It Is Well

March 9, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“It. Is. Well.” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Luke 4:-13

If I rewrote the temptation of Jesus story for today, it could sound a little different:

The tempter said to Jesus, “If you are the son of God, scan social media for updates about your friends and ignore all rabbit holes and clickbait.” Jesus answered, “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love… so, no.” (Hosea 10:12a)

The tempter said to Jesus, “Here is the world on a piece of paper, it is called the newspaper. Read this and tell me again that God is good.” Jesus answered, “God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s faithfulness for all generations – and that truth is deeper than any news.”

The tempter said to Jesus, “Here is a way to protect yourself, to get yourself out of the messes all around you.” And Jesus said, like Jesus liked to say, “Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.”

That is, I think that a significant temptation facing us today is the temptation to become overwhelmed, to slide into despair, or to become self-protective. As many have pointed out, that temptation has been handed to us on a golden platter by those who believe that having us overwhelmed and mired in despair means we will be more compliant, but even knowing that, it is hard to stay centered.

And, I want to make space to say, I don’t think any of us can stay centered all the time and we all have different vulnerabilities, different access to resources, and different levels of tolerance, and with GOOD REASON some of us can’t find our centers very much at all. Or ever. Which isn’t any sort of personal failing, it is just that being attacked is dis-regulating.

Some of you are already familiar with the story behind the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul,” but as I think it is otherwise an odd choice of chorus for our gathering hymn for Lent, I want to tell the story again. Horatio Spafford’s life was a bit like Job’s. (Grimace) Spafford had 5 children and a lot of wealth. One of his children died, and then much of the wealth went up in smoke in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Two years later the family traveled to England but Horatio sent his wife and remaining children ahead of him while he finished some work. Their ship sank and all of his children died. His wife was saved. When he followed, and his ship traveled over the waters where his children died, he stood on deck and watched. And it is said that the song came to him then and there.

Now, I fear that the story can be a little bit too poignant, and someone could take from it that grief and loss are to be ignored or dismissed, and a person of sufficient faith can face any disaster with poise and grace. I don’t mean ANY of that. I think that any grief comes in waves, and sometimes one finds a grace-filled peace and sometimes one finds the depths of despair. And I don’t think being a person of faith insulates anyone from disaster or being deeply impacted by it.

I do think though, that somewhere within us is a piece of our being that is connected directly to the Divine – some people call it soul – and nothing in the world can damage our souls. Our bodies can be harmed, our minds can be harmed, sometimes even our so called “spirits” can be broken, but nothing in the world can damage our souls. And we all have them.

One of the reasons to engage in Contemplative Prayer is to allow the soul – who knows God intimately – the space to offer guidance to our beings as a whole. Another is to find that “peace like a river” that our souls know but usually our whole beings can’t access.

The Quakers have done a lot of work in thinking about and learning about souls in this sort of definition. One of the things they teach is that souls are SHY. They get compared to wild animals, who spook easily, trust hesitantly, and need a lot of space. Some of the continued education time I’ve engaged with while here at First UMC Schenectady has been devoted to “soul-work,” led by the Center for Courage and Renewal which was founded on the teachings of Quaker Parker Palmer.

Courage and Renewal engages in practices to let our soul-wisdom out. Their retreats include a lot of silence, time for journaling and art, and the use of “third things.” Third things are some sort of art – music or poetry or paintings, etc – that are used as a vehicle for reflection and as an indirect way to seek soul wisdom. People have a chance to notice aspects of the art, notice the feelings they have in response to the art, and wonder a bit about the connection. A practice like this is part of our offering on Wednesdays in Lent, a space with lots of silence, some intentional questions, and plenty of spaciousness. Those shy souls might feel safe enough to peak out!

The wonder of the work I’ve done with Courage and Renewal has been in learning that when one soul peaks out, other souls get really curious and are more likely to do their own peaking out as well. The wisdom of one soul is never exactly like the wisdom of another soul, but nevertheless they recognize that type of wisdom and their “ears” perk right up.

