Untitled

September 29, 2024
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kindom. The fear-free kindom of God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 29, 2024

Uncategorized

“Why do we (the church) exist?” based on Deuteronomy…

January 31, 2021
by Sara Baron

a
Sermon

by
Rev. Sara E. Baron

First
United Methodist Church of Schenectady

January
31, 2021

For much of the past year, I’ve
been in crisis mode. Crisis mode requires full attention to be on
the present, as the demands of the present are too large to allow
time to reflect on the past or plan for the future. Of course,the
physical realities of distance also make planning for the future
difficult.

While
the pandemic is still raging, and there are a sufficient number of
other crises that need attention, my capacity to stay in crisis mode
is declining. It is, after all, a really demanding state and cannot
be held onto indefinitely.

I
don’t mean I’m taking unnecessary risks with COVID safety – I still
believe that the Wesleyan rule “First, do no harm” is our
guidance in this era, and everything I do to keep myself safe also
creates more safety for our communities.

What
I do mean is that I’m ready to accept some of the gifts of this era:
of a pause on reality as we knew it, and a major transition point
from what was to what will be. In particular, I think it is a good
time for the church to consider its most basic nature.

Why
do we exist?

Should
we continue to do so?

I
hope you’ll grant me a little bit of patience now that you know where
I’m headed, because the scriptures today are incredibly useful to
answering those questions, but to hear them well requires putting
them in context.

The
gospel lesson centers on the question of authority, specifically why
Jesus acted like he had any! Wise scholars point out “Authority is
the ability, actual or assumed, to control the behavior of others.”¹
Jesus, by birth, wasn’t supposed to have authority, yet he presents
himself as having it, and using it.

Until
this point in the Gospel, Jesus has been out in the wilderness, and
on the lakeshore. His entrance into the synagogue on the Sabbath was
an entrance into the space where the Scribes had authority, and his
words and actions SHAKE THINGS UP. This is the start of Jesus
messing with the status quo, and challenging what is assumed to be
true.²

I believe that is much of the
role of Christianity today, but I’ll get back to that.

This question of authority is
also central to the Hebrew Bible reading today. It comes in the
midst of a passage about the appropriate ways the roles of king,
judge, and priest should be fulfilled. Our passage is about the way
the role of prophet should be fulfilled. It is interesting because
the author of Deuteronomy is pretty clearly uncomfortable with the
role of prophet, and yet doesn’t think he can get away with
pretending prophets away. It is likely that Deuteronomy reflects the
perspective of the priestly voice, and the priests and the prophets
had an uneasy relationship.

The priests, like the kings,
inherited their power and role, which functioned to distance them
from everyone else. They got their authority at birth. Prophets, on
the other hand, emerged out of no where and were seen to have the
authority of speaking for God (at least by their followers.) They
often served to call others in authority to account, particularly for
the care of the vulnerable, and to warn that an unjust society would
not be sustainable.

The passage wants to limit
prophets. They have to be insiders, which is HILARIOUS, because I
just dare anyone to attempt to impose such a limit on the Divine.
They’re threatened a bit too, in hopes of reigning them in.

I think the role of the prophet
is interesting for THIS church, because historically the role of this
church in the Church-At-Large and in Society has been the role of
prophet. This is a church where justice-seekers gather, trying to
build the kindom of God, and willing to name things AS THEY ARE in
order to do so. Or, to be a little less diplomatic about it, we’re
really good at being a thorn in the side when one is needed. We
don’t go away, we don’t stop agitating, we aren’t willing to throw
anyone under the bus, and we are OK with people being annoyed with
us. We believe that calling for justice is the work of God, and
we’re going to do it.

In
contrast, the role of priest is largely one of ritual, and is a role
that is dependent on the good-graces of others. A priest is limited
in function because a priest has no means of survival other than the
good will of the people or more often of those in power.

To
be simplistic about it, the priestly role is about creating the
religious myths that uphold the status quo. The prophetic role is
about calling out the injustices of the status quo and motivating
change to a better system.

I
see those two roles intertwined in the Bible, struggling against each
other, and I see them in religious history as well. So it is no
shock that some of each is in every religious community, but more so
than most, this church is defined by its role as prophet.

It
may make sense then, that I also see Jesus as functioning in the
prophetic role. I am, after all, the pastor of a prophetic church.
In this Gospel lesson, Jesus is using his authority. So, he is using
“the ability, actual or assumed, to control the behavior of
others.”³
This seems to lead to the question: what was Jesus changing the
behaviors from and what was Jesus changing the behaviors to? Scholar
Ched Myers says, “Mark’s Gospel was originally written to help
imperial subjects learn the hard truth about their words and
themselves. …. His is a story by, about, and for those committed
to God’s work of justice, compassion, and liberation for the world.”⁴

That
is, Jesus was about opening the eyes of the people to see how they
were being oppressed, and to work together to break the chains of
oppression, so that they could build a society and a world without
oppression.

We
are quite clearly not Jesus’s audience, nor Mark’s. While our
community has a wide range of socio-economic statuses, we are a part
of The United States which is far more similar to Rome in the time of
Jesus than it is to Nazareth. So what does the authority of Jesus
call us to today?

I
believe Jesus calls us out of systems of oppression, and their myths.
Those myths include: some people matter more than others, some
people deserve more than others, there isn’t enough to go around –
so every person or group should fight for their own good, life is
about getting “ahead,” the status quo is mostly good, “be nice”
and don’t upset people, some people are just going to have to be left
behind and nothing can be done about it. There are a lot of myths
under this that support it, ones that maintain sexism, racism,
heteronormativity, the exclusion of people with disabilities, and
other forms of HIERARCHY of humans.

These
myths can be hard to let go of. They’re pervasive, they’re
insidious, and they’re even found in most faith communities, because
faith communities are comprised of people who also exist in society.

Jesus
calls us to justice, compassion, and liberation for the world. Jesus
calls us to kindom building, to being the beloved community, to
sanctification. (Sanctification is the process of letting go of
everything that isn’t love so that love can motivate all of our words
and actions.) God’s love extends to each and every living person,
and each and every living being. The change God seeks is from the
status quo to a world of equity, equality, compassion, and love.
THIS is the role of Christianity in the world.

The
work of the church is to value what God values, to model a community
that lives by those values, to support each other in the
transformation towards sanctification, and to believe that the work
of the kindom is the work of our lives. This is why we do things
together – so we can learn from each other, so we can love on each
other, so we can learn compassion from the inside and then share it
in the world. As we let go of the myths of systems of oppression,
we’re freed to see more and more clearly what justice looks like and
to live it more deeply.

THIS
is why we are people who take on the prophetic role. We have been
blessed to be able to see what oppression looks like AND to see what
life can be with God’s equality and equity at the center.

Why
do we exist? To live the values of the kindom, to show them to each
other and the world, to be hope for what can come. Should we
continue to do so? Yes, I rather think we should.

May
God help us along our way! Amen

1
Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Mark
1:231-34” p. 150.

2 Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1988, 2008), 141-143.

3
Malina and Rohrbaugh p. 150.

4 Myers,
11.

Uncategorized

“Nonviolence” based on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51

January 17, 2021
by Sara Baron

I’m
intrigued by the words in 1 Samuel, “The word of the LORD was rare
in those days; visions were not widespread.” The story says, in
those days, it took a while before the one being called by God
realized it.

Since
the beginning of October we have offered a “Contemplative Prayer
Service” on Sunday mornings at 10AM. Since the middle of November
it has been online. I’ve gotta admit, it has exceeded my
expectations. They were pretty low 😉 It turns out that getting on
zoom, muting your mic, and praying while other people are sitting on
zoom (mostly with their mics off) praying actually IS more connected
than praying alone.

It
is easier to be still then.

This
week I’ve found that I can’t get through the day without some silence
in prayer. I just get too agitated. And the angst builds and
builds, until I take time away from inputs to simply be with the
Divine.

