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July 16, 2023
by Sara Baron

“The Gift of Peace" based on Romans 5:1-5 and John 14:25-31

When you think of peace, what comes up for you? This became interesting for me as I sought a good pictures to go with the sermon title for our electronic sign. Apparently, according to the internet, peace looks like sunrise or sunset over a body of water, or a pile of rounded rocks stacked on each other, maybe with a person in a yoga pose.

Those are decent. I think they generically connote peace pretty well.

Is it different, for you, though, to consider when you are most at peace? It is for me.

I tend to think of moments of peace in two broad categories: first the ones that are like glimpses of grace when I just notice that there is wonder and peace around me, the second are the ones that I seek out – when I create the space to remember that God is with me and am able to let my guard down well enough that God’s peace seeps in.

The first kind, the just moments of grace when peace is there, are pretty wide ranging. I have often often found peace if I’m outside at dusk (other than black fly season), after a good workout, while in the woods, walking into the sanctuary, during nighttime snowfalls, when I hear achingly beautiful music, and when I’m surrounded by people I love and just savoring the goodness of their presence. Your list is probably unique to you.

Those moments are a gift. They come freely, I savor them when I notice them, and they slowly drift away. Finding inner peace, even if for a moment, is profound.

The second kind is the spiritual practice kind – or maybe the “means of grace” kind. Because people of faith through the ages have taught us that God’s peace is close at hand, and there are ways of connecting to it if we want to. So there is intention, and seeking in these moments of peace. I mostly call it prayer, but it may not look like what prayer expects to look like. Sometimes my prayer is sitting on the porch watching the wind blow through the trees, sometimes it is writing in a journal and sorting out what is happening inside me, sometimes it is taking a walk in nature because (for me) that is so potent as a means of connecting to God.

Sometimes it is sitting still, with my eyes closed, breathing, and intentionally letting go of thoughts as they appear. (That one might “look like” prayer.)

And, sometimes those prayer practices “work” and I let my guard down and I have INCREDIBLE moments of deep peace as a gift from the Divine. And, let’s be honest here, sometimes they “don’t.” Sometimes I can’t get my guard down. Sometimes other things distract me. Sometimes it seems like I get my guard down but the peace doesn’t come. It can’t really be forced.

Now, I’m conflating the grace of the experience of the presence of God with peace, because they conflate for me. They might not for you, that’s a thing to consider for yourself. In any case though, I think that peace is supposed to be one of the gifts of God, something that we receive from the Divine from God’s goodness. And, because we are able to talk about how we receive it and what helps us be open to it, and from that learn how to access peace even when the world is roiling around us, I think it is supposed to be one of the markers of faith.

The capacity to be at peace is meant to be something that differentiates us.

That’s a pretty high bar, huh? Because everyone has different personalities and some are more attuned to peace than others.

And yet, there is something there.

Because this may get at a really core question. What is it that we are seeking in life? Because the world around us tells us what success looks like – and it is things to do with appearances, power, violence, and money. And it is REALLY easy to buy into that narrative because it is EVERYWHERE. Part of the wonder of being within a community of faith is the chance to create a different narrative of success, and encourage each other to hear other options.

What if “success” is connecting deeply enough to God’s peace that it changes the world through us?

What if “success” is trusting enough in God’s love that it flows through us?

What if “success” is letting our hearts be opened wide enough for all of God’s people and all of God’s creation?

What if “success” is becoming loving listeners?

What if “success” is a life filled with joy?

What if “success” is in deep and whole relationships?

What if “success” is in how often we laugh?

What if “success” is in how much we savor wonder and beauty?

What if “success” is in becoming better and better at sharing?

What if “success” is in being able to give power away?

What if “success” is just in being alive and sometimes at peace, and that’s enough?

What if “success” doesn’t matter at all, and it is plenty to simply be?

What if it isn’t hard?

That’s a different narrative than the one I hear in commercials, read in the news, or see on social media.

We have recently brought into our worship the ancient tradition of “passing the peace of Christ” to one another. It has gotten pretty rave reviews around here.

It is also a profound thing that we do. It is acknowledging that God’s peace is with us, that it is worthy of our attention, and that it increases among us as we share it with each other. We are offering blessings to each other, I might argue the best ones. (Because I really really like the peace of Christ.) It gives us space to connect with each other, and it calls us back to the priority of living out the peace of Christ.

And peace, in Hebrew and in God-talk, is this really interesting holistic communal thing that refers to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being of each individual and the whole. It inherently acknowledges that the peace each of us holds is interconnected with the peace each other is holding. But it is a complicated concept in that it is possible to hold onto God’s peace even when not all is well. God’s peace can show up in the worst of times, and hold us together through it. God’s peace can be nurtured within us and within the community and build up resilience within us.

Peace.

Where the world focuses on violence and power, God calls us to nurture, savor, and make space for peace.

Thank God we are called to something different. Thank God we have each other to work with in the effort to nurture, savor, and make space for peace. Thank God for the moments when peace arrives and we are whole. 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

July 16, 2023

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July 9, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Exhaustion” based on 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25

Content Warning: in this sermon I’m going to talk about abuse of power, including abuse of power by clergy, including clergy sexual misconduct. This is a tender topic, particularly here, and you may wish to disengage from it, which is fine.

When I read this passage from 1 Samuel, my first response is to be exhausted. I was recently reminded that exhaustion is often a trauma response. Under the exhaustion are anger and sadness, I can’t differentiate them. Under that is more exhaustion.

I’ve now completed 17 years of full-time ministry and within them approximately 10 rounds of required clergy sexual misconduct training. In my 17 years these have been the only required trainings that clergy have been told to take, other than New York State who mandates sexual harassment training for every boss and employee. I’ve long been aware that the actions of clergy people before me, and the lawsuits that resulted from their actions, were creating the environment I minister in. I’m all for clergy sexual misconduct training, my only concern is the idea that it is the ONLY thing that matters. Particularly because I don’t believe the trainings themselves are necessarily the most effective way to bring the change they attempt to make.

So, that’s tiring, and makes me question a lot of things.

Also, I’m in leadership in the Annual Conference while we are trying to figure out how to pay for legal fees and settlements for a multitude of lawsuits related to the Child Victim’s Act, which opened a window for people who had been abused as children to bring lawsuits about it as adults. Everything about this is terrible, starting with the harm done to God’s children and including with the means by which we figure out how to find the money we need in order to respond.

Which is draining, and I hate it.

And finally I am serving this beloved church which has itself experienced clergy sexual misconduct, by a beloved clergy person, who is now deceased, whose life after his death still intersected with lives within this community. This fact is tender.

So are the impacts within the community of his actions, even though they are more than 40 years old and many of you don’t know anything about them. But it is now within this community’s DNA and I firmly believe that if this church had not been as strong, loving, loyal, and faithful as it is -it would not have survived it.

That’s actually a thing I want to make sure you hear: I believe this church is EXTRAORDINARY to have survived what happened to it. I fear some of you may think you are weak because it happened or because you couldn’t stop it, or because there were long-ranging impacts from it. Instead, I think it is pretty much a miracle you survived. Most churches don’t.

Here is what I know: an already beloved pastor was appointed here as senior pastor in the 1970s. He was charming and charismatic, brilliant and well-regarded. It was not known to this church that he had abused his power as pastor in his prior appointments. He abused it again, with married adult women who came to him for pastoral counseling, with whom he had affairs. At the same time that it became known he also was found to have a debilitating medical condition.

It had been thought he’d become a Bishop. Instead he was reappointed to Vermont. The church members split into two camps: one of those who were horrified by what had been done and one of those who defended their pastor at all costs and shifted the blame either to the women he’d harmed or to those who named the actions. Those two camps were stuck in a power battle, enmeshed in conflict, and not talking to each other.

When the next pastor came, he declared it “over” and said it wasn’t going to be talked about anymore. I believe that held for about 30 years until I arrived. Once, maybe 8 years ago, I named in a sermon that this church had survived clergy sexual misconduct. I was told afterwards that I’d made the FIRST public acknowledgement of that fact. Ever.

Over the course of the next decade or so, this church experienced significant decline. Now, I want to put that in context for you. It was the 1980s. The 1980s were a time when church attendance declined all across the USA. Also the 1980s were a horrible time for Schenectady, when many people left. Also the 1980s were the time when those who didn’t leave immediately after the clergy sexual misconduct slowly drifted off the next time they got hurt by the church.

