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

“A Hope-filled Crowd”based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Mark 11:1-11(…

March 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

One of the most repeated myths about Jesus’ death is that the crowd who celebrated him on Palm Sunday turned on him and demanded his death on Good Friday. This one isn’t true at all, and its repetition keeps us from seeing clearly what did happen in the last week of Jesus’ life. It has been useful to those who want claim that humans are fickle, and crowd mentality is dangerous, to claim that the same crowd changed sides, but that isn’t reflective of the story we’ve read.

Instead, the crowds remained incredibly excited about Jesus and loyal to him. Their presence and their fidelity to him was the largest part of his threat to the empire. I mean, he also engaged in two really emphatic demonstrations of nonviolent resistance, but no one would have cared if he hadn’t done so with many, many people watching.

In fact, throughout the end of Mark, we’re told repeatedly that the authorities were trying to figure out how to take out Jesus without creating a riot by crowds faithful to him.

11:18 “And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.” 11:32 “they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet.” 12: 12 ”they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.” 14:1b-2 “The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.‘”

John Dominic Crossan in God and Empire, suggests that the Good Friday crowd wasn’t really a crowd at all, but rather 9-10 people who were advocating for Barabbas, likely his followers. They weren’t the same people, and there weren’t many of them.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark there are tensions with crowds. Jesus keeps attracting crowds, and then tries to get away from them!! When he can’t, he teaches them, heals them, feeds them, then he tries to get away again. In Mark, the crowds are seen as a little bit dangerous, because they feed into the fear the authorities have that Jesus is going to start a violent revolution. The tension is ALWAYS there.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t going to start a VIOLENT revolution, he was starting a nonviolent one, but the difference didn’t end up mattering. Jesus was killed by the Roman Empire on the charges of inciting a violent revolt, EVEN THOUGH he’d only engaged in nonviolent actions. (Two notable ones: Palm Sunday and then on Monday the Temple Cleansing.) It seems that the fear the authorities had of the crowds and their power made the difference between violent revolution and nonviolent action less important to the authorities. They were too scared to pay attention to their own laws.

So, why were so many people following Jesus? What was it that was so attractive about him, or so irresistible? From what I can tell from the stories about him, his teaching was certainly mind-blowing, after all we’ve been struggling with it for 2000 years without coming to many answers. He also seems to have been a good healer. But those two pieces don’t quite explain the power he has in the stories about him. They don’t explain why the crowds were SO passionate for him that they protected him. They don’t explain why people were willing to walk away from the lives they’d known just to follow him.

I think he must have been profoundly rooted in God’s own love, AND very charismatic, AND incredibly empathetic, AND insanely insightful while also clear spoken, AND profoundly gifted at knowing what people needed and finding ways to fulfill it. The sort of live changing experiences people had with him, instantaneously, are really shocking. So is the story of Palm Sunday.

The story says that the crowd showed up at an anti-Imperial procession, that functionally named Jesus King, while shouting King-supporting phrases that were blasphemy and sedition in the Roman Empire, WHILE waving the national symbol (Palm Branches) of Israel, AND they laid their cloaks on the road in front of him. The Jesus Seminar thinks this is an expression of early Christian imagination, rather than historical memory. Historically speaking, at best, they think Jesus MIGHT have ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey as a symbolic act. That seems very likely, and it may be helpful for some among us to keep that in mind (and for others to ignore completely).¹

For those of you who have heard me preach on Palm Sunday before, you may remember that it is said to happen just before the celebration of the Jewish Passover. The Passover is the celebration of God’s actions to free the Hebrew people from slavery and give them new life together, eventually in the Promised Land. This central story of Judaism is of a God who cares about the oppressed and acts to free them.

Thus, the Roman Empire which had colonized the Jewish homeland, got a little nervous around the Passover celebration, all the more so because 200,000 people came to Jerusalem to celebrate it, swelling the city that usually had 40,000 residents. Thus, before the Passover began, the representative of the Empire entered the city through a formal processional with full military might on display. This wasn’t subtle, at all! It was a direct threat of violence, should any revolts or riots break out. The Empire was there to remind the people that they’d be crushed if they attempted to reenact their history of being freed from oppression.

People at the Roman procession yelled, “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord….” Those were the shouts appropriate to the Empire. And, that’s what makes the shouts said to happen at the Jesus parade so significant. They defied the power of Rome. They were blaspheming against the Empire, and doing so while seeking God’s help in overthrowing it! They also shouted “Hosanna”, a contraction of the Hebrew phrase “save, we pray.” The word, which we use as praise and adoration, to the people yelling it as Jesus rode the colt, literally meant ‘save’. Thus it meant “Hosanna!” Be our savior! Rescue us! Deliver us from our enemies! You are like the great King David! You come in the name of the Lord to bring us salvation from above!² They were speaking to YHWH, in Hebrew, seeking salvation from the Roman Empire.³

