If I Fall

January 19, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“If I Fall…” based on Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 5:1-16

January is National Mentoring Month, and so this year for Human Relations Day, we decided to look at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in context – along with the people who inspired him, and the people he inspired. Thus, I opened a lot of articles on the people who served as Dr. King’s mentors and I have three things to say based on that: OH MY GOODNESS were those impressive men; thank goodness for Ghandi and his witness to the powers of nonviolence that these mentors heard loud and clear; and finally – what an extraordinary group of superbly well educated men of color!

In the end though, I found myself more interested in Dr. King’s co-mentoring relationships. Perhaps that would be more normally construed as his collaborators. The key, I think, is to remember that Dr. King was the best known leader in the Civil Rights movement, but he was by no means alone. Dr. King worked side by side with Ralph Abernathy, and the impacts on the movement of Coretta Scott King and Juanita Jones Abernathy was also enormous. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was working tirelessly as well, with its wise leaders and faithful on the ground workers. Movements, it turns out, involve a lot of PEOPLE. No one person is a movement, nor can a single person lead a movement alone. Movements are the embodiment of “we’re in this together.”

With the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was a woman by the name of Fannie Lou Hamer:

Born in Mississippi in 1917, Hamer was a working poor and disabled Black sharecropper who joined the Civil Rights Movement at the age of forty-four. In 1962, her life changed dramatically after attending a mass meeting at a local church. The gathering had been organized by activists in SNCC. The speakers that night highlighted how ordinary citizens could transform American society with the right to vote, a message that resonated with Hamer. She went on to become a field secretary for SNCC and assisted Black people in Mississippi and beyond with voter registration.

This was dangerous work. In June 1963, Hamer was returning from South Carolina with a group of other activists. They stopped in Wynona to grab a bite to eat. Hamer’s colleagues encountered resistance from the owners of the café who made it clear that Black people were not welcome. The police arrived. And when Hamer exited the bus, an officer grabbed her and started kicking her. After Hamer and her colleagues were arrested, they received brutal beatings from the police officers who also instructed prisoners to do the same. Hamer’s injuries left her with kidney damage, a blood clot in her eye, and worsened a physical limp that she would carry for the rest of her life. However, Hamer was undeterred and continued her efforts to expand Black political rights.

…In April 1964, she joined forces with several other activists to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the MFDP. The group challenged the Mississippi all-white Democratic party. In August of 1964, only months after the establishment of the MFDP, Hamer and others traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to attend the Democratic National Convention.

…The experience in Atlantic City transformed Hamer. Although she encountered resistance, she persisted and delivered the most well-known speech of her political career before the Credentials Committee at the Convention. Hamer used her speech to describe the acts of racist violence Black people faced on a daily basis in the Jim Crow South. She told the stories of shots being fired at the homes of those who supported voting rights, and she told the story of what happened to her in Wynona. As she reflected on the painful experiences that Black people face in the South, Hamer could not help but to question America. In her words, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”1

She was a woman who was inspired by Dr. King, and then inspired Dr. King. They were even known to disagree and push on each other. That is, she was a full collaborator with him in the movement towards freedom. One of many famous quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer is, “If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.” Another great one, one I think we’re going to need in coming days is, “There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.” Finally, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

I hadn’t heard of Fannie Lou Hamer in my education, I didn’t learn about her until Shirley Readdean’s daughter Cyndee co-directed “Freedom Summer.” I’m so glad I did learn about her, because she was a living force for good, and I needed to know.

The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, with their commitments to freedom for all people, to transforming oppression, and to doing so through non-violence carefully followed the Way of Jesus, and the calling of God. We hear in Micah famous words:

[God] 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?

It is awe-inspiring how well the Civil Rights Movement embodied this. Dr. King and others preached goodness for oppressors, including in Dr. King’s sermon “Loving Our Enemies”:

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system..2

As they worked for justice, as they walked with God, they embodied kindness on the deepest levels – calling for true love for those who harmed and oppressed them.

Beloveds, this is a reminder we need. There is no one in the world that we are allowed to discount the humanity of – no one we seek to defeat. We want to change systems, we want to bring freedom, we want to care for the vulnerable, but we aren’t going to get to the kin-dom of God any way but through love – EVEN for those who do immense harm.

No one ever said following Jesus was easy.

Not even Jesus, whose famous Sermon on the Mount blesses those who are struggling with hopes that it will not always be this way. But not with the power to oppress those who oppressed them. The Jesus movement is nonviolent and loving – it isn’t passive, it isn’t willing to let injustice stand, but it is COMMITTED to being nonviolent and loving.

Jesus showed us that the nonviolent love of God could change the world. So too, did the Civil Rights Movement. Today, so too does the Poor People’s Campaign.

