“Sent” based on Isaiah 6:1-8 and John 3:1-17

May 27, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/When
I was 7, my friend Becca was in a church that focused on “being
saved.” As far as I understood it, “being saved” involved
taking a teacher from her Sunday School into the church library,
proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and praying a specific
prayer. This, apparently, was not to be done too early or one might
not believe it with one’s whole heart, but should be done as soon
as possible so as to ensure eternal salvation.

Becca
was very excited that she had been saved and frequently asked me if I
had been. I always answered no. This answer always resulted in a
long lecture about why I should “be saved.” The lecture, in
turn, irritated me. One day I had a brilliant revelation… although
I had never “been saved” in Becca’s definition, I believed that
Jesus loved me just as I was. I didn’t think that there were
specific hoops to jump through in order for God to accept me. So,
the next time Becca asked me if I was saved I said yes! I wasn’t
saved in her world view, but I was in mine.

Becca’s
understanding of being saved is a part of our Christian tradition.
So was mine. In the years since, my perspective has gained more
knowledge and nuance. I now know that salvation is about God’s work
towards healing and wholeness in the world. I’ve come to believe
that God desires “salvation for all of creation” which isn’t
about afterlife at all, but about the kindom coming to earth. I’ve
also learned a lot more about how things were in Jesus’ day. Still,
as a whole, I’m at a peace with my 7 year old decision to answer as I
did.

In
the time of Jesus, most people believed that when you died, you
ceased to exist – from dust to dust in those days meant no
afterlife and no eternal soul. In the Greeco-Roman religion that was
dominate in the lands that surrounded Jesus, the gods
were immortal – and people became immortal only when they were
promoted to god-status because of an extraordinary life. The
Sadducees, who were the ruling party in Judaism, utterly denied the
possibility of afterlife. Neither in Jesus’ immediate community
nor in his world at large was afterlife considered a real
possibility.

Early
Christianity was novel in that its followers believed that they could
become immortal. Or, to name it in the Greco-Roman context, the
followers of Jesus all became “little gods”. They were immortal,
something true only of gods and goddesses. This was a very strong
statement – people who followed Jesus became like the gods of the
world that surrounded them!

Today,
many people consider heaven and hell to be contrasting opposites. At
that time, the alternative to joyful eternal live was not hell. It
was “perishing.” That is, if you followed Jesus, you gained
eternal life. If you didn’t follow Jesus, you ceased to exist at
the end of your life. That’s where this passage ends… with the
well known John 3:16-17. “‘For God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not
send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that
the world might be saved through him.”

Thus,
the claim is made that those who believe in Jesus will gain eternal
life. My 7-year old friend Becca believed that there were specific
rules to guide what constituted “belief in Jesus.”
Understandings of afterlife have developed since the time of Jesus,
nothing stays stagnant! Early Christianity opened the door to eternal
life – instead of saying that only “gods” could live forever,
there was an affirmation of common people and our value.

While
are are thinking about that, let’s look more closely at the beginning
of this text. Nicodemus is named as a Pharisee, a group that gained
most of its power after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70
BCE, and a group that was open to afterlife in some form or another.
(Not the way people today think of it though.) Nicodemus, as a
Pharisee, being in power at the time of Jesus is exactly the kind of
historically questionable stuff that reminds us to take John
metaphorically.. Anyway, according to John, this guy comes to Jesus
… at night. Why at night? So he couldn’t be seen! Its really
kind of a funny story, even to start out… we have one of the
highest ranking officials in Israel sneaking around under the cloak
of darkness in order to meet with Jesus.

He
gets to Jesus and starts the conversation by complimenting him.
Unfortunately for Nicodemus, he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.
He doesn’t “get it.” He ALMOST “gets it.” He wants to
learn from Jesus, which is why he has come to Jesus. But he is still
afraid of what others will think of him or do to him, and that’s
why he comes at night. In addition, he bases his faith on “signs.”
That is, he thinks Jesus is connected to God because Jesus is able
to perform miracles. Believing in Jesus because of his miracles is a
BIG no-no in the Gospel of John. The faithful are supposed to
believe because they believe, not because of the powers that Jesus
has to do miracles. So Nicodemus says, “Teacher, we know that you
come from God because of what you can do…” And right there, as
John tells it, Jesus knows that Nicodemus wasn’t convinced to
follow him fully, yet.

Jesus
begins to teach… and he says… LISTEN CAREFULLY!…he says “No
one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
And Nicodemus says, “How can anyone be born again
after having grown old?” Did you hear that?

