“Love” based on Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 and Matthew 22:34-46

October 25, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’ll
admit it. I haven’t been thinking much about the long game. I’m
very much in the present and the near future… the time frame
between NOW and the “end” of the pandemic (whatever that means)
and maybe the first few weeks to months afterwards. Part of this is
the depth of unknowing – what will life look like “after”?
What does “after” mean? When will “after” come, and how?

But
also, I think I haven’t been thinking about the long game because the
present and the near future are overwhelming and I sort of forgot
that there IS a long game. That is, until I read the Psalm and it
felt like standing in a big field in the middle of no where watching
the stars come out at night. (I forgot about that too. There are
too many lights in the city, and travel is too hard with a pandemic
and a baby.)

The
Psalmist says to God, “For a thousand years in your sight are like
yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.” And it
is perspective, like seeing how SMALL we are in comparison to the
night sky, except in this case even better because the time warp
we’ve been in since March (or longer) is put in perspective too.

This
too shall pass.

It
is incomprehensibly bad, and incredibly hard, and not to be
trivialized.

But,
this too shall pass.

There
still IS a long game out there, and God is still playing it.

That
helps me breathe a little deeper.

God
is still working on the kin-dom, because God never stops working on
the kin-dom. Despite all the intersecting crises of this moment, God
keeps working towards a world of abundance, of fair distribution, of
love. And God WILL WIN, no matter the set back.

In
the midst of this remembering to breathe a little deeper and take
some of my fears for the moment and remember that God is playing a
long game, Jenna posted this image on Facebook of my very favorite
place on earth.

This
image also helps me feel the way the Psalm does, with “For a
thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or
like a watch in the night.” It puts my fears, as well as my
frustrations and my hopes, into context. There is so much beauty and
there is so much peace, EVEN NOW.

The
Gospel also serves as a much needed reminder speaking into these
difficult days. The teaching here isn’t unique to Jesus, or to
Christianity. Rather it is near universal in the world’s religions.
You may know the story of two great Rabbis, Shammai and Hillel in the
century before Jesus:

One famous account in the
Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to
Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated
that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the
entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot.
First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request,
threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to
Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said:

“What
is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole
Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!”¹

This
is the key to a life of faith then: Love.

Nothing
more or less.

Nothing
complicated.

Love.

Loving
God and neighbors. We can break it down, or expound on it, but in
the end it is just love. There is plenty of commentary on what it
means, which is good because it is more challenging than it sounds.

One
piece of commentary that has been most meaningful to me comes from
the Buddhist tradition. From Buddhism, have learned that
loving-kindness flows from compassion, and compassion HAS TO start
with yourself. Then it can flow to a loved one, and then loved ones,
and then known ones, and then unknown ones.

Because
most people I know, myself included, aren’t actually all that good at
self-compassion, THIS is my suggestion for you this week: once every
day find a way you can be more compassionate to yourself, that is to
treat yourself with loving-kindness.

As
this may seem strange, let me make it a bit more concrete:

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, you are so lazy, there is so much
to do, get up and DO IT” self compassion may sound like, “Self,
you seem warn down. Clearly you need a few moments before anything
else is asked of you. What might make those moments more
refreshing?”

or…

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, you were really mean to that
person you spoke to, you are a failure at basic human dignity.”
self-compassion may sound like, “Self, that went really poorly
didn’t it? I know I meant to do better, and I didn’t. Let’s look at
what went wrong, and see if we can find a turning point for next
time.”

or….

If
your self-narrative says, “Self, for pete’s sake, stop doom
scrolling! What is wrong with you, you know better!” self
compassion may sound like, “Self, it is a scary time and I know you
are looking for answers and hope. However, refreshing the news or
scrolling social media doesn’t have it, does it. It would be nice to
feel like there is more control in the world, but alas, my power is
only so big. What do I have control over that I could substitute?
Hydration? Taking a nap? Deep breathes? A walk? Let’s find
another way to respond to anxiety that helps more!”

That
sort of thing. This week, I hope you will do this once a day! And,
if you are superbly good at this (wow! Go you!) then you can try
having compassion for ONE other loved one a day too.

It
is funny, but loving our neighbors starts with loving ourselves. And
compassion for the world starts with letting God’s compassion reign
in our hearts.

So,
dear ones, go and love.

Amen

1 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/689306/jewish/On-One-Foot.htm

October 25, 2020

Uncategorized

“Breathe” based on Exodus 32:12-23 and Matthew 22:15-22

October 18, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today’s
gospel is one of those really deceptive ones. You think you know
what it means, and then you go to explain it, and it splits out of
your fingers.

The
Jesus seminar puts Jesus’s words, “Give therefore to the emperor
the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are
God’s” in red, indicating that they think this reflects an
authentic teaching of Jesus. In fact, it is one of the statement they
are most sure of, it ranks 7^th.¹

The
challenge for me is that I read the Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels this week (which I usually do), and it took issue
with how this text is usually understood.

“In
the twenty-first century, Europeans and Americans generally believe
there are four basic social institutions: kinship, economics,
politics, and religion. These are conceived as separate social
institutions, and people make arguments about keeping them separate.
However, in the world of the New Testament, people attended to only
two institutions as distinctive: kinship and politics. …

In
trying to understand the meaning of Jesus’ statement about rendering
to Cesar and God what belongs to each, therefore it would be
anachronistic to read back into the statement either the modern idea
of separation of church and state or the modern notion that economics
(including the tax system) somehow has a separate institutional
existence in a realm of its own. To assert here the frequent notion
that “two kingdoms” one political/economic and the other
religious, one belonging to Cesar and the other to God, are each
being given their due in the reply of Jesus is to confuse ancient
social patterns with our own.”²

Sooooo….
what does it mean?

I’m
not sure, but my best guess is that the clue comes in Jesus’s
question, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer when
it comes to the coin is “Caesars” What equivalently bears God’s
image?

Well,
our faith tradition says… we do. We are made in God’s image, the
latin is “imago dei” – image of God. The equivalent of the coin
is…. people.

This
is a fantastic answer. It is faith-filled, deep, and sidestepped the
trap they were trying to put Jesus into. Even better, it took a
while to sink in. You hear, “Give to God what is God’s, and you
have to think, ‘well, what is God’s?’” And that is a very useful
question. The coin suddenly seems a lot less important, when both
people and creation are God’s!

For
me, this is a primary identity. Who am I? I am a beloved child of
God, made in God’s image.

It
is also expansive. Who are you? You are a beloved child of God,
made in God’s image.

In
a symposium I did this week, Adam Foss shared about being a District
Attorney, and slowly awakening to the depths of injustice in the
justice system. As he woke up, he realized he needed to ask the
community he worked for what they needed, and he was surprised by
their answers. They told him that what they needed most from him was
“to be seen as humans” and “to be treated with dignity.”

This
has me thinking about how and when society dehumanizes people. There
are, unfortunately, A LOT of answers, but I’ve been wondering mostly
when society has convinced ME to dehumanize people. And, the answer
is sort of difficult to sit with.

Rather
than share my own list, I’m going to give you a moment to consider
yours.

