“Awe, Walk, Love, Serve”based on 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26…

February 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
believe that God loves all people unconditionally, completely, and
uniquely. It might make sense, even, to say that I think God loves
all people unfathomably – that it is more love than any of us could
ever even begin to comprehend. A few times in my life I’ve had a
sense that scales have been lifted from my eyes so that I can catch a
tiny glimpse of how much God loves God’s people, and it has blown me
away.

My
friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green has theorized that
Jesus’s healings were simply this: that Jesus was able to see people
and love people as a reflection of God’s knowing and seeing them and
being loved like that healed. I still haven’t decided if I agree
with her, but I think she makes an excellent point. God’s love is
that big, that powerful, and that wonderful.

This
is the starting point for everything I believe about God. Is is the
thing I am most sure of, and everything else is secondary. However,
those secondary things flow pretty readily from the first. If God
loves all of us this much, then God wants us to live good, full,
abundant lives – with meaningful contributions, full of beauty, and
defined by deep connections. Then it means that God has a lot of
balancing to do between various people and peoples with various needs
at any given time, and that means that the particular work needing to
be done is wide, varied, and not all parts are equally obvious to all
of us. A final secondary point before we move on to tertiary ones 😉
– I believe that God’s PRIMARY way of working in the world is
through people who are aligned with God’s vision. That isn’t meant
to limit God or God’s actions, just that it is the primary way God
acts.

For
me, this moves quickly to another set of conclusions: then there are
things getting in the way of what God wants for God’s beloved people
(*everyone). Clearly God doesn’t want any of God’s people starving,
so anything that results in starvation is against God’s desires. I
can draw similar conclusions about slavery, about abuse, about rape
and murder, about war, and the list starts getting pretty long.

One
word that I know that seems to encompass the way I think God wants
the world to be so that all of God’s people can be thriving with
good, full, abundant lives is: justice. Or, at least, that’s what I
mean when I say justice. Justice is working toward good, full,
abundant lives for all of God’s people. It sometimes means
supporting great things that are happening; it sometimes means
learning about complicated realities in order to understand them; it
sometimes means slowing down and making sure we’re living those good,
full, abundant lives so that we are signs of hope and centered in God
to make a difference; it sometimes means slowing down to connect with
God or each other or beauty; and it sometimes means naming what isn’t
fair or right in the world so as to work towards what is fair and
right.

Nevertheless,
the work of justice is the work of living God’s love for God’s
people. Often, it involves trying to support and empower the most
vulnerable people. God’s energy seems like it is often focused on
transforming the lives most desperately in need of change.

Now,
this all fits in with today’s passage, which clearly states that God
cares about vulnerable people and that God expects those of us who
are in relationship with the Divine to care about vulnerable people
too. When this was first proposed though, it was radical rather than
obvious.

The
neighboring traditions of ancient Israel thought that the gods cared
about … well, themselves: about being sacrificed to, praised, and
cajoled. Moses really may have been the first one to figure out that
God cared about how we treat each other.

During
Lent we are examining God’s vision for justice, how we see it in the
Bible, how we can feel its urgings now, and what that means for our
lives. Last week we examined Genesis 1, the priestly creation story,
and heard within it faith statements of the priests. They believed
they served the God of Sabbath, who built into creation itself a
rhythm of rest and justice. They articulated that God’s rest on the
7^th
day of creation was meant to create a rhythm of rest for all of
creation, in particular rest for Israelites and those who served
them. The equal access to rest is the beginning of God’s intention of
distributive justice, and those priests thought it was built into
creation itself.

This
week we are examining the Torah’s vision for a just society in a
passage Walter Brueggemann subtitles “Imitations of a Caring God.”
It starts with a question familiar to us from Micah, but this one
asks in the communal, the plural: what does God require of US? The
answer is pretty similar to the know we know too. Micah answers, “to
do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
(Micah 6:8b NRSV). Deuteronomy answers, “to stand in awe
of YHWH; that you walk
in God’s ways, that you love
and serve
God…” and then goes on to say that it also involves keeping the
commandments. Those commandments are the ones that envision a just
society where all are cared for, thus they’re also about “doing
justice” and “loving kindness.” Deuteronomy also reminds the
people that the commandments and decrees are “for your own
well-being.” This God that they were serving was one who wanted
good for them, all of them.
God’s dream was for a society
that could show the world how to live together so all could thrive.

Walter
Brueggemann summarizes this passage as “is a summons
to be fully Torah people of YHWH, supported by a series of
motivations.”¹
The motivations are ALL descriptions of God, and the commandments
seem to be to follow in God’s ways. God is the God of heaven and
earth, the text says, but God chose to specially love you and work
with you!! Because of this, you can trust God and follow God’s ways.

God
is a God of power, might, and fairness! God doesn’t take bribes.
God “executes justice” for the orphan and widow, and loves the
stranger by providing food and clothing. Because of this, and
because God took care of you when you were strangers in Egypt, YOU
should LOVE the stranger!

Brueggemann
puts it this way, “YHWH cares about the specificities of justice
and the victims of injustice. This is a God who cannot be bribed by
the wealthy and powerful but who attends to the needs and wishes of
orphans and strangers, who cares about the concrete implementation of
justice that has to do with the elemental requirements of food and
clothing.”²
This moves onto a commandment for Israel, the one to love the
stranger. This, too, might sound obvious, but really isn’t.

He
says, “Israel
is not permitted to become a homogeneous, ethnic community turned in
on itself, but is mandated, as a part of its most elemental
responsibility, to reach beyond itself to those who do not quite
belong, who are unlike Israel, but who are committed to life in a
community of obedience.”³
He also notices that we usually hear about the Israelites being
SLAVES in Egypt, but this talks about strangers. He has an
explanation for it, “We are accustomed to think of Israelites as
slaves. It is important, however, to remember that their status as
slaves was an economic development from the vulnerable status as
aliens and outsiders, because unprotected sojourners are almost
certain to become economic slaves.”⁴
(131) So, God took care of them and thus, “Israel’s distinctive
covenantal work, in response, is the economic practice of hospitality
and justice that will prevent other vulnerable outsiders from sliding
into the wretchedness of slavery through indebtedness.” (132)

This
is a huge deal, although it might not appear to be at first. In most
societies, or tribes, or groups of people, there is a stronger
requirement to care for insiders than for outsiders. Strangers and
outsiders are allowed to be vulnerable, while the insiders say “we
have to take care of ourselves first.” Perhaps this is best seen by
looking at the concept of nations themselves, and how they treat
their own citizens vs. people who aren’t their citizens (at home or
abroad). This moral code in the Torah though, doesn’t allow for it.
This moral code requires that the people who follow this God of the
Stranger find ways to protect OUTSIDERS. They don’t get to do “us
first” policies. Their God, who is the God of all people, may have
special work for them to do, but that doesn’t mean that God allows
them to ignore the needs of others. They have to find the ways to
care for themselves and others at the same time, no matter how hard
it is. They don’t get to take advantage of anyone, because their
God isn’t a God who takes advantage.

The
widows and orphans are “brought justice” by God as well. Widows
and orphans were “insiders” but ones without resources or
recourse. They didn’t have an adult male with full status in society
to care for them, but according to this passage, God’s own self steps
in to execute the justice they need. God serves as the one who is
missing for them – but in reality, this is also what God is asking
of the people in the society they create:
may even those without an advocate have enough.

And
may that be true because of who your God is, and what your God has
done.

All
of this talk of who God is, and what God is working toward, seems to
me to raise some questions about our work. We know that we are about
building the kindom of God, or alternative language options: about
sharing God’s love in the world, or about taking care of God’s
vulnerable people, or about creating justice for God in the world.
(All the same thing, as far as I know.) But I wonder what our
particular part in it is.

1
Corinthians 12 draws a wonderful metaphor about the work of
individuals in the Body of Christ: that we are to do our part, and do
it well, and trust other parts to do their work also, without
assuming any part is more important than any other. It might also be
a way of saying: work to your strengths, and trust that God spread
the strengths around well. 😉 It works within this Body of Christ.

However,
I think the metaphor applies more broadly. If The United Methodist
Church, OR the Church Universal are all working together as The Body
of Christ towards building the kindom, what is this church
community’s role in it? (Btw, I could easily expand further to
mention people of other faith traditions, as I think we’re working
together there too, but I don’t want to force Body of Christ imagery
on them.)

It
seems to me there could be a lot of possible answers. We might be
the head – we’re good at thinking deeply. We might be the
conscious, we’re good at seeing what is right and calling for it. We
might be the feet, we’re good at showing up where we are needed. We
might be the hands, we work well at sharing God’s love by handing
people tangible gifts. My best guess (and I offer this with humility
as I’m really not certain) is that we might be the heart – filled
both with expansive love for God’s people AND broken by the ways
God’s people are harmed. (Just not the cheesy kind of heart, we’d
hate being the cheesy kind.)

In
any case, I wonder if it is time for us to work together to what our
role is. It is my suspicion that being as clear as it is possible to
be about what God calls us to together will help us do it more
effectively! (First step in this is to fill out the survey that was
emailed out and will be handed out later…) What is our role in
sharing God’s love and caring for God’s people? May God help us
listen well, and find clarity in our shared answer, so we can do it
and do it well! Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Deuteronomy
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 129.

2Brueggemann,
130-131.

3Brueggemann,
131.

4Brueggemann,
131.

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 25. 2018

Sermons

“Regrounding”based on 1 Kings 19: 11-16 and Mark 9:2-9

February 11, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

“Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid. Domination systems of various types have existed since the beginning of recorded history,”¹ although not all human systems have been domination systems.

God works in the world to disrupt systems of domination and oppression, to build cooperation and connection, to bring justice and wholeness. This is both God’s long-term work, and true in the eternal now, and God does it without dominating us or requiring us to get on board. As people of faith, we seek to work with God in the the world to disrupt systems of domination and oppression, to build cooperation and connection, to bring justice and wholeness. In short, we fundamentally believe that all people matter, and we work to make the world better for all people, not just for the people at the top, and not just for ourselves.

We get together in worship to center ourselves in beauty and wonder, to connect to the Divine and to each other, and to find meaning and direction to take into the rest of our lives. We center worship around readings from the Bible that have been helping people figure out how to do this work for many, many years.