Jesus
says “born from above” and Nicodemus says “born again.” How
did he confuse that? Well, he wasn’t that ridiculous actually…
in Greek the word for “again” and “from above” is the same
word. Jesus is talking about the deep meaning of being born from
above, which is “from God”¹
and Nicodemus is understanding the superficial meaning – born
again. Nicodemus is being presented as foolish, or at least because
he didn’t have full faith he was too foolish to understand Jesus.
The image of a grown man re-entering the womb is meant to be funny.
It is meant to be as ridiculous as it sounds, because it is making
fun of the misunderstanding. Being born again is NOT AT ALL what
Jesus is talking about. Being born again is the MISUNDERSTANDING
that Nicodemus pulls out.

Being
born “from above” is having a spiritual birth. That could be
seen as something that all people have – as all people ahave
spirits – or as an eye-opening event that occurs when individuals
connect with God. It would make some sense, given the rest of Jesus’
teaching to think of being born “from above” as being connected
to God and therefore committed to building the kindom. Being born
from above is to live as God would have a person live, to share love,
to exude compassion, to see a better world. To be born from above,
then, is to live the prayer, “your kingdom come on earth as it is
in heaven.”

This
is a Gospel reading with many opportunities for misunderstanding. It
is one I am tempted to avoid, simply to not have to deal with them.
However, being informed about our scriptures and how they has been
used to do harm, and what they actually mean is part of what we need
to know to bring healing. Luckily, this passage has a lot of gems as
well as a history of being used badly. Verse 8 reads, The
wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do
not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with
everyone who is born of the Spirit.
There is a double meaning here – the wind is at once the Wind and
the Spirit of God. We do not know the beginning of the wind or of
God, but we are able to watch what the Spirit of God does in the
world. This is one of my favorite descriptors of the Spirit. If the
Spirit is truly the Spirit of Love (I think that’s fair) then it
reminds us that the demands of love can take us in rather unexpected
directions!Some
of the ancients thought of the wind as God’s breath.²
I suspect some of us moderns do too, at least in particular moments.
It has times when it is a potent metaphor.

The
passage continues though, in a rather weird turn. As another
commentator puts it, “The overlap of
crucifixion and exaltation conveyed by v. 14 is crucial to Johannine
soteriology because the Fourth Evangelist understands Jesus’s
crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension as one continuous event.”³
So, when the metaphor is drawn to “lifting up” it isn’t just
about Jesus’ death but about the end of his life and the beginning of
the life of the believers as the Body of Christ. (If you don’t know
the Moses reference, I promise, you don’t want to. It won’t help.)

Finally,
this text turns to one of the more abused verses in the Bible. It
is actually good news, no matter how it has been used to abuse others
in Bible bashing. The
good news is: “God loves the world SO MUCH that God
seeks to heal it in every way God can.”
In the words of a wise commentator,
“what if we are all called to “join in the creation of a
community in which God’s love was regarded as not being in short
supply, open only to those who have seen and confessed Jesus as the
Christ, but rather as poured out upon the entire world?”⁴

Taken
in continuity with John 3:17, “Indeed,
God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in
order that the world might be saved through him,” while remembering
that the first meaning in the Bible of salvation is healing, we get
to: “God loves the world SO MUCH
that…that God keeps moving creation to wholeness AND God pushes
and prods us in hope that we’ll learn deeper love. Nothing can
separate us from the love of God… because God loves the world THAT
much.”

Do
you ever wonder what it means to say that “God loves the world”?
It is startlingly unequivocal. It isn’t, “God loves the good
people.” Or, “God loves it when things are going right.” It
isn’t even, “God loves the world, but hates the brokenness.”
John 3:16 claims God loves the world. God gives gifts to the world.
God seeks healing and wholeness for the world. And the world isn’t
just humanity, it is all of creation.

God
LOVES the world.

For
me, that’s a bit of a relief. It reminds me that God’s love isn’t
contingent on us getting it right, love is already a part of it all.
It is a reminder that we can’t mess it up. Love is the starting
point of all creation, it has a power nothing else can match. For
me, at least, gratitude for this reality is what motivates me to work
with God for the building of the kindom. But it starts with love.
God loves the world. Unlike my childhood friend, I think there is a
full stop there, no conditions.

God
loves the world and all the beings in it. As. They. Are.
Salvation is a gift God willingly offers to us all.

Thanks
be to God. Amen

1Ernst
Haenchen John 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 1-6
(Hermeneia: a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible) (Vol
1) (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, January 1, 1988).

2
Raymond E. Brown Gospel According
to John.
Anchor Bible. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966-70.)

3
Gail R.O’Day, “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Comentary,
and Reflections.” In New
Interpreter’s Bible,
vol. 9. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995).