Yet, I believe, for those of you who were here, the decline in attendance and membership in the 1980s felt like failure. Which breaks my heart. I wish someone had made space for you all to talk about your experiences, to name what it had been like to have your spiritual leader do harm, or maybe what it had been like to think that people accused your spiritual leader of doing something he’d “never do.” I wish you were afforded the opportunity to talk about the ways that trust was destroyed as two camps maneuvered around each other. I wish you could have talked about the ways that led to mistrust in clergy, and in clergy authority, and the quiet ways you tried to create some safeguards. I wish someone had named that the women who trusted their pastor to give them pastoral care were vulnerable women were not to be blamed for being vulnerable nor for being seduced by someone with power – not even if they were pretty.

That is, I wish this church had received after care. I wish the Annual Conference had known to give it.

I wish the story that was taken from the time was something other than “we’re too brittle to deal with conflict, so we better not talk about it.” I wish fewer people lost faith in God because the pastor did harm – particularly the teenagers who talked about it all with each other but no adult knew to make space to help them make sense of it.

The church itself lost respect, authority, and credibility. I think rightfully so. I think the church and its clergy should never have had such power as to make abuse like that possible. I think there always should have been checks and balances and clergy people should always have been seen as fallible people and safeguards should have been in place.

Far too many faith communities have had faith leaders abuse their power. This isn’t as uncommon as I wish it was. I guess this comes back to that old wisdom that where there is power there can be abuse of power. 🙁

Today, I still see the echoes of the harm done to this community. It isn’t a linear thing where I can tell that “because x happened, y followed.” Humans and human organizations are more complicated than that. Here is what I see that I think is reflective of that era of harm: 1. This church is more afraid of conflict that most. 2. This church is more afraid of pastoral authority than most. 3. While I know you all to be profoundly thoughtful, careful, intentional people of faith whose lives reflect your values – there is significant fear of talking directly about God and the impact of God on your lives – which I think goes back to things about authority and power and abuse of power. 4. While there is discomfort about pastoral authority, there are also many places where the pastor is rather oddly deferred to. I think this is also about pastoral authority and ways it is not understood and not wanting to be touched. 5. Power itself is concerning around here, and there is fear and distrust around using power and figuring out who is supposed to have power.

And finally, 6. I think there is still an undercurrent of fear, guilt, and shame that this happened here… which knocks out some of the self-confidence you might otherwise have as a church.

So, when I read about Eli’s sons abusing their power by taking too much food, and taking the wrong food, and using their power to force women to sleep with them – it actually sounds like the age old story of my ministry. The realities of the harms done in the past, the ways they impact the present, the horror I have at what was done and how God’s love was abused in the world, and the challenges I face in attempting to share God’s love in the world while occupying the status, role and even pulpit of one(s) who did such harm.

Which I think has now sufficiently explained to you why the scripture exhausts me.

Now I want to tell you why I’m glad it is there, despite it all. I am so incredibly grateful that the Bible itself tells stories of abuse by those entrusted to do God’s work, and gives it to us as honest story that helps us make sense of our lives. If this story and ones like it weren’t in the Bible, we wouldn’t have anything to work with. We wouldn’t have precedent for knowing that those entrusted with God’s work often fail. We wouldn’t have evidence that God hates it. We wouldn’t be able to compare and contrast the experience of the people 3000 years ago to the ones of our own lifetimes.

I mean, I’d prefer if those entrusted with holy work simply didn’t abuse people. 100% my preference. But since that isn’t how it has been, how it is, nor how it is going to be, I’d rather have that truth in the Bible for us to work with and reflect upon. I’d rather have a lectionary text that pushes me to tell you – the church – your own story as I’ve had it told to me than continue the cone of silence.

I’d rather break the power of shame by bringing the past into full view than let it keep on beating us up.

I’d rather deal with this now, in the ways we can, than let it harm more generations in the future.

I’d rather be able to tell you that I think you are amazing for surviving than have you continue to feel guilt for abuse happening in your midst.

I’d rather deal with the past until it lets go of its grip on the present than try to force it away and have it come back to bite us.

I’d rather make space for truth and reconciliation. I’d rather have hope and rebuild trust and assure you that you can survive being in conflict than have you live in fear.

I’d rather talk about it. I think it is time. And I believe, with God, we can handle it. 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

July 9, 2023

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July 2, 2023
by Sara Baron

“A Story of Hope” based on Psalm 144:3-4, 12-15

When I was 13 I broke my leg, my femur to be specific. It hurt a lot. I was in a straight leg cast from my hip to my toes, which got in the way. During the weeks I was in the cast, I YEARNED to be able to walk up stairs and it felt like an ETERNITY passed while I had to sit on the stairs and push up or down them one at a time.

It was less than 6 weeks, but I was 13.

Sometimes though, even today, in the midst of walking stairs, I notice the absolute joy and wonder of being able to do so. I remember that yearning, and I’m grateful again that I can do the thing I wanted so desperately to be able to do.

I say this with an awareness that not everyone can walk stairs. Some have never been able to, some will never be able to again, some just can’t yet, and some cannot just for right now. The capacity to walk up and down stairs is something easy to take for granted – when and if you can do it. The lack of capacity to walk up and down stairs can profoundly impact a life, despite the best efforts of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Psalm today reminds me of stairs. It speaks of abundance with such profound excitement. Scholars are not clear about it: does it reflect an expression of a present joy or a future hope? In either case, I think it is worth paying attention to. What is the nature of this exuberant utopia worthy of great praise?

There is plenty of food, the children are able to grow strong and whole, no one is attacking them, and they are safe at home. Based on this they say, “Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall; happy are the people whose God is the WOMB OF LIFE.”

For people who have such things, it is possible to stop noticing how amazing it is when there is plenty of food, the children are able to grow strong and whole, no one is attacking them, and they are safe at home. It is possible to pay attention instead to what one doesn’t have, or what isn’t right, or even the stressors around them – and entirely miss the wonder of basic safety and enough food.

Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t have basic safety and enough food. We have a Community Breakfast Program to try to respond to the needs within our community for sufficient, nutritious food. We know that one meal a week helps without solving that problem. Violence in our society is plentiful, safe housing is insufficient, and good food is not as accessible as it needs to be. And, of course, those who are migrants, or immigrants, and those who are displaced as well as people in less wealthy countries ALSO lack basic safety and sufficient food.

It can be easy to take it for granted, unless you don’t have it. And It can be hard to focus on anything else when you are hungry or unsafe.

Which is why it is a beautiful and profound dream, the idea of plenty of food, children are able to grow strong and whole, peace and safety at home. For many, many people now and throughout history, enough food and a sense of safety would be a blessing beyond measure.

So, if you have that, THANK GOD!

And if you don’t, know this: God wants it for you too.

Because that is a part of the good news of God: that God’s aim is for everyone to have enough food and for everyone to be safe. That’s the dream. Enough for everyone. No one is excluded. No one goes hungry. No one gets hurt. No one is at war. No one has to fight tooth and nail to get enough to survive because there IS enough for everyone (already) and if it is distributed fairly everyone can thrive.

That’s God’s dream. That’s the kindom of God. That’s the beloved community. That’s what we’re about.

There are, of course, disagreements about how to get there. Do we create the kindom of abundance by attending to the disparities of our society and counterbalancing them? Or do we just kinda hope the injustice goes away? Do we create the kindom of God by offering debt relief to the overburdened? Or by prioritizing lenders at all costs? And while I’m at it, do we get to the kindom by trusting women to made the best decisions for their bodies and families or by asserting authority over other people’s bodies and lives?

There are, I’m sure, good faith arguments on both sides. But as people of faith seeking the kindom, seeking to ensure that ALL people access safety and sufficient resources for their needs, that guides our thinking on issues. Which side of the argument leads to life abundant for the most people? Which creates more justice? Which brings safety? Which leads to better distribution of resources?

And not everything moves in the direction of the kindom, right? But, still we seek, still we work, still we know God is with us in moving the world towards shared safety and shared abundance.

When we came home from Annual Conference, I shared with some of you that in the Episcopal address Bishop Héctor Burgos Núñez named some cultural shifts in how we will function together as United Methodists of Upper New York. My cynicism won out until his final point when he said that we would stop focusing on “church growth” and instead focus on “missional impact.” Now, I think “missional impact” is kinda useless language, but I am trained in speaking church and the actual meaning behind it is great. Missional impact is church-speak for tangibly sharing God’s love in the world. Which itself might be church speak (oops), for “helping.”

