Untitled

December 17, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Yearning for Joy” based on Micah 6:6-8 and Luke 1:67-80

I was in a “non-violent communication” workshop one time, which is a place that teaches about human emotions and how to have them without judging yourself for them. So, we’re in this workshop and someone takes the MOST obvious of teaching moments, something that would almost make you groan except that in this case, I didn’t KNOW the thing she was teaching so I was grateful that she made it so obvious.

We’d just come back from lunch and we were asked how we were doing, with the request that we respond with how we were feeling. It was practice with using feeling words. The co-teacher responded, “I’m feeling torn. I’m excited to be teaching this group, and at the same time I’m concerned about the two students who aren’t back yet.” There I was, in my 30s, and I’d just learned that it was VALID to hold MORE THAN ONE EMOTION at the same time. Which was helpful, because I’d done that plenty, but somehow I hadn’t known it was OK.

(This is why I often share really simple stuff about emotions with the rest of you – it was late in life learning for me and its been really significant. I dearly hope most of you already knew this, but when I look around at our society, I’m not sure who would have taught you.)

So I learned that when I take my feelings seriously, both on their own, and as flags pointing me to things I care about and value, I am allowed to feel more than one emotion – even seemingly contradictory ones. This knowledge has been very helpful for me, particularly in moments in my life when my life and the world as a whole were doing really differently. Like when Trump was elected and there was fear of what his presidency would look like – and I was newly in love and wedding planning at the same time. Or when there was a global pandemic and the country was locked down and everything was hard and confusing and – oh – I finally got to become a parent.

Which is all a long introduction to say: this is Joy Sunday, and heavens that can be confusing in the midst of sadness, anger, fear, and exhaustion. There seem to be plenty of reasons to skip joy – grief and heartache, violence and injustice for example.

And yet, none of that negates joy. In fact, oddly enough, making space for any emotion can make space for others too. It is possible to be deeply sad and deeply joyful at the same time. They don’t cancel each other out, sometimes they even harmonize.

Micah 6:6-8 is one of my favorite texts, and I know that’s true for many of you. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We try, really hard, to live this. But sometimes, I can get off kilter. I can get so focused on trying to do justice, that I forget to notice I’m also supposed to love and savor kindness. I also can forget that God is God and I’m not, and the responsibility for the whole world is NOT on my shoulders.

In recent months I’ve been hearing nudges from God to make more space for joy. It has been interesting to notice my own resistance to it. There are biases in me that worry about making space for joy. They tell me that I was born with rose colored glasses, and being an adult member of society requires me to see the injustices of the world clearly. They tell me that joy is trite, and not very serious, and I should be serious. They remind me of the things that break my heart, and suggest I worry more about those and less about trivial stuff. Basically, there is this whole narrative within me that says I’m supposed to be a mature, responsible human, and that means I should just attend to the hard stuff of life.

And that’s all really interesting because I KNOW BETTER. I believe that God wants all people to be well, to survive and thrive, to experience joy and wonder. I don’t think that anyone is excluded from that, so I believe we are honoring creation and connecting with the Divine when we experience joy.

I know that joy is resistance, that there are parts of our society that try to create anxiety, and sadness for personal gain, and it is useful have joy to repel that. I also know that joy creates internal resistance, making it possible to do the hard things when they come because they aren’t the only thing.

I know a God who calls us to Sabbath- away from consumption and productively and into connection- and I know connection to be a great source of joy. That is, I believe God sets aside time for just joy so that we don’t get confused into thinking life is just about work and hardship.

I also have the honor of being with people at the end of their life, and being with loved ones after a person has died. I know which memories are savored, which things are regretted, and how meaning is made of a life – and it all ends up calling us towards joy.

Finally, and this one may seem backwards – when we mourn unfair and early deaths, a lot of what we grief is the lack of space for the person to continue to have joy in their lives. That would seem to tell us that those who love us want us to life and find joy and savor it! JUST LIKE GOD DOES.

I know all that, I can expound on it for a lot longer than this, and I still find it hard to let myself do it. Some people are better at this than others, and maybe some roles in life hold emotions differently than other roles. I don’t know. I kind of hope this is one of those sermons that doesn’t resonate easily.

Some of the ones who are wise about God suggest that goodness, wonder, and joy lie at the heart of all things, and if you can just see them at the right angle, everything positively sparkles with joy. Other wise ones about God say that it is a mark of true faith to have deep joy.

Which is all to say, if there is some resistance to joy in you – be it your own struggles, or seemingly conflicting emotions, or some narratives that tell you that joy isn’t right for you – I invite you to push back. God wants joy for you, and requests that you stop squelching it. Joy is for everyone, that’s actually the thing we’re doing. We’re working with God to build the kin-dom of God, and one of the ways we’ll know when we get there will be the abundance of joy. And one of the ways we get there is to stop getting in the way of joy!

So, a final story. When I was in college, I had a fairly significant fight with a friend because I’d shared that cookie cutters brought me joy and he maintained that was simply ridiculous. I argued I had a right to feel how I felt, he maintained that … well, basically it seems he said all the stuff I internalized as a narrative about what it means to be a mature adult. Hmmm, I thought I won that fight!! Anyway, there are sugar cookies available with coffee hour today, cut with cookie cutters and decorated with too many sprinkles, and I hope they bring you joy – you deserve it. Thanks be to God for that, amen.

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

December 17, 2023

Uncategorized

“Love. One. Another.” based Revelation 21:1-6 and John 13:31-35

May 15, 2022
by Sara Baron

I chose the Revelation 21
passage for the same reason I usually choose an “end of Revelation”
passage: they’re visions of hope for the future. And I think we NEED
hope.

This is a good one. God makes
God’s home on earth, so the people’s lives are no longer (in any way)
separate from the Holy One, and that means that death and pain,
mourning and crying are all over.

I like it.

I’m not sure what it says about
me that it feels like a cop-out.

(Please don’t answer that.)

This whole “the earth goes
away and gets replaced by a better one” thing – that’s what feels
like a cop-out. I’m pretty committed to working with God on building
the kindom of God on earth, and having the whole thing go away and
get replaced seems like it defeats the whole purpose.

Of course, I don’t think that
all of us working together, even with the Divine, are going to
eliminate pain and death from the human experience, so if that’s
where we are wanting to land, I can see why we’d need intervention to
get there.

And, of course, I can understand
the deep human yearning for connection with the Holy One, and for a
future without a separation from God.

But, while I remain grateful for
visions of hope with enough power to help us through the hard times,
I’m finding myself less inspired by Revelation’s vision of perfect
future than by John’s dream of a loving faith community.

“By this everyone will know
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” That one
sends shivers up my spine. That one feels like the call on my life.
That one feels like the best I’ve ever seen of people of faith and
faith communities. That’s the one.

Important note: the commandment
“love one another” was NOT new. It was central to the faith
tradition of Jesus and his disciples, Judaism. There are two ways to
think of it as new. One is “as I (Jesus) have loved you, you also
should love one another,” so it is new in being reflective of
Jesus. The other is probably more accurate, the commandment is not
“new” but living that sort of love is part of the “new life”
that people of God are called to – a distinct form of life from one
of competition and fear. But please remember that loving one another
was already a part of the Jewish tradition, and had been for a LONG
TIME. We do not want to participate in anti-semitism, much less
pretend it is part of our faith.

Now, back to “By this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.“ This is both one of the most inspiring phrases I know
of, and one of the most worrisome. Because, let’s be honest for a
moment, it invites us to ask “is this true?”