Foss
also talked about the culture in the DA’s office, where if anyone
expressed discomfort (or any other emotion), they were told they were
“getting too close to the case.”

Maybe
that’s what really hit me. Because, if I’m honest, there is so much
pain visible to me, that I have to look away from some or numb myself
from some in order to function. But to do that FEELS like
dehumanizing the ones I look away from (perhaps it is.)

This
week I also came across a suggestion from Nanea Hoffman which said,
“Note to self: you don’t have to continuously monitor all the
disaster and heartbreak in the world. You are not in charge of
outrage and grief. Witness it. Feel the feelings. But remember,
love is where you live.”

And
with that, a deep breath came out.

It
is important to know where injustice is happening, where people are
being dehumanized, and in particular where people are struggling
close to home. BUT, not to know for knowledge sake. To know for
action’s sake – and studies say that the more we know the less
likely we are to act, likely because we get overwhelmed.

One
of the INTENTIONAL strategies of the past few years has been to
overwhelm us with despair. (It has worked far too well.)

But
we are not made in the image of Caesar We are made in the image of
God. We cannot solve all the problems in the world – at once. But
we CAN make significant differences in the world, and in the world
around us. The small actions we take every day matter, because we
are MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. We are God’s hands and feet and LOVE
in the world.

So,
what can you do to live in love this week? How can you let go of
despair? (Feel it but then let it go) How can you, like Moses, savor
the closeness of God? How can you connect with the humanity of
others?

A
suggestion, or two.

Take
deep breaths, stomach expanding breaths, often. Let them out with a
sigh.

It
helps. It may help even more if you remember that you are breathing
and breathing out the Divine.

And,
feel your feelings. Be with the despair, or the grief, or the joy,
or the anger, or the exhaustion. Even better, if you can trust
someone with them, name them. The more you accept your own humanity,
the better you will be able to accept the humanity of others.
Emotions are a reflection of souls.

And
that’s it, my friends. We are ALL made in the image of God. Thanks
be to God. Amen

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

2Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p. 397-8.

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

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

September 27, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

DANG.

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

So,
who or what has authority for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 27, 2020

Uncategorized

“Hunger” based on Matthew 20:1-16

September 20, 2020
by Sara Baron

On
Thursday morning I opened an article about the impact of COVID on
hunger around the world. The article started with a picture of a
malnourished child reaching out to a caregiver.

For
better or worse, I closed the article right then, my stomach already
roiling with horror and my whole being already feeling overwhelmed by
the scope of the issue.

As
these things go, a few minutes later I turned to sermon research, in
this case re-reading the chapter on Matthew 20:-16 from William R.
Herzog’s book, “Parables as Subversive Speech.” Herzog reminds
us that the day laborers in Jesus’s day were people who died of
malnutrition, people that society thought of as “expendables.”
Furthermore, these “expendable people” were the ones whose labor
enriched wealthy vineyard owners along with kings, emperors, the
military, the bureaucrats, and the religious leaders. The work of
agriculture was profitable, but as with any other industry, the
cheaper the labor, the more profits for those on top. Thus, the work
of day laborers was considered so invaluable as to be worth less than
what a person needed to eat in a day.

This
did not make my stomach feel any better.

Then,
I thought of the book, “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of
Class in America” by Nancy Isenberg that the Intersectional Justice
Committee book club read recently. In that book, Isenberg explains
that this country was colonized and founded while assuming that ~15%
of the WHITE population was “expendable,” in this case referred
to as “white trash.” This is IN ADDITION TO the dehumanization
of Native Americans as their land was stolen, the enslavements of
Africans and their descendants, and the consistent dehumanizing of
all people of color.

When
I read “White Trash,” I was horrified to realize that the people
who were considered “expendable” as our country was founded and
as it has continued – the ones sent to work in mines regardless of
safety conditions, the ones sent to build the railroads and to
dynamite mountains, for example, whose safety didn’t matter because
there were always more people who could be brought in to work – and
whose wages didn’t matter because there were always people willing to
work for anything, the ones who died young after hard lives — were
just the same as those day laborers that Jesus talks about. AND
they’re the same people who live with food insecurity in the richest
nation in history, the same people for whom subpar education is
deemed sufficient, the same people from whom wages are often stolen
without recourse.

We
still have “expendable” people in our society, we just don’t talk
about it explicitly. Worse yet, our country’s policies exacerbate
wealth inequality around the world, so that there are even more
people even more desperately poor and “expendable” outside the US
than in it (and within the US the number of people we deem unworthy
of sufficient nutrition is a moral atrocity.)

And,
of course, the pandemic has made this all worse. Were we once had
10-15% of the population of the US going hungry, at least double that
amount are now estimated to be hungry. 30% of our population.

Now,
there are some things we can do, if we are able. We can give to
SICM, to help the food pantry provide food in Schenectady. (They
also need volunteers.) Similarly we can give to or help with the
Sunday Morning breakfast here, or at the Regional Food Bank. The
organization “Bread for the World”¹
is our long term partner in education and advocacy to end hunger, and
they have many ways for us to respond.

But,
for now, I want to look at this parable.

Because,
not only do I believe Herzog that this parable was about the
struggles of day laborers and the ways that vineyard owners and the
systems they were a part of excited to oppress the poor and extract
wealth for the wealthy – I think Jesus TOLD THIS STORY to day
laborers.

Because
I think that God and Jesus are on the side of the people the world
sees as “expendable.” And, in particular, I think Jesus’s
ministry was PRIMARILY to the poorest of the poor. So, his teaching
was teaching for those who were struggling, including this story.

Which
should impact how we hear it.

The
people the first hearers of the story associated with was the day
laborers – the people who had lost their ancestral land, had no
notable trade or craft, and had fallen through the safety net. The
people waiting and hoping to be needed in the fields and paid so they
can eat that day.

The
first shock in the story is that the landowner comes out to hire them
himself. That didn’t happen in real life, but it helps the story
exemplify WHO is benefitting the most from their labor. The second
thing to note is that while the laborers hired first got to agree to
a wage – not a good one, but the normal one – the next sets of
laborers went into the fields without even an agreement. The final
set didn’t even get a say – they were SENT to the fields without
being told if they’d be paid.

Another
thing to notice is that this a VINEYARD and not a wheat field or
vegetable plot. The owner of a vineyard had to be wealthier than
average, because a vineyard took 4 years of intense labor as an
investment before profit would come in. That said, it was more
profitable than other land use. So wealthy people liked to buy other
people’s ancestral sustainable farmland and make it into vineyards.

The
owner’s response to the complaints of those who worked 12 hours being
paid the same as those who worked 1 is to dismiss the value of their
work. That was especially insulting because WORK was all that day
laborers had to offer. That is, the owner told the laborers they
were worthless.

However,
the parable tells us something else. The landowner had to keep
hiring people all day because there was so much work to do that he
wasn’t even able to estimate how much labor he needed. The vineyard
would not have been able to exist, much less produce anything,
without labor. The sub-subsistence wages of the laborers were part
of making the vineyard owner even wealthier, but moreso, the LABOR of
the day laborers was IMPERATIVE to his wealth. Wealth that, again,
he is making off of the land that they once used to LIVE and not just
struggle to survive.

