The Beloveds

January 18, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“The Beloveds” based on Matthew 3:13-17 and The UMC Social Principle on Racism, Ethnocentrism, and Tribalism

Into a world obsessed with those who have power over others, comes this little story about John and Jesus. The story is a fight to the bottom of the power structure. It is clearly told by early Church to tell us things about Jesus, as it doesn’t really fit the realities of his life. But it is, nevertheless, a rich little story.

While Luke goes to great pains to set up John and Jesus as cousins, that doesn’t happen in Matthew. In Matthew, John is a prophet in the wilderness calling the people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” and baptizing the people in the River Jordan. John was functioning as a prophet, and he acquired students who learned from him and taught his ways. Students are also known as disciples, and the way one became a disciple of a teacher or prophet was to be baptized by him.

Which is to say, that by the best guess of the best historical scholars, based on what we know, Jesus was a disciple of John. He was baptized by John and learned from him. Later on, when John is killed, Jesus continues the ministry of John INCLUDING taking on his theme “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” as Jesus’s main theme. He does, eventually, make it is own.

So we have this historical detail that Jesus was baptized by John, adapted a bit by the early Jesus movement to make sure it is clear that the point of this story is JESUS and not JOHN. So they have John objecting to it, which probably didn’t happen. And they have the voice of God show up… and I have to say I’m less willing to fight about that one.

Why?

Because at every baptism I have ever been present to it has been as if God has been speaking saying, “this is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” So while I’m not about to claim that this voice of God was objectively heard by all present or anything, I think it is one of the fundamental truths of the universe that is especially noticeable at baptism and it seems feasible to me that people could have sensed it at the baptism of Jesus.

In Latin, the phrase is “imago dei” which translates to “in the image of God” and it is the church shorthand for “people are made in the image of God which means that each and every person is holy.” This is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. We share it with other faith traditions, it is a truth that cannot be easily contained.

Everyone is beloved by God. God wishes good for everyone.

And while I always I hear this truth reflected at baptism, let me state explicitly that it applies to people who are not baptized, people who are not Christian, and people who are not religious. Being beloved of God even applies to people who do great harm. That doesn’t mean God is in favor of people harming each other, God’s love for us is just so immense and foundational that it can’t be broken by human action.

(And, yes, sometimes we want to make lists of people who are JUST SO BAD that maybe they’re not included, but dear ones, EVERYONE means EVERYONE. And excluding people from God’s love is not how we practice our faith.)

This is one of the Sundays in the year where I think it is reasonable to engage in extended quotation, particularly of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In my favorite of his sermons, “Loving Your Enemies” he says:

I would like to have you think with me on a passage of scripture that has been a great influence in my life and a passage that I have sought to bring to bear on the whole struggle for racial justice, which is taking place in our nation. The words are found in the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew. And these words flow from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard it said of old that thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”5

These are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries men have argued that the actual practice of this command just isn’t possible. Years ago the philosopher Nietzsche contended that this command illustrates that the Christian ethic is for weak men, not for strong men, and certainly not for the superman.6 And he went on to argue that it was just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth.

But we have come to see today that, far from being the practical, the impractical idealist, Jesus is the practical realist, and the words of this text stand before us with new urgency. And far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, love is the key to the solution of the problems of our world, love even for enemies. Since this is a basic Christian command and a basic Christian responsibility, it is both fitting and proper that we stop from time to time to analyze the meaning of these arresting words.

There are many things that we must do in order to love our enemies, but I would like to suggest just three. Seems to me that the first thing that the individual must do in order to love his enemy is to develop the capacity to forgive with a naturalness and ease. If one does not have the capacity to forgive, he doesn’t have the capacity to love. …

The second thing is this. In order to love the enemy neighbor we must recognize that the negative deed of the enemy does not represent all that the individual is. His evil deed does not represent his whole being. …

The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy neighbor is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. …

Now for the moments left, let us turn from the practical “how” to the theoretical “why,” and ask the valid, the vital and valid question, Why should we love our enemies? …

I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.1

I commend the whole sermon to you, but I’m going to stop quoting now. While the evils of racism have never been defeated in our country, we are now – again – in a time when the “fierce urgency of now” is present. And, that means that as people of faith, we are once again called upon to reflect HOW we want to seek God’s work in the world. Are we people of love and of non-violence, who believe in the transformational power of love to change the world for the better? Are we willing to be people who practice forgiveness? Are we able to be people who believe in imago dei for those who are doing harm? Are we able to remember that people are more than their worst? Are we willing to reach out in love, over and over again, seeking the well being even of those who do us harm, even when they respond with hatred and violence? Are we willing to use our lives to show the power of meeting hatred with love? Are we strong enough to things God’s way?

There are people in this world, people with power, who don’t believe in imago dei. They believe that SOME people are more HUMAN than others, instead of believing that all people are sacred because all people are loved by God.

Beloveds, these are our “enemies.” And, they are people in need of transformation.

