Discernment

March 15, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Discernment” based on Ephesians 5:8-14 and UMC Social Principles on Military Service (Part 2 of War and Military Service)

The heart of our scripture passage today as I hear it is “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” This is a pretty obvious part of faith – to try to figure out what is pleasing to God and do it. That’s living the life of faith.

And, of course, it is easier said that done. Sometimes we have easy clarity on what is right, what is wrong, what is pleasing to God and what would be displeasing to God. We know we shouldn’t kick people when they’re down, we shouldn’t ignore the pleas of the hungry, and we should take a few breathes before speaking in anger, take the time to savor the good parts of life.

But, truth be told, we don’t struggle with knowing what is pleasing to God when it is easy. Though sometimes we struggle to DO it. We struggle with knowing what is pleasing to God when it isn’t clear.

In my last church I served a church that was basically built for IBM engineers and their families. While there I was given advice about engineers from someone who had managed them professionally. The advice was: if an engineer comes to you to ask you to pick between two options, then just pick one. The premise, I’m told, is that if there was any significant differences between the two choices the engineer would have simply picked the better one. The only reason you’d be asked to decide as their supervisor, then, was if they were entirely equal and thus the engineer was stumped. In that case it doesn’t matter what you decide because they’re equal and what the person needs is a decision so they can move on – preferably done by someone they can blame later if it was wrong. So, I was told, if you trust the engineer, just pick one. That’s what they need.

Clearly, that was very particular to IBM engineers 😉

It is also relevant to the times when we struggle with figuring out what is pleasing to God. If one choice clearly worked better than others, then we’d just make that choice. Or, at least, we’d try to. Discernment is the spiritual activity we engage in when we are trying to do what is pleasing to God and the answer isn’t obvious in advance.

As I examined The United Methodist Church’s words on Military Service, I was struck by how deeply they’re reflective of a need for good discernment. It is abundantly clear that we need good people to serve in the military, including people of faith who do so with their convictions and conscience, and who will seek the well-being of all to the greatest extent of their abilities. It is also abundantly clear that some people of faith are called to refuse military service out of their faith. And the answer is particular to the person, and their faith, and their gifts, and their circumstances, and their callings, and is not the same for different people. Together, as a Body of Christ, and as a nation, and a world we are strongest when we have both people in the military who serve with integrity and people who choose not to serve as a means of expressing their faith.

For some people, knowing where to land on that question is easy, for others it could be the ultimate discernment. But, for all of us, there are times when we face questions of importance where we need to engage in discernment to find our way.

Now, I need to offer a little bit of my own nonconformist framing to this, simply because I am me and this was imperative to my development. For many years when I heard people talk about “finding out what is pleasing” to God, or discernment, or in the words I heard most often “doing God’s will” I thought of it was… well… obedience. My framing was that God – the creator of the universe – had expectations and plans for me and my job was to “discern” what God wanted and then obediently enact that. Which, I’ll be honest, got me to about 30 without significant issues.

And then it became really uncomfortable.

I didn’t like the implications about God and me that came with that framework. I wanted to be more than a cog in a wheel doing what some external being desired of me. And I wanted to fit the framework into the understanding I had of God as compassionate and kind and intimately involved in my life. The framework started to splinter because it didn’t really fit either the God I experienced nor my theology.

As I sat with my discomfort, and engaged in conversations about it, and wrote about it my prayer journal, and generally pondered about it I built a different understanding of what it means to “try to find out what is pleasing to” God.

While I do think of God as Creator, and that is huge in my personal belief system, when I pray I really think of it as becoming aware of the Holy Spirit who is everywhere – in me and around me and in and around everyone else – connecting us and loving us and just being the foundation of love in everything and everyone. Prayer is attending to and bringing my awareness to God who is with me, NOT to God is above me or beyond me.

And that means that discernment – for me – is not about figuring out the will of some OTHER being. Instead it is about listening to God-with-me, who I know through my own body and being, whose wisdom I access through my own. This, of course, has some dangers. The big one is that my own perception bias can impact how I hear God and lead me wrong. However, that’s always true! But, trusting myself as human who is able to to listen to the whisperings of God within is what discernment looks like for me. And it is hard, sometimes, to trust myself to do it. But it feels a lot more real and honest and even comfortable for me than my old framework did.

A few years ago our Church Council created a “Futuring Committee” to consider where our church is headed. We engaged in a process of group discernment. Our meetings were heavy in prayer, and we moved to silence when we got stuck. We did careful thinking and listening, but we also paid deep attention to what delighted us AS A MEANS of knowing what God might be nudging us towards. Eventually, in conversation with the church that went both ways, we landed on a plan to try to use our building as a resource to the community that will also help us build a more financially sustainable future. In specifics, we planned to make our space particularly available to dance and music groups, to increase the use of our space by outside groups (like All of Us in the Pine Room), and to renovate space we aren’t using for people to live – without having to do the development or oversight ourselves.

(Please note that as in any discernment, finding the way is one part and enacting it is a different part and we’re trying but not getting as far as we’d like with using our space for housing as of yet. But we’re still trying!)

I’m still happy with the work we did, primarily because we took a chance in trusting ourselves to be people who could “find out what is pleasing to” God. And, I think we did.

It seems important here to end on some practical notes about discernment. So, here we go.

First important thing to know: emotions are a TOOL of discernment, not a distraction from it. Does something excite you, bring you joy, energize you, delight you? THAT MATTERS!!!! Does something fill you with dread, bore you to tears, elicit disgust, make you recoil? That matters too! At least in my model of discernment, we have to take ourselves seriously as part of the data set we’re working with as we work with God.

Second important thing to know: when you get stuck, get curious. Why are you stuck? What values are in conflict? What is scaring you or holding you back? What would you need to feel more confident about your way forward? Does anyone else know what you’d need to know to figure this out?

Third important thing to know: discernment often involves a lot of time and silence, because sorting through our own emotions and wisdom and sorting what is real from what we’re afraid might be real, and sorting the past from the present, and generally just finding clarity is slow and takes attention and looks like nothing is happening for a really long time until it does.

Forth and final important thing to know about discernment: there are books written on this and practices that people have found really useful. For me, the ones that have helped the most are:

Prayer journaling. That is, writing it all down where the audience is God) which is helpful because I can sort it out as I write it down
Daily examen where you take time every day to notice the best and worst parts of your day, or the parts most and least connected to God, or the most loving and least loving parts and notice the patterns in them over time. (This can also be done with a journal where you write down both the best and the worst and review it on occasion).
Talking things over with those who are willing and able to hold the space for my own wisdom. I’ve most often practices this in Sacred Circles that come out of the Center for Courage and Renewal and Parker Palmer’s teachings, but really this is a Quaker practice with a long and beautiful history.

The real key here is to know that if you want to engage more deeply in intentional discernment, there are resources and you can find them or I can help you and you need not flail on your own!

We are people who are always trying to figure out what is pleasing to God. Thanks be to God for our trying, and our succeeding, and for the resources that can help us along the way. 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

March 15, 2026

Sermons

Radical Nonviolence

March 8, 2026April 1, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Radical Nonviolence” based on Matthew 5:38-42 UMC Social Principles on War (Part 1 of War and Military Service)

There are 4 really specific pieces of advice in our short scripture reading today and are are more radical than they first appear. Some of you have heard this before, and for you it is a review. Some of you haven’t, and this is new information. Both are good.

When I was a child I was taught that these recommendations were to be a doormat -to allow violence to be done to me and to… well, I guess to suck it up as passively as possible. That’s not what the text says.

Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek. Why? Because there was a difference in ways people were hit. Equals were slapped (or punched). Subordinates were backhanded. To be backhanded was to be put in one’s place, and that place was “lower.” To turn the other cheek is to REFUSE the other person’s narrative that you are lesser.

Important note here, only the right hand got used for hitting people, the left hand was unclean. Not because lefties are bad, but because left hands were used for unclean tasks so one hand could be clean.

Walter Wink explains, “This action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, ‘Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status doesn’t alter that fact. You cannot demean me.’” 1 Because if the person strikes the second cheek the only way they can do that is to treat the person as an equal! Which is to say that the Biblical themes that all people are created in the image of God and are beloved by God is the basis of this advice! To turn the other cheek is to refuse the position of subordinate and to reclaim one’s status as a full human being!

Similarly, comes the bit about suing a person for their outer garment. Let’s be clear, only someone who has nothing else would put up their (one) outer garment as collateral. And the Bible knows this well enough that there are repetitions of the law that if an outer garment is taken as collateral it must be returned to the person every night so they have it for warmth while they sleep.

As Wink says, “Indebtedness was endemic in first-century Palestine… It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy. Emperors had taxed the wealthy so stringently to fund their wars that the rich began seeking non-liqiuid investments to secure their wealth. Land was best, but it was ancestrally owned and passed down over generations, and no peasant would voluntarily relinquish it.”2 So high interest and high taxes were used to squeeze landowners out of their land and get their land into the lands of the wealthy. Note that Jesus assumes his hearers are the poorest of the poor, the ones whose outer garments are their debt security.

So why does he tell them to offer their inner garment as well? Because it would leave them naked. They couldn’t win in court, they couldn’t change the system, but they could expose it. “Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell less on the naked party than other person viewing or causing the nakedness.”3 Thus, nakedness became a prophetic protest! And, it took back power and dignity for people who didn’t have any in the systems of the day.

So, too, is the recommendation to “go the second mile.” The context here is that Roman soldiers could require someone to carry their heavy (65-80 pound) packs ONE mile, but not more than one. And the soldiers were known to abuse this regularly, so there were various punishments for them, although it wasn’t ever clear what the punishment would be it if was violated. Offering to carry it a second mile would take a person whose labor had been forced and give that person back their dignity. The solider wouldn’t’ want the second mile, would have to ask the person not to, would have to acknowledge the person. And meanwhile the person whose labor had been forced would “have taken back the power of choice.”4

The final piece of advice is to give to everyone who asks, which is hard and complicated and like the rest of these deserves its own sermon, but here we are. The gist seems to be that the only way the peasants could survive was if they engaged in mutual support and sustenance.

Taken as a whole, these pieces of advice establish a radical system of nonviolent resistance. They are a significant part of the reason that the first few centuries of Christianity were emphatically nonviolent, and nonviolence was considered the essence of living out Christian faith. But nonviolence isn’t passive, nor powerless. All of this was mean to empower, to connect, to expose, to invert the system.

These are teachings central to Jesus’s third way. That is, NOT violence, NOT passivity, but nonviolence. This is one of the cores of our Christian tradition. And, as we heard in our shared reading of our United Methodist Social Principals, there is now a debate about whether or not violence is ever acceptable and while I think that conversation has immense value, we’re not focusing there today either.

However, it seems worth mentioning that those who believe violence and war are sometimes necessary usually would do so within the confines of Just War Theory which states that before a decision to go to war can be considered justified these conditions must be met:

The war must have a just cause.
It must be waged by a legitimate authority.
It must be formally declared.
It must be fought with a peaceful intention.
It must be a last resort.
There must be reasonable hope of success.
The means used must possess proportionality to the end sought.5

Note that for Christians and United Methodists, stating that Just War conditions have been met and it is thus legitimate to go to war is the most permissive standard within our Christian tradition, and others would say that there is no such thing as a just war, nor any justification for violent action.

Walter Wink is one of the thinkers who lands in that second position, but he points out that there are places where those who believe in just war and those who believe only in non-violence line up:

Both acknowledge that nonviolence is preferable to violence.
Both agree that the innocent must be protected as much as possible.
Both reject any defense of a war motivated solely by a crusade mentality or national security interests or personal egocentricity.
Both wish to persuade states to reduce the levels of violence.
Both wish to hold war accountable to moral values, both before and during the conflict.6

I would suggest for us that those are the principals we use was we make our shared assessments about what our faith requires of us in the days we are living. And, I’m going to go ahead and state the obvious that the current war in Iran does not meet the standards we hold.

Furthermore, the non-profit “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” reported this week that complaints have come in that commanders are telling their troops that the war in Iran is part of God’s plan to usher in the return of Christ.”7 More than 200 such complaints have come in, from more than 40 units (as of Thursday). The first one was. “A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer on behalf of 15 of them.”8

Now, we around here are not well versed in the premise of Armageddon, so let me clarify a few things. The first is that the book of Revelation was written as a letter to support people living the violence of the Roman Empire while trying to live the nonviolence of Jesus. It is written as vision, and with some warping of time to give it deniability as being about the Roman Empire. Some parts of American Christianity have globed on to an idea of a final battle based on Revelation 16:16, “And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.” That said, while the battle lines are drawn, in the book of Revelation they never occur, and instead Jesus comes in and ushers in the new heaven and the new earth. Which is to say that the WHOLE of “Armageddon” premise is just… made up.

And using those myths to justify war, which is what happens every time the US enters a war in the Middle East, is an abuse of Christianity and Christian tradition to serve the values of the empire. The debate within the Christian tradition is about if ANY war can be justified. What is being articulated to try to motivate our military is a perversion of Christianity that is antithetical to our scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Christianity, like other world religious, holds that are people are of sacred worth. We never take killing lightly, and the power of the state to kill doesn’t change that standard. For now, we need to hold firmly to our own tradition, and refute any premise that tries to use Christianity to justify unjust war. We need to hold firm to the sanctity of human life, and commit to nonviolence in all the ways we are able.

We need to live out the love of God we have experienced, and trust that love has its own power. And, while we are at it, The United Methodist Board of Church and Society has some trainings for us about how we can respond with nonviolent resistance like Jesus taught us.9 Thanks be to God for a denomination that helps us know how to follow in the ways of Jesus. Amen

1 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), p.176.

2 Ibid, p. 178

3 Ibid, p. 179.

4 Ibid, p. 182.

5 Ibid, p. 214.

6 Ibid, p. 224.

7 https://myemail.constantcontact.com/MRFF-Inundated-with-Complaints-of-Gleeful-Commanders-Telling-Troops-Iran-War-is–Part-of-God-s-Divine-Plan–to-Usher-in-Return-o.html?soid=1101766362531&aid=3OTPFAZxIrI

8 https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for, accessed 3-

9 https://www.umcjustice.org/latest/lenten-webinar-series-ashes-to-action-lent-as-non-violent-resistance-8953

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

March 8, 2026

Sermons

Lifting Eyes to the Hills

March 1, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And STILL God is with us all.

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

Thanks be to God who is always with us. Amen

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

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

March 1, 2026

Sermons

Life Giving Bread

February 22, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Life Giving Bread” based on UMC Social Principle on “Food Justice” and Matthew 4:1-11

Welcome to Lent, let’s talk about the temptations the Tempter was tempting Jesus with. 😉

The last one is obvious, I think. Jesus is tempted with worldly power, and instead chooses Godly power. That one is a big deal, after all most of the expectations of the messiah at that point were for the messiah to restore Ancient Israel to its worldly power. And power over others is highly valued in a lot of places – but Jesus was into the power with, into relationship, into the well-being of the collective – not into using people to benefit himself.