The problem is that the very same texts that we gather around for clues of how God is at work disrupting domination systems have regularly been appropriated BY the domination systems TO dominate. So, we bring our whole selves to these conversations: our bodies to check when things seem wrong on a gut level, our brains to engage in critical thinking, and our spirits who yearn for justice as deeply as God does to see if God’s justice is found in the stories. We seek to be sure that we are working with God, not with systems of domination. There are no guarantees that we’ll get this right, but we try anyway.

With our critical thinking in tact, we might be tempted to disregard the story of the Transfiguration. After all, it doesn’t fit into how the world works as we know it. That is a sensible critique, but not a holistically reasonable one. The stories in the Bible are meant to help us find meaning and learn of God, but that doesn’t indicate that the best way to make meaning from them is to assume they’re objectively true and historically accurate. Instead, it means that we look carefully at their symbolism and metaphors, taking those seriously as part of how meaning is made from them.

That’s a wordy way of saying that I’m not particularly interested in the question, “did the transfiguration happen?” but I’m VERY interested in the questions, “What was the writer of the Gospel of Mark trying to communicate to us with this story?” and, “What meanings can be drawn from this story that still hold relevance for us today?”

Mark is telling a story with deep ties to the stories of his (Jewish) faith, building meaning on top of meaning. Elijah has already been connoted in the Gospel. John the Baptist was set up as a “new” (or returned?) Elijah making way for Jesus. The arrival on the mountaintop of Moses and Elijah symbolizes “the law and the prophets” as well as the two most significant prophets of old. I also think it is interesting that the two are Moses and Elijah and not Moses and David. The Jewish people had expected a Messiah who was a king, a king in the line of David, but the early Christians use symbolism of the prophets who called for justice to explain Jesus, NOT the symbolism of power over people!

Ched Meyers of the distinguished Mark commentary, Binding the Strong Man, wrote, “each of the two great prophets represent those who, like the disciples at this moment, beheld Yahweh’s epiphany on a mountain at crucial periods of discouragement in their mission.”²

To be specific, Meyers is connecting the journey that Jesus and the disciples took up the mountain to the one that Elijah had taken in the story we read today, and the one that Moses took to get the 10 commandments.

A refresher on those stories is in order. Elijah was a northern prophet called by YHWH during the reign of King Ahab (who may be most famous for being married to Queen Jezebel, whose reputation is distinctly undeserved). There was great fighting between the prophets of YHWH and the prophets of other gods at that time, and the palace was not in support of the prophets of YHWH. After a particularly intense defeat of the other prophets, Elijah fled the wrath of the palace. He was exhausted, overwhelmed, and feeling defeated. The story says God took care of him on his journey, and he came to rest in a cave on a mountain in the desert. Then comes our reading today – Elijah coming out of the cave to experience the Divine and God not being in the terrible displays of power and destruction but rather in the silence.

After the time to go away, the time to be cared for, the time to rest and recuperate, and the time to experience a connection to God again, Elijah was sent back down the mountain to continue the work to which he’d been called. He also was sent to find his own replacement, since his work would outlive him.

The story of Moses coming down a mountain with the 10 commandments is well known; it is an image seen regularly and a story alluded to often. Yet, we often forget what happens when Moses gets to the bottom! It turns out he was up on the mountain for a LONG time. The people left behind had gotten scared, and they started looking for reassurance, which took the form of creating out of a statute of a calf out of gold as a new “god” to worship.

The story says that when Moses got to the bottom of the mountain after his intense and powerful experience with God and saw the actions of the people he got so mad that he threw the 10 commandments down and broke them! Eventually Moses went BACK up the mountain to get a new copy of the commandments.

After the time of connection with God, a time of visioning a new kind of society without domination, and soaking in the hope of it all; and after seeing the fear of the people and how hard it was for them to trust in God; and then after climbing the mountain to start again, Moses finally came back down the mountain and was heard by the people. His ministry continued, starting with communicating with the people what he’d heard on the mountain. The 10 commandments would be part of the legacy of the work of the people that would outlive Moses.

Meyers is suggesting that those mountaintop experiences of God were not just life-giving moments in the lives of the prophets. They came in the midst of great struggles and discouragements, and those are part of the meaning intended by Mark. Mark puts this story in the midst of the major transition in his book. In Mark 1-8 we hear of Jesus’ ministry, primarily in Galilee. Then, at the end of Mark 8, we hear for the first time that Jesus’ death is coming. Immediately following is this story of the transfiguration. Then, soon after this story is a reiteration of the teaching that Jesus is going to be killed.

Jesus’ ministry started in Mark with a blessing from God. After his baptism, the story reads “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,‘” (Mark 1:11). This transition to the next era of his ministry, the march to his death, starts with a blessing that sounds very similar, “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 9:7). The primary difference seems to be that an instruction for the disciples is included in this blessing. Those disciples are the ones who will continue Jesus’ ministry after his death.

While it is easy to see the glory of the transfiguration as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ resurrection (which it is), it also looks like the transfiguration is a step on the way to the cross. Now, you don’t often hear me say “the way to the cross,” but this week I found someone who put words to what I mean by that, and since I can share his words, I can feel OK saying “the way to the cross.” In this way, we see how Jesus’ death on the cross served to break the domination system, and did so with the tools of the kindom. These words come from Rodney J. Hunter:

“It is important, however, when speaking of the way of the cross, to be clear about what it does not mean. It does not mean that we should seek or regard suffering as a spiritual good in itself or as inherently saving and redemptive – as centuries of misguided Christian theology and piety have often maintained. Jesus did not die because his suffering as such could purge the world of sin and evil. He died because the powers of evil sought to destroy his witness to nonviolent love, justice, and truth. His passion revealed, not only the ‘evilness of evil’ – its intrinsic, deadly violence – but the transforming power of divine love, a powerful, assertive love that does not dominate and defeat evil so much as challenge, expose, and seek to transform it. Such love alone ultimately carries the day; it alone is truly redemptive and saving.

Christians are therefore not called to exhibit a passive love that simply tries to be good and avoid evil. Nor is the way of the cross a private beating of personal woes for the sake of Jesus. It is rather a vigorous, assertive pursuit of social and personal righteousness through a love that refuses to play the world’s power game of domination, exploitation, greed and deception.”³

This gospel moment of transfiguration blesses Jesus for the work he will do to reveal the evil of the domination system AND to prepare the disciples for the next steps of their work to learn how to live that passionate love that will transform the domination system itself.

After that time up on the mountaintop, to see clearly the wonder of God’s work in the world, to understand the depth of the call Jesus had to follow, the disciples were sent back down the mountain. They were sent down to keep on learning, to see healing, to build connections, to struggle with the domination system, to be witnesses to death, and to find the strength to go on anyway.

The transfiguration story certainly foreshadows the rest of Mark, it also foreshadows life as a follower of Jesus for all time. May we keep learning its lessons. May we be instruments that continue Jesus’ ministry. Amen

1Jim Jordal, “What is a Domination System” found on 2/10/2017 athttp://www.windsofjustice.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=356 written on March 14, 2013.

2Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1988, 2008), page 250.

3Rodney J. Hunter, Pastoral Reflections on Mark 9:2-9 in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1 edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) 454.

–

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

Sermons

“Growing Strong” based on Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39

February 4, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A mentor once told me, “Every crisis is an identity crisis.” In case that isn’t an obvious platitude for you, I have taken it to mean that whenever a group or an individual is in crisis, they no longer know who they are. That is, the stories that explain them to themselves don’t make sense out of things any longer.

It does seem that we form identity in the stories we tell of ourselves. Our stories are sometimes called myths, and that reminds us that they’re both meaningful and inherently biased. They tell us where we came from, why we are here, what we are supposed to be doing, and how we most often mess it up! (Again, this is true both individually and collectively.)

The problem is, things keep changing on us! And that means we have to either tell different stories or change the ways we tell the same ones! In normal circumstances we change things in little ways as we go, and all is well. We add new stories that make sense of things, we tell some stories more, some less, and adapt details here and there. Normally we can keep up with ourselves. However, when radical change occurs and our stories haven’t caught up with our reality, we land in identity crisis.

Isaiah 40 speaks to a people in an identity crisis, and an epic one at that. The stories of the ancient Israelite people told of a trustworthy God who had chosen them, took care of them, who helped them overcome their adversaries, and who freed them from oppression. They WERE the people who were in relationship with that God. God was their identity, and God’s strength and steadfastness were the core of how they understood God.

And then … they lost. The Babylonian empire defeated them in battle, destroyed their city and society, and left them without leadership, hope, or defenses. (Interestingly, the Hebrew Bible was written down during the aftermath of this defeat, as if the people needed to work with the stories to try to make sense of their new reality. They may also have been afraid that their identity would be forever lost if they didn’t firm it up.) It was into this void of identity and meaning that the prophet Isaiah spoke in chapter 40.

The prophet reminded them of their stories, and of their God in whom their identity was formed. The prophet ALSO reflected on the stories and adapted them a bit to meet the circumstances, as was desperately needed. Isaiah connected the ancient to the present. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” and then reminded the people of who God is. In doing so, Isaiah reminded the people that God is ETERNAL and POWERFUL, and the rules of the earth are NOT, “ Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.” This served to acknowledge that a ruler of the earth HAS bested the people, but not God.

Isaiah acknowledges that the people feel abandoned by God, but then brings them back to their own stories. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” Then Isaiah adapts a bit more, reminding the people that God never runs out of energy, and that the people can pull from God’s energy and strength when theirs seems lacking. Sure, Isaiah says, humans get weary, “ but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

It was, even then, an old, old story, but it was also a story retold to fit the time frame, to give the people back their identity while acknowledging their reality. In many ways, the Gospels are doing the same work. The crisis when Isaiah wrote was the Babylonian defeat and the exile of the leaders. The crisis when Jesus started his ministry was the Roman Empire and its dominance over the territories that were the Jewish homeland. Ched Myers, whose outstanding book Binding the Strong Man offers GREAT insights on the Gospel of Mark, wrote:

“Economic and political deterioration, especially in the decade prior to the upheavals of the Roman-Jewish war, had dispossessed significant portions of the Palestinian population, especially in the densely populated rural areas of Galilee. Disease and physical disability were an inseparable part of the cycle of poverty (a phenomenon still true today despite the advent of modern medicine). For the day laborer, illness meant unemployment and instant impoverishment.”¹

Our gospel passage today includes the first healing in the Gospel of Mark. Healing passages can make some of us squirm uncomfortably, they remind us that the Bible is an ancient text from a very different worldview, and sometimes that leads us to reasonable questions about how useful the Bible is to our formative identity stories anyway! Meyers proposes a helpful perspective on Biblical healings.