Dear ones, in the days to come, I am going to hold on to Fannie Lou Hamer, especially her words, If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.” Whatever comes at us, if we respond with a commitment to justice, to goodness, and to being with God – we can bring good out of ANYTHING. (Eventually.)

May we follow the lead of those who call us to love, to justice, and to nonviolence. They have already shown us the power, we simply get to follow in the way and trust in God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 Keisha N. Blain, “Fannie Lou Hamer Embodied Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Vision of Courageous Black Leadership” March 02, 2022, found at https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2022/03/fannie-lou-hamer-embodied-martin-luther-king-jrs-vision-of-courageous-black-leadership.html, on January 15, 2025.

2 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church

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

January 19, 2025

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Untitled

December 3, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Yearning for Hope” based on Job 24:1-11, 22-25

Today we re-start the Christian Year, the liturgical cycle of waiting, celebrating, growing, waiting, celebrating, growing. We are now back in waiting. I think I fall deeper in love with Advent every year. The more commercialist Christmas pushes red and white, the more I find myself retreating the Advent colors of purple and pink. The more commercialism pushes secular carols, the more I find myself retreating into the quiet of the sanctuary and the integrity of Advent Hymns. The more commercialism pushes sales and deals the more attention I give to Alternative Christmas.

While secular Christmas has its bright, cheery, feel-good energy all around us, Christian Advent calls us to slow down, reflect, savor. Today we lit the candle of hope, one small light in an ever expanding darkness, one small light that will prove to be enough.

Now, I’m not against secular Christmas, I rather like it, but it feels disconnected from the one Christian one. This fall we did a Bible Study on the Christmas Stories in the Gospels, and we compared and contrasted them with our Christmas memories, our Christmas delights, and even the meaning we make from Christmas. (There is a poster in the back inviting you to do the same.) For most of us, Luke’s story of Christmas fit our faith the best, and made the most sense of it all. We also discovered that reading Luke 1 and 2 together made Luke 2 a whole lot more delightful. Luke centers on women, and on the disenfranchised, and the good news to all people. It fits who we seek to be as a church.

But for now, we’re still waiting, right? We’re waiting, and the description of the world being terribly wrong from the Bible’s most depressive abused character (Job) is doing its job of settling us into waiting. The description Job offers is of the world as it is and we YEARN with all our beings for the KINDOM of God where those descriptions no longer apply.

This Christian Year, the Worship Committee has taken seriously a request from the Intersectional Justice Committee to focus together on the book “We Cry Justice” put out by the Poor People’s Campaign. It is a book in 52 parts, meant to be read devotionally, and no matter how many times our Book Club tried, it didn’t become a readable book. It is a devotional book, so they asked if we could incorporate it into worship, and Worship Committee and I thought that was a wonderful idea. We have completed our year with “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” which was a gift from God via Dr. Wil Gafney, and there is space for a different focus.

The Poor People’s Campaign is a group of amazing activists who decided it was time to pick up the mantle from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr who was himself leading a Poor People’s Campaign at the time of his death. We have been lightly involved with the modern campaign for years, and we have KNOWN that it is one of the ways God is at work in the world, and yet we haven’t quite given it our attention, until now. The book “We Cry Justice” is intentional Biblical interpretation with an eye towards the injustices of the world towards people in poverty. When I wrote them asking for permission to use prayers and quotations in worship they got back to us immediately granting it!

So this year as we settle to wait, our waiting is really defined by our waiting for JUSTICE for the vulnerable and those living in poverty. This fits the life this church particularly well, when I think about what we focus on in mission, while it hasn’t even been a decision exactly, the goals seem to be to lighten the burdens of those living in poverty. We see in our neighbors, our fellow members and worshippers, those dear to us, and quite ourselves the struggles of trying to live in a world that values the creation of capital over the well-being of the vulnerable.

I don’t know about you, but it breaks my heart.

Over and over again.

Actually, I kind of do know about you. I know that this is a community of faith whose belief in God and God’s dreams for the world include knowing that what is just and right in the world is for people to have access to food that is nutritious, delicious and plentiful; to housing that is safe, mold-free, and affordable; and to healthcare that is caring, effective, and doesn’t require declaring bankruptcy. That we are people who believe that God’s desires in the world are for people to live full abundant lives, and we know what is impairing that.

I expect that what I just said was so ridiculously obvious that you don’t know why I’m bothering wasting my breath on it. Thank you for that, because, dear ones, what is clear and obvious here isn’t in the world at large. Our society as a whole is at peace with people being hungry or we would expand SNAP benefits to cover the WHOLE month, expand access to SNAP benefits to everyone who really needs it, and … oh, let’s talk about reality, we wouldn’t have had our federal government cut $22 million from funding for regional food banks that are the last-gap measure between those who are struggling and hunger. (THIS is why we have to go to the store for meat, because the Food Bank can’t afford to get it anymore.) Our society as a whole is at peace with homelessness, or we’d prioritize safe, accessible housing in our budgets and our legislation. Our society as a whole is at peace with people not have access to healthcare, or not being able to afford to access healthcare, or going bankrupt from accessing healthcare or – wait for it – we’d have a different way of providing and funding healthcare.

