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Untitled

  • April 9, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Yes to Hope” Isaiah 49:1-13, John 20:1-18 Easter, April 9, 2023

I have heard it said that no one under 40 expects anything good to happen ever again. The traumas of the pandemic, the realities of climate change, the exploitative nature of how we practice capitalism, and the big money interests preventing our government from functioning have led people to conclude we’re just doomed.

You might have gotten lost in my depressing list, so I’m going to remind you of the start of that idea. “No one under 40 expects anything good to happen ever again.” Here is the thing. I’m 41. So, I’m not under 40!! But I’m also not in a particularly distinct group from those under 40.

It is a little bit too easy for me to get pulled into “everything is broken and also impossible to fix.” Here is the really yucky part – being a preacher who focuses on the life and teaching of Jesus often makes this worse. I know it isn’t supposed to work that way, and I really appreciate the chance to spend my life wrestling meaning out of parables and getting challenged out of complacency with the teachings by and of Jesus.

And yet, as you may have noticed if you’ve heard me preach before, I think it is important to understand Jesus and his teaching in the context of first century Galilee and Judah, in the realities of empire and exploitation, in the disenfranchisement of the masses, and the ways that power was used and abused. The problem is that there are differences in specifics between then and now, but not so many in overall structure. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg refer to the economic and political system of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus as a pre-industrial, agricultural domination system. They contrast that with the post-industrial, non-agricultural domination system of today and I find that they’re horrifying similar.

Now, I love the Bible, I love the visions of God for a good society, and I am in love with the ways that Jesus cast God’s vision in terms of non-violence, distributive justice, collaboration, and shared care for each other. I love it enough to devote my life to it.

But there is a little problem with the fact that there have been nearly 2000 years since Jesus, and there have been “followers of Jesus” in an extraordinary number of positions in of power and influence, and for a long time it was even fair to say a few continents were “Christian” and yet the only thing that changed was the DESCRIPTIONS of the domination systems.

This being Easter, I could feed you sweet stories of moments I see the kindom of God at hand, metaphors about flower bulbs that bring life, or even experiences of utter awe that might communicate how very good God is. But if it is true that no one under 40 expects anything good to ever happen again, and if it is true that people have been following Jesus for 2000 years and the overriding economic and political systems are largely the same, it seems to me that this moment calls for a larger response to what is actually a very large scale problem.

By the grace of God, I have one.

You see, I sat with God in prayer this week and raised up the concerns already mentioned, and laid out my angst about preaching Easter into those realities. As I sat in my own discomfort, I also slowed down enough to become attentive to the Divine Presence. And then I started to think about the book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Because of my massive respect for David Graeber, I’d read “The Dawn of Everything” as soon as it came out, but it is now nearly 18 months later and I’m still processing it.

The book starts with sharing critiques of the European way of life from the perspective of Native Americans who’d were first exposed to it. There is universal horror at the idea of a society that allows anyone to be hungry, cold, or unhoused. A member of the Wendat Confederacy, Kandiaronick, offers a critique that could almost fit into the mouth of Jesus:

I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine.” I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behavior. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as look at silver?1

The authors preserve those critiques as a way of clarifying that the way of life that seems “normal” isn’t the only option. Indeed, that is the point of the book! That there have been many, many ways that people have organized themselves into societies. The authors aimed to disrupt the common historical myth about the origins of agriculture and social inequality. Many of their examples feel downright weird, the decisions on what people valued as society and how they made decisions. Humans are quite quirky. They establish, that having an abundance of grain doesn’t necessarily lead to being at peace with some people having warehouses of it and others having none.

For me, the overarching narrative of the book was: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I suppose that’s supposed to be obvious. There are examples of it! There were hundreds of years before King Saul when the Ancient Proto-Israelites lived an equalitarian communal existence. The very people quoted critiquing Europeans for letting people struggle lived in societies that took care of everyone!

However, being born and raised in the United States starting in the 1980s, I’ve only ever seen exploitative capitalism as the way society functions. Additionally, I’ve been taught to look at socialism and see the pragmatic ways it is also exploitative. And then I look at the life of Jesus and his critiques of the exploitative domination systems of his day, and at the prophets pointing the exploitative domination systems of their day, and the last 3000 years or so just seems pretty bad and maybe we’re stuck.

But we aren’t.

The exploitative domination system of Jesus’ day wanted to silence him and his movement so they wouldn’t be threatened. And so they killed him. And whatever happened on that first Easter, the impact was that the movement of Jesus simply continued without him. Jesus could be killed. God’s work in Jesus could not.

And, fine, here we are 2000 years later and it hasn’t all worked out yet. That IS depressing, no kidding. But, it DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY, and God is at work in the world to bring change, and I tend to think God has laid a whole lot of invisible groundwork to bring change that will one day break free.

It is POSSIBLE to be people who take care of each other. It is possible to have great healthcare available to all people without burning out the care-givers or sacrificing the care receivers. It is possible to have healthy, delicious food available to all the people of the earth, without poisoning the food with chemicals, copyrighting the seeds, impoverishing the local farmers, or pricing the poor out of food. It is possible to house all people, in safe housing without mold or other dangers, without making people choose between housing and medicine. It is possible.

It is POSSIBLE to take care of each other. It is possible to allow parents to care for and savor their babies, and to have well-educated and loving caregivers take over when it is time, and to care for the ill and aging with humanity without undercutting the needs of caregivers OR care receivers.

Isn’t it funny? What simple things I’m saying are POSSIBLE? And how far away they seem? And how it takes faith in a God who can bring life out of death to even consider these possibilities?

Now, dear ones, you may want me to lay out the road map from here to there. I can’t. I don’t see it. But I am reminded that I am a PART of the Body of Christ, and I am called to do my work and no one else’s. My job, today, is to remind you that things don’t have to be like this. Because until we remember that God dreams of justice, and joy, and abundant live for EVERYONE, we can’t even start to move towards it. Because the story of Easter is the story that life can emerge even when it seems it can’t. And today is Easter. Things look pretty rough out there. But God isn’t done with us yet.

I believe in the LIVING Body of Christ. If I can name it, and you can dream it, and God is with us, we’re gonna get from oppressive domination systems into life abundant for everyone. I fear it may yet take some time. The powers that are, are pretty significant. But, it is worth working towards anyway. Especially with God.

We work with a God who brings life out of death. God isn’t done with us yet, and God isn’t about to make peace with domination, or exploitation. God is a God of life abundant!

There is plenty of death around us, Holy One. We are willing to work with you on life. Guide the way! Amen

1David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Picador | Farrar, Straus, and Girouz, 2021), p. 55.

April 9, 2023

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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  • March 26, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Contagious” based on Isaiah 51:1-8, Luke 13:18-21 March 26, 2023

In 2001, in a grand adventure, I ended up in Fairbanks Alaska so I I could drive home with my brother home who’d had a summer internship with the National Wildlife Refuge. While in Fairbanks I was gifted with sourdough starter that I still use today.

