Radical Nonviolence

March 8, 2026April 1, 2026
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 Ibid, p. 178

3 Ibid, p. 179.

4 Ibid, p. 182.

5 Ibid, p. 214.

6 Ibid, p. 224.

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

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

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

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

March 8, 2026

Sermons

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

September 29, 2024
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kindom. The fear-free kindom of God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 29, 2024

Uncategorized

Untitled

May 29, 2022
by Sara Baron

“Resurrection People” based on Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 & John 17:20-26

There have been so many mass shootings. There have been so many that I suspect all of us have been touched by them not just on the news but also more directly, whether they be from afar, or from close up. My mother spent a year at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A friend went to the “other” high school – not to Columbine. Another friend grew up in the Conklin United Methodist Church, and to Susquehanna Valley Central schools. (The location of the young man who committed mass murder in Buffalo). These little connections make these deaths and the violence very, very real.

For years it seemed like the primary work of Schenectady Clergy Against Hate was to be gathering together with marginalized communities to speak to the pain of attacks against them. We got good at it. I’m still upset about that.

There isn’t much point in standing in this pulpit and decrying a lack of reasonable gun control laws – it is preaching to the choir. But also, how can one stand in this pulpit and do anything other than name the abomination that is a society that puts weapons of mass murder in the hands of those who engage in hate crimes, and those who wish to kill children. Buffalo and Uvalde. Back to back. But we all know what happened after Sandy Hook.

(Nothing.)

We live in a country that says it values the right to bear arms, but does so without providing a right to safety. We live in a country that won’t change its laws because the gun manufacturers have too strong of a lobby. We live in a country that is more invested in profits from murder than in preventing murder.

How can we do anything but grieve?

We live in a violent society, and it impacts us in so very many ways. We live in a violent society.

It breaks my heart. Sometimes it threatens to break my spirit.

But, I’m a person of faith, and so I choose to dream with you and with God about the nonviolent society that God wants for us, the beloved community that Dr. King spoke of, the kindom of God Jesus named, the true “Promised Land” of the people of God. I don’t want to give more time to violence.

Sure, I’m still going to contact my representatives and ask for changes to our gun laws. Sure, I’m still going to object to private prisons and solitary confinement and police brutality, and the like. That isn’t going to end. We can’t get from here to there without actual change.

But first and foremost, I want to follow Jesus on the path of nonviolence. I want to give my energy to how things should be. I don’t want to engage violence with violence. I want to engage the world with love.

Also, we aren’t going to get from here to there without knowing what we’re aiming at.

The text we have from John this week is as convoluted as John tends to be. But his point is that the loving community of faith is meant to be a living expression of the love of God. Jesus prays, asking that we might learn how to love. Jesus tries to place in the hearts of his followers, one more seed in hopes that it will grow: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.“ (17:26) We’re told, time and time again, that it is by loving each other in faith community that the world is changed. We start with each other.

The text from Revelation includes the very last words of the Bible, and I’m told that they’re best interpreted, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” There is a universality, a hope in both passages that the love that starts with Jesus and extends to the community of faith may become the norm in the world at large, and eventually the way the world works. We end with everyone.

For a very long time, Christianity was so profoundly peaceful that it was assumed a Christian could not fight in a war. (This changed around the time there was a desire for Crusades. Sigh.) This is still true enough that our Social Principals state, “We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ.” (165.c) United Methodists are able to use our faith as the bases of being a conscientious objector in the face of a draft.

Yet, there are so many ways that violence seeps in. It seeps into our language. It seeps in to our values. It seems into our lives. At times, it seems right into our faith.

We often talk these days about “echo chambers” and the distances between people of different political parties. We bemoan the increasing partisanship of our society. Which is good, because it is dangerous.

When I need to be reminded of the power of nonviolence, and how deeply rooted it is in my faith, I go back to the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Their fundamental tenet, #3: Nonviolence Seeks to Defeat Injustice, or Evil, Not People.

Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people.
The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil not persons victimized by evil.

Just saying those words reminds me that nonviolence requires great strength, and a community commitment to it. Reminding each other that those who do evil are victims and are not evil takes a faith community. I’ve often been struck by those in this community who have the patience to pray for those who do great harm, and how they guide and remind the rest of us of that need.