The work of responding to hatred with love changes everything. But it isn’t fast. This is the work of our whole lives. We are often going to be frustrated at backsliding and new incarnations of old evils. But we are people of God. We are people who believe in the power of love. We are people of HOPE. We are people who believe that God’s love is found in everyone and can be kindled into even the people most committed to wrongdoing.

We may not see visible progress right now, but I assure you God is at work. And every act of love matters.

We are called to love our neighbors, to love ourselves, and to love our enemies. Because it turns out all of those people are ones to whom God speaks saying “This is my child, my beloved.” Thanks be to God. Amen

1 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten

January 18. 2026

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

Sermons

If I Fall

January 19, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

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

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

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

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

No one ever said following Jesus was easy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 19, 2025

Uncategorized

Untitled

January 14, 2024
by Sara Baron

“The Beloved Way” based on Acts 2:43-47

This week I had a routine dental appointment. Our dentist, selected carefully by the measure of being covered by our dental insurance, having opening for new patients, and being a woman of color (my first choice when available) turns to have incredible an generic suburban office.

So I’m lying there, having my teeth cleaned, and staring at the florescent lights and ceiling tiles and suddenly I start thinking about the impact of this office on the world. The ways that routine preventative dental care subtly but profoundly impacts peoples’ lives. The wonder that is dental care when a tooth is aching, and someone can help. The life-changing reality of dentures. It becomes sort of amazing, thinking about this one small office in the midst of a maze of medical offices, and the difference it makes it people’s lives.

It was actually awe-inspiring, maybe because I never before thought about the utter wonder that is a modern, first world dental office and its impact. Wow. The only times I’ve come close to thinking about this is when I hear from or consider the work of our missionary, Dr. Belinda Forbes whose life work has been in offering dental care in Nicaragua where there are so few dentists that there is only one dentist for every 20,000 people. Listening to Belinda talk about training health volunteers to teach tooth-brushing, and to engage in tooth extraction always reminds me how imperative dental work is, but somehow this all still felt like a revelation to me.

(Dr. Forbes)

Dental work is an imperative part of the kin-mod of God. We can’t be holistically well if our teeth ache or if we can’t eat good food.

The wonder of all this for me was that this dental office is just there, quietly doing its work of caring for its patients, just like many others in our region, providing imperative care to people, and being a part of building the kingdom of God whether they know it or not. Now, I’m not saying dental care is perfect. Right? Some offices overcharge, some offer subpar care, systemic racism is at play there like everywhere else, and worst of all there are far too many people in our country who can’t afford to access dental care. It isn’t perfect.

But it is good. And it is a very good starting point for the kind of dental care the kingdom needs. Which is really, really nice because there is no need to start from scratch on that one, just expend access and increase justice.

And, the truth is that there are lot of pieces of our society that are like this – already people all over the place are doing foundationally good work, that matters to other people, and holistic well-being, and the kingdom of God, and …. wow!

When I read from Rev. Dr. King, I’m always struck by the depth of his faith. He had a clear-eyed view of the impacts of racism, poverty, cycles of violence, and the military industrial complex. His analysis of them and the ways they interplay is outstanding. Yet, it was his faith that he brought to his work, and his faith that led his work. He worked from a position of hope. He believed that the people working together could bring change, that love could overpower hate, that the evils of the world wouldn’t have the final say. His belief in God extended to belief in people, and our capacity to overcome the brokenness and actually build the beloved community. And he thought we got there by shared nonviolent direct action – which sounds like Jesus to me. It should, right, he was a Christian clergy person with a doctorate from a United Methodist Seminary (just saying). But I’ve noticed not all Christian clergy people pay a lot of attention to the power of nonviolence in the life of Jesus and his followers.

The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.1

I often speak of this as the kingdom of God, but I think it is good to remember there are other ways of talking about it, in including “the beloved community” like Rev. Dr. King said or “the way” the early Christians spoke of.

Rev. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence has been broken down to 6 principles, I’ve shared some of them with you in the past. Today I want to share the 6th:

PRINCIPLE SIX: Nonviolence Believes That the Universe Is on the Side of Justice.

The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.
Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice. 2

That’s what I mean by being struck by the depth of his faith. He saw the problems, but he believed that God will win.

When I read Acts 2, I’m overwhelmed. The space between the radical nature of the early church in selling all they had and living in complete inter-dependence and the way faith is practiced today seems impossibly far. But it turns out that there are so many things actually going right, things that we may not see or might take for granted, things that need a little bit of adjusting to be better, but are already working for good. There are lots of them, if we look. This week I saw one, I hope this coming week you see two. There is reason for hope, for faith, and there is a lot of need for nonviolent love in this world. Thanks be to God who is our source of hope, faith, and love. Amen

1 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/ – “The Beloved Community” accessed January 11, 2024.

2Ibid., Dr. King’s Fundamental Philosophy of Nonviolence.

