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May 2, 2021
by Sara Baron

“On Being Pruned” based on 1 John 4:7-21 and John 15:1-8

While I was in college I lead a group of new freshman on an outdoor adventure trip. We were assigned to trail maintenance in a very remote part of Northern New Hampshire. It was a beautiful place and a wonderful trip, but it turns out that a lot of trail maintance is actually killing small trees so that they don’t grown on the trail and I really deeply hated that. No matter how many times I reminded myself that by maintaining the trail and giving people a chance to experience that pristine wilderness I was PROTECTING most of the trees, I still felt uncomfortable with each one I killed.

Similarly, I’m not particularly good at pruning. I’m so afraid of going too far that I don’t go far enough. It would be enjoyable to claim that this is related to the value, “don’t hurt living things unless you have to” but that fails to notice that things you prune are things that NEED pruning. Pruning is a source of abundant life.

According to Gospel commentaries, grapevines are things that need pruning. The Five Gospels says, “Vines do not have branches, contrary to popular usage, but ‘canes.’ Each year canes are snipped from the vines and piled in the vineyard to be burned. … The vines will not bear good fruit, or fruit in abundance, if they are not pruned annually.”1 The metaphor loving writer of the Gospel of John suggests this is true of the followers of the way of Jesus as well. We too need regular pruning to “bear fruit.”

I suspect many of us feel similarly about pruning ourselves as I do about pruning any other living thing. It is uncomfortable, it is done with caution, we don’t want to go to far. And that means that often we don’t prune quite far enough.

This may feel like an unfortunate time to come across this Gospel, because the impact of the pandemic has been a desire to return to “normal” and profound objections to the ways our lives have been “pruned” from the outside beyond our control. But here is the Gospel anyway, and when we’re honest we note that even this awful pruning has had SOME silver linings.

Now, in John’s metaphor, God is the gardener, and God is the one doing the pruning. We are fairly passive to the pruning. We are definitely NOT in charge of self-pruning. 🙂 Phew. Likewise, we are not in charge of fruit production. Fruit comes from being connected to Jesus, and well pruned by God, and we are mostly PASSIVE fruit bearers. Fruit or lack there of isn’t really our fault. We are tended, rooted, and pruned to be the best fruit bearers we can be, and we can simply BE and God’s goodness will work through us.

Nice.

While I think that idea is incomplete, I also think it is one worthy of consideration.

Many of us TRY REALLY HARD ALL THE TIME, and this suggests that we can let go and God’s goodness will keep flowing. That is an important truth, if incomplete.

So if God is the gardener and the pruner, then who are we when we resist pruning? I suspect that we are vine “canes” that are holding on for dear life to canes that have already been snipped and berating ourselves that we can’t bring them back to life. There are these dead, decaying branches and we’re holding them in place willing them to grow again, and in doing so, missing the new life springing up within us.

Several years ago I watched a TED talk by Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard entitled “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” Gilbert’s ideas have stayed with me ever since. He opens his talk by saying:

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

I’m hoping you already see how this relates to letting God’s pruning without fighting it! He states his thesis directly (don’t you love that?), “What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. “ As you might hope, Gilbert proves this point along the way, and then goes on to conclude:

Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen. …when people say “I can’t imagine that,” they’re usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The bottom line is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It’s as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It’s a watershed on the timeline. It’s the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. 2

That is, pruning happens whether we want it to or not, and either we can make peace with it and let it be, or we can fight with it, but it won’t change the fact that things change.

While I prefer it when I can read it with some verses missing, 1 John 4 is a very important chapter in the Bible for most people I know because it says the thing they believe most, “God is love.” It says it strongly too, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. …Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their siblings, are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen,

cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (11, 20). Perhaps this fits the idea that loving God and loving other people are two sides of the same coin, inseparable though they can appear to be different. These claims about God, that God is love, and that loving people is a way of loving God, are the lens through which I see the entirety of the Bible. I remain grateful that it is there, and available to be used.

John chapter 15 goes on to sound a whole lot like 1 John 4. The Vine and Branches metaphor morphs quickly to point out that the fruit that God is looking for is the practice of abiding in love. So both of them point the question: what impairs love and what encourages it? If we are being continually pruned by God, what helps us let go of what we’re done with, and what helps us connect with what God is up to next? Or, in the metaphor, how do we let go of the pruned and dead branches so there is space for new growth?

Perhaps the best thing we can do for now is notice. We can notice what has been pruned, so we can let it go and we can notice what is growing so we can watch it growing. Perhaps this passage is exactly right for right now. We aren’t the gardener, we aren’t in charge, but we can – at least – stop impeding the Gardener’s work and instead notice what it is.May it be so. Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 453.

2 Dan Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self” Ted Talk, found at https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self/transcript?utm_campaign=social&utm_content=talk&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=soci al-science#t-308201 given on March 2014 accessed on April 29, 2021.

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“Three Days? Can You Count?” based on Hosea 5:15-6:6…

April 18, 2021
by Sara Baron

According
to the Gospels, Jesus was killed on Friday night. Easter was on
Sunday, and the first experiences of resurrection happened before
sunrise. That is a difference of about 36 hours. Which, if I’m
honest, is a VERY WEAK definition of “three days.” It is a
stretch to say, well, there was part of Friday, and all of Saturday,
part of Sunday, which is three different days.

Normally,
three days is 24 hours times 3= 72 hours. So Friday night to Monday
night. Or, you might say, Friday – then the next day is Saturday,
the second day is Sunday, the third day is Monday.

Am
I the only one who has been quietly annoyed by this for years? Yeah,
I am? I can live with that.

This
has made me curious though, as to why Friday night to Sunday morning
was defined as 3 days, because doing so was DEFINITELY an intentional
choice meant to fit Jesus’s story into an existent framework.
Otherwise it wouldn’t feel so forced.

(If
you are already bored, I invite you to stick with me anyway, it isn’t
going to take that long and it is more worth it than you might
expect.) It seems Luke was basing the 3 days off of the Hosea
passage

‘Come, let us return to the
Lord;
   for it is he who has torn, and he will
heal us;
   he has struck down, and he will bind us
up.
After two days he will revive us;
   on
the third day he will raise us up,
   that we
may live before him. (6:1-2)

This
clearly lists 3 days, but the meaning of the passage seems a little
bit ambiguous. However, if you either read all of Hosea to figure
out what this means, or trust the work of scholars who have done so
(I’ve done both), then it starts to make sense that what they’re
talking about is the renewal of God’s covenant with ancient
Israel. This is the theme of the whole book of Hosea. The
questions of Hosea center around what God is going to do since the
people have been unfaithful to the covenant. The passage we read
today is about God choosing to renew the covenant, despite the
people’s unfaithfulness.

And,
a reasonable person might ask, what does THAT have to do with 2 days
and 3 days? And really, what does it have to do with Jesus, or say,
us?

I’m
so glad you asked.¹

The
reference to 2 days and 3 days is based on the story of Moses sharing
the covenant in Exodus 19. Three months after the people had left
Eygpt, they got to Sinai, and Moses went up the mountain to be with
God. God told Moses to say, “You have seen what I did to the
Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to
myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you
shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the
whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a
holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the
Israelites.’” (Exodus 19:4-6) Aka – you are going to be a
sign of my love to the world. That WAS the covenant, and as it
got expanded and explained more it becomes clear that living out the
covenant is about how they treated each other, and the vulnerable in
their midst, and eventually even their neighboring nations.

Exodus
19 goes on:

Then Moses had told the words of
the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses: ‘Go to the people
and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their
clothes and prepare for the third day, because on the third
day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all
the people. You shall set limits for the people all around, saying,
“Be careful not to go up the mountain or to touch the edge of it.
Any who touch the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch
them, but they shall be stoned or shot with arrows; whether animal or
human being, they shall not live.” When the trumpet sounds a long
blast, they may go up on the mountain.’ So Moses went down from the
mountain to the people. He consecrated the people, and they washed
their clothes. And he said to the people, ‘Prepare for the third
day; do not go near a woman.’ (9-15)

And,
at the end of those 3 days the people “met” God. The story says
the experience was like the mountain being wrapped in smoke, and
fire, and earthquake, and thunder. It appears it was quite awe
inspiring. Then Moses gets called back up the mountain and that is
when Moses was given the 10 commandments and the rest of the
expectations of God for how the people were to behave to each other
and in worship.