He thinks they’re subversive! In Mark, this is the first one and it takes place on the Sabbath,so Jesus is starting trouble right from the get go. The last section of Mark 1, last week’s Gospel, included exclamations of Jesus’ authority. People were noticing that Jesus was wielding power usually held by the scribes. This is continuous in today’s passage. The scribes would have been part of the system of authority that called for the strict observance of the Sabbath, including refraining from healing. Jesus seems to care more about the people needing the healing than the authority of the scribes.

Meyer’s thesis is this: “Jesus healing ministry is thus portrayed as an essential part of his struggle to bring concrete liberation to the oppressed and marginal of Palestinian society.”² His insights are profound, but his language is often obscure so I’m going to try to summarize his perspective in my own words. This is an exercise that will result in a terrible lack of nuance and subtlety. I’ve footnoted his work so you can find it for yourself and regain that nuance.

After Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was healed and as soon as the sun went down, the masses arrived at the the door seeking healing. Jesus as healer was in high demand because many needed healing. Those many who needed healing were the poor and vulnerable. Often, those in need of healing had always been the poor and vulnerable, at times the need for healing itself had made people poor and vulnerable.

If we, as people of faith, try to focus on those needing healing from our 21^st century eyes, we will look at the symptoms and the disease, and get distracted by our theories of healing. In doing so we can miss the symbolism that brings the greatest meaning. Illness isn’t actually as simple as we moderns like to think of it. It is more than physical symptoms. Illness itself is perceived culturally and has cultural impacts. Of course, it impacts those around the one who is ill (family, friends, neighborhood, village) but it is also understood within the stories of the time and place. Stories form around particular illnesses, often quite potent ones. Worse yet, illness serves to distance the individual from their community!!

Understanding the stories of Jesus’ healing requires us to enter into the perspective of illness from that time, and what it meant then. In that time and in that place, when a person was healed, their capacity to rejoin society was healed, which means those around them were also healed. This also meant that those who had been considered “sick” or “impure” and thus on the bottom of the hierarchy of society were pulled up. The whole body of the community was healed and brought to wholeness, AND the hierarchy was disrupted when Jesus healed! In his healing, as in his teaching, the social order was ignored and messed with! 🙂

Furthermore, Meyers says that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ healings are connected to the faith and action of the healed, the healing itself empowers and acknowledges the humanity of the healed! Healing empowers the disempowered, both culturally and through affirmation of their power.

Jesus healing is consistent with the rest of his ministry. It brings up the downtrodden, it diminishes the power of those who hold power, and it reverses the dominant social code!³

Thus, the stories of healings of Jesus served to reclaim God’s identity, to disrupt the narratives of the Empire, and thus to restore the identity of the Palestinian people!

This all leads me to think about our stories, particularly our collective ones. We have stories of our communal identity as part of the United States, and as New Yorkers (actually I’m not sure how strong those are), as part of the Capital Region, and as part of Schenectady. We also have collective stories as monotheists, as followers of Jesus, as United Methodists (gee, that one is certainly undergoing crisis), as a part of Upper New York, and as First UMC Schenectady.

I’m wondering which sets of these stories are in good shape, helping us make sense of who we are and why it matters, giving us direction and hope! I’m wondering which sets of these stories are a bit outdated, needing minor edits to make a bit more sense of things. I’m also wondering which sets of stories are wildly out of wack, reflecting a bygone era and not helping us at all anymore.

Certainly in the recent past I’ve realized that the myths I held to be true of the United States as a place that welcomes and celebrates many kinds of people, and cares about the vulnerable and marginalized have been shaken to the core! So to have the stories of The United Methodist church following John Wesley’s advice “if your heart is with my heart, give me your hand.” New stories are forming, even by their own power, to replace the ones that have lost their power.

We are in the midst of significant cultural and religious shifts, possibly seismic ones. Even the internet itself has changed reality so deeply that those of us who remember it coming into our lives are shocked! And that’s only one piece. Many of our social and religious institutions are in crisis, which means they’re in identity crisis. Their stories aren’t up to date, their myths don’t make sense of things anymore. It is time to let go of what isn’t working, and that can be REALLY hard. It is also unsettling to be between functional myths!

I invite us all into reflection: What stories do you still find yourself telling? What do they mean to you? What stories have you recently let go of? Why? What stories are we adapting? Are we adapting well?

Our stories not only tell us who we are, they tell us who we think God is. Like Isaiah’s brilliant work in chapter 40, we need to connect the stories to the past AND help them respond to our present. May we pay attention so that we might do so with grace. Amen

1Meyers, 144.

2Meyers, 144.

3Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1988, 2008), page 144-150.

–

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 4. 2018

Sermons

“Change Bearer” based on 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 and Mark 1:21-28

January 28, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the midst of all the news that swirled around this week, one little line caught my ear. A Congressman was accused of sexual harassment of a staff member, and within his reply was the idea that he didn’t think he had any power over her. He thought she could consent, or could reject his advances, because he ran an egalitarian office. In fact, he was quoted as describing his office saying, “There is no hierarchy.”¹

I’ve heard such malarkey before, and it infuriated me then too. Most significantly, at one point a District Superintendent informed me that he didn’t think of himself has having power “over” the clergy in his district. This came up in a conversation when I was indicating that I didn’t think he should date clergy he was supervising, and he was justifying his behavior. Simply denying the power one has isn’t the same thing as not having it.

To be fair, at almost the same time, I had an awakening that resulted in an ah-ha moment of my own. I was serving on the “Conference Leadership Team” for the Upper New York Annual Conference. I was regularly in meetings making big decisions, had regular time on stage during Annual Conference meetings, received subtle deference from colleagues because of my role, and had even shared in DRAFTING the structure of the Conference itself. AT THE SAME TIME, I was really unhappy with the way the conference existed in the world and felt helpless to make the changes I thought we needed. During an Annual Conference session, when I was on the floor with everyone else, someone mentioned feeling disempowered and uninformed in the Conference. I ALMOST empathized by saying “me too!” but JUST BARELY kept my mouth shut.

I realized that while I felt disempowered, uninformed, and generally cranky, I had about as much power in the system as ANYONE did. In particular, I had a heck of a lot more power than the person who was (rightfully) expressing his own concerns. And I realized that if I had spoken, and claimed to be as disempowered as he was, I’d have created a false equivalency. I simply wasn’t disempowered in that system at that time, even if I didn’t feel like I had the power to do what I wanted.

In that moment, I realized that I’d done a similar thing to the District Superintendent – I’d internally downplayed my own power. Downplaying, or ignoring, the power I held was dangerous because it made it much easier to abuse the power. Whenever a person ignores a power they hold, and pretends it doesn’t exist, that enables the person to wield it irresponsibility and ignore the consequences for those who don’t have as much power.

At that point I made a commitment to myself to ACKNOWLEDGE and NOTICE what power I do hold, and attend to holding it carefully, so that I wouldn’t do accidental harm with it. I wanted to operate differently than those I saw abusing their power, and I wanted to have more integrity than I started with, once I saw the error of my ways.

Sometimes it is uncomfortable to acknowledge power differentials. Actually, it is often uncomfortable. (Perhaps especially in progressive circles where hierarchy is less valued.) It is far easier to pretend away hierarchy and to claim that the limits on our power make it useless. However, it is irresponsible and hugely dangerous.

The District Superintendent was engaged in sexual harassment (at least), and his SELF-JUSTIFICATION for it was in pretending away his power. His power over those he supervised didn’t dissipate when he pretended it away though. It didn’t give those he supervised easy ways to ignore or dismiss his advances. It just meant he didn’t take that into account, and he got what he wanted without acknowledging to himself that he’d done so with the power he wielded. It meant he took away both others’ consent and his responsibility for having done so.

This congressman did exactly the same thing. It is hard to believe that anyone who has the power to hire and fire their staff could be under the impression that their office is egalitarian, but clearly this misconception benefited the congressman and in his head justified his actions.

I suspect that ignoring the power one has over another is a common part of justifying sexual harassment, and many other abuses of power.

There is, however, an even more sickening reality. There are also those among us who claim the fullness of their power and authority and use it to harm others. In this case I’m taking about the Larry Nassars of the world, who not only set himself up to be in a position over young girls, he ENJOYED the ways that he was able to harm and humiliate them.

Larry Nassar, the “medical doctor” who worked with USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, who used his power to sexually assault more than 100 girls. Around Larry Nassar and those like him, are a set of people around them who functioned with their power in a third problematic way. Unlike that congressman who pretended away his power and thus allowed himself to use it inappropriately, AND unlike Larry who claimed his power fully to do harm, there are those who had the opportunity to use their power for good and didn’t. There are likely more reasons for this than individuals who didn’t act, but the results are all the same: more children traumatically abused.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”² There have been many, many people in the world who have passively accepted evil, and even used their power to silence those speaking of it.

One of the many gymnasts abused by Nassar was Rachael Denhollander. She was far from the first to speak out, but she was the first one to do so with her evidence and accusations prepared to force herself to be heard. Those defending him tried to silence her in many ways, but she kept talking anyway. She spoke with clarity and authority during his sentencing hearing saying, “I believed the adults at MSU surrounding Larry would do the right thing if they were aware of what Larry was doing, and I was terribly wrong. And discovering that I could not only not trust my abuser but I could not trust the people surrounding him has been devastating. It is part of the consequences of sexual assault, and it needs to be taken seriously.”³

That is, Larry Nassar’s actions were an atrocity. So was the enormous cover up, people who decided that maintaining the status quo, or getting the next win, or keeping the organization from liability, or not upsetting the apple cart was more important than the protection of CHILDREN from sexual assault. Many, many people had the power and authority to step in and stop his actions, and they did not do it.

