for me the third question
is null and void, but since Christianity has spent the past 1600-1700
years fighting over it, I guess we should take a moment to hear the
arguments. 😉

3. If both heaven and hell
exist, how are people sorted between them?

Possible answers:

In order to get into heaven you
have to BELIEVE the right things ( “Justification by FAITH.”)
This is the primary perspective of the Christian Right, although it
intersects some with the next idea.
In order to get into heaven
you have do DO the right things. For many of those Christians there
is a list of good things and a list of bad things to guide behavior.
( “Justification by WORKS” or “Works Righteousness.”)
In order to get into heaven one
must be baptized. This is often even subconscious now. This is one
of the strongest arguments for infant baptism. It is also one of
the strongest arguments against it. Some in this mindset will claim
that only baptism in their PARTICULAR part of Christianity will
matter. However, when Christianity was much younger, this often
resulted in people refusing to be baptized until the very last
moment. (I think, in fact, this is the historical basis for the
Catholic ritual of last rites.) They thought that once baptized all
their sins were forgiven, and if it was done late enough they
wouldn’t have time to sin. I’m not kidding. This was very common
practice.
In
order to get into heaven we need God’s grace, and God’s grace given
to us results in our ability to have faith. (“Justification by
grace alone though faith.”) UMC option
Thus it is not what we do or do not do; nor what we believe or do
not believe that results in our welcome into heaven. It is simply
God’s nature. This does raise a rather large question about those
who do not believe in God though.

As
a reminder of how complicated all of this is, I do not think that
our Gospel lesson supports or disproves any of the schools of
thought. Rather, it urges humility. The Sadducees were trying to
trick up Jesus, and they brought him a tricky question in order to do
it. The question supported their belief about what happens when
we die, but Jesus’ answer did not let them trip him up. He says,
““Is
not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the
scriptures nor the power of God? For
when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being
raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about
the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the
living; you are quite wrong.”

This
passage keeps me humble. I don’t know what it means, I don’t know
what heaven is like,or if it exists, and that’s OK. Many of us are
not same worldview as moralistic therapeutic deism who say “good
people go to heaven when they die” or the Christian-Right who say
that and have clarity over who counts as “good.” Many of us
simply don’t know what happens after death.

I
think that at the core, the questions of if afterlife exists or not
and whether there is cosmic justice are really questions about
existential anxiety. That is, as beings who are conscious and who
know we are mortal, we struggle with the reality that someday we
won’t be (at least in this form) anymore.

I
think that our shared, all the way back to Jesus, Christian Tradition
offers Jesus-followers two ways we can respond to existential anxiety
and the claims of the other traditions. If we are about continuing
the work of Jesus – about building the kindom and inviting others
to be partners with us in building the kindom – then our work does
not end with our deaths any more than Jesus’ did. This is not same
as individual afterlife, but is really powerful in a different way.
Certainly the ways that each of us work towards the kindom is unique,
but the end goal is shared, and after we are gone others will be
following up on our work with theirs … until the kindom comes.

The
other piece of our response to existential anxiety is simply trusting
in God. Whether or not we cease to exist at the end of our lives,
God and God’s memory will still hold our lives, our loves, our
actions, our thoughts, and our feelings. And, whatever is on the
other side of the proverbial curtain – God IS and God is GOOD and
what will be is possible to trust in.

And
that brings us full circle to say, that while I know it is awful to
acknowledge death while celebrating a new life, I am happy to say
that the kindom building and the goodness of God will outlast even the life of the baby baptized today life and thanks be to God for that! Amen

(http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/13.36.html?paging=off)

Sermons

“God With Us” based on Psalm 139:1-18 and Matthew…

September 29, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Children’s
Time: Let’s play an
imagination game. If you were going to play hide and seek in this
church, where would you hide? OK, now what if I change the rules?
If you were going to try to hide from God where would you hide? Is
that a ridiculous question? Why? (OH…. you can’t hide from God
because God is everywhere? Well, then let’s thank God for that!)