I have been for many years a student of “Nonviolent Communication” but if I’m honest, within that community there is a desire to change the name to “Compassionate Communication.” People do not want to define themselves AGAINST something, not even AGAINST violence, but rather FOR sometime, FOR compassion. I think they’re onto something. I think turning towards what we want the world to look like matters, even in little ways.

Our gospels tell us Jesus prayed for those who were crucified with him, and for those who crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34). In the midst of dying by state-sponsored violence, Jesus offered compassion, grace, mercy, forgiveness.

That’s the one we follow.

But also, we follow the one who told us to “turn the other cheek” and this is, of course, were our faith gets really interesting. Because to “turn the other cheek” is not simply to accept violence from another passively. To turn the other cheek – because of lack of toilet paper that created a societal norm that only allowed right hands to be used in public and because of a societal norm that indicated one backhanded a subordinate and slapped an equal – was to demand equality without returning violence with violence. Similarly, Jesus’ words on the cross take back the upper hand. They take the power of forgiveness. They take the power of knowledge. In the face of violence, they offer compassion and prove it to be a potent force.

This is the 7th, and last, Sunday of Easter. This is the final time this year that our primary focus is on the Easter Story (well, kinda, every Sunday is a “little Easter” but go with me).

There are many ways to understand Jesus’s resurrection, but for today, let’s focus on this one: The greatest threat the Empire had was violence, in particular violence in the form of a horrid public death. But resurrection says violence doesn’t get the final answer, not even death gets the final answer. Resurrection says that compassion gets the final answer. Mercy gets the final answer. Peace gets the final answer. LOVE gets the final answer.

Nothing, nothing, NOTHING could stop the love of God in Jesus. Romans 8:35-39.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Violence has a lot of power. A gut wrenching, sickening, disgusting amount of power.

And yet even in the midst of mass murders, we are Easter people. Easter, exists as a response to the violence of the world. We are Resurrection People. We are people of peace, and compassion, and nonviolence. We are people who know that love wins in the end. We are people who believe our lives can be useful in bringing peace, compassion, justice, and hope to the world. We are followers of a creative, loving, compassionate Savior, who could not even be stopped by death.

We are a Resurrection People.

Lord, hear our prayers. 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

May 29, 2022

Uncategorized

“The Only Way” based on Isaiah 61:1-4 and Luke…

February 6, 2022
by Sara Baron

I’ve
been wondering about this story of Jesus being attacked on a cliff
for as long as I can remember. How did Jesus get out? Perhaps
because of Sunday School materials from my childhood, I have an image
in my head of people fighting and kicking up a cloud of dust, out of
which Jesus walks unscathed. Or, perhaps this really is the
implication of the end of the story, “But he passed through the
midst of them and went on his way.” (4:30) 🤷🏻‍♀️

The
long standing question of “how did get out of such a dangerous
situation” has often distracted me from a far simpler reality:
this is a disturbing story. Jesus is at home, a place we might think
he would be particularly safe. Jesus is speaking in the center of
religious worship, a place we might hope would be particularly
nonviolent. Jesus is claiming the care of God for the people of God,
to people who definitely knew God and needed care – a gift that we
might hope would be well received.

Instead,
they were “filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the
town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was
built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” (4:28b-29)
Now, I can analyze what was going on that made them so mad. (Jesus
claimed more “honor” than was his fair share, in a system where
honor was a 0-sum game.) But in terms of the story being a disturbing
one, it doesn’t matter that much. This attack on Jesus by his
people, a potentially deadly attack, is just awful.

Scholars
think Luke is using this story to foreshadow how Jesus’ message will
be received – that while some will listen and be moved, others will
respond with violence to maintain the status quo. And, that actually
helps, because it brings into focus that the end of Jesus’s life is
really disturbing too. I have never managed to come to iaece with
capital punishment, and I find each instance of state-sponsored
killing to be … well, a lot more than disturbing. But let’s stick
with disturbing for a moment.

While
I had the opportunity to regularly hear fantastic preachers as a
kid, and had thoughtful Sunday School teachers and intentional Youth
Group leaders, the US culture’s basic atonement theory still
penetrated my consciousness. I grew up thinking that I was supposed
to believe that “Jesus died for my sins” and, since that was
something I was supposed to be grateful for, that meant that Jesus’
death was … useful? Good? (You might think I’d avoid “good”
but if so, consider “Good Friday.”)