January 14, 2024

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Uncategorized

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April 30, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Perplexed, but Not in Despair” based on 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 Luke 7:18-23

I have had an unexpected number of conversations about gun violence recently. I guess unexpected because the regularity of gun violence in our society means many of the conversations that can be had, have been had, and often there doesn’t feel like there is much more to say. I have tended to agree with the sentiment that if nothing happened after Sandy Hook, chances are pretty low for change. That doesn’t mean I’m not still engaged in trying, just… I’ve been feeling pretty resigned.

Yet, conversations bubbled up this week. In one, a friend reflected on the skin tones of members of her family and wondered if they were dark enough to be seen as threats. (She would prefer that I also say, she doesn’t want ANYONE killed by guns.) As you might expect, the answers to her questions are not the ones we’d like them to be.

Another person shared about being in a school lock down, this week, while actively caring for students with special needs, who were simply terrified. So was she. She wondered about if she should let her children leave her house ever again.

Yet another conversation was with a young mother in Nashville, a woman whose office for a decade looked out over the Covenant school. Beloveds of God, she was the one with hope. She spent the last month at protests and sit ins in the Tennessee Capitol, working with others to advocate for red flag laws and other reasonable protections, which was at least successful enough that the legislature shut down their session rather than deal with the daily protests. She talked about gerrymandering, and lack of democracy, and a sense that the national medial presented Tennessee as a broken wasteland.

And then she said, “There is hope.” She pointed out that Tennessee is where change has happened, historically, which I frankly didn’t know. Women and their allies mobilized a massive campaign in TN, with incredibly intentional internationality around race and gender, and got the 19th Amendment to the US constitution passed through the TN General Assembly which ratified it as an amendment. She pointed out that because of the FOUR Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Nashville, change has started there. Nashville was so important to the Civil Rights Movement that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “’I came to Nashville not to bring inspiration, but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.’

The late civil rights leader recognized the vast activism and steadfastness that rang throughout the city as students protested at lunch counters and intellectuals traveled to Fisk University to band together and fight for justice. As Martin Luther King Day approaches, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy of motivation and valor in the historic city of Nashville.”1

My friend and colleague said that change needs to start in the South, and Nashville is uniquely poised, and those who have been organizing are ready to keep going, and they are not going to let up.

I didn’t expect to find hope with the one I know closest to the pain, but maybe that’s an error on my part. It certainly fits what we heard in 2Corinthians, “In every way we are oppressed, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; knocked down but not destroyed; always bearing forth in the body the death of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might also be revealed in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10) Those closest to the destruction, the death, the horror, the brokenness are also the ones who have been able to feel the Spirit moving within them to bring change. They are NOT crushed, they’re motivated. They are NOT in despair, they’re channeling their anger. They have seen death, seen the death of members of the body of Christ, and they are letting God use them to move the state and the country towards life.

And the actions taken by activists, faith leaders, and every day people in Nashville and in TN has ended up kicking me in the pants too. They’ve reminded me of the power of hope. They’ve reminded me of the power of God.

Then, I heard a phrase worth sharing from the Rev. Dionne Boissiere, Chaplain of the Church Center for the United Nations. She said, ‘The faithfulness of God has nothing to do with the recklessness of humanity.” So, when we’re just frustrated beyond anything with the recklessness of humanity, we can rest assured that EVEN THAT can’t stop God over the long run.

Now, this doesn’t change the horrors of gun violence or violence in our society. There is still work to be done, and it still needs to be done. But work done with HOPE and with GOD is really different than drudgery.

The hope we’re talking about is the resurrection narrative itself. That death doesn’t have the final word, that LOVE does. That even when the worst things happen, they aren’t the end of hope. That good can grow, even out of bad. That life has a power and a force of its own, and while it may have to change course to avoid dead-ends, it keeps going. That injustice may have a stronghold, but it is not impenetrable. That … well, we may be oppressed but we are not crushed. That HOPE may be knocked down, but it cannot be destroyed. That love cannot be stopped.

Luke takes this on with slightly different metaphors, ones based in Isaiah, ones that I am a little less comfortable with because I have learned a lot from people who live with disabilities. One of the things I’ve learned is that for some the metaphors of “healing” are painful because they wish for “healing” that doesn’t ever come to them. To others the metaphors of “healing” are painful because it implies they are broken or less than, and they experiences themselves as whole and full – blessed in a different way. This awareness itself is a blessing, one that comes from being in an era with technological and medical capacities to support people with many different needs and many different capabilities.

In any case, I hear even better news from 2 Corinthians today, than Luke, which is a fun change of pace for me.

This week is an interesting one, if things go according to plan this is the last sermon I am pre-recording in my attic (before we moved, in the spare bedroom). I’ve preached 4 Easter sermons this way, and pre-recorded for 38 months. I don’t care to calculate how many sermons that is. Next week we expect Livesteaming to be up and running, and I’ll just preach one sermon and it will be recorded from worship which sounds …. weird at this point.