Sermon:
“The One in whom we live and move and have our being,” is a
description of God used by Paul in the book of Acts. It is one of my
favorite descriptions of God, because it fits so well with my
experiences of the Divine. I FEEL surrounded by and supported by the
Holy One. I love the idea that the boundaries between “me” and
“not me” are irrelevant to God, and God is as much in me as as in
you as in the air between us. Thus, the phrase “the One in whom we
live and move and have our being” is often repeated inside my head,
a regular reminder that the God of Love is the foundation of all that
is, and can be accessed in all times and places. I suppose it would
be fair to say it is one of my faith mantras, something I come back
to regularly, ponder often, and draw strength from.

In
Acts, when Paul uses this phrase to describe God, he is intentionally
appropriating a Greek poet speaking of the Greek god Zeus, and
applying the idea to YHWH instead. This makes me giggle, but it
doesn’t make the attribution feel less true. At the core of our
faith is a believe in God who is “omnipresent”,
a Latin-derived word meaning All-present, used to say that God’s
presence is everywhere all the time. This is why you can’t hide
from God. Further, this idea means that God is within us as well as
around us, so that not only our words and actions but even our
thoughts and feelings are known to God. To believe that God is
omnipresent is to claim that nothing can separate from the presence
of God, just as nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Our
Jesus-following faith also teaches that that God is “omnibenevolent”
another Latin word that means that God is “all good” or “all
goodness.” It might make more sense to say that God is “all love
for all of creation.” It isn’t JUST that God is with us, it is
also that God is FOR us, seeking good at all times. I’ve said it
before, and I think it is worth saying again: I don’t find it
particularly important whether or not people believe in God. I do,
however, find it VERY important how they understand God. Whether or
not a person believes in God as all-present and all-loving is
significant in who it is they think God is. Very different belief
systems develop when you believe in a God who is all-present and
all-loving … or not.

Today
we’re going to look at two belief systems that disagree with my
belief system at the core. Right now we are comparing three
different belief systems: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the
Christian Right, and “Jesus Following”¹.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism was identified by sociologists 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 taking a closer look at the fourth one: "God
does not need to be particularly involved
in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.“
In essence, I think this statement stands against the idea that God
is “all-present.” Or, at least, makes God so irrelevant that
God’s presence doesn’t matter. Now, the Christian-Right definitely
believes in God as all-present. However, I am not convinced that
they believe in God as all-loving. (Or, if they do, the words mean
something so different that it doesn’t count as the same idea.)

Let’s
look at Moralistic Therapeutic Deism first. This perspective, which
reflects the generic belief system in the US, says, "God
does not need to be particularly involved
in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
This makes God the last resort – and our LAST resort tends to be
something we don’t have much investment in. It also seeks to control
God. (Which those famous 10 commandments seem firmly against.) A
person who only reaches out to God when that person wants God to DO
something for them …. that person is thinking of God like a big
gumball machine. That is, “Insert prayer, and God gives you what
you want.” God becomes a means to an end, de-personalized,
unimportant for God’s own self, just there to please us.

I
suppose the statement doesn’t actually SAY that God isn’t all
present, but it make’s God’s presence irrelevant – other than as a
TOOL one uses for one’s own needs. I think it also denies God as
all-loving, because if you believe that God is all-loving, then you
believe that there is a SOURCE OF LOVE IN THE WORLD YOU CAN CONNECT
TO. And if you believe that, then I guess I figure you’d do so. Or
try to do so at least. Because humans are hungry for love – so we
seek it out (in productive and unproductive ways) all the time! So
this indifference to the Divine itself tells me that people aren’t
thinking of God as GOOD, or LOVING. Rather, they’re thinking of God
as …. well, meh.

Now,
I suspect this meh-ness about God is actually reflecting some of the
influence of the Christian-Right.²
(The Atlantic seems to be agreeing with me on this, they’re writing
a lot these days about how the decline in US religiousity is linked
to people associating the Christian-Right with Christianity and
opting out of it.) Now, I’m pretty sure that the entirety of the
Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam- teach and
believe that God is all-present. I don’t know of any part of any of
those traditions who argue against it. There are some stronger
understandings of it, like pan-en-theism which says that everything
that is exists within God and yet God is more than all that is. (I’m
a panentheist.) But the all-presentness of God isn’t in any way
controversial.

