“Allowing the Boys to Live” based on Exodus 1:8-22

October 9, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the people are reminded that they were once slaves in Egypt. It is used to explain the Sabbath, or maybe just to explain why servants get to have Sabbath too in Ancient Israelite society. It is used in the commandments to take care of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner as well. Basically, the people are reminded time and time again to have compassion for the vulnerable because they were once a vulnerable population.

However, there aren’t many stories about the people being enslaved in Egypt, this is one of the few. The ones that exist all revolve around Moses, and this story is the prelude to the story of Moses’ birth. It is very difficult to tell if there is any authentic memory underneath this story, because it is an old enough story that there really shouldn’t be and yet there are such epically profound truths in it about what it means to be an oppressed people and what subversiveness looks like from within oppression that it feels more true than most stories in the Bible. This story may not be a factual accounting of a particular incident in history, but because it contains so many larger truths, I’m going to treat it as if it is, and let it speak for itself.

According to the end of Genesis, the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob had all moved down to Egypt during a famine after Joseph had become the right hand person to the Pharaoh. Joseph had urged them to come down, where he could ensure that they would have sufficient food and land to be safe. The story explained that Joseph had interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream and predicted 7 years of excellent harvests followed by 7 years of famine. Pharaoh was so pleased that he elevated Joseph to the 2^nd highest office in the land, and while there Joseph reigned over an agricultural policy that completely impoverished the entire nation and brought their wealth into the Pharaoh’s hands. The people ended up selling their livestock, their land, and then themselves for access to Joseph’s grain stores.

So the same guy who “saved” his family did so while utterly destroying the people of the nation he was – supposedly – serving. The new Pharaoh “didn’t know Joseph” (the Bible suggests this story happened 400 years later, so that would be reasonable). However, it is a bit ironic that the Hebrews were enslaved by the people who one of their forefathers had masterminded enslaving.

Perhaps that suggests that oppression breeds oppression, and oppressors should be careful. In any case, by the premises of this story, by this time the Egyptians were in full fledge oppressor roles and the Hebrews were enslaved by them and oppressed by them.

In our Bible Study we were struck by the similarities between the story in Exodus and the experiences of slaves here in the United States. There is something universal about this story, and it strikes cords through the eons.

Puah and Shiphrah are midwives who are given an immoral order. They are to kill all the baby boys of their people. The names Puah and Shiphrah are classically Hebrew names, and the text reminds us that they’re Hebrew as well as mentioning twice that they are in awe of God. (The “awe” is often translated “fear” but “awe” is a much better translation.) We are not supposed to miss that they’re Hebrew, or that they’re being ordered to kill the boys of their own ethnic group.

It took me entirely too long to figure out why the boys were to be killed. I was thinking of males as especially strong laborers in the fields, and wondered why you’d want to have fewer of them. If you wanted fewer descendants, I thought, why not kill the girls who have the babies and leave the workers? Our Bible Study participants responded that the death of the male babies meant that the females would be sexually available to the Egyptians, and they’d presume that as half-Egyptian – the next generation would be more pliable and “better.” The participants in the Bible Study figured this out by considering American slave history.

We also noticed the language of fear created around the oppressed group, and the dehumanization of them. The Hebrews are called “powerful” and “numerous” and the myth is that they would do harm for the Egyptians, a myth used to justify enslaving them. It is suggested that they could be spies, or fight against Egypt in a war, or abandon their posts of much needed labor. Therefore, the myth of the oppressors says, we must enslave them and double down on the harm we do to them to keep them below us.

Oppression is very powerful, and human oppressors are capable of extensive harm, but there is a resiliency to life itself, and it fights back when life is oppressed. This story says that the more the Hebrews were oppressed the more they multiplied. I think we’re supposed to believe this was God’s hand at work; I think it is more the myth of the Egyptians continuing to justify evil. In any case, both the Hebrews of this story and the African American slaves oppressed in the United States suffered great losses as a community – losses of life and identity, language and culture, dignity and hope. Yet, the communities found ways to fight back, reform, and try again and again. This story suggests that the power to do so came from God, as do many of the songs and stories that remain from the American slave era. God supports the experience of the oppressed in overcoming oppression.

The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, were unusual women. It doesn’t seem reasonable that only two midwives could have been sufficient for all the births of the Hebrew women, so more likely they were the LEADERS of the midwives. It may even be that they were also midwives to the Egyptian women, as they imply they know the difference between each set of women giving birth. They are BRILLIANT, DEFIANT, and seemingly FEARLESS (although I’d stake a bet that they were terrified even while they kept their cool.)

They are given a direct order by the most powerful man in their country to kill the baby boys of their community and they don’t! If it is true that they were the leaders of the midwives, they give counter instructions. In any case, the voices of all the midwives are united in the shared voices of Puah and Shiphrah, and their voices respond to this immoral command with “no.” They just don’t! It makes me wonder how they had been formed as humans, and what empowered them to know better. The text says it was that they knew God, and I hope it is true for all who know God that our relationship with God empowers us to refuse to follow unjust orders, but I’ve seen it go other ways. How is it that knowing the Holy One can form us into people who more deeply believe in the sacredness of life? How is that being present to God helps us overcome our fears of the powers of the world? How were the midwives able to be so brave? I wish I knew, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God can help us overcome our fears and resist the power of oppression.

Did the midwives refuse the Pharaoh because he was Egyptian? Because the order was so atrocious? Because someone had already been training them on resisting oppression? Was it about who gave it, how terrible it was, or about who they were? How were they strong enough to simply refuse? And how were they wise enough NOT to say “no” to the Pharaoh (who would have killed them and replaced them with someone who would do what he said) but instead to simply not to it? I’d love to know, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God helped them overcome the power of the oppressor.

When they get called back to account for the live baby Israelite boys, they have a crafty answer in hand. They give a compliment to the femininity of the Egyptian women while using the fear of the Hebrews and assumptions about them to their benefit. They respond along the lines of “your women are more feminine and fragile while ours are more like animals.” To be precise, they say, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” You see? The answer they give manipulates the Pharaoh by complimenting his ethnic group and denigrating theirs, and it is believable to him. They save their boys. To do it they have to imply terrible things about the lack of humanity of the women they were related to, and they did because it was totally worth it.

Puah and Shiphrah aren’t the only ones in history who have played the assumptions of oppressors against the oppressors to gain freedom for the oppressed, but they did it as well as anyone.

Now, the incredible actions of these subversive women to save the lives of Israelite boys ended with things worse off than they started – sort of. The midwives had been told to kill the babies, the tactics then were supposed to be somewhat hidden and covert. Their actions forced his hand to make the death sentence to baby boys OVERT and visible. He continues to order the death of the baby boys, and he makes everyone responsible for it, since he hadn’t been able to control the midwives. In the short term, that meant more babies died.

But in the long term, it meant that the Hebrews lived. The overt action of the Pharaoh led to more subversive actions – by Moses’ mother and sister – and by Pharaoh’s own daughter. The fear of Pharaoh that led to his orders for murder resulted in Moses being raised in his own house – an Israelite boy who he had ordered killed. When Pharaoh raised the stakes it ended up backfiring on him and he eventually lost all his slaves.

It seems important to take note of how it must have felt to be Puah and Shiphrah in the moment when Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew babies to be thrown into the Nile. It would have felt like failure, right? They took risks with their own lives and likely the lives of those who worked with them to save the babies. They took morality and the love of God more seriously than the power of the Pharaoh/King. They fought with their wits about them for the well-being of their people and they won…

Until the Pharaoh made it worse and raised the stakes. They tried to save those baby boys and allow them to live, and then Pharaoh orders everyone to kill the baby boys and the organizational methods of the midwives can’t protect the babies anymore. Puah and Shiphrah must have been dismayed. Yet, the tactics they used ended up in one generation with the freedom of their people – instead of the death of the males of a generation and the rape of that generation’s women. Yes, things got worse. That’s what happens when you fight back against oppression. The oppressors make things worse first. Which means that when women – and men – are forced to use subversive tactics they have to be prepared for things to get much worse before they get better.

In The United Methodist Church right now, things are getting worse. The many brave people who have refused to follow unjust rules in the church have upset the status quo. Those who are committed to excluding LGBTQ people from full participation in the Body of Christ are furious that they can’t make people follow the rules. As they double-down on exclusion and tightening rules and punishments, they push the UMC toward schism. This weekend in Chicago a group of 1700 people deeply committed to exclusion gathered, and formally launched a para-Church structure they are calling the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Their first demand is that the Church end the resistance to exclusion once and for all. Since we all know that the progressives fighting for inclusion will not be silenced that is not possible. They suggest, that if resistance can’t be silenced that a plan needs to be developed to divide the denomination. Things are getting worse.

That means we are on the road to ending oppression. Thanks be to God for the midwives and all those willing and able to follow their lead. What a joy it is, in God’s holy name, to be part of ending oppression in any form. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 9, 2016

Sermons

“Persistent” based on Luke 18:2-5

October 2, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I recently heard a story,
it was the story of the person who told it to me, but it struck me
that it was also many peoples’ story. There was much to celebrate
in the story, and also a lot to be frustrated by. The person who
told me the story was someone who lacks access to sufficient
financial resources. That is, in the colloquial – he is poor –
although I think poverty is more complicated than that! The man is a
father, and his daughter got into a VERY good college, despite the
challenges the family faced and the challenges their school district
faced. As you might hope, the very good college offered this young
woman a financial aid package to make it possible for her to attend
the school. However, when the young woman got the financial aid
package and read it over carefully, she realized that the loans she
was being offered were predatory loans that would be verging on
impossible to ever be able to pay back! She contacted the school.
They ignored her. She kept pestering. They kept ignoring her. Her
father started calling, and he started calling up the chain of
command. He was told to stop calling. When I heard the story,
that’s where it ended – they were unsure if the young woman would
attend the very good college because she was WAY too smart to do so
at risk to her financial future.

She sounds like the
persistent widow. I’ve been told that the persistent widow is a very
strange character with which to start a sermon series on subversive
women – and not just because the Bible presents her as fictional.
The bigger issue is that her subversiveness isn’t very obvious. To
the naked eye, she just looks like an annoying nag! Actually, even
that may be projection. This is a SHORT story, there isn’t that much
to it!