The
parable also makes clear that the owner’s actions aimed at keeping
the day laborers competing with each other. Herzog says,

To
ensure a timely harvest, the landowner needed their labor. Yet the
lack of cohesion so evident among the day laborers allowed the
landowner to conquer them by dividing them. This is why the owner
spoke only to ‘one of them.’ The banishment of that one served to
intimidate the others and put them in their place. … [The owner]
smothered the truth that he was dependent on them and, as as result,
that they could have power but only a power tha grew out of their
solidarity. Divided, they would fall one by one before the withering
hostility and judgement of the elite. (Herzog, 96)

Jesus
told a story that let his hearers see more clearly the power they
had, the worth and value they had, and the need they had to work
together instead of competing with each other. The system is was
designed to oppress. The system today is too. And opting out isn’t
really an option for most people – at least not alone. But
together we can choose a different system.

Our
country has more than enough food for all the people. Our WORLD has
more than enough food for all people. The issue is not food, the
issue is distribution. And Jesus reminds us that people working
together can work for the common good.

May
Jesus inspire us to work for the common good, and may God strengthen
us and offer us wisdom so our work is productive. Amen

Questions
for reflection:

What
do you see being done for the common good?

How
should food be distributed?

In
what ways does society treat some people as “expendable”?

What
do you see being done to change that?

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

September 20, 2020

Uncategorized

“A kindom parable?” based on Romans 15:1-12 and Matthew…

September 13, 2020
by Sara Baron

There
are some simple takes on today’s parable. If you read it the way
Matthew wrote it, is an allegory about the importance of forgiveness.
As a reminder, the STORY itself says,

“A king called one of his
servants to settle accounts, the servant owed an extraordinary amount
of money. When the servant couldn’t immediately produce the money,
the king ordered that the servant, his family,
and all their possessions be sold to cover the debt
(worth noting, it wouldn’t have covered the debt.) The servant
grovels, the king not only relents, but FORGIVES the whole debt.

However, upon leaving, the
servant encounters someone who owes him money, requests that it be
repaid, and when that is impossible,
the servant threw the man into prison.

This got reported to the king,
who then had the servant tortured until he could pay back the debt.”

(It
is worth noting that the amounts of money in this parable are
OBSCENE. I’ve seen scholars guess that the first figure is as low as
$10 million or as high as $6 billion. The second figure is lower,
but not trivial. It is still more money than most peasants would
ever see, perhaps in the $10,000 range. The Jesus seminar actually
thinks this parable goes back to Jesus, in part, because the numbers
are so huge and they believe Jesus’s parables tended to exaggerate.
Other scholars point out that the first figure essentially equated to
“the largest figure one could ever name.” Our version of a
gazillion dollars, so, A LOT of money.)

So,
when the parable is taken as allegory, it is simple: God is like the
King, God forgives us our debts, we are then supposed to forgive
others their far smaller debts, if we don’t, we will go to hell.

HOWEVER,
despite what I learned in Sunday School as a child, parables aren’t
fables. They don’t tend to be easy to understand. Instead, they
tend to be things that make us think.

So,
when we come to a parable that seems easy to understand, it usually
indicates it has been cleaned up a little bit from what Jesus said
into what the Gospel writer thought it should mean.

If
we take the story just as Matthew wrote it, then God is vindictive
and while we’re instructed to forgive 70*7 times, God forgives once
and then gets unforgiving immediately. That should also give us
pause, since it simply doesn’t fit how we understand the Divine.

Now,
if we take out Matthew’s final scolding at the end, we un-fable the
story and get back to a parable. To take the parable as a parable
first requires that we do NOT assume that the earthly king is a stand
in for God?

If
we read it as parable, the whole thing gets uncomfortable. How could
anyone ever owe a king that much money? How does even the king have
enough money that he can forgive a figure like that on a whim? Where
does the money come from (hint: the laborers who are dying young of
starvation so the money can flow to the top)? Why doesn’t the servant
respond with generosity? Why did the other servants tell the king?
Why did the king respond with such venom? Who or what is good in
this story? What are we supposed to do? Does the second man get
released from prison when the first one gets sent to be tortured?
Does anyone win?

That’s
a solid parable.

However,
if we take out the BEGINNING line about this story being about the
kin(g)dom of God, things get even more interesting.

William
Herzog II in “Parables as Subversive Speech” suggests that we
first look at the story on its own merits – in the context of the
day. What follows is my adaptations of Herzog’s work. The king in
this story is most likely a client king of the Roman Empire. Someone
placed by Rome, and replaceable by Rome. He is in charge of
extracting wealth from the area he is king of, keeping some, and
sending the rest on. The system by which he does this is pretty
complicated, including many levels of bureaucracy that does his dirty
work for him – and is paid well enough to be grateful not to be the
peasants. The bureaucracy is kept on its toes with fear, and as such
the “work environment” is deeply suspicious, prone to untruths,
and manipulative. Everyone is “playing politics” with everyone
else because that’s how you survive.

When
leaders exist to extract wealth, they have to use their power to
terrify, and when power is inherently violent, the systems that
support it won’t be healthy. One could simply say that bad leaders
create bad systems, and that’s true, but under it all is a question
of what is the POINT of leadership.

The
Hebrew Bible suggests that the point of a leader is to care for the
people and pay attention to the needs of the whole, by
creating a system of justice that is fair, a society that enables
even impoverished people to survive, and an economic system that
distributes livable wages and sustainability as broadly as possible
(and prevents both generational wealth and its counter generational
poverty). Because the Jewish people knew this, the way the Roman
Empire worked was seen as inherently immoral. The Roman Empire, like
any empire understood the king to “own” the whole land and the
people, and to be responsible for using them to to extract wealth
from and to send to the top, and to do so by creating an unjust
system and threatening everyone with death and destruction. You can
see their point on this being a bad system.

OK,
so we have a Roman client king, and the first Jewish hearers would
have STARTED with distrust of this guy. Helpful to know, right?

And,
while the king was inherently immoral, SO WAS HIS COURT, as they were
the ones doing his dirty work. In fact, that first servant, was a
top level bureaucrat, and that large “loan” he was supposed to
replay was actually the “taxes and tributes” he and his
department were responsible for extracting from the people and the
land. Calling in the “loan” was demanding his money, perhaps as
a test of the servant, in order to threaten violence and keep the
fear up in the system. Being arbitrary and making unreasonable
demands helps create a culture of fear. The man doesn’t have the
full amount yet, possibly because it wasn’t “due” yet.

Now,
the first hearers likely would not have had a lot of identification
with this servant, because he was … basically a cabinet level
official whose own actions had done incredible damage to their
country and their lives. The king’s anger and threats are par for
the course, but, in fact, so is his forgiveness. Because the king
has now RE-ESTABLISHED his dominance, which was always the point. I
suspect the “Forgiveness” of the loan in this case is inherently
untrue, this was just a show of power, forcing the otherwise powerful
servant to be submissive and reminded of what can happen to him.