When I shared that with a few of you before worship, one of you responded with something like, “Well, yes. The entire point of church is to get people together so we can help other people. If we aren’t doing that, there is no point.” To which I may or may not have said “YES!” a little bit too loudly.

Some of how we do that is by worshiping. Now, if you are listening to this, you probably already find some value in worship, but I think it is helpful sometimes to consider WHY something is useful. Particularly because worship isn’t as directly a way of helping people as serving breakfast is.

Worship gives us a time that is apart from the rest of our week. A time to attend to beauty, and meaning, and to rest. That’s important on it’s own, and it is important to be able to keep going. Worship makes space for shared prayer, which matters in ways we can’t often even name. Worship gives us time to consider scripture and reflect on it, to try to work together to figure out what God is up to, to celebrate what God is up to, and (maybe most importantly?) to notice how God WANTS the world to be and how that is different from how it is. Because if we can’t dream with God towards how things should be, we can’t get there. Worship also gives us a chance to be together, which inherently matters. Because when people are together they can get to know each other, check in on each other, laugh together, and connect.

And because we NEED each other, so whenever we connect it benefits us and it benefits God. I think we may, as humans, need to express thanks for good things, and we need space to mourn the things that break out hearts and worship is designed to make space for the wholeness of human emotion.

We need time that is “unproductive” just set aside to BE humans, to BE with God, to simply BE and worship gets to be that for us too. All together this indicates that worship may be something we do mostly because we need it, and we need to be fed in order to feed. But at the same time we need each other at worship to make worship worship and that’s kinda cool too.

Finally, around here, we have the joy of sharing God’s incredible hospitality to all people and in our shared worship we can break down the barriers that have historically communicated to people that they were unwelcome or unworthy. And that dear ones, is a POWERFUL way of “helping.”

Our shared sense of God’s welcome, of God’s un-ending love, and of the energy and power we have to do things that matter TOGETHER then become the basis for everything ELSE we do as a church: the things we gather to give away, the places we go to share God’s love, the ministries we offer to ease the burdens of God’s beloveds, the ways we show up to be with God’s people and to advocate for God’s dreams.

We get to do all that because we share in God’s dreams for plenty of good and safety for everyone and we get to spend our lives working towards it with God.

And soon we get to gather at the table together to be fed. That is a reason to give thanks! And it is yet another reminder that the fullness of the table of God – the abundance of good food and spacious safety – are meant to be extended until everyone can be at the table together. With God and each other, there is plenty of reason to hope we can get there together.

May God keep on working with us, in us, and through us. 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

July 2, 2023

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June 18, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Responding to Pleas” based on 1 Samuel 1:1-6, 9-18 and Matthew 15:21-28

What do you want most in life? Or perhaps, what have you wanted most? For many, I know the answer is that of the Canaanite woman in the Gospel lesson: healing for a loved one. For some the answer is that of Hannah: fulfillment of a lifetime desire. There are more answers of course, but those two cover a lot of ground.

They cover a lot of humanity too – the utter horror that we can feel when we face the pending death of a loved one, the discontent that can come when we are unfulfilled, and even the ways that society tells us who we should be and the pressures that puts on us to want particular things.

There are some challenges in these texts. The first one, I think, is primarily for people who believe that Jesus was perfect. Because in the Gospel story, he definitely isn’t. He’s human and quite fallible. Now, if this is an impediment to you being able to hear the story, it is always possible to tell yourself that Jesus was “acting like a human to make a point.” Because a point gets made here. Jesus, honestly, dismisses the human value of another person because her ethnicity is different from his.

Worse, it is rather consistent in the book of Matthew with how Jesus talks about Gentiles. They are OTHER. Gentiles are non-Jews, and they’re not people of faith, and they’re less important. They are THEY, the “not us.”

Which definitely seems like the energy Jesus brings into the conversation. Now, he’s tired. Let’s admit it. He had left the Galilee to get a break from all the demands being made on him. He is on retreat, or something like it, taking a break. He is trying to fill himself up so he can go back to giving away what he has.

And while he’s on retreat, yet another person has heard of him, and yet another person asks things of him, and he is DONE and he draws a boundary and says “she is not my problem. I was sent to the Jews, she isn’t a Jew, I’m on a retreat, let’s ignore it.” (I kinda get it. This far at least. You can’t fix the whole world – and maybe not even if you are Jesus, or at least the Jesus who lived in a human body which is inherently finite.)

But still she approaches him, and asks him directly, “Help me!” And then Jesus says the awful thing. The thing inconsistent with what we teach about Jesus in Sunday School, and even most of the time at church. He says, “ “It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And from what I’ve read, calling a woman a dog back then was about as unkind as you might think it would be today.

But, I’ve got to give it to this unnamed Canaanite woman. Because she wants her daughter healed, and she won’t back down. She is willing, even to take the insult, if that’s what it takes. She is already kneeling before him, pleading, and having her humanity attacked isn’t going to stop her now.

She sticks with his metaphor and says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

She blows him away. I don’t know what it was like for him in that moment. Did he finally see her? Was he convinced by her argument? Was she like the persistent widow and he realized he better just give her what she asked? Was he impressed with her rhetorical brilliance?

The Gospels don’t tell stories of Jesus getting bested by the priests or the scholars or the empire. But they do tell stories of Jesus getting bested by women. This is one of them.

And not only does the story say that he healed her daughter, from that point forward Jesus started talking differently about Gentiles. At the end of Matthew we hear, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” The ministry of Jesus expanded in this story, and suddenly he wasn’t called only to the Jews, but to all of the people.

One might call this Jesus’ conversion story, if one wanted to.

Or, one might take this as a VERY GOOD example of what to do when one is called out for an unconscious bias – and how to let the wisdom of another person transform you into a better person.

And, one might see in this story the utter desperation of a parent with a sick child. That woman would have done ANYTHING for her daughter.

So would many of you. So have many of you. And so many of you, also, would have done anything that could have been done IF ONLY something could have been done.

For me, the part of this story that feels most universal is the desperation of the mother, of the person whose loved one needed healing. The one who couldn’t heal their loved one themselves, but would do anything to get someone else who could heal to heal.

That is one of the hardest parts of life, for those who experience it. Which over time is most of us. That desperation is part of being human. It is part of loving.

(I’m going to just mention this and move on, but the needs for universal access to great health care AND adequate support and care for medical providers are implicated in this passage too.)

I struggle a little more with Hannah’s request. Now, as a whole, I love Hannah. She speaks amazing words about God. But I worry that Hannah wanted to be the mother of a son because the culture around her told her that her entire value in the world was being a mother of a son, and she was trying to gain status with this request. That is, of course, unfair. Right? Because when society tells you that your value is based on something, humans tend to want that thing. I know that. But I want Hannah to just know she’s OK without the thing. I want her to know she’s enough as she is. I want her to throw away the expectations and just be awesome as she.

I’m tough.

(I’m tough on myself too, not just on Biblical characters.)

And maybe Hannah wants to parent because she wants to parent, but she kinda makes a deal with God here that if she gets to parent a son she will give him to be raised in the Temple and not actually get to be with him all that much. Which gets me back to thinking she wants status. But, OF COURSE SHE DOES. What other recourse does she have??

OK, so now I’m back to being compassionate for a woman who thought she had one job and wanted to do it and be recognized for being capable of doing her ONE job.

Great.

But once I start bringing in compassion, then I start seeing Penninah too. Because Penninah has the things she’s supposed to have. She is a mother, including being a mother of sons. Yet she knows herself to be unloved. She is said to “provoke” Hannah, and yet it seems perhaps she felt provoked as well. She had what society said mattered, but she she didn’t have fulfillment in it.

Well, she’s not the first or last one, huh?

A final complication exists for us in these stories of women pleading for what they want most. They have their pleas answered, in the positive. Hannah becomes a mother, the Canaanite woman’s daughter is healed. These stories tell of infertility being erased, and healing happening. Which means these stories can be painful for those for whom infertility remains or healing isn’t found.

Because we know in life that sometimes the thing we want most, sometimes the thing we need most, sometimes the thing we are willing to get onto our knees and beg and plead for …

we still don’t get.