In our study of the text
though, we found a lot to discuss about this short-storied,
fictional, persistent widow. It is helpful to remember that the
Torah, the laws of community life that the Jewish people understood
to have come from God, were very clear about the care for widows,
orphans, and foreigners. That would be, people who did not have the
protection of an adult male who was a member of society and were thus
vulnerable. The system was designed so that even the vulnerable
could find ways to survive. The Torah was also very clear about the
threat to society created by an unjust justice system, and
articulated frequently, in no uncertain terms, the need to have
judges who made rulings based on JUSTICE and not on who had more
money or influence.

That is, the persistent
widow is stuck in a situation she shouldn’t be in. She should be
cared for. She isn’t! It is likely that her “opponent” is the
person who should have been taking care of her and providing for her
livelihood, and wasn’t! The justice system was supposed to help her
find a way to justice. It didn’t. She was stuck in a situation
which was untenable for her survival without a means of recourse
because of the immorality of the judge. There was no other means by
which she could get justice. The system was closed to her, and the
only option left to her was to agitate the system.

The judge is presented
very simplistically. He doesn’t care about justice, people, or
God… and it sounds like he just does what he wants to do. He is a
negative caricature of a person abusing power or authority, someone
who isn’t easy to move toward justice.

The persistent widow won
though! I suspect that she could have taught the courses I took this
spring on non-violent direct action! Jesus says that the judge
thought to himself,
“because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice,
so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (v. 5) The
persistent widow didn’t have much power to use in the world, and she
didn’t have ANY power that could be used without being annoying. So
she used what she had. She was annoying. She didn’t give up. And
she annoyed him into doing what was right!

That’s
what I think is so subversive about the persistent widow. She can’t
have been the only widow in that city who was impoverished by a lack
of justice, she likely wasn’t even the only one to bring it to the
judge’s attention. MANY of the widows might have been in similar
situations. However, in cases like that, most people give up.
That’s what people are counting on, and that’s part of why injustices
sometimes win out.

I
think about that young college bound woman, and how carefully she
read the details of her financial aid package to determine that the
offer wasn’t fair. How many other people in the same situation come
with some trust that the college they want to go to won’t do them
harm, don’t read the package, or don’t yet have the math skills to
interpret the implications? How many people would decide to take the
package and hope for the best? How many people would try to call and
ask if there was another loan, but give up easily? I don’t know how
many people would get as far as the young woman I heard about, and
consider giving up their dream school, but I do know that her
persistence is NOT what the predatory loan company is counting on.

The
predatory loan company is expecting people not to pay attention, to
trust, to take a leap of faith, not to run the numbers, and to sign
on the dotted line – no matter how high the interest rate turns out
to be. The predatory loan company is able to get away with their
loans because few people are as persistent as that young woman. The
college, as well, choose to work with that predatory loan company,
and in doing so to keep this young woman and those in similar
situations IN poverty, while pretending to help them out of it. It
makes me wonder what they might be getting out of it.

Keeping
our eyes open to see
the injustices of the wold and REFUSING to be quiet about them once
we do is wildly subversive. I’m claiming the persistent widow was
subversive because she was a nag, and she didn’t stop nagging until
justice was found. It isn’t the wildest story in the Bible by any
means, but it may represent the most frequently successful mechanism
of accessing justice: refusing to give up!

One
of the challenges of acting like the persistent widow, though, is
that there are a lot of injustices in the world and none of us can
give attentiveness to all of them. That level of nagging can’t be
multi-tasked! This is one of the reasons I am so grateful for the
image of the Body of Christ. I come back to it time and time again,
reminded that if I do my part faithfully, and trust the rest of the
Body to do their part (and God to do God’s part), the whole world
gets better. Most often justice comes through collective action
(think Montgomery Bus Boycott, Women’s Suffrage, blocking the
Keystone XL pipeline), but sometimes they’re smaller or individual as
well. On occasion we can successfully seek justice alone, but no one
of us can seek ALL justice. If any of us try to
all the work of the Body of Christ, nothing gets done
at all!

My
college thesis was on John Conway’s “Game of Life,” which is a
set of rules governing a grid. On the grid, at any given moment,
each cell is “alive” or “dead” and then, from there, things
change. The status “alive” or “dead” is represented visually
by two different colors, and those statuses are able to change with
time, based on the relationships they have with other cells who are
also “alive” or “dead.”

One
night, deep in the trenches of trying to write up my thesis and
struggling with a decision about where to go to seminary, I went down
to the river to pray. I sat on a dock and watched the water flow by.
As might make sense if you’d spent as many hours and months staring
at colored boxes on a graph as I had, I started imagining the river
as the graph – and imagining the graph spreading out to cover all
the water of the world. I’d stared at colored boxes for a LONG time,
and I was tired 😉 Then, as I continued to pray, ponder, and be
overwhelmed, I started imagining one of those boxes as representing
MY life. To my horror, the box that represented my life was
blinking! I took this to mean that sometimes my life was
contributing to the well-being of others, but sometimes it WASN’T! I
found myself sitting on that dock on the Connecticut River, aware
that sometimes I wasn’t benefiting the kin-dom of God and wishing
with all that I was that I could ALWAYS be good.

It
was at that point that another thought entered my mind, one that was
outside of the particular ways my thoughts tend to cycle around.
That process has been one I’ve associated with the Divine, and I have
since thought of that prayer time by the river as a vision of sorts
-but I’m also giving you the details to consider it so that you can
assess how you’d like to think about it. The thought that entered my
mind, seemingly from beyond me, was that if I could manage to be a
blessing that contributed to the well-being of the kindom 51% of the
time, that was ENOUGH for God to be able to expand the goodness out
into the world and to be a net gain to the kin-dom.

It
was certainly a new thought to me then, I’d leaned more towards
perfectionism than toward an idea that offering more good than bad
was a net gain! It is a thought I’ve gone back to in the years
since, particularly when I’ve found myself being extra rough on
myself. It helps me to consider that God is able to make things work
with what we’re able to offer.

If
we do our best, and especially if we are able to offer a bit more
good into the world than harm, then God can use what we offer in
combination with the rest of the Body of Christ. The world becomes a
safer, fuller, more just place. The kin-dom becomes. We don’t have
to do all the work! We can’t! We’d burn out. That means that
sometimes we have to work through the process of figuring out which
things are ours to do and which things we leave for the rest of the
Body of Christ. Together, each of us offering the love, compassion,
and persistence that are our gifts from God, we can follow the
widow’s course and create the world that the Torah dreams and God
wants – the kin-dom of God! And it doesn’t even require perfection
😉 Just persistence. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 2, 2016

Sermons

“Shewdly” based on Luke 16:1-13

September 18, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Most Biblical scholars are utterly perplexed by our Gospel parable of the week, they tie themselves in knots trying to make sense of a story they perceive to be a moral out-lier. The ones who are able to make sense of it do so by making it sound a bit like this little story. The story MIGHT be true, and it goes like this:

Henry Ford made a trip to Ireland to visit the place of his ancestry. While he was there, two trustees from the hospital in the town he was visiting came to him asking for a donation. He agreed to give them five thousand dollars, which at the time was no small gift. In the paper the next morning, Ford saw the headline proclaiming that the generous American philanthropist Henry Ford had given fifty thousand dollars to the local hospital. As you can imagine, Ford was shocked and called the hospital to track down the two trustees he had met with. When they got to his hotel, he confronted the men about the massive mistake printed in the paper. The trustees apologized, and said they would be calling the paper immediately to correct the mistake and print a retraction, letting everyone know that Henry Ford had not given not fifty thousand, but only five thousand. Instead, Ford promised to give them another forty-five thousand. But, he gave them a stipulation: that a marble arch be erected at the hospital entrance with a plaque that read, “I was a stranger and you took me in.”¹

To be fair to most of the scholars, today’s text is complicated: it is a confusing story, it is a convoluted passage, and it has many layers of meaning. The author of the gospel of Luke – who for the sake of ease from this point forward we’ll call Luke- creates some issues for us. According to the Jesus Seminar, Luke merged together a combination of source material: 1) a parable Jesus is highly likely to have stated (vs. 1-8a); 2) a saying that probably comes substantially from Jesus’ lips (vs. 13)–neither of which is repeated in any of the other gospels; and 3) explanatory material provided by the Luke, which includes further statements placed on Jesus’ lips (vs. 8b-12, and 14).

That is, the parable likely ends with “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly”. The Jesus seminar puts the parable in RED, indicating that they think it was likely authentic to Jesus. They put the final saying, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.“ in pink, thinking it likely reflects something Jesus would have said. They distrust it a bit because of the way that Luke is using it. The stuff about trusting people to be honest in small and large matters, and using ill-gotten gains are all LUKE. It is OK to hear things from Luke, I love Luke, but it is important to separate out what Jesus was likely doing with this parable from what Luke was.

In order to understand what Jesus was likely talking about, it would be helpful to understand more about the laws and economic systems in Roman Palestine. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh in Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels help us out with this and win the prize as our favorite commentators of the week! They say, “Rich landowners frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and liquidate debts in the name of the master …”²The manager in the parable was such an estate manager. We’re figuring he wasn’t a slave, since he has to worry about where he’d live after he loses this job. It also seems worth pointing out that the landowner is TOLD that the manager has been mismanaging, but we don’t get any evidence of the truth of the statement, nor is the manager given the chance to defend himself. It could be hearsay, but the manager is vulnerable to the accusation and now has to fend for himself.

Back to Malina and Rohrbaugh, “Traditional Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss incurred by his employer for which he was responsible. He could also be put in prison to extort the funds from his family. If the dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been seen as damaging the reputation of the master. Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply dismissed.”³ That is, the landowner is being unusually generous with the manager. Remember this because we’re going to come back to it. The commentators make it clear that the timing was IMMEDIATE, “In the case of the dismissal of an agent, this dismissal was effective as soon as the agent was informed of it, and from that time forward nothing the agent did was binding on the person who employed him. The plan worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his dismissal got back to the village.”⁴ The manager had to act with the element of surprise as well as with haste.

And act he does! He gives away A LOT of money!! Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest one amount saying, “The size of the debts involved is extraordinary. Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of wheat.”⁵ The Jesus seminar translated this as 500 gallons of oil and a thousand bushels of wheat.⁶ In any event, it was a tremendous amount. Malina and Rohrbaugh continue, “Storytelling hyperbole may be involved or, as recent investigations have suggested, the debts are large enough that they may be the tax debts of an entire village. The amount of debt forgiven, though different in percentage terms, is in both cases approximately 500 denarii.”⁷We know from other parables and stories of Jesus that a denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer, so we’re talking about each of these amounts being 1.5 years worth of a laborer’s wages, or about $28,000 based on today’s minimum wage in New York.