It must be true in part. It
must be or I wouldn’t be here. I have been inspired by the
here-on-earth expressions of God’s love I’ve experienced in churches,
at church camp, in the Love Your Neighbor Collation, and with Upper
New York for Full Inclusion. I’ve known people whose very presence
exudes love. I’ve been in communities that have taught me that I’m
worthy of love, just as I am, no matter how awkward. I’ve seen the
transformational power of love being offered to people who have
received other stories about their lives: to teenagers with abusive
home lives, to people who are transgender and have been told horrible
things by other churches, to queer clergy people afraid for their
livelihoods, to veterans who fear their traumas makes them
unloveable, and to every day people who just wonder if they’re
“enough” who experience the community of God and learn they’re
loved and lovable.

It is the every day miracle of
the church, and it is why I am a part of the church, and it is
probably the thing I’m most committed to continuing with my life.

And.

And it isn’t the full story of
church.

I wish it was. I heard an idea
once that it is easier to be a spiritual person outside of faith
community, to commune with God in nature and solitude. Not just
because God is easy to access in nature and solitude (true for me!)
but because faith communities are full of struggle: conflict and
personalities and differences of opinion and people behaving in ways
we don’t like. But this idea suggested that this is GOOD not bad,
because communing with God in nature may help us feel and be
centered, but it is in practicing being loving when it is ACTUALLY
HARD that we GROW. We need the challenges of community to learn how
to be loving in the midst of real life.

That’s one of the most lovely
takes on faith community I’ve ever heard, and I hold it dear.

Because as much as I’ve seen the
church transform lives with its generous love and welcome, I’ve seen
profound pain too. There is the glaringly obvious pain of being part
of a homophobic and transphobic denomination. But there are also the
pains that result when we as a local faith community aren’t as loving
as we want to be. When someone is forgotten, or unseen in their
pain. When cultural differences are too big to be overcome. When it
seems some people are more valued than others. When values
themselves are violated (or seem to be). And when it feels like no
one cares about a person when they stop showing up.

There are days when I wonder
about the balance of if all, when I wonder if the love we are sharing
is more than the pain we are causing. I wonder if “They’ll Know We
are Christians By Our Love” is … well… true.

In the church at large
(annual conference and denomination) I have come to peace with
knowing that much of what happens is about power, and money, and that
fear is used as a means to an end to increase the power of a few over
the needs of the many. I hold hope that isn’t true on the local
church level, but when there IS conflict, it IS often about power
and/or over the authority over money, and I think based in fear of
what happens if one’s power is lost and one’s vision doesn’t prevail.

But, I also know that’s overly
simplistic. When it comes down to it, at least on the local level, I
trust that everyone is doing their best and trying to enable the best
sort of loving faith community, and doing that by the means they
believe most effective. Which means we disagree about HOW, and maybe
WHY, but not WHAT we’re trying to do.

And I often hope that’s enough
to hold on to to build on love, instead of letting fear drown us.
And I’m willing to keep on spending my life empowering faith
communities as long as I can believe that we are showing love, and
GROWING in love.

So, I want to spend the rest of
this sermon on this central question of faith: what helps us be more
loving, to share God’s love? Because I believe we WANT to be know by
our love. I think we’d be delighted if every time someone
encountered any one of us or a group of us they were astounded at our
love. But I think that requires us to be attentive to growing
in love.

The basis of love, as far as I
know is… (wait for it)… love. God’s love is the starting point
for our lives, our faith, our actions. And, I HOPE, the love of the
people of God has been transformative in our lives too, so we start
our journey to deepen love balanced on the love of God and God’s
people.

It also helps, a lot, to see
people acting in loving ways. Having models of what radical love
looks like, and broad and different models at that: to see the love
shared between our breakfast guests, and to see the love shared
between members of Church Council, and to hear stories of support
offered to those who are struggling. Knowing what love looks like, a
huge range of what it looks like, helps us see how we can live it.
Love lives differently in each of us, and it can take seeing it in a
lot of forms before any of us know how to let it live most easily in
us!!

It also helps, as far as I’m
concerned, to hear people talk about living love. To talk about what
they do with intention, and when they’ve struggled, and how they’ve
overcome barriers to love. The real, sometimes small, tangibles.
This sort of learning has often happened in Bible Study or small
groups for me, and it is a big deal to talk about the small stuff.

A huge gift in growing in love
is growing in the capacity to know I am loved EVEN when I’m wrong.
John Wesley actually helps me with this. He said that we’re all
wrong sometimes, but we don’t know when we’re wrong (or we wouldn’t
be), so when we come to a disagreement with another person, we should
enter into it with humility because it may well be one of the times
when we are wrong. That simple idea has made it easier for me to
forgive myself for being wrong, which helps lower my defenses, which
helps let others in.

For me, one of the greatest
gifts in growing in love is spiritual practice. That is, when I take
time away from “productivity” to “just be” and that helps me
remember that God loves me for who I am rather than what I can
accomplish. Also, God lovingly holds up a mirror to me, to help me
see what I’m doing and why, and let me decide as I’m ready to change.

There are also straight up
SKILLS that can help with being loving, particularly in a community,
which means in a group with conflict. Non-violent communication.
Active listening. Careful use of “I statements.” Or, just,
intentional empathy. All of which are actual skills that can be
taught and learned and developed. I sometimes think we undercut
ourselves by thinking that if we are simply taught of God’s love,
we’ll become the humans we want to be. When, in fact, we need other
skills and models and learning as well.

I dream that the church we
become might be able to be a source of healing people’s

trauma, that we might become
particularly skilled at sharing judgement-free love, and listening
with empathy so that those who spend time in this faith community
might experience HEALING from being here, and that the healing might
become a part of our story and what we offer our community.

That would require a pretty
serious investment in those skills, and in developing the resilience
to respond to conflict in new and different ways. SPPRC is working
on some of that, with a hope of bringing opportunities to our church
as a whole as well. It has become clear in the past 5 years that we
need more skills than we have. Which doesn’t make us bad, but does
make us responsible for developing together. For finding the ways
to face our conflicts with love. For becoming more loving. For
stepping up so people might see us and be astounded by our love for
one another. It could even be that these years of conflict could
become a saving grace for us, an opening to a new way of being that
could meet people and the world just where they need us to be.

In any case, growing in love is
what we’re about. God is with us, encouraging and enabling our
growth. May we commit to it as well! 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 15, 2022

The sculpture Reconciliation by Vasconcellos showing two former enemies
embracing each other. It was erected in 1995 in the north aisle of the
ruins of St Michael’s Cathedral, Coventry. (Destroyed during fire bombs
during the Coventry Blitz on 14 November 1940). (Image by
commons.wikimedia.org)

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

Uncategorized

Untitled

September 19, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Speaking” based on James 3:1-12

Well, here I am preaching on James 3 which is difficult because James 3 is about how strict and impossible the standards are for those who preach. Um, great. That doesn’t seem like a set up for failure at all 😉

James is well aware of Greek culture in his time, and Greek culture had a lot of things to say about the power of the tongue and the difficulty in controlling it. What makes James different is that he is HARSHER than everyone else. James thinks it is IMPOSSIBLE to control the tongue, and James is clear on why people should try anyway.

I see no need to attempt to make his point better than he does – the power of speech is immense, both for good and for evil, and even people themselves often lose control of their speech. Furthermore, perfect speech is impossible.

There is a whole field of theology focused on this. To quote from Wikipedia, who did a good job on this:

Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology,[1]is a form of theologicalthinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God.[web 1] It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology, which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is.1

That is, there is a whole field that starts with the idea that you can’t speak truths about God. Talk about a preacher’s bind!!