In the middle one we’re told that Jesus is tempted to test God. But that one has never made sense to me. I’ve never had a temptation to test God by engaging in self harm and expecting God to change the rules of physics to protect me. And, really, we’re talking about Jesus here who ends up being killed by the powers of the world, so…. What? My guess is that this is a story of early Christianity, when people had come to believe that Jesus was “special” and maybe even started to think of Jesus as “God” and then thought he’d have temptations to excuse himself from the laws of nature.

But is actually the first one that confuses me the most. The stones into bread one. The idea here is that Jesus has been fasting and he is famished. So the temptation is to … well… eat. To feed his body. To stop the pains of hunger.

Jesus responds that he is in need of God, not of physical nourishment and that’s really lovely and all but the fact does remain that he would have been REALLY hungry. So I got to wondering about this. I started to wonder what would be so bad about breaking a fast with some bread. Particularly if we suspect disbelief and think about it as if Jesus could ACTUALLY make stones into bread. What would be wrong with that?

And then I realized that to make stones into bread to break a spiritual fast would pretty much negate the purpose of the fast. Fasting is meant to be a way of CONNECTING, that every time a person feels hunger they use it to remind themselves to turn to prayer rather than food. But it has to be a choice, simply being hungry and not having access to food isn’t fasting. That’s being hungry, whether the person is spiritual about it not.

In traditions that use fasting regularly, the end of a fast is as intentional as the rest of it. Part of the temptation here is to circumvent the process and meet the bodily need before completing the spiritual process.

But the other thing that occurred to me is that in real life, bread is INHERENTLY communal. To make bread you need: flour, water, salt, and a leavening agent. In the time of Jesus the leavening agent it would have been sourdough. NONE of those ingredients are things that exist in a vacuum. To have flour you need land, and seeds, and time to cultivate and knowledge. You also need a way to grind grains into flour, which is pretty challenging to do. Water required a well in those days in that part of the world. Salt required harvesting and transportation. And sourdough … well, truthfully it dies sometimes and you need someone else to give you some again. Oh, and you need an oven, which is a thing that has to be build, and heated, which requires fuel.

That is a long way of saying – you can’t make bread by yourself. Bread is communal.

Then I got thinking about how it may look like bread is less communal today – after all we aren’t standing around a grinding stone with our neighbors or buying salt from the person who harvested it- but it takes many MORE hands to eat bread today than it did then!

I buy flour in a paper bag from the co-op. So to get it to me involves the co-op, roads, the company that grinds and sifts it, the farmers whose grain they grind, the people who make the equipment the farmers use, the seed companies, the water systems for the land, AND the people who made the paper bag, and the glue. And the paper company, glue company, co-op and flour company are places that have finance departments and HR departments and hire custodians and gardeners. Also, to buy the flour I participate in the finance system of the US, using a card, connected to my bank, all based on the worldwide value of the US currency.

I get water from my tap. Which is a miracle. And involves the city water system, those who maintain it, those who budget for it, the NYS regulations on it, the EPA regulations on it, the lawyer who are suing the EPA to keep regulations on it, the engineers who designed it, the workers who installed it, and the work of the plumbers I call if it goes wrong in my house!

I get my salt from the co-op too, I notice it has a metal spout and think about how many humans’ labor that spout adds. And I think about the work of maintaining the roads to get it to us, and the labor of doing it and the machines required and the labor of building and maintaining and dreaming the machines.

My sourdough I got from my brother’s college roommate’s stepmother, a lovely woman named Kathy who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, and could trace her sourdough to the time when Russians were in charge of Alaska.

The oven I use … oh my. People designed it, tested it, marketed it, transported it, and installed it. Others had to run electricity for it to work, and people connected my house to electricity and other people maintain the electrical grid. Oh, and the people who created, designed, perfected, transported, and installed the solar panels that sometimes provide the electricity for the house! I won’t go into it but most of the time when I make bread, I use olive oil too, and bowls, and pans, and tools! 😉

So when I “make my own bread,” I’m indebted to the labor of more people than I can fathom. And for those people to do their work, they need others too! Someone helped birth them, someone took care of them as children, people got them the medicine they need, people taught them, people wrote books they’ve read, people acted in shows they like and movies they make sense out of, someone recorded their favorite music, and someone is ready to answer the phone if they call 911. So, by the time we really think about it, the capacity for me to “make bread” requires …. a society.

To eat bread is to be nourished by the abundance of creation, the energy of the sun, the gifts of mother earth herself AND to be nourished by the interconnections of humanity itself.

Which means that magicking stones into bread is skipping out on the people and connections and communal wisdom and societal implications that are actually all a part of getting bread. If you skip out on that part, you’ve taken care of yourself in ISOLATION, taken care of only yourself while bypassing all the people who should be a part of it. You take your needs out of the community you live in. And when you take your needs out, you take your gifts out too, and you aren’t a part of the community anymore. To turn stones into bread is to act as if you can thrive in isolation.

And that’s why one shouldn’t make stones into bread – if one could.

And while we’re at it, stones don’t actually nourish, kind of like the cheap, self-stable food that many are forced by circumstances to rely on. Food that is high in sodium, low in nutrients, specially designed to make you overeat without being satisfied. Stones. And, what our society offers people as “food.” Because each loaf of bread we make is inherently dependent on others, and yet many of the others the bread depends on aren’t able to access good bread itself.

Our Social Principles make a strong point about the importance of local control over food justice. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways we actually can participate in the systems as justly as possible. This church was an early adaptor of Equal Exchange Coffee, when that was the only way people could access fair trade coffee and ensure that some of the costs of coffee were used to provide for the people doing the work! Now, we’re more able to access fair trade coffee in more places, as it became clear that “fair trade” is something that people want! We don’t want food systems that oppress, food systems that dehumanize, nor food systems that make us sick! We want just systems! We want those who labor to be able to eat – and truthfully, we even want those who don’t labor to be able to eat!!!! We want the abundant resources God has provided in the earth to be used to feed God’s people.

So, I’ve been thinking about where we are able to make a difference in these sometimes really complicated systems of our society. Which means I’ve been thinking about the wonders of food co-ops. When I arrived here I was told about the Niskayuna Co-op by a church member and I’ve loved it ever since. I’m also really excited about the Electric City Food Cooperative that is supposed to open this year. From their website, ““Community-owned grocery stores … are jointly owned and democratically governed by their member-owners – by the people, for the people.” They operate differently than grocery stores. Co-ops are “where Profit serves People and Planet, rather than the other way around.”

Because, “in conventional supermarkets, financial profit is the bottom line. In these companies, profits are distributed to shareholders or private owners. For corporately-owned grocery stores, the primary legal responsibility of the business is to generate profit margins to be redistributed to shareholders (typically people who are disconnected from the local community served by the store). Profit margins in grocery stores tend to be low compared to many other businesses and most corporately-owned supermarkets are only willing to establish stores in places where they can be assured that the population’s spending power and trip volume is high enough to generate profit for their shareholders and executives. They tend to favor car-dominated suburban areas more than locating in urban neighborhoods.”

“Research shows that community-owned grocery stores like co-ops are the best recipe for increasing access to nutritious and healthy foods, especially in areas like downtown Schenectady that have a history of disinvestment and are currently experiencing economic revitalization. Cooperative management models paired with significant community engagement with local government and nonprofit support make the difference.”

