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  • January 19, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Rebuilding after Trauma” based on Psalm 18:2-11, 16-19 and Isaiah 62:1-7

I picked the wordiest readings ever this week. They’re awfully hard to keep in focus. I’m sorry. They’re just so lovely though, that I couldn’t help myself. They are texts that talk about rebuilding after traumatic events, about God’s power and grace being enough to bring hope when it looks lost. They have imagery of healing and regrowth.

They talk again and again about salvation and delivery, and it seems like a good time to claims those words in their Biblical strength and power. Salvation comes from the same root as “salve.” To be saved is to be healed. Delivery has connotations of birth and passing through a narrow place to get to safety and wholeness. Both words are used throughout the Bible to indicate God’s actions for God’s people. God moves the people to healing, to wholeness, to safety. God liberates. God heals. God creates safe places for liberation and healing to occur.

If you, like me, have had a little bit too much exposure to the Christian fundamentalist narrative that salvation is about being saved from hell, I invite you to lay it down. Let it go. We aren’t talking about that.

In fact, Isaiah is talking about restoring the community of ancient Israel. Piecing together those who had been left behind in the unprotected lands with those who had been force marched into exile, and finding connection and wholeness again. Isaiah is talking about the horrors of violence, the battles and destruction of Jerusalem and that they DO NOT GET to define the people any longer. “No more shall your land be called Devastated; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her”. Wow!

The Psalm presents itself as being more about an individual, which it may be. Sometimes it is hard to tell in the Bible if an individual is an individual or a way about talking about a group as a whole. It doesn’t really matter though, the truths hold in it either way. The Psalmist expresses trust in God “The Rock Who Gave Me Birth is my rock” and then goes on pretty quickly to mention that things are not going well. “The snares of death encompassed me”, etc. The Psalmist called out to God for help, and experienced God listening and responding.

I wonder if there is something important there. The Psalm goes into quite a lot of detail about the strength of God’s response. God heard, God cared, God responded – and the earth SHOOK. When any of us is responding to trauma, being reminded that God is, that God cares, and that God can help matters a lot. There is isolation and powerlessness that keep trauma in place, but the reminder of God’s presence and care can change that reality quite dramatically.

Finally, the Psalmist says God simply plucked them up out of the danger and set them down somewhere safe, ending with “she delivered me because she delights in me.” What a profound conclusion.

A definition of trauma that I find quite useful is, “Exposure to an event which was perceived as intensely threatening to mind, body, or spirit, accompanied by feelings of helplessness, powerlessness and horror.”1 You’ll note there are two part to this definition: a threatening event and a sense that one couldn’t do anything about it. It is also worth noting that the PERCEPTION of the threat is the key, not the reality of it. AND that the threat can be to mind, body, or spirit.

Trauma is incredibly common in our lives. Adverse Childhood Experience Studies look at 10 common traumatic experiences (abuse, neglect, family dysfunction) and find that 60-65% of adults experienced at least one traumatic event in childhood. So MOST people. Most people were seriously harmed in their childhoods. The prevalence of childhood trauma has dramatic effects on physical and mental health over the course of a lifetime. And, of course, traumatic events occur in adult lives too.

A particularly notable one would be a global pandemic. Where there are threats to physical well-being in the form of the virus, AND mental and spiritual well-being in the form of separation.

Clearly, there are a wide variety of experiences in the pandemic and experiences of the pandemic. Some people have experienced far more trauma in the pandemic than others. Yet, we have each experienced some trauma, and we have had a COLLECTIVE trauma. It may even be that we are still in the midst of experiencing collective trauma. (I think it is hard to tell for sure.)

While trauma has incredible impact on bodies, minds, and souls, it is important to pay attention as well to resiliency factors. Because the impact of trauma is CHANGED by the presence of resilience. Things like: supportive friends, ways to engage with community, people to look up to, a sense of purpose, feeling valued, a sense of competency, opportunities for play. In my reading on trauma and resilience I’ve been struck by how UTTERLY IMPERATIVE mirroring is.

Mirroring are ways that people consciously or subconsciously reflect or “mirror” the emotions and feelings and aspirations of another. This has the impact of validating, accepting, and showing love for that person. (Generally when it comes to anger or outbursts mirroring is less useful, but naming emotions can still help a lot.)2 Mirroring gets a lot of attention in terms of parenting, but let’s be real for a moment: for the adults in the room, a lot of life is about self-parenting ourselves and supporting others in their capacity to do the same. We have have emotions, feelings, aspirations and needs, and sometimes we all need some help in accepting them and finding them valid. Sometimes we can do it ourselves (regulating!) sometimes we do it best with others (co-regulating!) and most of the time its a mix.

Mirroring and regulating feel central to these Biblical passages about delivery from trauma, salvation after trauma, restoration to a full and abundant life. In Isaiah God names the ways the community feels. It is heard and acknowledged. It isn’t dismissed. God is even named as “God who sees.” The ways the community has experienced the exile are spoken by GOD. The hope doesn’t come out of the abstract, it meets the people where they are.

In the Psalm first we hear the distress of the one who is struggling and then we hear the ways God responds. Perhaps you need to hear this too, so keeping in mind the traumas of the past 3 years or so, see how it feels to hear this as God’s response to the struggles you’ve lived through:

Then the earth shuddered and quaked;

the foundations also of the mountains trembled

and were shaken because of her anger.

Smoke went up from her mouth;

burning coals blazed forth from her.

She spread out the heavens, and descended;

thick darkness was under her feet.

She mounted up on a cherub and flew;

she soared upon the wings of the wind.

She made darkness her veil around her,

her canopy dark waters and thick clouds.

She reached down from on high, she took me;

she drew me out of the multitude of water.

She delivered from from my strong enemy,

and from those who hate me;

for they were too mighty for me.

Wow!

Well, I feel less alone, and less frightened by my finitude with God responding like THAT! (Also, I rather like that the “enemies” aren’t attacked, rather the Psalmist is simply placed out of their reach.)

The Psalmist brings fear and heartache, and FEELS God mirroring, responding, helping, empowering, and bringing them to safety. The whole earth shakes and God starts the process of rebuilding their life after the trauma.

In Isaiah, too, the trauma is acknowledged in the mirroring, and other healing starts too. There is dreaming, hoping, reframing, renaming, reconnecting. Trauma happens in human lives, individually and collectively, but trauma isn’t the last word. God doesn’t give up on us when we’re struggling, God sees and hears, mirrors and responds, and helps us find the skills to regulate. God works to bring us to safe places. God delights in us, EVEN when we are broken by the trauma of our lives.

We don’t have to be healed, or whole, or trauma free to be loved. God doesn’t expect that of us. God sees and hears, mirrors and responds, loves and hopes. Trauma doesn’t have the final word, love and hope do. That is, God does. Amen

1https://resolutioncounselling.ca/resolution-articles/nature-impacts-trauma/

2Adapted from https://www.enlivenminds.org/parental-mirroring/

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

January 22, 2023

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Untitled

  • January 15, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4Ibid.