Thus far, I’ve mentioned three ways power and authority is misused:

by being dismissed or ignored, and thus held irresponsibility.
by being used directly and intentionally to cause harm.
by being held passively, not being used to help those in need, which functions to support an abuser over the abused. (In some cases this crosses the line into intentional harm as well.)

This is all very interesting to consider when we have a Gospel passage that takes note that Jesus held power and authority very differently than the religious authorities of his day! Oye ve. “He taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” This the thesis statement of or Gospel reading! His authority is said to be amazing to the people who heard it, it was one of the first things that drew a crowd to him.

The early Christian communities whose stories of Jesus formed the Gospels may well have thought that Jesus’ authority seemed different because it was different. They may have thought that his connect to God was different than everyone else’s, and this may have been their point. Or, it may be that the scribes taught as if they were a bit removed from the text, teaching what other people had taught them, raising the historical questions, doing everything other than speaking about God from their own experience and claiming authority from their experience. (I may also be projecting myself onto the scribes, as I often choose that path.)

Or, perhaps it was something else entirely. When I listen holistically to the stories of Jesus, it seems that one of the themes is his work of empowering the people. Apparently “authority” in Greek means more fully “the freedom to express one’s powers.”⁴Perhaps he was using his “authority” to build up those he was speaking to. In this case, I’m drawing on the line from 1 Corinthians, “Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.” Authority used well builds up people, in love. It isn’t used for the sake of the one who holds it, it is used for the well-being of the community that gives it.

Jesus speaking in the synagogue would have been speaking in his own voice, not just that of the tradition, but I suspect he was using his voice and his authority to encourage others to claim their voices and their authority in building the kindom of God. He was building them up so they could build others up and everyone together could build the kindom.

That’s what it looks like to change the world. Power and authority used in the ways of the world are used to PUFF up the one who holds them, and to push down those who don’t. We’ve talked about many ways they can be used to do harm. But our goal is not only to “do no harm” but ALSO then to “do all the good we can”. (The first two of John Wesley’s “Three Simple Rules” as rethought by Reuben Job.) That means that ALL power and authority we have should be used to BUILD up.

This is a rather high calling. And it can be difficult. There are pitfalls in many directions, and discomfort to go along with it all. But that doesn’t mean it should be attempted. We are, all of us, leaders in building up the kindom, and the first work of the kindom is building others UP.

So, dear ones, may we follow in the way of Jesus, and find the ways to use our power and authority to BUILD others up. Amen

1Chris Cillizza, “Oh, Pat Meehan. No, no, no, no.” on CNN politicshttps://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/politics/meehan-analysis/index.html accessed on 1/25/18

2 https://paradoxologies.org/2010/08/28/martin-luther-king-jr-on-complacency-mlk/accessed on 1/25/18

3 Alanna Vagianos ”She Was The First Woman To Go Public About Nassar. Read Her Statement In Full” ttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rachael-denhollander-nassar-impact-statement_us_5a690ef6e4b0e563007627aa 01/24/2018 08:46 pm ET accessed on 1/25/18

4The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 61.

–Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 28, 2018

Sermons

“Thesis Statement”based on Psalm 65:5-12 and Mark 1:14-20

January 22, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Sometimes it seems like my entire adult life has been about realizing that nothing works the way I thought it did, and everything is more broken than I had been lead to believe. Like the Psalmist, over and over again it has become clear what has seemed good, fair, and just wasn’t even basically trustworthy upon further examination. In addition, I’ve learned that what people or organizations claim to be about often isn’t directly correlated with what they actually DO.

One scholar summarizes Psalmist as saying, “No matter how weighty their social standing, we cannot depend on other people to provide security or stability in our lives.”¹ Another scholar takes it a step further, adding commentary to the Psalmist’s ideas, “Every human effort, finite cause, and mortal relationship is an unsuitable object for our absolute trust and final hope. The career that shows so much promise, the children that seem so exceptional, the nation that appears so strong: they are like shifting sand which offers no security, no permanent purchase.”²

I don’t think the Psalmist and I are alone in our desire to find trustworthiness in what can’t offer “permanent purchase.” Often, when I hear people in their deepest struggles, they are struggling with a change they didn’t foresee – something they thought was more permanent than it was – and the harshness of reality adds a significant sting to something already plenty difficult. Something in human nature expects more permanence than there is, and wants to trust in that permanence.

The Psalmist concludes that only God is as sturdy, steadfast, and worthy of hope and trust as we need. God is able to be our refuge, time and time again. God doesn’t disappoint, and God is as permanent as we need. Best of all, God’s nature is steadfast love, and it is on God’s steadfast love as a platform, that we can build our lives.

Thanks be to God for that.

The thing is, I’m not sure it is all that easy for us to figure out what it means to trust God while remembering the impermanence of everything else. How do we balance the concepts that God is worthy of trust, but that doesn’t mean our loved ones will all live long happy lives, our jobs will treat us fairly, our bodies will remain strong and healthy, our homes remain in tact, or that our spouses will always treat us well. (To name a few.) God is good and trustworthy, but life remains complicated. I think that this seemingly obvious reality is really hard to master!

Figuring out how to trust in God while being realistic about the world, and without becoming cynical about everything is pretty difficult. It is also very important, in fact, I think it IS adult faith development! That is, adult faith development is: trusting God, seeing the world clearly, and holding hope – all at the same time. Marcus Borg gives a model of how faith develops, and helps clarify the process all people have to go through:

Precritical naiveté is an early childhood state in which we take it for granted that whatever the significant authority figures in our lives tell us to be true is indeed true. In this state (if we grow up in a Christian setting), we simply hear the stories of the Bible as true stories. …

Critical thinking begins in late childhood and early adolescence. One does not need to be an intellectual or go to college for this kind of thinking to develop. Rather, it is a natural stage of human development; everybody enters it. In this stage, consciously or quite unconsciously, we sift through what we learned as children to see how much of it we should keep. …

Postcritical naiveté is the ability to hear the biblical stories once again as true stories, even as one knows that they may not be factually true and that their truth does not depend upon their factuality. … Importantly, postcritical naiveté is not a return to precritical naiveté. It brings critical thinking with it. It does not reject the insights of historical criticism but integrates them into a larger whole.³

These ideas are larger than simply how we read the Bible. They apply to life in general. Pre-critical naiveté then, is trusting that God will make everything OK. Critical thinking comes when we acknowledge that lots of things aren’t OK at all. And then post-critical naiveté is the time of trusting in God and seeing the world clearly and holding onto hope.

Now, I think that during his ministry, Jesus was clearly living in post-critical naiveté. He knew EXACTLY how broken things were AND he trusted in God and worked to make them better. If I’m honest, I tend to think of Jesus as being born in post-critical naiveté, but that’s probably not really true! Mark says that Jesus came to Galilee (the location of the majority of his ministry) and started talking. He said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Throughout all of my study of the Bible, I have come to believe that Jesus’ words here are the thesis statement of his ministry, and thus of both the New Testament and the Body of Christ.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Because it can easily get confusing, let’s review what repentance is. Repent most literally means, “turn around” or “change direction.” I love my friend Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green’s take on it; she says it means to “turn around, look at God, look where God is looking, and refocus attention where God is looking.” In context, then, repentance is calling people to turn away from the ways of the world (domination, oppression, competition, hierarchy, etc) and turn TO the ways of God (cooperation, collaboration, mutuality, support, solidarity, etc).

Because it is the key to everything about Jesus, let’s review the idea of the kindom of God. The kindom of God is the world as God would have it be, when all people are able to survive and thrive, when abundance and sharing define the ways of life, when justice comes naturally to people, when things are exactly as they should be. That is, when we can look reality squarely in the eye and see nothing wrong at all. Building the kindom of God was the work of Jesus, and is the work of the Body of Christ today. Our theologians tell us that it is both “fulfilled” and “not here in entirely yet.” It is what God is working WITH us in creating, and it exists in moments and instances, but not yet as the earth’s reality.

To be fair, I think this whole thesis statement, and in fact this whole kindom of God thing is a form of circular logic. That is, repenting and refocusing on God and on God’s kindom IS the thing that builds the kindom – it doesn’t happen unless people do it. Believing that God’s way is good news, thus taking on the good news itself as a way of life is the way of making the good news into reality. Living as though the time is now is what fulfills the time.

I’m OK with it being circular logic though. Mostly because I believe it 😉 I also think this means that paying attention to the stuff in life that ALREADY is a glimpse of the kindom is one of the ways that we build it. And I think it is fitting, somehow, that this system only works if we trust that it works – it feels like the rest of faith.

Or, to put it more sufficiently, one scholar wrote, “Right away Jesus not only talks about the reign of God but enacts it.”⁴ This scholar explains himself saying, “Mark’s brief account of the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry links Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel with his calling of a band of disciples. These activities are by no means unrelated. Jesus’ proclamation is not just a solo recitation of informative words but is an efficacious action that creates community and is taken up and continued by that community.”⁵ Now here is the key to it all. This same scholar says, “wherever Jesus was active, the time was fulfilled and the kingdom was present.”⁶

Now this caught my attention. If wherever Jesus was active, the time was therefore fulfilled and the kindom was therefore present, then does that mean that when we are truly acting out the ministry of Jesus – sharing God’s love with our neighbors – that the kindom is present with us too? Are we able to, together, create the kindom of God – at least in small times and places?

I think we ARE!!!

I see it often enough. I see love being shared in extraordinary ways, I see transformation happening that doesn’t really seem possible, I see hope created in the things we do together, as well as laughter and healing. I see the kindom when we are together as the Body of Christ, it really IS present and the time is fulfilled.

This is humbling to realize, although it is also inspiring! It does lead me to some new questions: when and how are we most successful in having kindom moments? When aren’t we? How can we attend to them well so that we can appreciate them? What keeps us from creating even more kindom moments? How can we change those realities? Is the creating the kindom more work, or play? Is it about authenticity? Does it require community or can it happen with just one? Does it have to happen AND be noticed to have the most impact, or if we miss it, is it OK?

And finally, how is it that the kindom of God can co-exist in the world with the brokenness that is our current reality? (I think that’s just a reality of non-linearity.)

If Jesus, in his life, made the kindom into reality in his present; and if we as the Body of Christ continue his ministry in our shared lives; then we get to make the kindom into reality in our present. How cool is that???