Also, this is one of the signs that the world which turned upside down in March of 2020 is in a different place now. I’m not claiming all is well, and I’m well aware that what used to be normal will never be again. But we are worshipping in person, we are about to have the technology to include people at home in real time (YAY inclusion), and we are entering what I expect may be a long term new normal.

Friends, that’s hopeful.

Next Sunday, as well, I won’t be preaching because Bishop Karen Oliveto will be in Schenectady, sharing the Good News of God. We invited her to join us in 2020 as the start of our 25 year reconciling celebration, and here it is 2023 and we’re delighted to celebrate our 27th year of being reconciling. In fact, we’re so excited that we’re going to spend May AND June talking about God’s work of love and inclusion, the incredible ways God’s love has been experienced, and the commitments we have to keep on working with God until all God’s people can be welcomed and CELEBRATED in God’s churches.

Friends, that’s hopeful. Especially for all the people out there who need that good news and haven’t heard that people of God who call themselves Jesus followers know about the expansive nature of God’s love.

I hope that the inner parts of your being are perking up a little bit at these mentions of God’s hope and love. That they too hear that oppression can’t crush us, nor break us. That even death can’t stop the work God is up to in the world. That nothing, nothing, NOTHING can stop the love of God.

That “death is at work in us, but life in you all.” Life is at work in us. Life is at work in the world. We can have hope, because of God.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

1 https://urbaanite.com/mlk-nashville-nashville-speeches/

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

April 30, 2023

Uncategorized

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January 15, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Foolish and Wise" based on Isaiah 52:1-10 and 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Again and again I find myself at the website for the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and reading over the principles of Rev. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Every time I read them, I learn. Every time I read them I notice again how deeply rooted Rev. Dr. King was in following Jesus, and in the wisdom of other traditions that also teach nonviolence.

This week, the principle that jumped out was number 2: Nonviolence Seeks to Win Friendship and Understanding.

The outcome of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation1

It is always worth reviewing the idea of the Beloved Community, central as it is to Rev. Dr. King’s thinking. The Commission on Religion and Race wrote about this for us, “Philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce first conceived the Beloved Community concept; later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr popularized it during the Civil Rights Movement. Rev. Dr. King envisioned that the Beloved Community to be a global movement where the agape love of God would be the driving force to redemption and reconciliation and a place where all people can share in the abundance of wealth in the world. In the Beloved Community, all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and dehumanization are eradicated and countered by a more inclusive, interdependent existence of people who live in non-violent harmony with one another.”2

That is, the Beloved Community is formed from the truths of our 1 Corinthians passage. The ways to move from systems of power-over, oppression, and hierarchy don’t tend to come from those who hold the power, engage in the oppression, and maintain the hierarchy. Rather, the wisdom to see how things work, why things don’t work, and what could be better tends to come from those disempowered, oppressed, and on the bottom of a hierarchy. The ones lowborn, “foolish” in the ways of the world, insignificant, weak. They’re the ones most likely to listen to God, to respond to God’s urgings, to find new ways.

The nonviolent social movement of Rev. Dr. King, Ghandi, and Jesus are most notable to me, in that they sought to eliminate oppression with LOVE. They did not seek to eliminate the oppressors, only the oppression. They wanted to CHANGE relationships, not stop them. They saw that there is real power in community, in connection, in solidarity, and in peace. World changing power, and they all used it. Not power over, but power with.

There is the vision of the kindom, or the Beloved Community. The way of God in the world is not in power over, but power with. It is in humanizing ALL. It is in sharing abundant resources. It is in togetherness.

This, I think, is also the real meaning of the salvation discussed in Isaiah. The historical idea was of return, hope, freedom, and connection. And, when it is looked at carefully, it is clear that God is at work to move towards peace – towards wholistic well-being of all and each, towards joy – for all, towards comfort, towards freedom from oppression.

God’s dreams get spoken a little differently in each time and place, but in Isaiah and Paul, Jesus and Ghandi, Rev. Dr. King hopefully in each of us, they resonate with the same underlying melodies, hopes, and passions. God’s passion is for ALL to be WELL, together.

As you may remember, Rev. Dr. King talked about the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism as “forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle.”3 About poverty, he said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”4

Heavens. It is even less “new” now than when he said it. The existence of poverty within our nation is a choice our nation has made about it’s values, a choice that the Bible CLEARLY disagrees with. We could house everyone, and we could do it for LESS money than it costs us NOT to house everyone, but we choose not to. We could feed everyone, and the impact on our society as a whole would be profound, but we choose not to. We could provide affordable, excellent healthcare for everyone, once again at lower costs than our current system, but we choose not to.