I do wonder a little bit how time has impacted the truth James shares. He wrote to a primarily oral culture, where most relationships occurred directly face to face. We aren’t in that culture anymore, especially not now. Many of our interactions now happen through screens, typed with our finger tips rather than spoken with our tongues. At the core though, I’m not sure that it makes that much difference. What is said matters.

And, as James eventually points out, his primary concern is how people of faith speak about others. Luke Timothy Johnson, in the Anchor Bible summarizes with, “When one uses the same tongue to bless God, yet curse the human person who is created according to the likeness of God (3:9), one betrays in a fundamental sense the allegiance by which one claims to live. … Something more than the perfection of the human sage is at stake here. What is at issue is the proper mode of perceiving and responding to God’s creation.” (264-5)

If we bless God, we should also bless God’s creation, and God’s creatures.

Our speech should be a blessing.

Our speech should never be a curse. Nothing like being reminded that following in the way of Jesus is challenging, huh?

This feels like the final step in the process of remembering that the way we love God is to love our neighbors (all our neighbors). And then the way we praise and bless God is to praise and bless our neighbors (all our neighbors).

It is to use our words to build the kindom of God.

It reminds of the command to pray without ceasing, and in this case to let the words of our mouths be prayers of blessing whenever we speak.

In the midst of these standards, it becomes a bit of a relief that James doesn’t think perfection is possible. This being James though, I don’t think that means he lets us off the hook. He just says “yeah, it is impossible do it anyway.”

And, that’s practical advice. We have to speak. We have to communicate. We have to speak to God and of God, we have to speak to and of each other. And, quite often, we’re going to get it wrong, and that doesn’t mean we stop trying to get it right.

I find myself thinking about anti-racism conversations I’ve been in, when the space is created for honest conversation and white people become so scared of being called out for what they say that they try just not talking. I’ve done it. It feels safer. But it also cuts of the possibility for growth, learning, vulnerability, and relationship. Perfect speech isn’t possible, but giving up on speaking doesn’t end up helping either.

So what do we do? Our best.

We remember the power of words, and we remember the wonder of God’s creation, and we remember how beloved all of God’s creatures are, and we seek to speak with blessings as much as we can. And when we don’t, we notice, and use it to do better the next day.

(It isn’t so different from the rest of trying to build the kindom, either.)

There are tools. Nonviolent communication theory is one of my favorites. Others like simple reminders like, “before you speak, think: Is it True, is it Helpful, is it Inspiring, is it Necessary, is it Kind?” There are also the most consistent tools of all: spiritual disciplines that keep us connected to the Divine help us to be blessings no matter what comes at us; and breathing exercises and sources of grounding do so too.

In the end, as per usual, I don’t have much more to say than, James is right. And, it is hard to follow his advice. Let’s try anyway.

Amen.

1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology accessed 9/15/2021 at 2:45PM

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 19, 2021

Sermons

“Figuring Out Priorities, Discernment as Prayer Practice” based on…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This
Mary washing Jesus’s feet with her hair story is a variation on
stories found in the Synoptic Gospels. Just to clarify a few things
that you might have heard: this is the Mary of Mary and Martha, not
Mary of Magdala; there is no reason to believe that the woman in the
story was a prostitute; that said there were a few indiscretions
inherent in the story! To name them succinctly: women weren’t
supposed to be a part of formal dinner parties (then again Mary
wasn’t supposed to sit at Jesus’s feet as a disciple either), a
woman taking her hair down in public was scandalous, and feet aren’t
always really FEET in the Bible, even though I think they are here.

Other
than Jesus, all the characters in this story are unique to John’s
version. Given that, it is quite interesting that Judas is put in
the role he is. It works well as foreshadowing. It also works well
to explain a few things. When Judas is called a “thief” in the
story, the particular verb is the same one used in chapter 10 to
describe a thief who steals sheep. Thus, “The expression ‘not
because he cared about the poor’ echoes the description of the hired
hand’s lack of care for the sheep (10:13). The use of these words
suggests that the description of Judas is intended to point the
reader toward the proper context in which to place Judas’s actions.
When he betrays Jesus, he betrays the sheep.”¹
Thus when Mary takes care of Jesus, she takes care of the sheep too.
The shepherd and the sheep are interdependent.

John’s
version of this story sets up an interesting question: is it better
to use the super expensive (5 figure) perfume on Jesus or to sell it
and give the proceeds to the poor? The answer most theologians have
given is that it is good to be devoted to Jesus. The text sets us up
to think this way by saying that not even Judas meant the money for
the poor. However, I think it is a valid question!

I
think it is a REALLY valid question. After all, how do we decide
what to do with our resources? Most of us, most of the time, aren’t
in possession of perfume worth’s a year salary that was hand carried
from India to Bethany, but we do have our own resources to care
about. How do we decide what to give away, and what to use? How do
we decide what portions of our time to give away? When are are ready
to give something away – time, or money, resources or energy- how
do we know where to best put it?

I’m
not a great decider when it comes to such questions (or most others.)
I tend to think like a Tupper, “I need more data!” The answer
between “show devotion” and “care for the vulnerable” is
fuzzy for me plenty of the time.

And
I worry that when I don’t decide, when I just go about my day to day
life without thinking too hard, I’m even more likely to err than if I
consider a decision carefully and then choose “wrong.” Yet the
fear of being wrong often leads me to the status quo, and the status
quo isn’t particularly intentional.

Luckily
there is something called discernment. Apple dictionary does a great
job with the word “discernment.” The first definition is “the
ability to judge well” the second is “(in Christian contexts)
perception in the absence of judgement with a view to obtaining
spiritual direction and understanding.”²
So, in a very practical way discernment is deciding, but it has more
nuance: it is about making decisions spiritually. I suspect that
sounds fine and good to most of you – but also a bit meaningless.

I
have two practical offerings for you – two means of getting into
discernment. The first is a spiritual practice called “Daily
Examen.” I’ve mentioned it before, because I really like it.
Daily Examen is a simple practice, it is flexible, it is meaningful,
and it is HANDS DOWN the best way I know of for discernment of BIG
LIFE THINGS.

It
can be done individually, with a friend or partner, or in a group.
It goes like this. You do what you need to do to center yourself, be
that lighting a candle, turning on music, sitting comfortably, taking
deep breathes, or all of the above. Then, in language that works for
you, you ask the Divine to work with you in reviewing the past 24
hours. As you review the day, you seek out what the best part was
and what the worst part was. You may want to ask this differently:
when was I most connected to Love, when I was I least connected to
Love, when did I feel most whole, when did I feel least whole, etc.
The goal is to find a “high” and a “low” and THEN to thank
God for both, and for everything in-between.

Then,
if you are working with others, you share that information. In any
case, you write them down: the date, the best, and the worst. After
a while…. weeks, or months… you review what you’ve written and
you pay attention to patterns. Was the worst part of you day more
often than not related to your job? Then it is definitely time to
consider if that aspect of your job can change, OR if your job can
change, or if your attitude about your job needs to change. Was the
best part fo your day often the time you spent with your pet? Then
likely it would be great to find ways to maximize that. Or, perhaps,
was the best part of your day some ministry or group you only get to
do very once in a while – but every time it happens it was the
best? Then, perhaps that is something you want to give more
attention to.

See?
Pay attention to patterns, and USE them to discern ways to live a
life with even more good, more love, more wholeness. I want to note
that the staff I and I do this at staff meeting, although then we
review the whole week. I’m often SHOCKED that the answers I find
aren’t the ones I expect, and I think we all know each other a whole
lot more because we’ve heard where both joy and frustration live in
each other’s lives.

If
you want a resource to help you with this process, the book “Sleeping
with Bread” is particularly excellent.