Jerusalem wasn’t just the capital city of the former Jewish empire, according to Crossan “it was a capital city where religion and violence – conservative religion and imperial oppression – had become serenely complicit.”⁴ Jesus choose it as a place for his demonstrations because it was the center of this complicity with violence. Crossan says, “Jesus went to Jerusalem because that was where his deliberate double demonstrations against both imperial justice and religious collaboration had to be made. … It was a protest from the legal and prophetic heart of Judaism against Jewish religious cooperation with Roman Imperial Control.”⁵

The day after this peaceful, but POWERFUL, protest (Palm Sunday), Jesus went into the Temple and had another peaceful and POWERFUL protest. Crossan writes, “In Mark’s story, attention is focused on the demonstrations as twin aspects of the same nonviolent protest. … Each is quite deliberate. Each takes place at an entrance – into the City and into the Temple. Together, and in the name of God, these demonstrations are a protest against any collaboration between religious authority and imperial violence.”⁶

In all of this, the crowds stayed with him. Whatever it was that attracted them to begin with, there was substance under it that kept them there when things started getting dangerous. It is one thing to listen to a teacher in some field in Galilee and glean hope that life could be better than it is now. It is quite another thing to follow a leader who is protesting the Empire that has military might that has never been seen before, and to keep him safe with your sheer numbers. What kept them there?

In part, I suspect the crowds stayed because life outside of the Jesus movement was hopeless, and Jesus offered real and substantive hope for a different life -if not for those who followed him, then for the ones who came after them. Maybe the Spirit was there too, and the people could feel God at work, and wanted to be a part of it. Maybe the energy of the crowd was empowering and uplifting as few things were. Still though, I think Jesus just offered something no one else did – he saw them, he loved them, he wanted good for them, and he taught them how to work together to change the world so things could get better. People need to be part of something more than themselves, and the beaten down Jewish people KNEW in their hearts and in their bodies that there was more goodness in life than they were getting to experience. They knew God and God’s vision for them, and that the domination and oppression system wasn’t God’s will at all! In addition, I think Jesus’ love of them made it possible to see their own worth and to live it!

I ask about that crowd, because I think as later followers of Jesus it is worth wondering why we follow him too! While the disciples were all killed by the Empire for continuing the work of Jesus, for most of us there is much less of a cost in following. At the same time, there are a whole lot more distractions to following Jesus than there ever have been before. There are ways to numb ourselves out to the pains of life, options ranging from the simple distractions of smart phones, YouTube, and TV to the terrifyingly common addictive substances that pervade our society. There are other ways to “build community” and feel connected: sports teams, political groups, non-profit boards, game nights, and the list goes on. Following Jesus isn’t the easiest option. It calls us out of comfort zones, it prods us to love God’s people even when they drive us NUTS, it asks a lot of us.

It also gives a lot back. Following Jesus gives us an alternative vision: one where all of the people on the planet are God’s beloved children (not commodities and means of profit-building); one where there is incredibly important work to do together – building the kindom of God (not just individuals fighting to make it through day by day) ; one where there is hope for a truly good system of life together (not just Band-Aids on mostly broken systems); one where the nonviolent power of connection and community dominates (not violence or the threat of violence); one where HOPE dominates (not fear). It still sends shivers down my spine, how different God’s vision for the world is from how the world is at the moment, and the idea that God is working through us to make the vision into reality. May we join that hope filled crowd around Jesus, the ones following his vision, the ones making it possible for his work to continue, the ones who trust in his way. Amen

1Robert W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus (USA -HarperSanFransicso: Polebridge Press, 1998) 230.

2 From http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2004-2005/2005-03-20.shtml, Commentary by Rick Marshall, accessed on March 16, 2008.

3Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (Harper Collins: 2006)

4John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now(USA: HarperOne, 2007), 131.

5Crossan, 131-132.

6Crossan, 134.

–

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 25. 2-18

Sermons

“Thesis Statement”based on Psalm 65:5-12 and Mark 1:14-20

January 22, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Sometimes it seems like my entire adult life has been about realizing that nothing works the way I thought it did, and everything is more broken than I had been lead to believe. Like the Psalmist, over and over again it has become clear what has seemed good, fair, and just wasn’t even basically trustworthy upon further examination. In addition, I’ve learned that what people or organizations claim to be about often isn’t directly correlated with what they actually DO.

One scholar summarizes Psalmist as saying, “No matter how weighty their social standing, we cannot depend on other people to provide security or stability in our lives.”¹ Another scholar takes it a step further, adding commentary to the Psalmist’s ideas, “Every human effort, finite cause, and mortal relationship is an unsuitable object for our absolute trust and final hope. The career that shows so much promise, the children that seem so exceptional, the nation that appears so strong: they are like shifting sand which offers no security, no permanent purchase.”²

I don’t think the Psalmist and I are alone in our desire to find trustworthiness in what can’t offer “permanent purchase.” Often, when I hear people in their deepest struggles, they are struggling with a change they didn’t foresee – something they thought was more permanent than it was – and the harshness of reality adds a significant sting to something already plenty difficult. Something in human nature expects more permanence than there is, and wants to trust in that permanence.

The Psalmist concludes that only God is as sturdy, steadfast, and worthy of hope and trust as we need. God is able to be our refuge, time and time again. God doesn’t disappoint, and God is as permanent as we need. Best of all, God’s nature is steadfast love, and it is on God’s steadfast love as a platform, that we can build our lives.