As
I’ve grown, I’ve been blessed with spaciousness to consider what I
really believe, and to question things that don’t make sense to me.
While I seek to extend that spaciousness to others, and respect
differences in faith, for me that has meant leaving behind “Jesus
died for my sins” and leaving in its place, “Jesus died because
his movement threatened the power of the powerful and whenever I am
complicit in protecting existent power structures, I am engaging in
the same behavior that got him killed.” (I’ll admit, it has less
of a ring to it.)

I’ve
come back around to finding it disturbing that Jesus, who was a
powerful prophet, a man of incredible morality,
a truly amazing teacher, a notable healer, a wise mystic, AND a
liberator of the oppressed was killed because of exactly those
things. In fact, I’m back to finding it disturbing when people are
killed, and that includes those who are killed by state-sponsored
violence.

So,
this early narrative in Luke is a disturbing story that foreshadows a
disturbing story, which end up bookending most of Jesus’
ministry. All that Jesus offers in teaching, healing, and empowering
has over it the shadow of how threatening people find it to have
systems disrupted.

Luke
uses Isaiah’s vision of someone acting on God’s behalf to

bring
good news to the oppressed,
bind
up the broken-hearted,
proclaim
liberty to the captives,
release
to the prisoners;
proclaim
the year of the Lord’s favor,
to
comfort all who mourn;
repair
the ruined cities,
(etc)

and
Luke notes, right from the get-go, that this vision of God and being
one called upon to enact it is DANGEROUS work.

In
the end, Jesus’ untimely death was initiated by the powerful
religious authorities, who thought that his movement threatened the
well-being of the entire Jewish population. It feels like a
parallel to this story, where it seems that the hometown
faithful were terrified by the implications of what Jesus was going
to do.

They
would all have been saying to Jesus, “Don’t rock the boat!” Now,
“Don’t rock the boat,” is very good advice for getting ahead in
life, moving up ladders of institutional power, being generally
well-liked, and… in lots of cases… surviving. However, it turns
out that it is not the Jesus way, and that means it isn’t the way of
Jesus followers either.

Jesus
followed the path of nonviolence. That one is a difficult path, but
one that is abundant in grace and hope. If we think about the work
named in Isaiah 61, it becomes clear that this is profoundly
nonviolent work. Not only is the work itself NOT violent (a good
starting point) but it is aimed at disentangling the power of
violence that disrupts life itself.

It
is far too easy to ONLY take notice of direct, visible, physical
violence – and miss all the other kinds. Those of us who have been
trained in Safe Sanctuaries were reminded that abuse itself can look
like physical abuse, OR it can look like sexual abuse, OR it can look
like emotional abuse, OR it can look like neglect. Furthermore,
violence can also look like the simple threat of violence that is
used to keep people in check, even if it isn’t regularly used.

And,
on top of that, violence can also be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Violence includes allowing people to be hungry when there is abundant
food – because some people don’t “earn enough” to eat. That’s
a violence that looks like societal neglect. Violence looks like
people not being able to get health care, or get access to necessary
medication, or get life-saving treatment because of who they are or
what they have. That’s a violence that kills, but more out of LACK
of access than direct attacks. Violence looks like campaigns to
doctors to prescribe opiates, knowing they’d lead to addiction,
knowing they’d lead to death – but choosing profit over lives.
Violence looks like the laws we have that prevent people with
convictions from being able to have places to live, or food to eat,
or jobs to provide for their needs – even when convictions
themselves have more to do with our “justice” system than they do
with individual actions.

Or,
to make this a little bit more concise, all forms of inequity and
hierarchy are less visible forms of violence.

So.
Violence is a lot.

Which
means that non-violence is a lot.

And,
for those of you tuning in for the first time, Jesus led a movement
of NON-VIOLENCE and to choose to be a Jesus follower is to choose the
ways of NON-VIOLENCE.

There
was a fun note in the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels¹
that said, “an over-quick resort to violence is often an unintended
public admission of failure. In honor challenge, the party that
first resorts to violence loses the exchange: a resort to violence
indicates that wits have failed and bully tactics have taken over.”²
So part of what we’re seeing in this story is that violence tries to
take Jesus down, which itself proves Jesus right, and he does NOT
resort to violence, but rather walks away from it.