Three years ago, a whole lot of other people got into sourdough starter, and I happily shared mine, but I didn’t go with the craze because I’ve already been on it for quite a while. Except last week I came across an article about “high hydration” bread and I suddenly realized that the 2020 sourdough craze where all of my friends suddenly made prettier bread than I ever managed to wasn’t because of my lack of artistic skills after all! Instead, the “no knead” breads are actually high-hydration breads which get mixed differently and a particular style of bread I’d always wanted and failed to make was suddenly in my grasp.

So.

On my day off last week I decided to try high-hydration sourdough bread, except I couldn’t find the right recipe. The ones I found either required yeast (I think that’s cheating) or bread flour (and I believe in a limited number of flour types in a home at any time). So, I just sort of made the same bread I always make, but with a different proportion of water. And then I waited.

The recipe with yeast said it would double in 90 minutes.

I started at 8AM.

At noon, I thought maybe it had fluffed, a little.

At 2 it looked the same.

At 4 I decided maybe I should refrigerate it for the night, and try again the next day – as recommended by another recipe I’d found. But I was doing something else so I didn’t get up.

At 6, when I went to put it the fridge, voila, it had doubled!

Now, I love making bread, and it ALWAYS feels like magic when the bread rises, even with yeast, but more with sourdough. This time felt almost like the first time I’d ever made bread when I stared in wonder at what had happened. (My grandmother often used to look at me with affection and say that simple toys amused good children.)

Now, when Luke 13 says “it is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened,” I need you to know the “yeast” is actually sourdough starter. And sourdough starter in practicality is some partially made bread from last time, set aside for this time, from which a bit will be kept for next time. It really is just flour and water with wild yeast alive in it, that becomes concentrated by being fed with flour and water.

What I’m trying to say here is: IT IS SO COOL.

The flour and water that has invisibly hidden within it the wild yeast from the air all around us, is able to mix in with other flour and water, and the yeast grows and changes the whole batch – which can both make delicious bread and replicates itself for batches of the future too.

The yeast is, in one way of looking at it, contagious. Now, at this point of life most of us have some pretty negative connotations of the word “contagious,” right? In no small part because it is a word that reflects a POWERFUL reality, a way of changing things that can easily get out of control. Or, in the positive, it indicates the power of one small thing to bring enormous change.

The amount of sourdough starter within bread dough is almost negligible, but it changes everything. Mustard seeds are so small they can be hard to pick up… but the seeds grow huge and enable more life to come! (Also, the seeds when ground up have a potent, almost contagious flavor impact… just saying.)

I am so used to thinking about faith as active. We live out our faith. We nurture our faith. We nurture faith in each other. We work with God to build the kindom, and so on and so on and so on.

But in Luke, it doesn’t sound like that. In Luke, the power of the kindom of God is potent, and contagious and unstoppable. Sure, the seed needs to find the right place to grow, but when it does … WOW, a bush so big its almost a tree! Sure, the bread needs to be fed and mixed and kneaded (or not?) and baked, but WOW, the bread does the rising on its own!

One of the weaknesses of living within the post-industrial revolution, scientific method, de-mystified, de-mythified world that we now occupy is losing track of those WOWs. It can feel like the work of building the kindom is on our shoulders, instead of being on God’s shoulders where we have a chance to make our little contributions along the way. It can feel like we have control, when really we don’t, and then it can feel like it is all meaningless when that isn’t true either.

We can get lost figuring out how to understand God from the worldviews we occupy today. It is easy to do. (It happens to me rather a lot.)

For me, these kindom parables lighten the load a little bit. I can a plant a seed, but I can’t make it grow. I can mix up bread dough, but I can’t make that grow either. I can plant seeds of compassion, but I’m ALSO not responsible for making those grow. The contagion, the growth, the power of life within the world –that’s not my work, it is God’s!

And it is GOOD to have limits on my work!

On another grand adventure (you are hearing about more of those today that you should, proportionate to my life), I stood on the rim of of Bryce Canyon National Park and looked. At Bryce large columns of rock called hoodoos stand isolated, softer rock having been eroded away. On the top of those immense columns of rock, soaking up the sunlight, I found to my surprise – TREES.

How? How did the seeds get there? How did they get enough soil to grow? How did they withstand the wind?

HOW?

But also, thank God.

For me, those trees speak to the power and persistence of LIFE in this world. Life itself is contagious. How did those trees grow? Probably because other ones grew before them! And made soil, and the soil deepened, etc.

Because life brings life. Like yeast, and mustard seeds.

Because in the end, the power of life isn’t ours, it is God’s.

In Isaiah, we are reminded that God’s power is bigger and longer lasting that even the earth itself. It is forever. God’s love, and the power of life that God brings are eternal. God’s work for justice and goodness (righteousness) will not end. It can’t be stopped. It is contagious.

Friends, I have been in churches for my entire life (thanks Mom and Dad!) and for that entire time I’ve heard expressions of dismay at church decline. I’ve never known the church any other way, and I’ve never known the church not to be worried about it. It is, however, kind of a tiring story. One that doesn’t seem to bring along a lot of life with it.

What if we put a little bit more trust in God? What if we trusted that God is at work bringing life into the world and partnering with individuals and groups who are working with God, and along with life comes love and compassion, justice and goodness, righteousness and hope? What if we let ourselves be bread dough, and let God work within us, and stopped worrying about how fast or how well we rise? What if we trust God is doing good work, and we don’t have to control it? What if God’s contagious power of life can’t be stopped, and we couldn’t even do it if we tried? What if all we have to do is hang tight and wait and see, and maybe have some joy along the way?

By the way, the bread was the best I’ve ever made.

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

March 26, 2023

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  • March 19, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“God is Love” based on Psalm 136:1-16 and 1 John 4:7-12

There is an old story, one that may have been created by some preacher along the way, that is well worth telling anyway.

A young man left home against his parents’ wishes, feeling a need to fulfill his own dreams far from everything familiar. The disagreement over him leaving created a breech in the relationship and for many years there was no contact between them at all.

Some decades later the man’s journey was going to take him through his hometown, and he wrote a letter to his parents on their farm:

On March 26th I will be on the 3PM train, and I would like to stop and visit you, but I do not know if I am welcome. If you would welcome me home, please tie a red ribbon on the old oak the train passes by. If I see it, I will depart. If not, I will continue on my way. – Your Son

When the day came, he situated himself on the side of the train that would see the old oak, but closed his eyes as the train curved around the track bringing it into view. He was terrified to find it empty, aware that his parents might not even still be living, and if alive might not have forgiven him.

When he finally opened his eyes, the tree was covered in red ribbons, from the trunk to the tippy top, a beacon of red welcoming him home.

At the risk of abusing my privileges as preacher, I want to tell you that I think there are two equally important morals of this story. I think it is really obnoxious to tell people what to take from a story or another piece of art, but alas, here we are anyway. I also wonder which of these you took as the obvious point of the story! (Or if it was another entirely)

One, lovely, take is the reminder that God is like that man’s parents, always enthusiastically welcoming us home, even when we doubt our own welcome. This is an important point, and if you needed to hear it today, then thank God you did!