However,
the all-loving part of God IS. In fact, I think this is the breaking
point between the Christian-Right and Jesus-followers. While both
sides may make the claim, what we mean by it is profoundly different.
When I say God is all-loving I mean:

God
loves and wants good for ALL people, regardless of their
acknowledgement of God, desire to “worship” God, or the
morality of their actions.
God
seeks the COMMON good, and works to create the kindom in the world –
a time and place where ALL people can both survive and thrive.
No
one is more valuable than anyone else, and no one is less valuable
than anyone else in the eyes of God.
God
encourages us, nudges us, and calls us into loving words and actions
– all of us all the time – and we get to pick whether or not we
respond.
God’s
nature is to be loving, which is an awesome and delightful reality.
If we want to respond to that love, then we are led by gratitude and
by love itself. God’s request of us when we attend to God’s love is
that we RESPOND to it – by letting love grow in us and change us.
The love that grows in us is for God, for others, and for ourselves.
Another way to think of this is that deepening our relationship to
God is growing in compassion.
NOTHING,
no NOTHING – not death,
nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, or height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

When
the Christian-Right says God is all loving, it starts from a
different place. The Christian-Right worldview starts with “the
fall” – the idea of original sin. Within this perspective, there
is a separation between God and humanity that exists in two parts.
First, the fall itself is understood as fundamental to reality, it
create a separation between God and humanity as a whole. Secondly,
as each individual person sins that sin separates them from God.
From here, the Christian-Right considers ways to move from this
brokenness into “right relationship with God.” God as loving,
then, is God who gives humans the means to move from broken
relationship into right relationship.

Right
relationship with God consists of fulling a required set of actions
and beliefs. In this view, because God loves everyone, God gives
everyone the opportunity to be in right relationship. As God wants
to be in right relationship with everyone, God steers people towards
the correct actions and beliefs. Thus judgement and even punishment
by God of people are seen as corrections that are part of love, like
a parent correcting their child for the child’s development. (The
fact that punishment is a terrible motivator and, at the core,
doesn’t work, isn’t acknowledged from this perspective.)

In
the Christian-right view, wrong belief and/or wrong action can
distance one from relationship with God. And, at the point of death,
the opportunity to move into “right relationship” is cut off.
Thus, those in the Christian-Right try to encourage others to choose
right beliefs and right actions, so that they too can be in right
relationship with God and thus not spend eternity in hell, cut off
from God. It is possible to see, from this viewpoint, how judgement
could be seen as an expression of love.

I
haven’t actually been directly exposed to much Christian-Right
theology, but I actually was exposed to the core of this viewpoint,
one time when I was a teenager at my Annual Conference session. The
Bible Study leader showed us a video in which the human sin created a
chasm with us on one side and God on the other. The video then
showed us how Jesus’s death on the cross changed the nature of
reality, and that if we accepted God’s forgiveness (right belief),
then the cross would become the bridge we could walk to connect with
God.

I
think I was 13. The next day I complained about the video to my
pastor, and that particularly youth bible study leader never
returned. At that point I didn’t understand exactly how that
viewpoint was different from mine, but I could FEEL it. Somewhere
along the line I realized that I think the idea that sin separates us
from God is blasphemous because it indicates that SIN is more
powerful than God and God’s love.

Like
the passage from Matthew suggests, God does not call us into being
afraid of God. Rather, God is with us and we need not be afraid. God
loves us, all of us, and nothing can separate us from the love of
God. Thanks be to God. Amen

(Sermon
feedback leads me to add a PS to the end of this sermon: Therefore,
as people connected to the all-present and all-loving God, as people
freed from the fear that pervades the world around us, go and be
present and loving in the world!)

