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January 19, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Rebuilding after Trauma” based on Psalm 18:2-11, 16-19 and Isaiah 62:1-7

I picked the wordiest readings ever this week. They’re awfully hard to keep in focus. I’m sorry. They’re just so lovely though, that I couldn’t help myself. They are texts that talk about rebuilding after traumatic events, about God’s power and grace being enough to bring hope when it looks lost. They have imagery of healing and regrowth.

They talk again and again about salvation and delivery, and it seems like a good time to claims those words in their Biblical strength and power. Salvation comes from the same root as “salve.” To be saved is to be healed. Delivery has connotations of birth and passing through a narrow place to get to safety and wholeness. Both words are used throughout the Bible to indicate God’s actions for God’s people. God moves the people to healing, to wholeness, to safety. God liberates. God heals. God creates safe places for liberation and healing to occur.

If you, like me, have had a little bit too much exposure to the Christian fundamentalist narrative that salvation is about being saved from hell, I invite you to lay it down. Let it go. We aren’t talking about that.

In fact, Isaiah is talking about restoring the community of ancient Israel. Piecing together those who had been left behind in the unprotected lands with those who had been force marched into exile, and finding connection and wholeness again. Isaiah is talking about the horrors of violence, the battles and destruction of Jerusalem and that they DO NOT GET to define the people any longer. “No more shall your land be called Devastated; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her”. Wow!

The Psalm presents itself as being more about an individual, which it may be. Sometimes it is hard to tell in the Bible if an individual is an individual or a way about talking about a group as a whole. It doesn’t really matter though, the truths hold in it either way. The Psalmist expresses trust in God “The Rock Who Gave Me Birth is my rock” and then goes on pretty quickly to mention that things are not going well. “The snares of death encompassed me”, etc. The Psalmist called out to God for help, and experienced God listening and responding.

I wonder if there is something important there. The Psalm goes into quite a lot of detail about the strength of God’s response. God heard, God cared, God responded – and the earth SHOOK. When any of us is responding to trauma, being reminded that God is, that God cares, and that God can help matters a lot. There is isolation and powerlessness that keep trauma in place, but the reminder of God’s presence and care can change that reality quite dramatically.

Finally, the Psalmist says God simply plucked them up out of the danger and set them down somewhere safe, ending with “she delivered me because she delights in me.” What a profound conclusion.

A definition of trauma that I find quite useful is, “Exposure to an event which was perceived as intensely threatening to mind, body, or spirit, accompanied by feelings of helplessness, powerlessness and horror.”1 You’ll note there are two part to this definition: a threatening event and a sense that one couldn’t do anything about it. It is also worth noting that the PERCEPTION of the threat is the key, not the reality of it. AND that the threat can be to mind, body, or spirit.

Trauma is incredibly common in our lives. Adverse Childhood Experience Studies look at 10 common traumatic experiences (abuse, neglect, family dysfunction) and find that 60-65% of adults experienced at least one traumatic event in childhood. So MOST people. Most people were seriously harmed in their childhoods. The prevalence of childhood trauma has dramatic effects on physical and mental health over the course of a lifetime. And, of course, traumatic events occur in adult lives too.

A particularly notable one would be a global pandemic. Where there are threats to physical well-being in the form of the virus, AND mental and spiritual well-being in the form of separation.

Clearly, there are a wide variety of experiences in the pandemic and experiences of the pandemic. Some people have experienced far more trauma in the pandemic than others. Yet, we have each experienced some trauma, and we have had a COLLECTIVE trauma. It may even be that we are still in the midst of experiencing collective trauma. (I think it is hard to tell for sure.)

While trauma has incredible impact on bodies, minds, and souls, it is important to pay attention as well to resiliency factors. Because the impact of trauma is CHANGED by the presence of resilience. Things like: supportive friends, ways to engage with community, people to look up to, a sense of purpose, feeling valued, a sense of competency, opportunities for play. In my reading on trauma and resilience I’ve been struck by how UTTERLY IMPERATIVE mirroring is.

Mirroring are ways that people consciously or subconsciously reflect or “mirror” the emotions and feelings and aspirations of another. This has the impact of validating, accepting, and showing love for that person. (Generally when it comes to anger or outbursts mirroring is less useful, but naming emotions can still help a lot.)2 Mirroring gets a lot of attention in terms of parenting, but let’s be real for a moment: for the adults in the room, a lot of life is about self-parenting ourselves and supporting others in their capacity to do the same. We have have emotions, feelings, aspirations and needs, and sometimes we all need some help in accepting them and finding them valid. Sometimes we can do it ourselves (regulating!) sometimes we do it best with others (co-regulating!) and most of the time its a mix.

Mirroring and regulating feel central to these Biblical passages about delivery from trauma, salvation after trauma, restoration to a full and abundant life. In Isaiah God names the ways the community feels. It is heard and acknowledged. It isn’t dismissed. God is even named as “God who sees.” The ways the community has experienced the exile are spoken by GOD. The hope doesn’t come out of the abstract, it meets the people where they are.

In the Psalm first we hear the distress of the one who is struggling and then we hear the ways God responds. Perhaps you need to hear this too, so keeping in mind the traumas of the past 3 years or so, see how it feels to hear this as God’s response to the struggles you’ve lived through:

Then the earth shuddered and quaked;

the foundations also of the mountains trembled

and were shaken because of her anger.

Smoke went up from her mouth;

burning coals blazed forth from her.

She spread out the heavens, and descended;

thick darkness was under her feet.

She mounted up on a cherub and flew;

she soared upon the wings of the wind.

She made darkness her veil around her,

her canopy dark waters and thick clouds.

She reached down from on high, she took me;

she drew me out of the multitude of water.

She delivered from from my strong enemy,

and from those who hate me;

for they were too mighty for me.

Wow!

Well, I feel less alone, and less frightened by my finitude with God responding like THAT! (Also, I rather like that the “enemies” aren’t attacked, rather the Psalmist is simply placed out of their reach.)

The Psalmist brings fear and heartache, and FEELS God mirroring, responding, helping, empowering, and bringing them to safety. The whole earth shakes and God starts the process of rebuilding their life after the trauma.

In Isaiah, too, the trauma is acknowledged in the mirroring, and other healing starts too. There is dreaming, hoping, reframing, renaming, reconnecting. Trauma happens in human lives, individually and collectively, but trauma isn’t the last word. God doesn’t give up on us when we’re struggling, God sees and hears, mirrors and responds, and helps us find the skills to regulate. God works to bring us to safe places. God delights in us, EVEN when we are broken by the trauma of our lives.

We don’t have to be healed, or whole, or trauma free to be loved. God doesn’t expect that of us. God sees and hears, mirrors and responds, loves and hopes. Trauma doesn’t have the final word, love and hope do. That is, God does. Amen

1 https://resolutioncounselling.ca/resolution-articles/nature-impacts-trauma/

2Adapted from https://www.enlivenminds.org/parental-mirroring/

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

January 22, 2023

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January 15, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Foolish and Wise" based on Isaiah 52:1-10 and 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Again and again I find myself at the website for the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and reading over the principles of Rev. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Every time I read them, I learn. Every time I read them I notice again how deeply rooted Rev. Dr. King was in following Jesus, and in the wisdom of other traditions that also teach nonviolence.

This week, the principle that jumped out was number 2: Nonviolence Seeks to Win Friendship and Understanding.

The outcome of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation1

It is always worth reviewing the idea of the Beloved Community, central as it is to Rev. Dr. King’s thinking. The Commission on Religion and Race wrote about this for us, “Philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce first conceived the Beloved Community concept; later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr popularized it during the Civil Rights Movement. Rev. Dr. King envisioned that the Beloved Community to be a global movement where the agape love of God would be the driving force to redemption and reconciliation and a place where all people can share in the abundance of wealth in the world. In the Beloved Community, all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and dehumanization are eradicated and countered by a more inclusive, interdependent existence of people who live in non-violent harmony with one another.”2

That is, the Beloved Community is formed from the truths of our 1 Corinthians passage. The ways to move from systems of power-over, oppression, and hierarchy don’t tend to come from those who hold the power, engage in the oppression, and maintain the hierarchy. Rather, the wisdom to see how things work, why things don’t work, and what could be better tends to come from those disempowered, oppressed, and on the bottom of a hierarchy. The ones lowborn, “foolish” in the ways of the world, insignificant, weak. They’re the ones most likely to listen to God, to respond to God’s urgings, to find new ways.