As Ms. Bryce Covert summarized in an NYT opinion piece entitled “There is a Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things,” this summer,

“In a seminal 2001 paper, the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote tried to answer this very question: Why doesn’t this country have a welfare system that looks like the ones in European countries, progressively taxing those with the most wealth to redistribute resources to those with the least? Economic differences, they concluded, don’t explain it. But they did find that “racial fragmentation” has played a “major role” in keeping us from these policies in a way it hasn’t elsewhere. They also found that while Europeans see the poor as members of their own group who are merely unfortunate, Americans see them as lazy “others.” American voters are less likely to demand that their leaders pass policies that help the least well-off. “Racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately Black, unappealing to many voters,” they concluded.5

That is, our choices to allow people to struggle in poverty are inter-related with racism. Like Rev. Dr. King said.

The way I see it, at the center of all the evils and violence is the dehumanization of others. Which means that every SINGLE movement toward compassion is a movement away from violence, away from evil, towards the beloved community. Compassion MATTERS, for each of us, for all of us, and for the world we want to make. For the world we are making with God.

I subscribe to a newsletter from Emily Nagoski, who with her sister wrote “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” which I would put on a required reading list for humans if I had the power to make such a thing. Last week she entitled her email newsletter, “Burnout: You don’t have to Wait for the Revolution to Feel Better.”6

Her words were profound to me, and so I’m going to share them with you. She says that there are solutions to burnout, and they are neither the revolution nor self care. BUT RATHER, compassion. Speaking of society as a body, she says:

We help the body learn not to treat parts of itself as the enemy.

Just because a cell in our social body is different from us doesn’t make it “foreign” or a threat; its difference means that it plays a role in our social body that we ourselves cannot play, and so we must protect it, because our own wellbeing within this social body depends on every different cell sustaining its wellbeing. We can’t soothe the inflammation of the social body by attacking any part of it.

No, the cure for burnout can’t be some fantasy of revolution, nor is it the finger-trap of self-care. It is simply care; it is all of us turning toward each other with kindness and compassion. When we see each other’s exhaustion and overwhelm, we offer support without judgment. When we notice our own sense of inadequacy, we allow others to witness it and love us anyway. The “cure” is each of us declining to let the forces of racist, sexist, capitalist oppression stop us from loving the hell out of one other, come what may.

…

And if you’re worried I’m saying, “Don’t try to change the system; let’s just be nice to each other while the world burns,” I invite you to think bigger. Think outside the boring dynamics of Force A acting against Force B and so Force B retaliates with overwhelming power. Imagine instead Force B transforms into a cloud, saturating Force A with peace until it deliquesces and releases us into the natural, soft flow of being human.

Audre Lorde says: community built on honoring our differences. She calls us to “recognize difference as a crucial strength.” She says,

“Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community does not mean shedding our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

The cure is not “self-care.” The cure is simply care — all of us, caring for each other, by honoring our differences and loving one another because of them.

That’s it, dear ones. That’s how we do God’s work, how we build the kindom, how we live the Beloved Community, how we follow Jesus, how we continue the work of Rev. Dr. King. We love the hell out of each other, we simply care, we honor our differences and love one another. May God help us do it! Amen

1 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

2General Commission on Religion and Race. https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-beloved-community

3 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

4Ibid.

5 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/racism-paid-leave-child-care.html

6 https://emilynagoski.substack.com/p/burnout-you-dont-have-to-wait-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=287493&post_id=95085447&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Uncategorized

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

January 17, 2021
by Sara Baron

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

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

It
is easier to be still then.

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

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

Ready?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please
allow grace and love to fill you up.

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

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

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

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

January 17, 2021

Sermons

Untitled

January 19, 2020February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Two
years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas: Harry Potter,
Hogwarts Battle. We usually spend New Years together, and it is a
great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with
our niece and her mother. It is now fair to say that this is our
favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond
the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game
design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative
game. The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the
end either everyone wins or everyone loses. Which also means that no
one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost.
Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play
have winners and losers, and I’m generally OK with that, but there is
something really great about a collaborative game. It is especially
engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we
have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each
person’s strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of
their strengths.

The
game is hard, and we lose sometimes. Really, we lose about half of
the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing
just because the starting conditions are too difficult. But the
collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn’t THAT
bad. (Most of the time.)

I
find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun. When
I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was
mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive,
and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was
the least fun game imaginable. Yet,
there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is
inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and
competing against each other – and I’m really, really glad that
there are now super fun games that don’t buy into that model.

Collaborative
games seem more like the model of working for the common good. Maybe
it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word
“commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening
for me. I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways
of speaking about the kindom.

Over
the past 3+ years we’ve talked about Intersectional Justice and
Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy
for you, here is MFSA’s definition of its “intersectional
organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization
and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is
tied to concepts of power and privilege. Intersectional organizing
recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels.
Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is
imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space
for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework
led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of
resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical
intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and
relationship building.

To
bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means
acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as
possible so you can make some gains really doesn’t help that much.
For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to
vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women.
That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of
women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing. There have
been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time
it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During
an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically
about power. That is, we all know what traits are most associated
with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English
speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness,
educated, tall… etc, right? In each case, there is an opposite to
the description that is disempowered. I’m expecting you are
following thus far. Well, because the people who have the traits
connected to power control the resources, they use most of them! And
then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up
fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful
are willing to share. There are two
REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those
resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have
power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight
AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.