The manager IS shrewd. He doesn’t panic at the idea of being homeless and without resources, whether or not he was guilty of the dishonest management he was accused of. He uses the landowner’s softness against him, and for the common good! Back to our commentators, “Having discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or demanding repayment, the manager depends upon a similar reaction in the scheme he cooks up. It is a scheme that places the landowner in a particular bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks serious alienation in the village, where villagers would have already been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the manager for having made the ‘arrangement’) as a noble and generous man.”⁸Now do you see how it is like the Ford story? The rich man ends up being far more generous than he intends to be, in large part because he couldn’t easily take back claims others made of his generosity.

In vs. 8a, Jesus reflects the landowner praising the manager, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly.” By extension, Jesus was praising the actions of the manager as well–actions that brought debt relief to an entire village. The first listeners would have had an easy time identifying the themes of mercy and debt jubilee in the story, and knowing what Jesus was praising. Still, the praise given to the manager for his shrewd (and likely illegal) actions would have made the parable challenging. Jesus praises someone for tricking someone else out of a large some of money. The common good was met, but standard economic thinking suggests the landowner was cheated. Perhaps it is worth noting the the softness of the landowner, his preference for his employee, made space for his unintentional generosity. It might suggest that God is able to work with whatever softness we do have to create greater good!

Given the social-science context for the story, it sounds a lot like others of Jesus’ parables! In fact, it sounds a lot like the instruction to turn the other cheek (which happens to be the saying of Jesus that the Jesus seminar MOST believes to be authentic.

Luke records that saying this way, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also”. Scholars have taught us that this was a fantastically subversive action. Superiors hit inferiors with a backhand, while a front hand slap was indicative of hitting an equal. Because the left hand was used to wipe in ancient times, only the right hand was used for everything else. To turn the other cheek was not to become a doormat – it was to requires that if another hit happened, it was one that acknowledged you as an equal! It rejected the system of oppression.

It seems that the “parable of the shrewd manager” is another expression of this philosophy of rejecting systems of oppression (here including undue tax burdens and interest) and creatively turning them on their heads!! The shrewd manager found a way to care for himself, take care of his village, and make his former boss look good. Talk about a win/win! However, it took disregarding some rules/laws to make it happen, and the greater good was worth it. That’s what we think Jesus was trying to communicate with this passage. We are still left with the question of what Luke was trying to communicate with this passage–not just with the parable but with the passage as a whole.

According to Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, commentator in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, an important contextual piece to be aware of is that Luke was likely writing to a wealthy Greco-Roman Christian audience. Likely Luke-Acts was written to and for his patron, Theophilus, named at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. In this part of the narrative of Luke-Acts, Jesus was attempting to teach his disciples and followers all that was most important for them to know before his “date with destiny"in Jerusalem.⁹

Vs. 8b-14 speak to Luke’s interpretation of this parable. A key theme in this interpretation is money/wealth and the wise use of it, which is so central to Luke’s understanding of Jesus that it shows up no fewer than 8 times in the Gospel.¹⁰ This was raised by Alan Culpepper who wrote the brilliant commentary on Luke in the New Interpreter’s Bible.¹¹

This was an audacious message for Luke to deliver to his benefactor and his benefactor’s rich friends. To the end of making a fateful choice about whether or not to follow Jesus, Luke pushed them hard on the use of their wealth. Luke challenged them in a way that we don’t often get today. The line about not being able to serve two masters tends to either get ignored by modern day audiences when they have wealth or misinterpreted by others to mean that accumulation of money is inherently sinful. On the contrary, Luke’s audience was challenged into decisive, bold, creative actions–not a theological position on whether money is good or bad.

Unlike perhaps most of us, they were more likely to identify with the landowner and his experience of being manipulated into generosity. Luke pushed them to consider the steward, who in our parable faced not only the loss of his position but of his livelihood! He acted decisively, boldly, and creatively! He acted in a way that would have brought mercy and jubilee to an entire village and love to his master, while costing his master a LOT of money. Luke’s audience faced a situation that required bold, decisive, creative actions: whether or not they would follow the way of Jesus. This choice was encumbered with life-altering implications for how they used their wealth. Hanging onto it meant rejecting Jesus, rejecting God, and rejecting eternal life. Following Jesus meant something more and other than just giving their money away. It meant using wealth as a tool for mercy and jubilee, for bringing about God’s kin-dom on earth. It meant upending an economic system of usery and exploitation. It meant upending the fabric of the existing social contract.

Today, we face the same choice. Today we are relentlessly bombarded with messages about being consumers and needing to shop now and later today and tomorrow and every day so we can consume and needing to work in the highest paying jobs possible so we can support that consumption. Our society and economic system compel us into lives built on the exploitation of the poor, the marginalized and of this planet until they have nothing left to give us. The myths of our society are designed to silence objections: the cries for relief of the poor are said to be class warfare, global climate change is called a “theory”, the well-being of the economy is used as a proxy for the common good, and – of course – we’re told that any real change to our economy or the abuse of our planet would cost jobs, bankrupt businesses, and waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. That is, we’re told in many ways (large and small) that we can’t afford to be a just society because it would upend our society as we know it. This misses the point that not only can’t we afford to continue life as we know it, and upending society is going to have to happen to create an actually just society, but we are called to a higher way of being and a higher way of living in relation to each other.

Are we bold enough to follow Jesus? Are we willing to rock the boats of stability that keep the oppressed down? Are we decisive enough to follow Jesus? Are we willing and able to differentiate between the desires of consumerism and the needs of the kin-dom? Are we creative enough to follow Jesus? Can we see through the claims the economic system makes clearly enough to see how the system steals from the poor to give to the rich?

Finally, are we shrewd enough to follow Jesus? Given the broken systems that oppress, are we shrewd enough to mess them up? Jesus praises the shrewd and rewards bold, decisive, creative action. Let’s go and do! Amen

—

1Story told by Nichole Torbitzky in “September 18, 2016-Proper 20 (Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost)” on the website “Process and Faith”http://processandfaith.org/lectionary-commentary/september-18-2016-proper-20-eighteenth-sunday-after-pentecost/” accessed on 9/17/16.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292.

3^{Malina and Rohrbaugh, 292.}

4Malina and Rohrbaugh, 292.

5Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

6Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), pp. 557-9.

7Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

8Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

9Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, “Luke-Acts, Propaganda for World Mission: The Church’s Internal and External Relations” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Howard Clark Kee, et. al. (Cambridge University Press: USA, 1997) pp. 519-523.

10Jesus denounces the greed of Pharisees in Luke 11:39-41. A rich fool forfeits his soul in 12:13-21. Jesus speaks of a prudent steward in 12:42-48. Jesus tells a parable in which the outcasts are called to a great banquet in 14:15-24. Jesus speaks of the cost of discipleship and giving up all possessions in 14:33. And finally, the parable of the prodigal son in 15:11-32 immediately precedes today’s reading.

11^{R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1995).}

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron and Kevin M. Nelson

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 18, 2016

Sermons

“Utterly Ridiculous Actions” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m
going to start by answering Jesus’ presumptive questions, because I
know the answers. It is really exciting to know the answers to
questions Jesus asks, because they are usually trick questions, but I
have these. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one
of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after
the lost sheep until he finds it?”

NO.
– What are you crazy? Have you met sheep? They are seriously the
dumbest creatures God ever created (ok, fine, they are tied with
deer). If you leave 99 sheep behind while you go look for one that
got lost, when you come back, you’ll have 70, if you are lucky. I
mean, I was a camp counselor, and we went over the “lost camper
plan” and step one as a counselor is that you STAY WITH THE CAMPERS
YOU STILL HAVE. (The support staff looks for the lost camper, you
work on not losing another.)

NO,
you don’t go after that sheep. Not unless you have a really good
team backing you up, and it doesn’t sound like you do.

Next
question? “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses
one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search
carefully until she finds it? When she has found it she calls
together her (female) friends and neighbors …” Um. No one.
Because a silver coin is a days wage for a laborer and it is
basically enough to buy half a loaf of bread, and no one can afford
to throw a party for their neighborhood because they just found a
coin that would cover 1/20^th of that cost. I’ll agree
that she’d search for the coin, it is after all 1/10^th of
her life savings, but NO she wouldn’t throw a party. Are you nuts?

These
two parables feel like Jesus is doing a really bad Childrens’ Time
with all of us, waiting for us to object with the most basic of
reasoning, and then laughing at his presumed stupidity.

The
problem is that I’ve been preaching regularly for 10 years now, and I
know not to trust it when Jesus appears to be an idiot. I’ve learned
that he only plays dumb to get our attention. So, what is really
going on here? It seems that the key to understanding Luke 15 is in
paying attention to the opening paragraph. “Now
all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This
fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’“ (Luke 15:1-2,
NRSV)

Curious.
The New Testament seems to assume that some people are sinners and
others aren’t. Modern Christianity seems to assume that all people
are sinners (although if we look at actions and not just words, there
is an assumption that some people are WORSE sinners than others, but
no one cops to that). What did it mean to call some people sinners
in those days? R. Alan Culpepper, who wrote the commentary on Luke
for the New Interpreter’s Bible says “Those designated as ‘sinners’
by the Pharisees would have included not only persons who broke moral
laws but also those who did not maintain ritual purity practiced by
the Pharisees.”¹
I’m mesmerized by the idea of sin being finite enough that many
people wouldn’t qualify as sinners. It might take some of the guilt
off of life if, at least once in a while, we “weren’t sinners.”

The
so -called sinners are set up in contrast to the Pharisees and
scribes, people who were religious insiders. (To be precise,
Pharisees weren’t religious insiders at the time of Jesus, but they
were when Luke was writing his gospel, so we’re going to live with it
for today.) The religious insiders were concerned about the access
the religious OUTSIDERS were getting.

I
chose to use this text this week because I didn’t understand it at
all, and I took a leap of faith that some commentators would be able
to help me with it. Sometimes life works out exactly as planned, and
I discovered AMAZING work in the commentary series Feasting on the
Word by Charles Cousar (Professor Emeritus of New Testament at
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.) and Penny Nixon
(Senior Minister at Congregational Church of San Mateo, United Church
of Christ). The rest of this sermon is indebted to their genius, and
largely to their words 😉

“Often
this parable unfolds in a way that emphasizes the redemption of the
‘lost,’ but it is the ‘already found’ that the parable is meant to
bring to repentance.”²
Issues arise because in verse one the tax collectors and sinners are
coming near, and the ones who think they have an exclusive right to
be there are getting antsy. Jesus seems to respond that the ones who
are “lost” are already a part of the flock. They are lost out of
the flock, or in the house. They already count.