And when I’m out in the world, listening, a shocking number of people think that those living in poverty should just try harder, or suffer a little because they deserve it, or …. well, basically the assumption is that poverty is the fault of the individual and poverty is the punishment someone deserves for not “succeeding” in capitalism.

Thank God, we see people as beloved children of God worthy of good things and abundant life, and not worthy of being punished because the game is rigged and they can’t win.

Thank God we know a God who is defined by universal love, grace, and mercy. It turns out that matters a lot in what we think justice looks like.

So, here we are on this first Sunday of Advent with one candle-flicker of light in our sanctuary reminding us to hold on to hope. And we have that while we heard words from Job that tell us how the world really is. In “We Cry Justice” Aaron Scott reflects on this Job reading saying:

I see countless tents, tarps, and shacks lining freeway underpasses – up one day, then disappearing the next, removed by cities desperate to keep up appearances instead of keeping up with justice and mercy. I see signs turning parking lots and stoplights across the country into hostile territory: “No Loitering,” “No Illegal Shopping Carts, “No Panhandling.”

And last week while our social worker Sylvester worked to find housing for God’s beloveds who had shown up last week, he confirmed counties in the capital region are buying people bus passes to other counties to avoid the cost of housing them.

The world as it is.

But, dear ones, we aren’t waiting for more of the same. We are waiting for God’s Kindom on earth. And this year, I have noticed something terribly obvious. We aren’t just waiting with our ancestors in faith who also yearned for justice and God’s dreams. I believe we are waiting with God’s own self, God who yearns to see us make different choices and offer better care for God’s vulnerable beloveds.

A challenge of faith today is to look at all the brokenness, all the injustice, all the heartaches, and hold hope. And yet, dear ones, there is plenty. There is hope because God seeks justice. There is hope because this is a community of faith that sees the injustice around us and calls it “immoral.” There is hope because there is a whole Poor People’s Campaign out there working on it! There is hope because God and we, and others along with us, will never concede that this is good enough. There is hope because at the deepest core of reality, there is goodness (God’s goodness) and it is going to break through eventually.

There is hope in this darkness. And the yearning for hope, the yearning for better, the yearning for the kindom is some of the hope itself. Thanks be to God. Amen

December 3, 2023

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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“Are We Lost?” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

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

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

These
times, beloveds, are not simple times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

None
of which look anything like following Jesus. Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s
OK.

God
does, and God will lead us, TOGETHER.

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

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

September 11, 2022

Sermons

“Prophetic Justice”based on 2 Samuel 12:1-9

March 4, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It can seem like the word “scandal” and the phrase “abuse of power” were created to describe this period of history, but the Bible begs to differ. King David had more than his fair share of scandals and abuses of power.

At this point in the story, King David had been crowned king, and had the accouterments of power: he’d married the previous king’s daughter, he’d moved into the palace, he had a large harem and many children. The Bible says that all these were God’s gifts to him, a statement that I take core issue with, but am going to let lie for now.

Presumably the palace was higher than the rest of the buildings around it, in any case we’re told that David was out walking on the roof deck and had the vantage point to see Bathsheba bathing. What he saw, he wanted. Worse yet, he had the power to get what he wanted. He sent his servants to find out who she was. They told him. They told him not only who she was, and whose daughter she was, but also who she was married to. Knowing this, he sent other servants to fetch her.

And then he raped her.

The Bible only says that he “lay” with her, but she didn’t have the power to decline, and lacking the power to decline means that there is no possible way for there to be consent. We don’t know if it was violent or not, but it was rape. Bathsheba was impregnated by the rape, and let David know.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t get any better at this point. David didn’t want to take responsibility for his actions, so he started working on a cover up. Bathsheba’s husband was serving in David’s military, so David sent word to the general to send him home, under the cover of asking for a report from the front lines. It is also useful to know that at this time, kings tended to function as their own generals, and David staying home safe from the fighting was perceived by many as an inherent abuse of power.

David hoped that while home for the night, Bathsheba and her husband Uriah’s marital relations would cover his rape. It turned out that Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, was a man of high integrity though. He felt that it was unfair to the fighting army for him to have the comforts of home while they were on the front lines, and so he slept with David’s guards at the palace. Then David thought the man’s integrity would break with just a bit more pressure, so he got Uriah drunk. However, it still didn’t work. Uriah slept among the guards. So David wrote a letter to his general and sent it back to the front lines in the hands of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah.