These
defined times of prayer – with others in the Contemplative Prayer
Service as well as the ones I’ve taken out of deep and abiding need –
have reminded me of some things I’m embarrassed I’d forgotten.
Perhaps I hadn’t forgotten, but at the very least they came as well
needed reminders when other things had started to take precedence in
my being.

Ready?

First,
God is still THERE, or HERE, or however you say it. I’d like to
claim I NEVER forget that, but each time I settle into prayer and I
sense the peace that passes understanding and the grace that abides
I’m … surprised again. Maybe this is just because God’s goodness
is better than I’m ever able to remember, but each and every time I
encounter it I’m relieved to find it there.

Second,
stillness is …. possible. It often feels impossible right until it
happens. I get drawn into the news, into the COVID statistics, into
my own to-do lists, and then I get distracted by baby cries or
squeals, – or emails or texts – and the whole of life seems to be
carefully created to keep me from finding stillness (and letting me
have excuses about it) but then when I do it, it is still there
waiting for me and it is GLORIOUS.

Third,
there is a vibrant, thriving, almost tangible connection between all
living things and the Living God. When the noise of the world isn’t
in the way, the spiritual wonder is breath-taking.

Perhaps
these reflections are able to serve as a reminder to you of things
you also know. Or perhaps they serve as a reminder of a need to find
time for contemplative practice.

For
me, they serve as a source of transformation. My emotional responses
to the world right now are….sharp. I’m horrified. I’m terrified.
I’m disgusted. And yet, closer to home, I’m also delighted, and
exhausted, and grateful, and worried, and relieved. It is just a
whole lot to hold.

I
have been thinking about the retreat we did in 2017 with Bishop Susan
Hassinger, looking at spiritual practices that uphold social justice
work. This might also be called the grounding for building the
kindom, or following the way of Jesus without burning out.

The
needs of social justice work, of kindom building, are so BIG that I’m
overwhelmed by them unless I get grounded in the unfailing love of
the Divine. Worse, in this moment, I’ve finding it easier to get
pulled into the polarization of our society – which dehumanizes
“the other side” than ever. This is a BIG problem, particularly
for one who seeks to be a Jesus follower.

Are
you ready for today’s challenge? One of the great interpreter’s of
the life and teachings of Jesus in our tradition, the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote,

To
our most bitter opponents we say: “We
shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force.
Do to us what you
will, and we shall continue to love you. We
cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because
noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is
cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.
Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the
midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still
love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our
capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for
ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we
shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double
victory.”¹

I
feel quite confident that the most bitter opponents of the work of
Rev. Dr. King, and the kindom, have been hard at work in our society,
and their work has exploded into violence, death, fear-mongering, and
the disruption of our democracy. Rev. Dr. King worked against the
forces of white supremacy, by working for the full humanity of all
people.

And
that man, that wise prophetic man, that man whose life itself was
taken by the violence of the world, is the one who said, “Do it us
what you will, and we shall continue to love you.”

He
refused to face violence with violence, he believed that the Jesus
movement was founded in NONVIOLENCE. He refused to meet hate with
anything but love. Now, of course, LOVE did not mean “compliance.”
Love meant naming evil, love meant good analysis of power dynamics,
love meant strategic planning of protests, love meant taking care of
the people’s spiritual well being so they could keep on working for
God’s greater good. Love does not require us to back down. Love
does not require us to become passive. Love does not require us to
become silent.

But,
love does require us to seek the well-being of ALL OF GOD’S BELOVEDS,
and dear ones, this week, that includes people who are part of white
supremacist groups, and people who are part of QAnon cults, and even
the people who use those people to gain and keep power. Love
requires us to want what is good for all of them, although – thank
goodness – that doesn’t include that they get to keep power or
continue using violence. Perpetuating violence hurts both the one
who is violated and the one who violates. No goodness or love comes
out of it.

But
following the way of Jesus, nonviolent, loving resistance, that
builds the kindom. You may remember the admonition in Matthew to
turn the other cheek, “But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.
But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;
and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as
well.“ (Matthew 3:39-40, NRSV) Walter Wink’s teaching informed me
that these teachings are the ultimate in nonviolent loving
resistance. In those days there were two forms of striking a person
– one used for equals and one used for inferiors. A backhand vs. a
slap. The left hand was NEVER used because… well… toilet paper
hadn’t been invented yet. To turn the other cheek is to respond to
the diminishing insult of a backhand with an invitation to hit again
– but this time as an equal. Similarly, the Hebrew Bible forbids
anyone from leaving a person naked in the process of seeking loan
repayment. So, if a person seeks restitution of a loan by demanding
your OUTER garment, and you offer your INNER garment as well, you put
them in the situation of having to refuse to take both or stand in
violation of religious law.

I
sort of wish today’s gospel lesson has the question “Can anything
good come out of Nazareth?” asked to Jesus himself, but I think
John does well with it anyway. The answer of the whole book is “YES”
and the person asking the ignorant question is immediately aware of
his error. Loving nonviolence here includes seeing the world, and
its locations, a new.

I
am a little bit concerned that because I have focused on spiritual
grounding for kindom building, and nonviolent resistance
as the form of kindom building, that someone might not have
heard me speak imperative truths. So, please give me a moment to be
abundantly clear:

People
who perpetuate violence in the name of Christianity are not following
Jesus.

Christianity
itself has been profoundly co-opted by white supremacy in this nation
(and many others), and it is our obligation to CONTINUALLY root it
out, transform it, and be self-aware of how it is playing out in our
lives and communities.

The
violence we have seen in terms of mobs attacking governmental
institutions in this country are the angry expression of
mostly-white, mostly-men who believe they have a fundamental right to
be more important than others. Like any other abuser, they are most
violent when they fear they are losing control. THEY ARE LOSING
CONTROL, and they are truly terrifying as such.

The
progress we have seen in humanizing people from the fullness of
humanity is NOT GUARANTEED – these angry abusive mobs have friends
in very high places, and a lot of backing.

God
is always, always, always on the side of full and abundant life for
ALL PEOPLE.

So
that’s the side we are on. We don’t want power consolidated with
mostly white mostly men because no one group is able to adequately
seek the good of all groups. It is only through shared knowledge,
resources, and power that we can seek the common good.

And
THAT is why I want us to be grounded in contemplative prayer, good
analysis, and God’s grace. Because I believe those are means of
countering the insidious voices of white supremacy and it’s close
cousin the patriarchy. To move towards the kindom requires seeking
clearly what is happening, and letting God’s love transform us, and
the world through us.

So,
dear ones, please find the time to connect with grace.

Please
allow grace and love to fill you up.

Please
let Rev. Dr. King’s reminder of the way of Christ continue to
challenge you.
Please recommit to
Jesus’s way of nonviolence.

And
may God grant us wisdom for the facing of this hour. Amen

1Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “On Loving Your Enemies” found at
https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2015/01/19/martin-luther-king-jr-on-loving-your-enemies/35907
on March 29, 2018.

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 17, 2021

Sermons

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

September 15, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s
look at them: Blessed are the:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 15, 2019

Sermons

“Meditation of My Heart” Page based on Leviticus 19:9-18 Psalm…

September 30, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

What sort of world do we want to live in? What world are we trying to create? This is a central question of faith, and the answer has sacred names. It is often called the kindom of God, it is also known as the beloved community. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”¹ I believe that this vision goes back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and is the the vision of the Torah itself. (The Torah is a name for the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.)

Today I want to look at that vision for the world, and build on it into the vision we see God seeking to build from the world as we know it today into what it could be. The vision we’ll see was one that detailed how society should be set up, specifically outlining how to to create a just system where even the vulnerable can thrive.

Not everyone sees this vision in the Hebrew Bible. Many Christians have been taught to distrust the vision of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah is often interpreted into English as “the law” and that has gained disfavor in many Christian circles. Paul wrote in Romans 7, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Romans 7:6 NRSV) Those following his ideas have seen the law as old, as dated, as dead – and thus definitely not as life giving.