During the passing of the peace today, I ask that you talk to each other about the kindom – when you’ve seen it, felt it, heard it – I think talking about it makes it even more real. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And, keep on paying attention when you see the kindom. Not only does it take away disillusionment, it also builds the kindom itself. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Marsha Wilfong, Exegetical Reflections on Psalm 65:5-12 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 275.

2 Timothy A. Beach-Verhey, Theological Reflections on Psalm 65:5-12 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 274.

3Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (HarperSanFransicso: 2001) 49-50.

4Lee Barrett, Theological Reflections on Mark 1:14-20 found in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 286.

5Barrett, 284.

6Barrett, 286.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

January 21, 2018

Sermons

“Sin and Repentance (What!?)” Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

December 11, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

My natural instinct, when I hear the word sin, is to stick my fingers in my ears and sing a song approximating “la la la, I can’t hear you.” For the most part, this is not particularly productive. 😉 For the most part. 😉

To a certain degree, I think it is justifiable. Too much of Christianity focuses on individual sin: on guilt, the need forgiveness, and the threat of punishment for said sins. While this doesn’t seem to go back to Jesus, it does have a long history in the church. In fact, this fear based scheme has been a primary funding tool for churches for a REALLY long time. Churches who claim the exclusive power to offer God’s forgiveness have usually offered it with a price tag.

Thus, within the church, sin language has sounded like manipulation, for the purpose of controlling people, that mostly prevents the full and abundant lives that God ACTUALLY wants from us. Furthermore, focusing on individual sins keeps us from having time, energy, and passion to dismantle the CORPORATE sins of institutions and our society at large. (Like, for example, churches manipulating people to get their money.) Since I don’t believe God intends for us to be motivated by fear, and I don’t think good comes from guilt nor shame I really don’t buy into the standard logic on this topic. I do believe we need Divine Grace, but not to prevent us from condemnation in hell; more because all of us seek love and acceptance in our lives and knowing that God is already there loving and accepting us is a very good start to healthy living.

For many people the assumptions about sin, punishment, forgiveness, and God are the CORE of their faith; they think it IS Christianity. Thus, I often disengage from the word, and just tone it out. Tearing down people’s faith isn’t a good thing. However, what serves me well running in Christian circles does not serve me nearly as well when I’m working with the Bible. The Bible doesn’t mean “sin” the way that mainstream Christianity does. When I block my ears from the word, I often miss important things in the text.

All of this is to confess that in all the years I’ve read this Gospel passage, I’ve always mentally skipped over the lines, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” (NRSV)

Suddenly, now, it occurs to me to wonder what sins they’re talking about and why. And suddenly, it becomes clear that Mark is quoting Isaiah, and the context of Isaiah might make sense of Mark … and this might actually be a very important question. (Which means I likely should have paid attention to this earlier.)

The Isaiah text today is the beginning of Second Isaiah, and this is the same text Mark quotes. The massive book of Isaiah (66 chapters) is believed to actually be three different prophets at three different times. The first speaks before the Exile, warning about it. Second Isaiah speaks in the immediate aftermath. The Exile is the name for the defeat and conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire in 587 BCE. At that time, after a long siege, the city fell, and atrocious violence resulted. Many were killed, the city’s walls and temple were destroyed, and the remaining leaders were taken into captivity in Babylon. This was the Exile. It lasted 70 years by the shortest counts.

First Isaiah contains many dire warnings about what will happen if the systems don’t change. Second Isaiah represents a huge change in tone in the book starting with the words, “Comfort, O Comfort my people says your God.” Into the immediate aftermath of the horror, the prophet speaks words of comfort and hope. The people generally assumed that their military defeat was a punishment from God, and into that assumption is spoken a declaration that the punishment has ended. It is followed by a vision of God in action, making it easy for those who were forcibly marched as captives to Babylon to walk home with ease and safety. It is this that is quoted in Mark, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Then comes the “comfort” of a reminder that those who oppress will also fade, that oppression will not stand. Finally, our passage evokes God as Shepherd King, gathering the people, leading them, feeding them, and carrying them home.

All of this is evoked in Mark. It is as if the people feel like they are back in Exile and are needing God’s help finding their way home – again. The people are experiencing oppression from an outside force, and presumably many of them are now wondering if this oppression is a punishment from God, and therefore if there is a need to repent in order for God to restore them once again. If that experience of being dominated by Rome felt like the experience of being dominated by Babylon in the Exile, then it makes sense that the same theological reasoning would apply to both. Under this perspective, John the Baptist was there to make that repentance possible, and therefore change the reality of oppression.

Now, the ancient Jews, like their descendants today and the Bible itself, focused on COMMUNAL sin: on the injustices of society, on the systemic harm done to the vulnerable, on practices that harmed the weak, on systems that kept some down and some on top of them, etc. Those prophets of old were consistently accusing the kings of abusing their power, of forgetting that their power existed to care for the vulnerable and disempowered. The prophets, time and time and time again, reminded those in power that God had envisioned a just society; and warned that instead it had become exploitative.

Those prophets kept saying that if things didn’t change, the society would not be able to hold up its own weight. This may be why most of the people interpreted the Exile as God’s punishment, even though the prophets saw it simply as a consequence. But since this was a common understanding of how the world works, and since the people in the time of Jesus were living lives of oppression and exploitation from an external empire, it seems likely that they would be aware again of their communal sin and be seeking ways to reconnect with God who was known to act to restore their holistic communal life.

And this John the Baptist guy, he gave them a way to do it. Furthermore, the Temple at that point was understood to be the place to seek forgiveness, but the Temple had been appropriated by the Roman Empire and no longer truly existed to serve God OR the people. In fact, it may have been more of a source of manipulating the people than serving anyone. John had taken power and authority that was assumed to belong to Temple, and was using it to give people a way to connect to God who might act to change their oppression.

This is the man who will baptize Jesus. That means, this is the man who Jesus looked to as teacher. They really were working with some powerful and dangerous ideas! No wonder the Empire felt threatened.

As I’ve reflected on these texts and the themes of Exile and Return, I’ve wondered how those themes fit our lives. Do we feel like we are in Exile even within our own country like the Jews of Jesus day did? There are certainly many ways that is true. And we yearn for the restoration of the country as we thought we knew it and as we think it should be. There are many within our country who do not experience its benefits, who also have reason to identify primary with the Exile.

There are also ways that we might identify with the Babylonians, the captors. This is less comfortable, but sometimes it is true anyway. As citizens of the country with the world’s most significant military might, we might admit that our country is like Babylon to many. Or, we might consider the impacts of unfettered capitalism on the world, of patriarchy, and of white supremacy. Each of these are forms of Exile, and to the extend that we are parts of groups that benefit from them, we are the captors.

Oppression dehumanizes everyone involved. As much as the ancient Jews yearned for God’s actions to free them from oppression, if the Babylonians (and Romans) had known what was good for them, they would have yearned for the same. The Exiles repented in hopes of changing their reality of being oppressed. The Babylonians needed the same change too – but with far less awareness of their need. Everyone was dehumanized, and everyone needed freedom from the system. Please note that the same amount of harm was not done to oppressed and oppressor, but at the same time the oppressor was dehumanized to the extent that they dehumanized others. Does that make sense?

For example, I’m saying that while slavery did most of its harm to the slaves, the actions of dehumanizing the slaves inherently marred the humanity of the slave owners. The slave owners may have thought they were reaping benefits, and financially they were, but significant and yet invisible damage was done to their … to their souls and their humanity. That damage lives on, still harming individuals and the collective today in the form of racism.

So, if what God seeks is people who are living full and abundant lives with their humanity (and their souls) intact, then God inherently is seeking a world without oppression. Throughout many eras, God’s people have repented in hopes of transforming oppression. To repent, as the word comes from the Hebrew, means “change of mind.”¹ Getting out of the mindset of oppression is an imperative initial step of changing it, from either side. (Thought it is VERY rare that transformation from oppression comes from oppressors who reap the visible gain from the system.) That opportunity that John the Baptist was giving individuals to repent of their communal sin is looking better and better.

It does turn out that most of us HAVE gotten to particulate in (at least a variation of) John the Baptisms ritual. 😉 I know, I know, I’m just a font of novel information. As previously mentioned, I’m usually squirmy about “sin” language, and thus I haven’t always been the biggest fan of the first two baptism questions in the UMC. However, as they come to focus with this story, they might be waaaaay more awesome than I thought. Hear them again:

Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin? Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?²

These baptismal vows offer us a way to “change our minds” from the oppressive ways of the world, and live in freedom from oppression. They give us a chance to reject the systems of injustice. They let us dream of and be part of the the world we want to build. They free us from the power of sin that keeps us stuck in oppressive systems, and lead us to freedom for ourselves and for all people.

The best part is, as United Methodists, we believe that baptism is a God’s good gift given to us and humans cannot, ever, in any way, mess it up. So, that freedom from sin and that opportunity to repent from systems of oppression so that we can live in (and MODEL) freedom – that’s with all us for the long run. We can always have access. We are never cut off. Thanks be to God, for messages of sin and repentance that lead us to freedom from oppression. May we lean into our baptismal vows and use the power God gives us to live lives of freedom for ourselves and those around us. Amen

1W. Tatum Barnes “John the Baptist and Jesus: a report of the Jesus Seminar” (Polebridge Press: Sonoma, CA, 1994) page 122.

2In this case, I got these from: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/the-baptismal-covenant-iv so I didn’t have to type them, on December 6, 2017.

–

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

Sermons

“Here, in the Brokenness” based on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark…

December 3, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but things are not as they should
be. Actually, I suspect you have noticed it, but it feels like time
to explicitly name two of the very many ways in which this is true.

First
of all, our society is and has been awash in sexual harassment and
assault. Many, many men have used whatever power and influence they
have in the world for their own pleasure at the expense of others,
most often women. This is not news, per say, and yet there is
something happening.

This
is much like the impact of the #BlackLivesMatter movement on police
brutality, it isn’t that any of the behaviors are new or different,
it is that suddenly people are paying attention to the atrocities,
and calling for accountability en masse. Important and powerful men
have been removed from the positions they’ve used abusively. The
status quo is being interrupted, and that’s good.