The letter instructed the general to put Uriah in the front line of fighting and then pull back all the rest of the troops, to assure Uriah’s death. His general followed orders, Uriah died, Bathsheba mourned, and then David had her moved into the palace and married her himself, adding her to his royal harem.

This, apparently, displeased God, the Bible tells us. (2 Samuel 11:27b) Nathan comes to speak God’s truth to David’s power. As we heard today, Nathan tells David a story about a rich man with a large herds and flocks and a poor man who had only one lamb and treated it like family. The rich man wanted to look hospitable and good, but didn’t want to actually kill any of his animals, so he stole the other man’s lamb and fed it to his guest.

Like any of us, David was immediately able to see the injustice and wanted to do something to fix it! He thought the rich man had no compassion, he thought the man should have to repay what he’d done 4 times over. In fact he thought the man deserved to die over it (although I’m told what he said didn’t constitute an official judgment condemning the man to die, this was merely passion.) Nathan’s story worked. It not only raised the issues of abuse of power and basic injustice, it found a way to get at the most basic problem: David’s actions valued David more than other people, they indicated that David thought he mattered MORE. God doesn’t work like that.

In the New Interpreter’s Bible, Bruce Birch, comments on this passage saying, “Power is always tempted to live in the illusion that it is autonomous and self-sufficient. Powerful people in powerful positions often imagine that they can define reality in their own terms.”¹ However, “In the eyes of God, the powerless are as valued as the powerful, and the exploitation of the powerless ones is evil.”² That is, God’s justice doesn’t have favorites, but human action often does.

I don’t know what was going on in David’s mind when he took those actions. Did he think he was God’s favorite who could do no wrong? Was he just high on power? Did he simply WANT and act on that desire without thought of consequences, and then want to avoid consequences?

Although I am generally not a fan of David’s, in this story I think he acts as an extreme version of all of us. He isn’t the only human to have desire for someone or something out of bounds. He isn’t the only one to break rules (or laws) to get what he wants. And he certainly isn’t the only one to make things worse with the cover-up. It does turn out that when Nathan is done speaking his accusations, David actually acknowledges what he’s done and expresses repentance! That is worthy of notice. Most scandals and abuses of power aren’t acknowledged. Most of the time people double down on their “rightness” no matter how much harm they’ve done. In terms of acknowledging what he’d done and not repeating the same mistake, David IS an example of what humans can be.

It seems like David actually did know that what he was doing was wrong, even though that didn’t stop him. Now, in those days what he was doing that was wrong was taking another man’s property by sleeping with that man’s wife, and then the murder. Today we add rape to the list of acts of evil he perpetuated. I suspect he knew that was wrong too.

In addition to my curiosity about David’s motivations, I’m rather curious about Nathan’s. Why did he bring this up to the king? I don’t tend to think that God’s connection to humans was actually that different in those days than today, so I think it is likely that “the Lord sending Nathan to David” is much more likely to be Nathan’s deep sense that something was wrong and that God wanted his help in naming it. He may well have known that this had to be brought into the light, but it was still a frightening thing to do. Other prophets had been killed by kings, or threatened by them. David was already a murderer when someone got in his way.

Yet clearly Nathan’s sense that this had to be spoken was MORE powerful than his concern for his own well-being. Why? Why was this worth it for him? Was Uriah one of his friends? Was David one of his friends? Was God just a really good nag? Did this seem to matter? Did he want to prevent it happening again and again? Did he think David needed help finding the right ways to use power? Was he worried the whole country would fall apart if leadership like that continued?

Furthermore, of all of the issues of injustice that were present in that day, why was this one the one he spent his time on? This I might have an answer to! Human societies, at least ones with successful agriculture, naturally become domination systems. Some people end up with more power and they do what they can to keep it.

God’s vision for the Israelites was a society without a domination system. It was carefully designed to prevent generation poverty or cycles of debt; to welcome the stranger and care for the vulnerable; to offer rest to all, no matter their status; and to prevent the creation of social classes or nobility. In fact, in the original system the Levites were the teachers who taught God’s vision and tried to motivate people to keep it, but they were prevented by it from owning any land. Thus they couldn’t adapt it to their own benefit!

I think the most significant deviation from this vision occurred at the creation of the kingship. The bible itself expresses DEEP ambivalence about the practice of having kings. It suggests that God didn’t want a kingship for the country, but the people “wanted to be like other nations.” Since the people had been called by God to be a “light on a hill” the desire to be like their neighbors isn’t exactly flattering. For the most part, the Bible is unimpressed with the kings personally as well as in theory. David most certainly included, and in his case it gives us good examples of why!

I suspect that Nathan knew all this. He knew that kings tend to create domination systems, and they tend to justify them with divine “favor.” And he knew that the well-being of the masses in Israel was dependent on limiting the power of the king to dominate. If that’s true then his actions in calling out the king were meant to take care of the people. He might have only been calling out one action, but he was stopping the acceleration of domination.