Thanks be to God for that.

The thing is, I’m not sure it is all that easy for us to figure out what it means to trust God while remembering the impermanence of everything else. How do we balance the concepts that God is worthy of trust, but that doesn’t mean our loved ones will all live long happy lives, our jobs will treat us fairly, our bodies will remain strong and healthy, our homes remain in tact, or that our spouses will always treat us well. (To name a few.) God is good and trustworthy, but life remains complicated. I think that this seemingly obvious reality is really hard to master!

Figuring out how to trust in God while being realistic about the world, and without becoming cynical about everything is pretty difficult. It is also very important, in fact, I think it IS adult faith development! That is, adult faith development is: trusting God, seeing the world clearly, and holding hope – all at the same time. Marcus Borg gives a model of how faith develops, and helps clarify the process all people have to go through:

Precritical naiveté is an early childhood state in which we take it for granted that whatever the significant authority figures in our lives tell us to be true is indeed true. In this state (if we grow up in a Christian setting), we simply hear the stories of the Bible as true stories. …

Critical thinking begins in late childhood and early adolescence. One does not need to be an intellectual or go to college for this kind of thinking to develop. Rather, it is a natural stage of human development; everybody enters it. In this stage, consciously or quite unconsciously, we sift through what we learned as children to see how much of it we should keep. …

Postcritical naiveté is the ability to hear the biblical stories once again as true stories, even as one knows that they may not be factually true and that their truth does not depend upon their factuality. … Importantly, postcritical naiveté is not a return to precritical naiveté. It brings critical thinking with it. It does not reject the insights of historical criticism but integrates them into a larger whole.³

These ideas are larger than simply how we read the Bible. They apply to life in general. Pre-critical naiveté then, is trusting that God will make everything OK. Critical thinking comes when we acknowledge that lots of things aren’t OK at all. And then post-critical naiveté is the time of trusting in God and seeing the world clearly and holding onto hope.

Now, I think that during his ministry, Jesus was clearly living in post-critical naiveté. He knew EXACTLY how broken things were AND he trusted in God and worked to make them better. If I’m honest, I tend to think of Jesus as being born in post-critical naiveté, but that’s probably not really true! Mark says that Jesus came to Galilee (the location of the majority of his ministry) and started talking. He said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Throughout all of my study of the Bible, I have come to believe that Jesus’ words here are the thesis statement of his ministry, and thus of both the New Testament and the Body of Christ.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Because it can easily get confusing, let’s review what repentance is. Repent most literally means, “turn around” or “change direction.” I love my friend Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green’s take on it; she says it means to “turn around, look at God, look where God is looking, and refocus attention where God is looking.” In context, then, repentance is calling people to turn away from the ways of the world (domination, oppression, competition, hierarchy, etc) and turn TO the ways of God (cooperation, collaboration, mutuality, support, solidarity, etc).

Because it is the key to everything about Jesus, let’s review the idea of the kindom of God. The kindom of God is the world as God would have it be, when all people are able to survive and thrive, when abundance and sharing define the ways of life, when justice comes naturally to people, when things are exactly as they should be. That is, when we can look reality squarely in the eye and see nothing wrong at all. Building the kindom of God was the work of Jesus, and is the work of the Body of Christ today. Our theologians tell us that it is both “fulfilled” and “not here in entirely yet.” It is what God is working WITH us in creating, and it exists in moments and instances, but not yet as the earth’s reality.

To be fair, I think this whole thesis statement, and in fact this whole kindom of God thing is a form of circular logic. That is, repenting and refocusing on God and on God’s kindom IS the thing that builds the kindom – it doesn’t happen unless people do it. Believing that God’s way is good news, thus taking on the good news itself as a way of life is the way of making the good news into reality. Living as though the time is now is what fulfills the time.

I’m OK with it being circular logic though. Mostly because I believe it 😉 I also think this means that paying attention to the stuff in life that ALREADY is a glimpse of the kindom is one of the ways that we build it. And I think it is fitting, somehow, that this system only works if we trust that it works – it feels like the rest of faith.

Or, to put it more sufficiently, one scholar wrote, “Right away Jesus not only talks about the reign of God but enacts it.”⁴ This scholar explains himself saying, “Mark’s brief account of the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry links Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel with his calling of a band of disciples. These activities are by no means unrelated. Jesus’ proclamation is not just a solo recitation of informative words but is an efficacious action that creates community and is taken up and continued by that community.”⁵ Now here is the key to it all. This same scholar says, “wherever Jesus was active, the time was fulfilled and the kingdom was present.”⁶

Now this caught my attention. If wherever Jesus was active, the time was therefore fulfilled and the kindom was therefore present, then does that mean that when we are truly acting out the ministry of Jesus – sharing God’s love with our neighbors – that the kindom is present with us too? Are we able to, together, create the kindom of God – at least in small times and places?

I think we ARE!!!

I see it often enough. I see love being shared in extraordinary ways, I see transformation happening that doesn’t really seem possible, I see hope created in the things we do together, as well as laughter and healing. I see the kindom when we are together as the Body of Christ, it really IS present and the time is fulfilled.

