Context Is Everything

April 13, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Context is Everything” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Luke 19:28-40

I grew up understanding Palm Sunday to be a “yay Jesus” parade, and with a vague sense of confusion about how the “yay Jesus” on Sunday became the “crucify him” by Friday. Luckily, I came across “The Last Week” by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan and they taught me about a whole lot of things I was missing.

The most important thing I was missing in understanding Palm Sunday was CONTEXT. First of all, Passover. This year Passover started last night, and it is really good when the Jewish calendar and the (adapted) Christian Calendar line up because our stories from this week are all connected to Passover.

Passover is the Jewish celebration of God freeing the people from oppression and leading them into freedom and self-governance under a system of justice and equity. Specifically it is the freedom from the oppression in Egypt, but it turns out that that specificity is and is not important.

In the time of Jesus, Galilee and Judea were under the control of the Roman Empire. And while the Roman Empire would have stated things quite differently, emphasizing how great the Roman Empire was for all the people in it (uh huh…), the people disagreed. They noticed how the tax rates impoverished the poor to enrich the elite. They noticed how the military that “kept the peace” did so by silencing people’s basic concerns. They noticed that more and more people were dying of starvation. They noticed that their religion was being used to support the Empire, when clearly the God they knew wasn’t in favor of all the ways that justice and equity were being ripped away from the people.

And, despite all of the propaganda to the contrary, the Roman Empire knew all this too. Which is why when the major Jewish holiday of “The Passover” came up every year, and massive numbers of Jewish pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate God’s acts of liberation for God’s people, the Empire got antsy.

Like authoritarian regimes do when the people gather, particularly when the people gather together to celebrate FREEDOM.

Anyway, it was the Empire’s tradition that the Roman Authorities of the Day would gather in Jerusalem during Passover as well, along with some extra military power, to discourage people from getting any ideas about their God’s capacity to overthrow THIS oppressor.

Furthermore, the normal seat of power in the area was on the Mediterranean Sea, so coming to Jerusalem required moving. And if you are going to move the authorities, and the military, into the city where you want people to remember you still hold the power, you might as well do the moving as a big happy parade, right?

This is the second supper important piece of context. Before the Passover, every year, there would be a massive parade coming in from the West. Pilate, the Roman appointed Governor of the province of Judea had an Imperial Procession to accompany him – soldiers on gleaming horses, drumlins in union, glittering silver and gold on crests, golden eagles (the symbol of Rome) mounted on pole. The people who came to watch would have shouted the things they were taught to shout, “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.”

Thus, even the entrance into the city emphasized the power and authority of Pilate and Caesar and served to discourage the people from getting TOO excited about Passover and its basic meaning.

And this happened every year. People knew it happened every year. People knew that the authorities were big on shows of power, and the authorities counted on the shows of power to discourage the people and encourage compliance with authority.

Jesus knew this too.

I am pretty sure Jesus also knew that creating a mockery of the Parade of Roman Authority would not endear him to the Roman Authorities.

But it would diminish the power of the parade to intimidate, it would give voice to the needs of the people, it would remind the people that the God of the Passover was still with them.

And Jesus that breaking up the illusions of the Empire for the sake of reminding people of the power of God was worth it.

So he staged a counter-parade, one to come in from the East instead of the West.

His had no military to threaten the people with violence, instead it had cloaks on the road showing people’s profound, unforced trust in Jesus.

His had no gleaming trained horses, just an untried colt, according to the other gospels a young donkey. Now, make no mistake, this wasn’t just a contrast with the Western Parade. It also fulfilled an expectation about the Messiah. Zechariah 9:9 says:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

So, in riding on that colt, Jesus was reminding the people of what a King was supposed to look like to the Jewish people, and what the Roman Empire was NOT offering them afterall.

In response, instead of those golden eagle banners on display coming in from the West, the people waved Palm Branches, both easily accessible and historically a symbol of Ancient Israel.

And then, finally, whereas the shouts coming in from the West exulted Caesar, the ones coming in from the East exulted God and God’s servant, “"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“

Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. Also, once you see it, you get a better sense of why the Roman Authorities saw Jesus as a threat to their power, right? Palm Sunday is no where near as far from Good Friday as I thought it was as a child.

Now, at the end of Luke’s version of this Palm Sunday story, we hear, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

I want to remind us all that in Luke, the Pharisees were Jesus-friendly. They were making a practical and pragmatic suggestion that may well have functioned to save Jesus’ life if it was followed. They were reading the situation correctly. They wanted to help.

Jesus replies that the momentum has taken over and can’t be stopped, and we can note he also decided not to try.

I want to offer one more piece of context into this story, in this case into the whole story of Holy Week, and this one instead of coming from the scholarship of Borg and Crossan comes from the wisdom of our Disciple Bible Study group. Our texts all suggest that the Jewish authorities of the day were a part of the arrest and condemnation of Jesus. Only the Roman Empire could crucify a person, so we know that the Roman Empire killed Jesus, but all of our scriptures say they acted with the Jewish authorities.

The most important piece of context around this information is that the Jewish authorities of the day were PUT IN PLACE BY ROME to SERVE ROME and were REPLACED when they were insufficiently loyal to ROME. So it is really, really, really, REALLY important to distinguish between Jewish “authorities authorized by Rome” and “the Jews.” The failure to make that distinction has been deadly for our Jewish siblings in faith.

But I think, based on our conversations at Disciple, that it is possible to take this even a step further. In 70 CE a revolt against the Roman Empire emerged in Jerusalem and the response from the Roman Empire was a massacre and destruction of Jerusalem in a way that still has impact to this day.

I think it is possible that the Jewish authorities who were authorized by Rome and judged on their loyalty to Rome were still, in fact, trying to do their best by their own people and protect them as much as they could. Those leaders saw clearly what would happen if a revolt or revolution got out of control, and they didn’t want to see their people massacred.

Which is to say, it is possible to look at the position of the High Priest and his family, and others who were complicit in being loyal to Rome and probably condemning Jesus and, well, seeing why they did it. And that their intention was to protect their people.

Isn’t that a bit uncomfortable? Furthermore, the sect of Judaism that was in power during the life of Jesus was the Sadducees, but that tends to get misconstrued in the gospels because the Sadducees were so completely wiped out when Rome destroyed Jerusalem that the writers of the Gospels seem to have forgotten about them.

Jesus, clearly, had decided that it was time to defy the authorities, empower the people, and remind everyone of the wonders of God. Other people thought that was too dangerous, and it was going to get them all killed.

Because in systems of oppression no decision is easy or clear, and lots of decisions are between bad and worse, and they were operating in a system of oppression.

Which, beloveds of God, is a very good set up for Easter. Because in the end the authorities of the day can threaten violence, can threaten death, and are far too often capable of inflicting both. But on Easter we remember that not even death can stop the work of God in the world.

But, that’s for next week.

For this week, I think, our primary task is to dream a little bit about what kinds of protests, what actions of disobedience, what teaching and empowering of the people TODAY would count as following in the footsteps of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem. It is more than a little terrifying, and I have a lot of compassion for those Sadducee leaders, but I’m a follower of Jesus and that includes following his lead in protesting systems of oppression and reminding people that God cannot be stopped.

So, what forms of protest and disobedience is God calling you to?