4Ibid.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

Sermons

“In the Midst of the Mess” based on 1 Kings…

August 6, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

By the time we get to 1 Kings, many of us are lost in the storyline of the Hebrew Bible. It has been an intense soap opera for quite a while, and the intricacies are often convoluted and subtle. This leaves me with the task of setting the stage for the story we just read, a task I’m not entirely sure I’m up to. Nevertheless, I’ll give it a try 😉

You remember the story of Moses, right? Well Moses led the people the the border of the Promised Land before he died. Then Joshua led the people into the land. What followed was about 350 years of various leaders emerging as needed, which was when the tribes were under threat. That 350 year period is described in the book of Judges, and archaeologists tell us that is the period when the people occupying ancient Israel were most consistently living out the rules of the Torah. All the homes seem to be about the same size, meaning that wealth was neither being accumulated nor lost. That’s a significant part of the goal of the laws of the Torah.

Then, there came King Saul. The Bible says that the people wanted a King, but God didn’t want the people to have a King. The prophets kept telling the people that God is their Ruler, but the people wanted a human one anyway. You may be shocked, but I don’t quite believe that one. I think it is much more likely that Saul wanted to be King, and once he was King he made sure that the story being told was that he was King because everyone wanted him to be. I do, however, believe that the prophets thought this was a terrible plan!

Then, somehow, David becomes King. I say “somehow” because the Bible tells several versions of this and they don’t make much sense individually or together. Basically, David led a coup against Saul with military leadership from Judea supported by external mercenaries soldiers. The Bible claims Saul was crazy. It is very difficult to tell if that is propaganda from David. (Then again, historians aren’t sure either of them ever existed, which could potentially resolve this issue for us. However, we’re going with the story as its told, even with ALL of its complications.)

OK. So David is King, which happens to mean he has a whole bunch of wives. Some of the wives predate his kingship. Many of his wives he “inherited” from Saul with the kingship. #sentencesIwishIdidnthavetosay Once David is serving as King in Jerusalem, he acquires more wives. The most famous story of his acquiring a wife is the story of David and Bathsheba. David’s palace was now larger and higher than the homes around his, and thus when Bathsheba was bathing herself on her roof top one day, David saw her and lusted after her. He had her brought to him, raped her, impregnated her, tried to cover for it, and then and had her husband killed on the front lines when the cover didn’t work.

In response, the prophet Nathan brought accusations against him. David turns to God in repentant prayer. David and Bathsheba’s infant son dies, which the Bible tells as if it is God’s punishment (you can tell from my phrasing I don’t believe that either). Bathsheba stays in the palace as David’s wife. She appears to remain his favorite wife according to the stories. Also, she ends up giving birth to 4 more sons, the youngest of which is Solomon. Please note we don’t know if she had daughters because they’re generally not worth talking about as far as the Bible sees it.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? We are caught up to the start of 1 Kings. Oh shoot! We aren’t. I need to remind you of another messy bit of this story, in order to make sense of this one. King David’s oldest sons were born to his earliest wives, before he was King. The oldest was Amnon. He was the one who raped his half-sister Tamar, who was a full-sister to the third son, Absalom. Absalom killed Amnon in revenge, years later. Absalom then attempted to claim the kingship of Israel in a coup and was killed by one of David’s generals. The 2^nd son is assumed to have died in infancy. The 4^th son was Adonijah, who was thus the oldest surviving son as of this point in the story. The Bible says there were about 20 sons, Solomon wasn’t one of the oldest 10.

According to normal inheritance laws, Adonijah had a far stronger claim to the throne than Solomon did. The Bible often tells stories that ignore normal inheritance laws. According to the beginning of 1 Kings, the parts we skipped, David was very old and impotent. A new young, beautiful wife, was brought to “warm his bed” but that didn’t work. Her name was Abishag. With awareness of David’s condition, Adonijah holds a coup and claims the kingship. He raises support from his father’s old guard, the part of David’s leadership that was Judea-centric and NOT representative of the whole kingdom of Israel. He excludes ONLY his brother Solomon, which I think would imply that he saw only his brother Solomon as a threat to his claim. David’s newer advisors refuse to attend, and seem to decide to thrown in their lots with Solomon.

The story says that Nathan approaches Bathsheba with a plan. Bathsheba accepts it and goes to King David’s bedroom to make her plea. There may be a new, young, wife in town but Bathsheba still has the privilege of entering David’s bedroom at will and being greeted with an offer to give her whatever she wants.