This is humbling to realize, although it is also inspiring! It does lead me to some new questions: when and how are we most successful in having kindom moments? When aren’t we? How can we attend to them well so that we can appreciate them? What keeps us from creating even more kindom moments? How can we change those realities? Is the creating the kindom more work, or play? Is it about authenticity? Does it require community or can it happen with just one? Does it have to happen AND be noticed to have the most impact, or if we miss it, is it OK?

And finally, how is it that the kindom of God can co-exist in the world with the brokenness that is our current reality? (I think that’s just a reality of non-linearity.)

If Jesus, in his life, made the kindom into reality in his present; and if we as the Body of Christ continue his ministry in our shared lives; then we get to make the kindom into reality in our present. How cool is that???

During the passing of the peace today, I ask that you talk to each other about the kindom – when you’ve seen it, felt it, heard it – I think talking about it makes it even more real. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And, keep on paying attention when you see the kindom. Not only does it take away disillusionment, it also builds the kindom itself. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Marsha Wilfong, Exegetical Reflections on Psalm 65:5-12 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 275.

2 Timothy A. Beach-Verhey, Theological Reflections on Psalm 65:5-12 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 274.

3Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (HarperSanFransicso: 2001) 49-50.

4Lee Barrett, Theological Reflections on Mark 1:14-20 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 286.

5Barrett, 284.

6Barrett, 286.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

January 21, 2018

Sermons

“A (Very) Young Mother To Be” based on Luke 1:26-45

December 24, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The Christmas stories function as gospels in miniature: establishing themes, offering foreshadowing, and even telling parts of the story in smaller but parallel ways.¹ One of the little connections I first noticed this year is that in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus travels several times between the seat of his ministry in Galilee and the seat of Jewish power in Judea. This text has his mother Mary traveling from Galilee, to Judea, back to Galilee, and then BACK to Judea all while pregnant!

Luke’s themes – in both the Gospel as a whole and in the Christmas story – include a value of women, a focus on the marginalized, and attention to the Holy Spirit. Luke chapter 1 spends a lot of time on Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist. Luke is the only gospel to claim that Elizabeth and Mary are kin, as well as the only one to focus on the experiences of Elizabeth and Mary. Scholars have pointed out that Luke is intentionality setting up a rather enormous proposition.

Namely, Elizabeth’s pregnancy story sounds like a common Hebrew Bible story. According to Genesis none of the patriarchs and matriarchs were about to procreate without an exceptionally long wait and Divine intervention. Elizabeth and Zechariah are an older couple, without children, who have gone past childbearing age. Elizabeth and Zechariah’s story sounds most like Abraham and Sarah’s, although it also connotes the birth of Samuel. God intervenes, and the VERY unexpected happen, or at least it would be VERY unexpected if it weren’t so common in the Bible.

Mary’s pregnancy story, on the other hand, is novel in the Bible. It hasn’t been told before. The ancient Greeks and Romans may have hand virgin birth stories as commonly as we have superhero movies, but this wasn’t part of the Jewish tradition.

Elizabeth is an old woman, thought to be barren, who has a child because of Divine intervention. Her story resounds with Hebrew Bible echoes. Mary is a young woman, thought to be pre-pubescent, who is ALSO said to have a child because of Divine intervention. Her story has an entirely new tune and tone.

Scholars think that Luke is intending for Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, to represent the end of an age; while Mary’s son, Jesus, represents the beginning of another age.² In that case, having the two pregnant mothers residing in the same home in the Judean hills for three months, having Mary present for Elizabeth’s birth, having Elizabeth’s pregnancy function as proof for Mary’s experience, and having the women related to each other and spending time sharing their experiences, is potent with meaning.

Now, it does turn out that the idea of one age ending and another beginning with the births (and deaths) of those men does have some truth to it. After all, a miscalculation of the date of the Birth of Christ was the original premise of our Western Calendar. Time has been calculated since that moment. And, since Luke was writing about 60 years after the death of Jesus³, but the time these stories were written down, the sense of an era ending another beginning was presumably felt deeply. Setting up these two main characters as the icons of change indicates how important the early Christian community thought their lives were.

Now, there is a reasonably high level of certainty that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist AND that there were people who had wondered if John the Baptist was the Messiah. This means that the followers of Jesus – both during his life and after his death – had to explain why they thought THEIR guy was THE guy, and the OTHER guy wasn’t. I suspect some of the reason for the story we read today is to clarify that stance. It also serves acknowledge how closely tied their lives were and how closely tied their message were. Today, I think it functions well to remind us that the “end of an era” and the “beginning of an era” still operated in continuity – with a shared understanding of God and of God’s vision for the world.

Luke 1 is a chapter of waiting. It runs for 80 verses, and yet it isn’t until chapter 2 that Jesus arrives. Luke 1 is a little bit of Advent and of Christmas Eve – the waiting and the not-yet. Luke 1 gets us ready and hungry, and anticipating the arrival of the Christ-child. It makes us wait from the annunciation, through travels and songs of praise, through John the Baptist’s birth and circumcision, through the faith struggles of his father, and even through the start of John the Baptist’s ministry before the chapter ends and we get to turn to the birth of Jesus.