I think we miss a lot when we simplify that much. “The law” is a series of rules, regulations, and expectations about what it would take to develop a stable community that values human life. They’re profound, intentional, and life-giving.

The Torah vision emerges out of the core conception of the Divine in the ancient Jewish faith – that God was a God who cared about how people treated each other. God wanted the people of God to create a community where all of God’s people could survive, and thrive! This was notable in a time when most communities conceived of gods and goddesses who cared only for how humans treated the gods and goddesses – related to worship and sacrifices. Instead of a concept of God that is self-serving, the Torah vision sets out a series of rules and regulations about how humans are to treat each other, under the impression that this is what God wants from them. God is pleased when people care for each other. This is the foundation of our faith tradition, and of the Torah vision for good living.

As we see in several of the 10 commandments – don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet what your neighbor has – how neighbors get treated is central to how a stable and supportive society is formed. Of course, we also see in the 10 commandments that how God is understood matters – don’t have other gods, don’t make idols, don’t take the name of the God in vain, and even I would argue, remember the Sabbath day. These two facets coincide with the great commandments as found in the Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 19:18b, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” and the Shema, found in Deutoronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” On these two foundations – care for each other and love of God, ancient Israel was built.

According to John Dominic Crossan, the vision was one of distributive justice, and we see that as staring with the Sabbath. Sabbath is a distribution of rest, that applied to both Israelites, and foreigners. It applied EVERYONE, and came every week. That prevented people from being dehumanized by constant work. One day off out of seven means that there is an identity other than work. The Sabbath laws were also about distribution – distribution of rest and thus humanity! The Sabbath rules also, in a way, applied to the land. Fields were mean to lie fallow every 7 years. The Jubilee year was also an extension of Sabbath. Leviticus explains this in chapter 25:

“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. (Leviticus 25:8-13, NRSV)

This brings us to the the distribution of land, that land that each family returned to! Every tribe got a portion of the land and then every family got a portion of the tribe’s land. That is, every family got land on which they could live and farm. There was a careful distribution of land to enable all of the Israelites to have subsistence.

Then, there were rules and regulations to make sure that the land wouldn’t be appropriated out of the hands of the family!! One of those was the rule that loans had to be forgiven every 7 years so that debt did not accumulate. The other piece was that land could only be LEASED, as we heard in the Jubilee passage a moment ago. If a family got into financial trouble and had to sell their land, it could only be leased for up to 49 years but it could not be sold outside of the family. This meant a family could not permanently lose their basis of subsistence.

There is one exception to the land distribution though. One tribe did not get ANY land. That was the tribe of Levi, the Levites. The Levites, instead, lived off of the tithes of the other nations. The Levites were the “holy people”, from that tribe the priests were chosen. The Levites were set aside to deal with matters of the Divine. They were the moral compass of the community. The Levites were dependent on the other tribes for their survival when they otherwise had so much power, it kept them motivated to seek the well-being of the tribes because they were interdependent. It also meant that while most of society was at work farming and tending to herds, there were people pondering, considering, and attending to the big picture. It wasn’t that they were closer to God, simply that they got to spend more of their time attending to the things of God on behalf of everyone else.

The Torah vision had other safeguards in place to try to keep things just. Loans could not be given with interest. That means that there was no penalty for needing a loan. One did not go further into poverty because one was in poverty. It also means that those who were doing well enough to offer loans did not glean further wealth from it.

The was also a provision for gleaning. Those who owned land were banned from picking the edges of their fields as well as from going back to pick a second time, making sure to get it all. That way, those who didn’t have land – the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners, had a way to feed themselves by picking the leftovers. I am also under the impression that some of the work of the tithe was to feed the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners. That is, that even though the Torah tried to make sure everyone got land, there were also careful provisions for the exceptions! This is summarized in Leviticus 19, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Finally, the Bible absolutely obsesses over having a fair justice system that shows no partiality. To go back to Leviticus 19 for a concise version of this, “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:15) The very concept of justice in the Torah vision is tied into the lack of partiality, neighborliness, and to God’s own nature. Almost all of those Leviticus 10 provisions end with “I am YHWH.” God’s own being requires this care of people, and this care of people is what builds a society that reflects God’s own being!!

Of course, ancient Israel often failed to live into the Torah vision. That’s why we have so many prophetic books filled with prophets calling kings and the powerful into compliance with the care of the vulnerable and justice for all!

Now, I do not wish to live in a theocracy, I think they tend to go poorly. But, I think there is a whole lot in the Torah vision that is worth considering and pondering. I don’t see a whole lot of justice in our society, and I do see a LOT of partiality. Starting with where we are today, what do we see God at work trying to create? How is God seeing to make sure all people have sustenance? How is God at work to make justice systems just and fair? How is God trying to ensure the vulnerable are cared for and that those who have experienced oppression or harm are heard? I believe we can hear this work of God, if we listen for it; and see this work of God, if our eyes are open.

Psalm 19 celebrates the vision of the Torah, it celebrates the Torah itself! It is beautiful, isn’t it? It calls the Torah a source of reviving the soul, and wisdom, and clarity. It says the Torah is sweeter than honey and better that gold! It thinks this communal living that attempts to reflect God’s love of God’s people is THAT good! What delight is there in envisioning a society, a WORLD, where all are cared for?

The Torah-vision, the kindom of God, the beloved community, they are different ways of saying the same thing. So too, I believe, is the often repeated quote from Rev. Dr. J. Edward Carothers, teaching of the church existing to “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in ever widening circles of concern.” Just so, the Psalmist says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” As people of faith, we are called into these visions – to see them, to dream them, to move towards them, to celebrate them as they come into being, and work towards them. Sometimes the biggest work of all is to dream big enough for God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Martin Luther King Jr. 1957, found at http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html. Accessed on 9/27/28.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Hungry for the Kindom” based on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and…

August 5, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The central question of faith is: What is the nature of your God? The Bible’s most repeated answer to the question is “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

The narrative from Exodus seems to be slightly expansive essay on the theme “God’s steadfast love endures forever” that helps people understand what that means and how it functions. In the book of Exodus, we encounter God who liberates the oppressed. In particular, we encounter the Divine hearing the cries of the people, and feeling compassion for them. The Holy One then works through some of the least likely individuals possible to bring the people to freedom, and then guides them along their way.

Here, in chapter 16, the people are in the midst of the wilderness. By some estimates it has been about 6 weeks since they became free, and that appears to be long enough for the excitement to have worn off and new anxieties to have settled in. One commentator puts it, “The narrative of Exodus 16 can be read as representative of the type of crisis that faith faces whenever God’s people move from bondage to well-being. … The wandering in the wilderness is for Israel the place to knock down the mental frame of being oppressed and to pick up the life of liberty.”¹ Part of the framework of oppression is constant anxiety.

The newly freed former slaves are getting nervous about their situation. Now, when the Bible says “desert” or “wilderness” what it is trying to say is “a place so forsaken that human life cannot be maintained without Divine intervention.” The desert near Sinai was such a place, and I think most pictures of Egyptian desert do a good job of communicating just how scary it could be to suddenly find yourself in that place without sufficient provisions. I think the anxiety was founded, but I also think it was rooted in their oppression.

While other parts of Exodus indicate that the people were supposed to “have faith” and “trust in God to provide,” in this Priestly version of the manna in the desert narrative, the people grumble and God simply has compassion on them. After all, God’s steadfast love endures forever, and steadfast love looks A LOT like compassion. Another commentator said, “What is important here is that God – once again – heard the people’s cries and responded to their need, whether it was real or whether it was a misperception caused by panic.”² They are hungry and scared, so God offers them consolation and food.

There is one way in which I often struggle with Bible stories that speak of God feeding hungry people. I love the stories, but I also know that in real life people starve to death, and there are even more who are malnourished to the point that their health is compromised. It can almost sound like God picks favorites and feeds those while ignoring others, when we hear the stories of God feeding the people, and I don’t think God works that way.