It also seems worth noting HOW he did it. The use of the parable to bring his point home was brilliant. It raised David’s yearning for a just world, and that was necessary to bring David around to seeing his own acts of injustice and evil. This may be a very good strategy to keep in our own toolboxes for the difficult conversations God nudges us to.

Time and time again in the Bible, prophets have to tell those in power that their actions are against God’s will and are doing harm to God’s people. The role of the prophet is HARD, and dangerous. It was dangerous when Jesus did it too. And now, the role of the prophet is now shared within the Body of Christ. Jesus’s lifework was multifaceted, there is much to do as the living Body of Christ today. One piece of our shared work is to name injustices to those in power, to try to limit the destructive power of domination systems. For each of us individually, this is part of our work but the portion is different. At some times we have to speak to friends or family members. At others we have to speak to institutions or their leaders. All of it is difficult, but we are responsible for holding God’s vision of a just society in the midst of the many illusions about power and its right to dominate others. Our God is a God of the powerless AND the powerful. Our work is to reflect God’s: by seeking to eliminate the exploitation of the powerless. May God be with us that we might be as creative and successful as Nathan. Amen

1Bruce C. Birch, Commentary on 2^nd Samuel, New Interpreter’s Study Bible Vol 2 (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 1294.

2Birch, 1294.

–Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 4, 2018

Sermons

“Persistent” based on Luke 18:2-5

October 2, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I recently heard a story,
it was the story of the person who told it to me, but it struck me
that it was also many peoples’ story. There was much to celebrate
in the story, and also a lot to be frustrated by. The person who
told me the story was someone who lacks access to sufficient
financial resources. That is, in the colloquial – he is poor –
although I think poverty is more complicated than that! The man is a
father, and his daughter got into a VERY good college, despite the
challenges the family faced and the challenges their school district
faced. As you might hope, the very good college offered this young
woman a financial aid package to make it possible for her to attend
the school. However, when the young woman got the financial aid
package and read it over carefully, she realized that the loans she
was being offered were predatory loans that would be verging on
impossible to ever be able to pay back! She contacted the school.
They ignored her. She kept pestering. They kept ignoring her. Her
father started calling, and he started calling up the chain of
command. He was told to stop calling. When I heard the story,
that’s where it ended – they were unsure if the young woman would
attend the very good college because she was WAY too smart to do so
at risk to her financial future.

She sounds like the
persistent widow. I’ve been told that the persistent widow is a very
strange character with which to start a sermon series on subversive
women – and not just because the Bible presents her as fictional.
The bigger issue is that her subversiveness isn’t very obvious. To
the naked eye, she just looks like an annoying nag! Actually, even
that may be projection. This is a SHORT story, there isn’t that much
to it!

In our study of the text
though, we found a lot to discuss about this short-storied,
fictional, persistent widow. It is helpful to remember that the
Torah, the laws of community life that the Jewish people understood
to have come from God, were very clear about the care for widows,
orphans, and foreigners. That would be, people who did not have the
protection of an adult male who was a member of society and were thus
vulnerable. The system was designed so that even the vulnerable
could find ways to survive. The Torah was also very clear about the
threat to society created by an unjust justice system, and
articulated frequently, in no uncertain terms, the need to have
judges who made rulings based on JUSTICE and not on who had more
money or influence.

That is, the persistent
widow is stuck in a situation she shouldn’t be in. She should be
cared for. She isn’t! It is likely that her “opponent” is the
person who should have been taking care of her and providing for her
livelihood, and wasn’t! The justice system was supposed to help her
find a way to justice. It didn’t. She was stuck in a situation
which was untenable for her survival without a means of recourse
because of the immorality of the judge. There was no other means by
which she could get justice. The system was closed to her, and the
only option left to her was to agitate the system.

The judge is presented
very simplistically. He doesn’t care about justice, people, or
God… and it sounds like he just does what he wants to do. He is a
negative caricature of a person abusing power or authority, someone
who isn’t easy to move toward justice.

The persistent widow won
though! I suspect that she could have taught the courses I took this
spring on non-violent direct action! Jesus says that the judge
thought to himself,
“because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice,
so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (v. 5) The
persistent widow didn’t have much power to use in the world, and she
didn’t have ANY power that could be used without being annoying. So
she used what she had. She was annoying. She didn’t give up. And
she annoyed him into doing what was right!

That’s
what I think is so subversive about the persistent widow. She can’t
have been the only widow in that city who was impoverished by a lack
of justice, she likely wasn’t even the only one to bring it to the
judge’s attention. MANY of the widows might have been in similar
situations. However, in cases like that, most people give up.
That’s what people are counting on, and that’s part of why injustices
sometimes win out.