Yet,
it isn’t good enough. This week I had the incredible joy of holding
the youngest member of our church family in my arms. (It is GOOD to
be pastor.) I wanted to be able to promise her a world where she
wouldn’t know sexual harassment or assault, where she will be safe to
be whoever she is, where-ever she wants to be, no matter who is
nearby, all the time. The yearning that I had to offer her that
world clarified how very far we are from it, AND how desperately
needed it is.

Secondly,
we live in a country that accepts poverty as a necessary component of
life. Based on our policies, it is OK if people are hungry –
whether they are working or not, whether they’ve applied for SNAP
benefits or not, whether they are children or adults. Based on our
policies, it is OK if people are homeless, and if a person struggles
with addiction – by our policies – it is almost as if they don’t
deserve to be housed. Based on our policies, only people who can
afford to pay for it deserve the right to health care. Based on our
policies, it is acceptable for those without money to be
misrepresented or underrepresented in court, and spend time in jail
for crimes they didn’t commit. Based on our current policies, not
even children have a right to health care.

All
of these are choices, choices that we have made as a society about
what we value and who we value. Budgets are moral documents, budgets
indicate what an organization really values. Our society values the
growth of the economy, the growth of our exceptional military might,
and the flow of wealth from the bottom to the top OVER the capacity
to care for the vulnerable, the elimination of hunger, the
accessibility of health care, the safety of housing, or the fairness
of the courts.

Things
are NOT as they should be, and those were just two examples. There
are many ways that things are not as they should be.

This
is not the first time in history that this has been true. According
to Marcus Borg, the earliest human societies did not have significant
wealth differentiation nor oppression. The first two types of
societies were hunter gatherer and early horticultural. About them,
Borg says, “Differentials of wealth and power were minor.”¹
However, once full fledged agricultural societies developed about
5000 years ago, it became possible to generate wealth. In the time
of Jesus agriculture was the primary form of wealth.²
Borg calls the system at the time of Jesus the preindustrial
agricultural domination system.³
As far as I can tell, a few
things have changed since the time of Jesus: we’re now industrial or
post industrial and wealth is no longer primarily acquired through
agriculture.

Domination
systems that have oppressed the many for the sake of the few have
been the norm in the world since the development of full-scale
agriculture. The pieces of the world that concern me the most are
all parts of domination systems, ways that the systems are rigged
against the majority of the population for the benefit of a small
minority. David Graeber, in “Debt: A History of the first 5000
years” theorizes that the world’s major religions have all emerged
as a a response to the particular ways that domination systems
existed in their parts of the world.⁴
I’m going to take a stronger theological stance on that and say that
God has been at work in the world to disrupt domination systems as
long as they have existed, and the particular forms of that work have
been formalized into religious traditions.

We
hear in the texts today the same yearnings we know in our lives for
the world as it SHOULD be rather than the world as it is. These
texts feel familiar to me, to the depths of my soul. The Hebrew
Bible text doesn’t JUST come from Isaiah, who is my favorite, it
comes from third Isaiah – the last 7 chapters of the book – which
is the very best part of Isaiah. The prophet speaks of deep yearning
for God’s presence, a presence that would change reality from its
brokenness to its fulness. The prophet remembers times that God has
felt present and has made things better. The prophet celebrates that
God is one who cares about how the people treat each other, and yet
bemoans that God feels very far away. In fact, the prophet worries
that God is angry because the people have so profoundly mistreated
each other, and made peace with a society of deep injustice. The
prophet suggests that because God isn’t changing reality, they are
stuck living in the mess they made, without God delivering them from
it, and that isn’t OK at all.

Oh
Isaiah, how can you speak from so long ago truths that can still
sting with truth? I’m sometimes frightened that texts from 2500
years ago are still so accurate, which means that domination systems
haven’t lost their grip even as they’ve changed their ways.

At
first glance, or first hearing, or for me first 100 hearings, Mark
doesn’t sound like he is saying the same thing. Luckily, there are
those among you who share things with me when they seem useful, and
one of you sent me a reflection that opened my eyes to this text.⁵

This
passage in Mark appears just before the passion narrative begins,
Mark is using this text as a foreshadowing of the meaning of the
death and resurrection of Jesus. Like the passion narrative, it will
start in the night and shake the powers of the world. David Luce
writes, “Mark,
in other words, isn’t pointing us to a future apocalypse
(“revealing”) but rather a present one, as Christ’s death and
resurrection change absolutely everything.”⁶
For the gospel writer of Mark, the yearning represented in Isaiah is
FULFILLED by Jesus. For the gospel writer, Jesus is the presence of
God in the world changing things from how they are to how they should
be. At the same time, as Christians today, we know that the work
Jesus did in the world wasn’t completed in his life, but is ours to
continue as the current Body of Christ.

So,
the gospel writer speaks of things being pretty bad: suffering, the
sun and moon no longer giving the world light, the stars falling to
nothingness. In the midst of that horror, Jesus will break in and
transform it all. The gospel writer encourages people to be looking
for the signs that hope is about to break into the brokenness. The
gospel writer, I think, is hoping to encourage people in the midst of
some very bad days, to understand the brokenness itself as a sign
that things were about to change.

It
is hard, nearly 2000 years later, with all the brokenness that has
been between then and now to be as certain that the change is right
on the horizon. The yearning is easy to connect with. The hope is
imperative to connect with, the but the time frame is harder to buy
into.

I
do think that God is present with us, and that God is ever working
for justice, for dismantling the domination systems, for transforming
the world as it is into the kindom itself. While we seem pretty
resilient to God’s work, and while many things as are broken around
us, I’m told by historians who have a broader view than I do that big
and amazing things have gotten better.

Some
things aren’t all that new, but are pretty cool anyway. The
experiment in universal public education that started in
Massachusetts has had a huge impact on the world and its literacy.
All of those hospitals that various churches started over the
centuries have had an amazing impact in global health and longevity.

According
to the annual letter from the Gates Foundation (one of my favorite
reads), in the past 25 years childhood mortality rates for kids under
5 have dropped by 50%! Most of these preventable deaths have been
prevented because global vaccine access has increased, and 86% of the
world’s kids are now adequately vaccinated. The Gates Foundation
says that 300 million women in the developing world now have access
to and use contraception, which increases maternal and child health,
decreases childhood morality rates, increases education, and lowers
poverty. These 300 million women represent over half of the women
seeking to have it, but they’re actively working on it, and the
problem will be cut by over half again by 2020! As a reminder as
well, since 1990, worldwide extreme poverty (living on less than $2 a
day) has been cut in HALF.⁷

The
news that we hear mostly focuses on the broken, and in the past year
entirely too much of my attention has been on the broken. We live in
a world of domination systems, and many many things are broken. At
the same time, God IS at work in the world, working with people, and
together we are making many things better.

Dear
ones, the world is broken, and things are not as they should be.

AND

God
is at work in the world, there are many things that are getting
better, and the work we do matters.

It
is all true. And here in the brokenness, we yearn for God’s kindom
to come, just as Isaiah did, just as Mark did, and as God’s people
have through the ages. May the day come when the yearning is
fulfilled. Amen

1Marcus
Borg, “Jesus:
Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary” (USA:
HarperOne, 2006) 79-80. (Quote
on 80.)

2Borg,
80-81.

3Borg,
79.

4David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011), p. 83.

5David
Luce, email/blog entitled “…In the Meantime” Posted: 27
Nov 2017 07:50 AM PST Found at
http://www.davidlose.net/2017/11/advent-1-b-a-present-tense-advent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28…In+the+Meantime%29.

6Luce.

7Bill
and Melinda Gates “Dear Warren: Our 2017 Annual Letter” written
February 14, 2017
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO
accessed December 2, 2017.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

December 3, 2017

Sermons

“Shepherds and Salvation” based on Matthew 25:31-46 and Ezekiel…

November 26, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today
is “Christ the King” Sunday, sometimes called “Reign of Christ
Sunday.” It is the last Sunday of the Christian Liturgical year,
the completion of the annual cycle of remembrance and growth. Next
Sunday we start a new year of remembering and recreating with the
beginning of a new Advent. I often skip these texts, and this
topic. Most years the hierarchy of monarchy and patriarchy of
kingship combined with ridiculously high Christology are enough to
turn my stomach. Many years Thanksgiving gives me a way out.

This
year I heard the texts and the topic with a different energy. This
year I heard them speak about leadership, and I heard them speaking
about leadership in a radically different way than it is normally
spoken of. As I continued to reflect on the texts, I was reminded
that not everyone identifies as a leader, but we all lead. Much of
the leadership in human history and even today has been about
CONTROL, and about having power OVER other humans. God doesn’t call
anyone into that sort of leadership. God calls us into relationships
with each other, and leadership in that vein is about shared
empowerment. That is, I think that there are leadership components
in every relationship, even (if I’m honest) the relationship we have
with ourselves. That is, within each of us there are various needs,
desires, and values vying for control, and some of the work of our
lives is to balance each of those so that good is maximized – thus
there is leadership within.

Unfortunately,
often relationship between people are centered on control, instead of
on mutual benefit, listening, and affection. Those relationships
reflect a system of broken leadership, utterly unlike the idea of the
reign of God – which is also called the kindom of God.

It
seems at times that we don’t spend adequate focus on the kindom of
God. You may disagree, and that’s OK! However, since the kindom is
mentioned twice in the Lord’s Prayer, and is said to be the ACTUAL
messages that Jesus preached in his ministry, I don’t think is is
possible to focus on it too much.