She takes Nathans suggestions and runs with them. She tells David that he promised her Solomon could be king after him (Nathan said she should SUGGEST it in a question), she tells him Adonijah has claimed the kingship and makes sure it sounds particularly insulting to David himself, she tells him who among his servants have supported his son’s coup, she implies that the whole nation of Israel needs his leadership and that Adonijah will only care about the southern part of Judah, and she names for him the threat to her life and Solomon’s if David lets the coup stand.

There is just one little issue with what she says: there is no reason to believe that David had promised the kingship to Solomon. It is never previously mentioned. The possibility of Solomon as a contender only emerges when Adonijah doesn’t invite him to his coup. Most likely, it wasn’t true. David is likely experiencing memory loss by this point, and Bathsheba manipulates him into doing what she wants. She plays the role of king-maker, and she makes sure it is HER kid who on the throne. Her role has changed a bit since she was first introduced.

Then Nathan backs her up, sort of. He at least backs up the fact that Adonijah has held a coup. He lets her stand on her own in terms of the claim that Solomon would be king. Based on their words, Solomon is named and anointed King.

Then Solomon promises his brother Adonijah that he can live as long as he keeps supporting Solomon’s kingship. David dies, and then comes the next bit of our story. Now, if this part of the Bible is historical, and if all these characters existed, and if things more or less went down the way this story says they went down, I STILL don’t believe this part. Under those circumstances, I think that either Solomon or Bathsheba make it up.

The story SAYS that Adonijah, the eldest living son of David, comes to King Solomon’s mother and asks her to ask her son King Solomon if he can have his father’s youngest wife as his own. Since the King’s harem is seen as part of the King’s rightful possession, getting to marry one of David’s wives would have strengthened Adonijah’s claim to the throne. I don’t quite believe he would have been stupid enough to ask for that, especially when his continued life was already tenuous. However, the story says he asked, and says that Bathsheba goes right to the throne room. Her son bows to her has a THRONE brought out to her, indicative of his affection for his mother (or perhaps of her power in his kingship), and she publicly tells him about this request. In response, Solomon orders the death of Adonijah. It seems a bit too easy, especially in the first days after David dies, and if the story stands as written, I only wonder if Solomon was in on Bathsheba’s plan or not.

All in all, this leaves us with a whole bunch of questions. The most difficult question is one that was posed in Bible Study: is Bathsheba a subversive woman? In terms of saying, “Yes! Of course she is!” we have the following evidence: she made a king, she eliminated his rivals, and she got what she wanted out of the leadership of the country. On the other side, the side that says, “Nope, not a subversive women” we have the following arguments: manipulating people for power and influence is one of the most normal of all human activities, and even more normal when it comes to royal lineage. That argument says that no matter how you worked it, doing the work to get your son on the throne is playing with power, not subverting it.

For me, both of those perspectives hold a lot of water. I kept her story in this sermon series because I love that she has such a complicated life story and significant character development, particularly from being a passive object of lust into being the most powerful agent of her own life and one of the most powerful agents in the country. However, she still mostly exists within those terrible constraints of oppressive power. She just moves from being oppressed to being the oppressor, she doesn’t change the way the game itself is played.

The other big question is: how can the kingship be such a complete and utter mess????? This is the time of history that the rest of the Bible looked to as the golden age. There are only three kings of the United Kingdom (of Israel and Judea) and they are: Saul, David, and Solomon. And all three, and their families, are total messes. They make modern soap operas look boring. They make truly broken modern families look picture perfect. If that was the golden age, heaven help the rest of the ages!

Actually, while the drama factor is higher in the Jerusalem palace, all of the characters of the Hebrew Bible are ridiculous messes. Some are richer than others, some are smarter than others, but they’re all messes. They don’t even look impressive as compared to average humans. (And I think most humans are struggling rather mightily.) And yet, the Bible contends, God CHOOSES to work with and through those messy people. God doesn’t just give up on them because they are terrible parents, or greedy rulers, or manipulative queens, nor manipulated kings. God doesn’t even give up on the ones who are murders (David and Moses). Yeah, think about that for a bit. And who are the most famous murders in the Hebrew Bible? David and Moses. Who are the most celebrated leaders of the Hebrew Bible? David. And. Moses.

God doesn’t give up on us. Ever.

And the Hebrew Bible makes it plain to see that we can’t be so messy that God ever will give up on us. Even better, God keeps working with us to take our messes and make them into something beautiful. Solomon was known for his wisdom. David was known for his Psalms of Praise. Bathsheba found a way to be an agent of her own life (and help a very wise man take the throne). God isn’t scared off by messes, God can work with whatever we are, and bring wonder and beauty out of it all. Thanks be to God for that. 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

August 6, 2017