To my delight, it is about to get EASIER for people in our city to access good quality food, that connects us to local food sources, and distributes wealth more equitably! That is, while we can’t solve it all, we can do our best and maybe have the bread we eat that connects us to each other do a little more good along the way. And, more people will be able to access life giving bread. Thanks be to God for every single step towards food justice! Amen

February 22, 2026

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

Sermons

Context Is Everything

April 13, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Context is Everything” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Luke 19:28-40

I grew up understanding Palm Sunday to be a “yay Jesus” parade, and with a vague sense of confusion about how the “yay Jesus” on Sunday became the “crucify him” by Friday. Luckily, I came across “The Last Week” by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan and they taught me about a whole lot of things I was missing.

The most important thing I was missing in understanding Palm Sunday was CONTEXT. First of all, Passover. This year Passover started last night, and it is really good when the Jewish calendar and the (adapted) Christian Calendar line up because our stories from this week are all connected to Passover.

Passover is the Jewish celebration of God freeing the people from oppression and leading them into freedom and self-governance under a system of justice and equity. Specifically it is the freedom from the oppression in Egypt, but it turns out that that specificity is and is not important.

In the time of Jesus, Galilee and Judea were under the control of the Roman Empire. And while the Roman Empire would have stated things quite differently, emphasizing how great the Roman Empire was for all the people in it (uh huh…), the people disagreed. They noticed how the tax rates impoverished the poor to enrich the elite. They noticed how the military that “kept the peace” did so by silencing people’s basic concerns. They noticed that more and more people were dying of starvation. They noticed that their religion was being used to support the Empire, when clearly the God they knew wasn’t in favor of all the ways that justice and equity were being ripped away from the people.

And, despite all of the propaganda to the contrary, the Roman Empire knew all this too. Which is why when the major Jewish holiday of “The Passover” came up every year, and massive numbers of Jewish pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate God’s acts of liberation for God’s people, the Empire got antsy.

Like authoritarian regimes do when the people gather, particularly when the people gather together to celebrate FREEDOM.

Anyway, it was the Empire’s tradition that the Roman Authorities of the Day would gather in Jerusalem during Passover as well, along with some extra military power, to discourage people from getting any ideas about their God’s capacity to overthrow THIS oppressor.

Furthermore, the normal seat of power in the area was on the Mediterranean Sea, so coming to Jerusalem required moving. And if you are going to move the authorities, and the military, into the city where you want people to remember you still hold the power, you might as well do the moving as a big happy parade, right?

This is the second supper important piece of context. Before the Passover, every year, there would be a massive parade coming in from the West. Pilate, the Roman appointed Governor of the province of Judea had an Imperial Procession to accompany him – soldiers on gleaming horses, drumlins in union, glittering silver and gold on crests, golden eagles (the symbol of Rome) mounted on pole. The people who came to watch would have shouted the things they were taught to shout, “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.”

Thus, even the entrance into the city emphasized the power and authority of Pilate and Caesar and served to discourage the people from getting TOO excited about Passover and its basic meaning.

And this happened every year. People knew it happened every year. People knew that the authorities were big on shows of power, and the authorities counted on the shows of power to discourage the people and encourage compliance with authority.

Jesus knew this too.

I am pretty sure Jesus also knew that creating a mockery of the Parade of Roman Authority would not endear him to the Roman Authorities.

But it would diminish the power of the parade to intimidate, it would give voice to the needs of the people, it would remind the people that the God of the Passover was still with them.

And Jesus that breaking up the illusions of the Empire for the sake of reminding people of the power of God was worth it.

So he staged a counter-parade, one to come in from the East instead of the West.

His had no military to threaten the people with violence, instead it had cloaks on the road showing people’s profound, unforced trust in Jesus.

His had no gleaming trained horses, just an untried colt, according to the other gospels a young donkey. Now, make no mistake, this wasn’t just a contrast with the Western Parade. It also fulfilled an expectation about the Messiah. Zechariah 9:9 says:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

So, in riding on that colt, Jesus was reminding the people of what a King was supposed to look like to the Jewish people, and what the Roman Empire was NOT offering them afterall.

In response, instead of those golden eagle banners on display coming in from the West, the people waved Palm Branches, both easily accessible and historically a symbol of Ancient Israel.

And then, finally, whereas the shouts coming in from the West exulted Caesar, the ones coming in from the East exulted God and God’s servant, “"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“

Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. Also, once you see it, you get a better sense of why the Roman Authorities saw Jesus as a threat to their power, right? Palm Sunday is no where near as far from Good Friday as I thought it was as a child.

Now, at the end of Luke’s version of this Palm Sunday story, we hear, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

I want to remind us all that in Luke, the Pharisees were Jesus-friendly. They were making a practical and pragmatic suggestion that may well have functioned to save Jesus’ life if it was followed. They were reading the situation correctly. They wanted to help.

Jesus replies that the momentum has taken over and can’t be stopped, and we can note he also decided not to try.

I want to offer one more piece of context into this story, in this case into the whole story of Holy Week, and this one instead of coming from the scholarship of Borg and Crossan comes from the wisdom of our Disciple Bible Study group. Our texts all suggest that the Jewish authorities of the day were a part of the arrest and condemnation of Jesus. Only the Roman Empire could crucify a person, so we know that the Roman Empire killed Jesus, but all of our scriptures say they acted with the Jewish authorities.

The most important piece of context around this information is that the Jewish authorities of the day were PUT IN PLACE BY ROME to SERVE ROME and were REPLACED when they were insufficiently loyal to ROME. So it is really, really, really, REALLY important to distinguish between Jewish “authorities authorized by Rome” and “the Jews.” The failure to make that distinction has been deadly for our Jewish siblings in faith.

But I think, based on our conversations at Disciple, that it is possible to take this even a step further. In 70 CE a revolt against the Roman Empire emerged in Jerusalem and the response from the Roman Empire was a massacre and destruction of Jerusalem in a way that still has impact to this day.

I think it is possible that the Jewish authorities who were authorized by Rome and judged on their loyalty to Rome were still, in fact, trying to do their best by their own people and protect them as much as they could. Those leaders saw clearly what would happen if a revolt or revolution got out of control, and they didn’t want to see their people massacred.

Which is to say, it is possible to look at the position of the High Priest and his family, and others who were complicit in being loyal to Rome and probably condemning Jesus and, well, seeing why they did it. And that their intention was to protect their people.

Isn’t that a bit uncomfortable? Furthermore, the sect of Judaism that was in power during the life of Jesus was the Sadducees, but that tends to get misconstrued in the gospels because the Sadducees were so completely wiped out when Rome destroyed Jerusalem that the writers of the Gospels seem to have forgotten about them.

Jesus, clearly, had decided that it was time to defy the authorities, empower the people, and remind everyone of the wonders of God. Other people thought that was too dangerous, and it was going to get them all killed.

Because in systems of oppression no decision is easy or clear, and lots of decisions are between bad and worse, and they were operating in a system of oppression.

Which, beloveds of God, is a very good set up for Easter. Because in the end the authorities of the day can threaten violence, can threaten death, and are far too often capable of inflicting both. But on Easter we remember that not even death can stop the work of God in the world.

But, that’s for next week.

For this week, I think, our primary task is to dream a little bit about what kinds of protests, what actions of disobedience, what teaching and empowering of the people TODAY would count as following in the footsteps of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem. It is more than a little terrifying, and I have a lot of compassion for those Sadducee leaders, but I’m a follower of Jesus and that includes following his lead in protesting systems of oppression and reminding people that God cannot be stopped.

So, what forms of protest and disobedience is God calling you to?

May we listen well. Amen

April 13, 2025

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

Sermons

The Lost Sons

March 30, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“The Lost Son(s)” based on Joshua 5:9-12 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 March 30, 2025

If you have been part of the church for a while, you probably think you know the parable of “The Prodigal” pretty well. In short, many of us were trained to hear this as being about God who is generously forgiving, like the father in the parable. It is probably better for those of you who are a little new to this game, because today you are going to have to unlearn less stuff.