In an ideal world, this sort of wonder would happen every week in worship too, and I think to some degree it does. But worship doesn’t have quiet enough silence, or patience, for it to happen a lot. Nevertheless, grace appears because God is like that, and sometimes we’re really able to share our deepest truths and be heard by others deepest listening.

Dear ones, the point I’m trying to make may be a little obscure this time, so let me attempt to be clearer. Deep within you there is an unbreakable connection to the Divine. You may have other language for it, today I’m calling it soul. While the upheavals of the world can do profound damage to you, they can’t hurt your soul. Your soul might hide more deeply within you, or be more shy about sharing its wisdom, but it can’t be hurt! It can’t be hurt by distressing decisions or outrageous news or even by direct harm to you.

Because God’s own self is a part of you, and God is bigger and stronger and more loving than anything in the world could ever stop.

Which is why, in the middle of Lent, in a time when it feels like our society and the world are rolling backward, I think it is really important to sing, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.” I also think it is a great time to engage in contemplative prayer practices that help us connect with the Divine, with our own souls, and with peace.

All of which helps us feel the truth of “it is well, it is well, with my soul.” Because the wonderful thing is, it always is, always, no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen

March 9, 2025

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

Uncategorized

Untitled

September 5, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Interconnected” based on James 1:17-27

Welcome to the book of James. It is one of my favorites, despite the fact that it takes away one of my best preaching tools. That is, I usually spend a lot of time explaining context and making sense of a scripture in the time and place it was written. But James is almost a form of wisdom literature. It is universal. So, we’re able to spend our time on the ideas in the book directly.

James is written to the followers of Jesus in the diaspora – that is, those who lived outside of the Holy Land. The ones who had been DISPERSED from the land of their ancestors in faith. This feels relevant right now too. I don’t know any church members at FUMC Schenectady who would claim modern Palestine or Israel as their native land, but I think that all of us are displaced from the “land” we once knew, and have not yet settled into the “land” we’ll live in eventually. The Pandemic has displaced us all (although not all the same amount.)

In this opening chapter of the book of James, we are urged to LIVE our faith. James wants faith in ACTION. He urges people not to just listen to preachers 😉 but to LIVE their faith, and he gets rather specific about it. James believes that people who are followers of Jesus should be acting out different values than the world’s.

The crux of the advice from today’s passage is “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” For James, this is integral in what it means to be “religious” – right up there with caring about God’s beloveds who the world doesn’t value (“widows and orphans.”)

As far as I can figure it out, the work of Christians is to build the kindom of God. The kindom, sometimes called the beloved community, is God’s vision for the world. We will know it is here when the power of love overcomes the love of power; when the abundant resources of the world are used for the good of all people; when kin-ship connections cross all boundaries; when the poorest and most vulnerable people have enough to survive and thrive; when no one has to teach anyone about God because God is known by all. The kindom is God’s long term plan for us, and our work to get there happens in two broad ways: first, by creating Christian communities where we practice kin-dom values and treat each other like we’re already there and second by working with God to share love, to seek mercy, and advocate for justice so that the world is healed.

One of the parts of kindom building that can be hard sometimes is that it requires seeing clearly what the world is like now. We have to do this so we can hold it in tension with how God would have the world be in the kindom, but often the aching pain of the world as it is can be hard to let ourselves see clearly. For instance, we can’t work towards a world without rape and violence unless we admit that we live in a world with rape and violence, and that there are barriers to changing it. So, we seek to see clearly. We seek to see how things are AND how God wants them to be.

Now, I don’t want to shock you or anything, but the United States is a highly individualistic society. (The kindom is not.) We in the US have proven to the world how terribly individualism works – time and time again. Including in our responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

You might think that if you were looking at this pandemic with clear eyes that you would see that none of us can be well unless all of us are well- that we are collectively only as healthy as the least healthy among us – that every act of protection and prevention has enormous ripple effects. However, if we had learned this lesson, we’d be spending as much as possible to make it feasible to vaccinate every willing person in the world as soon as possible. We’d even do this before triple vaccinating our own population, because slowing down the spread of the virus is the most important way to keep everyone safe, healthy, and alive. The well being of all and the well being of the USA actually align! Yet, we miss the mark.