Another, lovely, take is the reminder to look around the world for love and notice when you see love that you are seeing God at work in the world. Imagine that son sharing his angst with a seatmate, and what the seat mate would have seen. The welcome wasn’t for them, but to be witness to such an outpouring of love is a powerful thing.

Furthermore, I think there are expressions of love like that around us all the time. Maybe not as visible as a oak tree covered in red ribbons, but no less potent. Our new house is rather close to Oneida Middle School, and that means I get to see a lot beautiful interactions between youngsters, and sometimes even have some with them. I see kids throwing snowballs, and clearly everyone is having a blast. I see kids clumped up talking and laughing, and I’ve also see them quickly make space when they see me pushing a stroller. I hear shouts of greeting, and just as enthusiastic goodbyes, and last week for no reason I could discern I was handed a snowball and encouraged to throw it at an inanimate object, at which point I was cheered on. Universally, the youngsters are kind to our toddler, and quite often coo at him in the sweetest of ways.

Now, I’m not sure what the middle school years were like for you, but they were a low point in my life. I didn’t fit in, I hadn’t found my grove, my friendships were particularity life giving, and the experience of being an outcast hurt to the very core of my being. These youngsters seem so much more poised and put together than I was, but I suspect plenty of them are experiencing similar angst anyway. I’m sure many are struggling in many ways, and I just can’t see it from my window or the sidewalk.

Yet, their poise, their presence, their companioning of each other, their kindness, and their quirkiness – I think – are actually healing some of those parts of me that are still aching from being their ages. And I’m inspired by them. I catch in them little glimpses of love and hope that remind me that God is good and that love is a potent force in the world.

I think we can find love if we are aiming to find it. I think we are more likely to notice it if we want to find it. And I think that when we seek it and when we notice it, the impact within us is HUGE. Paying attention to the impact of God’s love in the world magnifies its impact in us and in the world!

1 John 4 makes some really important points, it is a chapter of the Bible that I often think about, and guide people towards. “God no one has ever seen. Yet if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is made complete in us.” That’s a BIG DEAL. Sometimes I get rather annoyed with those who want to debate God’s existence. This isn’t because I think the answer is obvious, indeed I think LOGIC gives us exactly as many reasons to think God exists as to think God doesn’t. Instead, it is because I think the question doesn’t matter. If God exists, but just created us and now lets us be – then how is that different from God not existing? If God exists, but God’s primary function is to judge us after we die, then what difference does that make in our lives (other than frightening us?)

I think the important question is: how do you understand God? And I LOVE 1 John’s answer. God is unknowable, invisible, maybe even largely abstract. Which is hard, BUT God is also love and we can know, see, and experience God in love. Love is from God. God guides us to love. We should be known by our love. It is in our loving that God is known. We can make God more knowable, more visible, more concrete by ACTING in love.

And, even, I appreciate the line, “whoever does not know love does not know God” because I think it is true and I also think it is a great litmus test for people, for preachers, and for teaching in general. Don’t trust what isn’t based in love.

It may be that love has too many bad connotations or too little clarity for you, I am reminded that Rev. Dr. Andrew Driecter says that the word “compassion” works better for him than love, and feel free to substitute that in if it is better for you too.

There are, of course, a multitude of ways to nurture love and compassion within us! John Wesley encouraged us to think about them along two axes – individual to communal, and connecting to others to connecting with the Divine. We now have committees in each quadrant of that model 🙂 since it makes sense that a church would be aiming at giving people experiences of love and the opportunities to share it.

Today, my request of you is pretty simple: pay attention to where you notice love this week! AND, if you want “bonus credit” on this assignment, share the answers with someone else.

May God help us notice what is already all around us!

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

March 19, 2023

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  • March 12, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“What Can Separate Us from the Love of God?“ based on Romans 8:31-28

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers-that-be, nor things that are, nor things that will be, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Redeemer.” -Romans 8:38-39 1

“There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”-Galatians 3:28 2

If I were picking the most central Bible verses from the Christian Testament, these two would be it. To be fair, I think the Gospels have the best stories, and stories are more important than verses, but nevertheless. With all the issues I have with Paul, I’ll give him these. They’re everything. I’m not preaching on Galatians today, but I figured if I told you I had 2 favorite Christian Testament passages and didn’t share them both, I’d lose you to wondering what the other was. And, anyway, they’re especially beautiful and whole together.

Today we’re on Romans, on nothing can separate us from the love of of God.

Nothing.

This is so core to faith that I don’t feel like it can ever be emphasized enough, and also I fear that most of you already know this and aren’t that interested in it. Except…

One of my dear ones, a mentor and friend, suggested that the reason we have to keep telling people that God loves them is that it is really hard to believe, and a lot of messages are out there which tell people they aren’t lovable. So we keep coming back to God’s love in hopes of convincing people it applies to them, and to everyone else too.

Paul does a good job talking about what doesn’t get in the way of God’s love. It goes without saying that God’s love is also not impacted by wealth or poverty, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, history of trauma, mental or physical health status, abilities or disabilities, guilt nor shame. God’s love isn’t dependent on us being good, or useful, or even kind. God’s love applies to all, even the ones we think are awful, even the ones we think are evil, even the ones who have done great harm.

Which is to say that God’s love isn’t the same as God’s approval, clearly. Rather we lack the power to stop God’s love, even when we are at our worst, even when we do great harm to others of God’s beloveds.

That is: God’s love is the foundation of the universe, the essence of life itself, and the ground of our being.

Love is at the center of it all.

Now, I can be honest. That’s a faith statement for me. I believe that love, God’s love in specific, is at the center of it all. Others… don’t. Even some of you may not, perhaps because the use of the word God may confuse things enough for some of you that you’d rather withhold judgement. (For the record, I love that this is a church with enough spaciousness for people to wonder about the meaning of the word God and how we should and shouldn’t be using the word.)

So, knowing that I am speaking as myself, with some hope it might be useful for others, let me share a little a bit about what that means for me. If love is at the center of all that is, then judgement is not. That’s pretty important to me, even though I think accountability, apology, and growth matter a lot. But I see in many theologies a premise that God is first and foremost out to judge us, and that punishment and reward are at the center of the all that is. I don’t agree.

Alongside this, I fear that a lot of what we are doing as human being is trying to prove ourselves worthy. Maybe that sounds like “worthy of the space we take up on the planet,” maybe like “worthy of the resources we consume,” often I fear it is simply “worthy of love.” It may be that this is prevalent right now because of the internalization of exploitative capitalism and its obsession with worth itself. It may be that this is simply a basic human fear. It may be that our society’s structure explicitly devalues and dehumanizes some, and that keeps the rest of us afraid of falling into that category… I don’t know WHY. But I know a whole lot of our energy is about trying to be worthy. And I know that if God’s love for each of us and all of us is at the center of all that is, then we are already worthy and can stop trying so hard to prove it. Which can be a relief for as long as we remember it.

Now this is a place that progressive Christianity can get a little bit confusing. Because I talk a lot about “building the kindom of God” and others about “being the beloved community” and quite often we analyze what isn’t working in hopes of motivating people to work towards a better system that does a better job of valuing all of God’s people.