It feels a bit like we are waiting with Mary, aware of the changes that are about to happen, seeing the changes in her body, wondering about the impact (she’s said to ponder a lot), but without yet holding the baby nor forming him in his faith. Luke sets up Mary to be the sort of woman you can believe could raise a son like Jesus. She is named for Miriam, a wise and faithful leader, the sister of Moses.

(Mary is the Greek-i-fied version of the Hebrew Miriam. It isn’t clear to me if she would have been called Miriam, but it was written down in Greek as Mary or if the Greek influence was strong enough that she lived in that tension of being named for a Hebrew heroine, but with the itself Greek-i-fied. By the way, the word for that is “grecized” but I didn’t think we all knew that. Or, rather, I didn’t previously know that.)

Mary is also BRAVE and FIERCE. If you remember a later story of Jesus, the one with the woman who had been accused on adultery, the one they wanted to stone – because that was the prescribed punishment for such an act – then you may note why an engaged woman agreeing to a pregnancy from not-her-fiance was so brave!! An engaged woman was seen as fully the “property” of her husband, and adultery was defined as someone sleeping with someone else’s property, and a pregnancy when the couple hadn’t engaged in procreative activities would generally serve as good proof of adultery. Yet, in Luke, this isn’t a problem!!! For Luke, Mary speaks and is believed, and there isn’t any issue at all. I like Luke. He trusts women, and he gives them voice!

In many ways this presentation of Mary becoming pregnant by God reflects the Greek and Roman influence over that region as much as her name does. This was a fairly common story in Greek and Roman myths, although, I gotta give it to Luke, this is the only story in which the woman is asked for CONSENT before getting pregnant.

Mary DOES give consent. She knows what it could cost, but she is willing. As the story goes on, she sings God’s praises for being willing to lift her up by giving her this task (#tomorrowsSermon)

Now, much later in the Gospel, Jesus will be put to death because of his faithfulness to God’s message and the building of God’s kindom. However, in this very early passage in Luke 1, we see that his mother was also willing to take those risks in order to serve God and build the kindom. She was likely very young (on the cusp of puberty), very poor, and rather profoundly disempowered, but she is given a choice about her life and she chooses to take a risk for God’s sake.

Elizabeth is also named for a Hebrew heroine, Aaron’s wife (Aaron was brother to Moses and Miriam), whose Hebrew name has been translated into Greek. I choose to interpret from this story that Elizabeth was a mentor figure to Mary, a safe place Mary could go and ponder. It has already been said in Luke 1 that John the Baptist was going to be gifted with the Holy Spirit, and in this scene it is clear that the gift is so strong as to move his mother too! Elizabeth is presented as speaking a truth that much of the world will never see, and it is presented as if God’s own wisdom is able to move through her.

Elizabeth praises Mary BOTH for the wonder of having Jesus in her womb AND for faithfulness in believing God when she was told what would happen. I appreciate that this praise comes in two parts, too much of Christianity has only praised Mary for being the mother of Jesus, and missed that the story presents her as one of his teachers and mentors as well. Elizabeth expresses shock that she could receive the gift of a visit from such an important woman, and that the baby in her womb recognized the wonder of what was happening.

Luke 1 reminds us why the birth itself even matters! Luke 1 sets us up to notice that when God is up to something, God doesn’t tend to pick the already powerful and noteworthy figures to do the work! Luke notes that God works with and through women, and the marginalized, through that unable to be controlled Holy Spirit. Luke sets us up to notice that something BIG is about to happen and it will change the world.

Which perhaps leaves us with a very important question: how has the birth of Christ changed the world FOR US, and how are our lives and actions different because of it? The era we live in has been formed by these stories, and they are ours to ponder. Are we ready, like Mary, to answer the call for radical change with “let it be with me according to your word.”? May we be. Amen

1John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg point this out in The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Birth (USA: HarperOne, 2007)

2Fred B. Craddock, Luke in the series Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990) p. 29. This is one of several times this theory has been written, but he said it in a particularly accessible way.

3I’m taking this from the estimate that Luke was written in about 85 CE, while Jesus was born in about 5 BCE, and lived about 31 years. The “mid eighties” guess comes from R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1995) p. 8.

–

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

“Here, in the Brokenness” based on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark…

December 3, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but things are not as they should
be. Actually, I suspect you have noticed it, but it feels like time
to explicitly name two of the very many ways in which this is true.

First
of all, our society is and has been awash in sexual harassment and
assault. Many, many men have used whatever power and influence they
have in the world for their own pleasure at the expense of others,
most often women. This is not news, per say, and yet there is
something happening.

This
is much like the impact of the #BlackLivesMatter movement on police
brutality, it isn’t that any of the behaviors are new or different,
it is that suddenly people are paying attention to the atrocities,
and calling for accountability en masse. Important and powerful men
have been removed from the positions they’ve used abusively. The
status quo is being interrupted, and that’s good.