This
servant goes out after the “forgiveness” and then demands a
smaller BUT STILL LARGE sum be paid back to him. Again, it is worth
noting that the people Jesus spoke to would not have identified with
the man owing the smaller sum because it was still more money than
they ever had. And in this case the top level bureaucrat does not
forgive the debt, probably because most of the time debts are not
simply forgiven. Then other people in the court, who gained power
and prestige by lowering someone else’s, used this to take down the
top level official. And the king’s whims take him down this time.

That
is, perhaps this is not
parable of “what the kindom of God is like” and more a
description of “what the kingdom of Rome is like.”
By making plain how the systems of power work in the world,
Jesus was able to invite people to consider how they are complicit in
the system as well as if they want to continue to be.

Because
I, for one, don’t want to be part of systems like that.

Recently,
I’ve seen how beautifully another option can work. The practice that
I went to for care during my pregnancy and birth is one that prides
itself on putting patients first. And they did! My medical care was
profoundly humane, I was taken seriously all along, and my caregivers
took the time to talk with me – and not just about medical issues!
This seemed to penetrate the whole system. From the person who
greeted us at the desk, to the one weighing me, to the ones
scheduling next appointments, there was grace abundance, as well as
patience and kindness.

I
also noticed that the practice was humane to its workers. People at
various “levels” in the practice could be seen talking and
laughing with each other. It felt much more like people were doing
various tasks that all mattered than like there was a hierarchy in
the office. I also heard, at the hospital (as we were there for a
while) how incredibly well respected the group is!

Truthfully,
I found it mesmerizing. I wanted to know all their secrets. I asked
a bit, and what I heard was that the whole group was deeply committed
to putting patients first
and people came to work there to do that. The nature of the
organization was created by its primary value being lived out.

On
a smaller scale, I love the story of a very VERY mild mannered man
becoming the roads supervisor in a small town. As you’d expect,
people tended to call that office in a fury when something was wrong
with their roads, and lots can go wrong with roads. Those that loved
the man worried about him being eaten alive by other people’s fury,
but instead, his mild manners, calm assurances, tendency to listen
and commitment to doing his job well transformed those who called.
Even one person can make a huge difference.

Many
of Jesus’s stories teach us how to subvert broken systems. I think
this story teaches us how those systems work so we can make decisions
about engage with them. Funny enough, the reading from Romans goes
through this as well. Either we can take people down for making
different choices than we do, or we can participate with God in
building the kindom. Judgement, like manipulation, fear, and
suspicion keep us participating in systems of oppression.
Compassion, equity, listening build the kindom of God. In every word
that we say, and every action we take, we get to choose where we put
our lives. We can choose fear and violence or we can choose to build
the kindom of God for all people. May God help us choose well. Amen

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

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 13, 2020

Uncategorized

“Love in Community” based on Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew…

September 6, 2020
by Sara Baron

There is a truly great Facebook group for “Young Clergy Women
International,” and this summer one of the members said, “Hey,
I’m single and live alone, and I’m really lonely in this pandemic. I
know the grass is always greener, would those of you who live with
people tell me what is really annoying about that right now?” Let
me say, there were A LOT of responses, including people living alone
saying it helped them to know and people living with others saying it
helped them not feel so bad about being annoyed.

A few years ago now, I came across a rather radical idea: churches
are places of spiritual growth not IN SPITE OF disagreements,
pettiness, and annoyances with each other, but because of them. Now,
every church I’ve ever met would prefer to be seen as made up
entirely of agreeable people who are never petty nor annoyed with
each other. It feels like better advertising. After all, churches
want to be expressions of God’s love in the world, and it seems like
it would be best to AT LEAST like each other.

And yet, and forgive me if you didn’t know this yet, sometimes people
are annoying. To be fair, often the things other people do that
annoy us say a lot more about us than about them, but the point
remains – being in community means being in relationship with
people who will annoy you, people you will disagree with, and quite
often the work that people find important, you won’t. This applies
to the people we live within the pandemic, and the people we go to
church with. There is no perfect church. They are all comprised of
people.

This radical idea, though, was this is the POINT. Because if
spirituality is just about “God and me” it is really easy to
think you are doing well, growing, becoming sanctified. However, if
you are active in faith community, then it becomes imperative that
you get better at loving REAL PEOPLE in order to know you are growing
spiritually. If you aren’t occassionally annoyed, and getting
practice being loving about it, you aren’t growing (says this
theory.)

I love this idea. It is in our humanity, our brokenness, our
disagreements, even our pettiness, that we grow – and this is the
POINT of community, not one of its weaknesses.

In the past year, the most spiritually helpful idea I’ve come across
came from Brené Brown
suggesting that we assume that “other people are doing their best.”
That is, this is the idea that has most helped me to be more loving,
more patient, and more kind. This does NOT MEAN that someone else’s
best is OK – sometimes it is not, and cases of abuse are clearly in
this category – but in terms of my response to others, it is
helpful. I’d also like to note here that while churches are full of
annoyances and disagreements by necessity, there are REAL harms done
by faith communities that need to be taken seriously. Many of those
involve rejecting God’s beloveds, and/or functioning as an arm of the
status quo when it comes to racism, sexism, heterosexuality,
transphobia, ableism, and other hierarchies. The work of the church
includes CHANGING so that those harms don’t keep happening. Yet, it
also involves knowing that we are going to have to keep working on
each of those things, and never become complicit.

Paul suggests that we owe one another nothing but love, and I suspect
this is a far more radical idea that it appears at first. The
Ancient Roman economy, just like ours, was based on debt. People
made money by having money and loaning it out for interest. People
who were poor lost money by being without money. And much of the
world was motivated by trying to pay off debt.

To step out of that system, to owe no one anything, kept the rich
from getting richer. However, I think it also required the support
of community. Because most people wouldn’t have been able to take
care of themselves without acquiring debt, unless the community was
working together. So, that suggests that being debt-free meant
participating in the sort of the community that exemplified the
kindom – with people mutually caring for each other.

Then, it makes sense that all that is owed is “love to one another”
because such a community has to have deep bonds of love. And the
reminders of what good community behavior look like follow in Paul’s
instructions.

The gospel lesson from Matthew comes to similar points – we need to
have ways of caring for our community in order to be well,
relationships matter, God based community looks different, and we
grow in faith hand in hand with others.

Another way to think about this can be found in a quote by Ann
Voskamp, “Shame
dies when stories are told in safe places.” Churches
are meant to be those safe places, and for now our Bridging the
Distance Groups are intentionally trying to create those spaces. The
world uses our shame to control us, to get us to buy things, to
convince us to be or live certain ways. But God is interested in our
full and abundant lives, free to be and to LOVE. So God is
interested in making spaces for us to share our stories, and let go
of our shame.

Interestingly, like foregoing debt, foregoing shame requires
community support and enables kindom building. It also tends to help
us be less petty and deal better with annoyance 😉

So, wherever two or three Jesus followers are gathered, may we learn
to make safe space. And, in the meantime, may we learn to do it in
alternative ways 😉

Amen

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

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 6, 2020

Uncategorized

“Life” based on Romans 12:9-21

August 30, 2020
by Sara Baron

My
normal preaching style is to argue with the text, but I can’t do it
with this one. Romans 12 speaks for itself. That is, it preaches
for itself. It doesn’t need to be argued with, just amplified. It
preachers better in the Message, paraphrased by Rev. Eugene Peterson.
Hear it again¹:

Love from the center of who you
are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear
life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing
second fiddle.