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

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

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  • January 8, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Radical Experience of Acceptance” based on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

I have a very clear recollection of the first time I paid attention to the words of Bobby McFerrin’s arrangement of the 23rd Psalm. I’d heard it before, but I hadn’t LISTENED before. There was a church choir concert in Hollywood, the church I interned at was hosting, and one of the choirs sang it.

I was in seminary. I was reasonably familiar with the 23rd Psalm. I had expectations of what words I would hear. And then what I did hear was: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I have all I need. She makes me lie down in green meadows Beside the still waters, She will lead”1 All my breath left me, and I found tears rolling down my cheeks.

I went to a progressive seminary. I’d been led by intentional and caring clergy for years. I knew, and used inclusive language for God. I’d heard it used. I knew that the Holy Spirit was feminine in Greek. I knew God wasn’t male. I knew I was made in the image of God.

And.

And in that moment in a new and profound way, I felt included as a child of God. This overly common imagery of God as a shepherd translated from a distinctly male image with male pronouns to a distinctly female image with female pronouns mattered to me, to the deepest parts of my being. This is related, I think, to music touching a different part of our beings than logic and rational though. When that choir sang “she makes me lie down in green pastures” I felt safe and welcome, cared for and most significantly of all, I FELT the reality that I could be a reflection of God as a woman. To hear the metaphor of God as female in that song healed me a little bit. EVEN THOUGH I’d already “known” all of that.

Probably because there is a difference between knowing (head) and knowing (body and spirit).

As I read these epiphany scriptures this week I found myself cringing a little bit at the repetition of “daughter.” It felt like too much. I wanted to soften it, take it back, make it quieter. It felt like maybe it would exclude those who aren’t female.

But, I read the textual notes, and Dr. Gafney wrote in them, “Isaiah 60 speaks to a female entity, Zion, Jerusalem, frequently styled as God’s daughter; each “you” and “your” is explicitly feminine and singular, rhythmic and repetitive in Hebrew. I have added “daughter” each place this occurs for the English speaker-reader-hearer.”2 So, it is truly there, and what is odd is to hear it explicitly in English, “Arise, daughter; shine, daughter; for your light has come, daughter, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, daughter.” (Isaiah 60:1)3

So, instead of softening the language, I’ve sat with it. What I’veheard is that when God reveals God’s self to us (“epiphany” which is the name of the Sunday we’re celebrating) it often has to do with a radical experience of acceptance – and quite often a radical experience of acceptance when we were expecting rejection.

This is where we are gifted with a lot of wonderful power as a church. We are the people who can use they/them pronouns for God, and let people who are non-binary that we see God in them and them in God. What a gift to be able to give!

I have often reflected with awe at the impact of this church on those who were raised in it. In the process of preparing celebrations of life for church members, I get to know their families, and I am often struck by how this church has gifted the world with men who are free to be tender and compassionate and women who are free to be strong and clear, and visa versa, and more so. This has been for a long time a place where gendered expectations are put away and space is made for the fullness of God’s gifts in each person to emerge. What an incredible legacy this church has!

I have heard stories from many of you about your process of finding your way here, and the radical experience of acceptance that kept you here. One story involves sitting in a car in the parking lot and wondering if this church would really have enough love for the one waiting to enter. (You did.) One story involves looking for a long time for a church that could welcome two people with very different needs, and the powerful relief that came when it was offered. You did that too. A lot of stories involve a positive experience of faith in childhood, a developing sense of scientific knowledge and logic, and the wonder of finding a place where faith and knowledge can be held together in peace. Many stories involve a yearning for a community, and a struggle to find one who knows God well enough to know how big God’s love is. (This actually saddens me. I wish every church knew the expansive and epic extent of God’s love.)

Thanks be to God, that for many people, this is a place of epiphanies. This is a place where God reveals God’s self. This is a place where people experience radical acceptance, and that changes EVERYTHING.

Arise, daughter; shine, daughter; for your light has come, daughter, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, daughter.

AND

Arise, son; shine, son; for your light has come, son, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, son.

AND

Arise, child-of-mine; shine, child-of-mine for your light has come, child-of-mine, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, child-of-mine.

God speaks to all of you, to all of us.

It strikes me as sort of funny that this story from Matthew is the one that gets called the story of the Epiphany. Of all of the revelations of God in the scriptures, this doesn’t seem like the most notable. Most of the story is about the sages from the East talking to Herod, which I’m quite confident was NOT a strong God-moment. I will give it to them though, the story is courageous. Asking the King of Judea about the one born TO BE King of Judea is not usually a good choice. But, it is the one presented here.

The story says that they had a God-filled experience in following the star, an even stronger one in meeting “the child with Mary his mother” and an additional one in a dream that warned them about Herod. So there ARE three epiphanies in this story, but what is the Bible if not stories of the revelations of God’s love?

It seems to me there are some profound reflective questions gifted to us by these texts:

  • When have you had a radical experience of acceptance? What was it like? Why did you need it? Is it share-able?
  • When can you/we offer radical experiences of acceptance? Where is it needed? How can we do it?

I’m encouraged to note that it isn’t always a heavy lift to do this work. Hearing a beautiful song can be a radical experience of acceptance. Seeing the progress pride flag in out hallway has been for many a radical experience of acceptance. Using a variety of pronouns for God and God’s people can be a radical experience of acceptance. Making space for someone to be sad or mad can be a radical experience of acceptance. The reminder that it can be little things that offer radical experiences of acceptance lightens the load a little bit.

Because I believe we are called to radically accept, and love, and celebrate God’s gifts in all of God’s people. We are called BY our epiphanies to be people who offer space FOR epiphanies. We are ourselves radically loved by God, and we are able to offer God’s abundant love to others.

Thanks be to God! Amen

1 Lyrics here: https://genius.com/Bobby-mcferrin-the-23rd-psalm-dedicated-to-my-mother-lyrics, has a link to recording too.

2 Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021), 35.

3 Dr. Gafney’s translation, page 33.

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

January 8, 2023

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“Explaining Christmas“ based on Luke 2:1-12

  • December 25, 2022
  • by Sara Baron
image

One of the privileges I have
this year is to explain Christmas to a 2 year old.  I’m aware many
have done this before me, and at this point I’m pretty sure most have
done it better than I have.  But, I’ve learned along the way that
when I have to explain really complicated things to very small
children I end up learning what I really think.

Now, I think the common answer
to give a young child about Christmas is “It is Jesus’ birthday.”
Which seems legit, and I know my child has some grasp of birthdays.
I am, however, less confident he has a grasp on Jesus.  And while I
simply adore Marcus Borg’s explanation that Jesus was “a Jewish
mystic,” … well, that wasn’t going to help.

And, if I’m honest, we may think
of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday, but that only matters because of who
Jesus was.  For those who think of Jesus as fully human and fully
Divine, Christmas could be summed up as God being born on earth.  A
lot of Christian Christmas derives from this idea. It gives us the
space to consider the vulnerability of life, and how dependent we are
on each other.  For those awed by a powerful God becoming vulnerable
as a newborn, it follows that the vulnerability of our humanity is in
fact quite tender.