I
think about that young college bound woman, and how carefully she
read the details of her financial aid package to determine that the
offer wasn’t fair. How many other people in the same situation come
with some trust that the college they want to go to won’t do them
harm, don’t read the package, or don’t yet have the math skills to
interpret the implications? How many people would decide to take the
package and hope for the best? How many people would try to call and
ask if there was another loan, but give up easily? I don’t know how
many people would get as far as the young woman I heard about, and
consider giving up their dream school, but I do know that her
persistence is NOT what the predatory loan company is counting on.

The
predatory loan company is expecting people not to pay attention, to
trust, to take a leap of faith, not to run the numbers, and to sign
on the dotted line – no matter how high the interest rate turns out
to be. The predatory loan company is able to get away with their
loans because few people are as persistent as that young woman. The
college, as well, choose to work with that predatory loan company,
and in doing so to keep this young woman and those in similar
situations IN poverty, while pretending to help them out of it. It
makes me wonder what they might be getting out of it.

Keeping
our eyes open to see
the injustices of the wold and REFUSING to be quiet about them once
we do is wildly subversive. I’m claiming the persistent widow was
subversive because she was a nag, and she didn’t stop nagging until
justice was found. It isn’t the wildest story in the Bible by any
means, but it may represent the most frequently successful mechanism
of accessing justice: refusing to give up!

One
of the challenges of acting like the persistent widow, though, is
that there are a lot of injustices in the world and none of us can
give attentiveness to all of them. That level of nagging can’t be
multi-tasked! This is one of the reasons I am so grateful for the
image of the Body of Christ. I come back to it time and time again,
reminded that if I do my part faithfully, and trust the rest of the
Body to do their part (and God to do God’s part), the whole world
gets better. Most often justice comes through collective action
(think Montgomery Bus Boycott, Women’s Suffrage, blocking the
Keystone XL pipeline), but sometimes they’re smaller or individual as
well. On occasion we can successfully seek justice alone, but no one
of us can seek ALL justice. If any of us try to
all the work of the Body of Christ, nothing gets done
at all!

My
college thesis was on John Conway’s “Game of Life,” which is a
set of rules governing a grid. On the grid, at any given moment,
each cell is “alive” or “dead” and then, from there, things
change. The status “alive” or “dead” is represented visually
by two different colors, and those statuses are able to change with
time, based on the relationships they have with other cells who are
also “alive” or “dead.”

One
night, deep in the trenches of trying to write up my thesis and
struggling with a decision about where to go to seminary, I went down
to the river to pray. I sat on a dock and watched the water flow by.
As might make sense if you’d spent as many hours and months staring
at colored boxes on a graph as I had, I started imagining the river
as the graph – and imagining the graph spreading out to cover all
the water of the world. I’d stared at colored boxes for a LONG time,
and I was tired 😉 Then, as I continued to pray, ponder, and be
overwhelmed, I started imagining one of those boxes as representing
MY life. To my horror, the box that represented my life was
blinking! I took this to mean that sometimes my life was
contributing to the well-being of others, but sometimes it WASN’T! I
found myself sitting on that dock on the Connecticut River, aware
that sometimes I wasn’t benefiting the kin-dom of God and wishing
with all that I was that I could ALWAYS be good.

It
was at that point that another thought entered my mind, one that was
outside of the particular ways my thoughts tend to cycle around.
That process has been one I’ve associated with the Divine, and I have
since thought of that prayer time by the river as a vision of sorts
-but I’m also giving you the details to consider it so that you can
assess how you’d like to think about it. The thought that entered my
mind, seemingly from beyond me, was that if I could manage to be a
blessing that contributed to the well-being of the kindom 51% of the
time, that was ENOUGH for God to be able to expand the goodness out
into the world and to be a net gain to the kin-dom.

It
was certainly a new thought to me then, I’d leaned more towards
perfectionism than toward an idea that offering more good than bad
was a net gain! It is a thought I’ve gone back to in the years
since, particularly when I’ve found myself being extra rough on
myself. It helps me to consider that God is able to make things work
with what we’re able to offer.

If
we do our best, and especially if we are able to offer a bit more
good into the world than harm, then God can use what we offer in
combination with the rest of the Body of Christ. The world becomes a
safer, fuller, more just place. The kin-dom becomes. We don’t have
to do all the work! We can’t! We’d burn out. That means that
sometimes we have to work through the process of figuring out which
things are ours to do and which things we leave for the rest of the
Body of Christ. Together, each of us offering the love, compassion,
and persistence that are our gifts from God, we can follow the
widow’s course and create the world that the Torah dreams and God
wants – the kin-dom of God! And it doesn’t even require perfection
😉 Just persistence. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 2, 2016

Sermons

“What Angers God” based on Amos 8:1-12

July 17, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Most of the time, when people quote Amos, they quote the sweet part (Amos 5:24) which says, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” What they miss is that the verse they know is in the midst of more pieces just like the one we just read. The paragraph that verse is in, is attributed to God, saying:

21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;

I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

25 Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 26You shall take up Sakkuth your king, and Kaiwan your star-god, your images that you made for yourselves;27therefore I will take you into exile beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

I say that mostly so that you don’t think our passage from Amos today is the weird part of the book. Amos loves justice and righteousness, and he speaks about a God who cares about how people are treated. But, even for prophets, Amos isn’t a cheerful one. He believes that the people of God have utterly failed to uphold their end of the covenant and that their utter destruction is imminent. He says so, and people hate it.