I’m working today with the wisdom of Amy-Jill Levine, in her book “Short Stories by Jesus.” Dr. Levine is a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. Yes. New Testament and Jewish Studies. Dr. Levine is unusual in that she is a Jewish New Testament Professor, and that means she does incredible work bringing the history of Judaism as context for the New Testament.

She is also, let me be clear, awesome. And, a number of years ago she was in Schenectady to lecture at Union College. I’d had the privilege of meeting her even more years ago when I co-lead worship for a retreat where she was the key-note speaker. So I invited her to coffee, and somehow we ended up sitting in my office for hours talking. One of the things I remember saying is that this church gives her hope.

OK, so you are caught up? There is a brilliant scholar who brings incredibly useful Jewish context to the New Testament, and also she’s been here and she was impressed with you. (I am too, I love this church.)

Dr. Levine’s work on the parables in Luke 15 are the first chapter of her book “Short Stories by Jesus” and she brings some critiques even to the names we call it. She says, “there is nothing complimentary about being prodigal, that is, in wasting resources for personal gratification.”1 She ends up calling it the “Lost Son” parable, although she toys around with “The Father Who Lost His Son(s).”2

As good scholars do, Dr. Levine rejects attempts to make a parable into an allegory. She maintains the right of the father and both sons to be simply characters in the story. She does NOT think that the father represents God. Which is good, because he’s not a great father. She even takes the story as a stand alone, outside of the interpretation that the Gospel of Luke applies to it. She lets the parable stand as it is. So, let’s hear what happens when you do it that way.

Luke 15 opens with, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”3 (Luke 15:1-2) Dr. Levine thinks we may mess a bunch of the memos in even those opening lines. She writes:

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

Sinners are not “outcasts”; they are not cast out of synagogues or out of the Jerusalem Temple. To the contrary they are welcome in such places, since such places encourage repentance. The Gospels generally present sinners as wealthy people who have not attended to the poor. That is a dandy definition of the term. Thus, in a first-century context, sinners, like tax collectors, are individuals who have removed themselves from the common welfare, who look to themselves rather than to the community.4

Such a good definition of sin, and such an idea worthy of reflection. I suspect many of us can FEEL the truth of sinners being people who care only about themselves and not about the common well-being of the community. Yes?

Luke 15 then has three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin and then the lost son. The three seem presented to build on each other and reflect on each other. In each case the person who loses something has more than average. Most people didn’t have 100 sheep, most people didn’t have 10 silver coins, most people didn’t have a wealthy estate to liquidate to give to a son as an inheritance. Also, 100 sheep can be hard to count. Most people can’t immediately see in a pile of coins if there are 9 or 10. But two sons are supposed to be pretty easy to notice. But we’ll come back to that.

Dr. Levine points out that “some man had two sons” is a fabulous opening line that would lead its initial hearers to think about Cain and Abel; Ishmael and Issac; Esau and Jacob; etc. She says:

All Biblically literate listers know to identify with the younger son. But those first-century biblically literate listeners were in for a surprise, when the younger son turns out not to be the righteous Abel, faithful Issac, clever Jacob, strategic David, or wise Solomon. He turns out to be an irresponsible, self-indulgent, and probably indulged child, whom I would not, despite his being Jewish, be please to have my daughter date.5

Some of you are also quite biblically literate and you know that it was normal for a first born son to get a “double share” of the inheritance, so that an elder son would get 2/3 and a younger son 1/3. But, that was actually up the discretion of the father, who decided not to do it that way. Dr. Levine says that asking for an inheritance while the father was alive was probably similar to doing so today – not super common but not super problematic either. It is clear that the father is very fond of this younger son, probably problematically so.

In any case, the younger son gets his inheritance, leaves, spends it, and ends up in trouble. Dr. Levine reflects on the question, “What went wrong for him?”:

Readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa tend to attribute his desperate status to a combination of bad parenting, lack of community values, separating himself from his network, and personal responsibility. …

Readers in Russia tend to note neither personal failure nor fiduciary ineptitude but the famine – there was no food to distribute. In a Vanderbilt University seminar on Luke’s Gospel, a graduate student from Kenya proposed that the real problem was lack of generosity, for no one gave him anything. This reading is particularly commended by the narrative context of the parable. Junior’s yearning to be fulfilled is the same term used to describe the sick and destitute Lazarus in Luke 16:21.6

Lack of generosity. That’s a good take.

Many of us know that good Jewish boys didn’t raise pigs, but we’ve been taught it would have been problematic for a Jewish boy to even feed pigs, but Dr. Levine disagrees, “the son did what he did in order to live; Jewish Law is law by which one lives, not by which one dies. The prodigal is in an impossible situation, but the issue is not Jewish xenophobia or purity. The problem is starvation.”7

Then the younger son decides to return home. He claims he is going home to be a hired hand, but keeps calling his father father and assuming he’ll be received with open arms. Its manipulative. Basically, his plan is “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”8

As he returns, his father is thrilled to see him, is filled with compassion, runs to greet him, kisses him, and throws a party. I’ve been taught that the father acted too enthusiastically for a proper patriarch, but Dr. Levine is having none of that. She leans hard into proving that fathers who thought they’d lost their children and meet them alive again were welcome to respond with joy – and that no shame came on anyone for his delight.

The issue is entirely different. The issue is that he throws a party and FORGETS TO INVITE THE ELDER SON. Which is where we go back to 100 sheep are hard to count, 10 coins aren’t necessarily visibly different from 9, but heavens one should be able to count to 2 when it comes to children. But this father forgot to count to TWO. It really does seem like his preference for his younger son impaired his capacity to express love to his elder son.

So the older son comes out of the fields, notices the party, and asks one of the slaves what is going on. He gets told “your brother has come, and your father has sacrificed the grain-fed calf, because he received him healthy. And he became angry and didn’t want to go in.”9 Would you? It is, at least, very uncomfortable to be the last one told and to have been uninvited to the party, isn’t it?

So the father comes out to the elder son, the one who it turns out is lost to him in a way he hadn’t realized, and tries to comfort him and urge him to come in. But the elder brother is angry, and – finally- says so. The elder son rejects his familial connection to his brother, referring to him as “your son” but the father tries again and calls him “your brother.” (Truly, the use of family references in this parable is brilliant.) The father affirms “all that I have is yours” which is a truth the son needed to hear.

But the parable ends without a true conclusion. The father has made an appeal, but the two of them are left standing together outside of the party, with the son’s answer unmade. Does he go in? Does he refuse? Dr. Levine keeps asking:

What would we do, were we the older son? Do we attend the party? What will happen to this family when the father dies and the elder son obtains his inheritance? Will he keep Junior in the restored position to which the father elevated him or will he send him to the stables, to be treated as one of the ‘hired laborers’? …

What do we do if we identify with the father and find our own children are lost? Is repeated pleading sufficient? What would be? What does a parent do to show a love that the child never felt?”10

She concludes, “In this household, no one has expressed sorrow at hurting each other and no one has expressed forgiveness. … Recognize that the one you have lost may be right in your own household. Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share the joy and so that others will help prevent the recovered from ever being lost again.”11

She speaks truths I’ve heard from so many people, including many of you. This ancient short story seems like it resonates today as well as any day, when we let it speak for itself. The parable leaves me yearning for healing in that family’s relationships, similar to a way I often yearn for healing in people’s family’s today.