The
two parables are the same idea, they repeat for the sake of getting a
point across, or maybe because it is fun to have God as both a
shepherd (hated by Luke’s time) and a woman – and make most people
anxious at once. The Pharisees and scribes are said to be mad
because Jesus ate with sinners, which according to Luke he’s done all
of once by this point. They’re annoyed, “especially because the
sinners are ‘hearing’ Jesus. ‘Hearing’ for Luke is a sign of
repentance and conversion. Like the prophet Jonah in the Hebrew
Scriptures, the Pharisees and scribes do not take kindly to
the possible repentance of those who lie outside their definition of
the redeemable.”³

I
fear they’re not the only ones who feel that way. Have you
heard about the Wesleyan Covenant Association? They’re an emerging
group within the United Methodist Church who are trying to take
Luke’s “Pharisees and scribes” as their models for behavior.
Emerging as in their initial meeting is in October in Chicago. Their
stated goals start with “Connect
evangelical, orthodox United Methodists with one another in a common
ministry of the gospel,” and culminate with “To uphold and
promote biblical teaching on marriage and human sexuality.” (You
might be shocked to learn that they don’t actually mean “biblical
teaching on marriage and human sexuality” as I understand it.
They mean excluding the LGBTQ community from the Body of Christ.) The
Wesleyan Covenant Association is designated to be an alternative
structure that can become a new denomination, based on the litmus
test of believing that excluding God’s children from the church is
the best way forward. That is, they
do not take kindly to the welcome of people who lie outside of their
definition of worthy of God’s love, and they are willing to break a
denomination over it and define themselves by it.

⁴

Unfortunately,
the Wesleyan Covenant Association is NOT the only group of people who
immediately come to mind as trying to mold themselves after the
scribes and Pharisees rather than after Jesus. On this 15^th
anniversary of the attacks of September 11^th,
2001, we live in a country where many people are calling for the
exclusion of Muslims, the registration of Muslims, and closed doors
to the refugees of the world. We have a repeat of the ideology that
existed before World War II and kept many Jewish families from
receiving the welcome they needed to stay alive, except this time
with Muslims. Instead of learning the lesson that violence begets
violence and the world needs food, peace, and hope from the attacks
of September 11^th,
we have people calling for greater violence, less humanity, and
thereby the creation of more and more desperate people willing to
join extremist groups. Our sisters and brothers in faith who know
God through the teachings of Mohammad are particularly vulnerable
today, as they grieve with the rest of America.

Getting
back to the deceptively complicated parables, both the sheep and the
coin are passive. As one commentator explains, “A
lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do
so, out of fear. Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild
brush, hiding from predators. It is so fearful in its seclusion that
it cannot help its own rescue. The sheep is immobilized, so the
shepherd must bear its full weight to bring it home.”⁵
Furthermore according to Cousar, “Neither a sheep nor a coin can
repent. The issue of the
two parables, therefore, is not to call sinners to repentance, but to
invite the righteous to join the celebration.”

Let
me say that again. “The issue of the two parables, therefore, is
not to call sinners to repentance, but to invite the righteous to
join the celebration.” He goes on to quote Alan Culpper who said,
“’Whether one will join the celebration is all-important, because
it reveals whether one’s relationships are based on merit or mercy.
Those who find God’s mercy offensive cannot celebrate with the
angels when a sinner repents. They exclude themselves from God’s
grace.’ The Pharisees and the scribes put themselves outside of the
circle of divine grace by the way in which they grumble at Jesus’
fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. There is no joy or
celebration, no partying or delight, among Pharisees and scribes.
Even though invited to the reception given in behalf of the joyous
shepherd/woman, they cannot bring themselves to come; thereby, like
the elder brother (15:25-32), they are exposed.”⁶
Indeed, when Amy Jill Levine was in Schenectady speaking on the
Parable of the Prodigal (which immediately follows these parables),
she said that the point of the parable is the question of if the
older brother will accept grace or reject it after all. It therefore
raises the question about ourselves as well.

*Cough*
Wesleyan Covenant Association *Cough* (Seriously, this is so easy I
feel guilty about it.)

I
have one more gem to share with you from these wise commentators.
Nixon asks about the sheep and the coin, “Is it a search to save or
to welcome? It is one thing to ‘save’ and another to ‘welcome.’
Religious insiders are more comfortable with saving the lost than
welcoming those whom they perceive to be lost. Saving is
about power, whereas welcoming is about intimacy.
Saving is primarily focused on the individual, whereas welcoming is
focused on the community.”⁷
*SNAP*

These
texts present God as the hound-dog of heaven, searching out anyone
who would for any reason believe they are not welcome or not worthy
and proving that person wrong! All we are asked to do is
celebrate with God when goodness transforms the lives of those
who desperately need it! All we have to do is rejoice with God! And
apparently, sometimes, that’s too hard. It is easier to think of
people as needing to be saved (and assimilated into our way of doing
things), and harder to make space to truly welcome all of God’s
children and allow them to impact our lives in deep ways.

But
that’s the call: to be welcoming and open to intimate friendship and
relationship with all God’s children, and to rejoice when the welcome
is received. May God’s grace guide us to be the ones who are able to
rejoice! Amen

1R.
Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New
Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon Press: 1995), 9: 295.

2G.
Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

3Charles
B. Cousar, “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in Feasting
on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

4 http://www.wesleyancovenant.org/purposebeliefs
accessed on 9/10/16. The access date is especially important as the
wording has already been known to change without notice 😉

5Helen
Montgomery Debevoise “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 70

6Cousar
(quoting Alan Culpepper in “Luke” in the New Interpreter’s
Bible, 1995).

7Nixon,
71.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 11, 2016

Sermons

“Teaching Ephraim to Walk” based on Hosea 11:1-11

July 31, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The imagery of God as a loving parent in this text is particularly beautiful. However, one commentator suggested that it creates a problem for preachers: if we present God as a “father” we’re continuing the damage done by lifting the masculine above the feminine; if we present God as the generic “parent” it feels cold and distant; and if we present God as a nurturing mother we conflate nurturing with motherhood and do damage to nurturing men, women who are not mothers, and people whose mothers were not nurturing.

I’m going to have to go with the idea that these are not all EQUAL problems. While I do think it is possible to reclaim the neutral “parent” as close and connected, I think that the world is more in need of a counter image to God-as-Father. That being said, the concerns about God-as-Nurturing-Mother are worth acknowledging. So, please, know this: not all us have (or have been) the healthy sort of mothers that we would want; there are incredibly nurturing men, and we are grateful for the ways that their forms of nurture benefit the world; AND there are a lot of ways that women contribute to the well-being of the world beyond motherhood. Finally, feminine does not equal nurturing. Duh. There. That being dealt with, let’s look at this amazing text of Hosea!

Did you hear the verbs attributed to God? I loved, I called, I taught, I took them up in my arms, I healed, I led, I lifted, I bent down, I fed. These are tender, sweet verbs. They describe a loving, nurturing parent who wants the very best for their child. There are a few places where the description tends to sound more feminine and maternal. The images, “I taught Ephraim to walk”, “I took them up in my arms”, “I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks”, “I bent down tot hem and fed them” all sound like a mother caring for a baby or a toddler. The love between the mother and the child is tangible – even as the text acknowledges that the beloved child is currently acting like rebellious teenager!

Did you catch that part? “The more I called them, the more they went from me”, “They did not know that I healed them”, “they have refused to return to me”, “they are bent on turning away from me!” Just in case you are confused about language, the “child” or “son” in this passage is variously called “Ephraim” and “Israel” which mean exactly the same thing in this case. Hosea was a northern prophet who was speaking to the northern kingdom of Israel in during the last kingship of Israel before it lost in battle to Assyria and was exiled. The terms Ephraim and Israel were used interchangeably sort of like we say “America” and “The US”. The text is believed to have been edited, rather strongly, by the southern kingdom after their exile AND return. The southern kingdom seems to have heard truth in the words and wanted to claim them for themselves, particularly that the God’s love wouldn’t run out on them.

There are, however, some theological challenges to this passage. Most interpreters hear punishment in the text, and then hear it resolved through God’s loving nature. I have yet to be convinced by anyone or anything that God actually punishes people, so I find that problematic. I do believe that most of the people who lived in Biblical times and who wrote and edited the words of the Bible believed that God punished, so that certainly explains why it might show up like that.

However, I don’t THINK this text actually says that God punishes! I think people are so used to text that do, that they project it onto this one. Listen carefully: “They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.” (Hosea 11:5 NRSV) It doesn’t say – or even imply – that this is a punishment. It could just as easily be a consequence. Because of their actions, particularly the political choices of their leaders to make alliances with Egypt against Assyria, things would go wrong. Their schemes were going to lead to destruction.

Now, I really like my interpretation of that bit of the text – consequence instead of punishment – but it creates a problem soon thereafter. In verses 8-9, the words attributed to God are, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” Now, if we’d stuck with the idea that God was going to punish the people, then we’d have the easy way out here: God is a God of mercy and while God could justly punish the people, God chooses to follow God’s nature and be merciful instead. (Mercy IS “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”) That’d be grand – other than assuming that when bad things happen to us it is because God is punishing us and making God a really abusive parent.

However, if we go with MY theory that God is simply pointing out the consequences of their actions, then this part of the text suggests that God is deciding whether or not to interfere with the people’s free will. Furthermore, after some serious soliloquy, God decides TO interfere and change the course of human history. Sometimes fixing things makes them worse – and that definitely applies to trying to draw good theology out of the Bible!

There are good things here though, and I still think they are worth fighting for. Those last few verses make the fantastic claim that God is not like mortals, and what makes God holy is God’s capacity for mercy. That’s worth hearing, particularly if we are trying to be holy like God!