Looking at today’s text, this is one of the times that Biblical translation totally ruins the play on words. Amos sees a basket of summer fruit and the word for “summer fruit” sounds like the word for “end.” Therefore the first hearers would have noticed the play on words and been able to follow, but for us the textual connection is just obscure. We are left to trust the Hebrew scholars who tell us that it goes like. that This is a vision and a pronouncement about the end of life as Israel knew it.

Most scholars think that the book of Amos reflects prophetic oracles that derive from Amos himself, although they have been edited and a false ending added to soften the original end of the book! They think it came into its present form during the exile (587-539 BCE), so about 200 years after the prophet lived and spoke. As one scholar puts is, the oracles of Amos, “mainly condemned the ruling class in the north for their oppressive treatment of poor and needy members of society, and threatened that Israel would be punished by God, probably by military invasion and defeat. … Amos does not condemn Israel for faithless foreign policies; rather, he concentrates on the treatment of one section of society by another.”^¹ This oracle certainly fits that description.

There is a lot of destruction predicted, and that may reflect both the historical sayings of Amos and the historical remembering of both the Northern Exile (722 BCE) and the Southern one, since it got written down after both of them. I would like to focus, though, on the complaints that Amos names as the issues God is having with the people:

that they “trample on the needy”

and “bring to ruin the poor of the land”

they are impatient with religious observance, wanting to get back to making money

they cheat the people with improper weights and measures

they are “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals”

instead of selling food to people, they sell them mostly inedible food leftovers

These are both individual and communal wrongdoings. While each individual seller is responsible for their own actions which are wrong, that’s not all that is happening. It is because EVERYONE is doing this trampling that the poor are trampled. If some of the merchants were fair, people would have good options. If there were regulations of weights and measures, the people couldn’t be cheated. Society has to look the other way, and the empowered have to choose to do nothing in order for the poor and powerless to be so completely decimated. The wrong that is done is done by each person doing it and by the whole for not stopping it.

The line “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” is one of the more provoking in the Bible. It exemplifies the reality of greed – that when one person is trying to get rich, the people they are getting rich off of are paying the price. In reality, this was likely happening. It was common in ancient days (and ones not so long ago) for people to get so deeply into debt that they would sell themselves or their children into slavery to pay off the debt. The vision of God in the Torah which forbids interest AND forbids the selling of ancestral land, seeks to create a society without people being sold to pay off debts, but the people weren’t living that vision. People were cheating each other to make greater profits off of sandals, and those who were poor and vulnerable were being bought and sold because of the injustices of those profit margins.

I can imagine the justification of the grain sellers in the markets in Bethel, their responses to hearing Amos’s claims. Can’t you? They would say, “I have to feed my family! And I can’t do that if I sell the wheat in pure form because the harvest wasn’t good enough.” They would say, “I know my scale isn’t balanced, but did you see the guy over there? His is way worse!” They would say, “Yes, I’m doing OK for myself, but I work hard and I’ve earned what I have!” They would say, “It is the people’s choice to buy where they want, it isn’t my responsibility to take care of their well-being.” They would say, “If you don’t have enough money, you don’t get to buy the good stuff.” They would self-justify to the end, and in doing so deny their shared humanity with the people who happened to be poor or needy.

This spring I went to a training put on by the United Methodist Women about Human Sexuality so that I qualified to teach “Human Sexuality” MissionU this summer. They’re coming quickly! During the exercises we did to experience the curriculum we heard from a survivor of child sex trafficking. In the video she mentioned how many children are trafficked and how many people they were expected to sleep with every night. I did the math my head. By low estimates, 2,000,000 times a night, a child is paid for sex in our country. Suddenly it occurred to me that this means that there are A LOT of people choosing to use the bodies of children in this way. My mind was blown. I had no idea that so many people were engaged in such behavior, and it made me rethink our society as a whole.

It also led me to continued research, and I found quotations from men who bought sex with sex workers which are entirely too disturbing to be read from this pulpit.^² Even more distressing was that according to the research that is out there (which is mostly LOUSY by the way) the people who are buying sex are pretty NORMAL. Talk about “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandal” though! People who have enough to spend some as discretionary income are using it to buy access to the bodies of people who have no choice. (Although I acknowledge the reality that there are people who choose out of true free will and not just economic circumstances to sell their bodies, I believe that is rare enough and the harms done to those who do not truly have choice are severe enough that it is worth focusing on those who do not have control.) Most of sex that is bought and sold is done of desperation, addiction, and usually a lack of control over one’s life. Yet, people buy it.