Sometimes we plea and pray incessantly for something, and it doesn’t happen.

Sometimes our worst fears come pass.

And if not for us, then definitely for others, and we see suffering of God’s beloveds far too often for our souls to be at rest.

This is a known problem in theology – we have a God we say is good, and terrible things happen. And likely you have heard various “answers” to the problem from well meaning people of faith. Things like, “God always answers prayer, sometimes the answer is no.” or “Who are we to know what is good, only God knows” or (getting worse here) “maybe you didn’t pray hard enough” or (OYE) “maybe God is punishing you.”

I don’t have an “answer.” I don’t believe in God as a punisher, or in having to prove oneself in prayer, or that we are unable to identify bad things in the world. Indeed, I know that bad, sometimes horrible things happen. And they break my heart over and over again. And I believe they break God’s heart too.

And yet I believe that God is with us, all of us, and God is working toward good, all the time, and even the worst things in the world can be healed by God’s love. I believe bad things happen, but I don’t believe they’re the whole story. I guess I’m back to the whole Easter thing, once again. I believe God, who is Love, has the last word. I believe love wins in the end, even if it may take a while. Even if I will never see it. Even if I can’t see the way from here to there. I believe God is with us, and somehow, someway, that’s enough. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

June 18, 2023

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June 4, 2023
by Sara Baron

“All Are Welcome” based on Hosea 11:1-4 and Matthew 28:16-20

Sometimes I get distracted. Not just the normal distracted of turning to my phone when it buzzes or letting the internet take me down rabbit holes (although those happen too.) Sometimes I get so distracted talking about what kind of Christian I am NOT that I forget to talk about what kind of Christian I am.

In fact, that’s so true that I’m squirmy already, as the word Christian is overly affiliated in my head with things I struggle with. One of you once said that “Jesus follower” worked better for you than Christian for just that reason. And I love that. But also, “Christian” means “little Christ” and I do think the whole point is to continue the work of Christ in the world and it is probably worth the discomfort involved in claiming it anyway.

A friend and colleague, the Rev. Andrew Nelson, recently dropped a book off for me. Which is a great way to share love, particularly when this was a book I’d been looking for and not finding for years! I didn’t know EXACTLY which book on Celtic Christianity I wanted, but I knew I needed to find one. This one, turns out to be it: Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul by John Phillip Newell.

As I started to read I felt my whole being relax. Here, encased in centuries of tradition, is the faith that I know to the core of my being. When so much of my life in the church-at-large has been defined by being an outlier, a prophet, a person crying for justice for God’s beloveds, it is awfully nice to hear that my faith has deep roots too. I think, perhaps, it is nice to hear that I belong too. That the faith that says “God created all, and it is good” is VALID, and REAL, and DEEPLY faithful – and not… some radical new idea.

I want to share with you some of what I heard in Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, in hopes that it will also help drop down your shoulders, and let in a big deep breath. That we all can celebrate the God who is. The one who we know to be loving, ALONG WITH our great tradition. That we can acknowledge that we are faithful people with a faithful God.

(See, isn’t it nice?)

The first chapter of the book tells the story of Pelagius (Puh·la·jee·uhs) , a Welsh monk who lived around 360-430 CE. But, it starts by sharing the beliefs of the first known Christian teacher in the Celtic territory – the one whose teachings would have formed what Pelagius knew. That teacher was Ireneaus (Ee·ruh·nay·uhs ) of Lyons and his teachings were that: sacredness was not opposed to naturalness, that there is holy in naturalness, that heaven found in things of earth, that the divine is to be cherished within earthliness of human life and RELATIONSHIPS, that Jesus was ROBUSTLY human, and that the universe is born out of the substance of God – NOT out of nothing.1 Taken to its natural conclusions, those beliefs say “the stuff of the body of earth is sacred stuff. Therefore, how the body of another is handled in relationship, how the physical needs of those who are hungry and homeless is responded to, how the body of the earth and its resources are treated- these are all holy matters.”2

Well, YEAH! And if bodies are holy, then they shouldn’t be exploited, but rather honored and cared for. (CORRECT.)

In fact, this ended up being opposition to the way that the majority of Christianity under the leadership of the pope in Rome understood things. Because there is a doctrine called creation ex nihilo which says that creation was “out of nothing” and if that’s true than STUFF doesn’t matter and people can exploit it all they want. The implications of this in the world around us are abundant, but it is VERY nice to know this has NEVER been fully accepted in our tradition, I think.

The teacher Iraneaus taught that Jesus was the one who was “respeaking the sacred essences of the universe, re-sounding the divine that is in the heart of all things. This was to see Christ as reawakening in humanity what it has forgotten.”3 So not Jesus saving the world, nor Jesus standing against the world, but Jesus reminding the world of its sacredness and the things it already knows. I love it!

Now into the wisdom tradition that Iraneaus formed, came the monk Pelagius, who taught that “grace was given to reconnect us with our nature, which was sacred and made of God.” I believe that, and I like knowing how long that has been known! Pelagius ended up in Rome, which seems to have become a problem for his life, because rather than being with people who knew the sacredness of all, he was with people who knew the Church as a power-player in politics. (Ew.) And they took issue with him because he thought women were wise and worth both learning from and teaching. He also emphasized human sacredness instead of human sinfulness. He believed that “what is deepest in us is of of God and not opposed to God.”4 I just love it when people put WORDS to the things my very being knows to be true, but I hadn’t ever quite known I needed to say.

Now Augustine, who I did have to read in college and seminary, was all out of sorts about this and spent a lot of energy discrediting Pelagius, because he wanted to focus on original sin. (Facepalm.) That original sin doctrine was useful for the empire, and has been useful for the church, but I would say has not be useful for God’s people.

So, Augustine got Pelagius banned from the Empire, him and his teachings. Because apparently it is really upsetting to an empire if everyone is sacred, and then everyone maters. Then they’re not there to be controlled and used, but rather to be revered and related to.5 (Actually, I knew that. Jesus taught me.) Worse than the other stuff, Pelagius also taught that people who had more than enough should… wait for it… SHARE with those who don’t have enough. Once again, that’s easy to see as following Jesus, but it got him excommunicated. (Shoot, I already facepalmed.)

Anyway, Pelagius went home to Wales and kept teaching, and wrote under pseudonyms so people could read it and – I love this – often used “Augustine” as one of them. That teaching also included “that it is not so much what you believe about Jesus that matters. The important thing is becoming like Jesus, becoming compassionate. A Christ-one, he said, is one ‘who shows compassion to all… who feels another’s pain as if it were his one, and how is moved to tears by the tears of another.” That sounds like us, doesn’t it!?!6

Well, funny enough, the teachings of Pelagius weren’t stopped by being banned by the Roman Empire, or excommunicated by the Western church, or even sent back home. I knew that, because I was taught them as a child, and have experienced them as an adult. I just didn’t know their history.

When we get invited by Jesus to “go and make of all disciples” I don’t think we’re told to go into the world and tell people they are WRONG if they don’t follow Jesus. Instead, I think we’re invited to be in relationship with people and learn from their wisdom and share ours – including the stuff that Jesus respeaking and re-sounding – the wisdom we know in our souls and simply need to be reminded of. The stuff like “all of creation is sacred” and “all people are to be honored” and “the way of God isn’t the way of control over.”

When I think about what beliefs I center my life on, I usually use the word “inclusion.” But I think I get to inclusion BY believing that all people are sacred, and beloved by God, and THEREFORE all people welcome in the church. I get all sorts of upset about exclusion, BECAUSE it implies a limit to the sacredness of God. And that’s both wrong, and silly.

God is like the one who picks an infant up and smooshes them to their cheek. God is like that with all of us. ALL of us. Thanks be to God! Amen

1John Phillip Newell Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul (HarperOne, 2021), p. 24-26.

2Newell, 26.

3Newell, 26.

4Newell, 32.

5Newell, 40.

6Newell, 39.

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

June 4, 2023

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May 21, 2023
by Sara Baron

“The Tower” based on Deuteronomy 29:10-15 John 11:28-44

Last Summer Diana Butler Bass gave a sermon at the Wild Goose Festival that was shared and forwarded to me approximately 100 times, which was good because that’s how many times it took for me to read it. And once I read it, I participated in the sharing and forwarding too. Her sermon was entitled “All the Marys”1 and it shared one of the biggest breakthroughs in Biblical Scholarship in generations.