That
is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves,
and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to
play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance
themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and
needed. And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality
is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the
complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways
and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while
working for good. It is really, really hard.

It
is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week. The
passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you
should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore
the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“ The way I
heard that was, don’t just work for the benefit of a few, even if
they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of
ALL. And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational
work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better.
Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was
organizing around poverty. As several of the past year’s
Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers
that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to
divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and
impoverished people of color wouldn’t start working together against
their common oppressor. Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign was
designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly
for every’s good. As King once said, “In your struggle for
justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to
defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that
he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking
justice for him as well as yourself.” Because, truly, oppressing
anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today,
other’s have picked up Dr. King’s mantle, and there is an active Poor
People’s Campaign underway. While their “Fundamental Principals”
are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I
couldn’t edit them down. I want you hear, and be filled with hope,
and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they
are:

We are rooted
in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and
constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is
necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.
We
are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those
most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and
ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of
division.
We
believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that
exploit poor communities and communities of color and the
transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy”
that values all humanity.
We
believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.
We
believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the
richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the
United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome
poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic
exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.
We
recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic
oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally
and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be
understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.
We
aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by
religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in
school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how
our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of
these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and
the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire
for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.
We
will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve
as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to
transform the political, economic and moral structures of our
society.
We
recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many
of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level,
and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even
executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.
We
will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or
candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee
of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or
Republican but about right and wrong.
We
uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a
way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We
are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues
and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that
are affecting us all.
The Campaign
and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent
tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This
campaign is DEEPLY good news. I encourage you to look them up, their
demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read.
There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the
Poor People’s Campaign, and I’d be happy to connect to to those who
are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.

Working
towards justice for all is really, really hard work. It can even be
overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of
the whole world. Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind
you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is
called to do all the work. In fact, we’re called to trust each other
and each other’s work, and to carefully discern what our work is to
do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good
people are at work. We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations,
and with God at our backs, we can and we will. And it is possible
because of collaboration. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

January 19, 2019

Sermons

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

November 26, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ, 337

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

Welcoming and Loving in Difficult Times

March 13, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/

By Michele Cole

03/12/17

You know, one of my
favorite holy days is Ash Wednesday, odd as that may sound. I can’t
really explain why that is, except that there’s something very
grounding about being reminded that we are from the earth and to it
we shall return. It’s a reminder that we are a part of the big
cosmic dance that includes all living things as well as inorganic
creations like rocks and sand (particularly beach sand! 
) Or maybe it fulfills some kind of need to take a step back and
really look at how I live in and relate to the world outside myself.
I know these days I love to hear Pastor Sara read the litany from Yom
Kippur when she preaches in the joint ecumenical service; it’s
beautiful and life affirming. The downside to Ash Wednesday, at least
for me, is that it’s the beginning of Lent, which I’ve never
liked very much. As many of you know I grew up Catholic, although in
talking with others I find it was much the same elsewhere during that
time. I was a very imaginative and sensitive child and my very
traditional parish emphasized during Lent what was wrong with me, and
what I needed to do to be worthy. I was taught, or at least I
believed, that I was so bad that Jesus had to die because of me; and
so of course I felt very guilty that I helped to kill God. This isn’t
a judgement on the religion in which I was raised. This is how it
was, and I took it all in.

However, that’s not the
end of the story. As I was reading an online article on the United
Methodist Church’s General Board of Discipleship website a light
bulb went off in my head. I realized that the focus of Lent has
changed since my childhood, and indeed began changing across
denominational Christianity a few decades ago. Rather than a time of
grimness that we just need to suffer through, the theology and
practice of Lent has changed its focus to embrace a quiet time of
reflection and preparation. This shift in perspective brought us back
to the days of the early Christ followers, when they saw Lent as a
time of preparation for the sacrament of Baptism. For them, Lent was
the home stretch, as it were, when converts to Jesus’ Way received
their final faith formation before they entered the sacred covenant
with Christ and Christ’s church. This time was not all inward
focused, however; community members and soon-to-be members were
expected to look outwardly as well, tending to those in need. Lent
culminated in Easter, but also in baptism into a new way of living
for oneself and others.

I also learned that for
this Lenten season, the Methodist Church has decided to focus on
living out our baptismal calling, with a look each week at a
different baptismal question. Now, before you decide this sermon is
going to be as dry as dust, please hear me out! Maybe it will be, but
I’m finding it quite interesting how all of this is coming
together. You see, this week’s question is – “Do you accept the
freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and
oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?” Quite a
well-timed question, as it fits in rather nicely with the Scriptural
passages I chose for today and, unfortunately, with the tenor of
world events that have been happening recently.