People BUY access to another person’s body – quite often young girls who have been taken away from their families and friends. It is very clear to me that the harms that Amos spoke about, the “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandal” are very much still alive and well here and today. In Schenectady we know that there is plenty of prostitution and sex trafficking, and we know that once the casino opens we will have a lot more.

We also know, at least if we are listening to Amos, that God cares about the people that society ignores. The poor, the needy, the disenfranchised, the “least, the last, the lost, and the lonely” to name a few. God gets upset over the treatment of people who society tries to pretend don’t exist.

This week I was given the honor of being invited to sit on a panel to talk about the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Schenectady, and in particular the relationship between minority communities and our police forces. There were many articulate comments made about the ways that people who live in dark skin are told that they don’t matter. Some of the worst of those are known to us in the homicides perpetrated by police, but there are a million tiny cuts that happen every day in our city and county and country to people in dark skin.

Our society defines some people as mattering and others as not. That’s why we have to say #BlackLivesMatter. That’s why we have to be informed about sex trafficking and think about the reality that people BUY one another – if even only for minutes at a time. God is angered by the ways we dehumanize each other. God is angered when we allow injustice to fester and the vulnerable to pay the price. I’ve said before, and I still believe that the root sin is dehumanizing other beloved children of God. Everything derives from that.

Amos threaten the people with being abandoned by God, defeated in war, and the destroyed by an earthquake. That is to say, he thought God was angry, and angry enough to act on behalf of the people that the king and his empowered court had abandoned. I agree that God is angry, although I disagree with Amos about God’s methods. Given the injustices of today, I simply hear God crying and begging us to pay attention all of God’s people.

In the #BlackLivesMatter conversation we were encouraged to participate in Study Circles (I believe they will be coming back and we will get information out), to talk to people are different than we are, and to continue the work of educating ourselves on racism and – where it applies – white privilege. There is also a plan for continued conversation in our city.

With regard to sex workers and human trafficking, there is a a local resource that is doing great work. (Please consider this your mission moment in the sermon.) “Patty’s Place is a drop-in support and referral center for women engaged in sex work. They provide basic services such as food, showers, hygiene items, clothing, HIV testing, and a secure resting place, which help these women be safer in their current lives. They also offer counseling and referrals for longer-term services that can help women improve their lives and leave the sex trade. Most of the women with whom they work have suffered from years of abuse and have a variety of overlapping problems and needs. Patty’s Place gives these women a network of supportive relationships and help navigating the diverse services they need.” If you want to help, their two biggest needs are volunteers and donations. Volunteers are needed to do outreach and to do administration work. Donations are useful both as money and as supplies. Today they are mostly needing new underwear in all sizes and deodorant. If you get donations to us, we will get them to Patty’s place.

As the casino gets closer to opening, we are needing to prepare for expansions of dehumanization in our city. Studies tell us that there will be more trafficking and more people looking to buy sex. They also tell us that there will be more corruption, which means more injustice. There will likely be more crime, and more of it violent. As incumbent as it already is on us to re-humanize other people, and to recognize all people as beloved by God, there are going to be new challenges to that work. The current projections are that the casino will open in the first quarter of 2017.

There is a lot of work to do. Some of it, however, is in getting quiet and listening. We are not going to be able to invert all of the damage to our communities created by the city. Singlehandedly, we cannot even solve the struggles our city already has. We will need to focus a bit, listen for how we are best able to rehumanize God’s people, and get ready to do it. That is, while I encourage us to continue the work of building the kin-dom, loving the people, transforming injustice, and acknowledging all of God’s children, I also encourage us ALL to take some deep breaths. Maybe even a few months of deep breaths. Things are going to get harder around here, and we are going to need to be calm, centered, steady, and supportive of each other to be useful in changing things.

We aren’t called to be like the merchants in Bethel that Amos spoke to. Instead, we are called to take responsibility for the ways that our society diminishes beloved children of God, and do our part to change it. Some of that involves being quiet and observant to notice what is going on. Thanks be to God that there are so many ways we can participate in acts of love and justice. Thanks be to God that we are called both to action AND to Sabbath. May we learn to do both well. Amen

1John Barton “Introduction to Amos” in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible edited by Walter J Harrelson (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2003) 1279

2Two of them, “Prostitution is renting an organ for 10 minutes” and “Being with a prostitute is like having a cup of coffee, when you’re done, you throw it out” found at http://www.ksufreedomalliance.org/sex-trafficking.html

–

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

June 17. 2016