1The
use of the phrase “Jesus following” is not meant to suggest that
the Christian-Right are not Jesus followers. Rather, I find that
because of the hateful action of many people who claim the word
Christian, many of us are uncomfortable claiming that language and
prefer to take on “Jesus-follower” as a way of recognizing the
core figure of our faith tradition without the baggage of the word
“Christian.”

2I
love it when people do research that supports my assumptions:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-is-helping-drive-liberals-away-from-religion/.
(Don’t we all?)

Sermons

Untitled

September 8, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

We’re
currently looking at 3 different worldviews: Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism, the Christian-Right, and (for lack of language that is better)
“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 (No! Really!)
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 second of the them:

“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to
each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”

Unlike
last week, where I directly contrasted Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
with the perspective of the Christian-Right and then both with
Jesus-following, in this case I think Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
and the Christian-Right largely overlap. I don’t see a noticeable
difference, other than perhaps in the degree of openness to other
faith traditions.

The
difference from both is in how Jesus-followers see our tradition,
including in our Micah passage today. That passage claims that what
God wants is for us “to
do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

For
some people, what Micah says and “be good and nice” may look
similar at the outset. That’s what makes it so dangerous!

Now,
obviously, I take no issue with the last bit, where the Bible is
conflated with other faiths. When it comes to the basic moral
principles of the world’s religions, there is enough agreement to
speak in such terms. The issue, rather, is what a moral life looks
like!

The
first statement is that God wants people to be “good.” That’s
not particularly controversial at this point, but it is circular
logic! What does it mean to be good? Isn’t this a statement about
what being good means? Then simply saying, “being good is being
good” doesn’t help us figure things out much does it? That means
we have to decide from the next two words what this goodness looks
like.

This
is where we get “nice.” “God wants people to be nice.” In
fact, if you take out some words, this statement could read, “God
wants people to be nice, as taught in the Bible.”

Here
is the problem. It doesn’t. The Bible doesn’t tell people to be
nice.

Actually,
the Bible does not include the word NICE. And I mean AT ALL. Its
not there. It doesn’t show up. And I don’t think its an accident or
a mistranslation. I think its not there ON PURPOSE. What is nice
anyway? We use the word so much that we easily lose its meaning.
Apple dictionary defines it this way: “Nice”
pleasant;
agreeable; satisfactory.” I think the most important part of that
definition is “agreeable.” The word “nice” has very serious
connotations of “don’t rock the boat!” A nice person doesn’t
argue, doesn’t disagree, doesn’t tell you when you’re wrong, doesn’t
tell you when you are harming another person. A nice person doesn’t
name injustice, doesn’t upset the status quo, doesn’t willingly
engage in conflict. A nice person is always pleasant, even when
things are profoundly wrong. To be NICE is to take the path of least
resistance.

Our
Micah passage says that God wants us to do justice, to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with God. For clarity’s sake, I offer 3
different translations of this verse for you:

NRSV:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;  and what does the
Lord require of you  but to do justice, and to love kindness, 
and to walk humbly with your God?

NIV:
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD
require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly
with your God.

Message:
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God
is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair
and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.

Now,
there is something in there about loving kindness or showing mercy.
They aren’t the same thing as “be nice.” Now, the definition of
kindness, “the
quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate”,
helps, but I think its in the definition of mercy that we really see
the difference. Mercy is compassion
or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to
punish or harm. WHOA. That’s so not the same thing as agreeable.
Its so much STRONGER!

Jesus
says that the greatest commandments are to Love the Lord Your God
with all you heart, all your soul, and all your mind – and to love
your neighbor as yourself. In fact he suggests they aren’t so
different. This Micah passage is another way of saying it. To
love mercy is to love your neighbor as yourself, ESPECIALLY when you
have the power and reason to do otherwise.