Don’t burn out; keep
yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master,
cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the
harder. Help needy people; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless
your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy
friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get
along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with
nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t
hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get
along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not
for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take
care of it.”

Our
Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that
person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity
will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of
you; get the best of evil by doing good.

This
is one of those passages that doesn’t speak the name of God – but
tries to speak about what it means to be followers of
Jesus. Its good news that following God means being good
friends. Modern theologians and scholars spend a lot of time working
on the idea of a “relational God.” which is to say that God is in
relationship with us and cares deeply about our relationships with
others. To take it a step further even, God is in the midst of all
of our relationships with others. To be in relationship with God IS
to be in good relationship with those around us. To harm those in
our lives IS to harm God.

So
we hear that we should be good friends who love deeply – and thus
we become better friends with God.

The
next line is one of the best pieces of advice in the Bible. As
Peterson puts it: practice playing second fiddle. Imagine if we
did this. Imagine if we could practice and perfect second fiddle.
If we didn’t dream of having the top seat, but dreamt of being as
supportive as we can be from the place we are. Imagine if we all saw
ourselves as important people because of the ways that we play the
harmonies….. and not for the ways we play the melodies. To
practice playing second fiddle is also to put emphasis on God as the
band leader who knows how to make the music – it is to be willing
to play the role most needed instead of the role most prestigious.
There are people who do this, and do it well – you probably know
some. Think of how precious they are…. It
is good advice– practice playing second fiddle.

“Don’t
burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame.” We hear so often
about burn out. People throw themselves wholeheartedly into their
jobs, and their bosses take advantage of their willingness, and there
is more work than any person can handle, and eventually they have
nothing left to offer. We know this happens in the church too.
People get excited about being in a place where they can serve God –
and where they can feel God’s love through the people around them –
and they want to help however they can. Yet the meetings can get
tedious. And the excitement can fade as things don’t go as they’d
dreamed and maybe it seems like nothing ever changes – or like
everything has changed – and there is burn out. But this passage
tells us, as it continues, how to avoid it…. “ be cheerfully
expectant. Don’t quit in the hard times! Pray all the harder.” (I
would suspect, as well, that constancy of prayer and mediation would
guide each of us to be strong and wise enough to say no to roles in
the church that are currently dragging us under instead of lifting us
up. So prayer really is the answer!)

I
love the line: “Be inventive in hospitality.” That feels like a
task we are particularly called to right now, when all the forms of
hospitality we’re used to have suddenly become moot. What does it
look like now? How can we practice it? How do we experience it?

“Bless
your enemies, no cursing under your breath.” Oh that we might all
become people really able to do that. It is true that praying good
for our enemies, blessing them, changes them and us. Sometimes we
have to be careful about how we say it – its not real to say “May
every blessing fall on the person who annoys me most in the world.”
but its usually real to say “may the person who annoys me most AND
I manage to be more civil today.” And transformation happens –
particularly when we work hard enough that we don’t leave a piece of
ourselves behind muttering nasties.

We
have another piece of God caring about how we are with one another:
“Laugh with your happy friends when they are happy; share tears
when they’re down. God along with each other; don’t be stuck – up.
Make friends with nobodies; don’t
be the great somebody.” We are to be with those we love – and
share lives with them. What helps neighbors and families to share
tears and laughter today? It takes more intentionality to be
“present” with people right now, and it has always been
challenging for many of us not run away at the first show of emotion
(especially grief
and anger.) Also,
it is to try to be “THE GREAT SOMEBODY” – but we already know
we’re supposed to try to play second fiddle.

“Don’t
hit back, discover beauty in everyone.” You know, I have found,
especially over that when I let God show me what God loves about a
person, the beauty of the person is really visible. There is
stunning beauty in everyone. Mary
Lou Kownacki says, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once
you’ve heard their story.” I buy it. Of
course, it takes some serious work to let go of my own annoyances and
do so – but there is beauty in EVERYONE. “If you’ve got it in
you, get along with everybody.” I love how this is phrased. It
acknowledges that it won’t work for all people. Particularly because
getting along with some people means giving up who you are – and
that’s not the point. But WHEN ITS POSSIBLE, for WHOM its possible,
get along with everybody. Its a worthy goal!

“Don’t
insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do.
I’ll do the judging’ says God, ‘I’ll take care of it.” I
like this translation way better than the NRSV 🙂 It is in any case
a good reminder that the world is God’s, and justice is God’s, and
our goal is to do the blessing of our enemies, not the seeking of
retribution. I also like that it acknowledges our DESIRE to get
even, which is honest, without making space for us to act which is
moral.

“Our
Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that
person lunch, or if he’s thirsty get him a drink. Your generosity
will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you:
get the best of evil by doing good.”
It is so true that evil never overcomes evil, just like hate never
drives out
hate, and violence doesn’t bring peace.
Peace brings peace. Goodness brings goodness. Love
brings love. Love and goodness and peace transform evil. I hope
you’ve all seen it. I’ve seen it time and time again, particularly
in faith community. People who are afraid of being hurt come to camp
or church with a chip on their shoulder, ready to pounce at the first
person they see. With gentle love for a few days or weeks or years,
a sweeter and gentler person emerges, ready to soak in the goodness
and affirmation. People change more when you welcome them for who
they are and what they do well than when you disparage what they do
wrong. People change a lot – and you change a lot – when you
have lunch with your “enemy.”

Romans
12 teaches us a lot about how to be – how to be human, how to be
Godly, how to follow the way of Jesus. May we live our lives guided
by it. Amen.

Questions
for Reflection

How
do these instructions seem to you? Do they feel like useful
guidance? Do they feel different from or similar to the 10
commandments or the greatest commandments?

Which
piece strikes you the strongest?

What
part is hardest for you?

Where
do you hope to be able to do better?

What
DOES it mean to “love from the center of who you are” and how can
you do so more fully?

1 I
fixed one word, FYI.

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

“Rock” based on Romans 12:1-8 and Matthew 16:13-20

August 23, 2020
by Sara Baron

Hi.
My name is Sara Baron and I have the great delight of being the
pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Schenectady.

I
also haven’t been with the church in quite a while, even in this
medium. If you’ve joined us in the past 3 months, I may be a new
face to you – I’ve been out on family leave welcoming our child
into the world. The past months have been a roller coaster of
emotions for me: fear as our child was born too early, joy at his
capacity to thrive, gratitude at the support we received, horror as
the pandemic got worse, horror at the continued violence against
brown and black bodies, appreciation for those who protested and
organized in response, frustration at sitting on the couch nursing
instead of being in the midst of the response, melancholy at
isolation because of the pandemic, joy in connection because of the
gift of a back yard, wonder at watching our child grow, fear
regarding my own capacities to work and parent, and then relief to
remember how much I love this work and the people of this community.