That yearning for wholeness and goodness, that’s a whole big piece of what we’re trying to do as people of faith. Build a world where more and more people get to be whole, where more and more families get to be whole, where wholeness is easier and easier to access. And in this time when it is hard to impact the big stuff, maybe it is a good reminder to look around and work on the relationships with those closest to us. And to let our yearning for wholeness lead us to act in ways that lead to healing and wholeness here and now. May it be so! Amen

1Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, (USA: HarperOne, 2014) p. 29.

2p. 27.

3p. 31.

4p. 33.

5p. 47.

6p. 51.

7p. 52.

8p. 52 – quoting David Buttrick.

9p. 61.

10p. 68-69.

11p. 69.

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 30, 20215

Sermons

Provisions

March 23, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Provisions” based on Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9

I was reading a commentary on Luke and I realized I’m “getting” Pilate more and more these days:

Josephus’s accounts of Pilate’s confrontations with the Jews confirm that bloodshed was not uncommon: Pilate’s troops killed a group of Samaritans climbing Mt. Gerizim; Pilate introduced Roman effigies into Jerusalem; Pilate seized Temple Treasury funds in order to build an aqueduct.1

I don’t appreciate having a more visceral understanding of the experiences of ancient Jews in oppression by the leaders of the Empire, but here we are nonetheless.

I have been convinced by Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Walter Brueggemann that the Bible sets up a contrast between human systems of oppression and domination and God’s aims for systems of wholeness and interdependence. Various entities play the role of “oppression and domination” in different parts of the Bible. Egypt and the Pharaoh get to be the first and primary example of oppressors.

Egypt and the Pharaoh oppress the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and then God intervenes and frees the people. The people learn dependence on God and each other, and then get to settle into the “Promised Land” where they live in mutuality with sustainable practices and relative equality for a nice long time. 400 years or so.

The next example of oppression in the Bible is the Ancient Israelite Kings, perhaps none more so than Solomon. Once the people get a King, they get high taxes, forced labor, and class differentiation, not to mention kings who think they have the right to do whatever they want regardless of settled laws. The people are oppressed by their own Kings, mostly, although there is some debate about if that oppression was “better” than some others.

Then the next big oppressors are the nations who capture Ancient Israel and Ancient Judah, Assyria and Babylon. We hear more about Babylon, and it Babylon that features in our Hebrew Bible lesson today.

Isaiah 55 comes from the time of exile, when many Ancient Israelites were exiled in Babylon. While the exiles were taken away in waves and returned in waves, we often summarize the exile as lasting about 70 years, which means that most of the people taken into exile died there and most of the people who ended up returning had never been “home” before.

Today’s passionate passage dreams of the joy of homecoming, and contrasts the oppressive systems the people knew in Babylon with a return of God’s dreams back home. Walter Brueggemann writes:

The poet makes a sharp contrast between old modes of life under Babylonian authority and the new offer of life with Yahweh. The initial verse, perhaps in the summoning mode of a street vender, offers to passerby free water, free wine, and free milk. This of course is in contrast to the life resources offered by the empire that are always expensive, grudging, and unsatisfying. Israel is invited to chose the free, alternative nourishment offered by Yahweh.2

The thing is, the author of Isaiah 55 knows that not everyone will make that choice. The people who were thriving in Babylon were likely going to stick with the oppressive regime that benefited them instead of trying to live out God’s dreams. Others would stay because they just didn’t believe things could be any different. Despair kept them in place.

Whenever I encounter this passage, I’m drawn like a magnet to verse 2, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” This just has so many layers of truth. One is probably too literal, but in these days of ubiquitous processed food designed to create cravings without satisfaction I take the passage as a reminder to eat food that satisfies. Similarly, why do we spend money on cheap plastic gadgets that we’ll eventually tire of and trash?

More spiritually though, this passage guides me to reflection. What am I spending time, money, or energy on that doesn’t actually matter? Where is my labor being wasted? What good things is God wanting for us that we’re too distracted to attend to? What things that we have and hold dear might actually be getting in the way of what need or what would be great for us? What do I think of as “bread” that is really “fluff” and where do I seek satisfaction where I’m really being exploited?

The premise here is that God wants goodness for the people. Satisfying food that everyone can access, labor that builds up life and doesn’t drain it, delight, love, hope, a clear sense of God’s closeness, mercy, complete and utter wholeness and freedom. Contained within though is the reality that even when that kind of goodness is offered, people don’t always take it. Probably, at least in some ways, we don’t either, and God invites us to goodness again and again.

And to turn away from the things of death and destruction, from cheap tricks that distract us, from oppression and evil in all forms. So that we, and all, can move towards life.

Of course, we never get to do that in a vacuum. While we’re trying to learn how to live into God’s goodness, and let go of the things that don’t satisfy or bring life, we have to do it in the midst of a world where domination systems exist and oppression is present. Sometimes those are heavier than others, which I think we have already noticed today, but they’re never gone (at least in Western societies, I think some indigenous societies were and are quite different.).

By the time of Jesus the domination system of oppression was the Roman Empire version, and it was about as brutal as usual. While we hear Jesus talking about two incidents – one where Pilate had killed a group of people and one where a wall or tower collapsed and killed a group of people – I think the author of Mark was probably talking a lot more about the destruction of Jerusalem itself. There are profound questions being asked here, generally amounting to “are people who die in random incidents killed because God is punishing them for sin?” to which Jesus answers, “no!” And yet, Jesus says, unless things change and people engage differently with each other it will keep happening. Which, I’ll say, is true. For the early Jesus movement, there was a sense of urgency in this, perhaps because the early Jesus movement had also just experienced the massacre and destruction of Jerusalem and had a strong sense that the world was ending.

The end of our passage is also meant to bring urgency, but it also brings grace. The desert climate of Israel isn’t an easy one to grow anything in, there isn’t spare land or spare water for trees that don’t produce fruit. And yet, the gardener intercedes on behalf of the tree, asking for one more year to nurture it more deeply and see if it is able to fulfill its purpose.

I love that it reminds us that when we aren’t able to “fulfill our purposes,” we too may need some gentleness and nurture to give us a fighting chance. I love that it reminds us of a good way to treat others who are struggling. And I notice that the end goal is a tree that bears fruit, so that the people can eat from it.

Jesus and his followers get accused of being gluttons, drunkards, and violators of the Sabbath because they eat when they’re hungry and drink when they are thirsty. Jesus tells stories about fig trees, and wanting them to make figs so people can eat them.

It feels a little bit like the fulfillment of Isaiah’s dreams of what it would be like for the people who returned from exile. There was in the time of Jesus a plenty powerful oppressive system in place, but Jesus and his followers just ignored it. They lived as if they were responsible for and to each other, and savored life. This wasn’t a simple way to be, and it definitely had consequences, but I think it was a faithful way to be.

In the midst of systems that seem to push people down, one of the strongest forms of resistance is to eat bread that satisfies AND share it! To simply refuse to participate in oppression and instead participate in enjoying the goodness of life that God offers, and inviting others to do so as well. To find what satisfies, and share that too. To live God’s mercy.

Come to the waters, beloveds of God. You are not obligated to drink the oppressors’ poison, you are are invited to eat and drink and be satisfied and whole. Receive the provisions of God. God’s goodness remains, no matter what the oppressors have to say about it, no matter what they do. Thanks be to God! Amen

1R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke in” The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol IX, editorial board convened by Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) Commentary on Luke 13:1-9, page 270.

2Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), page 158-9.