Which, I know, is THE SINGLE MOST EXCITING THING I COULD EVER SAY! Or, perhaps, maybe, it might not be?

Stick with me.

It’s worth it. This is a case where a huge break through in Biblical scholarship has pretty big implications for those of us who follow Jesus. I’m well aware they aren’t all like that.

What I find interesting is that I’ve now read her sermon several times over the course of 10 months, and I can’t seem to retain it. The implications are actually so big and require such an enormous re-framing of how I understand the early Christian story, that my brain keeps erasing it in favor of the familiar.

If you have spent less time in Gospel commentaries and/or seminary than I have, I suspect you are going to find it easier to accept these very simple truths than I do. Which is great! This is really awesome stuff, and I’d love for people to hear it, know it, and even retain it.

Diana Butler Bass tells the story of Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader who felt moved to study Mary Magdalene, landed at General Theological Seminary in New York to work on a Masters of New Testament, and wrote her final paper on John 11. Her professor encouraged her to look at the newly digitized version of the oldest known text of John, Papyrus 66, from around 200 CE, and find something new in it.

I’m going to quote Diana Butler Bass here:

And so Libbie is in the library looking at the text and she sees this first sentence. And it’s in Greek, of course. “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Mary.” And Libbie said, “What? That’s not what my English Bible says. My English Bible says, ‘Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha.’” But the Greek text, the oldest Greek text in the world doesn’t say that. The oldest Greek text in the world says, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary.” There are two Marys in this verse. And Libbie went, “What the heck? What is going on here?” And she started digging into the text, zooming in on it to try to see what she could see over the digitized version in the internet. And lo and behold, Libbie noticed something that no New Testament scholar had ever noticed.

And that is, in the text where it had those two Marys, the village of Mary and his sister, Mary, and her sister, Mary, the text had actually been changed. In Greek, the word Mary, the name Mary, is basically spelled like Maria in English, M-A-R-I-A. And the I, the Greek letter I, is the letter Iota. And it looks basically like an English I. Libbie could see by doing this textual analysis that the Iota had been changed to the letter TH in Greek, Theta. That somebody at some point in time had gone in over the original handwriting and actually changed the second Mary to Martha. And not only had that person changed the second Mary to Martha, but that person had also changed the way it comes out in English. It says, “The village of Mary,” that would’ve stayed the same, “and her sister, Martha.” Someone had also changed that “his” to “her”; that “her” was originally a “his,” but they had changed it to a “her.”

Admittedly, the original text is a confused and not very good sentence. “Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary,” it’s almost like they’re heightening the fact that Lazarus has this sister, Mary. They lived in this village together, and Mary is Lazarus’ sister. Someone had changed it to read, “Mary and her sister, Martha.”

Libbie sat in the library with all of this, and it came thundering at her, the realization that sometime in the fourth century, someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha.

She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, “Mary.” The editor changed it all.

Now, that’s a pretty big deal, but I imagine that maybe you don’t… umm… I think the words might be “Care that much.” But let me say, “yet.” I haven’t gotten to the part where this MATTERS yet, that was a really important BACKGROUND. It also makes John 11 as we know it really hard to read and make sense of. But that’s OK too.

So the underlying question in this is “why?” Why would someone go through so much trouble to create the character Martha out of what was once Mary? The key may be in the part of John 11 we read last week,

25Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: the one that believes in me, though they may die, yet shall they live; 26and the one who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord: I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one that comes into the world.

In the Bibles I have that “she” appears to be Martha but if she doesn’t exist, then the she is Mary. And now we’re getting to it. Christianity has long claimed that the first declaration that Jesus was the Messiah comes from Peter, the Rock, who is presented as having done so in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (the “Synoptics”) and that answer kinda worked because Martha was a pretty minor character and even though she says so in John, it is easy enough to ignore because Peter is THE ROCK, and Martha is… well, kinda a nobody.

Back to Diana Bulter Bass:

But if it is Mary, the Mary who shows up in John 11 is not an unremembered Mary… This Mary has long been suspected of being the other Mary, Mary Magdalene. Is it really true that the other Christological confession of the New Testament comes from of the voice of Mary Magdalene? That the Gospel of John gives the most important statement in the entirety of the New Testament, not to a man, but to a woman, and to a really important woman who will show up later as the first witness to the resurrection.

You see how these two stories work together. In John 11, Lazarus is raised from the dead, and who is there but Mary Magdalene? And at that resurrection, she confesses that Jesus is indeed the son of God. And then you go just 10 chapters later and who is the person at the grave? She mistakes him, at first, thinks he’s the gardener. She turns around and he says, “Mary,” and she goes, “Lord.” It’s Mary Magdalene. It is Mary Magdalene.

Oh, and now I get to place for you the final piece. Do you remember learning that Christ wasn’t Jesus’ last name? I do. Christ is the English version of Christos which was the Greek translation of Messiah, which literally meant “smeared” as in “smeared with oil” as in “annointed as king” because the Greek didn’t have a Messiah concept like Hebrew did. So when we say Jesus Christ, we are actually saying “Jesus the Messiah.”

Well, a lot of people think Mary Magdalene was called that cause she was Mary, from Magdala. Except there was no village called Magdala. Diana Butler Bass summariezes it this way:

When we call her Magdalene, Mary Magdalene, is not Mary from Magdala. Instead, it’s a title.

The word magdala in Aramaic means tower. And so now you get the full picture. In the Synoptics, Jesus and Peter have a discussion. In that discussion, Peter utters the Christological confession. As a result of the Christological confession, Jesus says, “You are Peter the Rock.” In the gospel of John, Mary and Jesus have a conversation, and Mary utters the Christological confession. And she comes to be known as Mary the Tower.

Between these two confessions, are we looking at an argument in the early church? Peter the Rock or Mary the Tower?

But the John account was changed. The John story has been hidden from our view. All those years ago, Mary uttered those words, “Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” …

Mary is indeed the tower of faith. That our faith is the faith of that woman who would become the first person to announce the resurrection. Mary the Witness, Mary the Tower, Mary the Great, and she has been obscured from us. She has been hidden from us and she been taken away from us for nearly 2,000 years. …

Or, or perhaps and, you can leave here with a question: What if the other story of Mary hadn’t been hidden? What if Mary in John 11 hadn’t been split into two women? What if we’d known about Mary the Tower all along? What kind of Christianity would we have if the faith hadn’t only been based upon, “Peter, you are the Rock and upon this Rock I will build my church”? But what if we’d always known, “Mary, you are the Tower, and by this Tower we shall all stand?”

OK, that’s it. That’s my big Biblical Studies breakthrough story. Perhaps you might want to laugh with me that the big breakthrough is simply another affirmation that God loves and cares about all people, JUST LIKE THE TEXT FROM DEUTERONOMY said in a lot fewer words.

But, dear ones, what if we’d gotten both stories? And maybe the even more important question: how can we live now that we have both stories? How can we be followers of Jesus who was seen clearly by Peter and by Mary? How can we be people of faith who both follow a leader who is a rock on which we are steadied and a tower who lifts us all up? What if masculine and feminine were allowed to stand together as holy to the deepest core of our faith? What if there is a whole lot of space for both/and in our tradition!?!?

Someone actually didn’t want that. Someone edited it out, and made Mary smaller. Dear ones, may we commit ourselves to the opposite. May we go out and make God, and each other, and all we meet BIGGER! Tower like, even. Amen

1 ALL THE MARYS Wild Goose Festival, Closing Sermon, July 17, 2022 by Diana Butler Bass https://dianabutlerbass.com/wp-content/uploads/All-the-Marys-Sermon.pdf

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

May 21, 2023

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May 14, 2023
by Sara Baron

“The Things We Fear, and the Things We Want” based on Deuteronomy 28:58-68 and John 11:17-27

I’m not particularly great at monitoring the secular calendar, so before I preach this sermon, I need to admit that I completely forgot today was Mothers’ day. This is only relevant because I’m talking about parenting, which is something I’d have sought to avoid if I remembered. But I didn’t. So here we are.