It is helpful to think about who wrote the story. This story is told up by the Judean priests, it is designed to teach of God’s trustworthiness. The Judean priests, in their regular work, oversaw food redistribution programs, and called on the leaders of the people to make sure that systems were in place to make sure that food was accessible to those who need it. The story didn’t come out of vacuum. It is in the midst of the Torah, which as a whole, OBSESSES over taking care of the poor and vulnerable. We have a story that suggests that God took care of the poor and vulnerable in the desert AND SO the people should take care of the poor and vulnerable in the Promised Land.

Thanks be to God, on this planet we have enough! We have more than enough food to feed all the people. We have enough clean water (for the time being). We are even getting to the point where we have enough renewable energy sources to feed our energy needs! (How cool is that?) The reason people struggle with malnourishment and starvation is a HUMAN DISTRUBTION problem, not a lack of Divine gifts of abundance. Creation is sufficient to our needs. However, people have decided to use the resources in ways that prevent others from accessing them.

In the Bible, food is not just food. The people are told, “’At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’“ (12b, NRSV) A scholar explains, “In the Old Testament context, knowledge is not essentially or even primarily rooted in the intellectual activities of a human being. Rather, it is more experiential and embedded in the emotions. It therefore encompasses qualities such as intimacy, concern, communication, mutuality, and contact.”³ So the gift of the food was a way of “knowing” that God’s steadfast love endures forever. The food in the desert guided the people to trust in God, and God’s compassion for them. The food was food, and that was good. But the food was also a means of knowing that God is good.

James Fowler’s book “Stages of Faith Development” discusses faith development through the human life span. He says that if babies have human caregivers who notice and attend to their needs, they will later find it credible that God is benevolent. However, for babies whose needs are not met, it will be far harder in life to believe that there is any being with power who seeks goodness for them (or anyone.) We “know” God in part by having our needs met.

This has gotten me thinking about what our needs are. Maslov famously created a hierarchy of human needs, but further studies have indicated that they aren’t as hierarchial as he thought, nor as universal. Nonviolent Communication Theory has a list of universal human needs without any hierarchy. They fall into categories like: connection, honesty, play, peace, physical well-being, meaning, and autonomy. Nonviolent Communication teaches that all of us have all of the needs, and that most of what we do and say comes out of an attempt to meet those needs. Even more so, most of what we FEEL is a reflection of how our needs are met or unmet. Nonviolent Communication encourages us to notice what we feel, as a means of figuring out what we are needing. The needs are the key to it all.

The priests taught that God gave the people food so that they would KNOW (experience, live) God’s steadfast love. Having needs met makes so much else possible! When a need is flaring to be fulfilled, it is very hard to focus on anything else!!

In the end of our Gospel reading today, Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (35, NRSV) Based on the context, it is clear we’re not just talking about food here either. Earlier in the chapter, in the part we read last week, Jesus fed the masses. The verbs in that passage speak of not only being full, but being satiated. The people seemed to KNOW God and God’s love once again, through the bread. In today’s passage, they seem to be seeking those things again.

So bread IS bread, sometimes, because humans NEED food. But bread is also a metaphor for our other needs. So too with thirst. What hungers and thirsts is Jesus talking about? Knowing Jesus and his context, I suspect he was talking about bread and wine in physical senses AND at the same time in spiritual senses. Jesus never seems to focus apart from people’s physical needs, nor does he think satiating only the physical is enough. He fed people bread and hope. He offered people living water and compassion.

I suspect the bread of life and living water Jesus offers in John are intentionally vague, so that those of us who hear of them can attend to the needs flaring up in us. Then we can hear as we need to hear. Jesus offers food to the hungry, healing to the sick, liberation to the oppressed, release to the captives, good news to the hopeless, a welcome to the homeless, rest to the weary, comfort to the grieving, movement to the stuck, purpose to the lost, intimacy to the lonely, inspiration to the resigned, joy to the downtrodden, and inclusion to those who have been left out. 😉 To name a few.

The Gospel of John says the people had been satiated by Jesus, and they wanted to be again. The book of Exodus says the people’s needs were met so they would know their God to be the one whose steadfast love endures forever.

The Bible thinks about the needs of “the people” more often than it thinks about the needs of any individual person. It feeds the masses, because the conditions that make one hungry often make others hungry as well.

That leads me to wonder what the Body of Christ is hungry for today, the people together. I suspect we might hunger for justice and thirst for compassion, and I think that is what God hungers and thirsts for as well. God is the God of all the people, so whoever is hurting the most is creating aches within God. When the world becomes more just, God aches less. When the people receive compassion, God finds relief. When fewer people are hungry, there are fewer hunger pains within the Divine. Hunger for justice and thirst for compassion is a way of saying that those of us who have enough bread, hunger for a world where all people do too. It is also to say that we hunger for the kindom when all have enough to survive AND thrive.

May our needs be met – the ones we each came with today, and the ones we share as the Body of Christ. May we trust in God who seeks for us to know Holiness by meeting our needs. When human beings get in the way of God’s people getting what they need, may we be courageous enough to get in the way of those systems. And may we notice, when our needs are met, that the Holy One whose steadfast love endures forever is with us, ready to be KNOWN once again. May our hunger for the kindom help kindom come. Amen

1 Rein Bos, “Exegetical Perspective on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15” in Feasting on the World Year B, Volume 3; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)293.

2 Dean McDonald, “Homiletical Perspective on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15” in Feasting on the World Year B, Volume 3; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) 291.

3Bos, 295.

–

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

August 5, 2018

Sermons

“Not Seen, Not Forgotten” based on 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 and…

June 17, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It must have been about a decade ago, more or less. I was jogging one evening, around dusk. It was a really beautiful evening, the sky had transformed into one of those dark yet vivid shades of blue that always delights me. The temperature was just right – I was neither hot nor cold. I’m not sure how it happened, but I got thinking about floating in a body of water that was also neither hot nor cold, but just right. Just easy floating in comfortable water.

Then I started considering how easy it is to move your body when you are floating in water. A flick of the wrist can shift you around. As I thought of that, I realized that in this envisioned body of water, there was a teeny tiny current. It was so small that a flick of my wrist could keep me from being moved by it, but it was enough that it could guide my way.

That was it. I had a conception of a warm, safe body of water with a tiny current that I could float in, and either allow the current to move me, or not, with great ease. It felt like a lot more though. It felt like a vision of wonder and grace that was a gift from the Divine. I experienced it as a reminder that I had the freedom to easily follow through with my own will, that God would not overpower me. And a reminder that there was guidance available to me, a path that I could let myself be led on if I choose. I need not be aimless if I wish to allow the current to lead. The balance of guidance and freedom co-existing together was powerful.

It was a relief to think about my relationship with God, my life decisions, and even my life itself as FLOATING. I have sometimes had a tendency to think of them more as a swim race across the English Channel. In this vision the floating was good. It was not only good because it was easy, although it was easy. It was also all that was asked of me. I could float where I wanted, or float along as the current lead me, but the current was too slow and gentle for me to find it swimming. All I had to do was float. And even then either choice was OK.

(The few times that I’ve had visions that I think are of/from the Divine I’ve noticed that the God I experience is profoundly nonjudgmental and supportive.)

All in all, for me, that vision reminds me of the experience of Centering Prayer. Centering Prayer is prayer based on the name of God, YHWH, which means something like “I am” “I am who I am” “I will be who I will be”. It is a prayer of BEING, rather than a prayer of doing, or thinking. It is silent prayer, but not just silent on the outside. Centering prayer is prayer that is silent on the inside too. It is simply BEING, along with the “Great I AM.” So much of life is about doing, or speaking, or listening. It is active, engaged, intentional. Centering prayer is like floating on the warm, mostly still waters of God’s care, and just enjoying being alive.

Or, at least, it is when it works. It can be really hard to be silent on the inside, and then it doesn’t feel at all like that when you are trying and failing.