Having written myself into a corner, as I often do, now is the time you get to watch me wiggle back out of it! Now, as I often do, I’m going to suggest taking the text VERY seriously. What if the prophet is proclaiming things that are true: that God is like a tender mother who adores her children, that God’s people are like rebellious teenagers, that the actions of God’s people are going to cause them a whole lot of trouble, that like any good parent God is going to struggle to decide how much God should help out the teenager for the trouble they got themselves into, and that in the end God really really want to help the beloved child – sort of like an overly compassionate mother? That doesn’t HAVE to imply an invasion of free will…. it could just be a decision of how much help to OFFER!

Then we come to a new question! When we as a people get ourselves stuck in really bad situations, how is it that we think God helps? Does God change reality and the physical properties of nature around us? Does God interfere with our free will? Does God change the hearts of other people around us – and thereby interfere with THEIR free will?

Or is it more subtle? Does God simply stay with us in the bad times and make sure we aren’t alone? Does God help us by guiding us to creative solutions? Does God help us by giving us the courage to admit our mistakes and ask those around us for mercy and help? Does God help us by encouraging those willing to listen to offer us love and compassion?

The more I think about it, the more I think the beginning of this passage fits with its middle and its end. Israel is presented as variously a baby, a toddler, and a teenager. Those are all people that are allowed to make mistakes, to not know, to need some guidance. They are even people – at least the toddler and the teenager- who are EXPECTED to rebel. Often as grown-ups we’ve bought into the story that we aren’t supposed to make mistakes anymore, and that we are now supposed to know things. It makes it much harder for us when we are stuck in difficult situations to get out – because sometimes it feels like admitting that we are imperfect is the same as admitting that we are failures. Unlike the grace given by healthy parents to children, we sometimes forget to give ourselves grace when we make a mistake! Israel is presented like a child making a mistake, and God is presented as righteously angry – and gracious nonetheless.

I have told you this story before, but it is the best one I know, so I’m going to tell you again.

Julian of Norwich was a 14^th century mystic in England who wrote the potent little book, “Revelations of a Divine Love” based on a mystical experience she had while desperately ill, and decades of prayerful reflection on it afterward. She tells one of my favorite stories, intending to clarify the relationship between people and God. This is my synopsis of it:

A servant dearly loves their ruler. The ruler asks the servant to go run an errand, and the servant is THRILLED to get do so something to help the ruler. The servant, however, so dearly loves the ruler than even while hurrying away to do the ruler’s errand, the servant keeps looking at the ruler, loathe to let the ruler out of their sight. In this awkward form of movement, the servants doesn’t notice a hole, and falls right into it, all the way down to the bottom.

The hole is deep, and there is no ladder. The servant is trying to scratch their way back up, to continue the errand, all while berating themselves for their stupidity, “I should have watched where I was going, I’m of no use to the ruler now! How could I have done this! The ruler will be so disappointed! I’ve messed everything up again! Isn’t that just like me!”

The servant, trying again and again to climb out and failing, berating themselves silently, fails to look up and notice that the ruler is at the top of the hole, smiling kindly, and offering their hand to the servant.

God is often the one standing at the top of the hole in which we are berating ourselves, offering us a way out. Sometimes our own guilt, or the ways we berate ourselves, keep us from hearing God’s possibilities for our lives. In my own life, I have found that I really believe that God is capable of forgiving everything I do – but I’m not! Many times, instead of asking for God’s forgiveness (which I think comes automatically), I’ve had to ask God to help me forgive myself, so that I can move into the creative solutions that God offers.

This may be all the more important in community. The harms that we have done to one another in the past are imperative to recognize, but guilt rarely helps move anyone toward healing! Learning to acknowledge our individual and communal failings without dwelling in guilt and shame is another way of learning to walk – in grace.

Some of the work of learning to walk in grace is the work of self-forgiveness, and it is pretty important to make space for the goodness that God offers each of us. Truly, God is patient in teaching the people to walk – in grace. May we be patient with ourselves and each other in this process. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 31, 2016

Sermons

“Infuriating Plumb-Lines” based on Amos 7:7-17

July 10, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This poem is entitled “Allowables” and it is by Nikki Giovanni:

	I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn't
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don't think
I'm allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened¹

And yet, so many people are dead because others were afraid. We, as a country, are frightened.

The fear lives in us in many ways. We have anxiety for our own futures and for the futures of those we love, particularly of younger generations. We are afraid of the world that is becoming, particularly with regard to: Global Climate Change and the ways it is destabilizing the world; the global refugee crisis and the millions of humans left without a place to call home; and the global economy, still slumped in many ways and still biased to producing wealth for the rich by continuing to devalue the lives of the poor.

We are afraid, as well, of the prevalence of violence. Violence also comes in many different forms to keep us afraid. Around us there is domestic violence (emotional, physical, and sexual), violent crime, mass shootings, bombings, terrorism, and of course war – both declared and undeclared. Violence is terrifyingly common!

We a country that lives in fear of violence and death for ourselves and our loved ones. Most of us are afraid of not having enough to survive – no matter how much we have right now. We are afraid that we too could become refugees. We are afraid that our government and way of life could collapse under us (or is collapsing under us.) We are afraid of what another single person could do out of their fear or anger.

I watched the videos of the shootings that were perpetrated by police this week. I didn’t want to, but I did because it didn’t feel responsible to stick my head in the sand. It was clear that the officers were responding to their fear, and not to the actual events occurring around them. It is not yet clear what motived the police shootings in Dallas, and what we hear indicates that it was motivated by hatred. Yet, I suspect there is fear under that as well.

The fear itself is not the problem, although it is nearly epidemic. The problem is how the fear gets dealt with. It get denied, repressed, and projected – rather than admitted to and faced. That makes it stronger and less rational. Furthermore, the projection usually means that fear gets placed on people perceived to be “other”. That’s when fear gets dangerous. This, however, isn’t a new phenomenon.

In fact, I think what we see in our society today is also reflected in what Amos was calling out in his society in the 750’s BCE. Amos’s life as a prophet occurred during the reign of King Jeroboam II, who was the most “successful” king in the history of Israel. He was successful militarily, economically, and politically. He restored the kingdom to its largest known boundaries, brokered deals with other leaders, and the nation prospered. Well, like it goes, the wealthy prospered. Amos was from Judah, so the other country from whom Israel had succeeded in a civil war. Amos describes himself as a simple farmer, called by God to speak what others would not.

As Rev. Dr. Thomas Mann eloquently put it in my reading this week, “Prophesy is the gifted ability to see what other people cannot or will not see. Prophets focus primarily on the moral and spiritual conditions of a nation; they do not simply predict future events but warn of consequences to injustice.”² The nation of Israel was “successful” but as we’ll hear next week, Amos accuses the wealthy and the king of “buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.” (Amos 8:6) The cost of “success” was oppression. Amos was calling out the upper class for what they did to the lower class – and if you are patient, I’ll get to how that has to do with fear.

When people are oppressing others there are two interconnecting ways that they have to dehumanize the people they are oppressing. First of all, to choose to oppress someone requires creating a narrative that says that the other person or people matter less than you do. That can be done lots of ways: via race or gender or age or economic status or SAT score or position or whatever. Secondly though, to choose to oppress another person or people is an inherently terrifying act. When you are an oppressor, you have to be aware (at least subconsciously) that YOU could be the oppressed instead of the oppressor. Given that reality, it becomes imperative to continue to dehumanize the other, to oppress them further, to keep as much separation as possible between your full humanity and their partial humanity. Also, you have to make sure that they will never rise up and oppress you.

This was a significant piece of our history as a nation that engaged in racially “justified” slavery. There was a narrative – the race theory- created to justify dehumanizing people. There was a constant fear of slave rebellion, and there was a terror of slaves wanting to do harm to their masters like the harm done to them. The cycles of violence against people of color were deep, as was the fear of white people of being treated the way they treated their slaves. Both the violence and the fear live on. At the Schenectady Black Lives Matter march on Thursday someone made a sign that said “This is the new genocide of Black People.”

Race, of course, is not the only marker used to justify oppression. Any “otherness” will do – real or imagined. Often the marker has been economic – although the definitions of who gets to be wealthy and who doesn’t has changed with place and time. In Amos’s time, some of the poor in that society were poor by position: widows because they had no male protection nor access to land, orphans because they had no male protection nor access to land, and foreigners because they no male protection that counted nor access to land. Some would have been poor by circumstance – because of bad harvests or because there were too many male children in a generation or because they were the youngest sons of youngest sons.

There were people living in poverty, and the policies of those in power was to add to their struggle with oppression, rather than to lighten their load with policies of support. The vision of the Torah is of a nation where the widows, orphans, and foreigners are provided for, and where it is not possible to slip into generational poverty. By this time though, the people who claimed the vision of the Torah were acting more “normally.” They were participating in systems that used the labor of the poor to enrich the wealthy and strengthen the power of the already empowered. As Mann says, “For Amos, the primary failure is injustice,”³ and injustice is prevalent.

Amos doesn’t think God likes the injustice of Israel, nor the way it found its “success,” one little bit. He expresses it by suggesting that justice is not found in the nation, and God is so upset as to abandon the people. That’s the role of a prophet. The role of “those in power” is played in this story by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. According to Mann, “Bethel is something like northern Israel’s ‘national cathedral.’ The collusion of religious and political institutions is blatant when Amaziah says to Amos, ’[Bethel] is the king’s sanctuary.’ One would have thought it was God’s.”⁴ In particular, the name “Beth-el” means “house of God” so the suggestion here is not overly subtle.

Amaziah wants Amos to GO AWAY, because he is upsetting the kingdom by speaking the truth. Then Amos basically predicts the exile of the Israel, which will happen Assyria in a single generation. The important pieces of this passage for me today are: that the role of the prophet was to speak uncomfortable truths, that the man understood to be speaking for God was calling for justice for the least empowered, and that those in power desperately wanted the one calling for justice to HUSH.

Often prophets, however, have to point out not only what injustice looks like but what consequences it has. Amos pointed out that the “success” of Israel was unstable and could lead to its demise. As people of God, prophecy is some of our work. We end up having to say that unless this country turns itself around and faces its own racism as well as its ridiculous gun laws, the violence we experience now will only continue to escalate.

There is such fear in our society because there is such oppression, and those of us who benefit from it live in fear that it will turn around and oppress us. (Because life and society are complicated, almost of us benefit from it in some ways and are oppressed by it in others.) Injustice anywhere is not ONLY a threat to justice everywhere, is it a source of our anxiety and fear, and thus a piece of the violence of our society itself.