The nonviolent social movement of Rev. Dr. King, Ghandi, and Jesus are most notable to me, in that they sought to eliminate oppression with LOVE. They did not seek to eliminate the oppressors, only the oppression. They wanted to CHANGE relationships, not stop them. They saw that there is real power in community, in connection, in solidarity, and in peace. World changing power, and they all used it. Not power over, but power with.

There is the vision of the kindom, or the Beloved Community. The way of God in the world is not in power over, but power with. It is in humanizing ALL. It is in sharing abundant resources. It is in togetherness.

This, I think, is also the real meaning of the salvation discussed in Isaiah. The historical idea was of return, hope, freedom, and connection. And, when it is looked at carefully, it is clear that God is at work to move towards peace – towards wholistic well-being of all and each, towards joy – for all, towards comfort, towards freedom from oppression.

God’s dreams get spoken a little differently in each time and place, but in Isaiah and Paul, Jesus and Ghandi, Rev. Dr. King hopefully in each of us, they resonate with the same underlying melodies, hopes, and passions. God’s passion is for ALL to be WELL, together.

As you may remember, Rev. Dr. King talked about the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism as “forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle.”3 About poverty, he said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”4

Heavens. It is even less “new” now than when he said it. The existence of poverty within our nation is a choice our nation has made about it’s values, a choice that the Bible CLEARLY disagrees with. We could house everyone, and we could do it for LESS money than it costs us NOT to house everyone, but we choose not to. We could feed everyone, and the impact on our society as a whole would be profound, but we choose not to. We could provide affordable, excellent healthcare for everyone, once again at lower costs than our current system, but we choose not to.

As Ms. Bryce Covert summarized in an NYT opinion piece entitled “There is a Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things,” this summer,

“In a seminal 2001 paper, the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote tried to answer this very question: Why doesn’t this country have a welfare system that looks like the ones in European countries, progressively taxing those with the most wealth to redistribute resources to those with the least? Economic differences, they concluded, don’t explain it. But they did find that “racial fragmentation” has played a “major role” in keeping us from these policies in a way it hasn’t elsewhere. They also found that while Europeans see the poor as members of their own group who are merely unfortunate, Americans see them as lazy “others.” American voters are less likely to demand that their leaders pass policies that help the least well-off. “Racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately Black, unappealing to many voters,” they concluded.5

That is, our choices to allow people to struggle in poverty are inter-related with racism. Like Rev. Dr. King said.

The way I see it, at the center of all the evils and violence is the dehumanization of others. Which means that every SINGLE movement toward compassion is a movement away from violence, away from evil, towards the beloved community. Compassion MATTERS, for each of us, for all of us, and for the world we want to make. For the world we are making with God.

I subscribe to a newsletter from Emily Nagoski, who with her sister wrote “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” which I would put on a required reading list for humans if I had the power to make such a thing. Last week she entitled her email newsletter, “Burnout: You don’t have to Wait for the Revolution to Feel Better.”6

Her words were profound to me, and so I’m going to share them with you. She says that there are solutions to burnout, and they are neither the revolution nor self care. BUT RATHER, compassion. Speaking of society as a body, she says:

We help the body learn not to treat parts of itself as the enemy.

Just because a cell in our social body is different from us doesn’t make it “foreign” or a threat; its difference means that it plays a role in our social body that we ourselves cannot play, and so we must protect it, because our own wellbeing within this social body depends on every different cell sustaining its wellbeing. We can’t soothe the inflammation of the social body by attacking any part of it.

No, the cure for burnout can’t be some fantasy of revolution, nor is it the finger-trap of self-care. It is simply care; it is all of us turning toward each other with kindness and compassion. When we see each other’s exhaustion and overwhelm, we offer support without judgment. When we notice our own sense of inadequacy, we allow others to witness it and love us anyway. The “cure” is each of us declining to let the forces of racist, sexist, capitalist oppression stop us from loving the hell out of one other, come what may.

…

And if you’re worried I’m saying, “Don’t try to change the system; let’s just be nice to each other while the world burns,” I invite you to think bigger. Think outside the boring dynamics of Force A acting against Force B and so Force B retaliates with overwhelming power. Imagine instead Force B transforms into a cloud, saturating Force A with peace until it deliquesces and releases us into the natural, soft flow of being human.

Audre Lorde says: community built on honoring our differences. She calls us to “recognize difference as a crucial strength.” She says,

“Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community does not mean shedding our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

The cure is not “self-care.” The cure is simply care — all of us, caring for each other, by honoring our differences and loving one another because of them.

That’s it, dear ones. That’s how we do God’s work, how we build the kindom, how we live the Beloved Community, how we follow Jesus, how we continue the work of Rev. Dr. King. We love the hell out of each other, we simply care, we honor our differences and love one another. May God help us do it! Amen

1 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

2General Commission on Religion and Race. https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-beloved-community

3 https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

4Ibid.

5 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/racism-paid-leave-child-care.html

6 https://emilynagoski.substack.com/p/burnout-you-dont-have-to-wait-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=287493&post_id=95085447&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

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January 8, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Radical Experience of Acceptance” based on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

I have a very clear recollection of the first time I paid attention to the words of Bobby McFerrin’s arrangement of the 23rd Psalm. I’d heard it before, but I hadn’t LISTENED before. There was a church choir concert in Hollywood, the church I interned at was hosting, and one of the choirs sang it.

I was in seminary. I was reasonably familiar with the 23rd Psalm. I had expectations of what words I would hear. And then what I did hear was: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I have all I need. She makes me lie down in green meadows Beside the still waters, She will lead”1 All my breath left me, and I found tears rolling down my cheeks.

I went to a progressive seminary. I’d been led by intentional and caring clergy for years. I knew, and used inclusive language for God. I’d heard it used. I knew that the Holy Spirit was feminine in Greek. I knew God wasn’t male. I knew I was made in the image of God.

And.

And in that moment in a new and profound way, I felt included as a child of God. This overly common imagery of God as a shepherd translated from a distinctly male image with male pronouns to a distinctly female image with female pronouns mattered to me, to the deepest parts of my being. This is related, I think, to music touching a different part of our beings than logic and rational though. When that choir sang “she makes me lie down in green pastures” I felt safe and welcome, cared for and most significantly of all, I FELT the reality that I could be a reflection of God as a woman. To hear the metaphor of God as female in that song healed me a little bit. EVEN THOUGH I’d already “known” all of that.

Probably because there is a difference between knowing (head) and knowing (body and spirit).

As I read these epiphany scriptures this week I found myself cringing a little bit at the repetition of “daughter.” It felt like too much. I wanted to soften it, take it back, make it quieter. It felt like maybe it would exclude those who aren’t female.

But, I read the textual notes, and Dr. Gafney wrote in them, “Isaiah 60 speaks to a female entity, Zion, Jerusalem, frequently styled as God’s daughter; each “you” and “your” is explicitly feminine and singular, rhythmic and repetitive in Hebrew. I have added “daughter” each place this occurs for the English speaker-reader-hearer.”2 So, it is truly there, and what is odd is to hear it explicitly in English, “Arise, daughter; shine, daughter; for your light has come, daughter, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, daughter.” (Isaiah 60:1)3

So, instead of softening the language, I’ve sat with it. What I’veheard is that when God reveals God’s self to us (“epiphany” which is the name of the Sunday we’re celebrating) it often has to do with a radical experience of acceptance – and quite often a radical experience of acceptance when we were expecting rejection.

This is where we are gifted with a lot of wonderful power as a church. We are the people who can use they/them pronouns for God, and let people who are non-binary that we see God in them and them in God. What a gift to be able to give!

I have often reflected with awe at the impact of this church on those who were raised in it. In the process of preparing celebrations of life for church members, I get to know their families, and I am often struck by how this church has gifted the world with men who are free to be tender and compassionate and women who are free to be strong and clear, and visa versa, and more so. This has been for a long time a place where gendered expectations are put away and space is made for the fullness of God’s gifts in each person to emerge. What an incredible legacy this church has!