I’m intimidated by Mommy-blogs, online parent groups, and even parenting book. So I don’t read them. I guess in part I think of them as being like the Book of Discipline – the second you open it to figure something out you find you are out of compliance and then you have to decide if you want to A. Exert an exceptional amount of energy coming into compliance or B. Maintain the status quo while feeling guilty for knowingly doing it wrong. That said, I don’t think parenting quite has rules like the Book of Discipline so may it is more than I’m well aware of how judgmental people are of parents, and I’m just terrified of entering a space where I’ll be judged like that.

(It occurs to me this is a powerful motivator for why people stay away from church too. Scary parallels.)

All of that is to say, I want to talk a little bit about parenting, but I don’t know any of the official words and I’m far to scared to go down the rabbit hole of the internet to find them. So, here are words that no one has agreed upon, but I think are right. I aim to be a “feelings and needs parent.” By which I mean I seek to provide a lot of names for feelings, because I think talking about feelings helps everything, and having good names helps in talking about feelings. Things like, for example, “I have dread when I think about online parent groups.” The other part of this is needs, and for me that means that I believe that all human actions are motivated by attempting to meet basic human needs. To go back to that example, “I have dread when I think about online parenting groups because I have needs for compassion and to experience myself as competent and I’m afraid that both will be threatened.”

I’m pretty well bought in to the value of thinking about human behavior as an expression of human need, and I’m also committed to the value of using feelings as sources of wisdom. These are whole life commitments, and also parenting ones. They aren’t particularly easy parenting commitments though. It means working together to figure out what is going on, and how that has impacted behavior, and what that means about what needs are seeking to be met, and how we might meet those needs together safely and without stepping on other people’s needs. And basically there aren’t any shortcuts to doing that work.

The good part is that the skills I develop in parenting around feelings and needs are also ones that are useful in dealing with myself, and also in working with others in the church. The bad part is that one can get kinda drained doing things the hard way all the time.

Alas.

Because the another option is basically what we have in Deuteronomy, where God is presented as an authoritative, punitive parent who says “do it my way, or suffer the consequences.” And there the consequences are particularly awful.

Whenever I read Deuteronomy I remind myself to hear it in context. Deuteronomy was written down in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the despair of the Exile, in an attempt to answer the questions, “Why did this happen to us and what could we have done to prevent it?” Those writing have just experienced a huge communal trauma that threatened every part of their identity and theology, and they want to believe that it happened for a REASON. Because that’s just human. We want to make sense of the things that happen.

As people who largely believed that everything that happened, happened because God wanted it to happen, they then believed that the destruction had been God’s punishment, and to keep God in the right it thus it followed that their own misbehavior was the culprit. So, I can hear in our passage today an underlying assumption “oh how we wish we’d been more motivated to do things God’s way so this didn’t’ happen to us! I wonder what would have convinced us. Maybe these threats would have helped.”

Even so, I still cringe. That isn’t the way I parent, it isn’t the way I was parented, this isn’t the way I want to see power used in the church or the world, and to get to the point, it doesn’t fit the way I understand God.

And yet, the idea of God as one who punishes and rewards is quite a prevalent concept in the Bible and to take a stand against it requires acknowledging that. I am so grateful for John Dominic Crossan for the way he named the two “streams of thought” in the Hebrew Bible. One is the one we heard today – the stream of covenant, reward, punishment, and threat. It is there, it is plentiful, it can be found in the New Testament too if you are looking for it. BUT the other one is just as plentiful, and he called that the stream of “Sabbath and distributive justice.” That one says God created Sabbath as a gift to be equally distributed to all, and after Sabbath is distributed so too should be the land, the food, the education, … the power, etc. It is a vision of community, of sharing, of collaboration, and of motivation to love because God loves.

Both of the streams exist, and both are substantial. And probably both of them exist in us all to some extent, but most of us end up choosing one or the other, and I stand firmly on the side of Sabbath and distributive justice. I’m not arrogant enough to claim the other one is WRONG, or lacks value, or those who follow it are un-faithful. I just am here admitting that I know where I stand.

The punishments I hear in Deuteronomy are scare tactics, they are what people fear. But fear isn’t a great motivator, even if plenty of us use it on ourselves all the time. OK, fine, it is a REALLY powerful short term motivator, but it doesn’t change or form hearts or minds and it runs out of steam relatively quickly. The punishments from this passage flow pretty neatly into the conceptions of heaven and hell and a God who judges who goes where – used to motivate people toward goodness and compliance but also quite poorly. I’ve been asked by people why I am motivated to do good in the world if not simply to avoid hell.

OYE!

In truth, I tend to think of the two streams of thought in the Bible as being highly reflective of two steams of thought I see in our society. The Covenant one with rewards and punishments sounds a whole lot like authoritative leadership and a parental style often described as “daddy knows best.” (Which doesn’t mean that every family system in which this is the model has a father or has the father as the one who knows best.) In this system everyone else’s wisdom as well as their needs are dismissed so that the authoritative figure gets what they want and others are simply expected to comply.

The Sabbath, distributive justice one sounds like an egalitarian family, one where the feelings and needs of everyone are taken seriously, and win-win solutions are sought together.

Dear ones, I work with God toward the kindom of God because I believe it is possible to be a part of a better world. I believe we can take care of each other. I believe we can distribute goods and resources fairly. I believe people are lovely and it is worth working for everyone to be better off together. I believe in ABUNDANCE and that means there is enough for everyone if we just STOP being scared.

Which means I would rather not scare people, since fear itself is part of the resistance to just distribution.

Now, I think some of the same energy that we find in Deuteronomy is also in John this week. Martha believes her brother wouldn’t have died if only Jesus was there, and a conversation ensues about the correctness of her belief. For the Gospel of John, Jesus IS God, and whatever we may think about that notion, it is useful to remember when listening to John. So Martha believed the presence of God would have prevented her brother’s untimely death, and is rather irked Jesus didn’t show up. This becomes a opening to talk about Jesus/God’s power of life and resurrection, and in fact the story goes on past what we read today to the resurrection of Lazarus.

However, as Wilda Gafney says, Lazarus “is raised to life in the same old world. Life in Jesus happens here among the brokenness, failings, and limitations of the present world.”[1] While it could be easy to hear Jesus as talking about AFTERLIFE, the context of Lazarus pulls us back to THIS world.

Which means it pulls us back to making THIS world better, together, for all of God’s beloveds, all of us. I don’t know better motivations than gratitude and hope. Gratitude for the goodness of life and love, hope that with God all things are possible. Including win-win solutions. Including everyone’s needs being met and everyone’s feelings being taken seriously. To get there, we get to practice – with each other, with our families, every where we go. And thank goodness, there is a whole lot of grace for when we slip up.

If you want to take a first, tentative step towards all this, here is a link to a “Feelings and Needs” sheet with a lot of feeling words and a list of universal human needs, and it is best to start with yourself. What do YOU feel? What do you need? And how is it you feel God nudging you along to get those needs met?

Or, maybe get to a deeper question: what is underneath what you want? What needs are really seeking to be met and what ways are you willing to try to get them met? As we learn more to trust in God to care, we become better and better at sharing that love with others. We learn to make space for feelings, and needs. May God help us all! Amen

[1] Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (Church Publishing Incorporated: New York, NY, 2021) p. 185

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

May 14, 2023

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April 30, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Perplexed, but Not in Despair” based on 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 Luke 7:18-23

I have had an unexpected number of conversations about gun violence recently. I guess unexpected because the regularity of gun violence in our society means many of the conversations that can be had, have been had, and often there doesn’t feel like there is much more to say. I have tended to agree with the sentiment that if nothing happened after Sandy Hook, chances are pretty low for change. That doesn’t mean I’m not still engaged in trying, just… I’ve been feeling pretty resigned.

Yet, conversations bubbled up this week. In one, a friend reflected on the skin tones of members of her family and wondered if they were dark enough to be seen as threats. (She would prefer that I also say, she doesn’t want ANYONE killed by guns.) As you might expect, the answers to her questions are not the ones we’d like them to be.

Another person shared about being in a school lock down, this week, while actively caring for students with special needs, who were simply terrified. So was she. She wondered about if she should let her children leave her house ever again.

Yet another conversation was with a young mother in Nashville, a woman whose office for a decade looked out over the Covenant school. Beloveds of God, she was the one with hope. She spent the last month at protests and sit ins in the Tennessee Capitol, working with others to advocate for red flag laws and other reasonable protections, which was at least successful enough that the legislature shut down their session rather than deal with the daily protests. She talked about gerrymandering, and lack of democracy, and a sense that the national medial presented Tennessee as a broken wasteland.