There are many intersecting issues in our country today, and I’m expecting that many of you who are listening have already done many of the things that can make a difference. I’m going to remind us all of them again though, because in the midst of fear it is a good reminder that we can do things that matter.

We take courage from each other and from the God we know so that we can acknowledge our fears without repressing them nor letting them rule our lives.

We continue to educate ourselves about our past and present as a nation with racial oppression, to destabilize the myths of racism and thereby change them.

We can speak up about gun access.

We name injustice and oppression wherever we see it, and we participate in actions to change them. We do this even when it infuriates others.

We love all of God’s people as much as we can as often as we can and as well as we can, and trust that God will use our love to build the world as God would have it be.

We trust that if we work together, and act out of faith, hope, and love, even the brokenness of our country can be fixed.

May it be so, and may the God of justice use us to help heal our country, even if it means infuriating others with our calls for justice. Amen

1“Allowables” a poem by Nicki Giovanni, in her book Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid, page 109.

2Thomas W. Mann in “Exegetical Perspective on Amos 7:7-17” found on page 221 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

3Mann, 221.

4Mann, 225.

–

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“All Messed Up” based on Acts 16:16-39

May 8, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This story is all messed up. To begin with, Paul is a very questionable hero. He doesn’t seem to act in order to benefit the slave girl. In fact, the text says explicitly that he was “very much ANNOYED” by her and that’s why he healed her. Annoyance – not compassion, love, or concern for her well-being, annoyance.

Truth be told, the story doesn’t really seem to care about the slave girl either. The slave girl is not named, the text does not indicate that Paul ever spoke to HER directly, and it does not tell us what happens to her after she was “healed.” She’s a narrative means to an end.

The spirit in her is used to tell us that the followers of Jesus’s way were in fact slaves of the Most High God. Her status as a slave may exist primarily as a narrative device, whereby the enslaved is able to name the slave-to-God status of others. While it is suggested that her owner’s were angered by losing the money she had been making them, the accusations they made against Paul and Silas don’t even have anything to do with that.

Of the girl herself we know very little. She was a slave. She had a spirit of divination. It made her owners a lot of money. She followed around Paul and his company, and her truth-telling about them got annoying after a few days, so Paul ordered the spirt of out of and it came out. Then she wasn’t worth as much money.

Those aren’t terribly human facts to know about someone. We know nothing of her motivation, although her motivation could reasonably be assumed within the confines of the story, to be the spirit and not her! We don’t know what happens next for her. Is she beaten because she is now worthless? What back-breaking labor does she land in? How old is she anyway? What other work may she be used for now? What she grateful? Was the spirit something that benefitted her life or harmed it (go with the story on this one, we can’t change the story, so we might as well accept its premises for a moment).

Not only do we know nothing about her, we also don’t know why Paul failed to SEE her or have any mercy on her. If he had the power to take away the spirit, then maybe he could have done so earlier. On the other hand, having the spirit made her more valuable, which may have improved her life. But he doesn’t seem to CARE and neither does the story.

At best, this part of the passage might just be a retelling of the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge.

[Jesus said,] ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (Luke 18:2-5)

Paul gets worn down by a spirit, and orders the spirit out of slave girl. Like the judge, he doesn’t act out of justice or obligation, he uses his power because he is ANNOYED.

Later, when he gets out of jail because of his inborn status as a Roman Citizen, he demands HIS rights as a Roman Citizen, and is upset that he was mistreated because HE deserves better because of his power in the world. Paul demands a public apology, but only for how he was treated. He doesn’t ask about her status, or indicate that she mattered.

In Acts, Peter is presented as “the new Jesus.” Paul isn’t. Thanks be to God. I don’t know what Peter would have done in this case, nor can I really speak to what Jesus would have done. Yet, I’d like to believe they would have SEEN the girl, and not just been annoyed by the spirit. I want to think they’d worry about her life too. Stories of Jesus seem to imply that lives matter, even the lives of people who have been beaten down by life.

In this story, Paul fails to do so.

And yet, he doesn’t. The second half of the story is different from the first half. The interaction with the jailer is amazing, beautiful, miraculous, and shows an INCREDIBLE amount of empathy for the very person who was oppressing them. Paul and Silas cared about the jailer, and the ways that they responded to the jailer saved his life and showed him a new way of being. The way that Paul responds to the jailer is exemplary. He SEES him and cares about him, without even knowing him. That feels like how Jesus would have handled it.

The story of the earthquake in jail, and the prisoners staying put is pretty darn weird. I suppose Paul knew that the authorities would figure things out sooner rather than later, so he wasn’t particularly concerned. Yet in most cases in human history, the cycle of oppression wins out. One person or group oppresses another, and if the oppressed ever get a chance to lead, they respond with oppression as well. Prisoners taking gentle care of their jailers breaks the cycle of oppression. That being said, as a GENERAL rule, I don’t think this is a model we have to follow. It is a good thing to keep in mind when you already know you are SAFE, but not necessarily a good choice every time.

Paul’s actions in prison were very effective in proclaiming that the way of Jesus was different than the ways of the world. The jailer converted. Paul didn’t, however, call out the economic injustice, the inherent human dignity of the slave girl, or even the position of jailer in a system of oppression. Paul’s actions mostly left things the same, and didn’t lead people to fuss over them, other than worrying about if they’d get in trouble for misidentifying a Roman Citizen.

I think he could have done better. I think these stories are all messed up. That’s a relief! It indicates that sometimes the people of God mess up, and although we are doing our best, we fail to see the most loving way forward. Sometimes we don’t notice the calls for justice around us. Sometimes we’re just plain wrong! Often we don’t SEE.

Yet, God continues to work through Paul through the rest of Paul’s life. The writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles has told some pretty important stories for the history of human kind. That is, the failure of Paul and the story to get it right isn’t the final answer. (Not that this helps the slave girl one little bit. Nothing does.)

Yet, it doesn’t stop here. Paul kept developing, and learning more deeply how to love. He would eventually write the famous words to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29) Paul would come to know that slaves have value and that women have value. Perhaps if he looked back on his life, he would have regretted how he acted on that one day, but it didn’t define his life.

We can make mistakes, and learn to do better later. It’s normal. It’s human. In fact, we can’t do otherwise! God is certainly capable of forgiving us, and that should lead us to believe that we can be capable of forgiving ourselves.

want to share God’s love and God’s light at General Conference, even with those with whom I disagree. I don’t want to compromise, and I WILL NOT compromise on the inherent dignity and worthiness of all of God’s people regardless of sexual preference or gender identity. (Obviously.) And yet, the people who stand in opposition to inclusion are not the enemy. They simply don’t know better – yet. Many of us in this room have struggled along the journey to get to inclusion. (Some of us who are younger, had open-minded parents, and attended great churches in our youth didn’t have to struggle, but that makes us much more lucky than wise.) If those of us in this room, who now so consistently act out of regard for the wholeness of your sisters and brothers who are LGBTQI, were once not so sure, then it is clear that God’s grace can win in the hearts of others as well.

No one’s mind will be changed by yelling though, nor by nastiness. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Love is the only way forward, especially in the face of hatred and fear. As I get ready to leave, I’m pondering how to make space for God’s love to flow through me to drive out hate. I wonder how I can serve as a light.

Now, as previously discussed, I am convinced that the time has come for acts of disobedience and non-violent direct action that will disrupt the normal system. I believe that The United Methodist Church acts as an oppressor doing harm to beloved children of God, and I believe (as I have believed throughout my life) that I am to be part of changing that. The question is how to keep my heart and mind peaceful, steady, and focused on love while I do so. People are going to say terrible things, and things are at times going to go terribly wrong.

But the people who say terrible things are misguided, not evil. The things that will go terribly wrong are not permanent. God is love, God is creator, God is powerful beyond measure. God’s will win out in the end – either through The United Methodist Church or The United Methodist Church will die so that God’s love can live. Nothing else is the final answer. Nothing else can be. God’s love always wins. That is, the Love of God will win out in the end, no matter how much human beings at the church at large mess it up right now.

Two of my favorite prayer practices interrelate. I’ve mentioned them before, but it is worth a reminder today. One prayer practice is to breath in love and breath out stress, fear, and anything that holds you back from love/God. That one is wonderfully de-stressing. The other is to breath in the pain of the world, and allow God to transform it within you, so that you can breath out love.

It is my intention to pray that prayer over and over again. It is my intention to try to live that prayer through the next two weeks. When you are able, I invite you to join me. When the pain becomes too much to bear it may help. (If it doesn’t, return immediately to the other one and soak up love until you can go forward again!) We are, all of us, called to be God’s love and God’s light in the world. We are to participate in co-creating the world with God. We are to use our power to bring in the kin-dom. We are able to participate in changing hate into love.

Let us breathe. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 8, 2016

Sermons

“Shouting Stones” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-19; Luke 19:28-40

March 20, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I heard a story once of a United Methodist Church invited to be a part of a local Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It was a small church, they didn’t feel like they make much of a difference, but they were invited and they went! A few weeks ahead of time they’d left fliers along the parade route letting residents know that they’d be collecting underwear and socks for kids as they paraded. When the day came it was a bit cold and definitely cloudy. They were near the end of the parade, and not all of them wanted to go after all. But they did it anyway.

The parade route wound through a residential area and when the church group passed by (complete with a BIG sign), residents would yell after them “hey! Wait! I’ve got something for you!” and they’d watch as people ran into their houses and ran back out with the gifts for children. It was amazing, as not all of the residents seemed to have much to share.

Near the end of the route, standing in front of a gas station, came a young boy carrying as many cans of soup as he could hold. He stuck them in the arms of the ones closest to him and said, “These are for the hungry children!” The church didn’t correct him, they took the gift and added it to their pile.

Afterward, they reflected on their experience and realized that most of the people on that route weren’t church goers, didn’t have much to spare, and they might have though wouldn’t care about kids needing new socks … and yet they RAN to give their gifts! They didn’t want to be left behind. They -and that one young boy with the soup especially – CARED and they had gifts they wanted to offer. The church had made it possible for the people to give gifts they wanted to give!

In so many ways, that Saint Patrick’s Day parade embodies the spirit of Palm Sunday!

Now, Jesus wasn’t the only one going into Jerusalem around that time. The Passover was a holy celebration, and many pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate it. The city got 5 times bigger at Passover with so many people coming in. In fact, that’s the reason that Pilate, as the Roman appointed governor came into the city at Passover. They were worried that with all those people together celebrating the Passover things might get unruly.

