“Explaining Christmas“ based on Luke 2:1-12

December 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

One of the privileges I have
this year is to explain Christmas to a 2 year old. I’m aware many
have done this before me, and at this point I’m pretty sure most have
done it better than I have. But, I’ve learned along the way that
when I have to explain really complicated things to very small
children I end up learning what I really think.

Now, I think the common answer
to give a young child about Christmas is “It is Jesus’ birthday.”
Which seems legit, and I know my child has some grasp of birthdays.
I am, however, less confident he has a grasp on Jesus. And while I
simply adore Marcus Borg’s explanation that Jesus was “a Jewish
mystic,” … well, that wasn’t going to help.

And, if I’m honest, we may think
of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday, but that only matters because of who
Jesus was. For those who think of Jesus as fully human and fully
Divine, Christmas could be summed up as God being born on earth. A
lot of Christian Christmas derives from this idea. It gives us the
space to consider the vulnerability of life, and how dependent we are
on each other. For those awed by a powerful God becoming vulnerable
as a newborn, it follows that the vulnerability of our humanity is in
fact quite tender.

For me though, Jesus was a man
who knew God intimately and taught of God and lived a God-centered
life in profound ways that continue to be useful for knowing God even
today. And THAT, also, it turns out, doesn’t translate well to a 2
year old.

So I found myself saying,
“Christmas is when we celebrate someone who taught us about God’s
love.” Well, I’m not entirely sure if I said God. But I’m OK with
that because I think the phrase “God’s Love” is redundant.

And, by the grace of God, that
line got accepted, and I don’t have to answer more questions. Yet.

Next year promises its own
challenges. 😉 I suspect by next year I’ll be learning that my
seminary degree and nearly 20 years of ministry experience are
insufficient to the task. I’ll let you know.

But for now, Phew!

And also, I’m sort of interested
to learn what I really think of Christmas.

The Christmas stories in each
Gospel are sometimes called “the Gospel in miniature” and they
really do an amazing job establishing the setting, foreshadowing the
story as a whole, and setting up the themes of the Gospels they
begin. Luke focuses on women and shepherds, the outcasts being the
first to receive good news for all people, the looming presence and
power of the Empire and its taxation methods, the cycle of birth and
death as a way to talk about the fullness of life, humility, and the
value of pondering the wondrous things of God. I even see in the
story the foreshadowing of Jesus rising from the tomb, as the animal
feeding trough he is said to have been laid in at birth was BELOW the
floor and chiseled out of rock. He would have been lifted out of
that to be held. (I swoon a bit at this metaphor.)

So of the Christmas stories are
Gospels in miniature, than what we say about Christmas is what we
have to say about Jesus. And if this implies that I think Jesus is
“someone who taught us about (God’s) love,” then I’m at peace
with that conclusion. (I’m also relieved to already be ordained and
not have to attempt to justify this to a Board of Ordained Ministry).

There are a lot of fabulous
nuances to this story, and I would have a ball playing with them.
I’m entranced by the Isaiah passage and the space it gives us to
connect birth and death as well as connecting the delivery of a child
with the “delivery” of a nation into safety and well being. AND
I’m going to let it all rest.

Today we celebrate the birth of
one one who taught us about God’s love. Today we celebrate one who
taught us about God’s love. Today we celebrate God’s love. Thanks
be to God, who is love. Merry Christmas, and 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

December 25, 2022

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December 5, 2021
by Sara Baron

“The Road Home is Under Construction” based on Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6

When preaching is done well the past helps make sense of the present to prepare the people for the future. Preaching isn’t ever supposed to be just retelling the stories of the past, they’re told to make meaning, to help make sense, to get perspective, to gain insight. In oral tradition, the stories themselves change as they’re retold, responding to the needs of the people who are hearing the story as well as the perspective of the story teller. In our tradition, the stories eventually were written down into our scriptures, into one or a few versions, but preachers PLAY with the stories until they build a bridge from the past to the present that can support the future.

In this sense, I note that the scripture writers themselves are doing some “preaching” with the stories of their own tradition in our texts today. In Luke we hear quoted Isaiah, and it is with Isaiah we’re going to start.