I have heard stories from many of you about your process of finding your way here, and the radical experience of acceptance that kept you here. One story involves sitting in a car in the parking lot and wondering if this church would really have enough love for the one waiting to enter. (You did.) One story involves looking for a long time for a church that could welcome two people with very different needs, and the powerful relief that came when it was offered. You did that too. A lot of stories involve a positive experience of faith in childhood, a developing sense of scientific knowledge and logic, and the wonder of finding a place where faith and knowledge can be held together in peace. Many stories involve a yearning for a community, and a struggle to find one who knows God well enough to know how big God’s love is. (This actually saddens me. I wish every church knew the expansive and epic extent of God’s love.)

Thanks be to God, that for many people, this is a place of epiphanies. This is a place where God reveals God’s self. This is a place where people experience radical acceptance, and that changes EVERYTHING.

Arise, daughter; shine, daughter; for your light has come, daughter, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, daughter.

AND

Arise, son; shine, son; for your light has come, son, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, son.

AND

Arise, child-of-mine; shine, child-of-mine for your light has come, child-of-mine, and the glory of the Holy One has risen upon you, child-of-mine.

God speaks to all of you, to all of us.

It strikes me as sort of funny that this story from Matthew is the one that gets called the story of the Epiphany. Of all of the revelations of God in the scriptures, this doesn’t seem like the most notable. Most of the story is about the sages from the East talking to Herod, which I’m quite confident was NOT a strong God-moment. I will give it to them though, the story is courageous. Asking the King of Judea about the one born TO BE King of Judea is not usually a good choice. But, it is the one presented here.

The story says that they had a God-filled experience in following the star, an even stronger one in meeting “the child with Mary his mother” and an additional one in a dream that warned them about Herod. So there ARE three epiphanies in this story, but what is the Bible if not stories of the revelations of God’s love?

It seems to me there are some profound reflective questions gifted to us by these texts:

When have you had a radical experience of acceptance? What was it like? Why did you need it? Is it share-able?
When can you/we offer radical experiences of acceptance? Where is it needed? How can we do it?

I’m encouraged to note that it isn’t always a heavy lift to do this work. Hearing a beautiful song can be a radical experience of acceptance. Seeing the progress pride flag in out hallway has been for many a radical experience of acceptance. Using a variety of pronouns for God and God’s people can be a radical experience of acceptance. Making space for someone to be sad or mad can be a radical experience of acceptance. The reminder that it can be little things that offer radical experiences of acceptance lightens the load a little bit.

Because I believe we are called to radically accept, and love, and celebrate God’s gifts in all of God’s people. We are called BY our epiphanies to be people who offer space FOR epiphanies. We are ourselves radically loved by God, and we are able to offer God’s abundant love to others.

Thanks be to God! Amen

1 Lyrics here: https://genius.com/Bobby-mcferrin-the-23rd-psalm-dedicated-to-my-mother-lyrics, has a link to recording too.

2 Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021), 35.

3 Dr. Gafney’s translation, page 33.

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

January 8, 2023

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“Explaining Christmas“ based on Luke 2:1-12

December 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

One of the privileges I have
this year is to explain Christmas to a 2 year old. I’m aware many
have done this before me, and at this point I’m pretty sure most have
done it better than I have. But, I’ve learned along the way that
when I have to explain really complicated things to very small
children I end up learning what I really think.

Now, I think the common answer
to give a young child about Christmas is “It is Jesus’ birthday.”
Which seems legit, and I know my child has some grasp of birthdays.
I am, however, less confident he has a grasp on Jesus. And while I
simply adore Marcus Borg’s explanation that Jesus was “a Jewish
mystic,” … well, that wasn’t going to help.

And, if I’m honest, we may think
of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday, but that only matters because of who
Jesus was. For those who think of Jesus as fully human and fully
Divine, Christmas could be summed up as God being born on earth. A
lot of Christian Christmas derives from this idea. It gives us the
space to consider the vulnerability of life, and how dependent we are
on each other. For those awed by a powerful God becoming vulnerable
as a newborn, it follows that the vulnerability of our humanity is in
fact quite tender.

For me though, Jesus was a man
who knew God intimately and taught of God and lived a God-centered
life in profound ways that continue to be useful for knowing God even
today. And THAT, also, it turns out, doesn’t translate well to a 2
year old.

So I found myself saying,
“Christmas is when we celebrate someone who taught us about God’s
love.” Well, I’m not entirely sure if I said God. But I’m OK with
that because I think the phrase “God’s Love” is redundant.

And, by the grace of God, that
line got accepted, and I don’t have to answer more questions. Yet.

Next year promises its own
challenges. 😉 I suspect by next year I’ll be learning that my
seminary degree and nearly 20 years of ministry experience are
insufficient to the task. I’ll let you know.

But for now, Phew!

And also, I’m sort of interested
to learn what I really think of Christmas.

The Christmas stories in each
Gospel are sometimes called “the Gospel in miniature” and they
really do an amazing job establishing the setting, foreshadowing the
story as a whole, and setting up the themes of the Gospels they
begin. Luke focuses on women and shepherds, the outcasts being the
first to receive good news for all people, the looming presence and
power of the Empire and its taxation methods, the cycle of birth and
death as a way to talk about the fullness of life, humility, and the
value of pondering the wondrous things of God. I even see in the
story the foreshadowing of Jesus rising from the tomb, as the animal
feeding trough he is said to have been laid in at birth was BELOW the
floor and chiseled out of rock. He would have been lifted out of
that to be held. (I swoon a bit at this metaphor.)

So of the Christmas stories are
Gospels in miniature, than what we say about Christmas is what we
have to say about Jesus. And if this implies that I think Jesus is
“someone who taught us about (God’s) love,” then I’m at peace
with that conclusion. (I’m also relieved to already be ordained and
not have to attempt to justify this to a Board of Ordained Ministry).

There are a lot of fabulous
nuances to this story, and I would have a ball playing with them.
I’m entranced by the Isaiah passage and the space it gives us to
connect birth and death as well as connecting the delivery of a child
with the “delivery” of a nation into safety and well being. AND
I’m going to let it all rest.

Today we celebrate the birth of
one one who taught us about God’s love. Today we celebrate one who
taught us about God’s love. Today we celebrate God’s love. Thanks
be to God, who is love. Merry Christmas, and 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

December 25, 2022

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“Peace” based on Matthew 1:18-25

December 18, 2022
by Sara Baron

We have a lot of phrases about
peace in our faith tradition. Jesus is called the “prince of
peace.” We speak of the “peace that passes understanding.” A
sung blessing offers the line, “deep peace of the running waves to
you.” Songs and prayers ask God to “grant us peace.” We often
sing, “Peace be with you ‘til we meet again,” and we greet each
other with “peace be with you.” We yearn, collectively, for
“world peace.”

I’ve been trained in the
knowledge that the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, refers to holistic
well being – body, mind, and spirit – of the individual and the
community. It is more than the absence of war. It is the absence of
needs, the adequate distribution of resources so that no one has to
try to get what they need via violence.

In this way, shalom, peace, is
deeply integrated with the kindom of God.

This week I’ve been struck at
how RELATIVE peace is – both internally and externally. I think
I’ve often been distracted by the wondrous language about peace in
our tradition, and thought of peace as some perfect and excellent
thing. But that assumption has distracted me from a whole lot of the
incremental gifts of peace.

The many people in our church
and our society who have lived through trauma have fairly constant
alerts in their bodies and minds to remain vigilant, stay safe, LOOK
OUT! What looks like peace for someone in a constant state of alert
may be a relatively safe place or person that allows a few of the
alarm bells within to slow down. Which is to say that what looks
like relative peace for some would be REALLY HIGH agitation for
others. Yet, still, increased peace is a gift for all those who
experience it. Peace in the midst of trauma.

There is a famous story of
Christmas 1914, in the midst of World War I, when soldiers singing
Christmas hymns in the trenches started singing back and forth to
each other across the “no man’s land” eventually leading to
soldiers experiencing a Christmas peace and exchanging gifts and
laughter. Peace in the midst of war.