But there is a nuance here that I want you to know about: the goal is not to be good enough of a person, or good enough of a Christian, or enough of a do-gooder to be worthy of God’s love. WE DO NOT HAVE TO EARN IT. Rather, if we are able to soak in any amount of God’s love for us, to soak up the abundance of goodwill God has for us and for all, (and if we are able to do that with any life energy still with us, which is questionable for many right now, so please take that seriously too)… then quite often we wish to respond to love with gratitude and hope, and when we wonder what that should look like, THEN we hear the suggestion that God would like us to love one another as a form of loving God back.

Do you hear the difference? IT ISN’T AN OBLIGATION!!!! You don’t have to work for the church’s committees (I say with trepidation), or volunteer with worthy causes, or give generous donations, or even smile when you are cranky. God loves you as you are, and you don’t have to earn it.

Instead, when you are able to be upheld by that love, and you have extra to share, you are invited – welcome – to use that energy, passion, power, and resources toward loving God’s others beloveds. But first, breath it in, soak it in, and let it change you from within. First, it penetrate the guilt, and the shame, let it have it’s time with your exhaustion.

FIRST, remember that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then, maybe, then when you are ready, then when you WANT TO, then when it feels right, THEN you can see how you want to love in return. Amen

1 A Women’s Lectionary Translation

2Ibid

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 12, 2023

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  • March 5, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“What is Good?“ based on Psalm 92:1-5, 12-15 and Matthew 7:15-20

Two weeks ago I preached a sermon entitled “There is No Single Way to Follow Jesus” where I talked about diverse understandings of God and Jesus, multitudes of prayer practices, and not writing people out of the Body of Christ because we disagree with them. It seemed pretty important to me, especially as we baptized a teenager who might have been told along the way that there is one right way to follow Jesus. Others told me that, and I was grateful my church gave me space to disagree.

Afterwards, one of the wise ones around here recommended that I preach a follow up sermon that continued to make space for the multitude of ways to follow Jesus, but helped us all see that is different from saying “everything goes.” I have taken that to be an invitation to talk about “discernment” which is the fancy word for “figuring out what God would have us do.” Or, as apple dictionary puts it (exceptionally well, wow!) “perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding.”1

So today we’re talking about discernment, following the warnings of Matthew 7 to beware of false prophets and pay attention to whether or not love is the outcome of teachings, decisions, and leadership. That means we are also talking about how we live our faith values, and how we making decisions while listening to God. But, as an entrance into this conversation I need to tell you about what I am now thinking about as “The Great Toilet Brush Dilemma of 2023.”

Several articles I’ve come across recently have stated that toilet brushes should be replaced every few months, which is faster than I had thought, and I decided perhaps it should be taken seriously (as it didn’t appear to be put out by the toilet brush industry.) However, the toilet brushes I have are made of plastic, and I try to minimize my use of plastic (with limited success), so I searched the internet for “eco toilet brush” and found there were a number of options. However, most of them seemed excessively expensive, which violated that old Wesleyan principle of “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can” so I ignored those. One seemed reasonably priced and came with decent reviews, but a further look found that the brush didn’t work with chemicals (maybe OK), was hard to get dry (hmmm), and tended to mold (no!). So then I went back and looked at the suggested brushes from my preferred guide to such things and they offered two ideas, both made of plastic, but with REUSABLE brush heads. Which is better than non-reusable brush heads, right? But THEN I looked to make sure I could get the brush heads and I discovered one could, but then one had to decide between getting one brush at a time at nearly the price of the whole thing or getting 4 at a time for a much better rate, that even claimed to be “eco” and CLAIMED to be biodegradable but the number of asterisks around that led to that claim being less than believable, at which point I was needed to do something else and I made absolutely no decision. It is now nearly a week later and every time I think about finishing this decision I throw my hands up in the air and move on to something else while muttering to myself that this is a really trivial thing not worthy of so much of my attention.

Which is to say that in an attempt to balance some values I hold: care for creation (limit plastics!), financial responsibility (spend wisely!), and basic cleanliness (limit bathroom bacteria growth) – I got stumped. And I needed to tell you that so I could enter into this conversation about discernment with the appropriate levels of humility and no one would think I was offering expert opinions.

It really is true that not everything goes. There are better and worse decisions that can be made, sometimes even good versus evil. But those are the EASY choices. Choose good! The harder ones are where it is more difficult to see which is which, and while we are always going to struggle with those, God is here to help us, and to forgive us when we get it wrong. We’re talking about how to make those harder decisions today.

In this church we were given the gift of the phrase “optimize prime values” by a now departed member, Lee Tupper. Lee wrote, “there is a set of higher values (henceforth referred to as prime values in this discussion) that serve as the ultimate standard by which the relative ‘goodness’ of the consequences of human activities is to be judged. This relative ‘goodness’ is a measure of the degree to which the evolving human system tends towards a consistency with the relational type of God assumed. It is reasonably obvious that none of these concepts can be expected to be known or understood with real precision. It is also likely that we will not ever know whether the prime values are absolute and our knowledge of them is evolving, or the values themselves are evolving.”

However, other than suggesting “love” and “justice” as likely candidates, Lee didn’t tell us what the prime values ARE. As a church we’ve spent some time discussing it, and at the moment we lean towards naming that we think love, justice, compassion, inclusion and humility are prime values (although we have made no claim that this is a complete list).

So, if you are looking to figure out where God may be leading you in a decision, and you are needing some structure to use in thinking about things, considering love, justice, compassion, inclusion and humility might be of use. They at least put boundaries around what is important. That said, it doesn’t answer the Great Toilet Brush Dilemma of 2023, other than maybe affirming that the concerns I have are valid, which actually is a great help.

Within Methodist circles, one of the better known means of making decisions is to look at John Wesley’s three simple rules: 1. Do no harm, 2. Do all the good you can, 3. Stay in love with God.2 I have taught courses on Bishop Reuben Job’s short book on these rules, they’re quite lovely. However, my strongest memory of teaching it was the wise lay person who said, “These rules are great, but when I attempt to apply them to anything, I get no more clarity than when I started.” I had no counter. The rules are good, and sometimes they help, but sometimes they don’t.

The truth is that discernment is HARD WORK, and more of an art than a science. Most decisions are really complicated, and if they were simple they wouldn’t be the ones we were struggling with. There is very, very little in the world that is pure good or pure evil, and all decisions involve balancing various values while working with limited data. (Perhaps why the Tupper family motto is “We need more data!”)

I have two means of discernment that tend to work well for me, ones that help me get past the clutter of data and competing values. One I’ve mentioned a few times: the spiritual practice of daily examen. Truthfully, this is the BEST method I know for making big life decisions, and often small ones too. It combines spiritually and data in a way that brings me deep joy. The process is this: every day, take some time to ask for God’s help in reviewing the day and then ask two questions. One question should be along the lines of “what was the best part of my day?” or “where was I most connected to love today?” (I think those are two versions of the same question, you may not.) The second question should be along the lines of “what was the worst part of my day?” or “where was I most disconnected from love today?” After reviewing it all, thank God for the day as a whole – the good the bad and the stuff in the middle. Then, write down the answers. If you have a spiritual partner, it can be great to also share these answers every day. Over time, patterns will emerge in your answers. You will be able to see what is bringing life and what is draining life from you, and hopefully to adapt your life towards what brings life, and away from what drains life. When it comes to decisions about jobs, relationships, housing, or even faith communities, this sort of careful attention to where God’s life-giving energy emerges in you is amazing for guiding decision making.