May we listen well. Amen

April 13, 2025

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

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Untitled

April 2, 2023
by Sara Baron

Protest or Revolt? based on Galatians 3:23-4:7 and Matthew 21:1-11

For many years, I have had the chance to work with a camper I’m going to call Penny today. (So, not her real name.) Penny is a woman who has Down’s Syndrome, a huge personality, and a stubborn streak that can rival my own. She is also world class at engaging in passive protest.

In practice, at camp, this most often looks like a group getting ready to go somewhere, and Penny will sit down, and simply refuse to come along. Unless, that is, someone sings her favorite song and then slowly walks away from her, requiring her to follow in order to keep hearing the song.

The song, if you were wondering, is “This Little Light of Mine,” and it gets sung A LOT when Penny is at camp. Like, 50 times a day? Maybe more. Penny is very good at bending people to her will, and she really, really, REALLY likes that song.

A thing I respect about Penny is that she isn’t going to do what she doesn’t want to do. You can threaten her, bribe her, argue with her, or beg her. But she will simply hold up one finger, and dance it around a little, to let you know what she expects of you.

The thing is, that the camp I run is highly dependent on people being willing to function as a group and move as a group. We’re stuck when one camper doesn’t stay with the group, and it can force us out of adequate supervision! Refusing to get up is the PERFECT protest for our camp, because it puts the counselors and staff into a crisis. Truthfully, Penny gets what she wants because singing “This Little Light of Mine” all day every day is a lower price to pay than not being able to function or keep our campers safe. So she gets what she wants, we get what we want, and if there is a particular song stuck in one’s head for years after, at least you eventually learn to smile about it.

Also, by most ways of looking at it, Penny doesn’t have a lot of power in the world. So, God love her for using what she has well.

Penny at camp functions a lot like Jesus outside of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Jesus used what power to bring the change he wanted. He was up against the Roman Empire, but he similarly managed to put pressure on a sensitive point and get his message across clearly. The Roman Empire, however, did not concede as gracefully as the camp staff does.

Passover in Jerusalem was a conundrum for the Roman Empire. On the one hand, they wanted to show respect to an ancient faith tradition, and maintain the narrative of the Emperor’s power, might and goodness. On the other hand, Passover was a celebration of God’s actions in freeing the people from the oppressive power of a mighty empire, and a whole lot of people gathered very close to each other to do so, and that… felt dangerous. Because while I’m sure the Roman Empire didn’t think of itself as an oppressive overlord, they maybe had a bit of an awareness that some others did. So how do you respect this important religious festival while also keeping it under control?

The Empire came up with a good answer. The local leader Pilate, the “king of the Jews,” marched into the city with a full imperial processional. There were soldiers on gleaming horses, drumlines in union, glittering silver and gold on crests, golden eagles (the symbol of Rome) mounted on poles. It was a BIG time show of power and reminder of the Empire and its hold on Jerusalem. The people who came to watch would have shouted the things they were taught to shout: Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.

The Empire’s plan was to remind the people of the POWER and MIGHT and THREAT of the empire’s military while also being “present” for the rituals – and keeping an eye on the messages from their carefully selected high priests.

It seems Jesus saw through it.

And his processional, the one that came through the East gate, brought a lot of clarity to what was happening at the West gate. Instead of a tall shiny horse, Jesus rode in on an unbroken colt (or donkey. Or both ;)). Jesus came in his ordinary cloths, without the sparkle of gold or silver. Instead of being accompanied by soldiers with weapons, Jesus came with his disciples – ordinary men known for drinking a bit too much and the inability to keep their mouths shut when they should. Instead of banners declaring the power of Rome and displaying the golden eagle, the people shimmied up palm trees and cut off the branches to wave. Palm Branches were the national symbol of Ancient Israel, their flag. The people laid their cloaks on the road for Jesus’ colt to walk on. That is, they used the very little power they had as a carpet for Jesus’ feet.

Zechariah 9:9 reads “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Did you hear it? Your KING comes riding on a colt. Jesus wasn’t just borrowing a colt – and he wasn’t just being humble. He was connecting himself to the expectations of what the Jewish Messiah would look like. In fact, he was more or less claiming the crown. And the people supported him. So Jesus comes on a colt – which declares kingship – and the people wave the national flag – celebrating a new king!

To bring this into focus, Jesus riding a donkey into the East gate raised some questions:

Who is King of the Jews?
From where do they derive their power?
Does power come from the capacity to inflict violence?
Does their power come from sharing power?
Is Pilate there to celebrate God or to stop God’s work?
Which parade is God in?

Jesus found the weaknesses of the Empire – in the need they had to maintain power and control with violence and with the overarching narratives of their goodness. He gave people ways to question it all, just by riding on a donkey.

While I think the Palm Sunday processional was one of the greatest nonviolent direct actions in history, it came with a very steep price. Leading people to those questions undermined the Empire itself. The Empire read it as a revolt, in fact they decided to read it as a VIOLENT revolt, which probably means it shook them to their core. Which is both VERY IMPRESSIVE as protests go, and VERY DANGEROUS as protests go. The Empire killed Jesus for leading a violent revolt agains the Empire.

And the only thing they got wrong was that it was nonviolent.

Actually, scratch that. They got two things wildly wrong. First it was nonviolent to its core. Secondly, they thought killing Jesus would kill his movement. You, listening to this sermon, right now are part of the proof of how wrong they got that one!

But to go back to the nonviolence for a moment… this is absolutely key to everything about Jesus, and it shouldn’t be glossed over. The world tells us that the only power that matters is power over, and power over is enforced with violence. David Graeber in the book “Debt: A History of the First 5,000 Years” points out that only societies with inequality have police forces. And, only countries that are taking unfair shares of the world’s resources spend extravagantly on their militaries. It turns out there is a direct correlation between inequality and violence, specifically state sponsored violence.

The Roman Empire was the military superpower of its day, and was also exemplary a taking wealth from the land and from the poor and syphoning it to the very, very wealthy. Who is exemplary at that today?

Anyway, Jesus didn’t play by those rules. He didn’t enact violence, or permit it, nor did he let the threat of it stop him. He engaged in power with, not power over. He lived nonviolence and by his very life taught its power. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, says this as well as it has ever been said. “There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, there is no male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

Well, that takes care of power over!! That simple sentence teaches us that as followers of Jesus, none of the coercive power of the world applies anymore. And once that power-over is gone, along with it goes the need for violence to enforce it. What is left is space for people to work together, collaborate, help meet each other’s needs, and build connections and community. Which, to be honest, is a darn good reason to join that Jesus parade and choose his values instead of supporting the representative of the Empire on the other side.

But today, I’ll admit, even this story that astounds me every time I approach it, and even this Galatians passage which has one of my two favorite verses in the New Testament, still fall flatter than usual.

Because here we are, 2000 years later, in a society that sanctifies violence rather than nonviolence. In a society with about the same income distribution as the Roman Empire. In a society that STILL functions as if some people matter and some don’t. It is enough to make me wonder how well this Jesus movement is really doing after all. Furthermore, there is the “Christian Nationalist” thing that claims the name of Jesus while doing all the things of the Empire… power, violence, hierarchy, in groups and out groups, all of it.

And, this being the start of Holy Week, I’m going leave this here, in the discomfort. In the reminder that things are not OK, that people misuse the name of Jesus, that God is against violence but our country specializes in it, in the incredible power of the Palm Sunday parade that was a large part of why Jesus was killed. I’m going to leave us here in the brokenness. Spoiler alert: next week I have some good news to share. But for now, here we are.