And,
then he spends his ministry as a non-violent religious leader who
attempts to CHANGE the systems of oppression that are less visible
forms of violence. And then he invites us to follow him.

One
of the most visible nonviolent religious followers of Jesus in recent
times was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and The King Center
continues to teach the principles and practices of non-violence. I
regularly reread them, and seek further education on nonviolence as a
way of following Jesus and respecting the movement Dr. King was a
part of.³
The King Center states, “The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and
MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle.”
and expands on what that means, as well as naming the principles of
nonviolence and steps in nonviolent social change. For example:

PRINCIPLE
ONE: Nonviolence Is a Way of Life for Courageous People.

It
is not a method for cowards; it does resist.
It
is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
It
is aggressive spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

I
highly recommend the teachings of the King Center as further reading,
for good living.

For
this moment, however, I have a very pragmatic suggestion about
nonviolence. I have seen that there are HIGH levels of angst and
anxiety pretty much everywhere right now. I’m told others have
noticed this too, and it is often being seen via emotional outbursts
at strangers (particularly ones who work in some form of customer
service) or at loved ones (because that’s where we most often let go
of steam).

I
believe that one of the most powerful tools of nonviolence is
COMPASSION, and I believe it is needed in TWO directions. One
direction is towards others who are struggling, with a hope that we
might respond with calm, caring, empathy when others need it. The
other is towards ourselves – which is BOTH how we gain the capacity
to respond with calm to others AND how we work towards fewer
outbursts of our own.

This
week a fellow clergy person asked for help in dealing with her pent
up anger, and asked clergy sisters how they do it. The responses
were so helpful: exercise! Therapy! Throwing things that are safe
to throw and not at anything living! Medicine! Screaming! …. and
also self compassion. (I was asked, I answered.) To deal with
anger, for me, means I need to know what is under it – what value I
hold or need I have is being violated, so I can figure out how I want
to respond.⁴

Although,
sometimes before I can get to dealing with the anger, I have to do
the work of admitting that I’m angry, and to do that I take the
advice of Thich Naht Hahn, and breath in “I’m angry” and breath
out “I’m angry” until I get the sense that the anger has been
acknowledged. Then I can look at the why under the anger.

We
can’t build God’s kindom without doing it nonviolently.

Violence
isn’t going to get us to nonviolent justice. And to be nonviolent is
WORK. It takes INTENTION, and PRACTICE, and COMMUNITY, and heaps of
GRACE. It means we are constantly working on it, in ourselves and
with each other. It means every moment is an opportunity to try
again.

The
world responded with violence to God’s vision of nonviolence, and to
Jesus’ teachings of justice. But Jesus responded with the power of
nonviolence anyway, and it turns out that was enough so that we’re
still here, following in his way, 2000 years later. Nonviolence
isn’t the fastest way, but it is the only way. May God help us along
our way. Amen

As
we all grow and learn, we’re trying to learn how to listen to the
lessons of our emotions AND learn how to allow our emotions space to
be our teachers WITHOUT letting them hurt us or others. May God help
us learn those lessons. Amen

1I’m
well aware that my sermons could be set up as Bingo games, with this
book being one of the squares, Walter Brueggemann being another,
etc. Just acknowledging reality here.

2 Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Mark 1:21-34” p. 244.

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

4
https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/…/wc…)

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

February 6, 2022

Sermons

“Life, Death, and Resurrection“ based on Isaiah 25:6-9 and Mark…

April 1, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

When I was a little girl, 8 years old I think, my family adopted a calico cat we named Marble Cake. We adopted her from the Humane Society, and she was beautiful. She was a little bit wild! The first time I held her, she extended her claws and exited by walking down my back. My parents thought she’d been mistreated earlier in her life, and assured us that if we were kind to her she would settle down.

The thing is, they were right. She changed in the matter of months. She was sweet and cuddly, a wonderful lap cat, and a fantastic companion for 18 years! Looking back on that moment when she settled into our lives, I’m especially grateful for my parents’ wisdom. Marble Cake needed to be able to establish her boundaries and have them be respected, so that the love we wanted to give her could break through. If we had ignored her, she wouldn’t have experienced love. If we had violated her boundaries, she never would have come to trust us. Worst of all, if we had fought back when – acting in fear- she hurt us, there would have been escalating violence.