I often think of a young mother
I knew by being her pastor, who shared that her life was full with a
full time job and the needs of young children. She spoke of her
commute time as the most peaceful part of her life, and savored it as
a time to connect with the Divine. Peace in the midst of a
burstingly full life.

This week Matthew gives us a
look at Mary’s pregnancy through the eyes of Joseph. Mary is
vulnerable, as a pregnant engaged woman who wasn’t pregnant from her
fiancé. Joseph has a lot of power here, he can publicly shame her
and her family, which would most likely result in Mary being removed
from her family so they can regain some status. His original plan,
to let her go quietly, seems aimed at letting the father of her baby
marry her. It is aimed at respecting everyone involved. Of course,
then he gets new information and changes course, no longer assuming
another man needed the space to become the father of that man’s
child.

I adore the way this translation
speaks of Joseph, “Joseph her husband was a just man and unwilling
to shame her, he wanted to divorce her secretly.” I find myself
thinking that Joseph was a man who knew peace within. Either he
wasn’t personally offended by Mary’s pregnancy, or he was able to
hold that in perspective and not wish to retaliate. His aim was not
violence or harm, but rather everyone’s well-being. Peace.

As I’ve considered the factors
that lead to peace within, I’ve been struck at how mundane they are.
Like most things – athletic skills, musical talent, etc, – there
are people with natural connection to peace, and there are people who
nurture their receptivity to peace, and while both matter, the work
done to nurture receptivity to peace ends up mattering the most over
time.

We have been in the midst of
highly trying times for many years now. I tend to think back to the
2016 election cycle as the beginning of the escalation of tension and
anxiety, but you may place it elsewhere. Even if you want to place
it at the beginning of the pandemic, we are YEARS into what our
bodies have probably experienced as a “war.” I say war because
the stress levels have been escalated, and very few things have
helped us bring them back down.

Some of you, thanks be to God,
have found life-giving ways to reconnect with peace, wholeness, and
the Divine. I’m of the opinion that walking in nature is one of the
best practices for this, and a lot of you seem to agree. You have
found ways to connect with each other and loved ones, you’ve found
creative expressions, you’ve done meditation or prayer practices,
you’ve looked for beauty, you’ve been still in the face of your awe,
you’ve PLAYED. I can see the differences in us from a year ago, and
I can see that God is working to cultivate peace in us AND that we
are working on receiving those gifts from God.

My exclusive point today is an
encouragement to keep nurturing your receptivity to God’s peace. I’m
happy to chat about it with you more, to think about what it looks
like in you. I think we can look at the example of Joseph to see how
peace within a person impacts those around them. I want to be more
like that, and I suspect you may too. May God grant us peace, and
may WE prepare ourselves to receive 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

December 18, 2022

Uncategorized

“Joy” based on Luke 1:46-56

December 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

Some of you weren’t here last
week, and quite likely most of you have been through enough this week
that the nuances of last week’s sermon are no longer front and
center. (Most? All? It’s OK.)

Last week we lit the Advent
Candle of Love, and we looked at the example of Elizabeth’s loving
words to her young cousin Mary. Mary was engaged, pregnant, and
vulnerable. Her pregnancy looked like proof of infidelity,
everything in her life was likely in an uproar, and her cousin
greeted her with words that changed everything. They celebrated
Mary, they exclaimed over Mary, they reframed Mary’s shame, and
painted her instead as a a person committed to God’s faithful acts in
the world – even at high cost. The words showed that Elizabeth saw
her, loved her, and helped her let go of her fear and her shame.

Truth be told though, the Luke
reading cut off right in the middle of the scene last week.
Elizabeth greets Mary – and it was extraordinary. BUT, the next
lines are Mary’s response to Elizabeth, and they make a lot of sense
to read together as one conversation.

After Elizabeth wiped away
Mary’s shame and made room for love, Mary responded with her words of
praise for God, ones that are so famous they’re named. Mary’s words
are “The Magnificat,” called so for the opening line about
magnifying the Holy One.

Now, most scholars agree that
Luke 1 is a creation of the early Christian community, maybe even of
the author of Luke itself. What I find really remarkable about that
is that Luke has so much compassion for these women, and such a
strong sense of what they would be going through. It gives me hope
that there were strong women’s voices within the Christian community
at that time, that the equalitarian nature of the Way of Jesus
continued long enough that women’s voices were actually being heard
in the ways these stories were told. Or, maybe, Luke was simply an
outstandingly compassionate human, able to see beyond the bounds of
his own education and gender. Either option is really lovely, and
I’m really grateful for the ways these stories are told, so that
there is INCREDIBLE truth and wisdom in them. Luke and/or his
community, and his later editors cared about Mary and Elizabeth, not
just as wombs, but as humans with their own struggles and needs.

Thanks be to God for these
stories.

And, truly, thanks be to God for
the ones who thought enough about Mary to find words for this hymn of
praise to God that fit who she was as a person and a parent. They
are profound words.

They are also PROFOUNDLY joyful.
Mary is praising God, for being God. Mary knows her place in the
world, and it is not the top. She is awed that God would work with
her to do important things, and SEES herself as being “lowly” and
lifted up by God’s work with her. I’m also stuck that while the
first few verses name Mary’s awe at God’s work in her life, she moves
on quickly to simply her delight in God’s own self. She celebrates
God’s loving-kindness, constancy, strength, willingness to turn
upside down the powers and privileges of the world, to lift up the
lowly, to fill up the hungry, to offer care to those in need of it.

Mary’s song is a song of joy for
a God who feels close at hand in her life and in history, the past,
the present, and the future, the one who brings hope, the one who
makes it possible for her to face her own daunting circumstances.
She expresses JOY at being a partner with God in God’s work EVEN
THOUGH the circumstances were so far from ideal for her.

And I believe her words of
praise for God were a response to the words Elizabeth spoke to her.
As Elizabeth wiped away her shame and made space for Mary to
experience love, Mary’s life-light was able to emerge fully, and that
came out as PURE JOY.

It is hard (really really hard)
to fight through our shame to get to joy. But when the shame goes,
OH the things that can emerge!

I’ve been thinking a lot about
shame in the past few weeks, largely because focusing on the story of
Mary doesn’t give me any other option. Mary fits into a very long
cultural tradition that values female virginity, seeks to control
female sexuality, and generally treats women as if their only value
is in their capacity to provide womb access to the man who owns that
access. If she fails – because she is raped, because the couple is
infertile, or for any other reason, SHE is shamed.

This is one of the few times
when I don’t think the Biblical needs much contextual help. History
has changed, but not so much that we can’t follow that one.

This is why I find Elizabeth’s
words so powerful, when she compares Mary to other Biblical heroines
who were in compromising situations but were not defined by them.

I also have been thinking about
what shame looks like today. Obviously there is still an
over-abundance of shame around sex and sexuality. But we like to
make things complicated in our society today – we have a tendency
to make standards so contradictory and impossible that everyone can
find something to be ashamed about. There is shame for having too
much sex, or too little, for being too focused on it, or not enough,
for being sexually interested in the “wrong” person (or type, or
gender), or for being asexual, … for example.

And, there is shame for those
who have been assaulted, harassed, raped, or abused. This is some of
the strongest shame, and some of the most problematic.

For anyone holding sexual shame,
I invite you to this powerful reality: you are like Mary, the
mother of Jesus.

And I pray there are people like
Elizabeth in your life who will help you reframe what you’ve
experienced and find your own power in your story. So you can find
your joy!

In our society, though, sexual
shame is just one component. It seems to me that there are almost as
many sources of shame as there are ways we categorize each other.
Existing within capitalism, we have a societal narrative that poverty
is shameful. But, truthfully, we also know there is a shame in being
wealthy too – that to gain too much is to take it from others, to
have too much is to refuse to use it to help others. And, somehow,
people in the middle can feel shame BOTH WAYS.

Which is how a lot of things
work. Our society acts as if there is shame in struggling in school,
but also shames those who do too well in school, and it manages to
fall both ways on those in the middle. Or there is a story that
there is shame in different bodies – heights, weights, abilities,
dis-abilities, colors, hair types, noses.

And, let’s also mention the
shame around relationship status, where one might experience shame
for being single, or marrying too quickly, or being divorced, or
remarrying at the wrong time, or having kids or not having kids or
staying home with kids or not staying home with kids or having too
many kids or too few kids or kids the wrong way or at the wrong time.