So
why did the early Christians chose to tell the story of the
resurrection of Jesus as happening on the third day? Probably
because it was awe inspiring like that experience of the people of
“meeting” God. Likely also because it fit into this framework of
restoration from Hosea, and Jesus’s teaching had been about restoring
the relationships between God and the people and the people and each
other. Likely, also, this relates to the early Christian
understanding that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was a
NEW covenant between God and the people, one the people couldn’t mess
up. As such, it made sense to tell it in the form of the most
important covenant story of the Scriptures as they knew them.

Thus
the choice to force Friday night to Sunday morning into a 3 day
framework.

In
Luke we’re told that A LOT OF THINGS happened on that “third day”
Sunday. The women found the empty tomb, they told the disciples,
Peter also saw the tomb, two other disciples walked to Emmaus –
experienced the risen Christ – and walked back, and our passage
today starts with “while they were still talking about this,”
meaning the story of those who’d walked to Emmaus. Today’s passage
is still set on that “third day.”

The
story wants to emphasize that Jesus wasn’t a ghost or an angel, but
rather than he’d been physically resurrected. The idea is that
ghosts and angels don’t EAT, but living beings do. Having eaten, the
story says, he explained, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is
to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to
all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24-46b-47) As this
is a story of the early Christian community, we can use it to help
ourselves understand how they saw this new covenant. They did a nice
job putting the “three day” thing there to help make sense of the
covenant, right?

This
new covenant, at least in this passage, seems to be centered on
“repentance” and forgiveness of sins, right? Repentance makes
easy sense to me, it fits with the teaching that Jesus was sharing in
his lifetime of ministry, “Repent and believe, the kin(g)dom of God
is at hand.” That is, turn from the fear-filled ways of the world,
get centered in God, and participate in the kindom of relationship,
sharing, compassion, and abundance, and as you do so, the kindom will
gain strength until it comes in completion.

However,
in the Jewish Annotated Bible it is mentioned that in Jewish thought,
God is always ready to forgive the sins of the repentant.²
So, what is this about? Why did the early Christian community think
that forgiveness of sins was so central? This feels REALLY
important, because I still hear many Christians who think the entire
Christian story is one of forgiveness, and I’ve always struggled to
understand why, especially when God’s forgiveness was already
available before Jesus.³

In
the commentary on the Hosea passage, Dr. Gail Yee wrote, “The
period of chastisement when God rends the people is intended to
motivate their repentance/return. This doctrine of correction is
particularly characteristic of deuteronomistic and wisdom literature,
in which the period of the Babylonian exile was regarded as a
traumatic time when the people recognized their guilt and returned to
God.”⁴
When I read that, a light went off. The Jewish people in the time of
Jesus lived a life of oppression under the realm of the Roman Empire.
This likely felt like a new form of Exile, an exile at home. So, as
their ancestors in faith had done before them, they told themselves
the story that their oppression was God’s chastisement, and that if
they returned to God’s ways they’d be freed again. Return and
restoration in this story are dependent on both the people’s
repentance and God’s forgiveness.

And
suddenly the Christian story itself makes sense. They’re thinking
about communal sin, and global politics, and trying to please God
into making their lives better. Which MAKES SENSE for faithful human
meaning makers to do. But knowing
that frees me to tell my own faith story, which is that God was with
them in oppression, and working towards freedom (including through
Jesus) but hadn’t been punishing them to begin with. God’s
desires for repentance were about wanting to gift the people with
full and abundant lives and building the kindom, … not about proof
of worthiness.

And
that, dear ones, brings us to today. We have been in our own “exile
at home” for more than a year now, and consciously or unconsciously
there have been a lot of questions of “why did this happen to us?”
Those are normal, healthy, human questions. I suspect there has
been some creeping fear that the answer is “because we messed up”
and challengingly, that seems true. But that doesn’t mean anything
about God punishing us. We messed up by not trusting scientists, and
not taking the long view, and not caring for the vulnerable, and not
putting lives before profits. This pandemic isn’t God’s punishment,
but it is reflective of our collective “sins” so to speak.

I
hope and pray that we, our communities, our country, and our world,
will repent (especially the “first world). I hope we will learn.
I hope we will remember how interconnected we all are and that if
anyone is vulnerable to illness, we are ALL vulnerable to illness. I
hope we will decide to transform the ways societies work, to care for
all and bring life abundant to all. I hope we will remember all of
God’s covenants, and work with God in building the kindom, the
beloved community, peace on earth.

The
good news, is that the resurrection story tells us that what seems
impossible (like global change into care and compassion) is possible!
May God help us, and may we help God! Amen

1 Can
anyone tell the Pastor misses preaching in person?

2 Amy
Jill Levine “Footnote on Luke 24:47” in The Jewish
Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible
Translation, edited by Amy-Jill
Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 151.

3 Truthfully
I have a lot of critique of the idea, but not enough time to share
it. I’m happy to talk it over if you’d like.

4 Gail
Yee, “Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:3” in The New Interpreter’s
Bible Volume VII ed. by Leander
E. Keck et al, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 249.

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

April 18, 2021

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“Journey with Jesus” based on Psalm 133 and John…

April 11, 2021
by Sara Baron

Have
you ever thought about what it would be like to journey with Jesus?
I’m not actually talking about spiritual metaphor here, I suspect if
I was many people could openly say, “Yes, that’s my life!” I
mean, what it was like for the first followers of Jesus to journey
around Galilee and later Judah with the historical Jesus.

Being
a part of the 21^st century, my capacity for 1^st
century historical accuracy is lacking, so I’m sometimes hesitant to
to project myself into those experiences. Nevertheless, it feels
like I can’t enter into this story of “Doubting Thomas” without
letting my questions about journeying with Jesus come front and
center.

I
wonder how often those first followers were uncomfortable, especially
in the face of Jesus’ teaching. This is likely projection on my
part, a reflection of how challenged I am by what he taught. “Love
your enemy,” “give to anyone who asks of you,” “everyone is
your neighbor,” and “love your neighbor as you love yourself”
are all important, profound teachings. They’re also ones I fail to
live up to every day. Did the disciples squirm like I do? Or is it
that I come from a position of relative power and wealth that leads
me to squirm, and those who followed him more often had nothing and
could more easily accept his teaching?

What
about the parables? Even the Jesus Seminar believes that Jesus
probably taught in parables. The thing about parables is that
they’re lessons that keep on giving. Every time you think about
them, you can see something new. They grow with you. This is,
obviously, amazing as a teaching tool. But was it hard, as a first
follower, to be stretched and grown every day? Did it feel like
drinking from a fire hose? Did they ever feel like they got it, they
knew what he was up to, they were following along?

I
wonder too about the pace of life for those first followers. The
gospel writer of Mark likes the word “immediately” and seems to
tell a rapid fire story. But that just means he skips the quiet,
slow parts. Did they linger of meals, talking and laughing? Or was
everything GO-GO-GO like in the midst of an advocacy campaign with a
legislative deadline? I suspect it was the former. I don’t think
you actually build a movement that lasts unless you work at the pace
of human trust, and that pace requires a lot of talking, laughing,
story telling, meaning making, and even sitting around the fire in
quiet wonder.

Some
of my questions really add up to, what kind of spiritual development
happened to those who were following Jesus? The first followers were
members of a powerful faith tradition already, one that Jesus was
using and drawing from. They were also, mostly, disenfranchised
people without any reason to have faith or trust in the systems of
the day. They were marginalized people. (And that’s where I have to
be so careful to pay attention to the fact that I am not one, and not
to project myself more than I should.) In some ways, marginalized
people have an advantage in seeing what God is up to in the world,
because God is always up to upsetting the status quo to allow more
people to thrive AND survive and that is GOOD NEWS for the
marginalized people but threatening for those who are not.

And
they were spending all their time with Jesus, and with each other,
and that feels like the very best set up for rapid faith development.
Jesus was deeply connected with the Divine, likely a mystic, and
ready and able to put the needs of others before his own. In my
life, people like that have taught me SO much, and I’d imagine being
with Jesus for a year would change EVERYTHING.