The book of James has an interesting perspective on the relationship that Christians have to the world. In the face of the injustices of the Roman Empire, the wealth inequality, the slavery, the power imbalances, the death rates of the poor, James urges the faithful … not to get angry.

I find that my first instinct is to argue with this a little bit. “Are you sure?” “What about when…?” Yet, even as I argue, I am convicted by this passage.

Society is rife with anger. Anger is pulling us apart at the seams. Some of the anger, I’d argue, is “righteous.” It is a response to injustice that needs to be seen, acknowledged, named, and addressed. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

Most of the anger is misplaced. The anger is being used to create groups of “us” that stand against “them,” and those distinctions dismiss that everyone in both groups are beloveds of God. The anger is being used to provoke fear, sell products, pass unjust laws, and elect politicians. The anger is being USED.

And James points out directly that the people who want others to get angry are selling them on the idea that if they get angry enough, they will provoke God to action. James says it won’t work though. God will act when God will act, and furthermore, prayer is a better way to go about it. Anger serves the people promoting it, not God.

But what about righteous anger? As I’ve been saying recently, anger is a “secondary” emotion. That is, it exists like a red flag to mark a place where something that is held precious is being violated. It lets us know when our values are attacked, and underneath that is another emotion. Most often anger is there to act as the bodyguard to sadness or the diversion to fear.

Sadness and fear are sufficient. They can guide us to good action, they can show us the ways of compassion, they can help us grow together. They are wise enough, that once we find them, we can let go of the anger that guided us to them.

Which means that the way to be “slow to anger” is often to identify anger, and then sit with it and find out what is underneath it. It means that we sometimes need to listen – to ourselves and our tender emotions. God is there, with us when we listen, with us when we feel, with us when we discover what is under our anger. This is, even, a form of God’s healing, God’s salve in our lives.

Of course, “be slow to anger” is the third piece of advice we’re given in today’s passage. The first two are to be quick to listen and slow to speak. It seems clear that James’ advice is aimed at faith COMMUNITIES, because his advice is aimed at deepening and maintaining good relationships among the followers of Jesus.

For the past several years, I have participated in “listening circles.” These intentional spaces have careful guidelines that are aimed at making sure there is holy and sacred space for listening – and speaking. At times there have been 20 or 30 people in these circles, and you might think that there would be a lot more speaking than listening. But, there isn’t. Often there are prolonged silences between speakers, and they feel like time to absorb the wisdom one beloved of God has offered. When the obligation to have a response is taken away, along with the tendency toward chit-chat, there is spaciousness for silence and listening.

When I hear James say, “be quick to listen, slow to speak” I think of how healing those circles have been in my life. I love being freed from having to have a response to something someone says, and instead just listen to them and receive their wisdom. And, when I do speak into such a space, I am astounded at the power that comes with being heard with love.

As much as I have loved these experiences though, it isn’t clear to me how to live “be quick to listen, slow to speak” ALL the time. Really listening to another of God’s beloveds takes energy and attention, and … let’s be honest dear ones, those are finite resources!!! We will drain ourselves if we try to listen WELL all the time. (I’ve tried.)

That said, there is a being who is capable of listening with complete attention, and full energy, with love and compassion, with care and support – all day, every day, to all of us. God, the creator, sustainer, redeemer has gifted us with life, and God is with us breathing new life into us day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, and even second by second. When we seek God in prayer and meditation, we find that God is close at hand, ready and able to offer us healing. When all we have to offer are sighs too deep for words, God knows what we mean. When we are full of words, God listens until we have exhausted them. When we are able to be with the Divine in holy silence, God meets us there. And, of course, when what we offer God is our listening, …

well, that’s when things really start to happen 😉

James encourages us to an active faith – not just to worship God once a week, but to live out faith in every day. He reminds us that the very people the world dismisses (the “widows and orphans”) are the ones that followers of Christ take care of. James doesn’t hate the world – though he isn’t impressed with it either – but he doesn’t think being angry with it is going to change it. James encourages the people of faith to act differently. Take care of the struggling and vulnerable, listen deeply, speak with intention, slow down anger and learn its lessons instead of acting it out. Don’t replicate the brokenness of the world – change it.

