“The Only Way Home is through the Wilderness” based…

December 6, 2020
by Sara Baron

Does the present moment feel like Exile
to you?

I mean, does it feel like there has
been utter destruction of life as we know it, and that we are living
in a holding pattern waiting and hoping for change and a return to
“normal” knowing it will still be different?

It seems to me that this metaphor holds
water.

It was into the experience of Exile
that the prophet Isaiah spoke saying, “Comfort, O comfort my
people, says your God.” This seems important. The comfort didn’t
come when things were relatively OK, nor when things were getting
worse. Really, it was spoken into the darkest of days, when hope was
lost, and the people might have simply given up.

I’m telling you. Advent is ON POINT
this year.

Into the hopelessness, when the Exile
felt heaviest, God spoke, “Comfort, O Comfort my people. Speak
tenderly to my people.” Indeed. God speaks into this moment with
comfort, and hope.

Given the incredible efficacy of the
vaccine trials, I’m hearing that if everything goes right, the
earliest we could return to “life as normal” is May. On one hand
that feels really great. There is light at the end of the tunnel!
On the other hand, May isn’t exactly right around the corner, and
we’re already 9 months into this thing, and May is BEST CASE
SCENARIO, and I think we’ve all gotten good at being hesitant to
believe that best case scenarios are exactly how things will go.

Furthermore, Thanksgiving hit JUST
as we were otherwise about to bring this latest crest of COVID cases
around, and the next few months are terrifying. Today, I know more
people who are sick with COVID than I have at any other point in the
past 9 months. The worry for the world in general is even heavier
when I add the worry for people I know in particular.

And, of course, it gets dark SO EARLY.

Whenever I read this Isaiah passage I
think that, if not for these words of comfort and hope, the people
might have broken, and the return might not have been possible.
These are the words that remind the people who they are, whose they
are, and what their job is.

The problem for the Exiles, as well as
for us, is that the way home is through the wilderness. Biblically,
wilderness and desert mean the same thing: a place that life only
continues to exist by the grace of God. The problem is that the
Exiles had been force marched across the desert to get to Babylon,
and the way home required crossing the desert again.

Feel familiar? To get to May (let’s
hope it is May) requires a lot more of the same pains we’re now
familiar with. There is no way home except… through.

The prophet Isaiah sees this, and
promises God will ease the journey as much as possible – making it
level and safe, even, and easy to walk. But, friends, they still
have to go through the desert to get home. For the Exiles, it was
650 miles. For us…. well, that sounds about right 😉

To the exiles, the prophet says that it
is not necessary to depend on themselves. God is with them. God is
their shepherd, God is their protector, it is God who is steady and
steadfast, and God can be counted on.

EVEN in Exile, even in the midst of
death and destruction.

At this point in this pandemic, that’s
exactly what I needed to be reminded of:

The world is not on my shoulders

Christianity is not on my shoulders

The UMC is not on my shoulders,

and even though I bear much
responsibility for the well-being of FUMC Schenectady,

that too is on God’s shoulders.

The path “home” IS through the
desert, and it will be inherently difficult.

But God is with us, and God is easing
our way as much as it can be eased.

The other side of Exile will be
difficult as well (it took GENERATIONS to rebuild the first time),
but God is going to be with us then too.

In the midst of this experience of
powerlessness, it is such a relief to remember that God is still
powerful. And God is still working. And God is still
Love-Alive-in-the-World.

(It doesn’t make everything better,
nothing does, but it helps.)

It is into this metaphor of making a
straight highway in the desert for the Exiles to come home, that Mark
places the beginning of the Jesus story. Because the people of Jesus
day were living an existence much like the Exiles, except at home.
They were exiles in their own land.

And the Gospel writer says, that John
was working with God to prepare those “highways home” so that
Jesus could lead the people down them.

I sure hope that we’re like John.
Working with God to prepare the highways home. I think we are. And
I KNOW that God is working with us, and doing most of the heavy
lifting too.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

December 6, 2020

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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“By Whose Authority” based on Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16, Matthew…

September 27, 2020
by Sara Baron

There
are fantastic people in life who are able to quickly assess a
situation, and make a solid decision on a response. I deeply envy
those people. I’m a different kind of person, one who wants access
to as much information as possible, and then often internally
oscillates repeatedly. A good friend doing committee work with me
once told me that “our meetings would go a lot faster if you would
stop debating with yourself – outloud.” #truth.

Because
I’ve been examining the Gospel lesson this week, I am aware that
decisions require deciding where we put our trust. That is, who or
what has authority. That is because the central question in today’s
Gospel lesson is one of authority. Jesus was teaching, but as a poor
man without a formal position or education, he didn’t have a whole
lot of authority. The chief priests and elders had the education and
the positions. They held formal authority.

In
that time and place, like any other, authority mattered. They seem
genuinely confused. “why is this guy speaking like he has
authority when he has none? Does he have a powerful patron he is
speaking for?” The answer Jesus gives amounts to “I have the
authority of the respect of the people.”¹

DANG.