The parables in the gospels seem to tell a similar story. They speak of God’s mysterious actions, ones that humans wouldn’t be able to replicate. We can sow seeds, the gospel says, but we can’t control if they germinate or not. We might as well go to sleep and let God do God’s mysterious things. Soil, water, sun, and air work their magic on the the seed, all giving gifts no human can offer. After all that, the human can cut it down and enjoy the grain. But the human can’t make the grain. (This was true in the time of Jesus, let’s give it to him.)

We also can’t always predict how things will go. “The mustard seed was a common metaphor in Palestine for ‘the smallest thing.’ The plant could grow as tall as a house, and birds seemed to love its little black seeds.”¹ The people knew about the disparity between seed size and plant size, talked about it. In the gospel, it is used to indicate how vibrant and abundant God’s work in the kindom is. What appears small and insignificant to human eyes is plenty to change a landscape and an eco-system.

God is at work in building the kindom. God can make big things happen out of a tiny start! God’s work is mysterious and happens out of our sight, and yet we can see the fruits of God’s labor and with it we are fed and nurtured. God is invested in building the kindom and God is capable of doing it. The planted seed is no longer seen, but is not forgotten as it germinates and grows.

But, this raises some significant questions. Another commentator names them this way:

“One suspects that the early Christian communities were often as puzzled by this parabolic presentation of the kingdom as we are. These two parables that Mark stitches together have generated may theological interpretations over the centuries. Does the kingdom come slowly, over the long haul? Should we understand the harvest in due season as the future event of the eschatological time? Are we to believe that God is in control of the growth and harvest, despite the evidences of the way the world is?”²

Another commentator offered a great explanation of the words themseves.

“Hē basileia tou theou, found fourteen times in the Gospel of Mark and usually translated ‘the kingdom of God’ or ‘the dominion of God’ is an ancient metaphor not easily translated into today’s culture. In the first century CE, power and dominion belonged to Caesar. Early Christians preached that Caesar’s domination had been overtaken by the domination of God. This was an in-your-face radical claim defining insiders not by Caesar’s proclamation, but by relationship to the community that followed Jesus. (cf. Mark 3:31-35) In various twenty-first century cultures, the claim of radical inclusion is seeking expression in terms reflecting the egalitarian relationship of God’s beloved community. To that end, we translate hē basileia tou theou as ‘the kin-dom of God.’”³

So, then God’s beloved community comes into being mysteriously, with God’s effort, and is able to grow big and strong even from humble beginnings. It is as if the beloved community itself is a gift from God for God’s people. Then, as a part of the beloved community we are able to share that love – and it doesn’t always have to be difficult – and sharing love is building the kindom. I know sometimes it is difficult, and that’s good too. But it doesn’t ALWAYS have to be difficult! It is OK to float along in the current of God’s love. It is OK, sometimes, to just be.

Now, in the Hebrew Bible story, God also acts in mysterious and unexpected ways. The first of which is when text clearly states that God changes God’s mind! 15:34 b, “for YHWH regretted making him ruler over Israel.” (Inclusive Bible Translation) I think it is helpful to notice when the Bible says God changes God’s own mind, it reminds us that we are allowed to also! As I was taught in Process Theology, it also indicates that God is responsive to us! What we do in the world impacts God’s own being, and God has to change and response to the realities that we have created.

The story goes onto say that Samuel thinks he knows what God is going to do next! Samuel is sent to make a king from one of Jesse’s sons, and Samuel figures it will be the oldest one, especially when he sees that the oldest one is tall and handsome. Samuel is terribly human in that way, assuming that stature and beauty have to do with competence and blessing. Samuel is said to be rebuked by God, who does NOT care about those things. Although, I have to admit, later in the passage David is described quite exuberantly as handsome, which sort of undermines the message.

In any case, all of Jesse’s sons were present, except one. The final one was the youngest, doing the task usually assigned to the youngest son, the one least likely to become the head of the family. He was herding the sheep. His father didn’t choose to call for him, to join them at the feast. David had work to do, and he was doing it. But one by one, Samuel assessed that none of the older brothers had been chosen to be king. Finally he had to ask if there were any more sons, and then David was called for.

David hadn’t been seen at the party, Samuel didn’t know him, his family wasn’t paying any attention to him. He wasn’t seen, but he wasn’t forgotten by God either. David in this story is presented as being a lot like that mustard seed – small and forgettable, almost invisible, and yet capable of greatness. God’s work in David is also presented as being like God’s work in seeds planted underground, God transforming what is possible into what is.

The story of David is of God choosing the unexpected one. The parables of Jesus are of God’s mysterious power. These are stories of God at work, NOT of humans at work. I tend to like to emphasize what we are able to do in the world, how we are able to transform the world with God’s love, how God is able to work with and through us. Those are true things. But they aren’t the only true things. It is also true that God works when we least expect it, in the places and people we least expect to be open to it. God’s mysterious work is a source of hope. Not everything is on our shoulders. Not everything good is hard. Sometimes it is OK to just float and trust in God’s love and guidance. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Nibs Stroupe “Homelitcial Perspective on Mark 4:26-34” found in Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 3 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009)143.

2Don E. Saliers “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 4:26-34” found in Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 3 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009)142.

3Judith Hoch Wray, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 4:26-34” found in Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 3 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009)141.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Expansive” based on Luke 23:32-43

March 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I started really struggling with “atonement theory” at the end of high school, well before I knew what “atonement theory” was. For the record “atonement theory” relates to how it was that Jesus’ death on the cross united God and humanity, the way to remember it is that is about how “at-one-ment” happened.

At that time in my life, I’d only heard of one atonement theory, “sacrificial atonement” sometimes called “blood atonement” which says that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins. I was trying very hard to be a “good Christian” in those days, and to comply with what I thought I was supposed to believe, but this didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t figure out to whom was the payment made. As time went on I learned that there are various schools of thought about this. The answers can be: God, humanity, or justice.

Some say that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and the payment was made to God’s own self. But, if Jesus is God, then God required God’s self as a payment to God’s self, then…. why? Worse yet if we think of the God-Jesus relationship as Parent-Child in which case this becomes an obscenity of parental abuse and child sacrifice.

Some say that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and the payment was made to humanity. Frankly, I was always able to believe that God loved me and was willing to forgive me, so the idea that we needed this act to believe that God loves us and forgives us just didn’t hold water.

Some say that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and the payment was made to a need for balance the scales of justice in the universe. This one made less than no sense to me because if God’s actions are bound by a power that is greater than God, then God isn’t God. (To be fair, some said the payment needed to be made to the Devil, but that also implies the Devil is more powerful than God; and even as a teenager I’d foregone the assumption I had to believe in the Devil.)

Twenty years after I started asking this question, no one has convinced me that an answer I can accept exists. However, my initial desire to believe in sacrificial atonement theory, because I thought I was supposed to, was based in reality!! Most Christians today believe this. Once, as a pastor, I taught a course during Lent based on a video series by Marcus Borg. In the first week’s video Borg explained many ways of understanding Easter, explaining that the metaphors of “life” and “new life” and “hope to the hopeless” can be understood in many ways, but in all of them the metaphor is powerful. The course participants thought that made a lot of sense. The following week Borg outlined many different theories of Good Friday, and “atonement”, explaining that “sacrificial atonement theory” is one among many and was not particularly evident for the first 800 years or so of Christianity. The course participants balked. The centerpiece of their faith felt under attack.

Thus, I come into this sermon with some trepidation. What I intend to share is, I think, important. Yet, for some it will be inherently threatening. I speak truth as I know it, trusting that all of you are strong enough to disagree with me and to discount what you don’t find useful.

When I got to college I did a research paper on atonement theory and learned that there are a LOT of them, and that they’re rich and varied, and most of them are older than the one I’d thought was “normal.” I say this in case you want to know more about them, but I’m going to focus now on just one other one.