Our society is ripe with ways to
shame us, to tell us we’re wrong, to make us squirm. It manages to
land on everyone, although not at all equally, and causes untold
damage, most of which is invisible.

I suspect the shame is aimed at
controlling us and getting us to buy things, a population overcome
with its own failures is less likely to notice how it can seek
justice for each other, and is less able to connect and build
relationships that transform lives. And, we’re all a part of it too
– as we are overwhelmed by our sense of shame, we tend to try to
lower the anxiety of it all by naming what we see in other and…
passing it along. Ick.

But, this story of Elizabeth and
Mary is a profound example of the powers that can TRANSFORM shame.
Elizabeth saw Mary’s shame, referenced it, reframed it, and
celebrated Mary instead of shaming her. That’ll change things.

Last week I called us to be like
Elizabeth, wiping way shame to make space for God’s gifts of love
(and this week I’ll add joy.) But one of you, in response, reminded
me that before we can be like Elizabeth wiping away shame, we need to
face our shame like Mary did.

And now, I need to go back and
admit that Elizabeth had her fair share of shame too. At the
beginning of Luke she was a childless woman, which would have been
understood to be a “useless” woman. (Blech.) But something had
happened in Elizabeth where her shame become an opening for
compassion instead of a form of embitterment.

What a beautiful thing that is,
when our wounds, our shame, our struggles can open our hearts, break
open our compassion, make space in us for the struggles and shames of
others. That thing that can happen is a form of grace. It is an act
of God.

It is an act of God that comes
in many forms – sometimes the grace within us starts in awe and
wonder, sometimes from another person offering it to us, sometimes
directly from God, sometimes from the wisdom of a stranger – maybe
through a book or podcast, sometimes even I think it just comes from
within when the strength of our spirit rejects the narrative of our
brokenness.

Even though shame gets passed
around this world, and magnified, SO TOO does grace. I believe that
this is a place where good theology is a source of grace, and thus of
hope, love, and joy. So let me say some things as a person of faith,
a religious leader, a pastor, a person who seeks to follow Jesus’s
ways of knowing God:

God is not ashamed of you.
Shame is not a tool God uses.
God is willing and able to work
with you to eliminate your shame.
God loves you and even LIKES
you, and has compassion for you.
Grace is a tool God uses.
God is willing and able to work
with you to show you the power of grace in the world and in your
life.
Your body, your desires, your
gender, your abilities, your lack of abilities, your strength, your
weakness, your relationship status, your work status, your income,
and your resume are NOT what make you worthy or unworthy.
You are INHERENTLY worthy.
You are a beloved child of God.
God wants wonderful things for
you.
God wants wonderful things for
everyone.
You can’t exempt yourself from
God’s desire for goodness for you.

And finally

You aren’t going to shame
yourself into being better.

So, dear ones, to the extent
that it is in your capacity to do so, let go of your shame, and then
let God help you let go of it some more. Let grace in.

Because when you do, you may
find that your song of JOY is even more profound than Mary’s! Thanks
be to God! Amen

December 11, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Love” based on Genesis 17:15-22 and Luke 1:39-45

December 4, 2022
by Sara Baron

I’ve
always loved this little interlude in Luke 1, when Mary goes to visit
Elizabeth. I recognize it to be an early Christian creation, aimed
at connecting John the Baptist and Jesus, while putting them in their
correct order, but there were lots of ways that could have been done
and I appreciate this one.

Now,
I’ve always thought of it as … sweet, nurturing, maternal.
Elizabeth is OLD, a la Sarah, but pregnant, and it is astounding and
wonderful, and it seems Elizabeth has waited a life time for this.
From within the story, it seems likely that Mary was struggling, was
sent away for her pregnancy so people at home wouldn’t know, and was
sent to an older cousin who could be trusted to keep her safe. Maybe
even one known to be a little less judgmental than others. Or
perhaps just one known to be able to feed another mouth. Who knows??

But
I love this idea of this older pregnant woman and this younger
pregnant woman spending months side by side, experiencing new things
in their bodies, developing a deeper trust, maybe even discussing
what God was up to around them. It has ended up being a model for me
of the value of retreat, the value of mentors, the value of
connections with others who can hold me up when I’m vulnerable.

I
love this story.

This
week I learned that I’ve missed the majority of it’s power. I need
to give some context warnings here about violence, murder, and sexual
violence. It is always OK to leave, and stop listening when it isn’t
OK to hear.

Elizabeth
speaks a blessing to Mary, it is particularly familiar to those who
have prayed The Hail Mary, which says:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the
Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of
God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our
death.
Amen.

Elizabeth’s
words are, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
fruit of your womb…” (Those are the ones picked up verbatim
in The Hail Mary) “From where does this visit come to me? That the
mother of my sovereign comes to me? Look! As soon as I heard the
sound of your greeting in my ear, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Now blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of
these things spoken to her by the Holy One.”

As
Dr. Wilda Gafney says, “Elizabeth’s greeting comes from scriptures
she well could have known: Judges 5:24 and Judith 13:18. They invite
speculation on her contact with them orally or in writing…
Elizabeth’s proximity to the temple and its liturgies and her own
priestly lineage may have increased the likelihood of her literacy.”¹
So, like you do, I looked up Judges 5:24 and Judith 13:18. They may
not be what you’d expect.

The
Judges passage, in context is:

Most blessed of women be
Jael,
   the wife of Heber the Kenite,
   of
tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him
milk,
   she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.

She put her hand to the
tent-peg
   and her right hand to the workmen’s
mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
   she crushed
his head,
   she shattered and pierced his temple.

He sank, he fell,
   he lay still at her
feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
   where he
sank, there he fell dead.

Judith
13:18 is more similar than you might think, “Then Uzziah said to
her, ’O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all
other women on earth, and blessed by the Lord God, who created
the heavens and the earth, who has guided you to cut off the head of
the leader of our enemies.”

This
is… not as cozy as I was thinking. And, I’m thinking for lots of
you, these are not familiar stories and you might not have any idea
whatsoever is going on with the Bible celebrating murder.

So,
let’s at the very least make ourselves a little bit familiar with
the stories of these women to whom Mary is being compared. First
Jael, from the book of Judges. The book of Judges tells some of the
pre-history of the Ancient Nation of Israel, describing a 400 year
period when the tribes mostly functioned on their own, and when there
were outsider attacks, God raised up leaders – called Judges – to
fight them off and protect the people. One such judge was a woman
named Deborah, and she worked with a general named Barak when an
attack came from the Canaanites led by their general Sisera. Deborah
is called a prophetess as well as a judge, and is presented as
capable and impressive.

Her
general Barak is scared because the Sisera and the Canaanites have
more impressive weapons than they do, so he asks Deborah to come with
him into the battle, believing that God would help keep HER safe and
thus keep him safe. Deborah responds that she’ll go, AND that while
he will “win” the glory will not go to him, but to a woman.

So,
the battle happens, the Israelites win, the Canaanites run away, and
the general is running off on his own trying to save his own life.
He come to the tents of the Kenites, likely a metal working or
artisan tribe with neutrality to both parties, particularly the tent
of Heber the Kenite, who is gone, and Jael the Kenite who is present.
Jael invites him in, makes him comfortable, gives him milk, stands
guard while he goes to sleep, and then drives a tent stake into his
head to kill him. When the General Barak comes after him, Jael shows
Barak Sisera’s body.

And
then Deborah and Barak sing a song of praise for the winning of the
battle and Jael’s part in it – which is where we get our verses
from Judges.

So,
Judith. I suspect you are even less likely to know her story, as the
book of Judith is considered part of the Apocrypha (that is,
Protestants don’t consider it part of the Bible). It is a novel,
written a century or two before Jesus, telling the story of Judith
who saves her village from the Assyrian General Holofernes. It is a
pretty good story, and I’m a little bit sorry to give you spoilers,
but my goal is to explain Elizabeth and Mary, so shrug. The
General was attacking Judith’s home town, and the Jews there had
brokered a 5 day peace plan, but the council was hemming and hawing
about what to do, so Judith took things into her own hands. She does
a lot of praying and asking for God’s help, and she dresses up
beautifully, lies to the army to say she is fleeing to the enemy army
for safety, makes it plain to the General that she is game for
seduction, and then when he seeks to do so, plies him with enough
alcohol that he passes out drunk, beheads him with his own sword,
steals his head, goes off with her maid to pray, and instead of
returning to the war camp, goes back to her village to tell them
she’d solved their problem. The town magistrate then speaks the
words we heard earlier, praising her and naming her as having
followed God’s guidance.