That
itself uprooted everything in his society. This was bottom up power
and everyone knew that power came from the top down. Those crowds,
however, knew that the power from the top down was profoundly corrupt
and corrupting.

So,
who or what has authority for you?

And,
if you say it is God, (*great*) what does that mean for you?

One
of the gifts of the Methodist movement has been a way of thinking
about authority that creates some balance. The “Wesleyan
Quadrilateral” suggests that when looking for truth about things to
do with God, faith, and people, we take into account Scripture,
Tradition, Scholarship²,
and Personal Experience. If something can be made sense of with all
4 of those areas of authority, it can be trusted. If not, it has to
be handled more carefully.

That
said, each of the pieces of the quadrilateral is more complicated
than it may seem. For instance, how scripture is understood seems to
be a range wide enough to include pretty much every opinion and its
opposite, and yet somehow with great conviction on every side. 🙁 I
believe it is pretty clear that the authority of “church tradition”
is similarly broad, as is personal experience. I think the Psalm
tries to answer the authority question with some sort of balance of
scripture and tradition – it says that because God has cared for
us, we can trust God. That’s all fine and good, but it still doesn’t
answer our deeper questions.

For
example, there is the question of what our faith community looks like
during this global pandemic. The issue, as you may be aware, is that
the first general rule of John Wesley is “First do no harm.” But
that is ALSO not simple (nothing is simple with me, sorry). Because
doing no harm means not exposing anyone to increased risk of COVID
exposure. BUT, it also means not letting people who are hungry
struggle with their hunger when we can give them food (so we have
kept Breakfast open, even while offering it as take out). It means
making sure that families living in poverty still have toilet paper,
diapers, and hygiene products (so we have been giving away our
SUSTAIN supplies while our distribution has been closed.) It means
making sure people have access to others, in community, to be heard
and to share life (our Zoom Check in, the Midweek Coffee Hour, the
Bridging the Distance Groups.)

And,
still, we know we have excluded. Not everyone has internet. Because
the internet is PROFOUNDLY not the same, not everyone gains a sense
of connection via the internet. There has been a yearning for being
in our worship space, for sharing space, for being more together.

And
yet, still, “do no harm” with a pandemic! So, what to do? After
MONTHS of internal oscillation, and lots of conversation with others,
the best plan I have to offer is this: we keep our worship online.
We keep our Zoom check in as worship part 2. We ALSO offer a
“Contemplative Prayer Service” at 10AM in the Sanctuary. This
service won’t involve singing, or even congregational speaking. It
will be quiet, still, reflective. There will be masks and social
distancing. It will be short (30 minutes or less). All of this will
minimize risk – but also respond to need.

Truth
be told, I also LOVE contemplative prayer, and I think many of us
need some time of stillness and prayer, and this may be good for our
spiritual journeys.

It
wasn’t easy to figure out how to go forward, and more difficult
questions will keep coming, but this is where we got to for now. My
authorities have been the medical and scientific communities, the
responses we’ve gotten from the church, the reopening committee, and
my own personal experience.

If
I’m actually honest about how I make decisions, it all comes down to
love. My question is, “what is the most loving option” and then
I have to take into account “for myself,” “for others,” “for
the whole.” And that still doesn’t create easy answers, but at
least it means I’m making decisions in ways I can respect.

(Let
me take this time to say that pandemic decisions are ALL HARD, and we
all come to them with different bodies, different risks, and
different risk assessments. We aren’t all making the same choices,
but I hope we are all trying to care for each other in our choices.)

So,
for a moment, I’m going to assume that you want to go with me down
the “what is most loving” path. I imagine you’d ask, “what
about when I’m stuck or unsure?” In the past several years, I have
been working on…. trusting myself a bit more. Now, when I find
myself stuck (including procrastinating), I ask myself “why” and
explore it. While there sometimes feels like urgency, I’ve found
that when I (prayerfully) explore my stuckness, I usually discover
something really important that isn’t being cared for. (This is
really how we got to a contemplative prayer service, I couldn’t
figure out how to make in person worship work for enough people!)

The
other piece is to trust other people to tell you when you are wrong.
This, actutally, is very Wesleyan, and I think it is one of the most
important aspects of faith community. We’re all wrong sometimes.
Which means we all need to be corrected sometimes. Which means it is
really good to work on the skill of listening to others, and
admitting our errors.

This
isn’t a lot of new advice, is it? Trust yourself when you are stuck
that you are stuck for a reason, let love guide your choices, and
admit it when you are wrong? Like most faith stuff though, this is
all easier said than done. That, and it is pretty clear that
authority and decisions are still hard for me!

Let
me offer one more little thing then. I’ve often heard it said around
this church, “question everything” and I agree. We question
everything, and we try to come down on the side of love, and we seek
to be open to correction and then …. we need on more piece. The
final piece is to practice forgiveness of self and of others, because
we’re all going to err even when we do our best.

With
all this, may we get ever better at using God, and God’s love, as our
utmost authority. Amen

1Based
on the work of Bruce J Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh in “Social
Science Commentary on the Synpotic Gospels” pages 108-109.

2Usually
called “reason,” but that leads to misunderadning,

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 27, 2020