May God 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

April 2, 2023

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“Nonviolent Protests” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and Luke…

April 10, 2022
by Sara Baron

Palm Sunday, quick and dirty:

Passover is a Jewish holiday
celebrating God’s acts in freeing oppressed people from their
oppressors, and leading them to freedom even when a superior
military force wanted to prevent it.
The Celebration of Passover
brought crowds of faithful Jews into Jerusalem to celebrate God’s
power to free them from their oppressors.
Judea, and Galilee were
functionally Roman Colonies, overburdened with taxes that took the
wealth of the land and transferred it to the wealthy artistocrats at
the top of the Roman hierarchy.
The Roman Empire was fairly
nervous and jerky about large crowds of religiously faithful people
who believed in the power of God to overcome oppressors.
Thus, before Passover, the
Roman Empire had a HUGE military parade into Jerusalem emphasizing
the power of their military and bringing the Governor into town to –
as they would say – keep the peace.
The military parade and the
presence of the Governor functioned as THREATS OF VIOLENCE against
anyone who might think God was up to freeing people from oppression
once again.
(It may be worth remembering as
well that a few decades later there WAS a big protest and the Empire
responded with a massacre as well as the destruction of the temple.
They weren’t kidding about the threat of violence.
The military parade happened
EVERY YEAR.
Knowing this, Jesus engaged in
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION to parody their parade and clarify the
differences between Rome’s violent power and God’s nonviolent realm.

As the Jesus Seminar puts it,
“For his part, Jesus made it clear that he was entering Jerusalem
to face death. In that case, the ‘triumphal entry’ as Mark depicts
it is a satire of revolutionary processions and of the kind of
triumphal entry the Romans enjoyed making into cities they had
conquered.”¹
That is, “Jesus was not making a statement about his own
messiahship, but contrasting God’s imperial rule (‘Congratulations,
you poor! God’s domain belongs to you”) with Roman Imperial
Rule.”²

When I think about nonviolent
direct action, this Palm Sunday protest parade is an outstanding
example. It is up there with the best. I believe most of you are
aware of the lunch counter protests whereby people of color (gasp)
sat down at lunch counters where they would not be served to draw
attention to that injustice (and take the space of someone who might
be served AND PAY).

I believe most of you are aware
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when for over a year African Americans
refused to ride buses in Montgomery, Alabama until the buses stoped
having segregated seating. They refused to ride AS second class
citizens, and without their participation, the buses weren’t
sustainable.

Nonviolent direction action is
really, really hard work. In both of those cases people faced
violence and hardship in response to seeking justice. I’m always
astounded at the commitment people made FOR MORE THAN A YEAR in the
bus boycott, and in the face of VIOLENCE at lunch counters.

Those actions changed our
society for the better. They didn’t counter violence with violence,
but rather with nonviolence. They showed up or didn’t as needed, and
allowed their nonviolent actions to create change.

Our society isn’t particularly
fond of protest, or at least that what I hear when Black Lives
Matters gets brought up in most places. I hear that people should
seek justice in other ways, which makes it clear to me that a lot of
people don’t actually understand the point of protests.

Protests or nonviolent direct
actions are what you do when other avenues of justice are closed OR
you need to increase public awareness of injustice in order to work
through other avenues of justice. If a problem can be solved
directly, most people chose that route. Nonviolent direction action
is the HARDER way forward – one that comes at personal cost, often
with a threat of violence against those who are involved with the
action, and when other avenues are closed.

I’m quite confident that if a
nicely worded letter to a Diner or a local paper managed to
desegregate restaurants, people would have done that. I’m assured
that if a phone call to a city councilman or a postcard campaign to
the transit authority would have desegregated buses, people would
have been thrilled to take the easier route.

Several years ago now, the Poor
People’s Campaign NY did a series of nonviolent direct actions in the
New York State capital to draw attention to the ways that the needs
of people in poverty are being ignored. The one I thought was most
creative was the Fort Orange Club action. Kevin Nelson was present
and he explains it this way:

“We were protesting the
influence of lobbying interests (and their related campaign
donations) on policies that subvert the interest of average New
Yorkers. We had a human chain thing from the Legislative Office
Building (LOB) to the Fort Orange Club, with “bags of money”
along the chain to indicate the money flow. We blocked exits and
entrances to the parking lots at the Club for several hours.”

This one particularly reminds me
of the Jesus Palm Sunday protest, in that it seems equally BRILLIANT,
and infuriating to those in power.

The injustice I have spent the
most time working to change is the structural institutional
homophobia of The United Methodist Church. Because of my work there,
I’ve seen the ways that all other avenues have been blocked. Since
1972, petitions to change the homophobic stances have come to the
floor at General Conference, with no positive action. The judicial
branch of the UMC has upheld the discrimination, and most Bishops
will enforce it. LGBTQIA+ people and their allies lack the votes,
the power, and the access to justice.

Thus, there has been a need to
increase the pressure to create change, to increase anxiety, to bring
attention to injustice, and to be clear that the only way to stop the
demands for justice was to BRING JUSTICE to God’s people.

There have been a lot of
protests, and I want to talk about two of them.

For the first, I’m going to
share it in the words of Rev. Dr. Julie Todd who spent many DECADES
as an activist for Queer and Trans rights in the UMC. This is from
the “Love Prevails Blog”

There was a regularly scheduled
communion at every lunch break in the plenary hall at General
Conference 2004 in Pittsburgh. On the day the votes went badly yet
again for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ)
people, we decided as a movement to go to that communion service,
where we could stand in the presence of the broken and resurrected
Body of Christ. We did this as a means of re-asserting our presence
in that Body. We did this as a means of resistance against the false
institutional proclamation of one cup, one Body, and one baptism,
when clearly the actions of the General Conference actively sought to
harm and exclude members of that Body. All forms of our resistance
and disruption are embodied statements that the unity of the church
cannot continue to come at the cost of LGBTQ lives. These same acts
of resistance are theological affirmations that the resurrected Jesus
lives on in our whole and beloved queer bodies.

There was weeping and there was
anger at communion. There was a need for a deep and spiritual release
of the violence that had just been done to the queer body of Christ.
Because when votes are cast against the very existence of LGBTQ
lives, that is what is happens: violence. Christ’s body crucified
again. To not act in the face of such violence does further violence.

When the sacrament was over,
Rev. James Preston grabbed a chalice from the communion altar and
smashed it on the floor. The smashing of the chalice was not a
planned disruption. While there were many interpretations of that
moment of breaking the chalice, in fact there was no chaos, no
storming the altar, no desecration of the sacrament. There was a holy
anger that took shape in a prophetic act. A movement of the Spirit
interceded to express anguished sighs too deep for words. In the
breaking of the cup, Christ spoke to the real brokenness of the
moment.3

The
destruction of that chalice REALLY upset a lot of people. To this
day I remain horrified that they were upset at the breaking of a
sacred symbol, but not at the ways the church has broken God’s
beloved PEOPLE.

At
that same 2004 General Conference, people started wearing short
rainbow stoles to symbolize a commitment to full inclusion of
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person in the life and
policy of The UMC. Rainbow stoles become particularly symbolic at
Annual Conferences and their ordination services – when they are a
sign of protest over who gets the authority to wear a stole (a symbol
of being ordained) in The UMC. When I was ordained, I was supposed
to have a red stole placed on my shoulders, as red is the color of
pentecost and ordination. Instead I was ordained with a rainbow
stole (and still won’t wear a red one – not until all those called
can serve). My mentors laid hands on me without their robes or
stoles (and one of them in a LOVELY rainbow shawl), as further
expressions of my objections (and theirs.)