Yet,
it isn’t good enough. This week I had the incredible joy of holding
the youngest member of our church family in my arms. (It is GOOD to
be pastor.) I wanted to be able to promise her a world where she
wouldn’t know sexual harassment or assault, where she will be safe to
be whoever she is, where-ever she wants to be, no matter who is
nearby, all the time. The yearning that I had to offer her that
world clarified how very far we are from it, AND how desperately
needed it is.

Secondly,
we live in a country that accepts poverty as a necessary component of
life. Based on our policies, it is OK if people are hungry –
whether they are working or not, whether they’ve applied for SNAP
benefits or not, whether they are children or adults. Based on our
policies, it is OK if people are homeless, and if a person struggles
with addiction – by our policies – it is almost as if they don’t
deserve to be housed. Based on our policies, only people who can
afford to pay for it deserve the right to health care. Based on our
policies, it is acceptable for those without money to be
misrepresented or underrepresented in court, and spend time in jail
for crimes they didn’t commit. Based on our current policies, not
even children have a right to health care.

All
of these are choices, choices that we have made as a society about
what we value and who we value. Budgets are moral documents, budgets
indicate what an organization really values. Our society values the
growth of the economy, the growth of our exceptional military might,
and the flow of wealth from the bottom to the top OVER the capacity
to care for the vulnerable, the elimination of hunger, the
accessibility of health care, the safety of housing, or the fairness
of the courts.

Things
are NOT as they should be, and those were just two examples. There
are many ways that things are not as they should be.

This
is not the first time in history that this has been true. According
to Marcus Borg, the earliest human societies did not have significant
wealth differentiation nor oppression. The first two types of
societies were hunter gatherer and early horticultural. About them,
Borg says, “Differentials of wealth and power were minor.”¹
However, once full fledged agricultural societies developed about
5000 years ago, it became possible to generate wealth. In the time
of Jesus agriculture was the primary form of wealth.²
Borg calls the system at the time of Jesus the preindustrial
agricultural domination system.³
As far as I can tell, a few
things have changed since the time of Jesus: we’re now industrial or
post industrial and wealth is no longer primarily acquired through
agriculture.

Domination
systems that have oppressed the many for the sake of the few have
been the norm in the world since the development of full-scale
agriculture. The pieces of the world that concern me the most are
all parts of domination systems, ways that the systems are rigged
against the majority of the population for the benefit of a small
minority. David Graeber, in “Debt: A History of the first 5000
years” theorizes that the world’s major religions have all emerged
as a a response to the particular ways that domination systems
existed in their parts of the world.⁴
I’m going to take a stronger theological stance on that and say that
God has been at work in the world to disrupt domination systems as
long as they have existed, and the particular forms of that work have
been formalized into religious traditions.

We
hear in the texts today the same yearnings we know in our lives for
the world as it SHOULD be rather than the world as it is. These
texts feel familiar to me, to the depths of my soul. The Hebrew
Bible text doesn’t JUST come from Isaiah, who is my favorite, it
comes from third Isaiah – the last 7 chapters of the book – which
is the very best part of Isaiah. The prophet speaks of deep yearning
for God’s presence, a presence that would change reality from its
brokenness to its fulness. The prophet remembers times that God has
felt present and has made things better. The prophet celebrates that
God is one who cares about how the people treat each other, and yet
bemoans that God feels very far away. In fact, the prophet worries
that God is angry because the people have so profoundly mistreated
each other, and made peace with a society of deep injustice. The
prophet suggests that because God isn’t changing reality, they are
stuck living in the mess they made, without God delivering them from
it, and that isn’t OK at all.

Oh
Isaiah, how can you speak from so long ago truths that can still
sting with truth? I’m sometimes frightened that texts from 2500
years ago are still so accurate, which means that domination systems
haven’t lost their grip even as they’ve changed their ways.

At
first glance, or first hearing, or for me first 100 hearings, Mark
doesn’t sound like he is saying the same thing. Luckily, there are
those among you who share things with me when they seem useful, and
one of you sent me a reflection that opened my eyes to this text.⁵

This
passage in Mark appears just before the passion narrative begins,
Mark is using this text as a foreshadowing of the meaning of the
death and resurrection of Jesus. Like the passion narrative, it will
start in the night and shake the powers of the world. David Luce
writes, “Mark,
in other words, isn’t pointing us to a future apocalypse
(“revealing”) but rather a present one, as Christ’s death and
resurrection change absolutely everything.”⁶
For the gospel writer of Mark, the yearning represented in Isaiah is
FULFILLED by Jesus. For the gospel writer, Jesus is the presence of
God in the world changing things from how they are to how they should
be. At the same time, as Christians today, we know that the work
Jesus did in the world wasn’t completed in his life, but is ours to
continue as the current Body of Christ.

So,
the gospel writer speaks of things being pretty bad: suffering, the
sun and moon no longer giving the world light, the stars falling to
nothingness. In the midst of that horror, Jesus will break in and
transform it all. The gospel writer encourages people to be looking
for the signs that hope is about to break into the brokenness. The
gospel writer, I think, is hoping to encourage people in the midst of
some very bad days, to understand the brokenness itself as a sign
that things were about to change.