Our second reading for
today recalls the sheep and goats parable that is told just before
Matthew’s recounting of Jesus’ passion and resurrection. Given
the timing as the last instruction before the end, it can be thought
of as holding special emphasis as the final word on Jesus’ social
teachings. Let me put a little context around it, as I pulled most of
it out. This comes at the end of Matthew’s chapter 25, where Jesus
has been cautioning His followers about the coming of God’s kingdom
and what their attitudes and activities should be. He has already
told them to be alert, lest God come when they are not prepared, and
also to be bold, not cautious, as they go about spreading the Good
News and growing the number of disciples. Now he is taking those
teachings to a new level; not only are they to be concerned about
their own day to day living, but they are to notice and enhance the
lives of the neediest among them. This is not just a morality tale,
though, of how we are to act … it is also a tale of how we are to
BE in the world and what attributes we are to cultivate in ourselves.
For if you read the rest of the story, you will see that neither the
sheep who were kind to the needy nor the goats who were not, did it
because Jesus was alive in the marginalized. They didn’t realize it
was Him. Those who reached out expressed their compassionate care of
each other, their desire to help another in a time of great need. The
goats had no such compassion and in fact, by saying “we didn’t
realize it was you” betrayed their cynicism; had they known it was
Jesus certainly they would have done something for Him. For their
neighbor, not so much.

So ultimately this is a
love story, a story where we are the lovers, where because we are
loved we can in turn pass it on. It is a story that reminds us in
fairly clear language what we, in our love for each other, are to do.
Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, welcome the
stranger – while I imagine that we’ve heard these words many
times before, they are taking on new meaning today, in a world that
seems to get meaner and harder with each news cycle. I admit to being
somewhat of a Facebook junkie, and I spend some time each day reading
story after story about one group pitting themselves against another
more marginalized group, as if there is just a finite amount of love
and kindness in the world and it shouldn’t be spent on ‘them.’
More people are being overtly demonized, with more dire consequences,
than in any time in my memory. It’s easy enough to do, and there
are certain segments of our society now that seem to relish the task.
I was reminded of this when I saw Wicked last weekend, which was
fabulous by the way! 
I don’t know how many of you know the story but in a nutshell, it’s
a story about the ‘wicked’ witch of the west and how she came to
be wicked. And it turns out that it wasn’t her doing at all. She
was not ‘the bad one,’ but rather the victim of ‘othering.’
She was different from birth, with a different color skin from
everyone else, and so she was ostracized. She developed a talent for
doing spells and went to see the Wizard of Oz, who turned out to be
just a man, not really a wizard. She realized that he’d come into
power on a lie, and was in the process of eliminating all diversity
in the land of Oz. She argued with him and refused to join him;
instead she ran away. At which point the ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’
began to systematically demonize her, spreading rumors about her
evilness and telling lies about bad things that she had not done. By
the end of it, the people of Oz were thoroughly convinced that she
was bad to the bone, an evil wicked witch, even though her whole
reputation was built on lies. She was trying to do good, but the
castle was twisting everything she did, until finally she was no more
…

Which brings me back to
the present time, and the demonization of the ‘other,’ whether he
is an immigrant, or she is a refugee child fleeing from destruction
in her homeland, or they are a family of Muslims who are seeking
safety from an extremist organization that wants them dead. How are
we to think about the rhetoric that is flowing over us like so many
words, telling stories about the people who are leaving all they know
to come to where they hope is a safe place, guided only by their
hopes and the love of God who wants all God’s children to be safe.
Let’s take a moment to look at the lessons in the first reading,
when God called Abram and Sarai out of the land of their birth to
venture into a new land where their descendants will number like
stars in the sky.

Abram and Sarai were the
ultimate strangers; at a time when there were no Motel 6s or Google
Earth maps, they trusted God and went where they were told. They were
promised that they would be safe, that they would be led to a new
land, and that they would be a blessing to the world. This story
doesn’t say how they were treated along the way, whether they were
hassled or confronted, or whether they encountered the hospitality
that is so critical to so many stories in the Old Testament. What we
do know, though, is that they made it through to each place they were
led. They brought their customs and beliefs to a foreign land and
worshiped their God, and apparently were left alone to do this in
peace. And of course from them was born the Jewish people. This isn’t
just a creation story, though, detailing how the people of Israel
began. It is also a metaphor for how we are supposed to live, and to
think about others who are strangers in our lands. As Timothy F.
Simpson has pointed out in the online forum Political
Theology Today, this story is intended both
to make us think that we should be them (that is, that we should be
following where God leads, and trusting in God’s promises), but
also that we could be them. That like Sarai and Abram if we follow
where God leads we could be traveling to places we’ve never been
before, meeting people unlike us and bringing blessings to whoever is
there before us. This heightened sensitivity, or empathy, for the
stranger takes us in a couple of directions. It can lead us to put
ourselves in their place, encouraging us to treat them as we would
wish to be treated if we were far from home and family. We are also
led to recognize the blessings brought into our communities by those
whose talents and perspectives are different from our own. We are
called to be inclusive, to recognize the humanity of the stranger, to
be welcoming …