Isaiah is speaking to the Exiles, displaced in Babylon, trying to make sense of the traumas they’ve experienced, the losses they’ve lived, the discombobulation of being displaced, and the sense that God let them down. I think more of us fit in here than we tend to admit. I hear my colleagues talk about the pandemic as collective trauma, and I believe they are right. When we add together the childhood traumas that most people have experienced, to traumas in adulthood, to collective trauma – it becomes clear that we have similarities with the exiles. And, trauma isn’t just a word for “ a bad thing.” Shelly Rambo in her book Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining talks about trauma as “an encounter with death.”1 She, like other writers on trauma, clarifies that it isn’t just suffering, “Suffering is what, in time, can be integrated into one’s understanding of the world. Trauma is what is not integrated in time; it is the difference between a closed and an open wound. Trauma is an open wound.”

Into this brokenness, into this trauma, Isaiah speaks a vision. He says that God will level out the way home, create an easy pathway back to Israel with the mountains brought low and the valleys made high, and the curves straightened out. There are some important aspects to this story: God does it! The people don’t have to. God smoothing the way home tells them that God still cares about them, a response to their biggest fear. The trauma doesn’t go away, it isn’t solved by this vision of homecoming, or even the homecoming itself. However, the trauma ALSO doesn’t get to have the last word.

Isaiah is preaching “don’t give up” to a people who thinking about giving up. Isaiah is sharing that God still cares to a people who aren’t sure if God still cares. Isaiah is offering a vision of hope to a moment of hopelessness. And he does it with an imagery of justice, of bringing down the mighty and bringing up the weak. You see it? The past trauma, the present struggles, the bridge to the future?

I wonder how Isaiah would say it to us today. How would Isaiah speak into the loneliness of the past and present, the constancy of ambiguity, the displacement in place that we know today? I wonder what our path home would look like, how we might construe the road construction on that path in meaningful ways. What are the mountains we struggle to climb? What are the valleys light doesn’t reach? What curves keep us from seeing the way forward? What rough spots slow us down?

I’m struck that in all the layers of stories today, which are all themed on preparation, the preparation is always of “the people” and never of a person. I wonder if Isaiah’s metaphor for us today would be of God building the bullet train tracks home – so that we can journey together instead of apart, and take care of creation while we’re at it.

Now, Luke as a preacher, is using the story Isaiah told to make sense of HIS present. Luke’s present is situated in the powers and principalities of Rome, the passage starts by naming the era via the names of the men who were profiting from the control of the Jewish people. (And then the names of the high priests they’d appointed, which lacks subtlety.) And then, Luke switches, he says that into this powerful mess of oppression came John the Baptist, preaching and asking people to change their minds, turn around, get reoriented (#repentance). Luke uses the story of the past, the imagery of a safe road home, to make sense of John’s ministry. What had been a vision for exiled people to have hope that trauma didn’t have the last word became for Luke a vision of a prophet preparing the people to hear the words of the the Messiah, so that everyone might have healing (#salvation).

Luke is preparing the people to stand up to Rome, by telling them a story of John preparing the way for Jesus by preaching repentance.

How would we name our present day? Would we say, “During the presidency of…” or “When …. was governor of NY” or “in the time when trust was at an all time low” or “when income inequality had reached new highs?” It seems that how we name the present impacts how we contrast it with what God is up to. Funny that. Its true of how we name the past too, right? What stories do we tell, and which ones do we leave out? How do our memories adapt over time?

You may notice that different parts of Christianity understand Jesus pretty differently. It is likely fair to say in ways that are polar opposites. In the United Methodist Church, there is a similar phenomenon with John Wesley – the ways he is interpreted say more about the theology of the interpreters than of John Wesley. To be honest, I think Luke is pushing Isaiah’s vision pretty far here, to make it fit John the Baptist, but it does tell us how Luke understood John and Jesus which is exactly what it was intending to do.

How we tell the stories of the past (and which stories we tell), relates to what we perceive and we need in the present and what we dream for the future. This applies to our individual lives as well as our communal lives.

The past isn’t quite as… fixed as we might imagine it to be. It is complicated, and it can only be seen through the lenses brought to it. In this season of preparation, it seems fair to be asking ourselves: what are we preparing FOR, and how does that relate to our past and our present?

The rest of our lives are going to be “after the start of the pandemic.” Which means that the time before the pandemic is now our past. How do we tell its stories, and how do we tell them to make sense of the present and the future? More broadly, I suspect the days of Christianity being the de facto religion of the United States and mainline denominations dominating the religious landscape are also in the past. How do we tell those stories, and the stories of our own church with awareness that the present is different from the past and the future from both?