In
the scheme of things, what a clergy person wears or doesn’t while
being ordained into a homophobic institution is a pretty low form of
protest. (I joined to bring change, but I’m often still
uncomfortable with it.) There were no consequences, and no changes
came from it. But I remember having a colleague I was getting
ordained with asking me to refrain from those signs of protest so
that our shared ordination could be “sacred.” And I remember
responding that I couldn’t refrain from sharing my objections about
ORDINATION AT ORDINATION. (By the grace of God, that colleague later
changed their mind and told me so, thanking me for my witness.)

So, this Palm Sunday, this day
of remembering a nonviolent direct action that was responded to with
deadly force, I invite you into reflection on justice, protests, and

nonviolent direct actions.

When you see a protest – ask
yourself – what justice is missing, and WHY and HOW is it blocked?

When you see an injustice, talk
with others and pray about what means of responding will bring
change.

It seems that’s the Jesus way,
thanks be to God.

Amen

1. Acts
of Jesus, 120.

2. Acts
of Jesus, 121.

3. https://loveprevailsumc.com/2016/05/12/on-the-body-being-broken/

Uncategorized

“Protest Parade and State Sponsored Violence” based on Psalm…

March 28, 2021
by Sara Baron

Because
of the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Cross in “The Last
Week” I have been convinced that the first “Palm Sunday” parade
was an intentional protest in response to increased military presence
in Jerusalem of the Roman Empire for Passover.

Those
who have been listening to me preach for years are familiar with this
concept, and this year I’ll be taking it in a new direction, but
first I want to bring everyone else on board with this idea, as it
can sound quite different from what I learned in Sunday School as a
kid.

I
think the key to understanding the protest is to think about
Passover, and what it is. Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrating
God’s work to free God’s people from oppression from a foreign
government when they felt powerless to help themselves.

So
it might not be surprising that the Roman Empire, which had power and
control over the Ancient Jewish lands, got a little bit uncomfortable
when the city was overrun with devout Jews celebrating Passover. Nor
would it be particularly surprising that Passover was a time when
people tried to reclaim autonomy, the faith of their ancestors, the
sanctity of their Temple, and the right to the fruits of their labor.
After all, the Hebrew Bible itself sets a rich vision for a just
society, and the ways that wealth flowed from the poor to the rich in
the Roman Empire (and every empire before, during, and since) was the
OPPOSITE of that vision.

It
might even be good to remember that in 66 CE the was a revolt by the
Jewish population that lasted for 4 years. The final result was the
destruction of Jerusalem along with the Second Temple, and hundreds
of thousands of deaths. So the Roman Empire’s perception of threat
wasn’t actually wrong. The city and its many many Passover pilgrims
were primed for revolt.

And
that’s why the Roman governor came to Jerusalem from his normal digs
on the Mediterranean along with horses, flags, music, and a
significant number of soldiers prepared to take down riots. It was an
intentional show of force, meant to tamp down revolutionary
enthusiasm as well as efficiently deal with anyone who dared to start
anything. All of this is not unlike crucifixion itself which was a
particularly horrid form of capital punishment done in public to
those who lead VIOLENT REVOLTS against the Roman Empire to attempt to
discourage others from doing so.

The
Governor’s procession came in the West gate, as the Governor’s home
was to the west of the city. The big shiny military parade was an
annual event, something easy to anticipate. So, Jesus and his
followers staged a counter-parade coming in from the East gate.
Instead of flags with the golden eagle of Rome, the people waved Palm
branches – the symbol of ancient Judea. Instead of “Hail Caesar,
prince of peace” the people shouted “Hosanna” which means “God
save us!” And let’s be clear, “God save us from our oppressors.”
(The name Jesus and the word “Hosanna” come from the same Hebrew
root. Jesus literally means “God saves.”) They went on to say,
according to Mark, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna
in the highest heaven!“ Instead of being passively awed by the
display of violent capacity as in the western parade, the people put
their lives on the line by laying their outer garments (often the
only protection they had from the elements) on the road for Jesus’s
colt to walk on.

So,
to cut to the chase, Jesus appears to be staking a claim to the
rightful kingship of Israel, which suggests that then the Roman
Empire is not the rightful king. Jesus is having a protest against
the Empire. BUT, it was a NONVIOLENT one, just so we’re clear.

According
to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus also engaged in a protest at the
Temple complex. Both protests appear to have been wildly popular,
and the people were following Jesus and claiming him as God’s
deliverer (read: save-r). Thus, the authorities got scared. Thus,
they started to work to take him down, disperse his movement, and
threaten any who would try to follow in his footsteps as leader.
Thus the death on the cross even though the protests were NONVIOLENT.

Not
to give the ending away, but the presence of Jesus followers
remembering and embodying this story 2000 years later is a good
indication that the Roman Empire may have had the power to kill
Jesus, but it didn’t have the power to stop the Body of Christ. But,
alas, I get a week ahead of myself.

Most
years I like to contrast the ways of God from the ways of Rome, and
to clarify that there was nothing particularly wrong with the Roman
Empire – it is the way that pre-industrial agricultural domination
systems work – and at the core it is the way ALL domination systems
work, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand, humanity was WAY
into domination systems.

But
this year, the story of Jesus engaging in acts of public protest, and
as a result having the authorities of the day send a violent guard to
grab him in the middle of the night, convict him based on false
testimony, and kill him in a way the State itself said was unjust
(PEACEFUL revolt) is all just hitting too close to home.

Last
summer the Governor put in place an executive order, in response to
Black Lives Matter protests, requiring each local government in N.Y.
State to adopt a policing reform
plan that will maintain public safety while building mutual trust and
respect between police and the communities they serve. I have been
paying attention to what has happened in Schenectady and it is NOT
GOOD.

Here
in Schenectady, well after activists had release 13 demands¹
that included an end to knee holds on people’s heads or necks, a
video was released of a police officer using a knee hold during an
arrest.²
In response to outcry, the police banned knee holds.

What
followed was a fraught process that added up to the police pushing
through the police department’s OWN ideas of what police reform
should look like. Which a problem. No one can claim things are OK
here. We are not, after all, a city without a record of our own –
Andrew Kearse was a man of color who died in police custody in 2017.
We know we have parts of our city that are profoundly over-policed.
We know that the police end up being called into situations with
mental health crises, and are not trained or capable of responding,
and things go very badly. That is why there is a desire to move some
of the police funding to social workers who can respond with
training!

This
past week, our city council passed the police reform report put
forward by the police department. Upon careful inspection the ban on
knee holds on people’s heads and necks …. as been revoked. Knee
holds are, apparently, back in. Similarly, there is something called
“pain control” that I didn’t even want to google, but refers to
controlling people by hurting them. I’m quite confident that this
isn’t the way humans treat people that they see as fellow humans,
much less God’s beloveds.

It
all feels to me to be far too familiar to the Jesus story. Jesus was
inconvenient to people in authority. He empowered “nobodies.”
He helped the community work together. He questioned authority,
including questioning economic practice. He stood up for God’s
visions, God’s people, God’s dreams of justice. And it was so
threatening that they killed him to silence him.