During Lent we’ve been talking about God’s desire for Justice, as found in the Bible. We looked at the first creation story to see the priest’s enthusiasm for Sabbath rest for ALL of creation built into creation itself. We examined the Torah vision for a just society, one that calls upon the people to care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger as expressions of God’s own caring. We looked together at the role of the prophet in speaking truth to power so that kings didn’t start believing God allowed them to pick on the weak. We looked, as well, at one of Jesus’ parables to find that in it Jesus told a story of how oppression works so that those victimized by it could be freed from it.

Throughout these sermons we’ve been comparing and contrasting “domination systems” with God’s vision for the kin-dom of God. As a reminder, “Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid.”¹ God’s vision is for justice is a reflection of God’s love and care for all. This means God seeks a world that cares for ALL people, which involves access to adequate food, clothing, shelter, rest, education, and meaning, for starters – we call this the reign of God, or the kindom of God .

Domination systems are supported in part by ideology, usually in the form of religion. One of the most dominate of the ideological myths that supports the violence of domination systems is the myth of redemptive violence. Walter Wink was a professor at Auburn Theological Seminary and he wrote the seminal book Engaging the Powers that I finally got around to opening this week. He says regarding the myth of redemptive violence, “The distinctive feature of this myth is the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. This myth is the original religion of the status quo, the first articulation of ‘might makes right.’ It is the basic ideology of the Domination System. The gods favor those who conquer.”² Christianity is often used to support the ideology of domination systems. Wink again:

“The myth of redemptive violence thus uses the traditions, rites, customs, and symbols of Christianity in order to enhance the power of a wealthy elite and the goals of the nation narrowly defined. It has no interest in compassion for the poor, or for more equitable economic arrangements, or for the love of the enemies. It merely uses the shell of religion – a shell that can be filled with the blasphemous doctrine of the national security state. Emptied of their prophetic vitality, these outer forms are then manipulated to legitimate a power system intent on the preservation of privilege at all costs.”³

I think sacrificial atonement theory is one of these ways that “Christian” theology can be used as an ideology of redemptive violence to support Domination Systems. After all, in sacrificial atonement theory, there is a demand for a VIOLENT DEATH in order to bring resolution and peace. I think the ancient myth of redemptive violence has taken deep root in Christianity this way, and it is destructive of good living as well as good theology.

So, let’s look at another option! Wink uses “Powers” to describe the Powers in the world that support domination systems, through violence or the threat of violence. He thinks THEY killed Jesus, and that the work of God and Jesus was in resisting and exposing them. He writes:

“The cross also exposes the Powers as unable to make Jesus become what they wanted him to be, or to stop being who he was. Here was a person able to live out to the fullest what he felt was God’s will. He chose to die rather than compromise with violence. The Powers threw at him every weapon in their arsenal. But they could not deflect him from the trail that he and God were blazing. Because he lived thus, we too can find our path. Because they could not kill what was alive in him, the cross also revealed the impotence of death. Death is the Powers’ final sanction. Jesus at his crucifixion neither fights the darkness nor flees under cover of it, but goes with it, goes into it. He enters the darkness freely, voluntarily. The darkness is not dispelled or illuminated. It remains vast, untamed, void. But he somehow encompasses it. It becomes the darkness of God. It is now possible to enter any darkness and trust God to wrest from it meaning, coherence, resurrection. Jesus’ truth could not be killed.”⁴

Jesus died without being complicit in violence at all, he didn’t participate in it, sanction it, or fight it.

Now, I’m going to share a very long quote from Wink about what he thinks the death of Jesus does and doesn’t mean, because I’ve thought about it, and I can’t say it better.

“Jesus’ own view of his inevitable death at the hands of the Powers seems to have been that God’s nonviolent reign could only come in the teeth of desperate opposition and the violent recoil of the Domination System: ‘from the days of John the Baptist until now, the reign of God has suffered violence….Now, however, Christian theology argued that God is the one who provides Jesus as a Lamb sacrificed in our stead; that God is the angry and aggrieved party who must be placated by blood sacrifice; that God is, finally both sacrificer and sacrificed.” … But what is wrong with this God, that the legal ledgers can be balanced only by means of the death of an innocent victim? Jesus simply declared people forgiven, confident that he spoke the mind of God. Why then is a sacrificial victim necessary to make forgiveness possible? Does not the death of Jesus reveal that all such sacrifices are unnecessary?

The God whom Jesus revealed as no longer our rival, no longer threatening and vengeful, but unconditionally loving and forgiving, who needed no satisfaction by blood – this God of infinite mercy was metamorphosed by the church into the image of a wrathful God whose demand for blood atonement leads to God’s requiring of his own Son a death on behalf of all of us. The nonviolent God of Jesus comes to be depicted as a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is closest and most precious to him, but also holds the whole of humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipated and required. Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure religion.”⁵

Wink then summarizes what this means for us, “To be this God’s offspring requires the unconditional and unilateral renunciation of violence. The reign of God means the complete and definitive elimination of every form of violence between individuals and nations. This is a realm and a possibility of which those imprisoned by their own espousal of violence cannot even conceive.”⁶ John Dominic Crossan comes to a very similar conclusion, “Christians choose between the violent God of human normalcy and the nonviolent God of divine radicality, between peace through violence and peace through justice, according to which one they find incarnate in the historical Jesus”.⁷

The question is, “is our God violent?” Despite very good evidence from the Bible, from humanity, and from Christianity otherwise, I don’t believe so. I believe God is nonviolent, and calls all of us to nonviolence as well. I hope the chance to consider various understandings of Jesus’ death on the cross makes space within you to consider the question, and frees you to answer it in ways that are life giving. Amen

Questions for Sermon Talkback

What other atonement theories have you heard? (Or other nuances of the ones mentioned)

What sense can you make of the “Myth of redemptive violence”?

Does it make sense that sacrificial atonement is part of the myth of redemptive violence?

Is anything missing from our faith if we don’t accept sacrificial atonement?

Does Wink’s theory of Jesus’ death make sense?

How have you made sense of Jesus’ death?

How do you connect Jesus’ death to Jesus’ life?

For you, is there anything inherent about forgiveness in Jesus’ death? If not, do you find this in another place in your story of God/Jesus? If not, is it important to you?

1Jim Jordal, “What is a Domination System” found on 2/10/2017 athttp://www.windsofjustice.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=356 written on March 14, 2013.

2Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Fortress Press: 1993 it seems), 15.

3Wink, 28.

4Wink, 141.

5Wink, 148-9.

6Wink, 149.

7John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (USA: HarperOne, 2007), 141.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 18, 2018

Sermons

“Shepherds and Salvation” based on Matthew 25:31-46 and Ezekiel…

November 26, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today
is “Christ the King” Sunday, sometimes called “Reign of Christ
Sunday.” It is the last Sunday of the Christian Liturgical year,
the completion of the annual cycle of remembrance and growth. Next
Sunday we start a new year of remembering and recreating with the
beginning of a new Advent. I often skip these texts, and this
topic. Most years the hierarchy of monarchy and patriarchy of
kingship combined with ridiculously high Christology are enough to
turn my stomach. Many years Thanksgiving gives me a way out.

This
year I heard the texts and the topic with a different energy. This
year I heard them speak about leadership, and I heard them speaking
about leadership in a radically different way than it is normally
spoken of. As I continued to reflect on the texts, I was reminded
that not everyone identifies as a leader, but we all lead. Much of
the leadership in human history and even today has been about
CONTROL, and about having power OVER other humans. God doesn’t call
anyone into that sort of leadership. God calls us into relationships
with each other, and leadership in that vein is about shared
empowerment. That is, I think that there are leadership components
in every relationship, even (if I’m honest) the relationship we have
with ourselves. That is, within each of us there are various needs,
desires, and values vying for control, and some of the work of our
lives is to balance each of those so that good is maximized – thus
there is leadership within.

Unfortunately,
often relationship between people are centered on control, instead of
on mutual benefit, listening, and affection. Those relationships
reflect a system of broken leadership, utterly unlike the idea of the
reign of God – which is also called the kindom of God.