I’m
wondering this because of the easy way with which Thomas is able to
express his doubt to his fellow disciples. This is an expression of
a rather well developed faith. I want to consider a few “stages of
faith development” according to James Fowler, and wonder about
where the disciples were with those. Yet, I want to be a little bit
careful. It can be really easy to hear about stages like these and
try to characterize one’s self as HIGH as one can, as well as to
deride others for being in LOWER stages. That is NOT the point. In
fact, I suspect that most of us move around between stages based on
the level of stress we’re under, the strength of the teaching we’d
received on any given topic, the level of stress around us, and the
number of other things we’re trying to do at the same time. God is
with people wherever we are, and while we do want to “develop” as
people of faith, part of that development is making peace with the
honesty of where we are and being peaceable about where others are –
without judgement. This is also to say that if you feel like you’ve
moved backward over the past, say 15 months, then have grace with
yourself – that means you’ve been under unsustainable stress.

The
least developed “adult faith”¹
is one that easily yields to authority and quietly pushes away any
conflicts in faith in order to minimize the threat to faith. To help
grasp the stages, I think it may be instructive to see how the Psalm
might be heard from within this stage. The Psalm’s opening verse,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!” can be heard as an encouragement to keep the peace, quiet
one’s own questions, and silence the concerns of those who raise
issues – in the name of “unity.” Unfortunately, this
understanding of unity has the impact of silencing people who are
marginalized and preventing growth. Yet, it is easy to see how it
can be heard that way, right? “How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!” So— be quiet about issues
and experience the good and pleasant!! Thomas is well past this
stage when he easily, immediately, questions the statement of TEN of
his friends and faith companions.

The
next level of “adult faith”²
is characterized by angst and struggle as the person takes
responsibility for their own faith, instead of just following
blindly. In this stage is greater nuance, greater open-mindedness,
and more potential conflict. How might people in this stage hear,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!”? I wonder if the word “unity” becomes more complicated
here, or if “kindred” are subdivided. Is this a place where the
unity of the kindred reflects similar thinking groups, but there are
several different areas of unity? Does challenging authority become
a means of separation? (There are many other possible answers.) It
is clear that Thomas is AT LEAST at this stage, as he speaks his own
truth clearly. He stands in his own integrity whether anyone is with
him or not, although it is worth pointing out that he remains with
the whole, and that might suggest that this sort of unity is large
enough for everyone’s integrity.

The
next level of “adult faith” seems like the one all of the
disciples were in the midst of transitioning into after the death of
Jesus. It generally comes after a significant crisis, and James
Fowler calls this “Conjunctive Faith.” This is faith that can
handle paradoxes and mystery, and let go of pieces of tradition or
faith from prior stages that don’t work anymore. It is a stage and a
space where multiple truths can be held simultaneously, without
conflict. So how might, “How very good and pleasant it is when
kindred live together in unity!” be heard here? Perhaps this is
when “unity” becomes about seeking each other’s well-being
regardless of differences of perspective or differences of need.
Unity doesn’t require similarity, only love, and love flows from God.

I
cannot tell for sure if Thomas or the rest where in this stage yet.
I think most likely they were growing into it, and this is a story
about that transition. This is, after all, a story remembering that
different people have different experiences and rather than all the
value going to the ones with greater experience, there is an
acknowledged blessing of those who follow without the experiences.
This is a story that anticipates us – the ones who did not
experience the first resurrection first hand, and yet celebrate it.

There
is, for Fowler, a rare final stage of adult faith development, one
neither this story nor most people of faith reach. I suspect that
most of the disciples reached it by the end of their lives, and I
further suspect it is what John Wesley was talking about when he
suggested that people could reach perfection in living God’s love
during their lifetimes. I think that people in that stage would
hear, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together
in unity!” and immediately grasp that “kindred” is universal
and “unity” comes when all the people have the peace that comes
after the needs of justice are met.

Was
it because the disciples had time with Jesus that they reached the
final stage? Or was it because they lost Jesus and had to find the
ways to go on that they did? Or both? Or neither? It is
unknowable.

As
United Methodists, we are taught about that idea of reaching
perfection in living God’s love during our lifetimes. It is most
often called “going on to perfection” and most frequently it
serves to make me sad when I realize how far I am from that goal.
Yet, when I slow down enough to listen to the voice of God, I hear
God saying that I don’t have to be there yet, God hasn’t asked that
of me. Rather, God says, I’m asked to be where I am, and be open to
the next means of grace that will help me walk along my journey.
And, that seems fair, because God is a just God, and God doesn’t ask
more of us than we can give, and what we can give is based on who we
are today and where we are on our faith journey.

Which
means, really that I’m back to the metaphorical journey with Jesus,
and am encouraging you to think about how your journey is going, and
what the next steps are, and to check to see if you need any help
along the way. I can think of no clearer role for the church than to
help each other as we move along our journeys with Jesus. Or, in
other words, we help each other move onto perfect. May God help us
all!! Amen

1James
W. Fowler Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development
and the Quest for Meaning (San
Francisco: Harper&Row, 1981). Fowler’s stage 3:
Synthetic-Conventional”
Faith. Summary found at
https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/06/12/the-stages-of-faith-according-to-james-w-fowler/
(I have and love the book, but thank God for other people’s
thoughtful work.)

2 Fowler’s
stage 4: “Individuative-Reflective
Faith”

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

April 11, 2021

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“God’s Table Extended” based on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and 1…

March 21, 2021
by Sara Baron

Rabbi
Rafi Spitzer of congregation Agudat Achim in Niskayuna, led an
amazing workshop this week entitled “People of the Library: An
Introduction to Talmudic Literature and the Mythic Transmission of
Jewish Tradition for Clergy of Other Faiths.” Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate is a VERY cool organization, and I learned a lot.

Rabbi
Spitzer talked about the roots of modern Rabbinic Judaism as emerging
in the period after the destruction of the 2^nd
Temple (70-200 CE). This is the same period as the formation of most
of the Christian texts. Jesus lived earlier, of course, but most
scholars date the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, to 70 CE
because it mentions the destruction of the Temple.

That
is, both Modern Judaism and Christianity-As-We-Know-It (as a separate
faith tradition) emerged after, and in the response to Rome’s
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. It was in making sense of
this horrific disaster that new expressions of God’s ways in the
world emerged.

This
is particularly interesting to me because the Hebrew Bible was
written down in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the
First Temple in 587-586 BCE, when the Jewish leaders and scholars
were sent into exile. The stories, of course, were much older, but
they were written down then, and that means that they were written
down with the question “why did this happen to us?” at the
forefront.

That
is, the Hebrew Bible gets written down and tries to make sense of
death, destruction, and disaster. The majority of the “New
Testament” gets written down and tries to make sense of death,
destruction, and disaster, AND concurrently the Jewish Mishnah gets
written down and tries to make sense of death, destruction, and
disaster.

It
seems to indicate our faith traditions are deeply rooted in trying to
make sense of death, destruction, and disaster, or that God is up to
new things when prior systems are destroyed, or that in trying to
preserve what used to be we end up making new things possible, or
that God can bring good even out of bad, or maybe all of the above.

In
any case, I think it is interesting, and worth continuing to ponder.
Especially now, when we have experienced death, destruction, and
disaster, and are wondering what we and God will be up to next.

Our
Hebrew Bible Lesson today from Jeremiah speaks lovingly of the “new
covenant” between God and the people. This is such a foundational
idea in Christianity that we may not know that this passage is the
ONLY time such an idea emerges in the Hebrew Bible.

“Foundational,”
you say, “why?” Think of the words “old testament” and “new
testament” and remember that testament is a synonymous with
covenant here. This is how some people made sense of the whole
Christian tradition. That said, there are far too many who take
these words to mean that the Hebrew Bible is old, or outdated, or
replaced, and that is problematic. We intentionally use the words
“Hebrew Bible” to recognize our shared biblical tradition.

Anyway,
back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is a prophet of the exile, and for much
of the book Jeremiah warns of the dangers of the impending exile.
However, once the exile happens, Jeremiah’s tone changes, and he
turns to comfort and hope. This passage is part of that, promising a
return to God’s promises and relationships. The promise is
particularly full, as it speaks to both the northern and southern
kingdoms, the wholeness of Ancient Israel. It is also full in that
the new covenant will not be dependent on the people’s faithfulness.
God will take care of it.

“I
will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and
I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall
they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,”
for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,
says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their
sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33b-34, NRSV)

It
is a lovely vision, in some ways the ultimate comfort: a relationship
with God one can’t mess up.

The
Christian church has claimed this covenant as their own. Take these
words from our communion liturgy, “By the baptism of his suffering,
death, and resurrection you gave birth to your church, delivered us
from slavery to sin and death, and made with us a new covenant by
water and the Spirit.” (UM Hymnal, page 9).