In between Isaiah and Luke, speaks Malachi. Malachi speaks to the POST-exilic people, who were a combination of the exiles who had come home, the people who had been left behind, and those who had moved into ancient Israel in the meantime. For the returned exiles, the return wasn’t as idealized they might have hoped. They got home, but it wasn’t what they expected. There were conflicts between groups, misunderstandings, and DIFFERENT traumas that led to DIFFERENT triggers, all mixed up together.

In the midst of this, Malachi tells of a messenger who is preparing the way by purifying the people into righteousness. Malachi is preparing the people for the work they have to do by re-imagining the stories of the past. He reuses the idea of God sending a messenger, but changes what the messenger would do. Malachi looks to the past to purify the present to make space for the future, but to do so requires reworking the past.

All this preparing the prophets and writers were doing, all this worrying about the people and their connection to God, all of this awareness of the flow of time and its intersections, all of these criss crosses of timelines and imagery:

What do they say to us today? How do they help us be in our uncomfortable present? Well, all of the “presents” of the texts were uncomfortable. They were all times where people were just waiting it out, hoping for it to end – the exile, the discomfort after the exile, Roman rule. For what has felt to us like a very long time, we’ve been trying to wait out this pandemic.

But, the prophets and writers of God spoke into those uncomfortable presents to make meaning and do the work that needed to be done. This pandemic has lasted too long to just wait for it to go away. This IS our present, this one, not the one we expected, and God is with us in it, and God is working with us to build a bridge that can support the future.

I wonder what it will take to sort through the stories of the past, to tell them and hear them, and pick from them what stories we need to take with us into the future. I wonder how we get better at being in this uncomfortable and ambiguous now. I suspect a lot of it has to do with telling stories, and with taking the time to listen to God and ourselves. It has to do with not rushing away, but being present. And so once again, I invite you into the uncomfortable, into the present, into the NOW, with trust that God meets us here. Amen

Time with Young People

What is it like to be YOUR AGE years old today? What do I need to know, since I haven’t ever been YOUR AGE OLD in today?

Things are different than they have been, and it is hard to make sense of, but I’d love to know what you know, as I try to tell you what I know.

I”m 40 years old right now, and … I still have dreams that I am in public and forgot my mask…. and I also left the house this weke and got 5 steps away before I realized I really had forgotten my mask. My brain still forgets even big changes!!!

God is with us, God will always be with us, and God helps us adapt. Thanks be to God!

1 12.

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

December 5, 2021

Sermons

“Hope for New Life” based on Isaiah 11:1-10 and…

December 8, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

It
is common to call the writer of the Gospel of Luke… Luke, which
makes plenty of sense. It isn’t likely to be historically accurate,
but it is pretty simple to remember. Whatever the writer’s real name
was, the person who wrote the Gospel of Luke and its 2^nd
volume
the book of Acts, is said to be the best writer in the New Testament.
From my perspective I can tell that Luke does great work with
foreshadowing, telling stories within stories to enrich both stories,
symbolism, and themes. However, the really good stuff, I’m told is in
his Greek vocabulary and syntax which are simply just outstanding.
“Luke” was a VERY well educated person, and a master of the craft
of writing. Given how small the percentage of literate people were at
that time, being so well versed as a writer indicates not only
brilliance and skill but also power and privilege. One simply would
not become that great of a writer without a lot of access to unusual
levels of resources.

Luke
is probably my favorite Gospel writer, and I love Luke for his
emphasis on people who are poor, marginalized, and vulnerable, and
because they fit those categories, the women. Luke tells the story of
my faith, presenting Jesus as an ally to those most in need of
rescue, and as an organizer able to help people rescue themselves.
This has a bit of cognitive dissonance to it. Based on WHAT he
writes, Luke is a writer of the people. He is empowering, noticing
those society disregards, and telling the stories that the powerful
don’t want told. Yet, based on HOW he writes, Luke is one of
society’s elites.

Which
sounds to me like Luke being a living example of the power of Jesus –
to convince people to work together to build the kindom no matter
where they begin life, to be FOR ALL the people as they grow.

Isaiah
was a prophet, and from what I can tell, a prophet is a speaker for
the people. The Torah set up a society that treated people justly,
and prevented an upper class from ruling over a lower class. Yet,
people being people, power, money, and influence tended to coalesce
at a top and become a burden to the many. God’s prophets spoke out
against it, and called people back to God’s vision of a just, equal,
and equitable lifestyle.