It
seems at times that we don’t spend adequate focus on the kindom of
God. You may disagree, and that’s OK! However, since the kindom is
mentioned twice in the Lord’s Prayer, and is said to be the ACTUAL
messages that Jesus preached in his ministry, I don’t think is is
possible to focus on it too much.

Together,
we spend a few sermons focusing on it in 2014, and I want to bring
back some of the ideas we talked about then. They seem really
central to our faith, and it has been a while (and not everyone was
here then.) Both then, and now, I think this quote from Rev. Dr.
John Cobb is the most important thing I can share to bring the idea
of the kindom of God into clarity:

“Jesus
did not do away with the future tense. We still pray for its coming.
Clearly there is no earthly political region (basileia) that realizes
this ideal. Nevertheless, what is different in Jesus message is that
this ideal is already being realized. He says it is ‘at hand.’ Even
in his lifetime, to follow him was to take part in this new reality.
His table fellowship already realized it.”¹
“Jesus understood his message to be the proclamation
of the kingdom of heaven understood as a great opportunity or
blessing, not as a terrifying judgment. … ’The kingdom is
“at hand.” The requirement for being part of that kingdom is that
one change the basic way one thinks and lives. … Even more
important in my view is that a “basileia” need not be
hierarchically governed at all. Of course, the “basileia” Jesus
proclaimed involved God’s will being done. But when we read the
beatitudes, to take but one example, we may be struck by the
absence of one saying that those who obey God’s laws are blessed.
The first one, for example, says “blessed are the poor in
spirit,” and it goes on to say explicitly that “for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” (Mt.5:3) There is nothing here to indicate that
we should understand that the government of the divine
“basileia” would be like that of an earthly
kingdom, simply with God replacing the earthly ruler. That may have
been the theology of the translators of the New Testament, but there
is no reason to attribute it to Jesus. Jesus prayed to God as “abba”
of “papa.” Papa cares deeply how his children behave but even
more for their true happiness. The basileia of abba is
not a “kingdom.” I know of not perfect translation, but I am
fully convinced that “commonwealth” is better than “kingdom.”
One of the ways in which Jesus called people to change their thinking
was away from the hierarchical mindset that expresses itself in
“kingdom.”²

While
I REALLY like the idea of the commonwealth of God, or the basileia, I
most often use the phrase “kindom of God.” I use it because it
is identifiable as related to the “kingdom of God” and also names
a different dream – the dream of the time when all the world will
live in justice and peace because all people will treat each other as
kin. If there is any meaning to Christ being KING, it is that this
sort of kindom is what the Body of Christ is working on building.

By
the way, this kindom of God is language from the New Testament, but
it isn’t something that really started with Jesus. Jesus preaching
was continuous with and based on the visions of God from the Hebrew
Bible. Rev. Dr. Cobb
connects the prophetic tradition with Jesus’ kindom message saying,

“Jesus
calls us uncompromisingly to enter the prophetic tradition of Israel,
the one long-lasting tradition in human history that calls for a
reversal of the social, political and economic values that are
otherwise universally accepted. True wisdom is not what is taught in
universities. True wealth is not material possessions. True power is
not the ability to force people to do one’s will. Communities based
on this deep reversal are “at hand.” We can take part in them as
a foretaste of God’s hope for the whole world. Jesus understood his
mission to be to proclaim and realize this possibility.”³

That
all being said, the work of the Body of Christ to build the kindom
may make more sense in the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, as
he preached it,

“We
shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force.
Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot
in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation
with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and
threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded
perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and
beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be
ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One
day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so
appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the
process and our victory will be a double victory.”⁴

In
their own ways, our texts today also point to the kindom of God. The
Gospel lesson has long annoyed me, mostly because it seems to assume
that salvation has to do with afterlife, and I simply don’t think
that reflects the authentic Jesus. The Jesus Seminar colored this
text black (vindication!!), indicating that they don’t think it
reflects the actual words or ideas of Jesus, but rather of the early
Christian community.

The
text is worried about the care of “the least of these” which is
part of what the kindom of God is all about. One scholar points out
that of the ways that the sheep and goats were judged, “The first
five actions were typical Jewish acts of mercy. (Jews did not use
imprisonment as punishment.)”⁵
Matthew thought that while those early Christians were waiting for
Jesus to come back, they should act in continuity with good living as
both Jesus and the Jews had understood it. That scholar connects
these commandments even more strongly to the kindom, saying, “Jesus
teaches that God’s reign, the full revelation of which we await –
is characterized in the present, not by powerful works and miracles,
but by deeds of love, mercy, and compassion, especially toward those
most in need.”⁶

Our
Ezekiel passage understands salvation to be healing for the whole
community, not a particular form of afterlife. (Phew) It sees all of
us as sheep – some overfed and some underfed- but all the same.
This text speaks of a God who wants justice, not punishment. There
is a bit of punishment in it, but even within that, God’s concern is
for caring for the afflicted! This passage comes after an extended
metaphor about the leaders of Israel being like bad shepherds who
don’t care for their sheep. Here, God claims that God will shepherd
the people directly, since the human leaders have failed them so
badly. Historically, this passage is placed within the exile, and
Ezekiel is speaking hope to the people in a time and place when hope
itself is a form of resistance!

God
wants the people well led, so
that justice and love define their lives together. In both the
Gospel and in Ezekiel we see the concern God has in how ALL of the
people are treated, especially the vulnerable. God wants the people
to have good leaders, who care about the vulnerable, who care about
the well-being of the whole community, who are using the resources
they have for the COMMUNAL well-being instead of just using the power
for their own enrichment. The Bible, time and time again, calls on
leaders and on the justice system to be FAIR, and JUST, and to make
sure the vulnerable have a fair chance. It really is a different
idea of what leadership is than I tend to see in the world at large.

We,
all of us, are called into the kindom, which is build on people
believing in an alternative set of values – values of cooperation,
values of shared joy, values of hope, a refusal to discount the full
humanity of anyone, of peaceful resistance, of trust in God. The
kindom one where all the sheep are well-cared for. It requires
leadership, and it requires it of all of us. We have to let go of
the idea of power over others or control of them, that isn’t the way
of God. Enforcing our will isn’t leadership. Caring about each
other’s well-being, listening and responding, that’s leadership. As
Jesus said, the kindom is at hand. We are called to be leaders of the
kindom. May we learn the values well, and teach them with our lives.
Amen

1 Dr.
John Cobb “Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
accessed
on February 1, 2014.

2 Dr.
John Cobb “Third
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2014-01-26/third-sunday-after-epiphany
accessed on January 25, 2014.

3 Dr.
John Cobb “Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2014-02-02/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany
accessed
on February 1, 2014.

4
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King A
Christmas Sermon for Peace on Dec 24, 1967

5 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ “Exegetical Perspective on Matthew 25:31-46” in
Feasting on the World Year A Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and
Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Westminster John Knox Press:
Louisville, KY, 2011) 335

6 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ, 337

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Image of God” based on Isaiah 45:1-6 and Matthew 22:15-22

October 22, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The Bible often sounds
so… Bible-y that it can be easy to tune out. Or, at least, it can
be for me. Sometimes when I’m reading I’m tempted to “yadda yadda”
the stuff that feels like its been said over and over. This is
similar to trying to read legalese and make sense of the actual
point, which I know is there somewhere, but I have to break through
ALL the words that don’t actually mean anything to me.

I mention this because
I’m not entirely convinced I’m the only person with this problem, and
because I think many a normal person might have had this issue with
our Hebrew Bible text today. Yes yes, God opens doors, God levels
mountains, God gives riches, God calls us by name, God chooses the
chosen, God is the only one. We’ve heard all this before, it is
practically a chorus.

The big difference in
this passage, the part that makes it not at all redundant nor boring,
comes in the very beginning. “Thus
says the LORD to his anointed.” (I KNOW, you are half tempted to
zone out the Bible-ese already, but I promise, you want to hear the
next two words) “to Cyrus”. This, my friends, is some crazy turn
of a phrase.