I
have some deeply mixed feelings about this claim. On the one hand,
it fits with my assumption that our status as beloveds of God is
based on the nature of God (grace) and not on our performance. On
the other hand, it seems rather profoundly to miss out on the idea
that God wants us to take care of each other, and that our actions
matter in the building of the kindom.

Or
maybe I’m exaggerating. After all, Jeremiah’s idea isn’t that the
people ignore God’s wishes. Rather it is that they know God and
God’s grace so well that it is inherent in them and they live it out
naturally. (I have mixed feelings about this too – in that it is
lovely, but simply not true of Christians I know.)

In
1 Corinthians we read the first historical record of communion. Paul
had planted the church in Corinth but had been away for a few years.
In the first century CE the communion meal was a full common meal
(think potluck) during which the last supper was remembered.
Apparently in the time after Paul left things had gone off kilter a
bit. According to Marcus Borg:

the
wealthy (who didn’t have to work) would gather early for the meal.
By the time the people who worked (most of the community) got to the
meal, the wealthy had already eaten and some were tipsy. They may
also have served the best food and the best wine to themselves before
the others arrived. Such was common among the wealthy of the world.
For Paul this violated the ‘one body’ understanding of the body of
Christ. It meant bringing hierarchical distinctions of ‘this world’
into the body of Christ.¹

Borg
goes on to explain the later threat to those who eat and drink and an
“unworthy manner”. “In this context, eating and drinking the
bread and wine ‘in an unworthy manner’ refers to the behavior of the
wealthy in perpetuating the divisions of ‘this world.’ In Christian
communities, these divisions were abolished.”²

How
quickly the early church struggled with the equality and equity of
God’s kindom! How hard it is to let go of hierarchy and let love for
all be the way decisions are made. How familiar that is. Those of
us who are white have been trained in mostly subconscious ways that
we are at the top of a hierarchy, and when left to our own devices we
will re-create systems that put our needs at the top while telling
ourselves it is OK. Like the wealthy Corinthians might have said,
“We told them it started at 4, but they don’t make it until 5:20.
Why should we have to wait when we TOLD THEM what time it started?”
Or when a white person takes their own shame, guilt, anger, or
aggression as a reason to violate, harm, or kill people of color.
Or even in the tiny little micro-aggressions of every day, related to
who gets heard, who gets believed, who is expected to be soothing,
who is expected to sooth, and whose pain matters.

It
took Paul saying, “don’t violate God’s table like that” for it to
be heard. But I’m guessing that the reason he knew it was happening
was because the impoverished members of the community had been saying
so for quite some time, and finally tried a new way of getting their
needs heard. I am hearing from Asian and Asian American friends and
colleagues that violence against Asians and Asian Americans has been
a regular part of their lives in the United States all along, and has
been FAR worse for the past year +. I am also hearing exhaustion and
horror that a white man used his own shame as motivation for mass
murder, mostly of Asian women.

And
let me say, because it MUST BE SAID, that a person doing sex work
does not IN ANY WAY change their human value, nor make it permissible
to harm that person. Indeed, most people who support themselves with
sex work are people who exist in the most vulnerable positions of our
society, and as such are worthy of the most care and support to
counterbalance the harm they’ve lived.

The
Children and Youth of the Church have been working this Lent to
support a Lenten project to respond to hunger. They have invited us
to collect one canned good or nonperishables a week to donate to the
SICM food pantry. We are invited to bring those gifts this coming
Saturday (March 27 for those watching this NOT on Sunday) at the
flower sale. Those tangible gifts serve as a reminder of other
people’s tangible needs. It is also possible to make a donation to
SICM through our website or by check, knowing that SICM can buy food
at the Regional Food Bank at a very discounted rate.

That
is to say, that as we prepare God’s Communion Table for ourselves
today, given Paul’s admonitions, it might be a good time to be sure
that as we receive God’s gifts of grace, life, and hope, we extend
the table as we are able. Or, perhaps this is time for gifts to
Patty’s place. Patty’s Place is an outreach-based service for women
at-risk, exploited, or involved in sex work. They provide immediate
resources and long-term referrals.

I’m
less than sure we’re embodying Jeremiah’s new covenant, but I am
entirely sure that the part that says that God is with us, in our
hearts, and claiming us as beloveds is true. And I’m sure that we
have wonderful ways to respond to God’s love – with love, even,
ESPECIALLY in the midst of disaster. Let’s do it! Amen

1Marcus
J Borg, 59 Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order
the Books Were Written (United
States of America: HarperOne, 2012), 59.

2Ibid.

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 21, 20201

Uncategorized

“Lifted Up, I Guess” based on Numbers 21:4-9 and…

March 14, 2021
by Sara Baron

I
don’t like the Numbers story, or how it portrays God. I don’t like
that John references it, and adds it to his conception of Jesus. I
gave serious thought to avoiding both of these scriptures today, but
I don’t actually believe in avoiding difficult things. (Fine, also I
didn’t have a better idea.)

Just
in case you didn’t listen to the Numbers reading, or don’t naturally
object to scriptures, let me be clear about what I dislike about it.
It says that the people got impatient with God, and God punished them
for their impatience by sending poisonous snakes to kill them, and
when the people were upset about that Moses intervened and God told
Moses to make bronze serpent and put it on a pole for the people to
look at and be healed, and they were. So…. I dislike the narrative
that God punishes, and even more so that God punishes impatiences,
and even more that God’s punishes by killing. As a bit of an aside,
it also seems distinctly unfair that there was that whole golden calf
incident where making a golden calf was BAD, but in this story making
a bronze snake is the solution. But that is relatively unimportant
in comparison to the “God killing people for getting impatient”
theme.

Ok.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest, because now I can
approach the story from a different angle. The first piece of making
peace with this story is acknowledging that people are meaning
makers, and that means that sometimes we make meaning where it
doesn’t exist. So, if the people in the wilderness encounter
poisonous snakes, it makes plenty of sense that they’d make meaning
of out of it and claim that it is God’s punishment. People do that.

Having
said that, I think we can get more out of this story by (hesitantly)
entering into the mindset of the story than fighting with it. I
don’t actually think God punishes people by sending poisonous snakes
– or having a person lose their job – or creating hurricanes – or
creating a virus to kill millions. However, I think the “solution”
in this story is interesting part. Also, since people still
attribute struggles in their life to Divine punishment, so we don’t
have much space to stand on to judge the ancients.

From
within the story, the problem is that poisonous snakes are killing
people, and the people request Divine intervention so they can live.
Replace snakes with a virus, and we are right there with them. We’ve
prayed for God’s help on this. (Most of us think the vaccines were
God’s answer, and like many things, God’s answer came through the
hard work of people.)

The
ANSWER for “poisonous snakes are killing us” being “make a
bronze snake and put it on a pole for the people to look at” is
REALLY WEIRD. As in, if you asked me to brainstorm answers to
poisonous snake bites, I don’t think it would come up in my first
1000 options. (Ready: move camp away from the snakes, find
something to absorb the venom, look for an antidote, find ways to
pacify the snakes, figure out how to avoid the snakes, find out how
to repel the snakes.) See… none of that has gotten anywhere close
to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole.

So,
for just a moment, what if we take this story as more parable than
historical narrative? What if the SUPER WEIRD SOLUTION is something
designed to make us THINK and PONDER and consider, rather than, say,
replicate?

Then
where is the metaphor? Debie Thomas in “Journey with Jesus”
says, “In order to be saved, the people have to confront the
serpent— they have to look hard at what harms, poisons, breaks, and
kills them.”¹
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Avoidance
doesn’t solve problems. Systemic change doesn’t come without a deep
understanding of what is broken and who benefits from the breaking.
In making a replica of our problems, we may just learn how to fix
them. There is some GOOD STUFF here once the space is made for it to
speak with its own voice. Thank you metaphor and parable
perspective.

Interestingly
enough, this sort of fits the virus + vaccine issue – you don’t get
to a vaccine without looking at the virus very, very carefully. You
also don’t get immunity without some access to CREATED replications
of aspects of the virus. (Metaphors make life. Humans are meaning
makers. Did I mention that?)