The second method is one I learned from another church member. I would NOT recommend it for major life decisions, but it may in fact work for me when it comes to the Great Toilet Brush Dilemma of 2023. This one, like the last, involves trusting that God is with me, and that I thus have the wisdom I need to make the best possible decisions. In this case it involves trusting bodily wisdom. It goes like this: Sit on the edge of a stool or a hard chair. Set up two options in different places in front of you (say, to the right and to the left), close your eyes, and then notice if your body sways towards one or the other. That is, your subconscious will guide you to the decision you likely already made but hadn’t noticed yet, and the decision you already made is one that God helped you with.

Ok, there you have it: four methods to help with discernment, which is far fewer than I know, but maybe more than you needed. There is one last thing to say about this: we’re going to get things wrong, a lot. And that’s OK. God works with us where we are, and I think God works to multiply the good in the world, so whatever goodness we end up helping with ends up being far bigger than we might imagine. However, despite it all, I still have no clarity on toilet brushes. Alas. Amen

1Definition 2, accessed March 2, 2023.

2Particular phrasing adapted from Reuben Job. (He says 1 and 3 that way, but makes 2. “do good”).

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 5, 2023

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  • February 26, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“What To Do With Creation Stories” Based on Psalm 104:1-4, 10-15, 27-30 and Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25

I was really excited about the idea of starting Lent with Creation. After all, Lent is a season of preparation, a time when we are reflective and attending to the needs of our faith, and what better way to start that work than with the beginning of our shared story?

That excitement lasted until I sat down to reread the texts. At which point I began to question my sanity itself, and why I would set myself up to try to make meaning out of the Adam and Eve story. After all this story has been one of the primary ones used to subjugate women, not to mention queer and trans people AND has a bonus narrative of over emphasizing a duality of gender. My concerns about preaching about this led me down a line of thinking where I started to wonder if Creation itself really matters to Christianity and if perhaps we would be better off just ignoring all stories of Creation so I don’t have to preach on Adam and Eve.

That should count as a red flag in my thinking processes, because my faith is at the root a Creation-based faith. Creation is how I make sense of EVERYTHING. The Bible starts and ends with creation. We as people are co-creators with God, working towards the world as God would have it be (“the kindom”). Creation is sacred. The natural world is one of my best teachers. All of creation sings praises to the Creator. There is wisdom in every rock and stream and leaf. This is how I think. This is how I am!

I myself learned how deeply all of this is engrained when my beloved 2 year old spent last summer curiously pulling leaves and flowers off of living things, while I found myself assessing the health of the plants and inserting myself between him and any plant I deemed likely to be hurt by the loss of a single leaf. The lectures that came out of my mouth about respecting all of living creation were an excellent clue as to what I believe, although – as you might expect – not terribly convincing to the one who heard them.

So, what to do with creation stories?

And, before anyone gets too concerned listening to me, this seems like a prime time to talk about science and how great it is. To take a creation story seriously is not to assume it is factual about history and science, it is to consider it as a meaning making narrative and look for the clues of what it was trying to explain and why. I am DEEPLY committed to understanding God as Creator, it is inseparable from my faith as well as my world view, but I believe God created through the big bang and continued to create through evolution and continues to create today, along with us and beyond us.

For me, to claim God as creator isn’t about denying science. It is about believing there is sacredness in all that is, and that goodness is possible because God is the root of all being.

But, still, what are we to do with creation stories?

Well, I guess, we take them as they are: stories to help us understand the challenges of life, and we listen for their wisdom. Of course, the Bible has a multitude of creation stories because the Bible is working to make meaning and creation stories are particularly good at that. Phyllis Trible, starts the book God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality with the words “The Bible is a pilgrim wandering through history to merge past and present.”1 Looking at creation stories is the same as looking at the rest of the Bible. To make sense of it for the present requires some sense of what it may have meant in the past, but also a firm grounding in the present to see what it means now.

Now, as creation narratives go, Psalm 104 is one of my favorites. It seems to focus on the goodness and majesty of creation, and I like that theme. It also focuses on God’s presence within creation, another one I really like. Best of all, Psalm 104 presents God as active in caring for creation for the goodness of creation itself – us included. It serves as a reminder to be grateful for water, which brings life, and for grass which sustains cattle, for edible plants we get to eat and wine and water and bread to satisfy people. If Psalm 104 does all this while having some weird conceptions about what the sky is and some odd ideas about punishment, I can let it be, because I need the reminders of awe and care and hope that I hear in the text.

However, as creation narratives go, Genesis 2 is probably my least favorite. To be fair though, I dislike the text because of what others have done with it more than because of the text itself. So I forced myself to actually listen to it, and it turns out to be WAY more interesting and life giving than I expected.

Dr. Gafney says the first created human in this story is an “entity that will be divided into equal halves to form two human persons, yielding different theological implications than turning a man’s rib into a woman.”2 She is working on the interpretation from Phyllis Trible, which I’d like to point out was published in 1978 and continues to be one of the best texts on the subject.

In Trible’s translation of this Genesis creation story we start with, “And YHWH God formed hā-’ādām [of] dust from hā’adāmâ and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life and hā-‘ādām became a living nephesh.”3 From the beginning, Trible says, “Hā-‘ādām is the focus of God’s pleasure.”4 She translates hā-‘ādām as “earth creature” as it is a pun on the word for earth, and points out that the earth creature is NOT identified sexually. Rather the earth creatures is “precisely and only the human being so far sexually undifferentiated.”5 Further, “only two ingredients constitute its life, and both are tenuous: dusty earth and divine breath. One from above, one from below. One is visible, the other invisible.”6

And here I start to get a sense of the meaning the early story tellers were trying to get to. They wondered about this fragile reality called life, they noticed that we are interrelated with earth, but also more, at least while we are alive. These metaphors for what we “are” make a lot of sense if you are thinking meaning making and not science, right? Also, if you are listening to what the text says and not assuming that “earth creature” is “man.”

Now, if I were to pick one point from this story as the key thing that I think should be taken from it, I would pick the line “it is not good for the earth creature to be alone” which, as Trible says, “contrasts wholeness with isolation.”7 Please note that this is said while the earth creature is still… one. So I don’t think this is actually about romantic or sexual love, but rather the need for companionship and RELATIONSHIP. Further, God has been quite present with the earth-creature to this point, and it seems that God rather LIKES the earth-creature, but God still senses that the earth-creature is MADE FOR RELATIONSHIP with other earth creatures TOO.