I suspect that the story I just shared is particularly obvious to most of you. Hurting mammals respond with fear and fear often comes out as aggression. And any mammal who has been hurt needs consistent, gentle, loving care; and when it comes, miraculous changes occur. The irony is that human beings forget that we too are mammals, and we too need consistent, gentle, loving care. This forgetting causes problems on both the personal and the societal scale.

I want to look at the ways this plays out on the societal level. Let’s think for a moment about a group who is seen as a threat. This happens often enough! In fact, in the time of Jesus, the Jesus movement itself was seen as a threat. Conversely, from the perspective of the Jesus movement, the domination system of the Roman Empire was a threat!

Each of them responded VERY differently to the perceived threat though. The Roman Empire and its Roman appointed Jerusalem leaders worked the way most societies do throughout time. They decided to eliminate the threat, silence it, stop it. More concretely, they decided to kill Jesus to prevent the movement from continuing. Even though the Jesus movement was a nonviolent one, they stopped it violently. This is the most common way that the world works 🙁

Within the Jesus movement, those in power and authority were also a threat! The Jesus movement compromised primarily Galilean peasants whose lives were already threatened by the ways money flowed to the top in the domination system with didn’t leave enough for everyone to survive. They were further threatened when the Jerusalem leaders got scared of them. Jesus wasn’t trying to eliminate anyone though, he wasn’t even thinking of them as threats or as enemies. This is the man who taught love of enemies. Jesus was trying to change the system so that everyone benefitted, INCLUDING those who were currently oppressors. His nonviolent movement was aimed at the commonwealth of God where everyone can thrive. Now, of course, the oppressed are the most harmed in any system of oppression, BUT the oppressors are always also dehumanized by their participation in the system. Jesus was trying to bring a fuller life and a deeper humanity to all people, he was trying to bless the oppressors.

Reflecting back on Marble Cake, the Empire hit back when the cats claws came out, and Jesus loved the cat. Sometimes this is easier to see closer to our lives today. 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

Rev. Dr. King and his followers acted like Jesus and his followers. They followed the path of nonviolence that transforms violence itself with the power of love. It is not an easy path, but it is a transformative one.

The world in the time of Jesus, as it was before him and as it has been after him, tended towards the ways of violence, oppression, and domination. There is a contrast between the ways the world most often has worked and the ways God would have the world work. And the primary difference is that the world uses violence to uphold inequity while God calls us to nonviolence and profound equity. (As people normalized to a capitalistic system, this should be squirmy.)

Jesus threatened the domination system of his day, in many ways. He offered free healing, which upset the economic systems dependent on gaining wealth from people’s illness. He taught everyone who came to him, which flagrantly defied the rules of social order (most particularly that only men were worthy of studying God). His teachings illuminated the injustices of the world around him. He spoke in ways that called out those who benefited from oppressing others, including in his own faith tradition. Additionally, he engaged in nonviolent direct action against the injustices of the Roman-Appointed Temple and the Roman-Controlled Passover celebrations. Worse yet, he was profoundly popular with the masses who were rekindling the power of their own faith tradition to find hope, connection, and reasons to challenge the way things were.

So, the Roman appointed Jerusalem leaders killed him. Yet, he maintained his commitment to nonviolence. He didn’t fight back, he didn’t flee, nor did he accept that what was being done was acceptable. He was killed, but he remained nonviolent and committed to God and God’s vision. He didn’t let the threat of violence, and the fear it induces, change his path.

This becomes particularly significant today. Marcus Borg said, “Easter is God’s YES to the World’s NO.” The World, with its preference for systems of domination and oppression, killed Jesus. The threat of violence became the punishment of death, and the world’s strongest commendation. But it failed.

Violence couldn’t force Jesus to comply, or conform, or even fight back and become a part of itself. Violence was powerless against Jesus! Death was powerless against Jesus, because they couldn’t change him or stop him! Because Jesus was able to face violence with nonviolence and disrupt its power, we know that we can too.²

Furthermore, the reason the Empire used violence against Jesus was to stop the Jesus movement. In that, it radically failed. Initially, their tactics worked. Peter was too afraid to claim Jesus, even after he’d followed him to find out what was happening. The disciples stayed away while he was crucified. (Exception being the female disciples who seem to have been there the whole time, although to be fair to the males, I don’t think they were seen as a threat and therefore weren’t threatened in the same ways. Likely they were mostly invisible to those who killed Jesus.)