Now,
we need to take this one more step, back to Dr. Gafney for an
explanation of Elizabeth’s words, “Both forerunners of this
greeting are associated with bloody violence: Deborah’s war against
the Canaanites and Jael’s execution of Sisera, and an Assyrian siege
and Judith’s execution of Holofernes. Further, both Judith and Jael
are in sexually scandalous situations: attempted rape and assignation
and seduction. Mary’s own pregnancy is scandalous, hinting at sexual
infidelity. Elizabeth’s words provide transgenerational support and
comfort.”

That
is, if you were wondering why Jael would have murdered Sisera when
her people were at peace with him, the assumption underlying the
story is that he had or would attempt to rape her. Deborah ends up
celebrating that she didn’t end up having to seduce the general, but
is is CLEAR that she was going to do what needed to be done to save
her people.

These
women were fierce, to say the least. They were deadly. And, at the
same time, they were vulnerable. Jael was alone her in tent.
Deborah’s people were all at risk of death, and her actions to save
them put her at great risk – and alone in the general’s tent as
well. These women were praised as being “most blessed of women”
and “you are blessed by the Most High God above all other women on
earth.” And they too had scandals. It is as if the scandals don’t
make them less worthy of the praise they received.

It
is as if what happened to Mary need not define her life either. It
is as if whatever the world may be saying about Mary, even if her
life is at risk because of the interpretation of infidelity, she is
being connected to some of the fiercest, most active women in the
Bible in protecting God’s people. It is as if Elizabeth is seeing
her scandal, and giving her a new way to see it. It is as if
Elizabeth’s words wipe away Mary’s shame and give her a new frame of
reference, one that has been repeated millions of times in history,
praising Mary, and her role in God’s plans.

Friends,
in a world that defines people by their scandals, a world that locks
people up for their worst moments (or presumed worst moments), a
world that cuts people of for mistakes, a world that remembers even
misspoken words – let us be Elizabeths. Let us see, and have the
power to reframe the shame people hold. Let us wipe away shame to
make room for love. Let us see the whole person, even the hero, in
the broken one. Let us remember the stories of the HUMANITY of God’s
people in the Bible, and make space for HUMANITY in each other and in
ourselves. Let us be Elizabeths, wiping away shame to make space for
love. Amen

1Wilda
Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
(New York, NY: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021), page 7.

December 4, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Hope” based on Genesis 16:7-13 and Luke 1:26-38

November 27, 2022
by Sara Baron

This Advent
starts with annunciations – announcements to two women of what life
they are bringing forth into the world. These are told as God’s
mighty acts, the ways God impacts the world through these women and
their sons. They set up the anticipation of Advent – a knowing of
what is coming, an awareness that it is not here yet, and some rather
significant worries about the journey from here to there.

The
two stories today are united not only by the announcements they
contain, nor the scared young women, nor the extraordinary sons they
will have. In a way we might not have noticed before, the stories
are united by slavery.

Hagar
IS enslaved. Mary’s response to God, once it is translated without
attempting to soften it, is “Here am I, the woman-slave of God;
let it be with me according to your word.”
This response reminds me that Mary was a vulnerable girl, one who was
responding to the STATEMENT (not question or request) from a Powerful
God of what would happen to her.

Does Mary respond, “I have no
power here, so do what you wish”? Or “I am willing?” Would it
matter? The messenger had told her what would be, not asked her if
she was willing. The response that says, “I am a woman-slave of
God” could be humility and respect, or a desire not to be killed
for disagreeing. Mary is written into a no win situation. To say no
to God, when a direct messenger is sent, is known to be a bad idea.
(Yet, many of us do it regularly with only continued nagging to pay
for it… so, there is that.) To agree to a pregnancy while engaged
and not sleeping with one’s fiance is to become eligible for stoning.
It would be proof of adultery.

Mary’s response says she is
God’s slave. Hagar’s life is one of a slave. These are not the same
thing, but the connection between should be unsettling.

Hagar
is enslaved. She is enslaved and endures both physical and sexual
violence. Before our story begins, she runs away into the
wilderness, which means she was deciding to die rather than endure
more. Yet, in the wilderness, by spring of water which meant life
could continue, Hagar had an encounter with the Divine. (She is the
first woman to do so, also the first woman to be told directly she
will bear a child…. one of only three.) She is addressed, by name,
by the Holy Messenger. She is told what will happen.

And,
she is told to return to the violence she had run from. Further,
she is told that the
violence she experiences will become the legacy of the child she
bears, who will struggle against those he will call kin, as well
those who come after him. (This is an ancestor story, where the
ancestors serve as symbols for the people who claim their names.)
Then Hagar NAMES God, which is a HUGE deal, and calls God, “The God
who sees me.” Ishmael’s name mean’s God hears.

These indicate a powerful
blessing experience. These indicate she took hope from this
encounter. She feels seen, and heard. Now, of course, an experience
of the Divine IS a blessing, and would be one that she couldn’t have
expected. EVEN THOUGH she gets sent back to slavery, back to
violence, back to abuse, Hagar calls God, “God who sees me” and
calls her son, “God hears.”

Phew.

I find myself wishing God had
changed things for her, not just sent her back to the same situation
as a slave, experiencing violence. Yet, I cannot dismiss the power
of her experience. It wasn’t perfect, it didn’t end with happily
ever after. Oppression, even, continued. And, for Hagar, there was
hope.

But, hope is sturdier than
perfection. Hope is grounded. Hope is real and faces the world as
it is. Hope doesn’t require fairy tale endings, it means us where we
are.

This is good, because if only
people who know no oppression can have hope, few people could.

Hagar’s story isn’t particularly
unique. Many people have been enslaved in human history, including
to this day. Many people have experienced sexual violence. Many
people have been forced into marriages where sex is expected, but not
truly consented to. I fear that most women in history can identify
with Hagar.

And yet, there has been hope.

Hagar’s pregnancy was
complicated. I think maybe Mary’s was too. And, the Bible says,
their pregnancies changed the world for the better. We needed
Ishmael. We needed Jesus. We needed them raised by their mothers,
who had particular wisdom, particular faith, particular experiences
of the Divine, particular gifts.

This idea of a complicated
pregnancies, ones that threatened the life and well-being of the
mother, ones that changed the course of history, THESE are stories of
Advent.

These are stories of things NOT
being as they should be.

These are stories of waiting for
God to act to make things better.

Hagar felt blessed by her
encounter. A miracle here is that the people who wrote the book
understood themselves to be Issac’s descendants, but they wrote the
story of Ishmael’s mother. And they admitted the wrong done to her.
And they thought of her as blessed. And they perceived in her
experiences of God, EVEN THOUGH they thought of her descendants as
their enemies. That has a sense of the hand of God in the telling of
the stories to me. That’s not generally how we tell the stories, the
way the victor’s narrative reigns.

Whatever Mary’s experience of
her pregnancy was, I still believe that the life and faith of Jesus
were formed by his family, and his mother. And somewhere along the
line I do believe she had profound experiences of God, and was able
to teach them to her son.

Hagar and Mary were people with
limited choices. These women were on the margins, their sons were on
the margins, but their sons ALSO cared for others on the margins and
in doing so changed human history. Even encounters with God didn’t
make everything better. But being HEARD, being SEEN, being CHOSEN,
mattered. It gave them hope. It gave them meaning. It gave them
strength.

And, I believe, it gave their
sons compassion. And I note, as well, the power of being heard,
seen, and loved.

That’s another of those weird
things about real hope. It can take the hard, the horrible, the
ugly, the painful, even the traumatic, and work with it. Real hope
doesn’t require a pristine, hygienic, sterile environment. It meets
us where we are, just like God. And it works from here.