And then she said, “There is hope.” She pointed out that Tennessee is where change has happened, historically, which I frankly didn’t know. Women and their allies mobilized a massive campaign in TN, with incredibly intentional internationality around race and gender, and got the 19th Amendment to the US constitution passed through the TN General Assembly which ratified it as an amendment. She pointed out that because of the FOUR Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Nashville, change has started there. Nashville was so important to the Civil Rights Movement that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “’I came to Nashville not to bring inspiration, but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.’

The late civil rights leader recognized the vast activism and steadfastness that rang throughout the city as students protested at lunch counters and intellectuals traveled to Fisk University to band together and fight for justice. As Martin Luther King Day approaches, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy of motivation and valor in the historic city of Nashville.”1

My friend and colleague said that change needs to start in the South, and Nashville is uniquely poised, and those who have been organizing are ready to keep going, and they are not going to let up.

I didn’t expect to find hope with the one I know closest to the pain, but maybe that’s an error on my part. It certainly fits what we heard in 2Corinthians, “In every way we are oppressed, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; knocked down but not destroyed; always bearing forth in the body the death of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might also be revealed in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10) Those closest to the destruction, the death, the horror, the brokenness are also the ones who have been able to feel the Spirit moving within them to bring change. They are NOT crushed, they’re motivated. They are NOT in despair, they’re channeling their anger. They have seen death, seen the death of members of the body of Christ, and they are letting God use them to move the state and the country towards life.

And the actions taken by activists, faith leaders, and every day people in Nashville and in TN has ended up kicking me in the pants too. They’ve reminded me of the power of hope. They’ve reminded me of the power of God.

Then, I heard a phrase worth sharing from the Rev. Dionne Boissiere, Chaplain of the Church Center for the United Nations. She said, ‘The faithfulness of God has nothing to do with the recklessness of humanity.” So, when we’re just frustrated beyond anything with the recklessness of humanity, we can rest assured that EVEN THAT can’t stop God over the long run.

Now, this doesn’t change the horrors of gun violence or violence in our society. There is still work to be done, and it still needs to be done. But work done with HOPE and with GOD is really different than drudgery.

The hope we’re talking about is the resurrection narrative itself. That death doesn’t have the final word, that LOVE does. That even when the worst things happen, they aren’t the end of hope. That good can grow, even out of bad. That life has a power and a force of its own, and while it may have to change course to avoid dead-ends, it keeps going. That injustice may have a stronghold, but it is not impenetrable. That … well, we may be oppressed but we are not crushed. That HOPE may be knocked down, but it cannot be destroyed. That love cannot be stopped.

Luke takes this on with slightly different metaphors, ones based in Isaiah, ones that I am a little less comfortable with because I have learned a lot from people who live with disabilities. One of the things I’ve learned is that for some the metaphors of “healing” are painful because they wish for “healing” that doesn’t ever come to them. To others the metaphors of “healing” are painful because it implies they are broken or less than, and they experiences themselves as whole and full – blessed in a different way. This awareness itself is a blessing, one that comes from being in an era with technological and medical capacities to support people with many different needs and many different capabilities.

In any case, I hear even better news from 2 Corinthians today, than Luke, which is a fun change of pace for me.

This week is an interesting one, if things go according to plan this is the last sermon I am pre-recording in my attic (before we moved, in the spare bedroom). I’ve preached 4 Easter sermons this way, and pre-recorded for 38 months. I don’t care to calculate how many sermons that is. Next week we expect Livesteaming to be up and running, and I’ll just preach one sermon and it will be recorded from worship which sounds …. weird at this point.

Also, this is one of the signs that the world which turned upside down in March of 2020 is in a different place now. I’m not claiming all is well, and I’m well aware that what used to be normal will never be again. But we are worshipping in person, we are about to have the technology to include people at home in real time (YAY inclusion), and we are entering what I expect may be a long term new normal.

Friends, that’s hopeful.

Next Sunday, as well, I won’t be preaching because Bishop Karen Oliveto will be in Schenectady, sharing the Good News of God. We invited her to join us in 2020 as the start of our 25 year reconciling celebration, and here it is 2023 and we’re delighted to celebrate our 27th year of being reconciling. In fact, we’re so excited that we’re going to spend May AND June talking about God’s work of love and inclusion, the incredible ways God’s love has been experienced, and the commitments we have to keep on working with God until all God’s people can be welcomed and CELEBRATED in God’s churches.

Friends, that’s hopeful. Especially for all the people out there who need that good news and haven’t heard that people of God who call themselves Jesus followers know about the expansive nature of God’s love.

I hope that the inner parts of your being are perking up a little bit at these mentions of God’s hope and love. That they too hear that oppression can’t crush us, nor break us. That even death can’t stop the work God is up to in the world. That nothing, nothing, NOTHING can stop the love of God.

That “death is at work in us, but life in you all.” Life is at work in us. Life is at work in the world. We can have hope, because of God.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

1 https://urbaanite.com/mlk-nashville-nashville-speeches/

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

April 30, 2023

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April 23, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Love Your Neighbor” based on Deuteronomy 5:11-22 and Romans 13:8-10

This Romans 13 passage is hard for me to preach on because it is so core to how I understand faith that I struggle with adequate distance from it. I spent college with a construction paper sign on my door that said “Love is the Answer” and happily chirped to those who said “what is the question?” “it doesn’t matter.”

Jesus wasn’t the first one to notice that “love your neighbor” undergirded the other laws. Rabbi Hillel was in leadership from about 30BCE to 10CE – so he was someone a little older than Jesus. A famous story is told of Rabbi Hillel.

A stranger came to Hillel and made the request, “Teach me the Torah as I stand on one foot.” So Hillel taught him: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary. Now, go and learn it.”

It is reasonable to think that Hillel was pretty famous, and Jesus agreed with his conclusion.

I would even go another step and say that there are two great commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself and love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Loving God is reflected in the first 3 commandments, loving your neighbor in the final 6, and they’re both in the 4th about the Sabbath. Furthermore, I’m going to claim the TWO are even the same commandment in two forms. How do we love God? We love God by loving our neighbors. Why do we love our neighbors? Because we love God who loves them. They’re not differentiable.

So, that 4th commandment, the one about Sabbath. Have you ever noticed that it is a whole lot wordier than the others? “You shall not steal” is concise. “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the HOLY ONE your God commands you” is the opening sentence in the paragraph on Sabbath.

When John Dominic Crossan was here, he proposed that Sabbath is at the core of the theological stream that understands God to be aimed at distributive justice. I should say that differently. “Dom says the Sabbath is the key to faith as he knows it.” Phew, that’s better.

The thing that really strikes me about the Sabbath as explained in Deuteronomy is that is IS “distributed” fairly. When I want to encourage people to take Sabbath, and to take seriously their need to rest, to play, to connect with loved ones, and to remember that life is more than work – when I want to do all that I end up worrying that I’m just guilting the already overwhelmed. When people are working multiple jobs to have enough to eat, or working obscene hours to fulfill impossible job requirements – how does it help them for me to encourage them to “take a break?”

This may be why I hear “you shall not do any work – you, or your daughter, or your son, or the migrant in your towns, so that your female slave and your male slave may rest as you do” and I’m blown away by it. Imagine! Imagine if EVERYONE got equal access to FULL rest, EVERY week! Imagine if you didn’t have to a certain level of wealthy to afford rest!! Imagine if it weren’t a privilege, if it didn’t have to be earned, if it couldn’t be taken away.

I find this hard to imagine.

“Remember that a slave were you in the land of Egypt, and the FAITHFUL ONE your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the HOLY ONE your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” That is, because you were once aching and in need of help, give rest and help to those aching today. Don’t work, to try to get ahead and therefore demand others work. Rest so others can rest. Work doesn’t define life. Don’t be like those who oppressed you. Be people of God.

Because the people of God rest.

Because the people of God make space for others to rest.

Because love your neighbor as yourself means let them get a Sabbath rest too, let even those you have power over. It means letting them remember why life is worth living, and why work isn’t the centerpiece of life.

You may have heard me speak before about Walter Brueggemann’s book “Sabbath as Resistance” because it is a favorite of mine. I’m not going to start quoting it at you because if I start I won’t be able to start. But I’ve been deeply formed by Brueggemann’s thinking on Sabbath.