Thanks
for listening to my highlights – I hope to have the chance to hear
yours soon.

In
the midst of all of this, I’ve also struggled with my own self
judgement over “productivity.” When I went into the hospital to
have our son, I’d written worship, outlined the sermon, and prepared
the children’s sermon. I REALLY wanted to just finish worship before
stepping into the role of patient, but I KNEW that if I recorded a
sermon with the hospital wall in the background, I’d be taken to task
about it for the rest of my life. It didn’t change my frustration at
being unable to finish.

One
among you sent this card

to us,
and it has embodied the past 3 months for me. For those who know me
well, you may know that this has driven me up the wall. I spent a
lot of time dreaming what I’d do with my next “break from
breastfeeding” only to learn that feeding a extra tiny preemie
doesn’t really COME with breaks. Or at least it didn’t for me. I’m
told I got an extra special dose of being velcroed to the couch.

What
is funny is that this was only different for me in matter of degree.
For my whole life I’ve had a running to do list in my read, one that
would require every day to be 3 days long and each day to be
PERFECTLY efficient, and every day I’ve been frustrated that I
couldn’t complete the tasks on my mental to do list. And then, I
feel guilty for what I didn’t get done.

I’m
under the impression this isn’t just me.

All
of which I share to admit how I EMOTIONALLY respond to this gospel
lesson today – the one where Peter gets called “the rock on which
I’ll build my church” and I think, “WOW, he must have gotten a
lot done to get that title, which is further proof that a human CAN
do that much and so I should be able to and I’ve failed.” Which,
if I’m honest, isn’t a great emotional response to this gospel, but
it is MY emotional response right now, and I have a fear that many
people can follow me.

There
are some ironies in my response of course. One is that Jesus didn’t
ever SAY this, the story we read is the construction of the later
Christian community expressing their faith as well as their
leadership structure. The other irony is that this is said to PETER
who is the disciple best known for getting everything wrong and
putting his foot in his mouth. Peter, in the gospels, isn’t the
paradigm of perfection and productivity. Peter is the paradigm of
missing the point. He wants to build tabernacles at the
transfiguration, he encourages Jesus to stay out of Jerusalem for
safety’s sake, he denies Jesus after the last supper, he refuses
footwashing.

It
is a funny way to be a rock – but actually, it is rather
historically true. ALL the gospels tell us that Peter usually missed
the point, loudly, while Acts and church history tell us that he
because the leader among the disciples after Jesus’ death. Its a bit
confusing, unless you remember that God doesn’t judge us the way
we judge ourselves or others.

Which,
dear ones, is one of the most significant pieces of faith, and bears
rather constant repeating. Our value is NOT based on our
productivity, it is NOT based on our consumption, it is NOT based on
our knowledge, it is NOT based on our success. Our “value” is
inherent: we are beloved children of God, and we are loved because
we are God’s, and nothing we can do can take away God’s love. We do
NOT have to earn God’s grace, and we do not have to prove our worth.

If
you are like me, knowing this may be easy, living it is not.

But
it is a big deal. Because we believe this applies to EVERYONE, and
if everyone is beloved by God… the world is really messed up.

Now,
I believe that our core identity is being beloved by God and our
productivity is irrelevant. AND I think that there is a reasonable
question that follows the wonder of being loved by God…. “What is
an appropriate response to God’s love?” Or perhaps, “How can I
express my gratitude?” Or, maybe, “That’s wonderful, how would
God most like me to share my joy?” (I’ve
heard of a preschool Sunday School teacher who asked it as “What
makes God smile?”)

I
believe these questions are VERY different from “What do I have to
DO to be worthwhile or worthy?” but we tend to get them confused.
Or at least, I do.

From
my knowledge of God and the Bible, the answer to the questions about
responding to God’s love are: to love in return. Love God, and love
your neighbor – two sides of the same coin.

But
this can get tricky too. Because sometimes we think that the harder
we work to love, the more worthy that love is. But Paul’s sharing in
Romans helps counteract that idea.

Paul
encourages us to bring our WHOLE SELVES to God, to worship with body
and spirit. We aren’t meant to leave our weaknesses or struggles
behind in our God-life. Responding to God’s love is something we do
AS WE ARE, not while pretending to be perfect. #peter

Paul
urges us not to be conformed to this world – and I think that is
the world where our “value” is in our production and consumption.
Rather, we are freed to see as God sees, to love as God loves, to be
transformed by grace and to transform the world around us. Paul
encourages the members of the church – the parts of the Body – to
use the gifts they have toward the kindom. Not to use the gifts they
WANT to have, nor the ones they THINK are most valuable, nor even the
ones others want them to have, but to use the gifts the HAVE. It
even seems a little bit like the wisdom of the IJ book “How to Be
an Anti Racist” by Dr. Ibram Kendi – which invites us to take
hierarchy out of how we see cultures and people and instead celebrate
people and peoples where and how they are. So too the gifts of God.

Then,
it almost seems like God’s good gifts enable us to do the work God
asks of us, and it isn’t all arduous. It sounds as if I’ve been
often been making things harder than they need to be.

Peter
is the rock on which the church is built, and the church has made it
2000 years or so. The gifts he had, with God’s help, were sufficient
for the task. Friends, the gifts we have are too – and they don’t
always have to be forced. We are already loved for who we are. The
question is not what we have to do not what we should do. The
questions are what we can do and want to do! That’s how we too can
be rocks for the kindom.

Thanks
be to God. Amen

Questions:

Where
do you most tend to try to prove your worth?

What
most effectively reminds you that you are already beloved of God, as
you?

What
parts of kindom building bring you joy?

How
does it feel to be reminded that Peter was imperfect and still of
value?

What
would it look like in your life to allow yourself a bit more grace to
love LESS arduously?

—

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

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“Journey and Stability”based on Genesis 12:1-4a and Psalm 121

March 8, 2020
by Sara Baron

It
is commonly said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step. It seems, in this story of Abram, that this is true.
God says “go” and Abram takes the first step. By the accounts of
the Bible, it will be about 2000 miles, this journey he goes on.
Which is about the same distance as walking to Atlanta, Georgia –
and back.

Or,
its the same distance as walking the Appalachian Trail (AT) as it
wanders from Maine to Georgia. Thru hikers on the AT are able to
make the hike in 5-7 months. Abram and Sarai will take quite a bit
longer than that.

Thru
hikers on the AT, however, usually have lives to go back to. They
take time off, hike the trail (with food mailed to them along the
way), and then return to their houses, jobs, families, friends, and
former lives. Its said that 3 in 20 people who start out on the AT –
usually with the best hiking boots, water sanitizers, backpacks, and
tents – will complete the journey.

Abram
and Sarai will eventually complete their journey, albeit with
different names by the time they are done. They and Lot and their
servants and their animals traveled for 2000 miles and even when they
“arrived” where they were going, they would never settle. The
story claims that Abram was 75 when he left on the journey, and 175
when he died. The land where he and Sarah were buried – purchased
at Sarah’s death – would be the only land they would call their own
again. There were no more houses that they lived in. The rest of
their lives would be lived in the tents of a nomad. Once the journey
moved them from the city of their home, they wouldn’t hear their own
language ever again. And, maybe it was important, and maybe it
wasn’t – but the religion of his birth – the gods that the people
worshipped in the Land of Ur – were left behind as well. Abraham
left on this new journey called by a God who, as far as we know, had
not spoken to him until God said, “Get up and go.” And he left.