It
is hard, nearly 2000 years later, with all the brokenness that has
been between then and now to be as certain that the change is right
on the horizon. The yearning is easy to connect with. The hope is
imperative to connect with, the but the time frame is harder to buy
into.

I
do think that God is present with us, and that God is ever working
for justice, for dismantling the domination systems, for transforming
the world as it is into the kindom itself. While we seem pretty
resilient to God’s work, and while many things as are broken around
us, I’m told by historians who have a broader view than I do that big
and amazing things have gotten better.

Some
things aren’t all that new, but are pretty cool anyway. The
experiment in universal public education that started in
Massachusetts has had a huge impact on the world and its literacy.
All of those hospitals that various churches started over the
centuries have had an amazing impact in global health and longevity.

According
to the annual letter from the Gates Foundation (one of my favorite
reads), in the past 25 years childhood mortality rates for kids under
5 have dropped by 50%! Most of these preventable deaths have been
prevented because global vaccine access has increased, and 86% of the
world’s kids are now adequately vaccinated. The Gates Foundation
says that 300 million women in the developing world now have access
to and use contraception, which increases maternal and child health,
decreases childhood morality rates, increases education, and lowers
poverty. These 300 million women represent over half of the women
seeking to have it, but they’re actively working on it, and the
problem will be cut by over half again by 2020! As a reminder as
well, since 1990, worldwide extreme poverty (living on less than $2 a
day) has been cut in HALF.⁷

The
news that we hear mostly focuses on the broken, and in the past year
entirely too much of my attention has been on the broken. We live in
a world of domination systems, and many many things are broken. At
the same time, God IS at work in the world, working with people, and
together we are making many things better.

Dear
ones, the world is broken, and things are not as they should be.

AND

God
is at work in the world, there are many things that are getting
better, and the work we do matters.

It
is all true. And here in the brokenness, we yearn for God’s kindom
to come, just as Isaiah did, just as Mark did, and as God’s people
have through the ages. May the day come when the yearning is
fulfilled. Amen

1Marcus
Borg, “Jesus:
Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary” (USA:
HarperOne, 2006) 79-80. (Quote
on 80.)

2Borg,
80-81.

3Borg,
79.

4David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011), p. 83.

5David
Luce, email/blog entitled “…In the Meantime” Posted: 27
Nov 2017 07:50 AM PST Found at
http://www.davidlose.net/2017/11/advent-1-b-a-present-tense-advent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28…In+the+Meantime%29.

6Luce.

7Bill
and Melinda Gates “Dear Warren: Our 2017 Annual Letter” written
February 14, 2017
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO
accessed December 2, 2017.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

December 3, 2017

Sermons

“The Merciful” based on 1 John 3:1-3 and Matthew…

November 5, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

There
is a timelessness to All Saints Sunday, similar to the spacelessness
to World Communion Sunday. On World Communion Sunday, as the Table
of Christ feeds people around the whole world, we are able to connect
to our siblings in faith without distance separating us. On All
Saints day we connect to those who went on before us, blessed us, and
entered the great cloud of witnesses. I often think of the great
cloud of witnesses as being not just around us, but under us – they
are the ones on whose shoulders we stand.

Some
of the saints we knew well, some of their names will be read today,
some of them predated us by too many years for us to know them by
name, and yet they form the great cloud of witnesses. This reminds
us, as well, that we are here only for a brief period of time in the
work of the church. Someday, we too, will be part of the cloud. The
generations march ever onward. The cloud will someday include us,
and those who aren’t even here yet! The generations march ever
onward. Today is a day of timelessness.

It
is also a day of timelessness in that grief slows down time, and time
can feel relentless. On All Saints Day we don’t JUST remember those
who went on before us, and take a moment to acknowledge them, we also
notice the heartbreak of grief and attend to each other in our
heartbreak. While it is wonderful to have a great cloud of witnesses
around us, most of us would rather have those we love right here with
us! We are thankful to God for their lives, but usually we really
wish we were able to share more time with them!

There
is a deep holiness to the All Saints celebration, deep enough that
there is mystery in it as well. In seeking to be faithful to the
lives of the Saints, the lectionary has given us rather mysterious
text as well. It seems simple, until you try to make sense of it!
Here are the useful bits I’ve learned about these so called
Beatitudes:

The
verbs really matter.
A
bunch of the individual “blessings” are quotes from the Hebrew
Bible.
A
lot of explanations exist to solve seeming contradictions

I’m
gonna explain each. First of all, the verbs. Those who speak Greek
say that a whole lot of effort is made into having the verbs be in
the form they’re in. Namely, that the statements say blessed ARE,
but then indicate a future reality (mostly). Furthermore, they
aren’t commandments, they are stated as facts. Finally, according to
Feasting on the Word, “In
Psalm 1 the Hebrew word translated in our English text by our word
‘blessing’ is the word ’ashar,
which means in its literal sense ‘to find the right road’. … This
is the meaning of ‘ashar in the nine uses of ‘blessed’” in the
Beatitudes.”¹
That means that these mean something like “You are on the right
road when you are poor in spirit.”²
Or, perhaps, “You who are merciful are on the right road, you will
receive mercy.” So each line says “this group of people is on
the right road – and this is where it will lead them in the
future.” These aren’t particularly normal verb constructions,
which is why they’re worth mentioning.