For me though, Jesus was a man
who knew God intimately and taught of God and lived a God-centered
life in profound ways that continue to be useful for knowing God even
today.  And THAT, also, it turns out, doesn’t translate well to a 2
year old.

So I found myself saying,
“Christmas is when we celebrate someone who taught us about God’s
love.”  Well, I’m not entirely sure if I said God.  But I’m OK with
that because I think the phrase “God’s Love” is redundant.  

And, by the grace of God, that
line got accepted, and I don’t have to answer more questions.  Yet.  

Next year promises its own
challenges.  😉  I suspect by next year I’ll be learning that my
seminary degree and nearly 20 years of ministry experience are
insufficient to the task.  I’ll let you know.  

But for now, Phew!

And also, I’m sort of interested
to learn what I really think of Christmas.

The Christmas stories in each
Gospel are sometimes called “the Gospel in miniature” and they
really do an amazing job establishing the setting, foreshadowing the
story as a whole, and setting up the themes of the Gospels they
begin.  Luke focuses on women and shepherds, the outcasts being the
first to receive good news for all people, the looming presence and
power of the Empire and its taxation methods, the cycle of birth and
death as a way to talk about the fullness of life, humility, and the
value of pondering the wondrous things of God.  I even see in the
story the foreshadowing of Jesus rising from the tomb, as the animal
feeding trough he is said to have been laid in at birth was BELOW the
floor and chiseled out of rock.  He would have been lifted out of
that to be held.  (I swoon a bit at this metaphor.)

So of the Christmas stories are
Gospels in miniature, than what we say about Christmas is what we
have to say about Jesus.  And if this implies that I think Jesus is
“someone who taught us about (God’s) love,” then I’m at peace
with that conclusion.  (I’m also relieved to already be ordained and
not have to attempt to justify this to a Board of Ordained Ministry).

There are a lot of fabulous
nuances to this story, and I would have a ball playing with them.
I’m entranced by the Isaiah passage and the space it gives us to
connect birth and death as well as connecting the delivery of a child
with the “delivery” of a nation into safety and well being.  AND
I’m going to let it all rest.

Today we celebrate the birth of
one one who taught us about God’s love.  Today we celebrate one who
taught us about God’s love.  Today we celebrate God’s love.  Thanks
be to God, who is love.  Merry Christmas, and Amen!

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

December 25, 2022

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“Peace” based on Matthew 1:18-25

  • December 18, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

We have a lot of phrases about
peace in our faith tradition.  Jesus is called the “prince of
peace.”  We speak of the “peace that passes understanding.”  A
sung blessing offers the line, “deep peace of the running waves to
you.”  Songs and prayers ask God to “grant us peace.” We often
sing,  “Peace be with you ‘til we meet again,” and we greet each
other with “peace be with you.”  We yearn, collectively, for
“world peace.”

I’ve been trained in the
knowledge that the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, refers to holistic
well being – body, mind, and spirit – of the individual and the
community.  It is more than the absence of war.  It is the absence of
needs, the adequate distribution of resources so that no one has to
try to get what they need via violence.

In this way, shalom, peace, is
deeply integrated with the kindom of God.

This week I’ve been struck at
how RELATIVE peace is – both internally and externally.  I think
I’ve often been distracted by the wondrous language about peace in
our tradition, and thought of peace as some perfect and excellent
thing.  But that assumption has distracted me from a whole lot of the
incremental gifts of peace.

The many people in our church
and our society who have lived through trauma have fairly constant
alerts in their bodies and minds to remain vigilant, stay safe, LOOK
OUT!  What looks like peace for someone in a constant state of alert
may be a relatively safe place or person that allows a few of the
alarm bells within to slow down.  Which is to say that what looks
like relative peace for some would be REALLY HIGH agitation for
others.  Yet, still, increased peace is a gift for all those who
experience it.  Peace in the midst of trauma.

There is a famous story of
Christmas 1914, in the midst of World War I, when soldiers singing
Christmas hymns in the trenches started singing back and forth to
each other across the “no man’s land” eventually leading to
soldiers experiencing a Christmas peace and exchanging gifts and
laughter.  Peace in the midst of war.

I often think of a young mother
I knew by being her pastor, who shared that her life was full with a
full time job and the needs of young children.  She spoke of her
commute time as the most peaceful part of her life, and savored it as
a time to connect with the Divine.  Peace in the midst of a
burstingly full life.

This week Matthew gives us a
look at Mary’s pregnancy through the eyes of Joseph.  Mary is
vulnerable, as a pregnant engaged woman who wasn’t pregnant from her
fiancé. Joseph has a lot of power here, he can publicly shame her
and her family, which would most likely result in Mary being removed
from her family so they can regain some status.  His original plan,
to let her go quietly, seems aimed at letting the father of her baby
marry her.  It is aimed at respecting everyone involved.  Of course,
then he gets new information and changes course, no longer assuming
another man needed the space to become the father of that man’s
child.

I adore the way this translation
speaks of Joseph, “Joseph her husband was a just man and unwilling
to shame her, he wanted to divorce her secretly.”  I find myself
thinking that Joseph was a man who knew peace within.  Either he
wasn’t personally offended by Mary’s pregnancy, or he was able to
hold that in perspective and not wish to retaliate.  His aim was not
violence or harm, but rather everyone’s well-being.  Peace.

As I’ve considered the factors
that lead to peace within, I’ve been struck at how mundane they are.
Like most things – athletic skills, musical talent, etc, – there
are people with natural connection to peace, and there are people who
nurture their receptivity to peace, and while both matter, the work
done to nurture receptivity to peace ends up mattering the most over
time.

We have been in the midst of
highly trying times for many years now.  I tend to think back to the
2016 election cycle as the beginning of the escalation of tension and
anxiety, but you may place it elsewhere.  Even if you want to place
it at the beginning of the pandemic, we are YEARS into what our
bodies have probably experienced as a “war.”  I say war because
the stress levels have been escalated, and very few things have
helped us bring them back down.

Some of you, thanks be to God,
have found life-giving ways to reconnect with peace, wholeness, and
the Divine.  I’m of the opinion that walking in nature is one of the
best practices for this, and a lot of you seem to agree.  You have
found ways to connect with each other and loved ones, you’ve found
creative expressions, you’ve done meditation or prayer practices,
you’ve looked for beauty, you’ve been still in the face of your awe,
you’ve PLAYED.  I can see the differences in us from a year ago, and
I can see that God is working to cultivate peace in us AND that we
are working on receiving those gifts from God.