Friends,
I have on some of my worse days, had to hold down a person who was in
the midst of a crisis to prevent the person from harming self or
others. I hate it. It turns my stomach, even years later, to think
about it. But we were able to stop him without harming him, or
putting pressure on his head or neck.

And
many, many, MANY times in my life I have responded to people in the
midst of crises, people hijacked by their amygdalas, people out of
their own control. And 99.something% of the time, people can regain
control with just TALKING. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to dehumanize
anyone, accused of any crime, by seeking to control their actions
with pain or with a knee on their head or neck. EVER. We need to
keep talking about this – to each other, to the police chief, to
the mayor, to city council, AND to the governor’s office. The plan
submitted by our city is NOT sufficient police reform for our
community.

Next
week we will be celebrating Easter, God’s incredible powers of life
that overcome even death. But this week we need to be unsettled by
the world’s powers of death, and violence, and who they’re used
against.

Jesus
was the victim of state sponsored violence. Who else is like him,
today? Amen

1 http://www.allofusuntitledandfree.com/

2 https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/us/schenectady-police-officer-knee-on-man-video/index.html

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

“Crying Out” based on Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29 &…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
long thought that Palm Sunday was a big Yay-Jesus parade, where
people shouted Hosanna to say “YAY God!” and it was clear that
everyone got how great God really is and how God was working through
Jesus. I thought that the enthusiasm for God and Jesus was just so
big that the stones themselves were on the brink of crying out. Then
I read John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg’s book “The
Last Week”
and learned that wasn’t it.

The story of Palm Sunday is so
much bigger, so much deeper, and so much BETTER than what I
originally understood. It was, indeed, a Yay-Jesus parade, and it
did, indeed, reflect people celebrating their excitement over God’s
acts in the world. But a WHOLE lot was happening underneath and
around it, and to understand that, we need to look at the Jesus
movement itself, the thing that was being celebrated.

I’m
working today largely from John Dominic Crossan’s book “Who
Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel
Stories of The Death of Jesus.” When
he was here last fall for a Carl lecture we learned that he goes by
“Dom.” As he often does, Dom manages to get into the heart of
things by explaining the context. Context is what makes his
scholarship so awesome.

Jesus was a Galilean, whose
ministry was centered in Galilee, right? What was Galilee? Galilee
was a colony of the Roman Empire, and it was a part of what had been
the Northern Kingdom of Israel. We talk about the Northern Kingdom
of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judea because under King David
and his son King Solomon there had been a single united Jewish
country, Ancient Israel, for about 80 years after 1000 BCE. It then
had a civil war and split into two – north and south. The Northern
Kingdom of Israel lost a war to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and its
leadership was taken into exile. The Assyrian empire took over the
land and imposed their customs. The Southern Kingdom did better, it
didn’t lose and go into exile for another 150 years, AND the Southern
Kingdom also got the chance to return from exile and rebuild.
Afterward, it became extra judgmental of its secessionist northern
neighbors, both for the differences that had been present in the
civil war AND for the fact that they were no longer a pure Jewish
state, in faith or custom.

We know some of this history
because of the stories of the Samaritan woman at the well and the
Good Samaritan. Samaria is, after all, directly north of Judea, the
Southern kingdom. What we sometimes forget is that Galilee is the
region NORTH of Samaria. It was ALSO a part of the old Northern
Kingdom. The difference is that in the time of the Maccabees, about
150 years before the birth of Jesus, faithful Jews from Judea moved
up to Galilee to try to resettle faithful Judaism up north. The
Galilee of Jesus day was multicultural and multilingual, rural, and
full of faithful Jews as well as lots of people who weren’t Jewish at
all. It was also a colony of the Roman Empire.

Now,
as Dom says, “The Jewish peasantry was prone … to refuse quiet
compliance with heavy taxation, subsistence farming, debt
impoverishment, and land expropriation. Their traditional ideology
of land
was enshrined in the ancient scriptural laws.”^¹
Galilee itself was a fruitful place, and the land was useful to the
empire. Dom explains, “Lower Galilee’s 470 square miles are
divided by four alternating hills and valleys running in a generally
west-east direction. It is rich in cereals on the valley floors and
olives on the hillside slopes.”^²
It was also pretty rich in radicalism, perhaps BECAUSE of the
percentage of very faithful Jewish people who believed land to be a
gift from God for the people of God.

Now,
John the Baptist did NOT do his ministry in Galilee. (I JUST figured
this out.) His ministry across the river in Perea, in the DESERT. I
hadn’t realized that Galilee didn’t have deserts until Dom pointed it
out. The other side of the Jordan is the side people had waited on,
it is the side they entered the Promised Land from. Galilee, like
Samaria and Judea, had been part of the Promised Land. According to
Dom, John the Baptist “is drawing people into the desert east of
the Jordan, but instead of gathering a large crowd there and bringing
them into the Promised Land in one great march, he sends them through
the Jordan individually, baptizing away their sins in its purifying
waters and telling them to await in holiness the advent of the
avenging God.”^³
He was re-enacting the entrance into the Promised Land, that gift of
LAND for the people. Thus he was challenging the religious,
political, social, and economic bases of Roman control.^⁴
This got him killed.

Being a colony isn’t a great
thing for people. That’s obvious, right? Colonies exist to bring
wealth to the country that controls them, and that means that the
people in the colony are means of wealth production. Dom explains a
bit more:

“When
a people is exploited by colonial occupation, one obvious response is
armed revolt or military rebellion. But sometimes that situation of
oppression is experienced as so fundamentally evil and so humanly
hopeless that only transcendental intervention is deemed of any use.
God,
and God alone, must act to restore a ruined world to justice and
holiness.
This demands a vision and a program that is radical, countercultural,
utopian, world-negating, or, as scholars say eschatological.
That terms comes form the Greek word for ‘the last things’ and means
that God’s solution will be so profound as to constitute an ending of
things, a radical new world-negation.”

The best known example of this
in the Bible is when God acted to free the people from slavery in
Egypt. The people were oppressed, they cried out, God heard them,
and sent Moses and set the people free.

That particular story is
celebrated and remembered at the Passover. The Passover is holy
celebration of God’s action to set the people free when they had no
power to free themselves. The Palm Sunday parade was a formalized
entrance to the Jewish celebration of Passover in Jerusalem, at the
time when Jerusalem was ALSO under Roman Imperial control. It was,
thus, a very dynamic situation. The potential for Jewish upraising
at Passover is the reason that the Roman Governor showed up then,
with a lot of military might and show.. In fact, the Roman Governor
came into the West Gate with a LARGE military parade, at about the
same time that the Gospels say that the Jesus movement came in the
East gate with a populist God parade.

Can you feel the tension rising?

Dom
goes further into explaining how religious ideas of eschatology, of
last things, work. He says that there are two models, and John the
Baptist used one while Jesus used the other. The John the Baptist
way was passive for humans and active for God. It was the idea that
God is going to come save “us,” where us indicates a single group
defined by those who know that God is about to act. This sort of
eschatology is based on a future
promise that God will
act to save us. Dom says, “This future but imminent apocalyptic
radicalism is dependent on the overpowering action of God moving to
restore justice and peace to an earth ravished by injustice and
oppression.”^⁵
That might sound pretty good, until you hear the one Jesus used.