OK,
having found some actually useful meaning in the Numbers passage, now
we’re tasked with connecting this with John’s take on Jesus’s death.
#buckleup

As
you might have noticed, John 3:14-5 says, “And just as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
By “lifted up” John is talking about crucifixion, but he is
doing so in a very intentional way. Clearly, physically speaking,
crucifixion could be understood as being “lifted up” but it was
DESIGNED as a means of public shame and punishment that was so
horrible as to discourage others from engaging in anti-Empire
activities. This was capital punishment in an extra public and
grotesque form. So, calling crucifixion “lifting up” is
RECLAIMING it, denying its power to shame, and reframing it from a
faith perspective instead of a worldly one.

To
call it “lifting up” is to claim that they saw God in Jesus, and
the most extreme shame and pain and death the Empire had to offer
didn’t change that. In fact, to call it “lifting up” inverts it,
taking an experience meant to shame and suggesting it brought honor.
Calling it “lifting up” refuses the power of the Empire to make
meaning, and claims that power for the community of faith.

But
the gospel writer doesn’t even stop there! Instead John reframes the
Numbers story to make meaning out of Jesus. As the bronze snake
replica healed the people who had been poisoned and would have died,
so the crucified Jesus heals the people and offers them full and
abundant life with God. Or, as Debie Thomas puts is:

So why did Jesus die? He
died because he unflinchingly fulfilled the will of God. He
died because he exposed the ungracious sham at the heart of all human
kingdoms, holding up a mirror that shocked his contemporaries and
still shocks us at the deepest levels of our imaginations.
In other words, he unveiled the poison, he showed us the snake, he
revealed what our human kingdoms, left to themselves, will always
become unless God in God’s mercy delivers us. In the cross,
we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to
suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our
hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the
Other must wreak. When the Son of Man is lifted up, we see with
chilling and desperate clarity our need for a God who will take our
most horrific instruments of death, and transform them, at great
cost, for the purposes of resurrection.²

The
death that is human violence, fear, and competition is transformed
when Jesus is “lifted up” and shows the power of compassion,
grace, hope, and collaboration. The powers that harm are subverted,
the power of love is …. lifted up. In THIS is life.

It
is so in our lives as well, may we pay attention. Amen

1 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2944-looking-up

2Ibid.

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 14, 2021

Uncategorized

“Angry Jesus” based on Psalm 19 and John 2:13-22…

March 7, 2021
by Sara Baron

Growing
up, I saw a lot of images of Jesus as a clean, well groomed man of
European descent. You have probably seen these images too. His hair
is shoulder length, his mustache and beard and visible but trimmed,
his eyes are light, and the whole thing has an aura of “air
brushed” all over it. His expression is neutral, yet somehow
lightly angelic.

Without
going into the issues with presenting a Middle Eastern man as
European, or even the annoying prevalence of this presentation of
Jesus in our culture, I want to talk a little bit about the facial
expression. My first year here, I was given a image of a smiling
Jesus, and I savor it. Ludwig Fruerbach says that we humans project
what we think are the best and most important characteristics of
humans onto God. If that’s true, than a neutral expression on Jesus
suggests we think emotions are NOT holy. A smiling Jesus is a Jesus
with emotions, rather than a stoic, and I strongly prefer it.

If
you search online for images of “Angry Jesus” they mostly portray
today’s Gospel Lesson. Angry Jesus ALSO has an arm raised with a
whip of cords. For people who were raised with an un-emotive
understanding of Jesus or God as well as for people taught that
emotions are bad, today’s Gospel lesson can be rather distinctly
uncomfortable.

Jesus
gets angry. He acts out his anger. It has consequences. Other
people’s livelihoods are impacted. This is neither a neutral nor a
sugary sweet Jesus.

These
days when I hear this story, I hear it through the ears of the
trainings I’ve done on nonviolent direct action and I think how
brilliant it is! From that perspective, Jesus and his disciples
would have been working together on an action that brought people’s
attention to the issues with the Temple. I’m not exactly sure how
they would have said it, but the Temple had been the center point of
Jewish faith for nearly 1000 years, and as such it was hugely
important to Jewish people of faith. Because of that, the Roman
Empire had taken over control of it. The Empire appointed the high
priests, and the high priests were removed by the Empire at will. So
the Temple was at one and the same time the spiritual center of
Jewish life AND a system that had been appropriated for the exact
opposite of its purpose. It likely is helpful to remember that in
the Jewish faith the first 5 books of the Bible, the Torah, are
central in casting a vision of how God wants society to work. And
how God wants society to work is in a just and equitably way where
even the most vulnerable and impoverished are cared for, and no one
gets rich of of anyone else’s suffering.

Empires,
however, work the opposite way. Control is maintained with violence
or its threats, and the entire point of the system is to consolidate
wealth and power.

Now,
likely most people at Jesus’s time knew this. All of this. But,
they largely ignored it because… well… what are you gonna do?

That,
I’d guess, was the assessment of the issue. Jesus and his disciples
were looking for a way to clarify the issue, and motivate people into
different behavior. What they came up with, a disruption of the
marketplace around the Temple, is pretty brilliant. It always upsets
the status quo when business gets disrupted. (Several years ago I
participated in a Black Lives Matter protest that walked up 5^th
Ave in NYC, on a Saturday, in December. I couldn’t BELIEVE that we
were shutting down Manhattan during the Christmas Season. Clearly,
it was decided it was less problematic to give the people a voice
than to deal with the consequences of silencing the people.)

The
action, I think we can say, worked. First of all, we’re still
talking about it. Secondly, the appropriation of the Temple stopped.
While this story takes place in John chapter 2, in the Synoptics
this happens right before “Holy Week” and is one of the two most
significant actions that led to Jesus’s arrest and murder. It
clearly shook up the powers, and was experienced as a threat to their
power.

Which
I would call a nonviolent direct
action well done. And that reminds me that the consequences of
nonviolent direct action can be an increase in state sponsored
violence, at least initially.

With
that as introduction (too long?), I want to give us some space to
lean into the anger that we see in Jesus in this passage. I like to
think that he wasn’t just acting when he gathered cords into a whip
or overturned tables, it was a genuine expression of his righteous
anger with the life-affirming Jewish faith being used to destroy
life.

This
being the one year anniversary of the last time we gathered together
for worship in person (and funny enough, the last time we had an in
person charge conference!), it seems like a particularly appropriate
time to name some of the facets of this past year that can reasonably
illicit righteous anger.

The place to start seems to be
with 2.56 Million worldwide deaths, including over 518,000 in the
USA, many – if not most – of which were preventable if we had
prioritized people over profit.

Being intentionally misled by
leaders about the seriousness of this virus, about what we needed to
do to be safe, about how decisions were being made, and about who was
dying and where.

The simple fact that when it
became clear that the people most impacted by COVID were impoverished
people of color, our government immediate stopped caring as much.

That some churches and other
faith communities choose to ignore pleas by community health
professionals for safe practices and created super-spreader events,
while claiming to act in the name of God.

That decisions about when to
close and when to open were not guided by our Bishop or annual
conference leaders, but simply left up to us. (Not that I like top
down leadership either, but leadership becomes imperative when safety
is an issue.)

That when it became clear that
we needed masks the way we got them was through the works of
volunteer saints (thank you!) rather than the government we thought
was prepared to protect us.

That reopening plans have
continued to prioritize “the economy” rather than the people.
Yes, small businesses are struggling, but there are POLICIES that
could help, instead of risking the lives of the workers.

That police use of deadly force
on people of color JUST KEEPS GOING.

That the 644 billionaires in the
USA have earned $1.3 trillion dollars in the past year¹
while 1 in 6 Americans are food insecure.²

That somehow, SOMEHOW, there
still isn’t the will to create universal health care or a livable
minimum wage in our country (or at least its government), even though
we now see that we are only as healthy individually as the least
healthy among us collectively.

That all of the inequalities and
injustices of our society have been on display, and they continue to
be deadly, and there still isn’t a communal will to change.

That the things we need to do to
end this pandemic have been clear for a very long time, but between
political propaganda and the culture war and the need for clear
leadership and a priority on care for the vulnerable, it hasn’t been
done.

I
could go on. But I want to leave some for you to fill in on your
own.

There
is a lot to be righteously angry about. And today, I suggest we feel
it. Feel the anger of the last year, and all the people who have
been lost and all the opportunities that have been lost, and all the
exhaustion we’ve experienced.

Now,
I do NOT want you to let it go.