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 23, 2025

Sermons

Smoking Fire Pot

March 16, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Smoking Fire Pot” based on Genesis 15: 1-12 and 17-18 and Luke 13:31-35

On first glance, there isn’t much in our two scripture lessons today that jumps out as relevant. The Genesis story of the Abrahamic covenant is definitely an ancient story and frankly reads as a little creepy. The Lukan narrative about Jesus is obscure and feels out of context even to the gospel itself.

Luckily, first glances aren’t the only way to read scripture. One is permitted to dig into them until they start speaking important truths. And, these ones will do it, if you let them.

There is a passage in Jeremiah 31 about the “new covenant” that God is going to make with the people:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

The new covenant is different from the prior covenants because the people had the ability to mess up the other ones, but in this “new covenant” God is going to ensure that the covenant is successful and not be dependent on the whims of people.

The ways that many people talk about the Bible today, saying the “Old Testament” and “New Testament” which amounts to the “Old Covenant” and “New Covenant” reflect an understanding from Christianity that Jeremiah’s new covenant came into being with Jesus and transformed how they interacted with God. It was no longer about the people’s failure, but instead about God’s faithfulness. (Note that I’m not particularly fond of this language, as I don’t think that the Hebrew Bible was “replaced” by the Christian Testament, and proclaiming it is ends up being really dismissive of our Jewish siblings in faith.)

Except, if we’re honest, the Genesis 15 covenant between God and Abraham is more like that “new covenant” than like the ones we think of as the “old” ones. And Genesis 15 is – to state the obvious – rather early in the Bible.

Covenants are a form of contract between two parties. It was common enough that when the contract was being finalized animals would be cut in two and the two parties would walk between them to symbolize that if they broke covenant they deserved to die.

But in Genesis 15 something weird happens. First of all, it helps to know that in Genesis 14 Abraham won a battle that gave him the right to spoils, but he didn’t take the spoils as a way to indicate that he credited God with his victory. So in Genesis 15, God is pleased with Abraham and promises good things. But Abraham points out that good things aren’t that great for him when his family lacks an heir. God promises Abraham an heir. Abraham asks for proof.

Then Abraham, as instructed by God, gathers a bunch of animals and cuts them in two for a covenantal ritual. And then Abraham falls asleep – possibly a sleep given to him by God. And then either while he is sleeping or after he awakes (unclear) he sees “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.” That is, he sees a sign that God walks the covenant – alone. God takes responsibility for making this happen, and them promises Abrahams descendants what would come to be called the promised land.1

Abraham isn’t asked to do anything, to promise anything, to enact anything. It is all God. Which is exactly like that “new covenant” that comes up so much later. Which is to suggest that God has known all along that people weren’t particularly dependable covenantal partners, and God has been working to make things good for us anyway – all along.

I think this also leaves space for us to work alongside God, an idea I find important in faith, but it does give us a little space to remember that God is God and we are not and God can make good things happen with or without us and is going to do so! Which I find a bit of a relief.

Quite a while passes between Genesis and Luke. In the meantime Abraham does end up with descendants, and they do become quite numerous, and they do enter the promised land – and lose it – and get it back again. In the time of Luke the “promised land” is occupied by the descendants of Abraham but overseen by Rome which is rather complicated. And the center of the promised land is Jerusalem, the capital, and the center of the capital is the temple, Jesus is a faithful Jewish man who sees the holiness of the land, the capital, the temple, and sees the temple as the center of the world. And Luke, whoever he was, writes after the destruction of the temple and the capital, with grief for the Jerusalem massacre present in his words.

So when we hear Jesus lamenting, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” we can hear it in it Luke’s grief and a wish for the Jerusalem of old. It fits, as well, that while Jerusalem was the center of Jesus’s world, Jesus knew that it was corrupted by the influence of the empire, and he grieved what the city should have been!

But, I think the most interesting piece of this Luke passage is the part about the Pharisees. In Disciple we’ve been reading Matthew for two weeks and boy oh boy does Matthew like to diss on the pharisees. But Luke isn’t presenting them as a problem here. In fact, he is presenting them as allies. They give Jesus a real warning, one that they didn’t have to offer. The Pharisees were NOT a part of the power-sharing arrangement with Rome, like Jesus they didn’t approve of it. Jesus knew Herod was dangerous, he didn’t need to be told, but he probably appreciated that they cared.2

Biblical Scholar Richard Swanson summarizes the conversation they have this way:

“After you go,” says Jesus, “tell that fox I’m a little busy right now.” The scene plays best if the allies laugh. “Okay, we’ll do that very thing,” they say, “as soon as we see Old Foxy Pants. Which will be, ummm, never.” 3

The Pharisees joined Jesus in his lament of Jerusalem, they were actually his allies. Swanson concludes, “The Messiah has more allies than you might imagine. So do you. Recognizing that is how you prepare to welcome the one coming in the Name of the God Whose Name Is Mercy.”4

Which is to say, Genesis tells us that God is on our side.

Luke tells us that expected allies are with us.

They both remind us that we’re not alone, we’re not solely responsible for bringing the kindom, that we are able to rely on God and others along the way. And I don’t know about you, but I’m on board with those reminders. We are not alone. We have allies who care. We are in God’s care. God, who is working for good.

So much that is out in the world is meant to divide us, but God is here to unite us, and remind us that we’re in this together. Thanks be to God. Amen

photo by David Allan Baker

1Wisdom here from https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-genesis-151-12-17-18-6

2Wisdom here from: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=l&d=26

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

March 16, 2025

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

It Is Well

March 9, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“It. Is. Well.” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Luke 4:-13

If I rewrote the temptation of Jesus story for today, it could sound a little different:

The tempter said to Jesus, “If you are the son of God, scan social media for updates about your friends and ignore all rabbit holes and clickbait.” Jesus answered, “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love… so, no.” (Hosea 10:12a)

The tempter said to Jesus, “Here is the world on a piece of paper, it is called the newspaper. Read this and tell me again that God is good.” Jesus answered, “God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s faithfulness for all generations – and that truth is deeper than any news.”

The tempter said to Jesus, “Here is a way to protect yourself, to get yourself out of the messes all around you.” And Jesus said, like Jesus liked to say, “Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.”

That is, I think that a significant temptation facing us today is the temptation to become overwhelmed, to slide into despair, or to become self-protective. As many have pointed out, that temptation has been handed to us on a golden platter by those who believe that having us overwhelmed and mired in despair means we will be more compliant, but even knowing that, it is hard to stay centered.

And, I want to make space to say, I don’t think any of us can stay centered all the time and we all have different vulnerabilities, different access to resources, and different levels of tolerance, and with GOOD REASON some of us can’t find our centers very much at all. Or ever. Which isn’t any sort of personal failing, it is just that being attacked is dis-regulating.

Some of you are already familiar with the story behind the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul,” but as I think it is otherwise an odd choice of chorus for our gathering hymn for Lent, I want to tell the story again. Horatio Spafford’s life was a bit like Job’s. (Grimace) Spafford had 5 children and a lot of wealth. One of his children died, and then much of the wealth went up in smoke in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Two years later the family traveled to England but Horatio sent his wife and remaining children ahead of him while he finished some work. Their ship sank and all of his children died. His wife was saved. When he followed, and his ship traveled over the waters where his children died, he stood on deck and watched. And it is said that the song came to him then and there.

Now, I fear that the story can be a little bit too poignant, and someone could take from it that grief and loss are to be ignored or dismissed, and a person of sufficient faith can face any disaster with poise and grace. I don’t mean ANY of that. I think that any grief comes in waves, and sometimes one finds a grace-filled peace and sometimes one finds the depths of despair. And I don’t think being a person of faith insulates anyone from disaster or being deeply impacted by it.

