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March 26, 2023
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

So.

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

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

I started at 8AM.

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

At 2 it looked the same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it is GOOD to have limits on my work!

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

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

HOW?

But also, thank God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen

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

March 26, 2023

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

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

2 https://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