Abram,
Sarai, and Lot model listening to God’s call and trusting that God
goes with us on our journeys. That said, sometimes God calls us to
stay put too. God’s calls can’t be predicted, we aren’t all Abrams
and Sarais. And while God will call where and how God will call, we
all also have yearning for both journey and for stability. (Which
sometimes matches God’s call and sometimes doesn’t.)

We
want stability (like
Psalm 121): to have a routine, to have deep connections to people
we see on a regular basis, to know and understand the systems and
institutions around us, to have some predictability to life, to sing
songs we KNOW, to eat familiar food, to have our view of the world
unperturbed. I have been in Schenectady longer than anywhere else
since I graduated from high school, and I can assure you that there
is a magic and a wonder to knowing where you are going without
needing a map, to learning a grocery store well enough that you can
make a shopping list in the order of the store’s aisles, to having
your doctor actually know your medical history, to having colleagues
with whom you’ve built deep trust over time.

We
also want change though: we want new experiences, we want to travel
and see new things and learn different ways of being, we want to meet
people who teach us about seeing the world differently, we want
better than what we’ve already known – systems that WORK for
everyone, we want to sing new songs that resonate with our beings, to
eat new delicious food, to have our worldview expanded. We want to
grow, and change, and become. We want things to be BETTER.

The
tension between stability and change, between journeying and staying
put is a major tension in life. Immigrants and refugees live lives
of the journey, Abram and Sarai among them.

Years
ago I heard this poem, and its been playing around in my head ever
since:

The
Call of Abraham by Kilian McDonnell¹

(“Now
the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country.’” Gen 12:1)

Talk
about imperious.
Without a by-your-leave,
or, may I presume?
No
previous contact,
no letter of introduction,
no greeting,
just
out of the blue
this unknown God
issues edicts.

This
is not a conversation.
Am I a nobody
to receive decrees
from
one whose name
I do not know?
And at our first encounter!

I
have worshipped my own god.
To you I had addressed no
prayers,
offered no sacrifices.
asked no favors,
but
quick,
like sudden fire in the desert,
without the most
elemental ritual,
I hear “Go.”

At
seventy-five,
am I supposed to scuttle my life,
take that
ancient wasteland, Sarai,
place my thin arthritic bones
upon
the road
to some mumbled nowhere?

Let
me get this straight.
I will be brief.
I summarize.
In ten
generations since the Flood
you have spoken to no one.
Now,
like thunder on a clear day,
you give commands:
pull up my
tent,
desert my home,
the graves of my ancestors,
my friends
next door, leave Haran
for a country you do not name,
there to
be a stranger,
a sojourner.

God
of the wilderness,
from two desiccated lumps,
from two parched
prunes
you promise to make a great nation.
In me all peoples of
the earth
will be blessed.

You
come late, Lord, very late,
but my camels leave in the morning.

I
love the tension in the poem, the anger, the annoyance, the worry,
the fear, the humanity of it. The ending is perfect, because despite
it all or because of it all, he goes. Abraham is the father of
faith, the beginning of the monotheistic tradition. Christians,
Jews, and Muslims look to him as father.

I
looked at Genesis chapter 11 this week, and noticed something
important. Abram’s father, Terah is the one who starts the Journey.
We say that Abram went from Ur to Shechem, BUT REALLY his father
seemed to make the decision to go from Ur to Haran, which is the
longer part of the journey. Abram heard the call and left Haran for
Shechem. That changes things.

See,
if Abram was called out of no where and nothing to do this, with no
prior relationship with God, and he did… and he is the father of
faith, then we might conclude that we’re called to do that too. But
really it wasn’t like that. Whether or not Terah knew it, he started
the journey. Whether or not Terah knew God, he started the journey.
Abram had already experienced migration, and move, he had already let
go of some of the things you have to let go of to leave. Further,
despite the poem, we don’t really know how long God and Abram had
been talking, it may have been a lot longer.

The
scripture says, “Now the LORD said to Abram,
‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the
land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I
will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a
blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses
you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed.’”

But
it actually doesn’t say, “Suddenly, out of no where the LORD
said….”

If
Abram hadn’t done it, would we be here today? I don’t think so.
BUT, if Terah hadn’t gone, we also wouldn’t be, and if Isaac hadn’t
been faithful we also wouldn’t be….

Abram
was ONE PART of a journey. His part was spectacular and still
startles us today with its faithfulness. But the journey started
before him, and it was 500 years or more before the promise he heard
was fulfilled.

Its
not ALL on us, my friends. We’re called to do our part, but God is
patient, and has long range plans. We aren’t going to solve world
hunger or bring world peace, or even just transform poverty in
Schenectady by ourselves. We’re just a part – an imperative part,
but not the only part. The calls to stay, and the calls to go,
they’re all a part of a larger picture – and when we are faithful,
we enable God’s work in the world to grow ever more complicated and
beautiful.

So,
I couldn’t help but counter the Call of Abraham poem. I just don’t
buy that it was sudden, as beautiful as the first poem is. Nor do I
think Abram’s version is the whole story. So, having considered it
from another angle, here is the Call of Sarah.

The Call of Sarah by Sara Baron
(“Now, the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country.” Gen 12:1)

When you’ve been a failure, an outcast, a useless lump,
an ancient wasteland, like I have -which is to say:
a barren woman –
for your whole life, you learn the things others do not.

You learn how to hold your head up,
when there is no reason to be proud.
You learn how to find peace,
when there is no peace to be found.
And ever so slowly,
so slowly indeed that you don’t notice it coming,
you learn that your value is not
what everyone else believes it to be.
You learn that you are not just a failed child-bearer.
You learn that you are alive and good and loved and worthy as just a person, even without being a mother.

I heard it first.
I heard it many decades ago.
I heard it when we were still in Ur.
It took me a decade to admit it to myself.
And another to admit it to Abram,
sweet husband though he is.

After I told him, he looked at me strangely for a while.
Then, a few years later, he started to hear it too.
He looked at me even more strangely after that.

That was 20 years ago.
The call has become louder every day.
It has started to seems reasonable to us,
which just proves that we’re crazy.

We’re too old.

But then again the rituals of worship feel like lies now.
We’ve come to know this one who talks to us, this One-God.
The rest of them fade away as if to nothing in the light of the One-God.

I’m not sure when we decided,
it took so long, and we went back and forth and back and forth….
and then back and forth some more.
It was about when Terah died, that the back and forth line moved so we talked a bit more about going than about how crazy we were.
Then, later, we slowly eliminated our excuses.

After all, we’re old.
What do we have to lose?

I’m ready to leave the pitying eyes,
and move to the desert where I can be free,
To worship and to love the One-God,
To love and connect to my Abram,
To be a blessing, even without being blessed.

We come very late, One-God, very very late.
But our camels leave in the morning.