Now,
the Jesus Seminar thinks there is evidence to suggest that Jesus
likely said 4 of these blessings – because they show up in Luke and
Thomas. Those are: the poor in Spirit, those who grieve, those who
hunger and thirst (for righteousness), and those who are persecuted.
They think Matthew filled in the rest as a way to uphold the early
Christian Community.³
In both cases, the blessings have striking Hebrew Bible roots.

First
off, this text seems to be a reworking of Psalm 1, that being a Psalm
that talks about blessed people rather extensively (in the “to find
the right road” meaning). Regarding comfort to mourners, which the
Jesus Seminar thinks goes back to Jesus, that sounds a whole lot like
Isaiah 61:1-3, “The
spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to
the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the
day of vengeance of our God; to
comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland
instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle
of praise instead of a faint spirit.” Regarding meek inheriting,
which the Jesus Seminar thinks Matthew created, we hear it in Psalm
37:11, “But
the meek shall inherit the land, and delight in abundant prosperity.”

As
a whole, the lists of qualities of people sound like lists in the
Hebrew Bible that relate to who can enter the temple! There are
moral standards being held here, and they reflect the tradition they
grow from. For example,

Psalm
15:1-5

1 O Lord,
who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on
your holy hill?
2 Those
who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
and
speak the truth from their heart;
3 who
do not slander with their tongue,
and do no evil
to their friends,
nor take up a reproach against
their neighbours;
4 in
whose eyes the wicked are despised,
but who
honour those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even
to their hurt;
5 who do
not lend money at interest,
and do not take a
bribe against the innocent.
Those
who do these things shall never be moved.

Psalm
24:3-6 does the same. So, Jesus is REWORKING, or REMOLDING his own
tradition, and then Matthew is doing the same. Given those
realities, the really interesting pieces may be in what finally gets
included and excluded? Why were the poor in spirit, those who mourn,
the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are
persecuted for righteousness the groups of people who fit? Is it
because things were hard for peasants and things were hard for early
Christians? Or is there something deeper? (I don’t know, I’m just
wondering.)

Finally,
people have done a lot of work to try to understand this passage, as
it is one of the best known parts of the Bible while being rather
obscure. The New Interpreter’s Bible has points out, “Peacemakers
does not connote a passive attitude, but positive actions for
reconciliation.”⁴
(180, NIB) Marcus Borg explains some of the others:

“’Poor
in spirit’ almost certainly does not refer to well-to-do people who
are nevertheless spiritually poor, but to people whose material
poverty has broken their spirit. Moreover, ‘righteousness’ in the
Bible and Matthew does not mean personal rectitude, as it most often
does in modern English, but justice. ‘Those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness’ likely means ‘those who hunger and thirst
for justice.’ The meaning of
Mathew’s wording is thus similar and perhaps identical to what we
find in Luke, for it is the poor and hungry who yearn for justice.
In short, like the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes confirm that the
kingdom of God is both religious and political: it is God’s
kingdom, and it is a kingdom on earth
that involves a transformation of life for the poor and hungry.”⁵

Perhaps
that’s why these groups were included! Taken
together, the work of scholars establishes that these are meaningful
phrases that fit into the rest of Jesus’ teaching, and that they
aren’t meant to just be a mystery!

So,
these really are powerful teachings. As one scholar puts it, “In
none of the beatitudes is advice being offered for getting along in
this world, where mercy is more likely to be regarded as a sign of
weakness than to be rewarded in kind.”⁶
“Christianity is not a scheme to reduce stress, lose wight, advance
one’s career, or preserve one from illness. Christian faith,
instead, is a way of living based on the firm and sure hope that
meekness is the way of God, that righteousness and peace will finally
prevail, and that God’s future will be a time of mercy and not
cruelty.”⁷
The Beatitudes continue in the tradition of differentiating the ways
of God – justice, righteousness, peace, well-being for all – with
the ways of the world. The values the Beatitudes celebrate are not
at all the ones the world seeks, but they are the ones that build the
kin-dom.

On
All Saints we remember those who went on before us, and we remember
the ways that their lives followed God’s ways. On All Saints we
remember that they have shown us the right road, and that in doing so
they made it easier for us to travel it. We also remember that the
roads that we choose matter: they matter for the kin-dom itself, and
they matter for those who will come after us.

It
is a good road, this one that Jesus describes, it is a very different
road than others we could also choose to walk. It is a good thing we
have models who have walked the road ahead of us – and continue to
walk it with us as the great cloud of witnesses. Amen

–

1Earl
F. Palmer “Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 5:1-12” in Feasting
on the World Year A Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and Barbara
Brown Taylor, editors (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY,
2011) 238.

2Palmer,
238.

3Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), page 138.

4M.
Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII: Matthew
Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1995), page 180.

5Marcus
Borg, Jesus: The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary (HarperOne:
2015), 190-191.

6Boring,
179.

7Boring,
181.

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