So, dear ones of God, I invite you to God’s restoration, God’s healing of the world, God’s work of the Kindom: be quick to listen; be slow to speak; be slow to anger. With such “simple” acts as these, we can heal the world. May God help us. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 5, 2021

Sermons

“A New Thing” based on Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 24:1-12

April 21, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Years ago I asked my boss for a computer password. He responded, “You should know this. Its is the most obvious answer. We are a ____ people.” Now, I’ve had a lot of church related jobs, but I didn’t think this was obvious. I thought there were a lot of possible answers. We are a loving people. We are a Jesus-following people. We are a gracious people. We are a beloved people. After a while, I tried “We are a resurrection people” and that got me close enough that I was informed the password was “Easter.”

I’ve thought about that every since. For my boss, it was SO obvious that “Easter” was the sort of people we are. For me, there are a lot of questions about what that means, and how we live it out. I yearn for the sort of certainty he had in thinking I could guess the password.

Every month I ask a question of the Church Council as a start to our meeting. I’m known for asking difficult questions, and this church is full of thoughtful, intentional, … strong-willed…. opinionated people. (I wouldn’t have it any other way.) Thus, I ask a difficult question, people offer a variety of different answers, I have a better sense of what people are thinking and we move on.

For the first time, after nearly 6 years, this month the Church Council found an ANSWER to my question. It started like normal. I asked, “Where are you seeing resurrection?,” and people offered many and varied answers. But then a pattern emerged, and was named. The most profound way people are seeing resurrection is in the restoration of relationships, and as a corollary, in the miracle of life-giving relationships themselves.

I thought this was a profound answer, a good way of knowing what it is to be Easter people, so I ran it by the Confirmation class. You would be delighted to know that our Confirmation class is very reflective of this church. The students are thoughtful, intentional, strong-willed, …. opinionated people. They have no patience for irrationality, and even less for exclusion in any form. Last week I ran this idea by them. We talked about resurrection, what it does and does not mean, and how we make sense of the metaphor for our lives today. I wasn’t sure that “restored relationships” would be as meaningful for teens as for those who had experienced brokenness in relationships for decades. It turns out, I was wrong.

They thought that “restored relationships” and “hope where it seems there is no hope” sounded both meaningful and valid as ways of understanding Easter.

Thus, I’m trusting the Church Council and the Confirmation class to be good tests of the pulse of this community, and I’m going to keep on preaching about restored relationships AS resurrection.

For those who aren’t quite with me yet though, I want to play with that wonderful line from Luke’s first Easter Story, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (v. 5) Within the story it functions to emphasize the empty grave, but it also seems well phrased for metaphorical contemplation. When else have we given up something “for dead” when there is still life in it? When have we discounted a possibility, including of a restored relationship, when God wasn’t done with it yet? What does it mean to be people looking for the living among the living, rather than among the dead?

Last week I quoted John Dominic Crossan’s assessment of Jesus’ teaching, namely that Jesus taught “that God has given all human beings the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to all observers.”^¹That left us questioning how to live our lives being guided by that wisdom. Parker Palmer is a wisdom teacher, who teaches people how to find the power of life within themselves. It seems to me that his book his book “A Hidden Wholeness: A Journey Toward an Undivided Life” takes off where John Dominic Crossan off.