As
a reminder, Jesus was baptized by John. That means he was a DISCIPLE
of John (a student of John’s), but one way or another he branched off
of John’s teachings and went his own way. The second way that Jesus
ended up going is called sapiential
eschatology. Dom
says, “The word saptientia
is
Latin for ‘wisdom’ and sapiential eschatology announces that God has
given all
human beings
the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so
live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to
all observers. It involves a way of life for now rather than a hope
for life for the future. … In apocalyptical eschatology, we are
waiting for God to act. In sapiential eschatology, God is waiting
for us to act.”^⁶

As
far as I can understand it, this is the crux of it all. We follow
Jesus, who taught us about God who is already present to us, who
works with us to change things for the better. We aren’t waiting on
God. We’re working with God. Jesus’s ministry was one of
proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Dom explains this well too, “the
sayings and parables of the historical Jesus often describe a world
of radical
egalitarianism
in which discrimination and hierarchy, exploitation and oppression
should no longer exist.”^⁷
The Jesus kingdom movement, “is not a matter of Jesus’ power but
of their empowerment. He himself has no monopoly on the kingdom; it
is there for anyone with the courage to embrace it.”^⁸
All of this may explain why they could kill Jesus, but not his
movement.

It
also explains why the crowds were so excited on Palm Sunday and
throughout Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was speaking to their problems,
oppression, debt, loss of land, loss of subsistence, loss of dignity
AND he was offering them the reality that God
was already with them and they could change it themselves!
No wonder they were having a Yay-Jesus parade.

I
think the big questions this leaves US with today are about how we
best live the Kingdom. If it is already here, if God is already with
us, if we can partake in the radical egalitarianism, if God has
given all
human beings
the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so
live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to
all observers… then what is it that we need make space for so that
we can LIVE it!??? How do we access that wisdom we already have, how
do we live that life that God has made possible?

Or, to put it another way, how
do we step out of the world’s obsessions with consumption,
acquisition, fear, existential anxiety, competition, hierarchy, and
distractions SO THAT we can live the GOOD life God already made
possible? Since the goal is to live in love and allow lovingness to
expand in us, and I wonder if it is a matter of balance. There is a
need for rest, to savor the goodness; AND there is a need for
activity, to respond to the goodness. There is a need for more
learning to know how to best respond, AND there is a need to teach
others what we know. There is a need to attend to the goodness of
life AND there is a need to attend to the brokenness and see it
clearly. There is definitely a need to play – to live into joy,
laughter and delight AND a need to be courageous and loving in
seeking justice for all. Because part of the call of Jesus is to
live a good life, and the other part is to make it possible to for
others to live a good life – but not JUST a good life! The call is
to a life that is a transformed, courageous, God-soaked with love.

In
the end of our story we hear, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd
said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered,
‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”
This is the part I had entirely wrong. It isn’t that the stones are
bursting with joy. It is that the people cannot be silenced because
they’ve been empowered.
God’s empowering love is with them, and they’ve learned that they
already have what they need to change their lives and change the
world. And once people know that, they can’t be silenced. Thanks be
to God! Amen

1John
Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of
Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA:
HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 40.

2Crossan,
42.

3Crossan,
44.

4Crossan,
44.

5Crossan,
47.

6Crossan,
47.

7Crossan
48.

8Crossan,
48.

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 14, 2019

Sermons

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

March 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5Crossan, 131-132.

6Crossan, 134.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 25. 2-18

Sermons

“On Kings and Messiahs” based on Zechariah 9:9-10 and…

April 9, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

On
the evening of the first full moon after the Spring Equinox,¹
the celebration of Passover commences. Meals are eaten in
remembrance, with story telling. Passover starts at Sundown
tomorrow, and Seder meals will be eaten this week. During the Seders
and through the week, our observant Jewish sisters and brothers will
avoid eating leavened bread. Leavened bread is bread that has risen,
by either yeast or sourdough. Nearly all the bread we eat is
leavened, even the crackers I make are leavened! Matzah, an
unleavened flatbread, is used during Passover.

Do
you remember why? The formational story of the Jewish (or Hebrew)
people is that of the Exodus. The story starts with the people
enslaved in Egypt, struggling under harsh conditions and impossible
work expectations. They cried out to God for help, and God heard
them.

Moses
was born and was raised knowing he was Hebrew but in the Pharaoh’s
house. He saw a fellow Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian overseer,
and in his anger he beat the overseer to death. Then he fled to the
desert in fear that his act would become known. While in the desert,
Moses experienced God, and became aware that God had work for him to
do! After great objection, argument, and forcing God into
compromising, Moses returned to Egypt to set God’s people free.

The
story speaks of ten plagues, the first 9 of which are natural
occasional occurrences in Egypt. The Hebrew people took events that
happened and ascribed them to God’s will. It is likely that this
story developed its dramatic sequences over time 😉 The final plague
is by far the most horrifying. In preparation for that one, the
Hebrews are said to have killed lambs and spread the lamb’s blood
over their door posts. Then, the story says, God killed the
firstborn sons of all of the Egyptian people and animals – every
family except those who had lamb’s blood on their doorframes. (I do
not have words for how horrified I am by this story, and the only way
I can deal with it is by assuming it is the creation of hundreds of
years of oral tradition and not anything like factual history.)

The
Hebrews were then KICKED OUT of Egypt, in fear that God would do
something even worse if they weren’t set free. They left so fast
they didn’t have time to let the bread rise before they broke it.

Thus,
unleavened bread.

More
importantly though, the Passover story is one of liberation from
oppression, and a liberation that the people did not believe they
could achieve without God’s help. The enslaved people became FREE.
In her song after the people are free, Miriam refers to God as their
salvation, meaning that God saved them, meaning that God helped them!
This is the first time salvation is attributed to God. The harsh
conditions were traded in for manna in the desert. The God of their
ancestors saved them. The huge Egyptian nation with its vast wealth
and military might caved to let them walk away (and with gold and
wealth too!). Now, the story may not be historically true as
written, but it is metaphorically abundant, and tells of a God who
cares enough to change the reality of oppressed people.

The
gospel quotes from Psalm 118, a Psalm that the Jews recited at
Passover celebrations, one that includes the words, “Blessed is the
one who comes in the name of the Lord,” beautifully intermingling
the freedom that God had given the people with the moment that Jesus
walked into Jerusalem. Psalm 118 has TWO references to God’s
salvation, naming salvation work as God’s work. The Palm Sunday
narrative is saturated with symbolism of the Passover, and of God’s
work to free the oppressed.

Continuing
with a fast history, Moses had led the people to freedom, and led
them to the Promised Land, but died before they could enter the land.
For hundreds of years the people lived simple lives in their
families and tribes without any central government. Eventually
though, they became antsy and afraid (even though nothing really had
changed) and decided to get a king. They got King Saul. He was
either a little bit crazy all along, became crazy over the years, or
perhaps it is just that the propaganda against him called him crazy –
I don’t know. But after Saul was David, and David was … OK, I’ll
leave the David insults for another day. As David was dying he
decided that his son Solomon would become king after him and arranged
for Solomon to enter Jerusalem riding a donkey while people
proclaimed him king. Thus entering Jerusalem on a donkey became
significant.