Which
is a long-winded way of saying that we have two passages today that
are “of the people” and yearning for justice. They do so in ways
that can be a little bit uncomfortable. There are not simply passages
that suggest “a rising tide lifts all boats” but rather ones that
talk about REDISTRIBUTION of wealth¹.
These are passages that are good news for the poor, the lowly, and
the meek … but not for the rich, the proud, and the powerful. I
find the “rising tide lifts all boats” sort of justice easier to
swallow. This stuff is … harder.

And
yet, my activist friends assure me that we aren’t going to get to
justice only by being nice. So, let’s examine these texts for wisdom.
This shoot that come from Jesse in Isaiah, have you noticed that it
comes AFTER the tree has been cut down. This is a sign of hope after
destruction and hopelessness. The passage as a whole feels like a
cousin of last week’s passage. In this case, the new offspring of
Jesse (which is to say the new Davidic king) is going to be so
perfectly imbued with the Spirit of God that the new King will rule
as perfectly as God’s own self would.

The
impact of life as ruled as God would have it ruled is shockingly
different. When God’s spirit is in leadership, and when the people
are following in God’s ways, there will be peace even among animals
who are in each other’s food chains 😉 Safety becomes the center
point of this – the lamb, the kid-goat, the calf, and the human
child are all safe in the presence of those most apt to harm them.
This is another way of talking about not needing to be afraid,
because there is no motivation to do harm. In this case, it is clear
that there are no people oppressing other people, no one is “eating
up” the resources of the weaker people to make themselves stronger.
Security, hope, and peace are the result of God’s Spirit. That’s the
kindom.

Mary’s
song hits the same notes. Mary is continuing to process that she, who
is lowly by the standards of the world, is now “blessed.” She
attributes this change to God, and notices that this is how God
works. She says it is God’s nature to do great things, to show mercy,
to be strong…. to bring justice. And she names how justice comes.
It is by scattering the proud and bringing down the powerful –
while lifting up the lowly. It is by feeding the hungry but NOT
giving more to those who already have too much. Mary’s song is,
itself, strong and justice seeking. She identifies with the lowly,
who God lifts up. And it is even more interesting to hear that
knowing that the writer of the Gospel probably identifies with the
rich, and wrote her song this way anyway.

While
we know absolutely nothing about Jesus’s mother with any certainty,
we do know Jesus had a mother. The name Mary was associated with her
a few generations after his death, which isn’t a great reason to
assume it is true, but sort of like “Luke” we can go with it. I
suspect Mary got associated with the name of the mother of Jesus
because Mary is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Miriam. Miriam,
the sister of Moses, has the oldest words in the Bible attributed to
her, and saved her brother so he could save the nation Israel.
Associating Mary with Miriam is A-Ok with me.

Other
conjectures we can make about Mary include: she was Jewish, she was
from Galilee – most likely Nazareth, she was poor, and it is likely
she was young. She may have been a very faithful Jew, as Judean
settlers were intentionally reclaiming Galilee for Judaism around
that time, and the ones who went were often the ones who were
committed to the cause. She also might have been influenced by either
the Roman Empire’s violent destruction of the nearby city of
Sepphoras in her childhood or by the radical Jewish teachers in the
Galilee who taught that the God of liberation was going to liberate
again. In any case, while the leaders of the Temple during her
lifetime were appointed by Rome and the “official” religion had
been compromised, it is possible (probable?) that Mary knew a faith
that was untainted by the influence of power.

Which
is to say, that while Luke wrote the words we hear today, and put
them into Mary’s mouth for our story – they MAY well reflect her
faith itself. At the very least, Mary’s song words as an incredible
foreshadowing of the power of God that people saw in Jesus, and I
believe Jesus’s faith was likely formed by his mother’s.

In
Mark, Jesus is referred to as Mary’s son which is unusual in that he
was not referred to as his FATHER’S son. With the presence of a
punishing military force nearby, before Jesus’s birth, there are some
particularly awful possibilities about his father. What we know is
that at some point Mary was pregnant, expecting a child, and likely
pretty scared. I say that because maternal mortality rates were high,
infant mortality rates were high, and resources in Nazareth were
scarce. It is very likely that Mary herself was hungry, including
during her pregnancy and while she was breastfeeding Jesus. She had
seen extreme violence from the Empire, and had reason to believe it
could come back at any time. She MAY have been facing the possibility
of being ostracized from her community. Thus, I think it is fair to
assume she was scared.