The
second practical offering I have for you is from Nonviolent
Communication (insert gasps of shock here). As a whole, nonviolent
communication teaches us to listen and to speak in four parts:

With
clear objective observation

In
naming and claiming emotions. (ie. “I feel …”and never “You
make me feel…”

In
identifying and noticing the needs that are connected to the
feelings

In
making requests.

The
absolute key, as I see it, of Nonviolent Communication is in the link
between steps 2 and 3. That’s the part where we take feelings we are
feeling and examine them to figure out what needs are under them.
This process has proven to me that it can unravel even the most
complex experiences and responses for me. For example, I can think
of a time when I have felt annoyed. This is definitely something
worth considering, because it is MUCH more likely to give me
information about myself and what I’m needing than it is about what
I’d otherwise call the “source of my annoyance.” If I am
annoyed, it is because some need or needs of MINE aren’t being met.
Sometimes this is because my need for rest isn’t being met. Other
times it is my need for harmony, other times for order! In fact,
feeling annoyed has sometimes reflected a need for some
consideration. In this way of looking at things, feelings are gifts
given to us to help us navigate and understand the needs that
motivate them. They’re like flags marking something that needs our
attention. (Note: anger is super extra this, it marks a violation of
something we really value!)

Once
we are able to notice a feeling, it gives us a chance to consider
what needs are underneath it. Then, once we know the need, we have a
LOT of information about what is going on with us. Further, since
needs can be met in infinite ways, we have a lot of choices about how
to proceed. If what I’m needing is rest, I can go home and take a
nap… or I can go to the bathroom and take an extra long time
washing my hands…. or maybe just take a moment and say a few breath
prayers. If what I’m needing is consideration, then I have the
chance to consider what that can look like and if I’m willing to make
a request related to it.

All
of this means that feelings, which we have all the time, can be great
sources of wisdom about who we are, what we need, and that opens up
the door for some great discernment.

It
seems like a good moment to point out that in Nonviolent
Communication, needs are considered universal, and they’re not a bad
thing. They just ARE. The goal is to become aware of them when
they’re flaring up and then become aware of the MANY ways they can be
fulfilled, so that we start getting creative rather than trying to
force the same solutions over and over that don’t work.

Discernment
is very different from decision making. It is deeper. It is about
the why even more than the what. It can be reached through Daily
Examen, or Nonviolent communication considerations, or even just
through the quiet of contemplative prayer. I appreciate a difference
between petitionary prayer – asking God for stuff- and
contemplative prayer – being present with God. Personally, I enjoy
and find much more value in the latter. It also helps with
discernment.

I’ve
been told that when Quakers have an extra long agenda for a meeting,
they spend twice as long in silent prayer before it begins. There is
wisdom in that. Rushing to decisions can be as bad as avoiding them
all together. But discernment, deep consideration, gives us all a
way to make good, spiritual decisions.

It
turns out, of course, that pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’s feet
was a perfectly acceptable option. I maintain that selling it and
giving the money away would have been too. The key is probably in
the reasons underneath and around each decision, and figuring those
out takes discernment.

May
we practice it – regularly and well. Amen

1Gail
R. O’Day, “John” New Interpreter’s Bible page 702.

2Apple
Dictionary, “discernment” accessed 4/4/2019.

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 7, 2019

Sermons

“Hungry for the Kindom” based on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and…

August 5, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The central question of faith is: What is the nature of your God? The Bible’s most repeated answer to the question is “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

The narrative from Exodus seems to be slightly expansive essay on the theme “God’s steadfast love endures forever” that helps people understand what that means and how it functions. In the book of Exodus, we encounter God who liberates the oppressed. In particular, we encounter the Divine hearing the cries of the people, and feeling compassion for them. The Holy One then works through some of the least likely individuals possible to bring the people to freedom, and then guides them along their way.

Here, in chapter 16, the people are in the midst of the wilderness. By some estimates it has been about 6 weeks since they became free, and that appears to be long enough for the excitement to have worn off and new anxieties to have settled in. One commentator puts it, “The narrative of Exodus 16 can be read as representative of the type of crisis that faith faces whenever God’s people move from bondage to well-being. … The wandering in the wilderness is for Israel the place to knock down the mental frame of being oppressed and to pick up the life of liberty.”¹ Part of the framework of oppression is constant anxiety.

The newly freed former slaves are getting nervous about their situation. Now, when the Bible says “desert” or “wilderness” what it is trying to say is “a place so forsaken that human life cannot be maintained without Divine intervention.” The desert near Sinai was such a place, and I think most pictures of Egyptian desert do a good job of communicating just how scary it could be to suddenly find yourself in that place without sufficient provisions. I think the anxiety was founded, but I also think it was rooted in their oppression.

While other parts of Exodus indicate that the people were supposed to “have faith” and “trust in God to provide,” in this Priestly version of the manna in the desert narrative, the people grumble and God simply has compassion on them. After all, God’s steadfast love endures forever, and steadfast love looks A LOT like compassion. Another commentator said, “What is important here is that God – once again – heard the people’s cries and responded to their need, whether it was real or whether it was a misperception caused by panic.”² They are hungry and scared, so God offers them consolation and food.

There is one way in which I often struggle with Bible stories that speak of God feeding hungry people. I love the stories, but I also know that in real life people starve to death, and there are even more who are malnourished to the point that their health is compromised. It can almost sound like God picks favorites and feeds those while ignoring others, when we hear the stories of God feeding the people, and I don’t think God works that way.

It is helpful to think about who wrote the story. This story is told up by the Judean priests, it is designed to teach of God’s trustworthiness. The Judean priests, in their regular work, oversaw food redistribution programs, and called on the leaders of the people to make sure that systems were in place to make sure that food was accessible to those who need it. The story didn’t come out of vacuum. It is in the midst of the Torah, which as a whole, OBSESSES over taking care of the poor and vulnerable. We have a story that suggests that God took care of the poor and vulnerable in the desert AND SO the people should take care of the poor and vulnerable in the Promised Land.

Thanks be to God, on this planet we have enough! We have more than enough food to feed all the people. We have enough clean water (for the time being). We are even getting to the point where we have enough renewable energy sources to feed our energy needs! (How cool is that?) The reason people struggle with malnourishment and starvation is a HUMAN DISTRUBTION problem, not a lack of Divine gifts of abundance. Creation is sufficient to our needs. However, people have decided to use the resources in ways that prevent others from accessing them.

In the Bible, food is not just food. The people are told, “’At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’“ (12b, NRSV) A scholar explains, “In the Old Testament context, knowledge is not essentially or even primarily rooted in the intellectual activities of a human being. Rather, it is more experiential and embedded in the emotions. It therefore encompasses qualities such as intimacy, concern, communication, mutuality, and contact.”³ So the gift of the food was a way of “knowing” that God’s steadfast love endures forever. The food in the desert guided the people to trust in God, and God’s compassion for them. The food was food, and that was good. But the food was also a means of knowing that God is good.

James Fowler’s book “Stages of Faith Development” discusses faith development through the human life span. He says that if babies have human caregivers who notice and attend to their needs, they will later find it credible that God is benevolent. However, for babies whose needs are not met, it will be far harder in life to believe that there is any being with power who seeks goodness for them (or anyone.) We “know” God in part by having our needs met.

This has gotten me thinking about what our needs are. Maslov famously created a hierarchy of human needs, but further studies have indicated that they aren’t as hierarchial as he thought, nor as universal. Nonviolent Communication Theory has a list of universal human needs without any hierarchy. They fall into categories like: connection, honesty, play, peace, physical well-being, meaning, and autonomy. Nonviolent Communication teaches that all of us have all of the needs, and that most of what we do and say comes out of an attempt to meet those needs. Even more so, most of what we FEEL is a reflection of how our needs are met or unmet. Nonviolent Communication encourages us to notice what we feel, as a means of figuring out what we are needing. The needs are the key to it all.