And that, dear ones, I think holds throughout time. Trible says, “Since the earth-creature is not only part of the earth but also other than the earth, it needs fulfillment from that which is other than in the earth.”8 And, I’ve got to say, that feels right. And she points out that the ACTUAL phrase attributed to God says, “I will make a companion corresponding to it.” If you have a word other than companion, particularly one with a hierarchical basis in your mind, know that it is not fair to the Hebrew the story is told in. Trible explains, “According to Yahweh God, what the earth creature needs is a companion, one who is neither subordinate nor superior, one who alleviates isolation through identity.”9 Then God makes the animals, and they don’t fit. This reflects a God who is flexible, and working out with the earth creature looking for what that one needs, right? I like that metaphor too!

And then, God tries something else. Trible says, “In becoming material for creation, the earth creature changes character. Whereas the making of the plants and animals were divine acts extrinsic to the earth creature itself, the making of the sexes is intrinsic. Indeed, this act has altered the very flesh of the creature: from one come two. After this intrinsic division, hā-‘ādām is no longer identical with its past, so that when next it speaks a different creature is speaking.”10

“And hā-‘ādām said,

This, finally, bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh

This shall be called woman [’iŝŝâ]

because from man [’îš] was taken this.”11

Trible again, “the female pronoun this (zō’t) unmistakably emphasizes the woman whose creation has made the earth creature different. Only after surgery does this creature, for the very first time, identify itself as male.” “No ambiguity clouds the words used ’iŝŝâ and îš. One is female, the other male. Their creation is simultaneous, not sequential. … Moreover, one is not opposite of the other. In the very act of distinguishing female from male, the earth creature describes her as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” These words speak unity, solidarity, mutuality, and equality. Accordingly, in this poem the man does not depict himself as either prior to or superior to the woman. … For both of them sexuality oringinates in the one flesh of humanity.” I’m going to take this a step further and say that if this story claims the first earth creature was not gendered (non-binary perhaps?) and that humanity comes before gender, sex, or sexuality. The human experience is primary. The human need for relationship is primary.

This story seems to be trying to figure out not just where we came from, but what relationships we are supposed to have with God, with earth, with plants, with animals, and with each other. While it is at it, it is trying to figure out the pull of sexuality and the power of new love, the form of families, the role of gender, and what makes humans unique. That’s a lot to try to answer for one story. It is a lot more than the Big Bang Theory is able to offer too.

The Bible gives us multiple creation stories. I think that means we are to take seriously the sacredness of creation, but not fuss over the facts presented in each one. But we do have these stories to help us make sense of the big questions of life. Some of the answers will work for us, some won’t. It is OK to take what brings life and leave the rest.

For me, today, I like the idea of being an earth creature with Divine breath, I appreciate the reminders of awe and beauty, and the ones that say that I was MADE for relationships and that’s why they matter so much to me. What will I do with creation stories? Fight with them and savor them. Thank God. Amen

1Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978) page 1.

2Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 78.

3Trible, 79.

4Trible, 80.

5Trible, 80.

6Trible, 80.

7Trible, 89.

8Trible, 90.

9Trible, 90.

10Trible, 97.

11Trible, 97.

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 26, 2023

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  • February 19, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“There is No Single Way to Follow Jesus” based on Zechariah 8:1-8 and Luke 7:24-25

The United Methodist Church is a big tent denomination. We are large enough to include a wide variety of perspectives and values, or at least we have been. (Some of the most conservative US churches are choosing to leave right now.)

Many years ago I was sent to an area of the country that tends to practice Methodism rather differently than I do, and then I was asked to lead a small group of seniors in college who were experiencing a call to ordained ministry in The United Methodist church. This seemed rife with issues.

They spoke of God differently than I did. They made assumptions about God that I didn’t share. They’d lived different lives than I could understand, and let’s be honest, I was pretty confused even by the food.

And, in the midst of all that, there was something profoundly familiar in talking with those college students. The differences in how we understood God weren’t big enough to negate that I could sense God’s love in and for them, and the tingling awareness of their faithful decisions to live their lives to share God’s love.

The most embarrassing part of this for me is that I was surprised. I discovered that I had believed that people who thought and spoke of God differently than I did weren’t having authentic experiences of God. I discovered in that experience how small minded I was. And as I processed that, I was reminded that everyone is on a faith journey, and at every step along it we are doing the best we can, and we are WRONG a lot, and probably RIGHT a lot too, but no one has it all down. And even if they did, context changes everything, and requires adaptations again the next minute.

The places I thought the others were wrong didn’t negate God at work in their lives. The places I was wrong didn’t negate God at work in my life.

It turns out that I’m far more obsessed with perfection than God is, and God is willing to work with humans as we are. Phew.

Many years later, three dear friends and I went on retreat to write a confirmation curriculum that we would be excited to teach. We asked ourselves questions about what really mattered about our faith in our own lives, and how we might communicate that to others. The confirmation that I have taught here over the years is that curriculum, intentionally named “A Jesus Way of Living.” A Jesus Way, not The Jesus Way because we knew by then that what worked for us wasn’t going to be what worked for everyone, and that was one of the most important things we wanted to teach the young people in Confirmation Class.

A quick reference point: the vows from the baptisms today were that we as a church, along with parents and godparents will do all that we can to each these young people what we know of God and God’s ways. Confirmation class aims to teach older kids what they need to know about the church, it’s beliefs, and other ways of being faithful so that they can decide whether or not to “confirm” for themselves the vows made at their baptism.

One of the key components of the “A Jesus Way of Living” Confirmation Class is spending the first 15 minutes of any class engaged in a wide variety of spiritual practices and prayer traditions. We hoped to teach kids that there are many ways to access the Divine, and start them along the road of discovering how they TEND to best connect with God. This is, of course, incredibly personal, and every person who has been through the course has different experiences of each kind of prayer.

All of this seems like an affirmation of the reading from Luke today where Jesus talks about how different his ministry is from John’s without claiming that either one is better than the other. Right? It ends with Jesus saying, “For John the Baptizer has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you all say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Woman has come eating and drinking, and you all say ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”1

Two men, making opposite choices with how to live out their faith lives, and they were BOTH RIGHT. That’s what the last line means. Wisdom is Holy and Divine Wisdom, sometimes talked about in the Bible as if Wisdom is it’s own entity, and in the Gospels as if Jesus is Wisdom’s child. Wisdom is also consistently female in the Bible.

Dr. Gafney says of this passage, “What behaviors does Jesus associate with his divine Mother? A life full of joy and celebration, including those who, in the words of Paul, are low status and despised. Yet he does not disdain the ascetic’s path John follows: indeed he commends John with unparalleled praise. There is no single way to follow Jesus.”2

I hope that this information about there being many ways to follow Jesus is freeing.

But I want to also admit that it can be really heavy. I think it is easier to believe that there unique right answers and if one simply follows all the rules everything will work out OK. It is easier to believe that there is a right way and a wrong way and all one has to do is do things right.