Even
stripping away most of that, scared seems right. For years, Kevin and
I have struggled with some big questions: is it OK for us to choose
to bring a child into this world knowing the dangers of Global
Climate Change? Is it ok for us to choose to bring a child into this
world when there are other children who need to be parented? How much
capacity do we have to offer care and support for a child given our
other commitments?

After
long talks, prayer, and good counsel, we decided that our ideal
family would include a child born to us and a child adopted by us. So
we started trying to have a child and…. well, nothing happened.
Eventually we made an appointment with an adoption lawyer, and
decided to try private infant adoption. We filled out paperwork, got
background checked, had a home study, and were ready to sign a court
petition requesting that we be approved to be able to become adoptive
parents when we learned that I was, in biblical phrasing, “with
child.”

Now,
I live in the 21st
century,
with pretty great access to resources. While our country is weaker
than it should be, particularly in the care of women of color,
compared with ancient Galilee we have low maternal mortality rates,
low infant mortality rates, plenty of food, and low threat of
violence. Yet as an expectant mother, I’m scared. While I find it
excessive to overly identify with “Mother Mary,” preparing to
parent has certainly helped me see why she’s so popular. Also, why
she has every right to be scared. We have been wondering how on earth
will we prepare a child to be kind, compassionate, and moral in this
crazy world? How will we teach them of God in ways that feel relevant
while the world shifts under our feet?

Let
me assure you that we did NOT sign that paperwork and adoption is
officially on hold. Let me also admit to you that being the pregnant
pastor of this church for the past two months hasn’t been the easiest
thing I’ve ever done. I haven’t been puking (WIN) but I have been
constantly nauseated, and instructed to eat every hour. I’ve been
exhausted and my emotional resources have been down. At the same
time, I have experienced significant collateral friendly fire as this
church has worked together on the reality of our budget deficit.

Between
the friendly fire and being less resilient than usual, I have spent
time considering if pastoring this church – or even being a pastor at
all – continues to be the right path for me. Some of this is simply
about parenting: I’m nervous about being away from home 4 nights a
week like I usually am now. Some of this is about ministry’s
demands: what will it mean to have to establish the sort of
boundaries my child will need, and what will I do when the needs of
the church are in conflict, and what will happen when someone feels
that their expectations aren’t being met? Some of it is about our
child and this church. On one hand I can’t imagine any church but
this one being part of raising our child. I love the way children are
cared for during worship. I love our Sunday School and its teachers.
I love the way children are treated here, and I love the ways God is
understood and taught here. However, on the other hand, my stress
level has been sky high, and recently I’ve seen a lot of behavior I
wouldn’t want a child to learn about much less associate with this
church. So I’ve been wondering, is this a safe and secure place for a
child – our child – to learn about God? Will this place fulfill
Isaiah’s vision of a child being able to put their hand in a snake’s
den safely?

In
slow, careful deliberation, with conversation, and consultation, and
prayer, and a LOT of obsessing and worrying, I’ve decided not to give
up on ministry just yet. Then, even more slowly, I realized that –
for now – this church is worth the pain. I simply love you all.
Furthermore, I don’t believe that this church IS its worst behaviors.
Dear ones, I believe that this faith community is an expression of
the kindom of God. I believe it is a little bit of Isaiah’s vision,
and has the capacity to build the world into one of peace and
justice. I’m well aware that we have lots of hard times ahead (and I
am terrified
of
the boundaries I’m going to have to have as a parent, please be
gentle with me) but I believe you are worth it.

So,
anyway, I see why a prospective parent would be scared. And I am
gaining a new appreciation for the ways in which a new generation
provides new opportunities: 1) for regeneration, 2) for making right
the things we haven’t gotten right yet, and 3) hope for the future.
We are hoping to raise a child to know God’s love, follow Jesus, and
speak with and for the people. And I find myself reflecting on how I
hope this community will continue to exist and teach and raise up
future generations to do the same. Given all this, I see why a
prospective parent would choose to stick with the God of Liberation,
of Hope, and of Peace. And I see why Mary was amazed at her luck in
getting the chance to do so. Being a part of the work of God is a
blessing and a great opportunity. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 Someone
pointed out after worship that a rising tide may lift all boats, but
it doesn’t help people who don’t have boats.