As a reminder, the Jewish holiday of Passover remembers God’s saving actions in freeing the Israelites from their oppressors in Egypt. So, a whole bunch of Israelites oppressed by the Roman Empire were gathering together in their former capital to celebrate God’s actions to free them from oppression, and it made their current oppressors nervous.

That’s why Pilate came in every year. It was a good time to have some extra Roman military power, to remind the people that they would not stand for a revolt or any sort of rebellion. Pilate came in with all the flash and glory of the Empire – showing of the Empire’s power and threatening anyone who would deny the Empire the right to rule Israel. He came in from the coast – from the west, riding a horse, with drums and golden eagle flags and flash and power.

Jesus came in from the East. He came riding on the donkey – fulfilling a Jewish prophesy about God’s appointed King who would free them from oppression. That is, Zechariah 9:9b, “Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Riding a donkey was also the way that King Solomon entered when he became king. In fact, I’ve heard it suggested in that in the ancient Middle East Kings rode horses to war, but rode donkeys when they came in peace.¹ Some of the people were at the Western Gate greeting the power of the Empire. Some of the people were parading with Jesus toward the Eastern gate. Most of them were people without any hope of access to power or money through the economic system that existed within the Roman Empire. Yet, they had hope that God’s actions through Jesus might make a difference for them.

They were excited and hopeful, and they were yelling. The Gospel says they were yelling, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“ To our ears that may sound pretty standard. It certainly excesses exuberance, but it also just sounds like…. the Bible. So, if you aren’t paying attention to it, you might not notice that what they were saying was sedition!²

Israel was a part of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Caesar was the King – God was not, and Jesus was not. Rome ruled Israel, God did not.

Jesus was riding a donkey, which was the way that kings entered Jerusalem. He had a crowd around him supporting him. They were waving Palm branches, which were essentially the national flag of Israel, and they were proclaiming LOUDLY that Jesus was the king – and the one appointed by God. These were words and actions of a rebellion against the Empire – at exactly the same time that the army was coming into the city to stop rebellions.

There were some who tried to silence the crowds – to warn them of what would happen if the Roman Empire found out that people were yelling such things. But Jesus responds that they can’t be silenced. He suggests that the movement has begun and it is unstoppable. He uses the metaphor that if the people were silenced the stones would start shouting. As a child I took that literally, but these days I tend to think it means that the energy and hope of the movement couldn’t be silenced.

Jesus would end up dead by the end of the week, killed for leading a VIOLENT revolt against the Empire. Of course, it wasn’t violent, but it was a revolt. They thought that if they killed him, the movement would stop. We today are the proof that the stones would shout out – the movement can’t be silenced.

It is like the St. Patty’s day parade and the people running from their homes with their hands full of underwear. You’d think they didn’t have anything to give, but it didn’t stop them from giving it! You’d think the Israelite peasants would be too scared to rebel, but they were unstoppable. You’d think the movement started by a backwater Jew in an an Empire from 2000 years ago would have stopped by now, but it hasn’t. The stones still cry out.

For more than a year now I’ve been working with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition in preparation for General Conference in May. As a person who has studied math, and a person paying attention to demographics in The United Methodist Church I have a lot of clarity about what to expect from General Conference: a whole lot of pain and a hard shift towards a more conservative church. The question is how conservative it will become. There have been a lot of times when I’ve wondered why I’m doing progressive organizing in a church where putting our stamp of approval on a piece of legislation almost guarantees that it won’t pass. There have been plenty of times since my first trip to General Conference in 2004 where I have wondered why I stay in this denomination that does such great harm to my sisters and brothers in faith who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual.

I don’t think the people who waved palm branches and shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were stupid. They knew for sure that it was an act of rebellion, they knew it was seriously dangerous for them and for Jesus, and I suspect they knew that it was REALLY REALLY unlikely that Jesus would live to be king. I can’t be sure what any of them thought, but the Gospels themselves make it clear that Jesus knew the actions of Palm Sunday would get him killed, and I suspect most of the participants did too.

So why did they do it? They were desperate and there was very little reason to have hope outside of the Jesus movement. Peasants were dying young after living lives of hard labor and undernourishment. There wasn’t any reason to believe that would change on its own. Jesus brought hope. He brought a message that was different: showing people ways to work together to have enough, suggesting that the values of the world were all messed up, seeing and caring about women, children, people who were ill or injured, and people living in poverty. Jesus was the living reminder that God still cared, that steadfast love endures forever. They voted for that with their lives and their livelihoods. The cloaks they spread were often the only thing keeping them alive at night, protecting them from the desert night’s chill, and they choose to lay their cloaks before Jesus just like they choose to shout the words that could get them all killed.

They knew they might all die, and it was worth it anyway to have a reason to hope in God.

That sure makes General Conference seem less important! But truth be told, as much as I know that General Conference will be a disaster from a progressive perspective, I have a tiny bit of hope. There are some good things that might happen: legislation written by UM clergy with disabilities to expand the denomination’s care for people with disabilities will likely pass! The work done by Fossil Free UMC to get the denomination’s resources out of fossil fuels might pass and similar work done to get resources out of companies that support the occupation of Palestine might too. (And since our pension plan is worth ~$21 billion, what we do with our investments MATTERS.) And maybe, just maybe, even though it is a long shot, we might pass the legislation that creates global equity in The United Methodist Church and makes us true sisters and brothers with United Methodists outside of the United States.

Most of the injustices of the church will stand, I suspect there will be MORE injustice when we’re done with General Conference then there are now, and yet I’m going to go and work on organizing the progressive voice because I believe that calling for justice in the church and the world is the work of God. And maybe, just maybe, the Spirit will find a way to bring more good than bad out of it all. God has done weirder things already, even if it seems statistically unlikely to me!

Those Palm Sunday crowds took risks for the sake of hope.

They paid attention to what God was up to, even when chances were very slim that God’s loving-kindness and justice would end up in charge. They celebrated God, and they celebrated hope, and they came together cheering for possibility – even though it was dangerous to their LIVES.

They took risks for the sake of hope.

May we do the same.

Amen

___

1 http://www.gotquestions.org/king-ride-donkey.html

2The gist of this whole sermon comes from Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan’s book “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem” (Harper Collins: 2006). This is one of the most important books I’ve read in terms of reframing my understanding of Palm Sunday, and a whole lot of other things.

–

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

March 20, 2016

Sermons

“Questions about Mary (of Bethany)”based on John 12:1-8

March 13, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A few years ago at Thanksgiving, my immediate family spent time watching videos from the years my brother and I were kids. My grandfather had acquired a video camera when I was about 8, and I have very clear memories of trying to avoid the camera like the plague, although I seemingly failed. There were a lot of learnings in the watching of those videos, but I want to tell you today about just one. I learned that my grandfather had an accent!

This was mind blowing information for me. We were VERY close to our grandparents growing up, we spent all holidays and birthdays together, and weekends at their house. He was probably my favorite person to ever walk the face of the earth, and it is because of how he loved me that I can comprehend God’s love as unconditional.

However, I didn’t know he had an accent. He died when I was TWENTY, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t until he’d been dead for more than a decade and then I heard his voice again that I was able to hear it. Until that point he’d been so close to me that it hadn’t occurred to me that anything was out of the ordinary about him – mostly I guess because he was my ordinary. It is also possible that I’m an idiot. I’m not sure.

But I’m going with the point that overfamiliarity can blind us. I’m going with that point because I was reading the gospel this week and the WORLD’S MOST OBVIOUS question jumped out at me. It is, of course, not one that I’ve ever thought over before, even though I’ve heard this story and ones like it plenty of times, and likely preached them – often.

Ready?

Why were Martha, Mary, and Lazarus all living together? They’re presented as adults, and their own parents aren’t mentioned. They are said to be siblings, but no spouses are mentioned, and they’re all in the same household. This wasn’t a THING. Unlike 2016 where singleness in adulthood is normal, and this would simply be a notable attribute along the lines of “Oh, yeah, Mary’s cool. In fact, she’s so cool that she can manage to live with her sister and brother! They rent a place in Bellevue.”

Adult singleness and adult siblings living together was significantly less common 2000 years ago in Israel. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to identify a lot of scholarship on this issue. It seems, as per normal, that my questions aren’t what anyone else wants to answer. I did find a few articles, but I have some questions about the validity of their scholarship.¹ Basically there appear to be a few theories about why Martha, Mary, and Lazarus are all living together in their adulthoods:

They are actually quite young, and in fact too young to be married. This would be REALLY young, as average marriage age (of women) was between 14 and 16.

The women may be widows who didn’t remarry.

Martha and Mary may have “belonged to an ascetic sect and had chosen singleness and celibacy.”²

In particular, “It is believed that a colony of ascetics (perhaps Essenes) lived in Bethany. Literary evidence from one the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that these ascetics had a hospice in Bethany for the ritually unclean, which included lepers . The ascetics were known for their acts of charity and it is most likely that their hospice also helped and accommodated the poor and destitute.”³

There are a few other little things that I learned along the way in asking this question that I just have to share with you because they’re wonderful. First of all, Martha may not have been Martha’s name. “The name ‘Martha’ is the feminine form of an Aramaic word meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’, so ‘Martha’ may be a title rather than a name.”⁴ Also, in all of the gospels, Martha is mentioned first which means that she likely was the older, so this makes all the more sense. This implies that no matter how this went down, Jesus kept visiting a female dominated household. (Also, I sort of want to name a daughter Martha now.)

Next, it seems likely that Lazarus was their little brother. He never has a speaking role, which would make the most sense if he was young. This also makes his death (which was related in the chapter prior to our gospel reading today) all the more sad. I think it is unlikely that Lazarus was a child though. Jesus was really open minded, and broke open barriers with his “let the children come to me” line, but I don’t think that a child would be referred to as “he whom you love”. That, for me, suggests that they may not have all been that young. If Lazarus was “an adult” (whatever that meant at the time, but at least a teenager) but was the younger brother, then Martha and Mary were clearly above normal marrying age. Yet, I would guess that if Lazarus was an adult then he’d be called Master of the household. Perhaps Lazarus was a man with special needs, which would make this all even more awesome.

Yet, really, who knows?