My exclusive point today is an
encouragement to keep nurturing your receptivity to God’s peace.  I’m
happy to chat about it with you more, to think about what it looks
like in you.  I think we can look at the example of Joseph to see how
peace within a person impacts those around them.  I want to be more
like that, and I suspect you may too.  May God grant us peace, and
may WE prepare ourselves to receive it.  Amen

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

December 18, 2022

Uncategorized

“God’s Responses to Despair” based on Isaiah 65:17-25 and…

  • November 13, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

The people that walked in darkness have seen a light….
but it is discolored and a little murky.

I think that’s a fair
summary of what the “return” from the exile was actually like.
When Jerusalem was defeated in 587/586 BCE, the city gates were
ripped down, the Temple was destroyed, there was massive death and
destruction, and the remaining leaders, priests, and scribes were
force march to Babylon. The exile. During the time of the exile we
hear emerging stories of great pain and lament, AND prophecies of
great hope in and care of God. The exile and the period right after
it are also the time when the Hebrew Bible started to be written
down.

In 538 BCE those in exile were freed to return home if
they wished. Thank God! And many did, thank God!

And when they came home, it was …. painful.

The Promised Land had been decimated. Those who
remained had been without protection, without resources, without
hope. Many, many had died. I’ve heard as high as 90% of the
population. Those who were alive had now lived in fear and scarcity
for generations. And those who returned weren’t much better off,
except that they’d had hope of return which now turned out to seem to
be misplaced.

I’m going to just throw out here that if we are now in
the “end of the pandemic” it sure doesn’t look like I hoped it
would in March or April of 2020, and I have lots and lots of empathy
for those who “came home from exile” only to find out that home
had changed in the meantime.

In the midst of the struggles of return, and the
conflicts that inevitably emerged between those who’d been left
behind and those who’d been force-ably removed – and even more so
between their children and grandchildren, come the words of our
Hebrew Bible text. In context, Isaiah 65 is still struggling to
answer why things are so bad, and the first part of the chapter
claims that the issue is that people aren’t being faithful to God and
God’s dreams. But this later part of the chapter is focused on the
blessings God has in store for those who do follow the ways of God.
We may like to think of this as the fruits of living out God’s
visions for a just and compassionate society.

And, its pretty great. We’ve talked recently enough
about the part of Jeremiah that urged the exiles to build houses and
live in them, plant gardens and eat from them. This Isaiah passage
reiterates those ideals, but does so BACK AT HOME. Now the command
is not to give up on Jerusalem, but to have hope it can be rebuilt.

I think this might be a good time to remind you that
Jerusalem WAS rebuilt. The Temple was rebuilt. The city walls were
rebuilt. The city gates were rebuilt. The traditions of the people
were rebuilt. The hope in God was rebuilt. It didn’t look the same
as it had before, but it was rebuilt.

In fact, that’s a story we don’t focus on enough, and
I’ve been in initial conversations with people about restarting Bible
Study in January, and I’ve now convinced myself we should read the
book of Ezra, the story of rebuilding Jerusalem. (If you’d like to
study with us, the current question is: what time on Sundays shall we
do it, and I’d LOVE to hear your opinion.)

But now I’m ahead of myself.

In our passage today, we hear of the “new heaven and
new earth” God is preparing. To summarize quickly, I’m turning to
Walter Brueggemann1:

“Yahweh is moving beyond what is troubling and
unresolved to what is wondrously new and life giving. There is a
steady push towards newness in the Isaiah tradition that intends to
override the despair of Israel, especially the despair of exile.”
246

There are thee facets of new city:

“The first quality of the new city, stated negative
then positively, is a stability and order that guarantees long life.
As long as the city is both a practitioner and victim of violence and
brutality, no life is safe and no one will last very long.” (247)
“There will be a reordering of resources so that all may luxuriate
in life as the creator intends.” (248)

“The second facet of the reconstituted city is
economic stability.” Which implies stable society, lack of
invasion, fertility of land, fair taxes, fair laws. “Yahweh will be
the guarantor of a viable, community-sustaining economy.” “No
one is threatened, no one is at risk. No one is in jeopardy because
the new city has policies, practice, and protective structures that
guarantee what must have been envisioned as an egalitarian
possibility.” (248)

“The third provision…concerns an agenda of
well-being for children in the new city.” (249) “These three
accents on guaranteed long life, economic stability, and life under
blessing all attest to a city in which the power for life given by
the creator is fully available and operates in concrete ways. The
poem is a vision, but it is a vision looking to a public practice.”
(249)

That is, Isaiah 65 is written to COUNTERACT despair with
dreaming. It is a vision of hope, but one that would be worth
perusing. Despite the language of new heaven and new earth, this is a
pretty earth-centric vision. It centers on civic stability, economic
sustainability, and God’s tangible presence among those who are
alive. It starts with peace, includes distribution of goods, and
looks towards the well-being of all.

That seems like it would have landed well among the
people in despair, and changed what was possible for them.

Which has me wondering what God is dreaming of here.
How God is counteracting despair here and now. What sort of vision
God is planting among us for our community, state, nation, world
today?

Because I have noticed that God doesn’t give up when
disaster strikes, God just keeps on working towards goodness. This
also strikes me as the narrative of Luke. I think to hear our Luke
passage well requires remembering that Luke was likely written after
the destruction of the SECOND Temple, which coincided with the
destruction of Jerusalem and a horrifying number of her people. It
was a time of great despair, a moment of transformation in our faith
history and the history of our Jewish siblings in faith, a time when
everything changed and new forms of faith practice had to be created.
The transition from the Temple to the Synagogue happened at that
time, the end of the Sadducees and beginning of the leadership of the
Pharisees, etc. Our tradition was so new I can’t point to the same
types changes, but I can see how seismic this experience was.

The passage we read today was written by the early
Christian community, presumably trying to make sense of the
destruction and trying to reassure each other about what Jesus would
say to them in the midst of it. It is probably true that the Holy
Spirit helped them find these words of comfort, but it is probably
ALSO true that Jesus didn’t say this stuff in his life time.

The early Christian imagination produced the hope it
needed to face its reality without shattering into despair.

Which is to say that both of our passages are written to
people in despair, to try to keep them together and focused on hope.
They just sound really different.

Maybe that’s because people need different things at
different times.

Maybe it is because the despair they faced was
different.

Or because the perceived opponent acted differently.

Or the community was struggling in different ways.

But truly there are different ways to respond to despair
with hope, and the Bible is full of them, and we have two solid
examples before us today.

And, I heard a third recently. Bishop Karen Oliveto
shared a quote that I keep thinking about, “I rarely feel such
clear signs of fatigue and anxiety on days that are filled with
travel, meetings and assignments—only when I stop to rest. Without
sabbath, I would be dangerously ignorant of the true condition of my
soul.” ― Andy Crouch

I think in the midst of the struggles I hear today, this
is the one that could make the fastest difference. Right now we have
a lack of sabbath, lack of rest, lack of spaciousness for joy – and
lack of time to face despair. But this is change-able. We can
prioritize sabbath. We can make space for rest. We can sort through
despair instead of running from it. We can make space for joy and
not just distractions. We can even make space for relationships and
not just be ships passing in the night.