Sermons

“Scary Stuff” based on Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Luke 14:25-33

September 4, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Our texts today are SCARY. Or at least they are to me. There is ONE well-known hymn that reflects the Jeremiah reading today. Also, as far as I am aware, there really is only one hymn that works with our Jeremiah reading today. Sorta like the issue around “We Three Kings” – you know, that the so-called “wise men” weren’t kings and there is no particular reason to think there were three of them – the hymn “Have Thine Own Way Lord” seems to have taken over how people think about this text without accurately reflecting it. It guides their thinking more than the actual text does.

For example, the people who make suggestions of hymns to match the lectionary often do an excellent job. This week they offered variations on a theme: letting God have control over our individual lives. That’s a big problem because they text is COMMUNAL. It is about how a group of people (in this case a nation) are living out their covenant with God. The premise is not that one person’s actions are molded by God, although that is what that darn hymn says. For those blissfully unaware, “Have Thine Own Way” verse one says:

1. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will,
while I am waiting, yielded and still.

The hymn is about PERSONAL holiness, and yielding one’s power to God. For the time being I’m going to lay aside the questions about if that’s valid at all, to focus on what the text actually says. Jeremiah, it might be useful to remember, was the prophet of the exile. He experienced his call when he was a boy, and many scholars believe that the same prophet spoke warnings of the exile, spoke during the exile, and he spoke of the possibility of restoration. In the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, in the story of his call, it is said, “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,
‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’” (Jeremiah 1:9-10, NRSV) Jeremiah wasn’t born in an era when it would have worked to be soft and fluffy. It wasn’t the work that was needed at that time. He did manage to speak some of the most profound words of hope in the Bible, but mostly he spoke of death and destruction.

The text today is a challenging one. I don’t think it is challenging to UNDERSTAND, but it raises big scary questions. The prophet goes to a potter’s house and watched a potter for a while. Then he has an insight drawn from the metaphor of making pottery. The metaphor suggests that God is the potter and the people are the clay. It suggests that if God is displeased with the nation, God can knock down the clay and start over again. It further suggests that God is judging the people on communal faithfulness to their covenant.

The text actually says, “At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,” (18:7) and then it makes it quite clear that God can and will change God’s mind on the basis of the people’s behavior. What does it mean to assume that God steps into human affairs and takes down nations as God sees fit? If the implications of that aren’t scary enough on its own, it makes God a monster when we look at what has happened in recent human affairs. If God can and will step in to stop evil, then why didn’t God stop Germany before the concentration camps, or Russia before Stalin took over, or any society before they moved to genocide???

This perspective, this image of God as potter shaping the fate of nations, fit well in the time of the prophet Jeremiah. It fit his worldview and the worldview of those to whom he was speaking. It made sense of the political environment around them. It doesn’t fit for us anymore. We don’t see that God sweeping in to intervene at random moments fits the arc of history NOR our belief in God who is good. Rather, it appears that God works through individuals and communities who are open to the guidance of the Holy One, and through them seeks to bless the world. Free will exists. We get the leaders we empower.

There is still plenty of goodness in this text though! First of all, there is the direct claim about God being willing and able to change God’s mind in response to human activity. That seems like good news because it reminds us that we are truly important to God and that our RELATIONSHIPS with God and each other have real impact on God’s well-being.

Secondly, there is the reminder that comes from applying the pottery metaphor to communities who ARE seeking God’s guidance. Like ancient Israel, many faith communities today seek out the wisdom of the Holy One, and are open to some molding along the way – which likely makes it possible for God to do some molding along the way. Potters rework clay and are able to use the same clay to make a variety of different shapes before anything is fired. It doesn’t actually hurt the clay to be reworked, and the moisture level may need some fine tuning along the way to build a solid pot. The suggestion that we are still plastic, and that God is willing to work with us can be rather positive. In this era of exceptional cultural change, and profoundly different responses to institutionalized religion, this may be REALLY good news for us. Perhaps God is getting ready to knock down the UMC and build it back up as a source of greater justice and love in the world! (May it be so!) The plasticity of the clay allows for the reworking to happen without brokenness or pain – although it does require a certain openness to the guidance of the Spirit. We’re still working on that ;), especially as a denomination.