Not
what you were expecting? That’s fair. I don’t necessarily want you
to keep on being so angry that your blood pressure goes up or you
seek out comfort food, because that just does more harm. But I also
don’t want you to get angry and then “largely ignored it because…
well… what are you gonna do?”

Get
mad. Then get organized. That’s how we change the world. And if
now isn’t the time to organize, then it is the time to get informed,
and to build relationship so we can organize, have direct action, and
make change when the time is ripe. Or, perhaps, now is the time to
get centered into spiritual practice with God, so God can start
pushing and prodding on our hearts to let us know how to organize and
act first. So, I want you to keep righteous anger, and use it as
energy to do good.

Because
that’s how Jesus did it, and that’s how I think God calls us to do
it. Thanks be to God.

Amen

1 https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/

2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/hunger-coronavirus-economy/
To be fair, I averaged some stats.

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 7, 2021

Uncategorized

“Self-Denial and A Plague” based on Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16…

February 28, 2021
by Sara Baron

In
the book “Debt: The first 5000 Years,” David Graeber says
economic history as we know it is a falsehood. Instead, he says,
currency came into being this way: in order for empires to expand,
they needed armies at their ever expanding borders; in order to have
armies further from home there needed to be a way to feed them; in
order to convince people to feed armies, they gave the coins to the
army as pay and REQUIRED all the people have some of those coins to
give to the empire. Thus the creation of taxes, coins, expanded
military might, and markets came into being together. Furthermore,
coins made it much easier to calculate and charge interest, which
made it much easier to keep some people in poverty and make the rich
richer.

Graeber
also says that the time when “markets” were created in history
was ALSO the time that the world’s major religions were formed. (It
was a LONG era.) He proposes the religions were an oppositional
force to the value system of the markets. Instead of valuing coins,
interest, and violence, religions emphasized the inherent value of
people and our responsibility to care for each other.¹

When
I read that conception of the history of religion, I was excited and
relieved. First of all, it sounds like God. God works in contexts,
and expansive religions weren’t needed until expansive markets needed
to be countered. Smaller, tribal expressions of faith worked just
fine. It also makes sense of our Bible, which if we’re honest,
bounces back and forth between utterly radical critique of the
systems of power and empire and — well, justifying systems of power
and empire, as if there is a tug of war about the empire trying to
appropriate religion. Over all though, I found it a relieve to see
the 40,000 foot view of what we’re doing.

Both
of our passages today are about following God’s ways. In Genesis we
God hear claiming Abraham and Sarah and making plans to work with
them in the future. In Mark we hear reflections of the early church,
which was undergoing significant persecution, reflecting on the
powers of life and death.

So,
what does it mean to follow God’s ways?

This
was an open question in Genesis, and in Mark, and has been one in our
lives too.

This
is an open question in modern times too, and I hear people offer a
variety of answers. For some following God includes and is expressed
by particular clothing or diets. For some it includes and is
embodied in particular prayer types or times. For some it is
reflected in personal choices – everything from what words are
said, to abstinence from drugs or alcohol or sex – or just dancing
to what is purchased and where and why. For some this is reflected
in choices to join or be present with a faith community for worship –
or more. For some this is related to particular ways of seeing unity
with the divine. For yet others it is related to energy and effort
being used to build the kindom of God.

John
Wesley broke things into 4 categories: personal acts of holiness
(prayer, Bible Study, healthy living), communal acts of holiness
(worship, study, group decision making, sacraments), personal acts of
mercy (doing good works), and communal acts of mercy (seeking
justice.) Sometimes I hear people focus on only 1 of those 4, but
they work best as a whole.

To
break that down into really direct language – I sometimes hear
people think that speaking without swearing and abstaining from
caffeine are SUFFICIENT ways of being faithful to God. More power to
those who find spiritual power in those choices, but I don’t think
they’re sufficient in following God. Following God requires
connecting with others, as well as caring for others, not just
behaving “properly.” (Whatever that means.)

And
all of that gets us to today – to what some of my friends call
“Coronatide.” (If you don’t get it, don’t worry, it isn’t funny
enough to explain.) When reading a passage so emphatically about
self-denial as a means of following Jesus, how do we hear it TODAY?

It
seems to me that two mostly distinct forms of self-sacrifice have
been occurring over the past year:

There has been the sacrifice and
self-denial of those who have directly cared for others at risk to
themselves –which has included people who have gotten sick and
people who have died because of taking this risk.

There has also been a quieter
sacrifice and self-denial of those who have put life as they know it
aside for the well-being of others. (Masks, distancing, not doing
things they love, not being with people they love). To some degree
this sort of sacrifice comes with privilege – many would choose
this one and couldn’t. That doesn’t meant that this sacrifice has
been easy (it hasn’t), nor unimportant. These quiet sacrifices have
taken care of the whole, including those in the first group offering
care.

At
first glance, Mark’s passage seems to be about making a choice to
follow Jesus, and sticking with it. Upon close examination, the Mark
passage is more radical than it first appears. One scholar
summarizes, “The threat to punish by death is the bottom line of
the power of the state; fear of this threat keeps the dominant order
intact. By resisting this fear and pursuing the kingdom’s practice
even at the cost of death, the disciple contributes to shattering the
powers’ reign of death in history. To concede the state’s
sovereignty in death is to refuse its authority in life.”²

Religion
> market/empire indeed!

Mark
suggests here that to choose to follow Jesus is to deny and ignore
the threats of the state. It is to pick a full and abundant life,
and not fear.

Does
that feel strange right now? I don’t know if anyone feels like their
life has been full and abundant in the past year. And there has been
LOTS of fear.

Unless…

Unless
we change out we think about it. No, the past year has not been
“full and abundant,” but this past year we have picked LIFE for
ourselves and for others over and over again. We have prioritized
the full and abundant life of the COMMUNITY over ease and delight in
our own lives. We have tried to maximize the number of people who
will have long, full, healthy lives – with each and every difficult
choice we make.

And
sometimes it is a really important thing to remember that the stuff
we do – masks, and social distancing, and zoom (eh) and lack of
hugs, we do for a reason.

For
life.

For
each other.

For
Jesus.

For
the kindom.

We
have been following the way of God in new, different, and difficult
ways. We have been denying ourselves the joy of in person worship;
we have been carrying the crosses of wearing masks, forfeiting the
lives we know for … all for the sake of other people’s continued
lives.

We
have been trying to take care of all of God’s beloveds. We have been
reminded that the way to care for one is to care for the whole. It
has been hard, and it has mattered – and it still matters. While
what we’ve done has largely been quiet and seemingly small, thanks be
to God for what we’re able to do for each other!

Amen

1David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011).

2Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, 274. He is quoting
Taylor, 1963: 247.

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

February 28, 2021

Uncategorized

“Rainbows and Rain” based on Genesis 9:8-17 and Mark…

February 21, 2021
by Sara Baron

When
do you look for rainbows? After it rains, right? The Genesis story
connects the rainbow with God’s promise not to flood the earth –
again. It is an oddly timed symbol for such a promise, because by
the time it stops raining and the rainbow shows up … it has stopped
raining and the fear of flooding is likely already relieved.

Or,
maybe that’s the beauty of it.

Because
during a rainstorm we can anticipate it. “When this is over, we
can look for a rainbow!” So, even during the storm, we anticipate
it’s ending and the reminder that all will be well.

Of
course, in these days of climate changed by humans, rain can be
rather scary at times. Floods come more often, and more destructive
than usual. But that actually fits. The ancient Israelites were
desert people and deserts have weird relationships with rain. That
is, they need water for life, and have less of it than most, but
because the earth is so parched most of the time, and water tends to
come in deluges rather than sprinkles, heavy rainstorms quickly lead
to flash flooding.

The
ancient Israelites may have had some of our current misgivings about
torrential rain, and this story may have been a way to center in the
midst of their fears. While it rains, you can anticipate God’s
promise. When it is pouring, you start preparing for God’s sign of
hope.

While
I believe that the rainbow became a symbol for LGBTQIA pride because
of the diversity of colors representing celebrating the diverse ways
of being, I have always appreciated this anticipatory hope aspect of
it as well. The choice of the rainbow symbol, to those aware of this
Genesis story, is a choice to say, “things aren’t good now, but
they’re gonna be.”

Or,
in the language of the African American church tradition, “God is
the one who makes a way out of no way.” (I’m so thankful for the
creation of pride flags that intentionally include people of color as
well as the trans community in the beauty of human diversity.)