So, the tactics of violence to induce fear worked BUT only temporarily. Then SOMETHING happened and changed things. Those same disciples who had denied Jesus and disappeared into the night became the leaders of the continuing Jesus movement and were unstoppable by the threat of violence from that point onward. All of the (remaining, male) disciples remained nonviolent while they were killed by the violence of the Empire. Whatever it was that changed the disciples from fear to fearlessness, from allowing violence to impact their actions to being impervious to violence, that’s what we call resurrection.

And it is our inheritance today. Jesus had a commitment to nonviolence, one that refused to be changed by the threat of violence. His disciples learned it. Today we celebrate it, and in our lives we are able to claim it! We are, today, the Body of Christ continuing his work and his legacy, and that requires that we use his means to seek his ends. To be followers in the way of Jesus “requires the unconditional and unilateral renunciation of violence.”³ Without that, we would easily fall into the other methods of fear, retribution, and fighting violence with violence. And Rev. Dr. King so clearly told us, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”⁴

The system of domination, oppression, and violence killed Jesus, but failed to stop his movement. God and Jesus can’t be stopped even by death! The Jesus movement got stronger. God’s work in the world built strength!

Mark tells us all this with only an empty tomb. In this earliest of gospels, all we get is the already fearless women, the suggestion of resurrection through a messenger, the hope for the disciples, and the fear that ends it all. This is the original ending of the Gospel of Mark and it is strikingly abrupt. “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The end 😉 Scholars think the ending is intended to motivate action, that the listener would think “well, if the women didn’t tell, I have to” and/or “if they were afraid, I can overcome my fear and participate in the resurrection that they’re missing!”

To live out God’s nonviolence, is to live out God’s love, and is to live the kindom of God in the now. Some of this living is in celebrating, and that’s our particular work today! We are to see, name, and celebrate. We see, name, and celebrate nonviolence, the kindom, and resurrection. It is all around us, when we are looking. It is in the decrease in worldwide poverty and hunger, but also in the loving way our breakfast volunteers greet our breakfast guests. It is in the work of UMCOR, but also in the loving greetings shared as people enter the church. It is in the long, hard, work to change the norms and laws of society for the better but also in laughter between strangers.

Nonviolence, its expansive love, and its incredible power have changed the world and will change the world. Their power is seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus AND in his followers throughout time. May it be seen in us, in the strength of our love, and in the clarity of our commitment to follow his ways of nonviolence. May it be seen as we celebrate the resurrection and the reminder that violence cannot stop the love of our God. Amen

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

2Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Fortress Press: 1993 it seems), 141.

3Walter Wink, 149.

4King (same sermon on “Loving Your Enemies”)

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Expansive” based on Luke 23:32-43

March 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions for Sermon Talkback

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

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

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

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

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

How have you made sense of Jesus’ death?

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

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

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

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

3Wink, 28.

4Wink, 141.

5Wink, 148-9.

6Wink, 149.

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

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 18, 2018

Sermons

“The Power of Nonviolence” based on Isaiah 5:1-7 and Matthew…

October 8, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

As
my paternal grandmother (Nana) aged, she needed increasing levels of
help. After she’d transitioned to assisted living, her beloved only
son (my father) would often take her out on shopping excursions. My
Nana was a woman who loved to shop, ok, she was a woman who lived to
shop. It regularly amused me to talk to both my father and my Nana
after said excursions. My Nana would relate the experiences this
way, “Your father is SO impatient! All I wanted to do was go to a
few stores, look at what they had, and enjoy being out. All he
wanted was to get out of there. It is like he doesn’t know how to
have any fun!” My father would relate the experiences this way,
“Your grandmother takes forever! I took her to the store, she
wanted me to push her down each of the the aisles, slowly, and then
when we were done she’d want to do it again!”

Their
two versions of shopping together always made me giggle because it
was so clear that they were relating the same story, just from two
different experiences. I’ve been thinking about their shopping
excursions this week because the Gospel does the opposite.