OK, so, fine, maybe Jeremiah isn’t such scary stuff, but certainly Luke is! This whole cost of discipleship thing is tough. Did you hear the opening threat? “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) HATE? What????? To keep us on our toes, the Jesus seminar thinks that only this verse is authentic to Jesus, and several scholars point out that this is consistent with the rest of Luke’s message. Apparently, we are to assume that Jesus said it and Luke thought it was thematic.

Family Life Radio – I think maybe you should be particularly scared 😉

It is probably of use to remember that the basic unit of societal structure in the ancient world was family. Power derived from it. The head of household – the patriarch – had unilateral control over the other members of his household (the women, children, descendants, servants, and slaves), and only the patriarch would participate in public life with voice. To upset the family unit was to upset the entire society in which Jesus lived. I actually don’t think that we have a comparable understanding of this in our current family life. The nuclear family, known in our society to be fairly unstable, is not like families were in the time of Jesus.

Jesus was a revolutionary, at least as the writer of the Gospel of Luke understood him. He was interested in upsetting ALL the apple carts, and in order to do so, he started with the most basic. If you disregard the power and authority of the patriarch and the family unit in the time of Jesus, what are you left with? Anarchy and chaos.

Jesus really believed that the kin-dom of God was more important than societal order, and that in order to create a world where all people were cared for and able to thrive required utter devotion to such work. That is, one can’t have two masters: not God and money, not the kin-dom and the society, not Jesus and the family unit. The Jesus seminar does not believe that the rest of the words in the passage are attributed to Jesus, they sound too mundane. It is only the radical, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” that they take to be authentic. They attribute the final line of our text, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” to Luke. Other scholars point out that “possessions” isn’t a strong enough translation. It should be something more like “all that you have.”

So, is it possible to follow Jesus while also having loyalty to something else? Can we have bank accounts and be good Jesus followers? Can we value our family and be good Jesus followers? Can we have…. say…. an extensive collection of books and be good Jesus followers? Is there a way to follow Jesus without giving up EVERYTHING – all possessions, all finances, all relationships, and everything that matters to us? It may be Luke who raises the question, but it seems pretty valid to this Jesus-following-stuff.

I’ve been pondering this particular scary question for many years now. Reading the Bible, and in particular reading the Gospels, tends to bring it up. The Gospels are pretty clear that those of us who have two coats should be getting rid of one of them to someone who has none. The Gospels are RADICAL in their calls for us to care for each other and to build a world where all people have enough and can thrive – and they ask us to do it both individually and collectively. They stand against inequality and income differentiation. In some interpretations, ones I tend to believe, they stand against economics and markets themselves, staking a claim that money itself dehumanizes and the only way to live out the beloved community of God is to refute the most basic premises of economics.

I do think that the utter anarchy and chaos that would result from people following Jesus’ words, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,“ in the 1^st century can be matched by the anarchy and chaos that would emerge in the 21^st century if we refuted the principles of the market! Not just if we refused to charge interest, or to be charged interest, not just if we stopped “investing” in stocks and bonds, or if we functioned primarily through trade and barter and ignored money itself, but moreso if we REFUSED to accept the principle that the well-being of the economy was the basic good of our society. That could mess up EVERYTHING our society is based on.

And that’s what Jesus seems to be getting to in this speech. So, can we be disciples of we have possessions, family, and alternative priorities? I’ll give you the answer that lets me sleep at night. James Fowler, who was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, wrote a seminal book entitled “Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.” (It is one of my all time favorite books.) In it he outlines faith development in stages. He claims that the highest stage of faith development happens when a person stops experiencing a difference between their well-being and the well-being of the whole – and is therefore willing to give away ANYTHING (including their life) for the sake of the well-being of the whole.

That sounds like what Jesus is asking for, right? Fowler’s ultimate step in faith development – utter selflessness. Our goal as people of faith is to get get there, but it is a journey and we can’t get to the end unless we travel the path. (People do travel at different rates, and not all get to the end goal, and that’s OK.) Our contributions toward communal well-being are meant to fit where our faith is today, and our faith development is meant to lead us forward. We don’t have to pretend to be anywhere we aren’t. Our faith is made up of some scary stuff, but God walks with us on the way, and asks of us what we are able to give WHEN we are able to give it. May we be brave, throughout our faith development. Amen

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 4, 2016