Dear
ones, the rainbow feels like a good symbol in the midst of our
current “Rainstorm”, doesn’t it? Or perhaps you want to call it
a monsoon. Your choice. 😉

Which,
come to think of it, is also the Jesus narrative, and our gospel
lesson today. So much of what happens in the story assumes a greater
knowledge of the time of Mark and Jesus than we generally have, so
let me retell the story with some context put in:

“In those days, Jesus came
from Nazareth (Nowhereville) of Galilee (sketchy!) – leaving behind
his family, friends, and village – everything he knew, everything
he was. He was baptized by John – a rural Holy Man, in the River
Jordan, the traditional waters for the Ancient Jewish People.
Baptism marked Jesus as a student of John’s, it also symbolized his
choice to leave behind his society and culture and obligations, and
follow only the Divine.

As he was coming out of the
water, he had a God-experience, a rather beautiful one. It was as if
the heavens were torn open and God was more accessible, and the
Spirit came right there to be with him. Jesus heard a voice offering
a blessing, claiming him! “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” In such a way, he who had left his kin
was adopted into God’s family.

After such a profound blessing
though, the Spirit of God send Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus did
not choose it, the wilderness is the place where it is hard to
sustain life, and he was alone, and he struggled, and he was tempted,
and he had to figure out what it would mean for his life to be a
Holy Man too. He was there for 40 days, like Moses was awaiting an
audience with God. With God’s help – again proving Jesus as God’s
kin – Jesus made it through.

When he came back out of the
wilderness, his teacher John had been arrested. He was on his own as
a Holy Man. He went back to Galilee, that suspicious place he was
from, and started speaking God’s ‘good news.’ Which didn’t sound
exactly like people expected it to. He said, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good
news.’”¹

That
“good news” seems to require a little bit more examination. One
scholar points out, “’Gospel’ was most commonly used in antiquity
to announce benefits to the populace.”²
Another summarizes what Jesus says with, “He boldly announces that
the reign of God – with its dreams of justice and love, equality
and abundance, wholeness and unity- is dawning.”³

Jesus
is a rainbow.

He
is a sign of hope, in the midst of the storm. He comes out of
nowhere, is claimed by God, and offers a message of hope and promise.
The world with its power hierarchies, the world that counts some
people as “disposable”, the world where economies exist to let
rich people get richer on the labor of the poor, the world that wants
to appropriate religion to support the powerful, the world that tells
the 99% to fight each other for the scraps left over after the 1%
have been fed, the world which says to take care of yourself and your
own first and let other’s fend for themselves – the WORLD’s powers
are at an end. A new reign is coming, and it will look entirely
different.

In
God’s kindom, there is no hierarchy, everyone is working toward for
the common good. In God’s kindom there are no disposable people, all
are treated as beloved children of God. In God’s kindom, there are
neither rich nor poor. Instead, each person offers their gifts and
labor for the betterment of the whole, and resources are distributed
according to need. In God’s kindom, we all treat each other as
“insiders” and work for each other’s well-being as well as our
own.

To
repent is to let go of the fear, the competitiveness, and the
judgements of the WORLD, and allow the love, the hope, and the
compassion of the kindom to take root.

This
isn’t easy. It never has been. Nor is it now. Judgements are hard
to let go of, including judgements of ourselves. They’re extra hard
in matters of life and death, like vaccines, and access to health
care, and decisions about masking and distancing and schooling and
childcare and caution vs. risk these days. Right? The issue is that
these judgments slip far too easily into shame, including self-shame
from people who have gotten COVID, which IS blaming victims.

I
don’t claim the authority to know about the best vaccine distribution
plan, but I do think it is useful to take a kindom look at our
pandemic lives. What does it look like when we look from love, hope,
and compassion?

From
that angle, I see a lot of gratitude: for the ways people have
adapted to make all of us healthier, for creativity and hard work in
trying to keep things going as they need to, for those offering care
or services even when there is risk to self involved.

I
also see more clearly the injustices of the moment: that not all
“frontline workers” have had a choice about if they want to be in
the frontlines at all, and that far too many people are forced by
economic circumstances to take risks they don’t want to take. That
people of color have been impacted in a multiplicity of ways: with
less access to adequate housing, with more people doing “essential
work”, with less access to protective gear, with higher poverty
rates that require taking greater risks, with less access to health
care, and with less responsive health care when it is accessed. (To
name a few.) Each of these systemic pieces of racism in our society
are highlighted by the higher infection rates and higher death rates
among people of color, and show us yet again the impact of disparity
on people’s very lives. Lack of equity kills, and movements from the
world-as-it-is to the World-as-God-would-have-it-be are movements
from death to life.

Looking
at the pandemic from the kindom view, mostly, I’m overwhelmed with
compassion: for the impossible decisions everyone is making to the
best of their ability; for the dehumanizing isolation so many are
living with; to the life-draining balancing acts being asked of
mothers, fathers, and caregivers. From this view, judgements
lighten, and love grows.

Finally,
the kindom view reminds us that we are no stronger than our “weakest
link.” That is, we are unable to be healthy in isolation. Until
the WORLD is vaccinated, all of us are at risk. And that’s always
been true, but now we can see it clearly.

We’re
all in this together. We’re all in this storm together (although it
impacts us differently.) And from the midst of this storm, we’re all
reminded that at the end of the storm, the rainbow comes. God
doesn’t abandon us in the storm, hope doesn’t die, the kindom is at
hand, repent and believe. Entering into the kindom’s values will
help kindom come. Remembering the rainbow helps us live through the
storm. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Summary
influenced by:

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, ~128.

Bruce J. Malina and Richard L.
Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) 146-7.

Debie
Thomas, “Beasts and Angels”
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2924-beasts-and-angels
2-14-21, accessed 2-18-21.

2Malina
and Rohrbaugh, 148.

3Myers,
91.

February 21, 2021

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

“Becoming More Human” based on Psalm 50:1-6 and Mark…

February 14, 2021
by Sara Baron

Do you listen to podcasts? I
know some of you do, and I get regular recommendations for great
ones, which means I often feel guilty for never getting to them. I
download them sometimes, with expectations of listening. However
between being a person who values the space to think that silence
gives me, loving classical music when I am in the car, and preferring
to learn by reading, I just never get around to podcasts.

This is true with one exception.
After all, I have an exercise bike that I use regularly, and I
prefer to be slightly distracted from the challenges it provides me.

Rather to my own surprise,
ride after ride, I keep on going back to “The Enneagram Journey”
hosted by Suzanne Stabile. The Enneagram is one of those means of
modeling humanity by breaking people up into different types and
explaining how the types are different. As with any other model, I
think it is useful until it isn’t, and should be held lightly as
containing truth without being definitive. So perhaps it is odd I
keep going back to this, but the host is mesmerizing. She is a
wisdom teacher, who uses the Enneagram as her model, and I like
wisdom. Maybe more so though, she is unfailingly kind and curious.
While being entirely herself, the only well-known person I can think
of to compare her to is Mr. Rogers, but she does her work for adults.
I find listening to her soothing and inspiring.

While listening to her podcast
this week, she stopped me in my tracks. I had to get out my phone
and write down this quote, WHILE ON THE BIKE. In passing, she
mentioned a suggested spiritual practice and then said, “Spiritual
meaning it will make you more human.”

I believe that. I’ve never said
it quite that way, but I believe that. Spiritual means it will make
you human. The goal isn’t to be less human, or less embodied, or
less connected, but rather to be MORE so. More human, more embodied,
more connected.

At its core, this is what
today’s Gospel lesson is about. This may not be what you see at a
first glance though. When Jesus appears in dazzling white clothing
with prophets of old and a voice coming out of a cloud, this may seem
to be about the super natural, the beyond earthly, or perhaps the
“spiritual realm,” I don’t think it is.

I think this is MOSTLY a story
about coming back down the mountain to continue doing ministry, and
that the stuff that happened on the mountain was meant to be
motivation and support for the important stuff happening back where
the people were. The top of the mountain was an experience of the
Holiness of the Divine, as well as an ah-ha moment about the
connection Jesus had to God’s work. These experiences are such
wonderful gifts when we have them – connections with God, senses of
the Holy One, ah-has about the wonder of what is.