This
imagery is used, and added to, in the text we read from Zechariah
today. In Zechariah the act of a king riding in Jerusalem on a
donkey, again, is used as a symbol of the coming Messiah. Zechariah
is written after the exile, when there is no longer a king in
Jerusalem and between the destruction of the first temple and the
building of the second. Zechariah is written in a downtrodden time,
when the people yearned to be rescued from their new oppressors and
for their society to be rebuild. The people remembered a time when
their lives were centered on God, and they dreamed of a leader who
would guide them back to that. Zechariah’s words about a king and a
donkey reflect hope for such a leader, usually called the Messiah.
The hope was that the Messiah would bring God’s salvation back, that
God would use one human to save the rest, to free them from
oppression, to restore their nation and their order.

There
are still more symbols in this story that come from Jewish scriptural
context. Another ancient King (pre-exilic), in this case Jehu (who
was even further from perfection than David), who was greeted in his
kingship when people took off their cloaks and spread them over a
stairway while shouting, “Jehu is King” (2 Kings 9:13). This
seems like it is referenced with the laying down of cloaks in the
road for Jesus, once again affirming the perception of Jesus as God’s
chosen leader.

This
is a story that is also post-exilic, but much closer to the time of
Jesus. The Maccabees (200-350 years before Jesus) gained military
victory and freedom for the Jews in Judea and were celebrated with
crowds waving palm branches and thanking God
(1
Maccabees 13:49-52 and 2 Maccabees 10:1-8). Intriguingly, the second
of the stories relating palm branches, parades, and thanksgiving to
God in Maccabees also relates to cleansing the Jerusalem Temple of
foreign influence and reclaiming it for YHWH worship after driving
out the army that had occupied Jerusalem.

The
more I look at the story of Palm Sunday the more I’m struck with the
intensity of the symbolism. It seems clear that the people who told
the story, the ones who wrote it down, and those who edited it wanted
their points to be clear. Now, that means that not all of the
symbolism is likely to reflect history itself, but instead to reflect
an excess of meaning. The Jesus Seminar puts it this way, “In
Matthew and John the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem mounted on an ass
thus becomes the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophesy and
confirms the early Christian conviction that Jesus was the expected
Messiah. The Christianization of whatever event lay behind this
story led the Fellows to declare the narrative a fiction based on
prophecy. At the same time, they held out the possibility that Jesus
may have entered Jerusalem astride a donkey as a symbolic act.”²

In
all of the Gospels, the crowds yell “Hosanna” which means “God
saves” or “God, save us” or “God, HELP!” The salvation the
Jews had experienced in Egypt as freedom from their oppressors, and
the salvation the Jews had experienced in Babylon as freedom from
their oppressors, was being sought in the time of Jesus while seeking
freedom from Rome. I think it is important to remember that the
“salvation” they were calling for was a tangible, physical kind
relating to the opportunity to survive as a community, for each
person to be able to live a just and righteous life while thriving.
“Hosanna” wasn’t about afterlife, it was about desperate need in
THIS life. Hosanna sounds like a shout of glory and acclamation to
us, but I suspect it also carried overtones that would be very
familiar to refugees today.

My
thinking on Palm Sunday follows the lead of Marcus Borg and John
Dominic Crossan in The
Last Week.³
Most definitively, this story tells us that the early Christian
communities who wrote down the gospels believed that Jesus was the
expected Messiah and that his life was as important as any king’s
life had been. Furthermore, it is very clear from the way the story
is told that Palm Sunday is Act 1 to the Cleansing of the Temple’s
Act 2.

For
those who haven’t been present on previous Palm Sundays with me, Borg
and Crossan point out that at the same time Jesus is said to have
entered the city on a donkey via the Eastern Gate, there was a Roman
processional entering via the Western Gate. The Roman governor ruled
from the coast of the Mediterranean, but came to the city for
Passover, along with significant military guard, in order to maintain
the peace while the people gathered to remember their God’s actions
in freeing them from oppression. The parade that people gathered to
see on the West side of the city was a display of military might,
excessive wealth, and the glorification of the Empire. People on
that side yelled, “Hail
Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman
Peace; Caesar is Lord….” That’s what makes the shouts on the
East side so significant. They defied the power of Rome, and gave the
power back to God and God’s actor. They were blaspheming against the
Empire, and doing so while seeking God’s help in overthrowing it!

Jesus’
parade was a counter to their Imperial procession. It was
intentionally different—meek, mild, nonviolent, the opposite of
mighty, militaristic and powerful. And it was carefully timed. In
other words, it was subversive and courageous. While
we don’t know that all the pieces happened as the stories suggest, we
have reason to think that the stories reflect a kernel of truth –
and that the counter parades offered very different visions of the
world as it should be!

The
Palm Sunday processional along with the indictment of the Temple, and
their timing within the Jewish celebration of Passover, seem
carefully planned to present Rome as the new oppressor – the Egypt
and Pharaoh of Jesus’ present day. In naming Rome as the oppressor,
Jesus also reinforced God as the liberator (savior). The Palm Sunday
parade offered an alternative to oppression, and suggested that the
alternative was in God’s way and God’s vision. Jesus entered the
city while the people called for God’s salvation. This suggested the
Roman officials were NOT the appropriate leaders of the Jews, and
their actions as oppressors delegitimatized them and opened the door
for a rightful leader. Furthermore, I think it was a popular action
and disconcerted the authorities. I still think this is why the sign
over Jesus’ head at death read “King of the Jews,” because this
action claimed that he was. More and more I don’t think Jesus was
aiming at a throne, rather he simply aimed at reminding the people of
God and God’s role as their liberator.

Jesus
MIGHT have gotten away with Palm Sunday if he hadn’t continued on,
and pressed the issue further with the Indictment of the Temple. I
think that the two actions were carefully planned, and meant to
subvert the power of Rome while reclaiming God’s vision for a just
society. They both contrasted God, and God’s acts to save the people
from oppression, with Rome. Jesus acted to reclaim the power of the
Temple for God worship, as he reclaimed God’s leadership of the Jews.
Jesus aimed to reconnect the people to God. That’s why he would have
engaged in planned actions that destabilized Rome’s power and thereby
lead to his own death.

Connecting
the plight of the Jewish people under Roman rule to the plight of the
Jewish slaves under Egyptian oppression was exactly the sort of thing
the Governor came to Jerusalem to silence. Yet Jesus pushed the
package, road the donkey, disturbed the peace at the Temple. It
seems to me that he heard the shouts of Hosanna and was willing to
listen and act. This leads me to wonder: are we?

Amen

1Well,
except when lunar calendars add a leap month and then it is the
second full moon after a vernal equinox, forgive me for
oversimplifying for the sake of a better story 😉

2Robert
W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The
Acts of Jesus (USA
-HarperSanFransicso: Polebridge Press, 1998) 230.

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

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

“Shouting Stones” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-19; Luke 19:28-40

March 20, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I heard a story once of a United Methodist Church invited to be a part of a local Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It was a small church, they didn’t feel like they make much of a difference, but they were invited and they went! A few weeks ahead of time they’d left fliers along the parade route letting residents know that they’d be collecting underwear and socks for kids as they paraded. When the day came it was a bit cold and definitely cloudy. They were near the end of the parade, and not all of them wanted to go after all. But they did it anyway.

The parade route wound through a residential area and when the church group passed by (complete with a BIG sign), residents would yell after them “hey! Wait! I’ve got something for you!” and they’d watch as people ran into their houses and ran back out with the gifts for children. It was amazing, as not all of the residents seemed to have much to share.