As
far as I can figure it out, what we have in the Gospel is one story
being used for two totally different purposes at the same time
(without changing perspectives). One of these stories is the
narrative that Jesus told and the other is the one that the early
Christian community told, and they told them for VERY different
reasons.

Since
we are are much more familiar with the one the early Christian
community told, and since it is the version we see in the Gospel
today, we’re going to start by looking at that one. It is
brilliantly done, poetically beautiful, and intended to insult the
Jews. SIGH. As the Jesus Seminar puts it, “This
parable was a favorite in early Christian circles because it could
easily be allegorized [to the story where] God’s favor was
transferred from its original recipients (Israel) to its new heirs
(Christians, principally gentiles).”¹
This version intentionally reflections on Isaiah 5:1-7. They start
in parallel ways, with the description of the creation of the
vineyard: planting, enclosing, digging, building a watch tower. The
parallels in the beginning of the passages are intended to remind us
of the conclusion of the Isaiah reading, which says (in case you
forgot), “[God] expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness,
but heard a cry!” (Isaiah 5:7b, NRSV)

In
Isaiah the shock is that after all that work (and it takes years to
get grapes from the vineyard), the grapes were sour. The metaphor
indicates that God had invested in creating a just society with
Israel and is horrified that they didn’t become one. Matthew extends
this metaphor, indicating that he thinks the Jews failed to create a
just society, but that the Christians will succeed. In the
allegorical reading of the parable, God will kick out the tenants and
replace them. It seems that this reflects a time when Christians
were feeling disempowered and felt the need to tell stories that
empowered them. The problem is that for a whole lot of centuries
now, Christians have been the empowered and by continuing to tell
themselves this story they have disempowered Jewish people and
perpetuated antisemitism.

We
can be clear that the Matthew version is the creation of the
Christian community and not Jesus because it includes the detail
about the son being killed and cast off. Ched Myers writes, “The
son is killed and cast off (without proper burial, the ultimate
insult) Jesus too will be cast ‘outside’ the city of Jerusalem.”²

The
good news is that scholars think they can get a good guess at how the
original parable sounded, the one Jesus told. This is the other
version of the parable, and it wasn’t allegorical. William Herzog
points out the version in Matthew is quite different from others,
saying, “The parable begins with a description of a man creating a
vineyard yet neither Luke nor the Gospel of Thomas include these
details.”³
That means that the original parable wasn’t meant to be an extension
of Isaiah 5, and likely wasn’t intending to dismiss the Jews. The
Gospel of Thomas version is thought to be the closest to what Jesus
might actually have said:

“He
said, A […] person owned a vineyard and rented it to some
farmers, so they could work it and he could collect its crop from
them. He sent his slave so the farmers would give him the vineyard’s
crop. They grabbed him, beat him, and almost killed him, and the
slave returned and told his master. His master said, “Perhaps
he didn’t know them.” He sent another slave, and the farmers
beat that one as well. Then the master sent his son and said,
“Perhaps they’ll show my son some respect.” Because the
farmers knew that he was the heir to the vineyard, they grabbed him
and killed him.”⁴

This
parable seems to describe something that might have actually happened
during Jesus life time. It reflects tensions that were present in
Galilee at that time. In the Social Science Commentary they write,
“If we may assume that at the earliest stage of the Gospel
tradition the story was not an allegory about God’s dealings with
Israel, as it is now, it may well have been a warning to absentee
landowners expropriating and exporting the produce of the land.”⁵
Another commentator concludes, “And however the vengeance of the
owner may be interpreted allegorically, it certainly reflects a
landowner’s wrath, which which the landless Palestinian was all too
familiar.”⁶

So
the problem in the parable according to Herzog is “the creation of
a vineyard would, on economic grounds alone, have disturbed the
hearers of the parable. Because land in Galilee was largely
accounted for and intensively cultivated, ‘a man’ could acquire the
land required to build a vineyard only by taking it from someone
else. The most likely way he would have added the land to his
holdings was through foreclosure on loans to free peasant farmers who
were unable to pay off the loans because of poor harvests.”⁷
This means that “building vineyards was a ‘speculative investment’
and therefore the prerogative of the rich.”⁸
So the parable reflects economic realities that were doing GREAT
harm in Galilee at the time of Jesus.