There is always the third option. Bethany, the town in which they’re said to reside, means “Poor House” or “House of Misery”.⁵ It is even suggested that as “Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem which made it a perfect location for a hospice for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem who became ritually unclean and were unable to participate in the Jewish festivals.”⁶ As residents of Bethany, it isn’t all that unlikely that the family was involved in running a hospice of sorts. In fact, it would make sense out of this story itself! How did Mary happen to have a nard of perfume worth a year’s wages for a laborer? It would be reasonable that she might have gotten it as a gift from a wealthy former patient.

On the other hand, it could just be that this was a wealthy family headed by Martha, and supportive of Jesus. We don’t know. If they weren’t running a hospice, then it is notable that they had a house large enough to offer hospitality to Jesus AND his disciples (and their families) and the capacity to feed them all, which would be consistent with having enough wealth to own expensive perfume as well. They wouldn’t be the only wealthy, female dominated household that identified with the early Jesus movement either, so that could be.

While I’m muddying waters, I also want to mention that I’m pretty confused about how Jesus MET these siblings anyway. He’s from up north, in Galilee. Its almost a 100 miles away. He is clearly really close to them, and they show up in all the Gospels. This family matters to Jesus. But he spends his life and ministry in Galilee and only visits Jerusalem. In the gospel of John, Jesus is killed because he raises Lazarus from the dead, but he is called to their house because of his existent relationship with them, which we haven’t heard about until he is called. He was already in the area though. How did they know each other? How did they become so close? Mary presents as a disciple. Lazarus is called beloved. Martha and Mary both presume the right to chide Jesus. Don’t you just want to know?

Me too. But I have no theories on this. Sometimes love happens between people (including the deep friendship kind), and it is always amazing. It seems it was amazing for Jesus too. There is perhaps ONE clue. The passage states that the perfume filled the room. That is, it says, “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” This sounds A LOT like Song of Solomon 1:12, “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.” Maybe, just maybe, Jesus and Mary were courting. This is mostly fun because when people tend to theorize about romantic relationships for Jesus, they usually pick Mary of Magdala instead of Mary of Bethany. I’m a rebel.

Now, I have two last things to clarify, this time about our gospel lesson in particular. John’s story is different from the other versions of this story. The setting is different (in the synoptics it happens at Simon the Leper’s house), the woman is different (not a prostitute here), and the location of the perfume is different (it is on his head in the other versions). Only John tells this crazy story of Mary anointing his FEET and them wiping them off with her HAIR. It is also only John who presents the action of Jesus on the last night he was with them as being FOOT WASHING and not the Last Supper. That means that Mary’s action of washing Jesus feet comes before Jesus chooses to wash his disciples’ feet… almost as if Jesus found the experience so moving that he let it define his ritual of goodbye to his followers.

Also, when Jesus says, “the poor you will always have with you” he is likely quoting Deuteronomy 15:11 which in the NRSV reads “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” It isn’t a passive acceptance of poverty (which I always worried about) but a commandment to share. However, even as he quotes the scripture, he goes on to say, “BUT you will not always have me.” Whoever poured the perfume, wherever, in all the stories Jesus defends the action. One commentator says, “What church serious about discipleship does not struggle with the tension between money spent in beautiful acts of worship and money spent on behalf of the poor?”⁷ AMEN to that. The affirmation of this passage is of that tension, that both beauty and a response to poverty are necessary.

As in this sermon, life often has more questions than answers. This passage sure does, even though its familiarity can be blinding. That’s true of a lot of the Bible, at least for me. There are some great take aways from this, even in the midst of all the questions though: Jesus had the capacity to form deep, meaningful friendships – including with strong women. Therefore relationships REALLY matter. Beauty has inherent value, as does taking care of each other. And the way we follow is a way of servant leadership – of foot washing – and radical expression of love. May both the questions and the answer bless us all this week. Amen

1Issues: lack of doctorate; way of describing Christianity; and lack of footnotes. Presumably the last one should matter the most, as I don’t have a doctorate either.

2“Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany” in New Life written by Marg Mowczko found at http://newlife.id.au/christian-living/martha-mary-and-lazarus-of-bethany/ on March 12, 2016.

3Ibid

4Ibid. (I really liked this article, I just wish it was better footnoted…)

5Ibid

6Ibid

7H. Stephen Shoemaker, “Homiletical Perspective on John 12:1-8” in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 2 ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) p. 145.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 13, 2016

Sermons

“The Mystery of God – A Personal Take” by…

March 9, 2016February 15, 2020
by Administrator

I am
honored to take my place in this pulpit.
It has a reputation for allowing free expression, and I am sure that I
am not the only one who might have expressed views and opinions regarded as
outside the current dogmas of the Church.
This is not the first time I am asked to give a sermon in a Methodist
Church. I grew up in a Primitive
Methodist Church and my Father was a Lay Preacher for 50 years. You see in England in the 1940’s, the
Methodists did not have sufficient full-time ministers for one at every church
and chapel. The churches were organized
into 5 to 10 in a circuit with perhaps half the number of full-time ministers,
hence the need for Lay preachers to fill the vacant spots. So in my youth I was in training to be a Lay
preacher and occasionally was asked to conduct the services at small chapels in
the countryside of North-West England.
The one piece of advice I was given by an old gentleman at one of the
Chapels was “Be sure to include the Lord Jesus in every one of your sermons”. So here goes:

We each
one of us is aware that we have been endowed with both Reason and Heart. At
times we can be rational and at other times we act and behave
irrationally. We have been given such
amazing characteristics such as imagination, daring, patience, fortitude and
peace that we can envisage such spectacular feats as landing humans on the
Planet Mars; yet we also have within us characteristics such as jealousy, hate,
idleness and often a desire for War. So
this exploration of the Mystery of God is my attempt to try to understand the
concept of God as expressed in the Bible and use my personal rationality as far
as possible, recognizing that somewhere along, Faith and Belief are heavily
involved.

I’m
starting with three assumptions as a basis for my discourse:

First: That since we are here in this place at this time,
that we all believe in God, and we are here to worship him, or her, or it.

Second: That we can all agree in the concept of God the
Creator of all things, Omnipotent, God only Wise.

Third: That we are
each of us made in the Image of God.

Now,
each of us has a personal view of other characteristics that we may project and
I propose to relate some of my questions, truths and speculations that that I
have recently had pause to consider. Living in a Retirement Community with many
essential services provided, leaves time to remember the past and assess one’s
life journey.

The
Bible, particularly the Old Testament, cites many stories of a person’s,
usually a man’s, encounter with God, although God never shows himself. For instance in the Garden of Eden, Adam and
Eve were created with Free Will, the ability to choose, and they ate of the
Tree of Good and Evil; they encounter God who knows they have disobeyed his
commandment to eat only the Tree of Life, and for that they must leave the
Garden and henceforth their lives will involve toil and pain. In our first lesson, we are given the story
of Moses and his encounter with God and the burning bush on Mt. Horeb. Moses wants to be given a name so he can tell
the people in slavery who it was that sent him there. And God’s answer is “I AM that I AM” or an
alternative translation of the Hebrew is “I AM that I AM or What or Will BE”.

I
believe we can all agree in the belief of God the Creator of THE Universe,
though to me it seems there may not be one, but in fact, many parallel
universes that exist but which we are unable to see or experience. If you want an easy metaphor of such parallel
universes, just surf your cable TV and witness the separate existences that
occur that you only are aware of when you tune in to that particular channel.

If you
believe with me that each of us is made in the image of God, then the inverse
of that is that HE, SHE, or IT (or as modern theologians would call God – “The
Ground of our Being”) must possess all our characteristics in Spades & much
more. Since I was trained as a
Physicist, I must assume God is the Supreme Physicist, the most capable
Experimenter & the All-knowing Theoretician. So what if our Universe is a Grand
Experiment? As a physicist we are not
uncomfortable with parallel universes or with the concept of a Universe of
Opposites. Pythagorus (who you all know
from his famous Geometric Theorem) was also a philosopher & religious
teacher who lived some 500 years before the Christian Era, and he drew up a
Table of Ten Opposites describing our universe: (in those days the number 10
was a special number)

Limited Unlimited
Odd Even
Unity Plurality
Right Left
Male Female
at
Rest in Motion
Straight Curved
Light Darkness
Good Evil
Square Oblong

We can add many more – Physicists now know there is Matter
and Anti-matter, an electron & a
positron, while there is a neutrino, a friend of mine who heads a Govt. Lab in
Virginia has recently had an appeal before Congress to spend several hundred
million dollars of public’s money to fund an experiment to attempt to discover
the anti-neutrino. There is also Joy and Pain!
So I believe that God must in fact be a Duality – A God of both Positives
and Negatives, a God of both Good and Evil.
And that presents for me a Major Dilemma. How to understand the occurrence of Pain and
Suffering that appears to be inflicted on both good and bad people?

So, from
what I have said, might we infer What God’s Strategy for Mankind might be?

If you
follow me, I am suggesting that our Universe is an experiment in Free Will, and
God wants to see how humankind handles it, and the Bible indicates that God
wants us to walk this balance between Good and Evil and over time God has tried
several different techniques to send messages to attempt to make it clear as to
how humankind should conduct itself. The
early books of the Bible suggest to me that God chose “Judgement” initially to
let people know his ways; through Moses he attempted to send a list of
Commandments, still later he chose to send messages through the Prophets. In the case of David, he first called Samuel
to be his messenger who then much later used him to anoint David to be King. However
it was many years before David was actually installed as King of Israel. You can probably think of many other ways the
books of the Old Testament describe God’s action to convince his chosen people
to walk the straight path. Finally, as
John describes in his account of the coming of Jesus – God sent his only
begotten Son that we could be saved and St. Paul said that not only Jews, but
all people could be part of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Back of
all this is a personal awareness of God’s identity. The early Jews called God “Jaweh”, and later
David used the term “Adonai” and these have come down to us using the vowels of
one and the consonants of the other as “Jehovah”. We in First Methodist recently heard Gendis
Khan, a Moslem and the Iman from the Schenectady Mosque, describe God’s identity
as Justice. Pope Francis has recently
authored a book entitled “The name of God is Mercy”. I personally believe that “God is Love”, and
God expressed that Love in sending his only begotten Son to earth in order to
show us how to walk the balance between Good and Evil.

It is
my belief that God has a purpose for each of us. For sure, we can only do our
best in the present. As illustrated by
the story of Samuel and David, God’s timetable is completely different from our
own. As the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
wrote – Life must be lived forward but can only be understood backward.

Therefore, go forward with courage and hope and obey Jesus’s Commandment
– Thou shall Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind and Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. AMEN.

Sermon March 6, 2016

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