I do think though, that somewhere within us is a piece of our being that is connected directly to the Divine – some people call it soul – and nothing in the world can damage our souls. Our bodies can be harmed, our minds can be harmed, sometimes even our so called “spirits” can be broken, but nothing in the world can damage our souls. And we all have them.

One of the reasons to engage in Contemplative Prayer is to allow the soul – who knows God intimately – the space to offer guidance to our beings as a whole. Another is to find that “peace like a river” that our souls know but usually our whole beings can’t access.

The Quakers have done a lot of work in thinking about and learning about souls in this sort of definition. One of the things they teach is that souls are SHY. They get compared to wild animals, who spook easily, trust hesitantly, and need a lot of space. Some of the continued education time I’ve engaged with while here at First UMC Schenectady has been devoted to “soul-work,” led by the Center for Courage and Renewal which was founded on the teachings of Quaker Parker Palmer.

Courage and Renewal engages in practices to let our soul-wisdom out. Their retreats include a lot of silence, time for journaling and art, and the use of “third things.” Third things are some sort of art – music or poetry or paintings, etc – that are used as a vehicle for reflection and as an indirect way to seek soul wisdom. People have a chance to notice aspects of the art, notice the feelings they have in response to the art, and wonder a bit about the connection. A practice like this is part of our offering on Wednesdays in Lent, a space with lots of silence, some intentional questions, and plenty of spaciousness. Those shy souls might feel safe enough to peak out!

The wonder of the work I’ve done with Courage and Renewal has been in learning that when one soul peaks out, other souls get really curious and are more likely to do their own peaking out as well. The wisdom of one soul is never exactly like the wisdom of another soul, but nevertheless they recognize that type of wisdom and their “ears” perk right up.

In an ideal world, this sort of wonder would happen every week in worship too, and I think to some degree it does. But worship doesn’t have quiet enough silence, or patience, for it to happen a lot. Nevertheless, grace appears because God is like that, and sometimes we’re really able to share our deepest truths and be heard by others deepest listening.

Dear ones, the point I’m trying to make may be a little obscure this time, so let me attempt to be clearer. Deep within you there is an unbreakable connection to the Divine. You may have other language for it, today I’m calling it soul. While the upheavals of the world can do profound damage to you, they can’t hurt your soul. Your soul might hide more deeply within you, or be more shy about sharing its wisdom, but it can’t be hurt! It can’t be hurt by distressing decisions or outrageous news or even by direct harm to you.

Because God’s own self is a part of you, and God is bigger and stronger and more loving than anything in the world could ever stop.

Which is why, in the middle of Lent, in a time when it feels like our society and the world are rolling backward, I think it is really important to sing, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.” I also think it is a great time to engage in contemplative prayer practices that help us connect with the Divine, with our own souls, and with peace.

All of which helps us feel the truth of “it is well, it is well, with my soul.” Because the wonderful thing is, it always is, always, no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen

March 9, 2025

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

Uncategorized

Untitled

May 5, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Hallelujah, It Is Finished!” based in theory on John 21:1-14 as a story of resurrection

Dear ones, it is official. The era of institutional discrimination against queer and trans people in the United Methodist church has ended.

The phrase that said that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” is gone, and our new statement on Human sexuality reads:

We affirm human sexuality as a sacred gift and acknowledge that sexual intimacy contributes to fostering the emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being of individuals and to nurturing healthy sexual relationships that are grounded in love, care and respect.

Human sexuality is a healthy and natural part of life that is expressed in wonderfully diverse ways from birth to death. It is shaped by a combination of nature and nurture: heredity and genetic factors on the one hand and childhood development and environment on the other. We further honor the diversity of choices and vocations in relation to sexuality such as celibacy, marriage and singleness.

We support the rights of all people to exercise personal consent in sexual

relationships, to make decisions about their own bodies and be supported in those decisions, to receive comprehensive sexual education, to be free from sexual exploitation and violence, and to have access to adequate sexual health care.

The “funding ban” is gone – church support at levels can be extended to organizations doing ministry with LGBTQIA+ folx.

We don’t call anyone “self-proclaimed practicing homosexuals” anymore (PHEW), and now we affirm that queer clergy can be ordained and appointed in The United Methodist Church AND that if they can’t be safely appointed at home they can be appointed across conference lines.

We now allow clergy to preside over and UM churches to host same-gender weddings.

There are no longer chargeable offenses for ones’ sexual orientation or for doing same-gender weddings.

AND we’ve created a process to RESTORE CREDENTIALS of those who lost them because of their sexuality, gender identity, or presiding over a wedding. (It remains to be seen if anyone will use this.)

AND we’ve put in place a regionalization plan that allows for areas around the world to do ministry in ways that work for them, THANK GOD, and also means we can move from these NEUTRAL stances to POSTITIVE statements in the near future.

Friends, that first one, the “incompatibility clause” was added in 1972 and we’ve been fighting to remove it every since. 52 years.

The era of harm to God’s beloved queer and trans people through The United Methodist Church is OVER.

HALLELUJAH.

I have a memory of being in junior high Sunday school and learning that The United Methodist Church was bigoted against queer people and being simply horrified that they didn’t know better yet. I thought back then that it was just a matter of time for the church to catch up.

I remember going to General Conference in 2004 and learning how intentional and organized the homophobic movement was. It blew me away. It wasn’t simply that the church forgot to notice they had this justice issue to fix. It was that people were working hard, with great intentionality, to do harm to God’s beloveds.

I have done my part, to change the church. So have you. So have tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe more. I can’t quite process how many people have worked so hard to bring this day. The laborers have been many, and until this past two weeks the fruits have been few. But here we are.

THIS is the First Sunday of a fully inclusive United Methodist Church.

And, I thought it would feel better.

It is like I forgot about how pain works. I forgot that when the active harm stops coming, that’s when you finally get to really feel it all. That’s when the grief hits. That’s when the anger is finally able to be let out.

Until this week the harms kept coming, and all we could do was survive.

And now we have to heal.

Darn it.

IT IS FINISHED, HALLELUJAH.

And.

And we lost beloveds to suicide. And we lost those called to other churches or professions. And we lost the full authenticity of those called and serving. And we lost members who were told they were incompatible, or they couldn’t get married, or they couldn’t have their kid baptized. And we lost those who just couldn’t stay anymore. And those who have been WAITING have lost so many years.

52 years.

AND, sorry, I know I’m Debbie Downer, but we know we closed the Central Jurisdictions in 1968 to create a beautifully diverse fully shared body of Christ and racism is still alive and well anyway. And we also know that women have had full ordination rights since 1954 but don’t have pay equity or any other kind of equity. So removing formal discrimination doesn’t solve the whole problem.

You already knew that too.

Ever since the rules changed to allow all of our siblings their ordination rights, I’ve been humming Mark Miller’s song “The Journey Isn’t Over.” God’s call in my life to bring justice in the church and the world for God’s beloveds who are trans and queer hasn’t changed. I’m so grateful, so very, very grateful not to be ashamed of my denomination more. But the journey isn’t over:

From Seneca Falls,

from Selma to Stonewall

we’ve come a long way,

we’ve come a long way.

From Seneca Falls,

from Selma to Stonewall

we’ve come a long way,

but the journey isn’t over.

Friends, THIS journey will be over when God’s beloveds who are trans and queer, God’s beloveds who are women and non-binary people, God’s beloveds who are BIPOC, God’s beloveds with disabilities, AND ALL of God’s beloveds are able to live in fullness and abundance in the kindom of God.

From now until then, we’re called to make it so.

Hallelujah, THIS STAGE is finished, AND the journey isn’t over. Amen