The priests taught that God gave the people food so that they would KNOW (experience, live) God’s steadfast love. Having needs met makes so much else possible! When a need is flaring to be fulfilled, it is very hard to focus on anything else!!

In the end of our Gospel reading today, Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (35, NRSV) Based on the context, it is clear we’re not just talking about food here either. Earlier in the chapter, in the part we read last week, Jesus fed the masses. The verbs in that passage speak of not only being full, but being satiated. The people seemed to KNOW God and God’s love once again, through the bread. In today’s passage, they seem to be seeking those things again.

So bread IS bread, sometimes, because humans NEED food. But bread is also a metaphor for our other needs. So too with thirst. What hungers and thirsts is Jesus talking about? Knowing Jesus and his context, I suspect he was talking about bread and wine in physical senses AND at the same time in spiritual senses. Jesus never seems to focus apart from people’s physical needs, nor does he think satiating only the physical is enough. He fed people bread and hope. He offered people living water and compassion.

I suspect the bread of life and living water Jesus offers in John are intentionally vague, so that those of us who hear of them can attend to the needs flaring up in us. Then we can hear as we need to hear. Jesus offers food to the hungry, healing to the sick, liberation to the oppressed, release to the captives, good news to the hopeless, a welcome to the homeless, rest to the weary, comfort to the grieving, movement to the stuck, purpose to the lost, intimacy to the lonely, inspiration to the resigned, joy to the downtrodden, and inclusion to those who have been left out. 😉 To name a few.

The Gospel of John says the people had been satiated by Jesus, and they wanted to be again. The book of Exodus says the people’s needs were met so they would know their God to be the one whose steadfast love endures forever.

The Bible thinks about the needs of “the people” more often than it thinks about the needs of any individual person. It feeds the masses, because the conditions that make one hungry often make others hungry as well.

That leads me to wonder what the Body of Christ is hungry for today, the people together. I suspect we might hunger for justice and thirst for compassion, and I think that is what God hungers and thirsts for as well. God is the God of all the people, so whoever is hurting the most is creating aches within God. When the world becomes more just, God aches less. When the people receive compassion, God finds relief. When fewer people are hungry, there are fewer hunger pains within the Divine. Hunger for justice and thirst for compassion is a way of saying that those of us who have enough bread, hunger for a world where all people do too. It is also to say that we hunger for the kindom when all have enough to survive AND thrive.

May our needs be met – the ones we each came with today, and the ones we share as the Body of Christ. May we trust in God who seeks for us to know Holiness by meeting our needs. When human beings get in the way of God’s people getting what they need, may we be courageous enough to get in the way of those systems. And may we notice, when our needs are met, that the Holy One whose steadfast love endures forever is with us, ready to be KNOWN once again. May our hunger for the kindom help kindom come. Amen

1 Rein Bos, “Exegetical Perspective on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15” in Feasting on the World Year B, Volume 3; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)293.

2 Dean McDonald, “Homiletical Perspective on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15” in Feasting on the World Year B, Volume 3; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) 291.

3Bos, 295.

–

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

August 5, 2018

Sermons

“The Will of God” based on 1 Samuel 8:4-20…

June 10, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf

In
the gospel today, Jesus said that anyone who does the will of God is
his mother, brother, or sister. He defines his family by those who
do God’s will. Jesus also taught us that our God is a God of love,
which is the starting point for knowing God’s will. Jesus reminded
us of the great commandments. “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind”
and “Love
your neighbor as yourself.”

I’ve
had some very helpful nudgings from this congregation recently. Many
of them have been in your consistent reminders to take care of myself
since my knee injury, and collectively you’ve seemed to know that I
would need a lot of those reminders. Being patient with my body
isn’t easy for me.

There
were two more nudgings as well. One of you asked if I could say more
to acknowledge the pain people have and struggle with. That
certainly felt important. Then came another call, asking me if I
could preach about self-love.

I’ve
concluded that the Spirit herself has been at work in all of this.
Self-love is a very exciting topic to speak about! I’ve spent most
of my continued education time during my years as your pastor working
on this for myself, and I think I’ve learned a few things that might
be of use. Yet, this is also a nerve wracking topic to talk about,
both because it requires great vulnerability and because it is a
tender topic with which I might accidentally do harm.

Nevertheless,
it is time to talk about loving ourselves. When we say
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” we tend to
ignore the implicit assumption that we love ourselves contained in
the rule. To prepare for this sermon I asked on Facebook and through
some emails for people to offer definitions of love. I told them it
was for preaching, I did not share that I was going to preach about
loving ourselves!

The
answers were, of course, amazing. A lot of the responses reflected
careful consideration followed by a conclusion that defining love is
very difficult and perhaps impossible. I got wished “good luck”
rather a lot! Some tried to find the words anyway, and I think
you’ll find them useful for reflection. In order not to distract
you, I’m going to offer some of your definitions words without
attributing them.

Love
is more of an action than anything else. For example, I find making
the bed in the morning a complete waste of time, my husband loves to
come home to a made bed, when I make the bed, I do it for him
because I know it will make him happy, that’s love.
The
glue of the Trinity, spilling over into creation.
I
feel that love is a choice. It stems from a feeling, but it is a
solid, daily choice.
the
movement of goodness itself…
Spirit
is Love and Love is Spirit
Companionship; Communication; Accepting
each others thoughts and feelings; Reaching
a hand in church; In
the middle of the night reaching out to touch
love
cannot be defined because a definition automatically puts boundaries
and love is not bounded

One
can give examples of the affects of love on both the lover and the
object of that love (animate or inanimate) and the effects of
love-Love casts out fear

Finally,
one among you shared a set of profound thoughts, which I cannot
summarize or shorten without weakening it:

Love
can mean many things depending on the context.
I
think you mean love as it involves people or spirit rather than
things like ice cream or sports.

With
regard to people, love
is a state of unlimited commitment where
two people or even in some cases like a pet dog
become
so in sync with one’s feelings that the object
of love is an extension of the person and
foibles are overlooked or forgiven.

Then
there is spiritual love =the love of God or Jesus which is our rock
of support -it is often recognized in retrospect like in the
expression `If not for the love of God I would have suffered’.
When one recovers from a traumatic experience or accident one
is grateful for the love of the Divine.
I
know that scientists and
engineers
are often tagged as non-believers unless some measurement standard
can document the cause of an event. I don’t agree – there’s more
than mortals can conjure up that is involved.
So
these are my ramblings – I’ll be interested in the views of others
and
remain
thankful
for all the love I have experienced.

Another
among you has since reminded me to tell you that love is so powerful
as to be very dangerous. Since I was reminded of that I’ve been
trying figure out if that applies to self love or not. It seems to
me that romantic love is far more dangerous than self love, but then
again that the world as we know it would fall apart if we were good
at self love. (At least, the US economy would!) So perhaps self
love is quite dangerous as well.

Now,
the logical among you (and there are plenty of you!) are going to
wish that at this point I’d offer a definition of self-love, despite
the fact that I’ve just shown you by example how very hard it is to
define love at all. I’m going to give this my best shot. Self-love
is “loving yourself as you’d love your neighbor.” Or, perhaps it
might be better for some of us to say “loving yourself as you’d
want a dearly loved one to be able to love themselves.” I say this
because most people I know are far kinder to their loved ones than
themselves. We speak to ourselves in ways we’d never permit
ourselves to speak to anyone else.