Hagar being enslaved was not OK.
It has never been OK for any human who was enslaved. And, those who
have lived as enslaved people still had hope. They had hope for the
end of slavery. They had hope things wouldn’t always be that way.

Some had hope of escape. Some
had hope of little moments of connection or compassion with others.
Many had hope in God, the one who never stops caring no matter how
hard things get.

And, changes are pretty high the
mother of Jesus didn’t get pregnant after choosing her marital
partner, experiencing desire, and consenting to intercourse. This,
too, is not OK. And, this too happened to many, many, many women.
It continues to happen. It is not OK. But it isn’t the end of hope.

I
am now preaching after the most recent attack on the LGBTQIA+
community in the form of a gunman attacking Club Q in Colorado
Springs. The attack was less deadly than it might have been because
of the actions of a vet and a drag queen, who took down the gunman.
Thank God they stopped him. And yet 5 people are dead, 19 are
injured, and once again the safety and sanctity of the club has been
violated. Trauma abounds. Grief abounds. The sickening reality of
the danger of being queer or trans is affirmed. The still present
horrors from the similar attack on Pulse Nightclub are resurgent.

And I wonder about this sticky,
sturdy, real hope I’m talking about. What does it even look like?
Is this a hope that someday our children will be able to dance in
peace? Is this a hope that maybe one person who might commit
violence like that could receive love in ways that prevent it? Is it
a hope that reasonable gun laws might make these shootings harder
accomplish?

Cause I still want hope to look
perfect. I want it to be that there is NO more violence against
queer and trans people ever again. I want an end to gun violence,
and an end to violence. I want clubs to thump and throb with music,
never again interrupted by gun fire. I want veterans to come home
without PTSD, and not need to position themselves to see exits, and
not be needed to stop shooters. Ok, I want there to be no need for
veterans.

And, I’m struck by both God and
hope being more willing to be in this reality than I am. To know the
brokenness we live in, and not give up. To see how hard things are,
to see how interconnected the struggles are, and not be overcome. To
know the grief, the heartache, the violation, the trauma, and not let
it be the only or the final word.

Our God is a God who sees.

A God who hears.

And a God of hope.

God calls us from this world of
violence into the kindom of peace. God gives us gifts of peace, love, joy, and hope.
God calls us to be peace-makers, love-sharers, joy-spreaders,
hope-increasers. May we receive and act on God’s call. May this
Advent be a time of quiet transformation so that what God is growing
us may soon break forth. Amen

November 27, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Rejoice” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Philippians 4:4-9

November 20, 2022
by Sara Baron

I think gratitude is one of the
most important parts of our spiritual lives. I’ve experienced this,
AND I’ve seen the research, and I love it when both are true.

The challenge is, I’m not sure
what I have to say about gratitude that is new, and I’m rather afraid
of being trite. This tends to be my problem when I encounter
scriptures I rather agree with, rather than ones I can have a good
debate with. But, I’ve found time and time again that a conversation
with scriptures can take me to unexpected places, so let’s see where
they lead today.

We can start with Philippians.
With that lovely repetition to “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I
will say, Rejoice.” (4:4) I am always moved by the people I meet
who are living out this commandment. The ones attending to the good
God is doing, and speaking it with joy. The ones focused on joy, and
rejoicing, and celebrating God’s goodness.

I also love the next line,
inviting people to “let your gentleness be known.” That sounds
like the highest of callings, to be known by gentleness. I have
known some people to whom that description would apply, and it is a
gift simply to be in their presence. Their very self-hood changes
the world around them for the better.

But then we get to “don’t
worry, trust God.” And while it is very good advice, it is very
difficult to apply. Especially because the world isn’t fair. But
then again, those who I’ve known who live this are often the ones
with the least amount of worldly goods, who say they trust God
because God has provided. So, maybe I don’t actually know that much
about this, and I simply have a lot to learn.

Then, focus on the good. This
is the one that meets me where I am right now. This is the one
that calls for my attention, my reflection, my sharing. So, here we
are and here we are going to stay. In Paul’s words, “Finally,
beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if
there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.” (4:8)

Maybe it is because of the work
I do, but it often occurs to me that the resource I spend the most
time managing is my attention. This isn’t just about if I give my
attention to the good stuff or the hard stuff.

The daily questions start with:
Do I respond first to this email, or that one? To email or phone
calls? To texts or facebook messenger? Do I end this conversation
because I have a meeting, or do I make space for this because it is
more important? When do I know I’ve found the right poem, or hymn,
or sermon example and it is time to move on, or maybe it isn’t good
enough yet and I could keep searching. Which book should I read
next? Do I have time to read? Should I go visiting? Which
committee asked me which thing to follow up on? Which one of those
things needs the most immediate response? Which one of those things
will take the most preparation? Is reading the news important so I
know what is going on, or is it a distraction to what is REALLY going
on with God and God’s people? Do all of the staff have what they
need from me to do their jobs well? Is it OK to just sit and be with
God before I try to balance any of these things?

(If you found that list
overwhelming, please note that it applies ONLY to my work life, and
doesn’t even touch on other parts of my life. Also, if you found
that overwhelming, I’d appreciate knowing how you make such
decisions, cause it sounds like you may have wisdom I need.)

That last question about
sitting with God and just being before I try any of the things,
that’s the key one for me. I’ve known since my early twenties
that I’m at my best when I get quiet time with God, but I’ve
struggled to allow myself to have the thing I need when other things
also clamor for my time and attention. Someone recently asked me,
“if I already know what I need in order to be the best pastor and
person I can be, why am I not doing it?” And in the question, I
was thus reminded that connecting with God, and being centered, is
the thing that makes all the rest of what I do valuable, and it is in
EVERYONE’S best interest for me to nurture my connection with the
Holy and to have space to hear my own wisdom (even when the wisdom is
hidden under my fears.)

So, I’ve been doing it. Not
perfectly, but waaaayyyy more. Sometimes I still feel guilty.
Because I could be using my time and attention for so many other
things! But, I’m pushing through the guilt.

And the results have been
interesting. Mostly because my capacity to see the beauty of the
world, the wonder of people, and the mysterious goodness at hand has
changed. Being quiet in the morning (most mornings), softens me. It
slows me down. And it makes things easier. I’m get hurt less
easily. I have empathy closer at hand. I can see details and the
big picture, at the same time, with more ease. I’m just less
overwhelmed.

But the best part is being able
to see wonder again. I’m awed by text messages from people, because
they so often contain wisdom and I’m able to be thankful. The other
day – please don’t judge – I saw a dust particle floating in a
stream of sunshine and it was beautiful, and I had ENTIRELY forgotten
that dust can be awe inspiring and beautiful. I’m a little more
flexible (don’t expect immediate miracles people), which makes
everything flow easier in … well, parenting, and being a partner,
and in being a pastor.

For me, the key to being able to
bring my attention to “whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is
commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything
worthy of praise” isn’t in just trying harder to focus on
the good things. For me, at least, the way to bring my attention to
the good is to attend to what I need to be whole, and then the rest
flows.

Now, some of you are great at
letting yourselves have the things you need. I commend you, and
apologize for this mostly useless sermon as far as you are concerned.
However, for a wide range of reasons (including “capitalism”) a
whole lot of us aren’t great at letting ourselves have what we need.
Sometimes there are external factors that make it hard (or
impossible.) But often, there are internal ones. I can tell you
that I believe God wants you to have your needs met. I can tell you
that if you stop fighting what you need as too much, or too selfish,
or unreasonable, or … whatever you tell yourself… that other
goodness flows from letting yourself get what you need.

Now, I continue to believe I’m
likely not alone in needing quiet time with God, but I also think
that my need is a little different than other people’s. This week I
was given the gift of a GREAT descriptor of this church as a group of
people who love kinetic prayer. That is, many of us around here NEED
to give back. Some people NEED to hear gorgeous music and just feel
the wonder of it in their bodies. Some people NEED to move in nature
or their souls start to shrivel up. Some people NEED connections
with others, regularly. (I think we all do, but more so for
extroverts.) Some people NEED to create. I can’t tell you what you
need, but I suspect you already know.

The key is to let God help you
whittle away at the internal barriers to allowing yourself to
prioritize what you need.