A
quick set of historical reminders is in order to make sense of it
though. Around 587 to 586 BCE the Jewish people living in Jerusalem
were defeated by the Babylonian army, and the city and temple were
destroyed. The leaders and the educated were taken to Babylon as
slaves and the rest of the people were left behind without defenses,
food, or hope. This is known as “the Exile” and we believe that
the Hebrew Bible as we know it was written down during and after the
Exile, which means the stories were told in particular ways to try to
answer the question “Why did this happen to us?” In fact, the
very idea of a Jewish Messiah developed at the time of the Exile, as
a person who would right the wrong of the Exile itself and recreate a
vibrant Jewish Empire.

The
Exile ended when the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonian Empire in
battle, and took it over. The Emperor of the Persian Empire then
decided that he didn’t much care about the Jewish captives, and freed
them to go home as they wished. It had, however, been 48 years,
which is several generations without birth control, and not everyone
went home.

Back
to our passage, do you know who was the Emperor of the Persian Empire
in 539 and let the captives go free? Cyrus. So, this passage, which
is the first one to claim anyone as the Messiah (“God’s anointed”),
claims that role for a FOREIGN, NON-JEWISH, EMPEROR. Well, now,
that’s pretty curious, isn’t it? This stuff isn’t all just
Bible-ese. 😉

The
idea here is that by freeing God’s people, Cyrus was doing God’s
work. But the claims are rather radical. First of all, Cyrus is
called the messiah, then Cyrus is said to be called by name by God,
and to be given a last name by God EVEN THOUGH Cyrus doesn’t know or
worship God. So, the work of freeing the people was done through the
work of Cyrus, and God helped Cyrus along the way to make it happen.

The
most curious part is that God used an EMPEROR, which doesn’t tend to
be the way God works, at least when we get to the Gospels. However,
the fantastic thing we can take from the Isaiah passage is this: God
doesn’t limit God’s work just to people who believe particular things
or speak of God in particular ways; God is willing to work with and
through anyone who is open to working with God! The fact that this
was clear enough in 539 BCE that the people of God thought Cyrus was
God’s chosen messiah is very good news indeed. Inclusivity runs deep
with God, and God’s people have known it for a long time.

Now,
Matthew is distinctly less enamored with foreign emperors than Isaiah
is. Matthew sets up this story beautifully, designing a narrative
around the snappy statement of Jesus which said, “Give therefore to
the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things
that are God’s.” That little saying is one of the very few things
the Jesus Seminar REALLY thinks Jesus said, and Matthew builds a
story around it to make sense of it. The story is well constructed.
The coin described has on it the face of the Emperor, while our faith
tradition has always claimed that people have on them the “image of
God.” Matthew even word plays this, having the adversaries
describe Jesus as a man who shows no partiality, which is literally,
“you do not regard the face of anyone.”¹
The whole story then plays around with faces, and images, wondering
whose matches with whose.

While
Matthew’s story is well constructed, we think the authentic memory is
simply in that statement, “Give therefore to the emperor the things
that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
That statement seems to direct us to a reasonable follow up question:
What is it that belongs to Caesar and what is it that belongs to
God? In fact, I think it is this question that makes the statement
so powerful and memorable. It appears benign, and would have sounded
benign to Roman ears. They might have thought, “Yeah, sure, give
money to the Emperor, that’s really what he wants, and as long as he
also gets the power and respect he deserves, your God can have what’s
left.”

Jewish
ears would not have heard the same thing at all. They would have
heard Jesus and immediately considered, “But, if we are to give to
God what is God’s, there is nothing left for the emperor!” So,
Jesus’ saying manages to totally subvert the power of the empire
WHILE sounding benign to the emperor’s ears. Well played, Jesus.

So,
for a faithful Jewish person at the time of Jesus as today, all
things belong to God. That’s one of the implications of thinking of
God as Creator, God created all things and all things are thus God’s.
The less obvious follow up question is: what does it mean to give
something to God who is already the Creator of all things? I don’t
mean to be trite, I think this is a valid question. We might have a
sense of being able to “give our hearts” to God, but we aren’t
just looking for that. We certainly have the capacity to give money
to the church, and to other groups whose work builds the kin-dom of
God, which can be a way to give to God, but if God is the God of
EVERYTHING and we are to give what is God’s to God, then… how?

Jesus
doesn’t clarify. As the Jesus seminar puts it, he leaves that as
homework, “He does not tell his questioners what to do other than
to decide the claims of God in relation to the claims of the
emperor.”²
As far as I can figure it out, to give something to God is to use it
for the building of God’s kin-dom; or sometimes that’s called God’s
kingdom; that is, to create the world into the world as God would
have it be; that is, a world where everyone has enough to survive AND
thrive; that is, a world of justice that allows for peace; that is a
reality where all people are humanized and no one is left
dehumanized; some call this the beloved community. I know that’s a
lot of rephrasing, but we Christians find this idea important enough
that we talk about it in a lot of ways, and it seems important to
point out that they’re all the SAME idea.

In
seminary I was offered the idea that we are co-creators with God.
That is, God created, but in that creation we received free will and
that free will is a part of creating what is and what will come next.
If the kin-dom is to come, then we need to be co-creators with God
in making it happen, because God will not work without us nor force
it upon us. I’m proposing that to “give to God” is to offer it
for the sake of the kin-dom. Resources I see all us as having
include: our time, our energy, our mental though space, our money,
our gifts, and our passions. None of us have any of those in equal
measure, but we all have the chance to decide what to do with them.

There
is a heck of a lot of work to be done in building the kin-dom as
well, and the work is quite varied. Paul did some good work on
making lists of various gifts that are useful and various work that
is to be done, but the end point is that we need lots of different
skill sets and we need not judge ourselves nor others for what we’re
able to offer.

As
a practical example, when the area I was in flooded in 2011 I was
asked to do some organizing work, because the fire department was
busy emptying basement and the fire auxiliary was busy trying to
distribute food and water. So I sat at the fire department and made
lists: lists of people who wanted to help and lists of people who
needed help. To be honest, I’m not all that useful at most building
or demolishing work, I don’t know all that much about it. However,
it turned out that a deeply necessary job was the one that involved
keeping lists and making phone calls. It was more than a year before
I lifted my hand with anything but a pen or a phone in it for that
recovery, and yet I got enough feedback to know that the work I’d
done mattered. At the same time, nothing I did would have mattered
if there weren’t people willing to do the heavy lifting, nor others
working to get supplies, nor if the people working to restore the
utilities hadn’t succeeded, nor if the basements weren’t drained, nor
if the people hadn’t had food and water in the meantime.

I
think perhaps disaster recovery is a decent metaphor for building the
kin-dom if anything is: it takes a lot of people doing what they are
best at, some of which may not seem that important, much of which is
mucking out, but all of which together can transform it all!

Another
practical example seems to be in order. Many in this congregation
have been doing the long term work for full inclusion of LGBTQIA+
people in the church and in the world. That requires a lot of
different effort: from strategy work to protests, from legal work to
acts of defiance, from the the “work” of celebration to the
simple acts of inclusion, and beyond. A few years ago a friend
mentioned the deeply necessary work of having initial conversations
with people who are closed minded, or who are having their very first
thoughts that perhaps God loves LBGTQIA+ people too – and that she
no longer feels called to do it. She is an incredible organizer, we
really need her organizing rather than in those conversations, and
she was wise enough to know continuing to be in those talks decade
after decade was too much for her. Her stance felt like freedom. We
don’t all have to do the same work, there is too much to do to be
stuck on only one thing!

So, to give to God’s what
is God’s, what does it mean? It means our whole lives being directed
towards co-creating the fullness of God’s vision into the world. The
really good news is that when we are working along with God, the
burden is lightened and the possibilities are expanded. Thanks be to
God! Amen

1Richard
E. Spalding, Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 22:15-22,
Feasting on the Word Year
A, Volume 4,
edited by David L. Barlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 189.

2Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The
Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), 236.

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

October 22, 2017