Parker Palmer believes in the power and wisdom of the soul, and since the word soul isn’t one I find easy to explain either, I’ll let him say what he means by that:

“Philosophers haggle about what to call this core of our humanity, but I’m not stickler for precision. Thomas Merton called it the true self. Buddhists call it original nature or big self. Quakers call it the inner teacher or the inner light. Hasidic Jews call it a spark of the divine. Humanists call it identity and integrity. In popular parlance, people often call it soul. … it is the objective, ontological reality of selfhood that keeps us form reducing ourselves, or each other, to biological mechanisms, psychological projections, sociological constructs, or raw material to be manufactured into whatever society needs – diminishments of our humanity that constantly threaten the quality of our lives.”²

I’m going to take it a step further and say that the soul is the source of the wisdom that Dom was talking about, “the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to all observers.” Our souls KNOW, we know, but to know we have to listen to our souls.

Throughout Lent we’ve been talking about spiritual practices. One might also say we’ve been talking about practices of listening to the Divine, to our own souls, and to each other’s souls. None of this is particularly easy, but Parker Palmer is the teacher who is focused on exactly that. He thinks most of the time we’re led by ego and by fear, which leads us to be divided from the wisdom of our own souls, “Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the ‘integrity that comes from being who you are.’”³ He calls us to wholeness, but cautions us that, “Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.”⁴

Isn’t THAT an interesting idea to consider on Easter? On this day when we think about resurrection, about restoration, about new hope and the power of life; what does it mean to think about wholeness as requiring acceptance of brokenness? Do we tend to think of resurrection as … perfection? I suspect we do. But that misses the point. God’s work in the world towards restoration doesn’t require nor create perfection. Perfection isn’t a part of life, and resurrection is about restoring LIFE. HOWEVER, God’s work in the world is always towards wholeness, and wholeness requires seeing, accepting, and making peace with brokenness.

Parker goes on to explain how we TEND to deal with this, “A divided life is a wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound. Ignore that call, and we find ourselves trying to numb our pain with an anesthetic of choice, be it substance abuse, overwork, consumerism, or mindless media noise. Such anesthetics are easy to come by in a society that wants to keep us divided and unaware of our pain – for the divided life that is pathological for individuals can serve social systems well, especially when it comes to those functions that are morally dubious.”⁵ Then he explains how to get OUT of that cycle, and the answer is both individual and communal. Palmer is a Quaker, and he believes there is a lot of power in silence, in quiet, and in listening. He encourages people to make space for silence in their lives, but he also says, “But we cannot embrace that challenge all alone, at least not for long; if we are to sustain the journey toward an undivided life. The journey has solitary passages, to be sure, and yet it is simply too arduous to take without the assistance of others. And because we we have such a vast capacity for self-delusion, we will inevitably get lost en route without correctives from outside of ourselves.”⁶

A few years ago I did an intensive training in the teachings of Parker Palmer. Much of what Palmer offers is based in the Quaker tradition. In living out these ideals in community, I discovered there was A LOT of power in them. We were taught to ask open, honest questions of each other, and to sit in silence especially when it was uncomfortable. We were invited to play with poetry and art, journaling, and conversation. We were taught that the soul is wise as all get out, but also shy and needing time, space, and metaphor to share its wisdom. We were taught to hold space for each other’s souls, both because souls are inherently precious, but also because every time a glimpse of a soul is seen, we learn about our own soul too. It is an unspoken part of Palmer’s worldview that souls are unique reflections of the Divine.

I have one more of his insights I want to share today: “All of the great spiritual traditions want to awaken us to the fact that we cocreate the reality in which we live. And all of them ask two questions intended to keep us awake: What are we sending form within ourselves out into the world, and what impact is it having ‘out there’? What is the world sending back at us, and what impact is it having ‘in here’? We are continually engaged in the evolution of self and world – and we have the power to choose, moment by moment, between that which gives life and that which deals death.”⁷ Isn’t that the question of Easter? How do we choose life? How do we work with God who chooses life in choosing life?

How do we live lives that REALLY show “that God has given all human beings the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to all observers.”^⁸How do we participate in and build community that loves people, and their souls, into a fuller wholeness; under the premise that whole people are a gift to the world? How do we build communities that reflect God’s goodness, wholeness, hope, and the power of God’s commitment to LIFE rather than death?

How do we allow God’s love, life, and wholeness into our lives so that we, and our relationships, can be restored? John Dominic Crossan believes that Jesus taught us we already know what we need to know, we already have the wisdom. Parker Palmer says that wisdom is in our souls, and to access the wisdom we need some quiet, and we need others who also trust in the wisdom of our souls.

This is what we know: God is a God of LIVE, not death; the wisdom you need to lead a transformed life is already with you; there are people who trust in your wisdom and are willing to help you find it; silence is a valuable asset in listening to the soul; metaphor, art, and open-honest questions matter too; AND… this is a community that has been and will continue to love people AS THEY ARE. That love then means that people can safely let their souls out to play, and grow further and further into who God calls us to be. We are a safe place for souls, and that means we are a safe place for LIFE. Maybe, after all, we are an Easter people. May it ALWAYS be so. Amen

1 John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA: HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 47.

2 Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward the Undivided Self(USA: Josey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 2004), 33.

3 Palmer, 4.

4 Palmer, 5.

5 Palmer, 20.

6 Palmer, 10.

7 Palmer, 48.

8 John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA: HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 47.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

April 21, 2019

Sermons

“Subversive Grace” based on Job 2:7-10

February 5, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This
week a clergy friend reached out with a concern about our United
Methodist Bookstore and recourse center, Cokesbury. In the most
recent Cokesbury catalog, on page 21, listed under “Women’s
Studies” was a book entitled “Zip It” with a cover image of
women’s lips zipped closed. He asked us to join him in expressing
displeasure. I did. I got a response from Cokesbury that attempted
to reassure me by informing me that I was ignorant of their intent.
The email informed me that the author, “offers
practical how-to’s meant to inspire her readers to use their words
‘to build, not to break; to bless, not to badger; to encourage, not
to embitter; to praise, not to pounce’. Her work is very
specific to women’s group Bible study and personal devotion and
reflection.”¹
Clearly the author of the book along with the author of the email
perceive this to be EMPOWERMENT of women. You might stake a guess
that I disagree. You’d be right.

Now,
this particular exchange was fairly trivial this week. It was almost
nothing, except that it served as a reminder of the inherent sexism
in The Church and the resiliency of the patriarchy in the
institution. It was just another
piece of frustration and sadness. In the language of Parker Palmer,
it was another expression of the “tragic gap.” He explains it
this way, “Of
all the tensions we must hold in personal and political life, perhaps
the most fundamental and most challenging is standing and acting with
hope in the “tragic gap.” On one side of that gap, we see the
hard realities of the world, realities that can crush our spirits and
defeat our hopes. On the other side of that gap, we see real-world
possibilities, life as we know it could be because we have seen it
that way.”²

Palmer teaches that much of what we struggle with in life is the
reality of the tragic gap and how to be authentic in response to it.

The
tragic gap ALWAYS exists. For the past few weeks though it has felt
like every piece of news, as well as every time I’ve accessed social
media, I’ve been bombarded with reminders of the tragic gap. At
times it has felt like I’ve been drowning in them. My natural
emotional disposition tends toward happiness and playfulness (along
with overthinking 😉 ), but recently I’ve been feeling tired,
overwhelmed, and bogged down.

Now,
it feels imperative to mention that I do not think that a publishing
foible by Cokesbury is a tragedy, it did not send me into a
depression, and it is not even OVERLY significant. In the face of
the scope of issues today, it barely registers. I have to say this
because the last time I acknowledged being personally harmed by the
existence sexism in the church at large I was told by Annual
Conference Leadership that I was a hysterical woman and sent to
Emotional Intelligence training. So, now that’s cleared up.

Truth
be told though, there are so very many reminders of the tragic gap
right now that they are piled on top of each other. There are all
the normal ones and all the exceptionally new ones. I think it is
creating a phenomenon similar to grief: when a new grief occurs it
also serves to reawaken all the grief we have experienced before it.
No one attack on the world as it should be is the problem: they all
add on to each other and start to snow ball. For many in my life,
I’m hearing that they are now avalanching. Dear friends (please
note: friends, none of you, I wouldn’t share your struggles from this
pulpit) have told me this week that they are experiencing physical
symptoms of the anxiety they experience given the current depth of
the tragic gap. I’m also hearing people are having trouble sleeping,
as well as turning to junk food and alcohol to make it through the
days.

As
for myself, this week I noticed that EVERYTHING I try to do is an
uphill battle. It all just feels harder, sort of like how it does
when I haven’t taken vacation in entirely too many months. My
yearning has been to sit on the couch, drink tea, pet my cat, and
watch West Wing and anything more than that requires steeling myself
to do what needs to be done.

I
don’t know how all of you are doing. I hope some of you are fine and
dandy, with either sufficient coping mechanisms, sufficient hope, or
sufficient joy to counterbalance the world’s problems. I know some
of you are really struggling, and that those struggles are often a
combination of the world around us and the personal issues that keep
coming. Perhaps some are also in the middle: aware of the struggles
and making it. After last week’s sermon, and the Biblical book from
which we read, many of you may be feeling anxious that I’m about to
make it worse.

I
don’t think I am. Ironically enough, Job feels like a friendly
figure right now, and his story seems to give us reason for hope.
For those of you who aren’t inherently familiar with the story, let
me summarize quickly: Job is presented as a truly good human.
Everyone agrees that he is “blameless and upright,” faithful to
God, and even overly observant. He made sacrifices to God JUST IN
CASE one of his sons accidentally sinned. He was also wealthy in the
form of enormous flocks. He and his wife and had 10 children, 7 sons
and 3 daughters. God is said to be proud of Job’s good heart and
faithfulness.

Suddenly
things changed: all of his wealth was either killed or stolen. At
the same time, all of his children, who had been feasting together,
were killed when a wind knocked down the tent. Job turned to grief
and turned his heart to God in prayer. Then, in our text, his
health deteriorated, with painful sores opening all over his entire
body. He is already sitting on an ash heap and appears to simply,
calmly, pick up a piece of a broken pot to use to scratch himself.
It seems that he is already so heartbroken that the physical symptoms
barely register.

That
seems right. The deepest grief I have seen in my life has been the
grief of parents mourning for their children. In the face of losing
10 children, I don’t think anything else would even register. Job’s
wife is convinced that his death is imminent, and even in the midst
of her shared grief, she manages to register the degree of his pain.

The
meaning of her words is not entirely clear. She says, “Do you
still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.” The big
question is: does she assume he is dying already and wish to ease his
death by helping him speak words of truth on the way out; OR does she
believe his suffering is too great for anyone to handle and believe
that if he curses God, God will finally let him die? That is, it
isn’t clear if she thinks he is dying anyway which then also makes it
unclear if she thinks cursing God will kill him. Since this is a
book especially designed to argue against the idea that a difficult
life indicates that God is punishing you, I’m going to suggest that
the more likely meaning is the first: she wishes for him speak out
loud of his pain to ease the suffering on his way to death.

Truly,
Job’s wife speaks with outstanding grace, especially for a woman who
is also grieving the loss of all of her children. The capacity to
attend to anyone else’s pain in the midst of that grief is unusual –
humans are built that way. She wants his pain to be eased, both
physically and emotionally. She thinks he is being too stoic, and
should let go of his pride in order to find some relief. In Bible
Study we found ourselves telling stories of the end of people’s
lives, and the grace-filled ways we had known loved ones to ease the
end of the dying person’s life. This woman’s words reminded us of
how difficult it can be to let go of a loved one, and at the same
time how much of a relief it is when someone we love is no longer
suffering.

Job’s
wife encouraged him to do what he could do to be at peace at the end
of his life. He refused her, responding that his faith required him
to deal with the pain as it came. In case you haven’t read Job, it
is interesting to note that for chapters upon chapters after this he
expresses his pain with great intensity. However, the prelude seems
to forget those speeches.

Now,
the grace-filled response of Job’s wife has not been heard as such
throughout history. “Chrysostom asked why the Devil left Job his
wife and answered with the suggestion that he considered her a
scourge by which to plague him more acutely than by any other
means.”³
Yep. And he wasn’t alone, “The ancient tradition, reflected in
Augustine, Chrysostom, Calvin, and many others, that she is an aide
to the satan
underestimates the complexity of her role.”⁴
Most male commentators throughout history have condemned Job’s wife
for her words, seeing her as a part of the problem. I wonder how
much of culture’s assumptions about females fed into that
perspective. It was difficult for those of us who studies this
together to hear anything but gentleness, love, and grace in Job’s
wife’s words. They’re subversive grace, for sure, not at all
reflecting the most common ways of showing love, but they’re grace
nonetheless.

The
book of Job explores human suffering, and asks the big questions
about how human suffering and God’s will are related. God’s answers
to Job’s questions are in chapters 38-40 if you want to read them
yourselves. The book of Job gives us a space to reflect on suffering
itself, and it gives us words to name the suffering. We don’t have
to be in Job’s particularly awful position to be suffering, there are
many kinds of suffering in the world.

This
week we had a Gathering of (The) Connection where we talked about
finding peace. We were gifted with wonderful questions: what is
peace? What helps you find peace? What keeps you from peace? We
discussed the balance of righteousness anger and peace, and we
wondered about it. As we discussed a thought started to form in me:
I think I’ve been doing it wrong. (Or if not “wrong” than in a
less than optimal way.)

In
recent weeks, I have allowed my fears and angers to motivate and lead
me, and I am not at my best when I do that. Certainly there is
plenty worth protesting, there are great organizations to donate to,
and imperative conversations to have. However, if I want to be as
useful as I can be in building the kin-dom of God, then I need to
start those actions from the best motivation. Now I’m wondering if I
can attend to centering myself in the unconditional love of God and
wonder of life and Creation – even now, ESPECIALLY now? Can I
allow myself to slow down enough to consider where my energy belongs
and where my gifts are most useful? Can I show up, wherever I show
up, grace-filled and at peace so that the love I have to share can be
part of what I offer in changing the world? Can I learn how to hold
peace in such a deep way that it allows me to hold anger differently?

Please
be aware that I think grace-filled and at peace can be a reasonable
way to protest, chant, and resist!! I’m talking about the inner
motivation and way of responding to the rest of God’s people. When
it comes down to it, I think that the energy we bring into the world
changes it more than the words we use. The world is desperately in
need of love and peace – and listening as well as many many forms
of resistance. Furthermore, in the past few weeks people’s hearts
haven’t stopped breaking in the normal and awful ways human hearts
break. There is still a lot of need around us for patience and
compassion.

So,
I’m hoping that in the face of great suffering I might be able (on
good days) to share subversive grace: to share God’s love from a
place of peace and gratitude WHILE calling the world out of the
tragic gap and into the kin-dom. This will take times of quiet,
intentional reflection, deep conversation, and attending to hope,
gratitude and goodness. This will take paying attention to what
brings me energy – and doing those things. This will take a
regular practice of Sabbath, in particular Sabbath from the news
cycle. I got one of those this week and it made all the difference.

Finally,
I hope that my journey is of use to you as well. In the midst of her
own suffering, Job’s wife found the way to hear her husband’s pain
and respond to it with love, grace, and compassion. That’s
especially hard work right now. But, may God help us to treat
ourselves, and those we love, with similar love, grace, and
compassion. May we find our energy sources, good spiritual
practices, and the freedom to breath outside of the news cycle.
And, with God’s help, may it lower our anxiety and fill us with some
much needed peace. Amen

1Personal
Email, February 1, 2016.

2Parker
Palmer, Healing
the Heart of Democracy,
p. 191. Accessed at
http://www.couragerenewal.org/democracyguide/v36/
on February 2, 2017.

3Marvin
H. Pope, Job.
In
the Anchor Bible Series, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co, 1965)
page 22.

4Carol
A. Newsom “The Book of Job” in The New Interpreter’s Study
Bible Vol IV (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1996), page 355.

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