Over the past almost 3 years we’ve been exiled. I can’t
tell if we’ve really returned, but if we have, it is still hard.
We’ve seen a lot of destruction and more than our fair share of
death. But based on the Bible we can be sure that God is speaking a
word of hope and a depth of vision into this moment.

Maybe this seems too simple, but I think it is abundant:
take time OFF. Be spacious with your soul. Let your to-do lists
go. Follow what brings you joy. Let your emotions BE, without
judgment. Let God have time to dream in you.

Because as Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may linger for the
night, but joy comes with the morning.” God isn’t done with us,
not yet. May God’s dreams be met with our spaciousness to hear them!
Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in
Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and
David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press,
1998).

November 13, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Joy and Protest” based on  Psalm 98:1-6, Isaiah 55:10-13

  • October 30, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

“You shall go out with joy, and be
led forth with peace, the mountains and the hills will break forth
before you, there will be shouts of joy, and all the tress of the
field shall clap (shall clap) their hands.”  So goes our final hymn
today, and so has gone our stewardship campaign this year.

Isaiah 55 for the win.

Joy!

Peace!

Imaginatively imagery of pure delight!

So,  I went to Walter Brueggemann to
understand better what is going on, and the great Prophetic Scholar
did not disappoint.  He reminded me that Isaiah 40, the start of
second Isaiah, begins with
the words, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.  Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem.”  The entirety of the passage is written to
the exiles, with affirmation that God is not done with them yet.

That while the worst has come, it will
not be their whole story.  That when things get hard, God still wins.
That God’s love remained with them, and hope continued.

Our passage today is the very last part
of what scholars call 2nd Isaiah – this part of the book
written to the exiles to PREPARE them for God’s work of restoration.
And today’s passage imagines the joy of their homecoming.  The
passage ties together some of the work of the exodus with the work of
restoration.  The rain and snow that can be counted on to produce
crops remind the people of the desert wandering, and God’s
provisions.  The verb even “go out” is a verb of the exodus.  But
here, in the “2nd exodus” it is quite different.  The
first exodus was hasty and fearful.   But the restoration, this “new
exodus” is joy, peace, and well-being.

Bruggemann writes, “Before there can
be any geographical departure from the [Bablyonian] empire, there
must be a liturgical, emotional, and imaginative departure.  Israel
in exile must be able to think and feel and imagine its life out
beyond Babylon’s administration.  Israel must so trust the rhetoric
of assurance and victory that it can flex its muscles of faith and
sense that the cadences of faith are more compelling than the slogans
of the empire.”1

And, this is that imaginative
departure.  It imagines creatures and … well, mountains and hills
and trees gathered on the roadside to watch the spectacle of the
people returning.  As if it is a parade and nature itself is
healed by the
restoration of the people to their homeland.

Instead of thorn and brier – symbols
of judgment and punishment – there are cypress and myrtle – signs
of growth and life and beauty.  The restoration of ancient Israel is
envisioned to be the restoration of sustainable living, of the fair
distribution of goods, the return of the ban on interest, the care
for the vulnerable.  And that means the restoration of God’s values,
which was very significant for people who had been living in the seat
of power of a large empire because empires ALWAYS involve domination,
hierarchies, debt, and oppression of the vulnerable.  Brueggeman
suggests even creation itself would be healed by this restoration
because empire destroys nature, but sustainable equitable living
exists in harmony with nature.  

If it takes dreaming of leaving the
exile in order to prepare the people to actually leave the exile,
this is some excellent writing getting them ready.  This is writing
for life.  This is writing to remind us that life is possible, that
loveliness exists, that hope is reasonable.  As Brueggemann says, in
this writing, “All are now at home, safe, beloved, free, free at
last, Thank God Almighty, free at last.”

As rain and snow leave the sky, to
bring life on earth, and grow food so too is it with God’s word that
accomplishes what it aims at – and it aims at joy, peace, and
restoration.  

In order to be ready to leave the
empire, to leave the exile, to return, to be restored, the people
needed first to dream God’s dreams.  And God sent them dreams.

Before they could leave in fact, they
had work of letting go – I love his phrasing, “there must be a
liturgical, emotional, and imaginative departure.  Israel in exile
must be able to think and feel and imagine its life out beyond
Babylon’s administration.”

I preached a few weeks ago about how
ready I am to NOT resonate with exile literature, and that does mean
that I’m pretty excited to hear “end of the exile, beginning of the
return literature.”  But I keep noticing that leaving the exile
meant not only leaving the exile but ALSO leaving behind the
pre-exile-ancient-Israel.  

Which is to say, I’m all for starting
to vision a post-pandemic life, but I have to keep reminding myself
that to leave the pandemic behind also means finishing the work of
letting go of the pre-pandemic life.  It means seeing with clarity
what has changed, and not FIGHTING it anymore.  It means accepting
this reality as it is, so that God can dream with me and with us HERE
AND NOW without my too-tight-grip on the past keeping me from
listening.

And, to be honest to these passages, it
also means making more space for joy.

Loosening my grip on what was helps me
make space for joy.  Even, loosening my grip on what joy USED TO look
like makes space for how it looks now.  And generally speaking,
loosening my grip  helps with joy 😉

The thing I’ve noticed about joy, the
continuity of it, is that for me is about connection.  I find joy in
connecting with others, in connecting with God, in connecting with
nature.  That is, joy happens in togetherness – at least for me.

Which is probably why I’ve been so
moved by our stewardship campaign this year, “Together for joy.”
I simply adore the order of the words.  For me, I know joy comes in
togetherness, but I love the INTENTION in being together FOR joy.

It is another wonderful take on the
Psalm:

Make a joyful
noise to the Lord, all the earth;
   break forth
into joyous song and sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with
the lyre,
   with the lyre and the sound of melody.

With trumpets and the sound of the horn
   make
a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

The normal take is the wonder of making
music to praise God, but I love adding to that meaning by seeing each
of our lives as a piece of the music and our lives together as
creating that joyful noise!  

In many churches, today is Reformation
Sunday, the day when they remember the initial act of Martin Luther
in nailing the 95 thesis on the church door and starting the
Reformation.  We are, curiously enough, a part of Protestantism, but
direct descendants of the Reformation.   Lutheran, Presbyterian,
Reformed, and even most Baptist churches descend from the
Reformation, but we split off of the Church of England, which itself
split from the Roman Catholic Church for rather different reasons.
(The king wanted a divorce, the pope didn’t grant one, so the king
nationalized the church.)  

Our roots are not in the reformation,
but our identity is in Protestantism.  That is, by nature, we PROTEST
the abuses of the church and the world and advocate for God’s people.
Thanks be to God!  We are active in the face of injustice, and we are
actively seeking God’s kindom (although, to be fair, this is true of
more people than protestants, so we claim this but not exclusively.)

We are, together for justice, together
for joy, together for compassion.  We witness the mountains and the
hills breaking forth before us, and the trees of the field clapping
their hands.  