There
are 4 girls in this world I consider my nieces, including one who is
biologically my niece. The two oldest are old enough to sometimes be
terribly hard on themselves, and life has sometimes given me the
chance to have heart-to-heart talks with them when they’re in the
midst of self-blame. Because of my deep love for them and because of
the training I’ve had in listening, I’ve sometimes been able to help
them translate their own self-criticisms. It turns out that “I’m
an idiot” usually means something else entirely, for instance, “I’m
feeling frustrated that I can’t find my long underwear, and I’m
afraid it is a fundamental flaw in my humanity that I could have lost
them.” Once translated, it becomes much easier to think together
about whether or not misplaced long underwear are really such an
enormous failure.

Now,
clearly, misplacing one’s long underwear does not an idiot make. We
all have the capacity to assure a beloved child of that. I’m less
confident about our ability to remember that when dealing with
ourselves. We jump from a small infraction of our ideals to an
enormous overstatement of our failures. We keep the self-criticism
tightly wound inside, most of us keep it so tightly wound that we try
to pretend it away even to ourselves.

The
jump from small infraction to utter failure is the work of an
internal “self-critic.” We all have them. These are parts of
ourselves that manage to jump to strong, universal, and nasty
criticisms at lightspeed. They sound like this: “I’m lazy.”
“No one really likes me.” “I’m stupid.” “I’m selfish.”
“Everything is wrong and it is all my fault.” “I’m going to
fail.” “I’m fat.” “I’m going to get fired.” “I’m ugly.”
“I’m unlovable.” “I don’t deserve to be here.” Most of us
have a lot of them, and they’re powerful. While they all sound more
or less alike, each of us have our own set with their own particular
refrains. Self-critics within say things we’d never allow others to
say to us – and would never say to others – and they say them
regularly.

The
most shocking thing I’ve learned this decade is that self-critics are
TRYING TO HELP us. They’re just really, really bad at it. They
actually want to protect and support us, but they have bad
communication skills. They think yelling at us and shaming us will
motivate us to do better. Instead, it can cripple us at times, it
keeps us afraid, and it doesn’t give us any sense of freedom.
However, it is possible to learn how to TRANSLATE the criticism!
Under the ugly words is a loving intention, and if you listen to that
self-critic the way you might listen to a beloved niece, you can find
it. The best part is that once you hear the loving-intention
underneath the criticism, the critic often stops yelling and gives
you some peace!

Listening
to our self-critics is terrifying. However, in my experience, it is
more frightening to contemplate than to do. Because the self-critic
always has a loving intention, and because that loving-intention
hasn’t usually been heard, it is actually sort of lovely! It is far
worse to hear the criticisms regularly yelled from within than it is
to hear the loving-intention!

One
of the harshest critics I’ve had in my life used to tell me quite
often that I was “too much.” This was extended to include, “too
loud, too big, and too pushy.” I heard it MANY times a day. With
the guidance of a loving teacher, I was able to hear beneath it. The
self-critic was still feeling the pain of being an unpopular
elementary school student, and was trying to help me control myself
in ways that might make me more like-able. The self-critic hadn’t
meant to hurt me! It really did want to help, it was just scared!
Once I heard the loving-intention, it toned down. I still hear from
her once in a while, but only in fairly extreme circumstances (when
maybe I should be keeping my mouth shut after all!). Even then, the
bite that once sought to control me isn’t there anymore.

There
is a quote I’ve always loved, “Love me when I least deserve it
because that’s when I really need it.” This applies to others when
they’re not able to behave well, and it applies to ourselves when
we’re not able to behave well, and it applies to our self-critics!
, Now, I don’t want to send you off to face your self-critics
without a bit more guidance. If you are ready to live without quite
as much internal yelling, then I suggest a few things. It helps a
lot to write things down. “I’m too much” was a terrifying,
almost heart-stopping thing to hear inside myself, but in black and
white on paper it looked a lot smaller. If you have a person you
trust, they are often quite helpful in working on translating with
you. (Including your pastor.) The process takes some time, so be
patient with yourself. It may sound silly, but it requires actually
listening to the self-critic in order to get to the loving intention.
And, as loud and hurtful as self-critics can be, they’re also sorta
shy. This is a good time to remind you of the “feelings and needs”
list found here: https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf. It helps to remember that we
all have needs, the needs are universal, needs do not make us weak –
AND most self-critics are trying to help us meet a need!! A very
difficult to internalize reminder: we can actually get along without
self-critics. They are not the only reason we get anything done, we
are able to function and even thrive without internal yellers.

I
started this conversation with the precious moments I’ve had when
I’ve been able to help translate my niece’s fears. I started that
way on purpose. Our inner critics are a lot like hurting children,
and they respond best to patient, gentle, loving attention; and they
sometimes need some affirmation that we know they’re hurting before
they can trust us to work with them. The ways we seek to help
children when they’re hurting are the same skills we can use to be
more loving to ourselves.

Doing
the work to love ourselves is a part of God’s will. If God loves us,
then God doesn’t want us spoken to in hurtful and abusive ways.
Thus, the time it takes to find the loving-intention is time well
spent. Furthermore, love itself is a cool thing. Every time it
stretches out in a new direction, it expands its capacity. As we
love others more, we can love ourselves more. As we love ourselves
more, we can love God more. As we love God more, we can love others
and ourselves more.

Love
is the will of God.

Including,
self-love.

May
we do God’s will. 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

June 10, 2018

Sermons

“Listening and Receiving”based on 2 Kings 5:1-14 and Luke 10:1-11

July 3, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

70
people are sent out by Jesus, two by two. 70 is a symbolic number. In
Exodus, Moses was assisted by 70 elders and in Genesis 10 there is a
listing of all the nations of the world: they number 70. While all
the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell the story of
Jesus sending out the 12 disciples 2 by 2, only Luke includes this
story of sending out the 70 (which in some ancient manuscripts is 72,
but we’re going to just live with 70).

It
is possible that this feels a bit repetitive, since Luke says in
chapter 9 that Jesus sent out the 12 disciples in a similar manner.
However, there is something really strange about this story, MUCH
more interesting than the version a chapter before. That is, Jesus
sends out the 12 disciples in Galilee, the area that he spent most of
his life and most of his ministry. However, in chapter 10 he is in
SAMARIA, on his way to Jerusalem. He sends out these 70 people to
EXACTLY the communities that most people at the time found most
distasteful.

This
is possibly the most Jesus thing I’ve ever heard. He sends out this
massive group of people to places they’d be radically uncomfortable,
AND refuses them any comforts: they can have no purse or bag nor
(extra?) sandals. They’re on their own dependent on the hospitality
of people they’ve never met and are likely terrified of. They’re
told to go into people’s homes, receive their hospitality, and eat
their food and drink their drinks.
When he sent out the 12 in Galilee he didn’t bother specifically
telling them to eat and drink what they are given. This only happens
when he sends them out in Samaria.

You
remember, right, the Samaritans were so hated that people FREAKED OUT
at the idea that Jesus would receive a cup of water from one? The
Samaritans were so hated that the whole point of one of the most
well-loved parables is the unexpected twist that a Samaritan could be
the hero. (Ironically, and to keep things confusing, in the 2^nd
Kings reading the word Samaria is used interchangeably with Israel.
That’s because it predates the first exile. That is, it was from a
time when Samaria, Israel, and Judah were all united, well before
Jesus.)