So, a quick hot take on
Deuteronomy. This is the story of God giving the people what they
need. Land to work, food to eat, homes to settle into. And the
people give back to God of what they have. That is, they RECIEVE the
gifts of God, and they give back from what they have RECIEVED.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s
just me, and if so I’m sorry for wasting your time but I’m really
happy for you. That is, maybe I’m the only one still struggling to
receive God’s good gifts, and let myself have what I need. If not
though. If you still struggle too, may this be a moment of
assurance. We have to receive what God gives us before we do
anything else with it. It is hard, TRUST ME I KNOW, but God wants
goodness for you.

Please don’t stand in God’s way.

And when you let God’s good
gifts fill you up, the gratitude comes on its own. And it is
amazing. May you see it too. Amen

November 20, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“God’s Responses to Despair” based on Isaiah 65:17-25 and…

November 13, 2022
by Sara Baron

The people that walked in darkness have seen a light….
but it is discolored and a little murky.

I think that’s a fair
summary of what the “return” from the exile was actually like.
When Jerusalem was defeated in 587/586 BCE, the city gates were
ripped down, the Temple was destroyed, there was massive death and
destruction, and the remaining leaders, priests, and scribes were
force march to Babylon. The exile. During the time of the exile we
hear emerging stories of great pain and lament, AND prophecies of
great hope in and care of God. The exile and the period right after
it are also the time when the Hebrew Bible started to be written
down.

In 538 BCE those in exile were freed to return home if
they wished. Thank God! And many did, thank God!

And when they came home, it was …. painful.

The Promised Land had been decimated. Those who
remained had been without protection, without resources, without
hope. Many, many had died. I’ve heard as high as 90% of the
population. Those who were alive had now lived in fear and scarcity
for generations. And those who returned weren’t much better off,
except that they’d had hope of return which now turned out to seem to
be misplaced.

I’m going to just throw out here that if we are now in
the “end of the pandemic” it sure doesn’t look like I hoped it
would in March or April of 2020, and I have lots and lots of empathy
for those who “came home from exile” only to find out that home
had changed in the meantime.

In the midst of the struggles of return, and the
conflicts that inevitably emerged between those who’d been left
behind and those who’d been force-ably removed – and even more so
between their children and grandchildren, come the words of our
Hebrew Bible text. In context, Isaiah 65 is still struggling to
answer why things are so bad, and the first part of the chapter
claims that the issue is that people aren’t being faithful to God and
God’s dreams. But this later part of the chapter is focused on the
blessings God has in store for those who do follow the ways of God.
We may like to think of this as the fruits of living out God’s
visions for a just and compassionate society.

And, its pretty great. We’ve talked recently enough
about the part of Jeremiah that urged the exiles to build houses and
live in them, plant gardens and eat from them. This Isaiah passage
reiterates those ideals, but does so BACK AT HOME. Now the command
is not to give up on Jerusalem, but to have hope it can be rebuilt.

I think this might be a good time to remind you that
Jerusalem WAS rebuilt. The Temple was rebuilt. The city walls were
rebuilt. The city gates were rebuilt. The traditions of the people
were rebuilt. The hope in God was rebuilt. It didn’t look the same
as it had before, but it was rebuilt.

In fact, that’s a story we don’t focus on enough, and
I’ve been in initial conversations with people about restarting Bible
Study in January, and I’ve now convinced myself we should read the
book of Ezra, the story of rebuilding Jerusalem. (If you’d like to
study with us, the current question is: what time on Sundays shall we
do it, and I’d LOVE to hear your opinion.)

But now I’m ahead of myself.

In our passage today, we hear of the “new heaven and
new earth” God is preparing. To summarize quickly, I’m turning to
Walter Brueggemann¹:

“Yahweh is moving beyond what is troubling and
unresolved to what is wondrously new and life giving. There is a
steady push towards newness in the Isaiah tradition that intends to
override the despair of Israel, especially the despair of exile.”
246

There are thee facets of new city:

“The first quality of the new city, stated negative
then positively, is a stability and order that guarantees long life.
As long as the city is both a practitioner and victim of violence and
brutality, no life is safe and no one will last very long.” (247)
“There will be a reordering of resources so that all may luxuriate
in life as the creator intends.” (248)

“The second facet of the reconstituted city is
economic stability.” Which implies stable society, lack of
invasion, fertility of land, fair taxes, fair laws. “Yahweh will be
the guarantor of a viable, community-sustaining economy.” “No
one is threatened, no one is at risk. No one is in jeopardy because
the new city has policies, practice, and protective structures that
guarantee what must have been envisioned as an egalitarian
possibility.” (248)

“The third provision…concerns an agenda of
well-being for children in the new city.” (249) “These three
accents on guaranteed long life, economic stability, and life under
blessing all attest to a city in which the power for life given by
the creator is fully available and operates in concrete ways. The
poem is a vision, but it is a vision looking to a public practice.”
(249)

That is, Isaiah 65 is written to COUNTERACT despair with
dreaming. It is a vision of hope, but one that would be worth
perusing. Despite the language of new heaven and new earth, this is a
pretty earth-centric vision. It centers on civic stability, economic
sustainability, and God’s tangible presence among those who are
alive. It starts with peace, includes distribution of goods, and
looks towards the well-being of all.

That seems like it would have landed well among the
people in despair, and changed what was possible for them.

Which has me wondering what God is dreaming of here.
How God is counteracting despair here and now. What sort of vision
God is planting among us for our community, state, nation, world
today?

Because I have noticed that God doesn’t give up when
disaster strikes, God just keeps on working towards goodness. This
also strikes me as the narrative of Luke. I think to hear our Luke
passage well requires remembering that Luke was likely written after
the destruction of the SECOND Temple, which coincided with the
destruction of Jerusalem and a horrifying number of her people. It
was a time of great despair, a moment of transformation in our faith
history and the history of our Jewish siblings in faith, a time when
everything changed and new forms of faith practice had to be created.
The transition from the Temple to the Synagogue happened at that
time, the end of the Sadducees and beginning of the leadership of the
Pharisees, etc. Our tradition was so new I can’t point to the same
types changes, but I can see how seismic this experience was.

The passage we read today was written by the early
Christian community, presumably trying to make sense of the
destruction and trying to reassure each other about what Jesus would
say to them in the midst of it. It is probably true that the Holy
Spirit helped them find these words of comfort, but it is probably
ALSO true that Jesus didn’t say this stuff in his life time.

The early Christian imagination produced the hope it
needed to face its reality without shattering into despair.

Which is to say that both of our passages are written to
people in despair, to try to keep them together and focused on hope.
They just sound really different.

Maybe that’s because people need different things at
different times.

Maybe it is because the despair they faced was
different.

Or because the perceived opponent acted differently.

Or the community was struggling in different ways.

But truly there are different ways to respond to despair
with hope, and the Bible is full of them, and we have two solid
examples before us today.

And, I heard a third recently. Bishop Karen Oliveto
shared a quote that I keep thinking about, “I rarely feel such
clear signs of fatigue and anxiety on days that are filled with
travel, meetings and assignments—only when I stop to rest. Without
sabbath, I would be dangerously ignorant of the true condition of my
soul.” ― Andy Crouch

I think in the midst of the struggles I hear today, this
is the one that could make the fastest difference. Right now we have
a lack of sabbath, lack of rest, lack of spaciousness for joy – and
lack of time to face despair. But this is change-able. We can
prioritize sabbath. We can make space for rest. We can sort through
despair instead of running from it. We can make space for joy and
not just distractions. We can even make space for relationships and
not just be ships passing in the night.

Over the past almost 3 years we’ve been exiled. I can’t
tell if we’ve really returned, but if we have, it is still hard.
We’ve seen a lot of destruction and more than our fair share of
death. But based on the Bible we can be sure that God is speaking a
word of hope and a depth of vision into this moment.

Maybe this seems too simple, but I think it is abundant:
take time OFF. Be spacious with your soul. Let your to-do lists
go. Follow what brings you joy. Let your emotions BE, without
judgment. Let God have time to dream in you.

Because as Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may linger for the
night, but joy comes with the morning.” God isn’t done with us,
not yet. May God’s dreams be met with our spaciousness to hear them!
Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in
Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and
David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press,
1998).

November 13, 2022

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