Dear ones, God leads us TO joy.  God
leads us to PEACE.  Not just for ourselves, for all people, but for
ourselves too.  We are blessed with the joy of being together, and we
are together for joy.  Thanks be to God!  Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p 162.

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

October 30, 2022

Uncategorized

“Now” based on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

  • October 9, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

Sometimes,
I get tired of preaching about the exile.  I get tired of thinking
about the exile.  I get tired of the fact that the exile metaphors
resonate with me, and I’d strongly prefer that they didn’t.

But
I’m ahead of myself, because we don’t talk enough about the exile to
assume that people can follow what I mean by it.  So, a quick
historical summary: After King David and King Solomon, the ancient
nation of Israel split into two.  The northern part had the name
Israel and the southern part the name
Judah.  That was stable for a few hundred years, then the northern
nation was subsumed by Assyria in 722 BCE.  The southern
kingdom held on for a while longer (mostly by paying tributes to
larger empires) but was destroyed in 586 BCE.  

At
that point the leaders, the literate, and the priests were forced
marched to Babylon, while the poor, illiterate majority were left in
the ruins of a destroyed Jerusalem without the protection of city
gates.

That’s
what we call “the exile.”  In 539 BCE (47 years later) the first
of the people who’d been exiled were freed to come back.  Meanwhile
the people who stayed had been decimated by famine, disease, and
attackers, and “home” wasn’t what people had remembered or been
told about.

The
reality of the exile is formative in the writing down of the Hebrew
Bible, and the questions that were being asked and answered in how
the stories got written down.  It is also one of the great narrative
arcs of the Bible, and I think that’s true because it was written
down when it was still so vibrant in people’s lives and memories.  I
also think it is true because the sensation of being displaced from
life as we know it and/or life as it should be is quite common, and
having the narrative of the exile helps us make sense of life as we
know it.

And
now we’re back to the beginning.  I appreciate the ways the stories
of the exile make sense of life, but I’m rather tired of identifying
with it.  I’d rather resonate with some stories of stability instead.

But,
here we are.

And
in the midst of this is Jeremiah’s profound, shocking, amazing,
unexpected communication on behalf of God.  He writes to those in
exile, the ones who have been torn from their homes, the ones who are
prevented from going home by exactly the people who tore up their
home and tore them from their homes and he says on behalf of God:

Build houses and live in them;
plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take wives and have sons
and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in
marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and
do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have
sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its
welfare you will find your welfare.

I
can’t imagine that this is what the exiles wanted to hear.  

I
would imagine this was the opposite of what they expected.  Wouldn’t
they want to be ready to leave at any time?  Why settle in?  After
all, the passover celebrates God calling the people from Egypt so
quickly they had to cook unleavened bread!  Build houses and plant
gardens?  That sounds wrong.

Get
married?  Have kids?  Keep on living?  Keep on trying to thrive and
grow?  But, that doesn’t fit either.  They’re in a temporary place,
shouldn’t they wait until they get home and can be in the “Promised
Land” and connected to life as they know it, life as it is supposed
to be?  Why bring kids into the mess of the exile?  I mean, does an
exile marriage even COUNT?

And
then, then God gets INTO it.  This is one of the most shocking things
attributed to God in the Bible, and that’s saying a lot.  God says,
“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find
your welfare.”  Seek the welfare of…. Babylon?  Pray for Bablyon?
Work for the wellbeing of Babylon?  Our well being is correlated
with the well being of our oppressors?

We
aren’t trying to undermine them?  We aren’t trying to destroy them?
We aren’t trying to … at the very least just keep our heads down
until we get to leave?  We’re working for their WELFARE?  (It may be
helpful to know that I don’t think the exiles were slaves, but nor
were they free to leave.)

That’s
about how I think the exiles would have responded.  But maybe I’m
wrong, because while everything God says is counter-intuitive,
everything God says also sounds like God.  And they, too, knew God.
So maybe they knew to expect the unexpected, to know compassion for
others would come at the most annoying times, to experience God’s
reminders about loving everyone when they least wanted to hear it.

I
hear the echos of this message from God when Jesus heals the
senator’s daughter, when Paul has compassion for his jailers, and
when MLK reminded his listeners that the goal was not to harm the
oppressors but transform them so they too could live a more wonderful
life.

This
is a very, very Godly message, this “But seek the welfare of the
city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its
behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

I’m
not sure when it gets easy.

Because,
right now, this feels like a message to settle into this
late-pandemic reality.  Let go of what was, and build houses HERE.
Plant gardens HERE.  Savor relationships and build up families HERE
and NOW.  And, seek the welfare of the city where we now are.

But
most of us still aren’t all the way here yet.  (Maybe the young are?)
We’re still remembering what was.  Maybe, even, we’re still letting
God know that we are ready to bake the bread – even the unleavened
bread – and walk away from this mess right now!  We don’t want to
settle into this reality.  We want to go HOME.  We don’t want to seek
the welfare of this time, we want this time to be different than it
is.

But
God meets us in the now.

Not
the past, the future, nor the time we wish it was.  The now.

That
pre-exilic time never returned.  But there was a vibrant post-exilic
time, which included things like the Bible being written, the Second
Temple being build, the walls of Jerusalem being restored, and as a
thing that is pretty relevant to us, the life of Jesus.

It
seems to me, from where I’m standing, that the temptation of the
exile is the yearning to return to how things used to be.  But God
urges the people to be present in their NOW, which prepares them for
the next things God is going to be up to with them.

I
guess, like the exiles, God is dragging us into the now – sometimes
while we kick and scream like toddlers.  And I think that’s the word
as I hear it today.  God is with us in the now, calling us into the
now, and preparing us for the future.  

And
this is where we meet God.

May
we be open to meeting God here.  Amen

October 9, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Hell and the Mid-Terms”based on Amos 6:1a, 4-7 and…

  • September 25, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

If
you want to watch me get internally up in arms quickly, you can give
me a Biblical narrative about heaven and hell that directly suggests
that God sends bad people to suffer in hell.  I’ve spent much of my
life trying to counter the narrative that God is someone to be afraid
of, along with countering the idea that God arbitrarily punishes
people with eternal condemnation.  Therefore I can get rather quickly
irritated at scriptures supporting condemnations to hell.  

Enter:
this week’s gospel lesson, in which a rich man and a poor man die and
the poor man is  carried away by the angels to be with Abraham while
the rich man is being tormented in Hades.  HEY BIBLE, I’m trying to
teach people about loving God because God first loved us, NOT trying
to scare people into conformity.  COULD YOU TONE IT DOWN A LITTLE?

Obviously
not.  Getting myself up in arms about a text doesn’t actually make it
go away, so I’m going to have to deal with this story.  I can calmly
remind myself that it is a parable, and parables are meant to help us
break down our assumptions about how the world works, NOT be taken
literally.  That helps some.  I can remind myself that the Jesus
Seminar doesn’t’ think this story goes back to Jesus, but rather to
Luke.  But that doesn’t do too much for me, because I find Luke to be
a pretty significant teacher in his own right.