At
the time of Jesus, Samaritans practiced faith differently. The
followers of Jesus were Jews, I think very traditional Jews, part of
a recommitment to orthodox practice sort of Jews. The Samaritans
were NOT CONSIDERED Jews (although that’s yet another example of the
bias itself.) To make this a bit clearer: good, deeply faithful Jews
at the time were very careful about what they ate, when they ate it,
and how it it had been prepared. That was part of how they expressed
their faithfulness to God. Being sent out into Samaria to be welcomed
into people’s homes as strangers and to EAT THEIR FOOD …. wasn’t
kosher. (giggle) Literally. 😉 But the story says Jesus sent out 70
people into Samaria anyway, and specifically told them to eat and
drink what they were given to eat and drink.

This
relates to the vision of Peter in Acts 10, where Peter has a vision
of God telling him to consume food otherwise thought unclean. The
fact that the stories reflect each other isn’t a surprise, as Luke
and Acts are really the same book by the author: Part 1 is Luke and
Part 2 is Acts (the fact that they are not one after another in our
Bible is an atrocity.) It does make me doubt the veracity of this
story, but only the “I don’t think the facts add up to be terribly
like to have ACTUALLY HAPPENED” way. I think the story reflects a
deep and abiding set of truths about God, about Jesus, about the
Jesus movement, and about breaking open barriers that would otherwise
divide people, and that’s WAY more important than it actually having
happened. However, as I find this story to be completely and utterly
delightful, I sort of hope I’m wrong.

Going
back into the story as it’s own narrative again, Jesus
doesn’t just send them out to eat and drink. He sends them out to
heal
and to give a message, “The
kingdom of God has come near to you.”
That message is the one that Jesus shares over and over again.
Really, the combination of healing and that simple message are the
THEMES of the Gospels, everything else is an expansion on those
ideas.

The
Gospels are full of healing narratives, usually done by Jesus
himself. In our passage today though, we see the expansion of the
work from Jesus to his followers, a reminder that the expansion
extends all the way out to us. Healing, of course, takes on many
forms. It can be physical, emotional, or spiritual, and at times the
most appropriate healing is death itself. Our work as followers of
Christ is to participate in the healing, in a holistic way. This is
good, as not all of us are medical professionals, but all of us can
participate in healing ourselves, each other, and the world.

My
friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green suggests that the power
of Jesus to heal was located in his ability to really truly SEE and
HEAR people, and to LOVE THEM as they really are and show them how
loved they were. She suspects that much of what harms us would be
healable if we knew that we were seen, heard, and loved as we are.
The work of healing, then, is also the work of loving – work we are
all called to do whether it is easy or hard for us.

To
see, to hear, and to share love with a person is also known as the
work of LISTENING. Listening is a profoundly healing act. This
isn’t just something that Jesus could do. It is passed on to us
along with the rest of the work of the Body of Christ. If you’ve
been playing along with my sermons over the past year or two, you may
already know that I’m excited about Nonviolent Communication as a
means of grace.

Nonviolent
communications is a system of both listening and speaking meant to
bring healing and wholeness into the world. It
is an act of love with power.
It happens in 4 parts, whether it is an act of listening or of
speaking. When it is an act of listening, a person practicing
Nonviolent communication: listens for observations of what happened
(which may involve asking some questions), then listens for feelings
about what happened (this may also involve some questions, or even
making some guesses), then listens to what the person’s deep need is
that connected the experience itself to the feeling that emerged
(yes, yes, this too might involve questions or guesses), and finally
seeks to understand what the person would want in order to make life
more wonderful after being heard about the experience, the feeling(s)
and the need(s). This last bit is listening for a request. Often the
request is really just to be heard!

I
wonder if the work of healing that the disciples and the 70 were sent
out to do had to do with deep listening and thereby sharing the
wonder of love itself. I’ve seen that work system, rather well and
quite frequently.

In
Nonviolent Communication Theory, there is a concept of universal
human needs. One of the lists of these needs includes 90 of them,
under the categories: connection, honesty, play, peace, physical
well-being, meaning, and autonomy. All of us have all the needs, all
the time, and this theory suggests that what we say and do is always
related to getting our needs met. Some of the ways we seek to get
our needs met are more effective than others, and some cause less
harm than others. Knowing our needs, and making direct requests tends
to help us get the needs met, and do it without impeding anyone
else’s capacity to met their needs!

(It
may also be helpful to note that not all needs are equally important
to everyone. For example, I have noticed that a lot of what I do is
about meeting my needs to contribute to the world, experience
efficacy, and keep things in balance. Everyone else probably has a
different subset of needs that they tend toward most strongly.)
Also, FYI, we are offering another class on Nonviolent communication
this fall! Stay on the lookout for more information.

We
can see listening like this (and nonviolent communication) in the
Hebrew Bible text, if we read into it a little bit. The Israelite
slave girl observes
that Naaman has leprosy. She seems to feel
sad about that, and finds in herself a need
to contribute to his well-being. So she suggests (this is an
indirect form of a request)
that he might find healing through Elisha. She seems to be
suggesting that her life would be more wonderful if his was as well!
And she is heard!

I
think the most interesting example of nonviolent communication comes
when Naaman gets a response from Elisha to “’Go,
wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and
you shall be clean.’“ That’s what happened (observation), and he
feels ANGRY. It turns out his expectations weren’t getting met. He
expected to be healed in person, something he very well may have
associated with being RESPECTED as an important person. So, I’m
thinking his need TO MATTER wasn’t being met!

When
his servants heard him, and heard him well, they were able to respond
to his need and help him reframe the possibilities. They helped him
meet his need to matter in how they listened to him and responded to
him, and that freed him up! Once his need to matter was being met,
he was able to give the washing in the River Jordan a try.

Truly,
in this story, people do a lot of good listening (and some good
speaking) that ends up making a big difference:

The
slave girl listens to the issues of her masters – and with a tender
heart.
The
mistress listens to the advice of her slave.
A
spouse listens to the advice of another spouse.
A
king listens to a general.
A
king listens to a prophet (that almost NEVER happens in the Bible).
And
then the general listens to his servants, and to the prophet.

All
in all, this whole story is extraordinary, more so in the listening
than in the healing that ensues. Repeatedly
people listen to others who would normally be considered below them,
and are blessed by the wisdom imparted.
It is a case where listening to seemingly strange advice leads to an
unexpectedly good outcome. Namaan’s listening is imperative to his
healing. It allows others to bless him with their knowledge and
wisdom! He was able to receive the gifts they wanted to give him
because he listened to them. They were able to give him the gifts he
needed, because they listened as well.

Between
the gift of prayer itself, which is (among other things) the
experience of being listened to with love by the Holy One’s Own Self,
and the ways we are gifted by being able to be listened to by each
other, there are many opportunities for healing in our lives.
Assuming the veracity of the sending out of the 70, I still don’t
really know what they did. But I rather love the idea that they
might have been listening to people and thereby connecting them to
the love of God! It could have been very healing for everyone
involved, especially when it happened across boundaries that weren’t
supposed to be crossed!

Dear
Ones, as you leave this place, I hope you will find ways to listen:
to each other, to strangers, to others you meet along the way, to the
Holy One, and to the deepest part of yourselves. The gift of healing
is as close at hand as our ability to listen. May we practice well.
Amen

–

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

July 3, 2016

Sermons

“Powerful, Tempting Words” based on James 3:1-12 and Mark…

September 13, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I used to have a game called “True Colors.” It consists of a set of questions, and voting boxes. Questions were something like, “Who is most likely to talk their way out of a speeding ticket?” or “Who makes their bed every day?” Each player is assigned a color, and then the players vote on who among them best fits the description. The scoring of the game required players to assess each question and determine if they would get “all”, “some,” or “none” of the votes on that question. Thus, the game existed to answer the advertised question, “Do you see yourself as others see you?”