Together,
we spend a few sermons focusing on it in 2014, and I want to bring
back some of the ideas we talked about then. They seem really
central to our faith, and it has been a while (and not everyone was
here then.) Both then, and now, I think this quote from Rev. Dr.
John Cobb is the most important thing I can share to bring the idea
of the kindom of God into clarity:

“Jesus
did not do away with the future tense. We still pray for its coming.
Clearly there is no earthly political region (basileia) that realizes
this ideal. Nevertheless, what is different in Jesus message is that
this ideal is already being realized. He says it is ‘at hand.’ Even
in his lifetime, to follow him was to take part in this new reality.
His table fellowship already realized it.”¹
“Jesus understood his message to be the proclamation
of the kingdom of heaven understood as a great opportunity or
blessing, not as a terrifying judgment. … ’The kingdom is
“at hand.” The requirement for being part of that kingdom is that
one change the basic way one thinks and lives. … Even more
important in my view is that a “basileia” need not be
hierarchically governed at all. Of course, the “basileia” Jesus
proclaimed involved God’s will being done. But when we read the
beatitudes, to take but one example, we may be struck by the
absence of one saying that those who obey God’s laws are blessed.
The first one, for example, says “blessed are the poor in
spirit,” and it goes on to say explicitly that “for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” (Mt.5:3) There is nothing here to indicate that
we should understand that the government of the divine
“basileia” would be like that of an earthly
kingdom, simply with God replacing the earthly ruler. That may have
been the theology of the translators of the New Testament, but there
is no reason to attribute it to Jesus. Jesus prayed to God as “abba”
of “papa.” Papa cares deeply how his children behave but even
more for their true happiness. The basileia of abba is
not a “kingdom.” I know of not perfect translation, but I am
fully convinced that “commonwealth” is better than “kingdom.”
One of the ways in which Jesus called people to change their thinking
was away from the hierarchical mindset that expresses itself in
“kingdom.”²

While
I REALLY like the idea of the commonwealth of God, or the basileia, I
most often use the phrase “kindom of God.” I use it because it
is identifiable as related to the “kingdom of God” and also names
a different dream – the dream of the time when all the world will
live in justice and peace because all people will treat each other as
kin. If there is any meaning to Christ being KING, it is that this
sort of kindom is what the Body of Christ is working on building.

By
the way, this kindom of God is language from the New Testament, but
it isn’t something that really started with Jesus. Jesus preaching
was continuous with and based on the visions of God from the Hebrew
Bible. Rev. Dr. Cobb
connects the prophetic tradition with Jesus’ kindom message saying,

“Jesus
calls us uncompromisingly to enter the prophetic tradition of Israel,
the one long-lasting tradition in human history that calls for a
reversal of the social, political and economic values that are
otherwise universally accepted. True wisdom is not what is taught in
universities. True wealth is not material possessions. True power is
not the ability to force people to do one’s will. Communities based
on this deep reversal are “at hand.” We can take part in them as
a foretaste of God’s hope for the whole world. Jesus understood his
mission to be to proclaim and realize this possibility.”³

That
all being said, the work of the Body of Christ to build the kindom
may make more sense in the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, as
he preached it,

“We
shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force.
Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot
in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation
with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and
threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded
perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and
beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be
ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One
day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so
appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the
process and our victory will be a double victory.”⁴

In
their own ways, our texts today also point to the kindom of God. The
Gospel lesson has long annoyed me, mostly because it seems to assume
that salvation has to do with afterlife, and I simply don’t think
that reflects the authentic Jesus. The Jesus Seminar colored this
text black (vindication!!), indicating that they don’t think it
reflects the actual words or ideas of Jesus, but rather of the early
Christian community.

The
text is worried about the care of “the least of these” which is
part of what the kindom of God is all about. One scholar points out
that of the ways that the sheep and goats were judged, “The first
five actions were typical Jewish acts of mercy. (Jews did not use
imprisonment as punishment.)”⁵
Matthew thought that while those early Christians were waiting for
Jesus to come back, they should act in continuity with good living as
both Jesus and the Jews had understood it. That scholar connects
these commandments even more strongly to the kindom, saying, “Jesus
teaches that God’s reign, the full revelation of which we await –
is characterized in the present, not by powerful works and miracles,
but by deeds of love, mercy, and compassion, especially toward those
most in need.”⁶

Our
Ezekiel passage understands salvation to be healing for the whole
community, not a particular form of afterlife. (Phew) It sees all of
us as sheep – some overfed and some underfed- but all the same.
This text speaks of a God who wants justice, not punishment. There
is a bit of punishment in it, but even within that, God’s concern is
for caring for the afflicted! This passage comes after an extended
metaphor about the leaders of Israel being like bad shepherds who
don’t care for their sheep. Here, God claims that God will shepherd
the people directly, since the human leaders have failed them so
badly. Historically, this passage is placed within the exile, and
Ezekiel is speaking hope to the people in a time and place when hope
itself is a form of resistance!

God
wants the people well led, so
that justice and love define their lives together. In both the
Gospel and in Ezekiel we see the concern God has in how ALL of the
people are treated, especially the vulnerable. God wants the people
to have good leaders, who care about the vulnerable, who care about
the well-being of the whole community, who are using the resources
they have for the COMMUNAL well-being instead of just using the power
for their own enrichment. The Bible, time and time again, calls on
leaders and on the justice system to be FAIR, and JUST, and to make
sure the vulnerable have a fair chance. It really is a different
idea of what leadership is than I tend to see in the world at large.

We,
all of us, are called into the kindom, which is build on people
believing in an alternative set of values – values of cooperation,
values of shared joy, values of hope, a refusal to discount the full
humanity of anyone, of peaceful resistance, of trust in God. The
kindom one where all the sheep are well-cared for. It requires
leadership, and it requires it of all of us. We have to let go of
the idea of power over others or control of them, that isn’t the way
of God. Enforcing our will isn’t leadership. Caring about each
other’s well-being, listening and responding, that’s leadership. As
Jesus said, the kindom is at hand. We are called to be leaders of the
kindom. May we learn the values well, and teach them with our lives.
Amen

1 Dr.
John Cobb “Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
accessed
on February 1, 2014.

2 Dr.
John Cobb “Third
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2014-01-26/third-sunday-after-epiphany
accessed on January 25, 2014.

3 Dr.
John Cobb “Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany” Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary,
http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2014-02-02/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany
accessed
on February 1, 2014.

4
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King A
Christmas Sermon for Peace on Dec 24, 1967

5 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ “Exegetical Perspective on Matthew 25:31-46” in
Feasting on the World Year A Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and
Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Westminster John Knox Press:
Louisville, KY, 2011) 335

6 Thomas
D. Stegman, SJ, 337

–

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

Sermons

“Noticing What Has Gone Well” based on Deuteronomy 8:7-18

November 20, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

As far as I can tell, gratitude is imperative to a holistic spiritual life. It might be the most important component. While this is something we know intuitively, recent research has emphasized its importance. Gratitude practices can change our perspectives, lighten our moods, and help us feel more at peace in the world. (This seems good, right? We might need this, especially now.)

One of you had a friend who had a wonderful practice: every day she took a moment to write down the thing she was most grateful for on a slip of paper and put it in a vase. On New Year’s Eve she read them, one by one, and reflected on her year. I love the double blessing of this: both the practice of paying attention each day and the opportunities to review the good parts of a year.

At the core, I am aware of two very different motivations for faith. It seems to me that many people are motivated by fear, and that sort of religion has never been interesting to me. The other choice seems to be a motivation of gratitude: that because of being loved by God, and being grateful, we choose to love in return (because that’s what God asks of us.)

Indeed, I think gratitude is at the very core of faith itself. Which is why I want to spend today looking at its ugly underbelly. Gratitude matters too much to be blind to how it can be misused.

The Deuteronomy text gives us a way to look at some of the underside of gratitude. This is a text suggested for the celebration of Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and it cuts off the chapter two verses from the end. When it is read as suggested, it makes some important points. Like the rest of the book of Deuteronomy, this text is concerned about the complacency that comes with wealth and well-being.

The idea is that the people learned to depend on God in the desert, when all they had to eat was manna, and even access to water limited and based on God’s will. (This is their story, I might choose to tell it differently, but it is their story.) Once they got into the land with its abundances of gifts, they might forget that they are just as dependent on God in the Promised Land as they were in the desert. From manna to wheat and barley, vines and fig trees and pomegranates, olive trees, and honey and an abundance of water! As Ronald Clements puts it in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “It is precisely this richness and abundance that is seen as a temptation to forget God and the divine commandments.”¹ Or, as Walter Brueggemann puts it in his commentary on Deuteronomy, “A gift kept long enough begins to seem like a possession.”²

The text is deeply concerned that having access to wealth will lead the people to think they’ve earned the good lives they have, and that it will lead them away from God. Now, I think Deuteronomy is concerned about complacency because of the Exile. That is, the book was written down in the form it is is now after the people had lost the land, their power, and many of their people. They were trying to figure out what they could have done differently to prevent that from happening, and when they looked backward, they were concerned that they’d become complacent. They thought they should have remembered the desert, and the dependence on God, and remained grateful.

However, the text doesn’t really end where we left it. The final two verses in this section are, “If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.” These lines raise much deeper concerns about gratitude for me. You see, the story of the Bible is that God gave the Promised Land to the ancient Israelites.

Furthermore, the Bible acknowledges that there were ALREADY PEOPLE living in the land when God decided to give it to “the people,” and the Bible says that God lead the ancient Israelites to kill them off so the ancient Israelites could have the land instead. Believe it or not, there is both good news and bad news on this front.

The good news is that the killing off of all the people in the land didn’t actually happen. We know this in at least two important ways: the first is that for the rest of the Bible’s history we hear the challenges of living intermingled with the people of the land, the ones who didn’t follow God. That indicates they weren’t all killed off. Secondly, archeological research has looked at the cities that existed in the land at that time, and they simply weren’t concurred or destroyed. (So, no, Joshua did NOT fight the battle of Jericho, but that’s a story for another day.) Addison Wright, a Catholic Biblical Scholar, thinks it was most likely that a very small band of nomadic people had an exceptionally profound experience of the divine in the desert – a God who cared about how people treated each other; when they got to a land they wanted to settle in they told their story; and the people in that place were moved by the story and choose to claim it as their own. Thus the origins of ancient Israel was a mixture of the native people of the land and those who entered it with the God-story.

That’s the good news. Now for the bad news. The history of North and South America was formed by the Bible’s meta-narrative about God’s Promised Land and the right of those with might to take it from those who already lived on it. The Bible speaks of God giving the land to God’s people, including God giving the people military victory. It sounds horribly like Manifest Destiny, doesn’t it? While the mass killing of ancient Palestine didn’t happen, the mass killing in the Americas most certainly did, and it was justified with these Biblical stories.

(The Bible is a very scary weapon.)