Or,
I can let the story stand as it is written, try to put my concerns
aside, and see what the story can teach as it is.  Which, I’m pretty
sure, is the best way forward.

So,
who is Lazarus?  He is a poor man, reduced to begging, whose body was
covered in sores.  He was hungry, and he was aching, and the comfort
he received was of dogs licking his wounds for him.  Oh my.  Unlike
in other parables and unlike the rich man, he is given a name.  His
name means “One God has helped.”  In having a name, we are
confronted with his humanity.  We are invited to look at him, and see
his pain.  

Many
of the first followers of Jesus were people like Lazarus.  Or people
one step from being people like Lazarus.  They knew his pain, they
saw his humanity, they could look at him and see his reality because
it was familiar.  They also knew the ways other people looked away
from them, and worked to not see them.  They knew people wanted them
to be invisible so they could go on their merry way.

In
a conversation I once witnessed, a person who had recently been
housed was asked about how to best respond to people begging on the
street.  While only one opinion, hers has stayed with me.  She said
it mattered much less to her if people gave money or not, but it
mattered a lot if they looked at her and acknowledged her.  She often
felt invisible, and dehumanized, and someone responding when she
spoke mattered a whole lot.

Lazarus,
I’m thinking, knew what that was like.

Who
was the rich man?  We know he was rather seriously rich and had 5
brothers.  We also know that he didn’t see Lazarus.  Not in the
beginning of the story, nor in the end.  He thought Lazarus was
disposable, he thought Lazarus should be sent to do his bidding.
Lazarus should be sent to soothe him, Lazarus should be sent to warn
his brothers.  (Not warn EVERYONE, mind you, just his brothers.)  

As
Debbie Thomas, theologian and writer of “Journey with Jesus” puts
it:

But here’s the scariest
part of the story for me: even after death, the rich man fails to see
Lazarus.  Privilege just plain clings to him — even
in Hades!  Though he piously calls on “Father” Abraham,
he refuses to see Lazarus as anything other than an errand boy:
“Bring me water.”  “Go warn my brothers.”  No
wonder Abraham tells him that the “chasm” separating the two
realms is too great to cross.  Let’s be clear: God is not
the one who builds the chasm.  We do that all by
ourselves.1

That
is a scary part, that the things separating us from seeing each
other’s humanity are so powerful that they could remain even beyond
our deaths.

When
I stop myself from having an instantaneous defensive reaction to this
parable, I can see it has some powerful truths.  It rejects the
world’s hierarchies, and humanizes everyone.  Similarly, it
challenges the assumption about who is “good” or “worthy.”
For those who are living in poverty, it showed them that they were
seen in their full humanity.  For those not living in poverty, it
makes people who live in poverty visible.  It also makes clear that
the rich man may have been rich, but he was definitely poor in
understanding.  Finally, we are reminded that this is not a new
teaching brought by Jesus, but the essence of the Hebrew Bible spoken
in a slightly new way.

Now,
I’m always grateful for reminders like those, but I want to also
point what I don’t think we should take from this parable:  I do not
think it should lead us to condeming others to hell; nor to feeling
complacent about this world assuming that what is wrong here will be
fixed “in the next”; I don’t think we should dismiss the rich man
as heartless without looking at who in the world we try not to see;
nor (finally) should we use this parable as permission to dismiss
ANYONE as other – not the rich man, not Lazarus, and not anyone
else either.  

One
of the great costs of a theology that includes hell is the idea that
the division between good and bad people is between PEOPLE, instead
of accepting that all of us are good people and bad people, and
trying to work with God to maximize the good.  That is, a theology of
hell makes space for us to dehumanize and “other” some of God’s
beloveds.

John
Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said, “if your heart
is with my heart, give me  your hand.”  He understood the
difference between disagreements about details and implementation and
disagreements about what matters in the world.  He feared people
would let little things divide them, instead of working together on
the things that really matter.

Similarly,
my colleague Rabbi Matt Culter has invited fellow members of
Schenectady Clergy Against Hate to speak this weekend about divisions
in our society and how to not let them live in our hearts.  We have
an election cycle coming up, and as he said, “Intense rhetoric is
only exacerbating the tensions. We are in a unique role to help
de-escalate the tensions that surely will grow in intensity as
the mid-term elections grow closer.”  (He didn’t even know about
this parable coming up in the lectionary!)

This
weekend, Rabbi Culter will remind his congregation that every voice
matters so no one should be dismissed, that there is a need to
respect each other’s character – which means not speaking of or to
one another in anger, and finally that we are all on the same
journey.

Now,
I have to admit that I struggle with attempts at peace or unity that
do so at the expense of the vulnerable or minoritized.  And I think
there are real differences in vision for our country, ones that
include very different perspectives on – say – Lazarus and the
rich man.  I think those are the sorts of differences that matter,
too.  AND, I think that those whose values are different from mine
also have reasons why they think their system is best over all, they
are also on this journey called life, they are also worthy of respect
and being heard.  (Not the sort of respect that is obedience, the
sort of respect that honors humanity.)  I don’t have to agree with
someone or their values to find them worthy of full humanity, care,
access to health care, enough food to eat, and respect.

Divisions
between us make space for hate.  Dismissing someone because of a
different point of view makes space for hate.  EVEN dismissing
someone for a different set of values makes space for hate.  

NOW,
what about the times when someone else’s “point of view” is one
that, say dismisses the humanity of others?  For me, the answer comes
from Rev. Dr. King’s sermon “Love Your Enemies” (which quite
clearly also goes back to Jesus, but I like how Dr. King says it)

Now there is a final reason I
think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love
has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that
eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, “Love
your enemies.” Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to
redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies,
you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of
redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even
though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a
neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of
that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them.
Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and
they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the
beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because
you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and
sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period,
but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will
break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive,
and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that
builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears
down and is destructive. “love your enemies.”2

I
wonder what would have resolved the parable?  Perhaps, the rich man
seeing Lazarus as a fellow human, another person beloved by God, and
in need of care.  Giving him a blanket, or inviting him to a feast,
cleaning his wounds, offering him a job, maybe just letting the table
scraps fall to him, maybe as much as welcoming him into the household
for care.  Yes, I know that means another person would have replaced
Lazarus at the gate, maybe two if generosity was known.  Because a
single act of mercy doesn’t create social change and prevent people
from being poor.  But until the humanity of the rich and the poor can
be seen TOGETHER, the will to change society can’t be created either.

Oh,
also, a pragmatic suggestion: maybe try to use social media less?  It
is designed to create division, and we want to create space for love.
Thanks be to God, the God of love.

Amen

1https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2374-the-great-chasm

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

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

September 25, 2022

Uncategorized

“Role Model?”  based on Luke 16:1-3

  • September 18, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

Parables are not fables.  They don’t
teach us a direct lesson that can be immediately applied to living a
good life.  Case in point: the parable of the dishonest manager.  If
I were giving awards for the most morally ambiguous parable, this one
would be in the running.