At its best, worship can be like
a mountaintop experience, rich in sensory experience and openings to
experience the Spirit. But like the journey of the disciples in the
Gospel, the mountaintop is a temporary destination, and the purpose
of worship is to go back OUT into the world, refreshed and renewed,
filled with God’s love and ready and able to share it. Worship helps
us be more human! I think in person gatherings are even better at
this – when we can sing together and breath together, when we can
check in on each other before and after, when our emotions
intermingle, when the children lead us and open our hearts, when we
feel the base notes rumble the pews, when we can smile at each other,
and notice how someone is walking differently. Put that way, I’m
reminded of how incredibly embodied worship is, and can see clearly
how well it helps us be more human. But even this online worship,
lacking those elements, is still aimed at our humanity. The
scriptures are ways that people have made sense of their humanity for
thousands of years. The music aims to connect us with our emotions.
The lyrics of the hymns along with the words of the prayers remind us
of the universality of our humanity, and the needs and desires we
share with each other. Sermons, at their best, speak to who we are
and who we want to be, our humanity. We give, out of a sense of
gratitude for our lives, and out of a desire to bring more full
living to others. The images that the church offers each other to
intersperse our liturgy itself are visual art, means of connecting
with our humanity and with the sacredness of our earthly life. Not
to mention, we start with a breath prayer, and the fact that
breathing is proven to be one of the best access points to
spirituality really just proves everything!

I could make the same points
about prayer and spiritual practice, but I suspect that will be
overkill, so you can either trust me on it, or look at it yourself.

Spirituality is about being more
human.

Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it
wonderful? Isn’t it counter to some other narratives we’ve heard
along the way?

The point of the
transfiguration, no matter how wonderful it was, is the going back
DOWN the mountain. The point of prayer and contemplation is to meet
God in our humanity. The point of worship is to become more human.

I’ve been slowly reading “The
Body is Not an Apology: The Radical Power of Self Love” by Sonya
Renee Taylor. (Slowly because it is radical enough to take time to
absorb.) Taylor spends a whole lot of time talking about body love,
and pointing out that when we hate our bodies – or even just things
about our bodies – we end up doing harm to other bodies. She is
articulate about the imperative work of becoming more deeply embodied
and more profoundly human as a good in and of itself AND as the only
way we can truly love other people in their humanity and their
bodies.

That seems like the completion
of Stabile’s idea. Spiritual means it will make you more human. And
being more human means you are more able to be loving to other humans
– all of whom are God’s beloveds.

So, dear ones, may we become
more spiritual, more human, more loving. 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

February 14, 2021

Uncategorized

“Sacred + Ordinary” based on Isaiah 40:21-31 and Mark…

February 7, 2021
by Sara Baron

I
can’t get past Peter’s mother-in-law. There is so much more in this
passage, and there is so much in the Isaiah passage that I want to
get to, but she won’t let me go.

For
those who don’t know I’m using the name Peter for the man in the
passage called Simon, because he has a name change later, and because
of the name change we’re more familiar with him as Peter, “the rock
on which the church is built.”

Now,
there really isn’t much of a story here. It is two verses. “Now
Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him
about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her
up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” (NRSV Mark 1:30-31)

Yet,
somehow, the story just won’t let me go.

One
part may be obvious. I try, regularly, to let my feminist guard
down, and say, “well, those were different times” but COME ON.
She’s unnamed, which indicates Mark didn’t think she was that
important – even important WOMEN get named in the Gospels. And
after she is healed, she gets up and SERVES.

While
not entirely resolving this issue, Debie Thomas offered some helpful
insight about the word used here for “serve” in Greek. She says:

The
verb St. Mark uses to describe the mother-in-law’s service is the
same verb the gospels use to describe the angels who attend Jesus
after his forty days in the wilderness. It is the same verb Jesus
uses to describe himself when he washes his disciples’ feet: “I
am among you as one who serves.” And it is the same verb the early
church uses to commission deacons, the “servant” leaders of the
church.

What
if Simon’s mother-in-law is not an undervalued woman in a
patriarchal system, but the church’s first deacon? The first person
Jesus liberates and commissions into service for God?¹

That
helps a bit. I still don’t love that she gets healed and starts
serving, but if I’m honest, I know those people. The ones with such
profound servant hearts, that nothing short of profound illness could
keep them from offering exceptional hospitality. The ones who would
get up from a sickbed and start cooking immediately, if the
opportunity arose. And, to be honest, they’re not all women.

The
other little bit of new insight into this passage came from my
beloved commentary “The Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels” which pointed out the obvious. Galilee in the time of
Jesus was patriarchal, and in particular that meant that when a
couple got married, the woman left her home and went to live with her
husband’s family. Which means that it is actually quite weird that
Peter’s mother-in-law lived with them. It indicates that she’d run
out of who should take care of her: her husband, her sons, her
father, her brothers. I think even her cousins would have been
responsible for her care before her son-in-law. But nevertheless,
she was there.²

Somehow,
this little story keeps getting further under my skin. Peter’s
mother-in-law was a widow without sons. She was living in the home
of some fishermen, and while there is some debate on this, I don’t
think fisherman were doing well in the socio-economic systems of the
day. They’re all in Galilee which was the backwater part of the
backwater Jewish portion of the great Roman Empire.

Peter’s
mother-in-law is yet another figure in the Gospels who would have
been ignored and counted as unimportant by society. Peter’s
mother-in-law is yet another piece of proof that the Way of Jesus
isn’t the way of the world.

I’m
still sad she’s unnamed. I’m still a little sad she jumps up to
serve them.

But
at the same time “they told Jesus about her at once.” The family
cared about her, and Jesus cared about her. Just because she was a
poor widow didn’t mean she was unloved by her own family. DUH.
Value in society really doesn’t have any relation to the value a
person has to their own people.

Many
of the most moving celebrations of life I have presided over have
been for caring mothers, many of whom never worked outside the home,
others of whom had jobs that were notably secondary to their roles as
caregivers. As far as today’s society is concerned, stay at home
mothers aren’t particularly notable. But as far as their families
are concerned, they were the center of the world.

Similarly,
most of the imperative lessons I’ve learned in life have been from
campers with Special Needs and from those living without homes. Both
are populations the world tends to overlook, yet inter-personally
people are people, with wisdom, and gifts, and love to share.

I
think, deep down, we all know that the things that make a person
MATTER in society aren’t at all related to what matters in day to day
life. And, of course, in the eyes of God, EVERYONE matters.

When
it came to Peter’s mother-in-law, they didn’t hesitate or confer
about whether or not she mattered, thank God. Because of course she
matters! Would any of us decline to ask for help for a beloved
family member? Since Jesus had JUST healed in the Synagogue, in
front of her family members, there was good data on his abilities.

I
keep thinking about how society teaches each of us our place, and
teaches us how to inhabit that place. The things that don’t REALLY
matter in life, still get under our skin. Who walks down the street
head held high? Who carefully avoids eye-contact? Whose language is
considered appropriate for a business meeting? Whose appearance is
considered appropriate? Or, even, who has a right to be angry about
how life turned out, and to take their anger into explosions of
violence on others?

We’re
well trained by society, enough so that it is notable when people
buck trends.

I’m
now at an age where most of the time people assume I’m reasonably
capable. But 10 or 15 years ago, as a young woman in ministry, that
was less true. I often got invited to sit on committees where I was
the only young woman, and often I could tell people thought I should
be grateful to be allowed to be present, and keep my mouth shut while
people who knew what they were talking about made decisions.

Thanks
be to God, I was raised in the Jesus movement, and formed in the
radical Ways of Jesus, and I assumed that if I had a place at the
table I had a responsibility to use it.

It
is clear that Jesus doesn’t give two figs about the roles that
society prescribes to us. A beloved child of God was sick, Jesus had
the capacity to heal, and he healed her. He reached out to touch
her, even though she was an unknown woman to him, even though she was
ill.

And
if this perfectly ordinary woman was seen and healed by Jesus, then
we can be assured that our perfectly ordinary lives are also seen by
Jesus, and healing energy is available to us as well.

For
me, Peter’s mother-in-law serves as a reminder of the sacredness of
the ordinary. God is in each of us, God’s value is on each of us,
and ordinary lives are saturated with the capacity to be lived with
love and to thereby change the world.

In
a culture, like many others before it, that often pushes us to think
we have to be extraordinary to matter, it is good to be reminded of
the sacredness of the ordinary. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2897-a-day-in-the-life

2Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Mark 1:21-34” p. 150

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

February 7, 2021

Photo by Barbara Armstrong