It
also reflected a reality of violence at the time of Jesus. Herzog
continues, “If the peasants resorted to violence only when their
subsistence itself was threatened then the conversion of land from
farmland to a vineyard ([Mark] 12:1b, 2) would be an event that would
trigger such a response. The building of the vineyard and the
violence it generates also describes the conflict of two value
systems. Elites continually sought to expand their holdings and add
to their wealth at the expense of the peasants.”⁹
So, the creation of new vineyards was part of a system of wealth
transformation from the subsistence peasants to the very wealthy.
Herzog then seems this as step one in a spiral of violence that went
like this:

“The
spiral begins in the everyday oppression and exploitation of the poor
by the ruling class.This violence is often covert and sanctioned by
law, such as the hostile takeover of peasant land. More often than
not, peasants simply adjust and adapt to these incursions by the
elites in order to maintain their subsistence standard; but… even
peasants have a breaking point. When their very subsistence is
threatened, they will revolt. This is the second phrase of the
spiral of violence, and it is this phase that the parable depicts in
great detail. Inevitably, such rebellions or revolts are repressed
through the use of force, as the final question of the parable
suggests. This officially sanctioned violence defines the final
phase of the spiral of violence, which always occurs ‘under the
pretext of safeguarding public order [or] national security.”¹⁰

I
have, to this point, been following the commentaries of multiple
brilliant scholars: ones who differentiated the current form of the
parable from the one Jesus likely told, ones that explain the
economic factors of vineyards, ones that connect economic systems
with violence. However, first I’m going to draw my own conclusion,
one that none of them came around to.

To
get there, I want to go back to a seemingly simple point John Dominic
Crossan made while he was here. He mentioned that Jesus was killed
for being a non-violent revolutionary, and we know this because he
was killed alone instead of being killed with all of his followers
like he would have been if he’d led a violent revolt. John Dominic
Crossan is one of many scholars who think that Jesus was very
intentionally nonviolent, and that was a definitional characteristic
of his movement. I agree with them.

My
suspicion is that if Jesus told this story, he told it to talk about
violent resistance and nonviolent resistance. He would have told
this story to point out that violence tends to beget violence, and to
offer an alternative. The spiral of violence: taking away people’s
livelihoods, killing in self-defense, repressed rebellions was NOT
the vision Jesus had for the people. By naming how things tend to go
down in the world, by talking about how others were choosing to act,
he would have been differentiating his movement from theirs.

The
answer to Matthew’s question at the end of the parable, “Now when
the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
is that the owner would either kill them directly or displace them
without any resources to allow them to die slowly. In the
allegorical version of the story when God becomes the landowner,
that’s disgusting. However, if Jesus’ intention was to point out how
the world works and
offer an alternative,
it
is worth listening to.

This
week, it seems worth remembering that we are followers of a man who
lived in a time of violence, who choose nonviolence and invited
others to choose nonviolence with him. John Dominic Crossan invited
us to remember that there is power in nonviolence too, and that is a
power of the followers of Christ. The empire that perpetuated
violence in the of Jesus killed only him because they thought the
threat of violence would kill his movement, but it failed.
Nonviolent resistance could not be stopped so easily.

The
question for today is how we practice nonviolent resistance in the
ways that Jesus did: which were pointed, powerful, and effective in
caring for the vulnerable people of God. This week has felt
overwhelming: paying attention to yet another mass murder, learning
more and more about the ways that the people of Puerto Rico have been
systematically impoverished, and watching as another large swath of
people prepare for yet another hurricane. Nonviolent resistance
takes intentionality, focus, communication, collaboration,
creativity, and commitment. But it has brought justice to this world
time and time again. (If you need an example, the Civil Rights
Movement in this country is the most accessible, but the list is
really quite long). The next successful movements for justice will
be wise to follow the same method that Jesus used: nonviolent
resistance. For that I hope we can all say: Thanks be to God. Amen

1
Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five
Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), pages 510.

2
Ched Myers, Binding
the Strong Man
( Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988, 2008), page 309.

3
William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech,
(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), p. 101.

4Gospel
of Thomas 65:1-7, Scholars Version.

5
Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 110.

6
Myers, 309.

7
Herzog, 102.

8
Herzog, 103.

9
Herzog, 107-108.

10
Herzog, 108-109, working with work from Helder Camara, 1971.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 8, 2018