For starters, the issue presented is of
a DISHONEST manager, that’s who we’re dealing with as the… hero?
The dishonest manager gets fired, but before the word gets out, he
cancels some of the debt of the owners debtors, presumably aiming to
get hired by one of them for his next gig.  So he is dishonest,
underhanded, and self-serving.  And he gets commended by the person
who had fired him and used as an example of kindom values by Jesus?

This guy is our role model?

Let no one say the role of the preacher
in interpreting the texts for a modern audience is easy.

But… let’s give this a try.

First of all, I think we better have a
solid sense of this
story in its historical context so that we read less into it and hear
it more as first hearers would have.  Here is redacted commentary
from the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

Rich landowners
frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the
household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and
liquidate debts in the name of the master.  Such agents were usually
paid in the form of a commission or fee on each transaction they
arranged.  While token under-the-table additions to loan contracts
were common, all the principal and interest had to be in a publicly
written contract approved by both parties.  There is no warrant for
the frequent assumption here that the agent could exact as much as 50
percent above a contract for his fee.  If that had been done, the
rage of the peasants would have immediately been made known to the
landowner ,.. who would have been implicated in the extortion if he
acquiesced.  This is clearly not the case in this story.

Traditional
Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss
incurred by his employer for which he was responsible.  He could also
be put in prison to extort the funds from his family.  If the
dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been
seen as damaging the reputation of the master.  Severe punishment
could be expected.   Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply
dismissed.

In the case of
the dismissal of an agent, the dismissal was effective as soon as the
agent was informed of it, and from that time forward, nothing the
agent did was binding on the person who employed him.  The plan
worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his
dismissal got to the village.  …

The scheme of the
manager is to seek new patrons….

The debtors here
[paid a fixed amount of the produce].  The size of the debts is
extraordinary.  Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they
are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of
wheat.  Storytelling hyperbole may be involved, or as recent
investigations have suggested, debts are large enough that they may
be the tax debts of an entire village.  …

The “rich man”
presumably has …an interpersonal attachment to his manager.  Having
discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or
demanding repayment, the manager depends on a similar reaction in the
scheme he cooks up.  It is a scheme that places the landowner in a
peculiar bind.  If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks
serious alienation in the village, where villagers would already have
been celebrating his astonishing generosity.  If he allows the
reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the
manager for having made the “arrangement”) as a noble and
generous man.  It is the latter reaction upon which the manager
counts.1

The more I read about the Jewish
peasants of Jesus day, the more I am convinced that they were well
aware of the systems of injustice that kept them down.  I find this
to also be true of people living in poverty today.

I’m not sure if there is an actual
protagonist in this story, really.  The rich man is definitely not
seen as a good man, in a society were wealth was assumed to be
stolen.  But, the person whose job it was to enable the rich man’s
continued wealth accumulation was ALSO not seen in a positive light.
Many people I know can identify with the managers bind.  He was
better off being a manager and getting a decent cut of the accounts
he created than he was in most other positions he was eligible for,
but working for “the man” whose very wealth oppressed others was
also inherently dishonorable work.  Or at least, I believe the
peasants would have seen it that way.

And quite often when I think too hard
about what it means to work for “The United Methodist Church”, I
fear it too is inherently dishonorable work, even if I believe
working for THIS church is a moral good.  There are SO MANY jobs like
this though.  Working for the health care system – YAY, caring for
people!  But also, making wealth for investors in insurance
companies.  Sigh.  Working in education – YAY, teaching people
things they need to know!  But also, participating in a system that
maintains income INEQUALITY over lifetimes.  Groan.  Actually, come
to think of it a lot of jobs, probably most jobs, are really morally
ambiguous given the fact that we live in a society that treats a
large percentage of people as expendable, and the institutions and
systems of society are part of how we maintain this system.

(Right now I feel like John Oliver when
he talks about how incredibly cheery his show.)

So in the midst of the realities of
income inequality, injustice, and violations of Jewish law, comes
this incredibly morally ambiguous parable.  I think the way I can
most easily make sense of it is if the debts forgiven are the debts
of the whole village.  That brings the whole thing together for me –
including that it suggests the Rich Man owns the whole village which
was common enough in the Roman Empire but INHERENTLY immoral in the
tradition of the Ancient Jews who believed that every family got land
access that could not be taken away from them.  This is related to
the banning of INTEREST, which keeps people from being stuck in
poverty cycles.  The rich man owning the village means that the
morals of the community have been deeply violated, and both the rich
man and his obsequious servants are at fault.

The post-firing actions of the
dishonest manager have some accidental Robin Hood implications then.
He cancels debt, creates a better balance, eases the lives of the
people.  But, it is still pretty clear that he does this FOR HIMSELF,
and the benefit to the people is mostly accidental.

Now, this has some themes that fit
other parables and other teachings of Jesus.  There is a value in the
cornering of the rich man into being generous, in winning the
“shrewd” fight, and in taking care of the people, no matter the
intention.

While I believe that the “moral” of
the story is likely tacked on later, the Jesus Seminar thinks it goes
back to Jesus and I think Luke placed it well.  “No servant can
serve two masters.  No doubt that slave will either hate one and love
the other or be devoted to one and disdain the other.  You can’t be
enslaved to both God and a bank account.”  The book “Debt: The
History of the First 5000 Years” says that the world’s major
religions emerged IN RESPONSE (to counter) the world’s first market
economies.  That is, there started to be an assumption that markets
were GOOD, and defined what life should be, and those who won at the
market deserved it and those who lost at the market deserved it, and
that was just how life was.  

In the face of that, religions said,
“nope.”  I would make a claim the author didn’t, that this was
related to the Spirit of God NOT being invested in the markets and
the hierarchies they created in the “value” of human life.  But,
in a quite literal sense, religions countered the claims of the
market.  Money is NOT what matters most.  Individual wealth is NOT a
sign of a persons goodness.  Instead, all people have value.
Instead, goodness is related to the way All the people are cared for.
Instead, the COMMON GOOD is the definition of a successful society.

God cares for the peasants, even though
the market does not.  

This morally ambiguous parable is
likely NOT one we want to take as a simple role model story.  BUT, in
the vein of great parables, it is one that invites us into
consideration of our own lives and our own roles.  When are we
serving “the rich man” and harming the poor?  When are we serving
ourselves, and who is that helping and hurting?  When are we serving
the poor, and why?  How are we implicated in the systems that
oppress, and how and when are we motivated to shake them up?  And,
maybe – when we are backed into a corner afraid for our own
well-being, can we find ways out that help others along the way?

Serving God and not money is not
encouraged in our society.  I often fear our economy is the actual
“god” of our society.  But the God of our Bible, and the God we
learn about from Jesus is deeply invested in offering us alternatives
to worshipping the economy.  Thanks be to God for being worthy of our
worship for being the worthy center of our lives.  Amen

1Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292-3.

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

September 18, 2022

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