Jesus’ questions in the gospel lesson today made me think of that game. He asks two questions: Who do THEY say that that I am and Who do YOU say that I am, but the gospel writer seems to use them to introduce the questions “Who did Jesus think that he was?” and “Who did God think that Jesus was?”

The game True Colors, doesn’t really do what it says. It CLAIMS to ask “Do you see yourself as others see you?” But it really asks, “Do you know how others see you?” or “Do your self-judgments fit other people’s judgments of you?” The answer is often, “no.”

I once heard a story of a woman who saw herself very differently than others saw her:

“An Asian traveller to Iceland joined a night-long search operation for herself after she failed to recognize her own description in details of a “missing woman”.

The woman was declared missing from a party touring the Eldgja volcanic region in south Iceland after getting off the party’s bus to freshen up, the Daily Mail reported.

She hopped off the bus briefly, but had also changed her clothes — and her fellow travellers did not recognise her when she climbed back on again to continue the party’s journey. Soon the search began for a woman described as Asian, around 160 cm, in dark clothing and speaking English well. When the details of the missing person were issued, the woman reportedly didn’t recognise her own description and unwittingly joined the search party for herself.

After a night-long operation involving around 50 people, the “missing woman” eventually realised she was the source of the search and informed the police. The search began on Saturday, but was called off at around 3 am (local time) on Sunday morning when the woman realised she was the subject of the frantic efforts.”

This woman did not know how the others on her tour bus saw her. Quite possibly, the others the on the tour bus didn’t really see her, if a change of clothing was that confusing for them.

For some of us, it is easy to be pulled into spending all our time worrying about how others see us and it is easy connect our self-worth with how others judge us. If we were to ask the questions that Jesus asked, “Who do they say that I am?” and “Who do YOU say that I am?,” life could get really difficult. It happens naturally enough. Positive judgments from others feel good – at least at first. Negative judgments from others feel bad – at least at first. Most human language is laced with judgment, and it has powerful effects on our understandings of ourselves. To make things even more challenging, not all judgments come from the outside. Many of the most powerful ones are self-judgments, and they are often HARSH.

Judgments are so pervasive that they’re sometimes hard to identify. Studies of people texting while driving have established that there is a reason people do it! Namely, there is little, tiny rush of endorphins that comes every time we get a text message or a response on social media, and the rush of endorphins can become addicting. The endorphins (good feeling hormones) indicate, to me, that most of us interpret texts or social media responses as a sort of praise – someone cares enough to respond to us! And we’re so hungry for praise, which is positive judgment, that we seek it out – as a whole culture.

James seems to obsess over judgments. He says he is talking about the power of words, and he is, but it seems a little bit bigger than that. Our tongues are as powerful as the rudder of a ship, or the campfire that starts a forest fire, he claims. But then he gets all flustered that blessings and curses can come out of the same please. He says, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” (James 3:10) but the even better part is when he objects to the whole idea of cursing, saying that with our tongues “we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” (James 3:9) First of all, he has a great point. Much 1 John says, “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20) Since all of creation is created by God, or at perhaps all of creation is IN God, to curse anyone or anything is to curse God.

Now, I proposed a few weeks ago a new definition of blessing, a blessing is anything that is being used for building up the kin-dom. I wonder what that does in this passage, when James talk about speaking a blessing! Would that mean that he’s talking about words that are useful for building up the kin-dom? I suspect so. And then curses word be words that keep the kin-dom from being build up! The reason I suggested that James is more upset about judgments than just about words, is that I think the thoughts we have and the judgments contained in them can do as much damage within us as the words spoken out-loud can do damage to others.

Blessings and curses may not even sound much like we’d expect them to. Some curses may be couched in flowery praise language, but be used to manipulate someone to do something not good for them! Blessings may come out in hesitant, halting language, seeking to name a truth a person has to share without even a mention of good things to come!

In any case, James is on target with the power of language, and how it impacts both the speakers and the hearers. The ways we use language, and the goals we use it for, form us and our communities.

Given all that, the questions Jesus asked strike me as dangerous! He was ASKING for judgment. Different people judged him differently. The answers the disciples gave were very different. He was told that some people thought he was john the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets, and yet another group said he was the Messiah – the one they’d all been waiting for. That seems to be the answer he was looking for, or at least the answer the Gospel writer wanted placed in people’s minds. We aren’t told how Jesus understood himself, nor why he wanted to know what people were saying. The text seems to suggest that while the Messiah that the people expected was to be the new King of Israel, the Messiah they got was one who would be killed for that very claim.

Rev. Monty Brown, a United Methodist from West Virginia has answered the most important of the questions for all of us, Jesus included I’d say. Who does God think that I am? God thinks that I am a “beloved child of God, precious and beautiful to behold.” Who does God think that you are? God thinks that you are “beloved child of God, precious and beautiful to behold.”²

Unlike the roller coaster of other people’s judgment, this God based identity is steady, sturdy, and consistent. What does it mean to be beloved of God? A friend of mine says that to love someone is to acknowledge that your well-being is intertwined with theirs. To love someone is to acknowledge that your well-being is intertwined with theirs. That is to say that their happiness brings you joy and your sadness brings them sorrow…. that it is hard for you to be fully happy if they are sad. It seems like a very good description of what love looks like.

And not just on the human level. What does it mean to be beloved of God? It means that God’s well-being is intertwined with ours…. when we hurt God hurts with us and when we celebrate, God is filled with joy.

Now, if we ponder that for a moment, and we consider what it means to love God… God intertwines us with everyone else, at least a little bit. When we say we love God, it means that our well-being is intertwined with God’s well being – which is intertwined with everyone else’s well being! God does best when things happen that are a net good for all people, and God is most hurt when deep harm is done. Maybe that’s why it actually feels bad to get revenge, or to hurt another person – because if we listen well, we hear the ways it hurts us too. And maybe that’s why the best feelings in life tend to come when we’re able to help another person – because we get a bit of the joy back.

Now, being a beloved child of God, precious and beautiful to behold is our fundamental identity – all of us. But if you notice, that doesn’t mean everything will go well. Right after the conversation about who Jesus was, he talked with his followers about what kind of trouble that was going to cause in his life. That’s another place that the power of language is visible. Peter offers him advice: be smart, save yourself! And Jesus must be tempted, because he responds, “Get behind me, temptation.” Putting to words something Jesus wanted anyway made it harder for him to turn it down. The words Peter spoke were powerful and tempting. Many words are. There is a lot be said for taking words (even words that aren’t spoken, words that stay thoughts) very seriously. When we are at our best, we can take the judgments of our thoughts, our words, and our world, and examine them for the nuggets of wisdom within.

That’s one of the coolest things I’ve learned this summer studying non-violent communication. Judgments have nuggets of goodness in them, showing us what we need and what we want and thereby helping us get there. Peter’s judgmental rebuke of Jesus contained within it the nugget of joy in his connection to Jesus and wonder at his teaching a desire to have his meaningful life continue. Jesus’ responsive rebuke of Peter revealed his shared desire to continue his life and ministry, and his commitment to being authentic. He knew others were out to get him, but he refused to change the way he acted out love in the world. Listening to the values people have in stories makes the stories much richer.

Listening the needs and values we have in judgments can take the sting out, and leave life enriched. May our powerful words be used to tempt ourselves, each other, and those we meet into enriched lives. Amen

1 http://www.deccanherald.com/content/275838/tourist-joins-search-self-missing.html Accessed September 12, 2015.

2 Monty Brown, Free Us For Joyful Obedience: A Primer on Pastoral Caregiving from a Pastor’s Heart (AuthorHouse, Bloomington IN: 2006) Location 680 in Kindle edition.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 6, 2015