Remember
dear ones, there is more to the story than meets the eye –
including the ones who started the journey and the ones who complete
it. Our parts are imperative, but they’re just a part of what God is
up to. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 http://www.saintjohnsabbey.org/mcdonnell/poetry.html#The%20Call%20of%20Abraham

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“The Garden of Eden in Context” based on Genesis…

March 1, 2020
by Sara Baron

Six years ago I
shared with the worshiping community in this church my learnings
about the Garden of Eden story. Some of you weren’t here yet, and
some of you don’t have perfect memories. The challenge of serving
THIS church, though, is that some of you DO seem to have perfect
memories, and I don’t want to bore you. So… if I do, I’m sorry. I
promise I’m getting to new and different points, but we all need to
get there together, and that requires reviewing the information about
the story first.

The Creation
story that starts in Genesis chapter 2 is the Yahwist version, which
means it is folk literature, aimed at explaining why things are they
way they are. Folk literature and shared communal myths are pretty
deeply related. While the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible never
comes back to mention the Garden, or Adam, or Eve again, the
Christian tradition has been quite obsessed with this story. That’s
likely due to the work of Paul in Romans, and the way that Paul’s
understanding became a normal way of understanding the point of
Jesus!

However, the
story itself makes the most sense when we look at it in context, and
the context for the story is the Ancient Near East, and the creation
stories of the Ancient Near East. For transparency’s sake, my
understanding about this text comes from the brilliant Roman Catholic
priest and scholar Addison Wright, who shared with “Ecumenical
Scripture Institute” in 2011.

The Canaanites,
neighbors and frenemies of the Ancient Israelites, have a creation
story centered around their tribal god, Baal. Baal
was for them the storm god and fertility god. He fought Leviathan in
order to bring order out of chaos. He dispensed well-being on the
earth. He is called rider of the clouds, and much of this is
appropriated for YHWH. Baal has a holy encampment on his holy
mountain after the intentional flood at the sea – like YHWH with
Sinai and Noah. Some text fragments of Baal’s creation story have
incantations against snake bites, with a story about a man in the
east near the Tigress called Adam who touched a tree he shouldn’t
have touched, and got bit by the snake, and by calling on the gods he
got the incantations to avoid death, and the enmity between humans
and snakes. That tree was the tree of death.

OK,
so hopefully I’ve done my job in convincing you that the early
Genesis stories that the Yahwist tells fit into the Ancient Near
East. Now, in the Ancient Near Eastern people believed that
you could EITHER be immortal OR reproductive. You probably can see
the problem – if you let immortals reproduce, you get to infinite
people very quickly. You can probably also see then, that for the
people who believed this, sexuality was inherently related to death
and mortality. The capacity to procreate came WITH the reality of
dying. And, lest we forget the rather long era of human history
before effective birth control, sexuality and children were tied
closely together. So again, parenthood and death was one option and
immortal life without sexuality was the other. One could not have
both, as they saw it.

Furthermore, in
Ancient Near East stories, paradise gardens are places that IMMORTALS
live. Thus, children do not live there. Given this assumption,
eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”
transformed Adam and Eve from being immortal, asexual beings into
mortal, sexual beings. That knowledge seems like it may have had a
lot to do with sexual maturity.

Now, when I
first heard this, I liked it a lot. Mostly I liked it because it
pulled us out of blaming women for everything, and out of a hyper
focus on sin. I wasn’t really convinced by it though.

Then, Father
Wright pointed out that the punishments given in the story fit this
understanding. After they eat, they see that they are naked, which
fits a burgeoning sexual awakening. We stopped reading before the
rest of the punishments, but they are: the couple is thrown out of
the Garden, the woman will have pain in childbirth, sexual desire
will complicate life, you will have to work to stay alive, and you
will now die. Which it turns out, all fits. Leaving the Garden is
what happens when you aren’t immortal. Pain in childbirth is only
relevant when childbirth is going to happen. Sexual desire IS
complicated, and wasn’t when they didn’t have any. Having to work to
stay alive isn’t necessary when you can’t die. Finally, being mortal
means death will come. Perhaps most interestingly, at the end of
the list of punishments, the woman is named for the first time. Adam
(whose own name means mud-creature) calls her “Eve, because she was
the mother of all who live.” Eve means to breath, to live, or to
give life.

At that point,
I was convinced that Father Wright was not only onto a cool
interpretation, his interpretation was superior to any others I’ve
ever heard. The only problem is that it doesn’t work with Paul’s
take in Romans, at least as it has been used through the millenia.
Paul argues that as death came into humanity through Adam, the sting
of death is removed from humanity by Jesus. In fact, Paul is sort of
taking on the whole Ancient Near East, because he is claiming that
with God’s work in Jesus, one can have children AND be immortal, just
not an immortality on earth. Paul is trying to make sense of Jesus,
and of the impact of his life, and this is how he does it. I don’t
think Paul meant to create quite the firestorm of misogyny and
sin-guilt that he accidentally did.

Which then
leaves us free to be rather grateful to Adam and Eve, since if they
hadn’t eaten of that tree, none of us would exist 😉 Moreso, it
gives us freedom to reconsider our understandings of both gender and
sin. It feels like a good reminder that by “sin” the Bible means
“missing the mark” which always feels a lot lighter than what I
would otherwise assume.

One of my
curiosities is about why we’ve held onto this story so tightly.
Again, the ancient Jews did not, and while Paul makes this argument,
we could have rather ignored it as well. Yet this story is still one
of the living folk narratives in our culture, for Christians and
non-Christians alike.

I’ve wondered
if it relates to a yearning for “paradise.” It is all sort of
interesting, right? Because once we bring Paul into it, paradise
comes back in the form of afterlife. And I think people yearn for
paradise, quite possibly because the world we live in is so full of
suffering and we’d like to consider other options. The Garden of
Eden itself though, according to the story, was quite small! It was
small enough for one person to tend to it, and it contained only two
people. That would be REALLY boring for ETERNITY. Exiting
definitely seems like the right option.

And yet, the
world is not as it should be. We know this in our bones. And we
YEARN for it to be better. Sometimes our yearning takes the form of
remembering the past in a way that cleans it up and makes it seem
closer to perfect than it was. Sometimes our yearning encourages us
to close our eyes to the pain and suffering around us. Sometimes our
yearning for better closes our eyes to the harm we are doing, and the
shame we live with. Sometimes our yearning for better erupts in
anger for how things are. Sometimes our yearning for better makes us
afraid of what is and what might come.

AND, sometimes
our yearning for better is how God works with us to make the world…
better. Isn’t it complicated that the same yearning can do harm and
do good? Oh, human life. I think there are two best ways to respond
to our shared yearning for a better world. One, as you might guess,
is to work with God and each other to make the world better. The
other is to put our energy on noticing the things that are already
good. There may be a natural desire for paradise, and we don’t live
in one, but we do live in a world filled with wonders, and when we
forget to attend to them, we can miss out on all the goodness that is
already with us. The kindom, they say, is already here in part and
is coming in completion. Let us pay attention to both parts – as
they are the work of co-creating that paradise with God. Amen

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

March 1, 2020