Now
its time to go back to the rest of Micah’s claim. To do justly, to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. I will admit that its best
the Moralistic Therapetic Deism’s claim that God wants us to be
“fair” is entirely true, and I suspect that its a similar
articulation as the theme of Justice throughout the Bible. It seems
clear, Biblically speaking, that God is OBSESSED with justice. There
are all sorts of commandments that have to do with making sure that
the justice system is fair – and that it doesn’t benefit the rich
more than the poor, men more than women, natural citizens more than
outsiders. There
is a deep awareness that left to its own devices, a society will bend
justice toward power so that the powerful will constantly become more
powerful and the powerless more powerless. God’s commandments are
meant to prevent this!

Justice,
and judgement, and the judicial system even are all there to make
sure that things are FAIR for people no matter who they are. You
might remember the story of the prophet Nathan telling a sob story to
King David … the story is that a very very wealthy man with many
herds noticed that his very poor neighbor had a very nice lamb, and
so, he stole it! David’s was so angry at this rich man, and Nathan
pointed out to him that HE was the wealthy man in the story. The
prophets were the ones making sure that people didn’t forget about
justice!

Justice
often demands the opposite of niceness. While niceness is the
path of least resistance, justice often requires being part of active
resistence. The demands of justice in the world may require
upsetting the social order, upsetting other people, upsetting the
institutions of power and privilege. Those fighting for women’s
rights were told they weren’t being NICE. Those fighting to end
slavery weren’t NICE. Those fighting to end segregation weren’t
NICE. But…. they were just, and they were merciful.

In
the best case scenario, if “fairness” is given all the power and
energy that it deserves, then YES, God does want us to be fair, but
note that it isn’t some fairness that has mostly to do with trivial
matters – it is a fairness that has to do with everyone having a
fair opportunity to LIVE and THRIVE. That’s where the Leviticus
passage comes in. It does, of course, include “love your neighbor
as yourself” but it seems to also be pretty explicit about what
that looks like. In this passage, loving your neighbor as yourself
means leaving a means of livelihood for the poor rather than
enriching yourself. In this passage, loving your neighbor as
yourself means telling the truth in order to produce fairness and
justice. This passage worries about the disempowered, and tells
those who have power to act responsibly with their power: to give
wages when they’re earned, to refrain from doing harm simply because
it can be done. Loving your neighbor as yourself means creating a
JUST justice system, impartial to power and wealth, and to refrain
from profitting from violence. This is some PRATICAL and real stuff.

It
isn’t “nice” stuff. It is “just” stuff.

That
tiny Micah passage includes, as well, that God wants us to “walk
humbly with our God.” This is not paralleled at all in Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism, and from my understanding of it, that is not
accidental either. People following that way of thought do not
believe that in spiritual practice or discipline. They see prayer as
a way of manipulating God into giving them what they want. For the
most part, they do not read the Bible, or reach out to others as a
way of sharing God’s love. They think of God as existing for THEM,
rather than thinking of themselves as existing to do God’s work in
the world. Its an enormous switch!

This
may be one significant place where the Christian-Right and
Jesus-followers align. Our Tradition teaches us that we are the Body
of Christ – we are gifted and blessed so that we can be a blessing
to others. We exist so that God’s love can spread. We are the
continuation of the ministry of Jesus himself. We are part of God’s
transformation of the world, and our work in that includes
significant time studying and praying and worshipping and discussing
so that we might BEST use our lives for the goodness of all.

Micah
tells us to be humble before God. That is, to remember that God is
God and we are not! That the purpose of life is not that God serve
us, but that we serve God. And that in serving God we are both
blessed and a blessing! That our lives AND the lives of those we
meet are improved!

You
see, our Tradition is not all about us, it is about everyone. It
is DEFINTELY not about “ME”! Micah reminds us with simple words
about humility – which are put next to justice and mercy in their
importance! Those THREE things are what it means to be a “good”
person, if you listen to the Bible. Justice, mercy, humility.
They’re balanced, and they push us beyond ourselves to being truly
good neighbors to those we meet.

So,
my friends, despite the the apparent similarities, again we find that
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a mistranslation of our faith. Our
tradition does NOT teach us to be nice. In many ways it teaches the
opposite. It teaches us to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with our God. May we do what we are taught. 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 8, 2019