It is way, way, way harder to believe that God works differently in different contexts, and in each of us, and even differently in each of us in different parts of our lives. It means that we are always learning, and changing, and seeking to hear the Divine EVEN THOUGH we know we will never hear God perfectly. It means often having to forgive one’s self for beliefs that one no longer holds (Like thinking that God only authentically works in people who think like I do), and that’s heavy. It means constantly letting go of assumptions about God and Godly living that aren’t bringing life anymore, and that too can be difficult. Worst of all, in my opinion, it means being open to a huge range of possibilities and NOT being able to cross any of them out as WRONG, but rather having to slow down enough to hear the wisdom I hold, and the ways God is working in me, to decide which way to go. It is slower, more careful, and much less certain work. It can be tiring.

That doesn’t make it unimportant though.

Now, I’m going to have to explain a little bit of context in order to explain how Zechariah fits into all of this, but I’m getting back to listening to what God is up to.

In 587-586 BCE Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading army of Babylon when the King had decided to stop making tribute payments. Many were killed, the temple was destroyed, the poor were left undefended, and the wealthy and educated were force marched to Babylon where they stayed for generations. In 538 BCE the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Persian Empire. Starting then, some of the descendants of those who had been force marched to Babylon started to return, and over a VERY long time they eventually rebuild the Temple, the City, and the community of faith.

The story of that rebuilding is what we’re working on in Bible Study, it is also told in different ways by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. Because, much like there being many ways to follow Jesus, the Bible is at peace with there being many ways to tell a story, and doesn’t assume that only one perspective is “right.” Zechariah, in our passage today, is speaking about hope. God is going to return to Jerusalem with the people, and full and abundant life will be present again. I rather love that the way he talks about that is by saying that there will again be elder women and elder men sitting on the streets watching, and there will again be girls and boys playing in the streets. The abundance of life is captured by the presence of the old and the young together, and that is a great image of wholeness.

The line that really pulls on me is attributed to God and says, “Though it seems miraculous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it seem miraculous to me, says the COMMANDER of winged warriors.” That is, God says, “Sure, you don’t think it is possible

that you can rebuild and life can be good again for all people. But should I let your fears stop what I want to do???”

And that’s where I think we come back to listening to God, and listening broadly. I think that God is often dreaming and nudging us towards bigger and more wonderful things then we can dream on our own. Other times God is dreaming and nudging us towards smaller and more wonderful things than we would allow ourselves. Listening to God means being open to an astounding amount of love and how it wants to move in the world, and how it wants to move in US in the world.

So, just in case I haven’t been clear enough yet, this is my point today: There is No Single Way to Follow Jesus, you have to figure out your way yourself, AND what God is up to in the world and in you is meant to be beautiful, wonderful, and loving. And I think it is worth the time to figure out and to live it. Amen

1Luke 7:33-35, “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church” translation by Dr. Wil Gafney.

2Gafney, 70.

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 19, 2023

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  • February 5, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Welcoming…Enemies?” based on Isaiah 16:1-5

The Bible doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about the Moabites. It does suggest that the Moabites were cousins of sorts of the Israelites, claiming that their patriarch was Lot, the son of Abraham. However, if you remember that story, the basic suggestion is that Lot’s line lived on because his daughter got him drunk and got pregnant off of him, which is not the sort of origin story one tells about a group of people you like.

To quote the Encyclopedia Britannica “The Moabite language differed only dialectally from Hebrew, and Moabite religion and culture were very closely related to those of the Israelites. Nevertheless, Moabites were excluded from the Jewish community (Deuteronomy 23:3–6), where the name Moab became a typical denomination for the enemies of God (Isaiah 25:10).”1

Right, so the Moabites were sort of the old-school version of the Samaritans – close cousins, deeply hated, enough so that Moabite was the synonym for enemy.

And into that reality comes the Isaiah reading today. We’ve been working from “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” and translated Dr. Wilda Gafney makes an intentional choice to translate Zion and Jerusalem in the feminine (as they are in Hebrew). To make clear to the English speaker the constancy of the feminine, she “reproduces ‘daughter in places where English masks the frequency of the feminine address.”2 That has resulted in a lot of “daughters” in our recent readings, which may – in this case – create some confusion for those who heard the text today. So, let me clarify. In the New Revised Standard Version of this Isaiah passage, the translators tell “daughter Zion” to care for the “daughters of Moab.”

As Dr. Gafney says, ‘God calls on her daughter, Zion, Jerusalem to welcome her Moabite sisters in their time of need. Israel’s relationship with her border states was perpetually tumultuous even with shared ties… Often in the Hebrew Scriptures foreign women are treated as prospective danger, irresistible to Israelite men through sexual wiles, leading to Israelite men straying from their God. But in Isaiah 16, God calls on Israel to care for these vulnerable women.“3

The Bible has pretty much nothing nice to say about the Moabites, but when they are struggling and in danger, the people are told to shelter them, really, to save them. That’s so far beyond "love your enemies so God will judge and drop heaping coals on their heads” (thanks Paul) and sounds more like “love your enemies because they’re beloved of God too, and worthy humans at that.” These were the people the Israelites were at war with, more often than not. And they’re told to welcome them, shelter them, and keep them safe.

There is, you may remember, another place where the Bible has something rather nice to say about the Moabites, which is that Ruth was one and she was pretty great. This is a thing I love about the Bible. It is unable to sit tight with violence and hatred, it just can’t keep God’s love from seeping in, even with the ones it struggles with the most. As anyone who has ever attempted to explain the Good Samaritan parable knows, you have start with explaining the enmity between the Israelites and the Samaritans to get to the point of the Samaritan being the hero. Or, after the HORRIBLE defeat of Jerusalem by Babylon, the exiles are told to seek the good of the city of Babylon.

The Bible doesn’t make peace with hatred. There is always light shining through. As much as the people struggle with each other, God’s love for all can’t ever be extinguished. And, truly, I think the people tried. Their own grief, fear, and anger created enormous blinders to the humanity of the outsiders, the enemies. But, God’s work to transform it is ALSO always there, and nudging away the blinders to see the beloveds of God underneath.

Now, I believe the commandment by Jesus to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you” is well known. But I think maybe we don’t spend enough time talking about the skill sets necessary to do so. This week I picked up a book by my favorite seminary professor, Andrew Dreitcer. The book is entitled, “Living Compassionately: Loving Like Jesus” and in the introduction I found myself remembering why he was my favorite professor. He talked about his own struggles with loving his enemies, and trying SO SO HARD to love people, only to discover that telling himself he should wasn’t the same as actually doing so. He said, “The constant efforts to manufacture acts of love because my faith demands it – even when I don’t feel loving – may lead me to a sense of guilty inadequacy, or a sense of failure, or ultimately to burnout.”4 The HONESTY of that was such a relief.

But, he also didn’t leave it there. He acknowledged it, and then came around to, “The heart of the Christian path of love – radical compassion- can be taught.”5 Then he spends the rest of the book teaching it.

In recent years, one of the most common questions I’ve been asked has been about how to remain connected to people on the other side of the political spectrum. This is a WONDERFUL question. This is a loving question. This is also a REAL question. We may know that politics are just politics, and that outsiders are trying to divide us, and that people matter more than their stances on some issues, but at the same time the mostly deeply held beliefs we have about what the world looks like and what it should look like are often in contrast to what people believe on the “other side” of that spectrum. And in cases of the violation of our most dearly held values and beliefs, it is truly a challenge to find shared humanity.