Welcoming … it can be
very hard for us to do, especially when those we greet look or act
differently from us, or from how we think they should. Heightened
tensions in the United States and around the world are resulting in
policies targeting Muslims and brown skinned people, murders of
people with brown skins or turbans, anti-Semitism resulting in bomb
threats and cemetery desecrations, and more murders of trans women of
color. In the absence of facts, ‘alternative truth’ is leading
Americans to fear and hate immigrants, refugees and anyone outside of
our comfort zone. Yet all is not yet lost, even though sometimes I’m
not sure I recognize our country anymore. Amid yells of “go back to
where you came from” we have to be the people of welcome, of
abundant love. We have to recognize the humanity of those who others
demonize, and share our humanity with them. We must model for the
world what we would like the world to become, and represent not only
the wanderer but also the One to whom we belong. If that sounds vague
I’m afraid it is, because each of us has a different talent to
share, and more or less time to exercise it. Each of us has a
different perspective on current events, and how we would like to
influence them. What I’m really suggesting is that we need to be
awake to what is going on around us at all levels of our society, and
to be ready to respond in whatever way makes the most sense for each
of us. As we seek to reach out to the least of these, and welcome the
strangers among us, we often need to look no farther than next to us,
or down the street, or sometimes even no farther than our own mirror.

In
the Matthew passage, the point is made that Christ has aligned
himself with the ‘least of these’ and in so doing, is found in
all of us. I would argue that when we think about bringing compassion
and love to each other, we should also pay attention to how we can
care for ourselves. It can be hard to do, I know, because I’m
working on it myself. It can be very easy to look after everyone else
but ignore our own very real needs for love, connection, compassion.
Right now I’m very concerned about how many people are hurting,
both the targets of nastiness and those of us who care about them and
for them. The 24 hour news cycle is producing lots of anger, despair
and hopelessness as it seems we go from one painful episode to
another. Many of us are simply exhausted and are struggling to make
sense of what’s happening around us. It’s in times like this that
we are called to nurture ourselves, to bring that same abundance of
compassion and love to ourselves that we give to each other. It’s
ok to recognize that our energy isn’t limitless and our passion
needs feeding before we can feed another.

This brings me to another
challenge that I’m struggling with; I don’t have an answer for
it, I just want to put it out here for your consideration. I’ve
talked a lot today about loving the least of these, and reaching out
to our neighbors, especially those who are being oppressed and
marginalized by society. But, that leaves out a group of people whom
we may not want to consider but who I feel we must. What about those
folks who are doing, saying and believing things that we find
absolutely abhorrent? Those whose attitudes we believe to be
completely wrong and even contrary to the Good News that we listen to
and love? I don’t know if you remember, but Sara preached about the
question I raised at the Connection gathering a few weeks ago,
wondering how peace and anger can co-exist, how we can be peaceful
without losing the edge that draws us into social action. I am now
raising a similar question, but one that may make us a little more
uncomfortable. At least it makes me squirm. I’m trying to figure
out how to love someone who I would much rather hate, or at least
detest a lot. Who I may actually think is dangerous to me or to our
society. I don’t mean that squishy kind of love that Kay Jewelers
sings about, but instead the robust love that we are told to bestow
on each other just for being a child of God in whom Jesus lives. What
does that love look like when its object is someone we don’t like?
How do we manifest it in our lives, and how do we come to terms with
it ourselves? I also wonder if, by saying that there are people who
by their words or actions don’t merit my love and concern, am I not
being just like those very people who hate others and wish ill for
them? Does the guilt or innocence of the person impact my Christian
love for them? Just a few of the questions swirling around in my
head. I’d welcome a conversation about them sometime if anyone
wants to take that one on!

Our readings for this
morning provide guidance as we consider the baptismal question I
posed earlier … “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives
you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they
present themselves?” If we are to answer yes to this question, we
must follow the direction we receive from God to welcome the stranger
among us. To feed, clothe, visit and care for the least among us
with an abundant compassion and love that reaches out because our
neighbor is in need, recognizing that Christ lives in everyone we
touch. To care for ourselves because we see the Christ in ourselves,
and to provide us with the strength and determination to keep
reaching out where we are needed. And finally to love without measure
not only those who are loveable, or those who we ‘should’ love
but also those who think differently from us or who have different
values. Because to resist evil and injustice do we not need to
counter it with love as well as with action? As Martin Luther King
Jr. said in his 1963 book of sermons Strength
to Love, “Returning hate for hate
multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of
stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies
toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says
“Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and
ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an
impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else?
The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing
wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.” These were timely words in 1963 when Martin
Luther King Jr put them to paper. They are equally of timely today.
May we find it in ourselves to love our enemies, even as we struggle
for a world where all are treated fairly and welcomed without
hesitation.

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady