“The Will of God” based on 1 Samuel 8:4-20…

June 10, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf

In
the gospel today, Jesus said that anyone who does the will of God is
his mother, brother, or sister. He defines his family by those who
do God’s will. Jesus also taught us that our God is a God of love,
which is the starting point for knowing God’s will. Jesus reminded
us of the great commandments. “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind”
and “Love
your neighbor as yourself.”

I’ve
had some very helpful nudgings from this congregation recently. Many
of them have been in your consistent reminders to take care of myself
since my knee injury, and collectively you’ve seemed to know that I
would need a lot of those reminders. Being patient with my body
isn’t easy for me.

There
were two more nudgings as well. One of you asked if I could say more
to acknowledge the pain people have and struggle with. That
certainly felt important. Then came another call, asking me if I
could preach about self-love.

I’ve
concluded that the Spirit herself has been at work in all of this.
Self-love is a very exciting topic to speak about! I’ve spent most
of my continued education time during my years as your pastor working
on this for myself, and I think I’ve learned a few things that might
be of use. Yet, this is also a nerve wracking topic to talk about,
both because it requires great vulnerability and because it is a
tender topic with which I might accidentally do harm.

Nevertheless,
it is time to talk about loving ourselves. When we say
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” we tend to
ignore the implicit assumption that we love ourselves contained in
the rule. To prepare for this sermon I asked on Facebook and through
some emails for people to offer definitions of love. I told them it
was for preaching, I did not share that I was going to preach about
loving ourselves!

The
answers were, of course, amazing. A lot of the responses reflected
careful consideration followed by a conclusion that defining love is
very difficult and perhaps impossible. I got wished “good luck”
rather a lot! Some tried to find the words anyway, and I think
you’ll find them useful for reflection. In order not to distract
you, I’m going to offer some of your definitions words without
attributing them.

Love
is more of an action than anything else. For example, I find making
the bed in the morning a complete waste of time, my husband loves to
come home to a made bed, when I make the bed, I do it for him
because I know it will make him happy, that’s love.
The
glue of the Trinity, spilling over into creation.
I
feel that love is a choice. It stems from a feeling, but it is a
solid, daily choice.
the
movement of goodness itself…
Spirit
is Love and Love is Spirit
Companionship; Communication; Accepting
each others thoughts and feelings; Reaching
a hand in church; In
the middle of the night reaching out to touch
love
cannot be defined because a definition automatically puts boundaries
and love is not bounded

One
can give examples of the affects of love on both the lover and the
object of that love (animate or inanimate) and the effects of
love-Love casts out fear

Finally,
one among you shared a set of profound thoughts, which I cannot
summarize or shorten without weakening it:

Love
can mean many things depending on the context.
I
think you mean love as it involves people or spirit rather than
things like ice cream or sports.

With
regard to people, love
is a state of unlimited commitment where
two people or even in some cases like a pet dog
become
so in sync with one’s feelings that the object
of love is an extension of the person and
foibles are overlooked or forgiven.

Then
there is spiritual love =the love of God or Jesus which is our rock
of support -it is often recognized in retrospect like in the
expression `If not for the love of God I would have suffered’.
When one recovers from a traumatic experience or accident one
is grateful for the love of the Divine.
I
know that scientists and
engineers
are often tagged as non-believers unless some measurement standard
can document the cause of an event. I don’t agree – there’s more
than mortals can conjure up that is involved.
So
these are my ramblings – I’ll be interested in the views of others
and
remain
thankful
for all the love I have experienced.

Another
among you has since reminded me to tell you that love is so powerful
as to be very dangerous. Since I was reminded of that I’ve been
trying figure out if that applies to self love or not. It seems to
me that romantic love is far more dangerous than self love, but then
again that the world as we know it would fall apart if we were good
at self love. (At least, the US economy would!) So perhaps self
love is quite dangerous as well.

Now,
the logical among you (and there are plenty of you!) are going to
wish that at this point I’d offer a definition of self-love, despite
the fact that I’ve just shown you by example how very hard it is to
define love at all. I’m going to give this my best shot. Self-love
is “loving yourself as you’d love your neighbor.” Or, perhaps it
might be better for some of us to say “loving yourself as you’d
want a dearly loved one to be able to love themselves.” I say this
because most people I know are far kinder to their loved ones than
themselves. We speak to ourselves in ways we’d never permit
ourselves to speak to anyone else.

There
are 4 girls in this world I consider my nieces, including one who is
biologically my niece. The two oldest are old enough to sometimes be
terribly hard on themselves, and life has sometimes given me the
chance to have heart-to-heart talks with them when they’re in the
midst of self-blame. Because of my deep love for them and because of
the training I’ve had in listening, I’ve sometimes been able to help
them translate their own self-criticisms. It turns out that “I’m
an idiot” usually means something else entirely, for instance, “I’m
feeling frustrated that I can’t find my long underwear, and I’m
afraid it is a fundamental flaw in my humanity that I could have lost
them.” Once translated, it becomes much easier to think together
about whether or not misplaced long underwear are really such an
enormous failure.

Now,
clearly, misplacing one’s long underwear does not an idiot make. We
all have the capacity to assure a beloved child of that. I’m less
confident about our ability to remember that when dealing with
ourselves. We jump from a small infraction of our ideals to an
enormous overstatement of our failures. We keep the self-criticism
tightly wound inside, most of us keep it so tightly wound that we try
to pretend it away even to ourselves.

The
jump from small infraction to utter failure is the work of an
internal “self-critic.” We all have them. These are parts of
ourselves that manage to jump to strong, universal, and nasty
criticisms at lightspeed. They sound like this: “I’m lazy.”
“No one really likes me.” “I’m stupid.” “I’m selfish.”
“Everything is wrong and it is all my fault.” “I’m going to
fail.” “I’m fat.” “I’m going to get fired.” “I’m ugly.”
“I’m unlovable.” “I don’t deserve to be here.” Most of us
have a lot of them, and they’re powerful. While they all sound more
or less alike, each of us have our own set with their own particular
refrains. Self-critics within say things we’d never allow others to
say to us – and would never say to others – and they say them
regularly.

The
most shocking thing I’ve learned this decade is that self-critics are
TRYING TO HELP us. They’re just really, really bad at it. They
actually want to protect and support us, but they have bad
communication skills. They think yelling at us and shaming us will
motivate us to do better. Instead, it can cripple us at times, it
keeps us afraid, and it doesn’t give us any sense of freedom.
However, it is possible to learn how to TRANSLATE the criticism!
Under the ugly words is a loving intention, and if you listen to that
self-critic the way you might listen to a beloved niece, you can find
it. The best part is that once you hear the loving-intention
underneath the criticism, the critic often stops yelling and gives
you some peace!

Listening
to our self-critics is terrifying. However, in my experience, it is
more frightening to contemplate than to do. Because the self-critic
always has a loving intention, and because that loving-intention
hasn’t usually been heard, it is actually sort of lovely! It is far
worse to hear the criticisms regularly yelled from within than it is
to hear the loving-intention!

One
of the harshest critics I’ve had in my life used to tell me quite
often that I was “too much.” This was extended to include, “too
loud, too big, and too pushy.” I heard it MANY times a day. With
the guidance of a loving teacher, I was able to hear beneath it. The
self-critic was still feeling the pain of being an unpopular
elementary school student, and was trying to help me control myself
in ways that might make me more like-able. The self-critic hadn’t
meant to hurt me! It really did want to help, it was just scared!
Once I heard the loving-intention, it toned down. I still hear from
her once in a while, but only in fairly extreme circumstances (when
maybe I should be keeping my mouth shut after all!). Even then, the
bite that once sought to control me isn’t there anymore.

There
is a quote I’ve always loved, “Love me when I least deserve it
because that’s when I really need it.” This applies to others when
they’re not able to behave well, and it applies to ourselves when
we’re not able to behave well, and it applies to our self-critics!
, Now, I don’t want to send you off to face your self-critics
without a bit more guidance. If you are ready to live without quite
as much internal yelling, then I suggest a few things. It helps a
lot to write things down. “I’m too much” was a terrifying,
almost heart-stopping thing to hear inside myself, but in black and
white on paper it looked a lot smaller. If you have a person you
trust, they are often quite helpful in working on translating with
you. (Including your pastor.) The process takes some time, so be
patient with yourself. It may sound silly, but it requires actually
listening to the self-critic in order to get to the loving intention.
And, as loud and hurtful as self-critics can be, they’re also sorta
shy. This is a good time to remind you of the “feelings and needs”
list found here: https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf. It helps to remember that we
all have needs, the needs are universal, needs do not make us weak –
AND most self-critics are trying to help us meet a need!! A very
difficult to internalize reminder: we can actually get along without
self-critics. They are not the only reason we get anything done, we
are able to function and even thrive without internal yellers.

I
started this conversation with the precious moments I’ve had when
I’ve been able to help translate my niece’s fears. I started that
way on purpose. Our inner critics are a lot like hurting children,
and they respond best to patient, gentle, loving attention; and they
sometimes need some affirmation that we know they’re hurting before
they can trust us to work with them. The ways we seek to help
children when they’re hurting are the same skills we can use to be
more loving to ourselves.

Doing
the work to love ourselves is a part of God’s will. If God loves us,
then God doesn’t want us spoken to in hurtful and abusive ways.
Thus, the time it takes to find the loving-intention is time well
spent. Furthermore, love itself is a cool thing. Every time it
stretches out in a new direction, it expands its capacity. As we
love others more, we can love ourselves more. As we love ourselves
more, we can love God more. As we love God more, we can love others
and ourselves more.

Love
is the will of God.

Including,
self-love.

May
we do God’s will. 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

June 10, 2018

Sermons

“Young, Widowed, Sisters-In-Law” based on Ruth 1

June 12, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Life didn’t go well for Naomi. I mean, it didn’t go terribly to begin with: she married, she had two sons. Compared to most heroines of the Bible, that’s saying something! She didn’t go through the long barren years we’re used to hearing about with the matriarchs.

We don’t know how her marriage was, but we usually don’t. She got married, she had two sons. All that is OK, good even. If feminine expectation was fulfilled in the procreation of sons, she was successful. Then there was a famine. For ancient Israel that really meant that there was a drought, and food couldn’t be grown. In response to that desperation, Naomi and family left their homeland and went in search of place where there was food.

They ended up in the land of Moab, east of the Dead Sea. The book of Genesis tells us that Moab was Lot’s son/grandson. I find it interesting that the Bible always identifies enemies as extended family. Throughout much of ancient Israelite history the Moabites were on the opposing sides of wars. Today the land that was called Moab is a part of the nation Jordan, and the boundary lines still run down the middle of the Dead Sea.

Naomi was a refugee, forced to leave her country because of lack of water. This was in the era before climate change, there are many more people in her situation today than there were then.

In ancient Israel, Naomi’s family had access to their own land. They were farmers. Things were so desperate that they left the land they had, that they freely owned, so that he could be a day laborer in a foreign land, because they thought it was more likely that they’d survive the lack of water THAT way. Since this story predates currency, I suspect they left their country without any wealth, with just the clothing on their back and maybe a few farm tools. They were desperate, hungry people, trying to survive when the land they lived in couldn’t provide for the people who lived on it.

It seems likely that they lived a live of poverty in Moab. It seems like there WAS enough food, or at least enough MORE food that it was worth stopping there. I’m not entirely convinced there was fully enough food, since we aren’t told how all the men die, and malnutrition is an open option. Ancient Israel had some laws in place to minimize the hunger of foreigners, but I don’t know if Moab did. Most likely Naomi’s husband and sons were day laborers, struggling to make enough for the family to eat day by day.

I point this out, in part, because I want to acknowledge that Ruth and Orpah were likely also from very poor families, because I can’t imagine that any family with any sustainable income would have married their daughters off to an impoverished refugee family. (This was not a time when marriages happened because of love.) And Ruth and Naomi WERE married into this family. They were also married into this NUCLEAR family, when that wasn’t the norm yet either, and when that would have been a reason to distrust the foreigners further.

Now, as we all know, poverty and wealth do not define happiness. There are very happy, healthy families who live in poverty and very sad, mad, and dysfunctional families who have great wealth. In fact, studies say that money only increases happiness when it makes the difference between being homeless and hungry and being terribly housed and having just enough to eat (even if it isn’t that good). After the point when there is housing and food, money doesn’t increase happiness. (Though I do wonder if it decreases stress.)

I’m proposing that Ruth and Orpah likely came from families in poverty. We don’t know if they came from healthy, happy, loving homes. They seem especially fond of Naomi and well bonded to her. It makes me wonder if she’d been kinder to them than others in their life had been.

On the other hand, perhaps they were just following convention. It is hard to know. The convention at that is defined by levirate marriage. That is, if a married man died before producing an heir, his brother would be responsible for marrying his wife and thereby producing the heir. With both brothers dead, this was a problem. The women were still bound to the family they’d married into, but no spouse was forthcoming. In those days the most vulnerable people in society were the ones who didn’t have a NATIVE male to take care of them, including by making a living. The Hebrew Bible of speaks of the vulnerable in society as the widows, orphans, and foreigners – with a note that an orphan was a person without a FATHER. These were the ones for whom special laws existed as protection. All groups of people without a native male who had power in the system and access to land in Israel.

These women qualified. All they had was each other, and none of them had a path to care for themselves much less the others.

Naomi frees the younger women from their bonds to her. I suspect that couldn’t really be done without a man doing it, so it sort of didn’t count, but they didn’t have any men around to do it. I wonder if her lack of authority in the system is part of why Ruth felt she had the freedom to disobey Naomi’s instructions.

In any case, both Ruth and Orpah, who made opposite decisions, were disobeying the rules of society. Society didn’t have a way to care for them at this level of brokenness. Oprah abandoned the family she’d married into. Ruth disobeyed her elder. They both broke the rules, because there wasn’t a way forward within the rules.

Naomi had one what was expected. She’d married and procreated, and then she’d gone with her family to seek enough food to survive, she’d grieved for her husband and children. Her choices were, seemingly, exhausted. Either she could stay in a foreign land with NO ONE to take care of her or she could go home and HOPE that someone still lived who might take responsibility for caring for her. Or, if not, she would at least die at home. She decided to go home.

That left her daughters-in-law to either abandon her (presumably the only family they still had from their so-called adulthood) or their country of origin and all they’d ever known. They seem to genuinely like, to want to stay with her. Maybe I’m missing cultural memos, but it FEELS like they want to stay with her. This mother-in-law had been good enough to them that they wanted to stay with her rather than return to their own mothers’ homes.

We don’t know why, and while I could project things, they wouldn’t be accurate. But they both said they wanted to go. It was only after Naomi pointed out that staying with her likely meant a life of barrenness without any hope for the future that Orpah reluctantly returned to her family of origin.

We don’t know what happened next for Orpah. She’s never mentioned again. I don’t think anyone would have had a way to know. Perhaps she returned to her mother’s house and quickly found a new husband and lived a pretty normal life. Perhaps she was tainted by her first marriage to a foreigner and lived and died a widow. Maybe life changed for her and she had a taste of existence beyond hard work and poverty, although it isn’t very likely. In that moment, standing on the road that returned Naomi to Judah, Orpah had no way of knowing how it would end either. She had two terrible choices before her and she picked one, hoping that it would work out.

So did Ruth. She decides to leave family, country, language, culture, and even her faith to follow her mother-in-law to a foreign land. I’ve often used this text at weddings because it comes from a woman freed to make her own choice, and in that freedom she chooses to bond her life to another’s.

“Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
17 Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.”

With the saying of those words her life changes. She becomes an immigrant, and enters Israel as a foreigner and a widow. She doesn’t have a reason to expect that she’ll find anything easier there, and many things will be harder. Yet, it seems clear, she genuinely loves Naomi and wants to spend her life bonded to Naomi’s life.

The book goes on to tell Ruth and Naomi’s story, and presents Ruth as a heroine and matriarch of the Davidic line. It seems to suggest that Ruth “choose correctly” but I don’t think that conclusion is sustained by the story. These three women were stuck without a clear way forward, with good reason to worry about how long they could live. Each made the best choice she could given the knowledge she had, and given the constraints of her world. I don’t think the story would have ended as well if all three went back to Israel, it would have been harder to feed three mouths. I don’t think it would have ended as well if only Naomi had returned home, I don’t think anyone would have noticed or cared about her. The story ends with a male relative noticing Ruth and deciding to care for them both. What happens when there isn’t one?

This story acknowledges the struggles of women without male support in patriarchal systems, it points out the vulnerability of women dependent on men, and makes clear that women end up making impossible decisions to survive – even ones others might want to judge. The story assumes that refugees and immigrants are more vulnerable than natives in their own lands. It also makes it clear that some people have WAY more power than others – that without a native male to care for them, the women had no legal recourse nor means of survival. The story also points out, clearly, that without water, people can’t survive. The changing weather patterns of the world are creating more and more Naomis.

The world today has more displaced people than it ever has before. Climate scientists tell us that this is a number that will keep rising. Until we can hear Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah’s stories as universal, we may miss the plight of many of God’s children. Can we imagine Naomi as a refugee from Yemen today, because of the drought there? Can we imagine Ruth walking “home” with Naomi across the desert to start a new life in a unfriendly foreign land? Can we hear in them refugees from Syria, Somalia, or South Sudan?

I suspect God can hear the echoes. This story speaks through the ages of the difficult choices vulnerable people, particularly refugees and immigrants, make to survive. It reminds us to pay attention to who in our society and world lack access to the means of survival and/or justice.

May we be brave enough to keep listening. Amen

–