John Dominic Crossan says Sabbath is the starting point for justice, for the ways of God in the world.

Brueggemann says Sabbath is the central commandment, the most important one.

They both think practicing Sabbath is central to loving your neighbor. The connection, I think, is that NOT WORKING is imperative to BEING HUMAN. And we generally aren’t any better at letting other people be human than we are at letting ourselves be human. So we need regular time to stop and practice being humans – not people worth what we can do or make – but just beloved people of God SO THAT we can do the same for others.

We have to have regular time to NOT WORK in order to LOVE people, and loving people is loving God, and this turns out to be really important.

Last week I talked about nurturing the space for God to grow seeds of hope in us. This week I’m getting around to suggesting that Sabbath is a well known best practice for that.

Now, Sabbath may not be what you think it is, so let me go deep down into its roots. Sabbath is a time to stop being productive so you can be whole. Sabbath is a weekly day off to focus on the things that matter instead of the things demanded of you. Sabbath is for family, friendship, relationship, time with God, laughter, play, poetry, art, music, song, and naps. Sabbath is the practice of leaving behind Pharoah’s demand that the decedents of Abraham make bricks, and relearning the rhythms of grace instead.

Sabbath is trusting in God’s abundance, instead of fighting for your part of a scarcity pie.

Sabbath is focused on love, not productivity.

Sabbath isn’t generative. It doesn’t create value. Instead, Sabbath makes time to savor what is and what is good.

Sabbath is time for loving neighbor, and self, God and earth. Sabbath is TIME set ASIDE from LABOR for LOVE.

Those of us who have practiced yoga are familiar with the practice of shavasana, the intentional rest after movement, to allow the practice to settle in. For many it is a dreary, drowsy, sweet, restful time that is more restorative than sleep. Sabbath is meant to be delicious like that. Sabbath IS delicious like that.

At one low point in my spiritual life, I met with a guide to get things back on track and I found myself repeating “I’m so tired, I’m just so tired.” She recommended sleep. I laughed as I realized my communication failure. “Oh, I get sleep. Physically I’m fine. It is all the other ways I’m tired.” Luckily she understood, and recommended more time alone with God where I don’t try to produce anything, but simply savor the love God has for me.

Don’t try to produce anything, just savor the love God has for you.

Do you do that? Would you want to try? Could you give it 5 minutes? An hour? A day? A day a week? What would happen if you did? What wonderful things would happen? (Savoring God’s love, it turns out, as mentioned previously, often looks a lot like savoring the love of God’s other beloveds.)

Will you?

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

April 23, 2023

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April 16, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Doubt, Peace, and Blessing” based on Acts 1:3-5, 12-14 and John 20:19-30

I care about a lot of things, and I care a lot about people and that can be challenging. I know at least some of you know what I mean. Loving people is a great and wonderful thing, but there is a lot of pain out there and it can be overwhelming.

Julian of Norwich said, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of thing shall be well.” And I want to argue back.

I can make good arguments!

But I’m not going to share them with you.

Today I want to talk about how she is right. First, I have to note that she speaks in the future tense. She did not claim that all was well. She didn’t dismiss the suffering of her day. Instead, she speaks of hope in the power of Divine Love, she speaks resurrection, she speaks of the kindom that will come.

“And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.”

Now, I think Thomas is the disciple for the rest of us. I adore the guy. I love how brave he is to be the one who went out when the rest of the disciples locked themselves in. I figure he was the one gathering up supplies for everyone. I love how honest he is about his disbelief. I love how is is the stand in for the rest of us who would also NOT see Jesus appear in the upper room. And I love how when he comes across new information, he changes his mind. He said he wouldn’t believe until he saw. He saw, and he believed. I love his devotion to Jesus and to Jesus’ followers. I love his resilience in being dismissed over and over again in the history of Christianity and still having such power to help us. And, of course, I love that he – like the others – was blessed with peace. Because I always love that blessing. I love that Jesus appeared showering his grieving followers with “blessed wholeness for each and all of you” and I love that we greet each other with those words in worship to this day.

So, right, I love Thomas.

And, as it turns out, I love doubts because they’re real. I love when Thomas just says, “I will not believe.” I love it when people say that to me too. I particularly love it when people name for me something they think they’re supposed to believe and don’t, and I’m able to say to them that I don’t think they have to believe that afterall.

Most of the time I’m also able to say I don’t believe it either. I learned the power of hearing that from a pastor when I was a teenager. I had come to have serious doubts about hell. It just didn’t make any sense to me that a God who loves people would send anyone to hell. I didn’t think God’s love was that small or powerless. I made an attempt to talk to my own pastor about it and he informed me that believing in hell was a requirement of Chrsitianty. Or something. I don’t really remember anything other than being told I couldn’t believe what I believed. I kept my mouth shut for quite some time afterwards, but maybe a year and a half later (I think I was 13), I was at camp and we were doing Bible Study in the woods and the topic seemed to come up and I brought it up softly. Something like, “I’m not sure that I believe in hell.” The pastor with us heard me, and told me that I should trust myself and believe what I believed.

He opened the door for me.

(Clearly I went ahead and walked all the way through.)

I think my favorite part of this story is that the pastor, who is still a mentor, doesn’t remember it. It was just a normal part of his ministry to empower people, and to affirm God’s love, and it wasn’t notable for him at the time. But I’m not sure I would have stayed in Christianity without him.

Right. So I love doubts. And I love your doubts.

In preparing for this second Sunday of Easter I found myself wondering, “What do we REALLY doubt?” I mean we as a community, which may be different from any of us individually. And I may not know. But my best guess is that we doubt, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.”

For good reasons, and those are OK.

But for some bad reasons too. I think we may doubt it because the 24 hour news cycle fills up our hearts and minds with stories chosen by the principal “if it bleeds, it leads.” I think we may doubt it because social media has no conscience. I think we may doubt it because human nature tends to spend more attention on the bad then the good, requiring 5 times as much good as bad for it to get the same amount of attention. I think we may doubt it because we’ve been trained in or bought into the scarcity mentality. I think we may doubt because someones, somewheres, think it is good for sales if we are hopeless and uncomfortable and they’re good at marketing.

That’s a lot of pressure on us NOT to have hope.

It is coming at us from all directions all the time.

Dear ones, I would like us to build some resilience around ourselves, so we can let hope be nurtured and grow in us. So I want to remind you of some things that are just truly good news. Every day people leave domestic violence. And some of they stay away and never experience it again. Every day people get sober after a long experience with addiction, and some of them stay sober for the rest of their lives. Every day people who have lived through trauma find ways to keep going, to share love, to heal, to make it through. And that means that trauma doesn’t have the last word. Every day science and medicine advance and make a fuller life possible for people who didn’t have hope yesterday.

Friends, the coal industry just had a TERRIBLE first quarter.

And, you know, those African American legislators in Tennessee got their seats back. And the white woman who protested with them named racism as the reason she wasn’t kicked out, re-centering them in the conversation.

Loving relationships exist.

And, dear ones, spring comes every year and the sun rises every morning and sets every night. There is plenty of hope to ground ourselves in.

I don’t think God needs any of us to feel more guilty, to be more overwhelmed, or to have superficial knowledge of more problems.

I think God needs more people grounded in hope. So I want to ask you to pay attention to your lives. What drains your energy? What builds your energy up? Thank goodness, we’re all different and that means the answers will be different. Otherwise everyone would want to be an bus driver and no one an accountant.

Friends, please, for the love of God, take your need to rebuild your energy seriously. Do things you love. It is a form of resilience. It is a form of nurturing hope. It is a

form of faith.

So, let’s get practical. What do I mean? I mean, talk with people you laugh with. Try new things that make you a little nervous. Notice flowers when you are out and about. If you are like me, take as much time as you can to savor the silence and let it heal you from the inside out. If you are nothing like me, go to a really loud concert and let it heal you from the inside out. Look for beauty. Pay attention to goodness. Give yourself a break.

I think our doubts are likely related to doubting that we deserve good things, like the stuff that restores us. But Jesus blessed with all with comfort, hope, and peace – the peace that is blessed wholeness for us and for all. We have doubts, all of us, right? And that’s OK. But may we nurture hope by letting God help us nurture our God-given energies. For good. For peace. For hope.

“And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.” Amen

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

April 16, 2023