Near the end of the route, standing in front of a gas station, came a young boy carrying as many cans of soup as he could hold. He stuck them in the arms of the ones closest to him and said, “These are for the hungry children!” The church didn’t correct him, they took the gift and added it to their pile.

Afterward, they reflected on their experience and realized that most of the people on that route weren’t church goers, didn’t have much to spare, and they might have though wouldn’t care about kids needing new socks … and yet they RAN to give their gifts! They didn’t want to be left behind. They -and that one young boy with the soup especially – CARED and they had gifts they wanted to offer. The church had made it possible for the people to give gifts they wanted to give!

In so many ways, that Saint Patrick’s Day parade embodies the spirit of Palm Sunday!

Now, Jesus wasn’t the only one going into Jerusalem around that time. The Passover was a holy celebration, and many pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate it. The city got 5 times bigger at Passover with so many people coming in. In fact, that’s the reason that Pilate, as the Roman appointed governor came into the city at Passover. They were worried that with all those people together celebrating the Passover things might get unruly.

As a reminder, the Jewish holiday of Passover remembers God’s saving actions in freeing the Israelites from their oppressors in Egypt. So, a whole bunch of Israelites oppressed by the Roman Empire were gathering together in their former capital to celebrate God’s actions to free them from oppression, and it made their current oppressors nervous.

That’s why Pilate came in every year. It was a good time to have some extra Roman military power, to remind the people that they would not stand for a revolt or any sort of rebellion. Pilate came in with all the flash and glory of the Empire – showing of the Empire’s power and threatening anyone who would deny the Empire the right to rule Israel. He came in from the coast – from the west, riding a horse, with drums and golden eagle flags and flash and power.

Jesus came in from the East. He came riding on the donkey – fulfilling a Jewish prophesy about God’s appointed King who would free them from oppression. That is, Zechariah 9:9b, “Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Riding a donkey was also the way that King Solomon entered when he became king. In fact, I’ve heard it suggested in that in the ancient Middle East Kings rode horses to war, but rode donkeys when they came in peace.¹ Some of the people were at the Western Gate greeting the power of the Empire. Some of the people were parading with Jesus toward the Eastern gate. Most of them were people without any hope of access to power or money through the economic system that existed within the Roman Empire. Yet, they had hope that God’s actions through Jesus might make a difference for them.

They were excited and hopeful, and they were yelling. The Gospel says they were yelling, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“ To our ears that may sound pretty standard. It certainly excesses exuberance, but it also just sounds like…. the Bible. So, if you aren’t paying attention to it, you might not notice that what they were saying was sedition!²

Israel was a part of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Caesar was the King – God was not, and Jesus was not. Rome ruled Israel, God did not.

Jesus was riding a donkey, which was the way that kings entered Jerusalem. He had a crowd around him supporting him. They were waving Palm branches, which were essentially the national flag of Israel, and they were proclaiming LOUDLY that Jesus was the king – and the one appointed by God. These were words and actions of a rebellion against the Empire – at exactly the same time that the army was coming into the city to stop rebellions.

There were some who tried to silence the crowds – to warn them of what would happen if the Roman Empire found out that people were yelling such things. But Jesus responds that they can’t be silenced. He suggests that the movement has begun and it is unstoppable. He uses the metaphor that if the people were silenced the stones would start shouting. As a child I took that literally, but these days I tend to think it means that the energy and hope of the movement couldn’t be silenced.

Jesus would end up dead by the end of the week, killed for leading a VIOLENT revolt against the Empire. Of course, it wasn’t violent, but it was a revolt. They thought that if they killed him, the movement would stop. We today are the proof that the stones would shout out – the movement can’t be silenced.

It is like the St. Patty’s day parade and the people running from their homes with their hands full of underwear. You’d think they didn’t have anything to give, but it didn’t stop them from giving it! You’d think the Israelite peasants would be too scared to rebel, but they were unstoppable. You’d think the movement started by a backwater Jew in an an Empire from 2000 years ago would have stopped by now, but it hasn’t. The stones still cry out.

For more than a year now I’ve been working with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition in preparation for General Conference in May. As a person who has studied math, and a person paying attention to demographics in The United Methodist Church I have a lot of clarity about what to expect from General Conference: a whole lot of pain and a hard shift towards a more conservative church. The question is how conservative it will become. There have been a lot of times when I’ve wondered why I’m doing progressive organizing in a church where putting our stamp of approval on a piece of legislation almost guarantees that it won’t pass. There have been plenty of times since my first trip to General Conference in 2004 where I have wondered why I stay in this denomination that does such great harm to my sisters and brothers in faith who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual.

I don’t think the people who waved palm branches and shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were stupid. They knew for sure that it was an act of rebellion, they knew it was seriously dangerous for them and for Jesus, and I suspect they knew that it was REALLY REALLY unlikely that Jesus would live to be king. I can’t be sure what any of them thought, but the Gospels themselves make it clear that Jesus knew the actions of Palm Sunday would get him killed, and I suspect most of the participants did too.

So why did they do it? They were desperate and there was very little reason to have hope outside of the Jesus movement. Peasants were dying young after living lives of hard labor and undernourishment. There wasn’t any reason to believe that would change on its own. Jesus brought hope. He brought a message that was different: showing people ways to work together to have enough, suggesting that the values of the world were all messed up, seeing and caring about women, children, people who were ill or injured, and people living in poverty. Jesus was the living reminder that God still cared, that steadfast love endures forever. They voted for that with their lives and their livelihoods. The cloaks they spread were often the only thing keeping them alive at night, protecting them from the desert night’s chill, and they choose to lay their cloaks before Jesus just like they choose to shout the words that could get them all killed.

They knew they might all die, and it was worth it anyway to have a reason to hope in God.

That sure makes General Conference seem less important! But truth be told, as much as I know that General Conference will be a disaster from a progressive perspective, I have a tiny bit of hope. There are some good things that might happen: legislation written by UM clergy with disabilities to expand the denomination’s care for people with disabilities will likely pass! The work done by Fossil Free UMC to get the denomination’s resources out of fossil fuels might pass and similar work done to get resources out of companies that support the occupation of Palestine might too. (And since our pension plan is worth ~$21 billion, what we do with our investments MATTERS.) And maybe, just maybe, even though it is a long shot, we might pass the legislation that creates global equity in The United Methodist Church and makes us true sisters and brothers with United Methodists outside of the United States.

Most of the injustices of the church will stand, I suspect there will be MORE injustice when we’re done with General Conference then there are now, and yet I’m going to go and work on organizing the progressive voice because I believe that calling for justice in the church and the world is the work of God. And maybe, just maybe, the Spirit will find a way to bring more good than bad out of it all. God has done weirder things already, even if it seems statistically unlikely to me!

Those Palm Sunday crowds took risks for the sake of hope.

They paid attention to what God was up to, even when chances were very slim that God’s loving-kindness and justice would end up in charge. They celebrated God, and they celebrated hope, and they came together cheering for possibility – even though it was dangerous to their LIVES.

They took risks for the sake of hope.

May we do the same.

Amen

___

1 http://www.gotquestions.org/king-ride-donkey.html

2The gist of this whole sermon comes from Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan’s book “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem” (Harper Collins: 2006). This is one of the most important books I’ve read in terms of reframing my understanding of Palm Sunday, and a whole lot of other things.

–

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

March 20, 2016