This week, as our nation celebrates Thanksgiving, we remember with gratitude the Native people’s generosity in sharing their food to keep the early European settlers alive. Our country’s narrative usually ends there (or at least that’s how I learned it as a child), and ignores that the European settlers responded to this generosity with mass murder, justified by the Bible. According to A People’s History of the United States, “The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalm 2:8, ‘Ask of me and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’ And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2, ‘Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.’”³

Personally, I am grateful for the Native Americans who fed those settlers, and helped them make it through the winter. At the same time, gratitude alone seems insufficient when looking at the larger story. Telling the story as I was taught it as a child glosses over a much larger story of genocide, one justified with our faith tradition, one whose impacts are still very much alive in the Native American people and their descendants today.

As a descendant of those Pilgrims, how can I claim gratitude for the actions of the Native people without letting that gratitude turn into complacency for the profound harm that was also a part of the story? As a faith descendant of those ancient Israelites, how do I make sense of their stories of violence in the name of God, and the justification of violence that has come from those stories? And how do I hold that in tension with my gratitude for the text itself and the stories of faith? As a person of relative wealth in the world, how do I do more than justify complacency with gratitude?

There are even DEEPER questions under all of this. As people of faith, we often talk about the good gifts God has given us: people who love us, abilities we have, food, shelter, etc. Yet, when we attribute those good gifts to God, how do we make sense of people who are lonely, those with disabilities, people who doesn’t have food or shelter? Does our gratitude for what we do have blind us to the fact that God loves people without just as much as God loves us? How can we be grateful without being blind to the struggles of others of God’s children? How do we make sense of the different struggles people face? And how much do we attribute to God?

Do we want to claim that God gives all good gifts and that bad things in life are our own fault? Or the fault of society? Or of evil? Do we want to claim that God “has a plan” and that plan includes some people having and some not? Does all good come from God? And if so, why didn’t God attribute it more fairly? And where does the bad come from?

Furthermore, when does gratitude for one thing become a chain that binds people? For example, a person who is grateful to have enough income in their family is thus stuck in an abusive relationship by that very income?

All of this is to say that gratitude that is, I still think, the very core of our faith, can have a very complicated and noxious underbelly. While I worry about gratitude being a source of complacency, I also think that at its best gratitude can move us out of complacency. When we pay attention to what is GOOD in the world, we make space for more good. Sure, the good is often complicated, and needs further investigation. That needs to happen too. Nothing is pure, and we have to live in the complicated, even with gratitude. So, despite all the complications, may we pay attention and respond with gratitude! Amen

1Ronald Clements, Deuteronomy in the New Interpreter’s Bible Vol 2, (Nashville: Abingdon,1998) p. 356

2Walter Brueggemann, Deuteronomy (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 109.

3Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: First Perennial Classics, 2001), p. 14

–

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

November 19, 2017

Sermons

“The Merciful” based on 1 John 3:1-3 and Matthew…

November 5, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

There
is a timelessness to All Saints Sunday, similar to the spacelessness
to World Communion Sunday. On World Communion Sunday, as the Table
of Christ feeds people around the whole world, we are able to connect
to our siblings in faith without distance separating us. On All
Saints day we connect to those who went on before us, blessed us, and
entered the great cloud of witnesses. I often think of the great
cloud of witnesses as being not just around us, but under us – they
are the ones on whose shoulders we stand.

Some
of the saints we knew well, some of their names will be read today,
some of them predated us by too many years for us to know them by
name, and yet they form the great cloud of witnesses. This reminds
us, as well, that we are here only for a brief period of time in the
work of the church. Someday, we too, will be part of the cloud. The
generations march ever onward. The cloud will someday include us,
and those who aren’t even here yet! The generations march ever
onward. Today is a day of timelessness.

It
is also a day of timelessness in that grief slows down time, and time
can feel relentless. On All Saints Day we don’t JUST remember those
who went on before us, and take a moment to acknowledge them, we also
notice the heartbreak of grief and attend to each other in our
heartbreak. While it is wonderful to have a great cloud of witnesses
around us, most of us would rather have those we love right here with
us! We are thankful to God for their lives, but usually we really
wish we were able to share more time with them!

There
is a deep holiness to the All Saints celebration, deep enough that
there is mystery in it as well. In seeking to be faithful to the
lives of the Saints, the lectionary has given us rather mysterious
text as well. It seems simple, until you try to make sense of it!
Here are the useful bits I’ve learned about these so called
Beatitudes:

The
verbs really matter.
A
bunch of the individual “blessings” are quotes from the Hebrew
Bible.
A
lot of explanations exist to solve seeming contradictions

I’m
gonna explain each. First of all, the verbs. Those who speak Greek
say that a whole lot of effort is made into having the verbs be in
the form they’re in. Namely, that the statements say blessed ARE,
but then indicate a future reality (mostly). Furthermore, they
aren’t commandments, they are stated as facts. Finally, according to
Feasting on the Word, “In
Psalm 1 the Hebrew word translated in our English text by our word
‘blessing’ is the word ’ashar,
which means in its literal sense ‘to find the right road’. … This
is the meaning of ‘ashar in the nine uses of ‘blessed’” in the
Beatitudes.”¹
That means that these mean something like “You are on the right
road when you are poor in spirit.”²
Or, perhaps, “You who are merciful are on the right road, you will
receive mercy.” So each line says “this group of people is on
the right road – and this is where it will lead them in the
future.” These aren’t particularly normal verb constructions,
which is why they’re worth mentioning.

Now,
the Jesus Seminar thinks there is evidence to suggest that Jesus
likely said 4 of these blessings – because they show up in Luke and
Thomas. Those are: the poor in Spirit, those who grieve, those who
hunger and thirst (for righteousness), and those who are persecuted.
They think Matthew filled in the rest as a way to uphold the early
Christian Community.³
In both cases, the blessings have striking Hebrew Bible roots.

First
off, this text seems to be a reworking of Psalm 1, that being a Psalm
that talks about blessed people rather extensively (in the “to find
the right road” meaning). Regarding comfort to mourners, which the
Jesus Seminar thinks goes back to Jesus, that sounds a whole lot like
Isaiah 61:1-3, “The
spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to
the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the
day of vengeance of our God; to
comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland
instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle
of praise instead of a faint spirit.” Regarding meek inheriting,
which the Jesus Seminar thinks Matthew created, we hear it in Psalm
37:11, “But
the meek shall inherit the land, and delight in abundant prosperity.”

As
a whole, the lists of qualities of people sound like lists in the
Hebrew Bible that relate to who can enter the temple! There are
moral standards being held here, and they reflect the tradition they
grow from. For example,

Psalm
15:1-5

1 O Lord,
who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on
your holy hill?
2 Those
who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
and
speak the truth from their heart;
3 who
do not slander with their tongue,
and do no evil
to their friends,
nor take up a reproach against
their neighbours;
4 in
whose eyes the wicked are despised,
but who
honour those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even
to their hurt;
5 who do
not lend money at interest,
and do not take a
bribe against the innocent.
Those
who do these things shall never be moved.

Psalm
24:3-6 does the same. So, Jesus is REWORKING, or REMOLDING his own
tradition, and then Matthew is doing the same. Given those
realities, the really interesting pieces may be in what finally gets
included and excluded? Why were the poor in spirit, those who mourn,
the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are
persecuted for righteousness the groups of people who fit? Is it
because things were hard for peasants and things were hard for early
Christians? Or is there something deeper? (I don’t know, I’m just
wondering.)

Finally,
people have done a lot of work to try to understand this passage, as
it is one of the best known parts of the Bible while being rather
obscure. The New Interpreter’s Bible has points out, “Peacemakers
does not connote a passive attitude, but positive actions for
reconciliation.”⁴
(180, NIB) Marcus Borg explains some of the others:

“’Poor
in spirit’ almost certainly does not refer to well-to-do people who
are nevertheless spiritually poor, but to people whose material
poverty has broken their spirit. Moreover, ‘righteousness’ in the
Bible and Matthew does not mean personal rectitude, as it most often
does in modern English, but justice. ‘Those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness’ likely means ‘those who hunger and thirst
for justice.’ The meaning of
Mathew’s wording is thus similar and perhaps identical to what we
find in Luke, for it is the poor and hungry who yearn for justice.
In short, like the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes confirm that the
kingdom of God is both religious and political: it is God’s
kingdom, and it is a kingdom on earth
that involves a transformation of life for the poor and hungry.”⁵

Perhaps
that’s why these groups were included! Taken
together, the work of scholars establishes that these are meaningful
phrases that fit into the rest of Jesus’ teaching, and that they
aren’t meant to just be a mystery!

So,
these really are powerful teachings. As one scholar puts it, “In
none of the beatitudes is advice being offered for getting along in
this world, where mercy is more likely to be regarded as a sign of
weakness than to be rewarded in kind.”⁶
“Christianity is not a scheme to reduce stress, lose wight, advance
one’s career, or preserve one from illness. Christian faith,
instead, is a way of living based on the firm and sure hope that
meekness is the way of God, that righteousness and peace will finally
prevail, and that God’s future will be a time of mercy and not
cruelty.”⁷
The Beatitudes continue in the tradition of differentiating the ways
of God – justice, righteousness, peace, well-being for all – with
the ways of the world. The values the Beatitudes celebrate are not
at all the ones the world seeks, but they are the ones that build the
kin-dom.

On
All Saints we remember those who went on before us, and we remember
the ways that their lives followed God’s ways. On All Saints we
remember that they have shown us the right road, and that in doing so
they made it easier for us to travel it. We also remember that the
roads that we choose matter: they matter for the kin-dom itself, and
they matter for those who will come after us.

It
is a good road, this one that Jesus describes, it is a very different
road than others we could also choose to walk. It is a good thing we
have models who have walked the road ahead of us – and continue to
walk it with us as the great cloud of witnesses. Amen

–

1Earl
F. Palmer “Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 5:1-12” in Feasting
on the World Year A Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and Barbara
Brown Taylor, editors (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY,
2011) 238.

2Palmer,
238.

3Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), page 138.

4M.
Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII: Matthew
Leander E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1995), page 180.

5Marcus
Borg, Jesus: The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious
Revolutionary (HarperOne:
2015), 190-191.

6Boring,
179.

7Boring,
181.

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