So, I’ve really appreciated that people acknowledge how hard it is and try to do it anyway. And I’ve offered some answers and suggestions to those who have asked, potentially even something vaguely helpful if I’m lucky. I’ve suggested listening for other people’s values and digging in deep until the similarities of desires can be found – even if the solutions on top of them aren’t shared. I have suggested acknowledging that others are struggling and make space for that struggle, particularly for the fear that is so prevalent in our society.

But between this Isaiah passage about sheltering one’s enemies and the book on compassion, my answers sound weak to my own ears. I wish now I had started by offering people compassion for the struggle they brought to me, and in doing so modeled the compassion that I think we need for such work. Dr. Dreitcer reminded me that from my own faith position, compassion flows three ways between God, other, and self, and that when we are struggling to offer compassion to another, we may first need to make space to experience God’s compassion for us, and/or to have compassion for ourselves first. We can’t browbeat compassion out of ourselves, or pick it up from bootstraps. And then, I wish I had reminded myself and others that by offering vulnerability we make space for the sort of intimacy we want with others. If the goal is to remain in contact with people we care about, then there are skill sets for that too.

Now, I suspect you’d like the easy fix on how to be more compassionate, and I sort of want to give it to you, but it isn’t an easy fix. It is the stuff of long regular practice, of starts and stops, of learning by doing, of taking time for what matters. It is the stuff of good spiritual practice. Dr. Dreitcer recommends intentional spiritual practices focused on intention, attention, awareness, intimacy, imagination, and feelings. (Yeah, just that!) I offer that we are blessed with new committees working on relationships and on spiritual formation, and the work of the groups will continue to offer to all of us the means of developing our compassion so that the actual practice of loving our enemies, or maybe just those who really exhaust us.

I think this is all good news. That God doesn’t want us to stay in enmity with others, and that there are ACTUAL ways to build compassion so we don’t have to just feel guilty when we aren’t as loving as we want. It is all good news. And we can work on it together. And it is good to be a faith community where that’s part of what we’re trying to do together. We are in this together. May God help us along our way. Amen

1https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moabite

2 Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 50.

3Gafney, 53.

4Andrew Dreitcer, Living Compassionately: Loving Like Jesus (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2017), 12.

5Dreitcer, 13.

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 5, 2023

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  • January 29, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Everything Is Good” based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and 1 Timothy 4:1-6, 9-10

I was trained in process theology, which focuses on genuine free-will and understands God to be all-good and all-knowing, but NOT all powerful (because that would defy free will). These days I mostly don’t think about process theology, it just sort of flows through me without awareness. But then I came upon the line from 1 Timothy, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing for rejection, rather received with thanksgiving.”1

Reading that, my heart leapt for joy! An affirmation of the goodness of creation! YES! A reminder to focus on the good! YES! A move towards gratitude, as spiritual practice, YES!

And about that far into my excitement, I found the counter-narrative building up in me. Because there are weapons of mass destruction and addictive recreational drugs and I’m not willing to go so far as to claim they are good. Now, if you want an easy way out of this, you can say simply that “everything created by GOD is good” and not everything created by humans. Truthfully, that’s probably a good distinction.

But, this is where I find I’m truly a process theologian. Process theology says that any capacity that exists can be used for good or for evil, and that as capacity increases so too does the capacity for good and in equal measure the capacity for evil. So, power. Any given power can be used for good, or for evil. To go back to my prior examples, we might think of the scientific and engineering minds as well as the money that was used to create weapons of mass destruction and that those resources could have been used quite differently – maybe to modernize the electrical grid or enable tree planting to fight climate change or… all sorts of things. The capacities can be used for God. God intends them for good. But we are free to choose how we use them.

Unfortunately, quite often, people choose to use power and capacity for evil. The reasons are wise ranging, and quite often those doing great harm are doing so because they were also harmed, but the truth is that there is a lot of bad stuff out there. And society is rife with collective horrible decisions.

And, I think there is wisdom still in 1 Timothy’s “For everything created by God is good, and nothing for rejection, rather received with thanksgiving.” Because I think God did create everything for good, and nothing for rejection – and WE have choices about how we use stuff.

In Dr. Gafney’s reflections on this text she said, “The Epistle is highlighting how very much opposite of the spirit and teaching of Christ are the false doctrines they are rebuking; doctrines that limit and exclude.”2 Now, this argument is powerful and beautiful, and should be held carefully.

My specific concern is the decision made by the early Church to not require followers of Jesus to follow kosher guidelines. I think that decision was fine, but I also think it it is a faithful choice for Jewish people to be kosher, and for religions to have dietary codes. I’m reminded of a young friend who kept kosher, and was willing to talk about it who said, “It is what I can do to remind myself regularly of God.” Beautiful.

Which I guess is to say that religious dietary codes can be good.

And lack of them can be good.

The capacity of all things to be good makes space for us to consider what it means to use any given thing FOR good. How can we sanctify something in how we choose to use it? 1 Timothy says, “For it is sanctified by God’s word and prayer,” but I think there is a little bit more to it.

If everything is made to be good then even the most basic parts of our lives are sanctified. What does it mean to eat with an awareness of the goodness of the food we have, and God’s blessings on it? Does that change the pace at which we eat, the presence of prayers of grace, the amount of attention we give to the flavors of our food? Does it impact what we choose to eat when we are thinking of eating itself as a potential moral good for ourselves and the world?

What does it mean to think of sleep as GOOD? How does that impact how we approach it?

Or, this was a recent insight for me, what does it mean to think of exercise as “the opportunity to move with joy?” (Because if I’m honest I have mostly thought of it as “the best way to quickly punish my body for the fact that I sit too much.”) I think maybe thinking of exercise as a good gift from God can create some pretty radical changes for me.

Or, what does it mean to notice the goodness and sanctity of … the chance to sing a hymn together, or the joy of a cup of tea, or a random meeting on the sidewalk? The simple little things that make up our days and our weeks, what if they ARE all meant for good?

There was a line in a commentary on Ezra that I read in preparation for out Bible Study that really stood out for me. The author, Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi who is a Rabbi, points out that Ezra is not focused on the work of heroes but rather on the work of the people as a whole. She says, “Success is not a return to glory but the sanctification of the mundane, ‘daily, prose-bound, routine.’”3

Sanctification: making something holy. So “success” is finding the holy in the mundane.

Now, the things that have done great harm to us or others – we need to be clear those were not God’s intent – but what if God is working with us to transform them anyway? To bring healing and to make it possible to bring whatever good is able to come out of even great harm. (From Zechariah, “I will change their shame into praise.”)

What if God is up to all kinds of good all the time all around us and all we have to do is notice?

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Isn’t that wonderful?

Amen

1 1 Timothy 4:4,Translation by Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 49.

2 Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, p. 50.

3 Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1988), p. 187.

January 29, 2023

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  • First United Methodist Church
  • 603 State Street
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