“Figuring Out Priorities, Discernment as Prayer Practice” based on…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This
Mary washing Jesus’s feet with her hair story is a variation on
stories found in the Synoptic Gospels. Just to clarify a few things
that you might have heard: this is the Mary of Mary and Martha, not
Mary of Magdala; there is no reason to believe that the woman in the
story was a prostitute; that said there were a few indiscretions
inherent in the story! To name them succinctly: women weren’t
supposed to be a part of formal dinner parties (then again Mary
wasn’t supposed to sit at Jesus’s feet as a disciple either), a
woman taking her hair down in public was scandalous, and feet aren’t
always really FEET in the Bible, even though I think they are here.

Other
than Jesus, all the characters in this story are unique to John’s
version. Given that, it is quite interesting that Judas is put in
the role he is. It works well as foreshadowing. It also works well
to explain a few things. When Judas is called a “thief” in the
story, the particular verb is the same one used in chapter 10 to
describe a thief who steals sheep. Thus, “The expression ‘not
because he cared about the poor’ echoes the description of the hired
hand’s lack of care for the sheep (10:13). The use of these words
suggests that the description of Judas is intended to point the
reader toward the proper context in which to place Judas’s actions.
When he betrays Jesus, he betrays the sheep.”¹
Thus when Mary takes care of Jesus, she takes care of the sheep too.
The shepherd and the sheep are interdependent.

John’s
version of this story sets up an interesting question: is it better
to use the super expensive (5 figure) perfume on Jesus or to sell it
and give the proceeds to the poor? The answer most theologians have
given is that it is good to be devoted to Jesus. The text sets us up
to think this way by saying that not even Judas meant the money for
the poor. However, I think it is a valid question!

I
think it is a REALLY valid question. After all, how do we decide
what to do with our resources? Most of us, most of the time, aren’t
in possession of perfume worth’s a year salary that was hand carried
from India to Bethany, but we do have our own resources to care
about. How do we decide what to give away, and what to use? How do
we decide what portions of our time to give away? When are are ready
to give something away – time, or money, resources or energy- how
do we know where to best put it?

I’m
not a great decider when it comes to such questions (or most others.)
I tend to think like a Tupper, “I need more data!” The answer
between “show devotion” and “care for the vulnerable” is
fuzzy for me plenty of the time.

And
I worry that when I don’t decide, when I just go about my day to day
life without thinking too hard, I’m even more likely to err than if I
consider a decision carefully and then choose “wrong.” Yet the
fear of being wrong often leads me to the status quo, and the status
quo isn’t particularly intentional.

Luckily
there is something called discernment. Apple dictionary does a great
job with the word “discernment.” The first definition is “the
ability to judge well” the second is “(in Christian contexts)
perception in the absence of judgement with a view to obtaining
spiritual direction and understanding.”²
So, in a very practical way discernment is deciding, but it has more
nuance: it is about making decisions spiritually. I suspect that
sounds fine and good to most of you – but also a bit meaningless.

I
have two practical offerings for you – two means of getting into
discernment. The first is a spiritual practice called “Daily
Examen.” I’ve mentioned it before, because I really like it.
Daily Examen is a simple practice, it is flexible, it is meaningful,
and it is HANDS DOWN the best way I know of for discernment of BIG
LIFE THINGS.

It
can be done individually, with a friend or partner, or in a group.
It goes like this. You do what you need to do to center yourself, be
that lighting a candle, turning on music, sitting comfortably, taking
deep breathes, or all of the above. Then, in language that works for
you, you ask the Divine to work with you in reviewing the past 24
hours. As you review the day, you seek out what the best part was
and what the worst part was. You may want to ask this differently:
when was I most connected to Love, when I was I least connected to
Love, when did I feel most whole, when did I feel least whole, etc.
The goal is to find a “high” and a “low” and THEN to thank
God for both, and for everything in-between.

Then,
if you are working with others, you share that information. In any
case, you write them down: the date, the best, and the worst. After
a while…. weeks, or months… you review what you’ve written and
you pay attention to patterns. Was the worst part of you day more
often than not related to your job? Then it is definitely time to
consider if that aspect of your job can change, OR if your job can
change, or if your attitude about your job needs to change. Was the
best part fo your day often the time you spent with your pet? Then
likely it would be great to find ways to maximize that. Or, perhaps,
was the best part of your day some ministry or group you only get to
do very once in a while – but every time it happens it was the
best? Then, perhaps that is something you want to give more
attention to.

See?
Pay attention to patterns, and USE them to discern ways to live a
life with even more good, more love, more wholeness. I want to note
that the staff I and I do this at staff meeting, although then we
review the whole week. I’m often SHOCKED that the answers I find
aren’t the ones I expect, and I think we all know each other a whole
lot more because we’ve heard where both joy and frustration live in
each other’s lives.

If
you want a resource to help you with this process, the book “Sleeping
with Bread” is particularly excellent.

The
second practical offering I have for you is from Nonviolent
Communication (insert gasps of shock here). As a whole, nonviolent
communication teaches us to listen and to speak in four parts:

With
clear objective observation

In
naming and claiming emotions. (ie. “I feel …”and never “You
make me feel…”

In
identifying and noticing the needs that are connected to the
feelings

In
making requests.

The
absolute key, as I see it, of Nonviolent Communication is in the link
between steps 2 and 3. That’s the part where we take feelings we are
feeling and examine them to figure out what needs are under them.
This process has proven to me that it can unravel even the most
complex experiences and responses for me. For example, I can think
of a time when I have felt annoyed. This is definitely something
worth considering, because it is MUCH more likely to give me
information about myself and what I’m needing than it is about what
I’d otherwise call the “source of my annoyance.” If I am
annoyed, it is because some need or needs of MINE aren’t being met.
Sometimes this is because my need for rest isn’t being met. Other
times it is my need for harmony, other times for order! In fact,
feeling annoyed has sometimes reflected a need for some
consideration. In this way of looking at things, feelings are gifts
given to us to help us navigate and understand the needs that
motivate them. They’re like flags marking something that needs our
attention. (Note: anger is super extra this, it marks a violation of
something we really value!)

Once
we are able to notice a feeling, it gives us a chance to consider
what needs are underneath it. Then, once we know the need, we have a
LOT of information about what is going on with us. Further, since
needs can be met in infinite ways, we have a lot of choices about how
to proceed. If what I’m needing is rest, I can go home and take a
nap… or I can go to the bathroom and take an extra long time
washing my hands…. or maybe just take a moment and say a few breath
prayers. If what I’m needing is consideration, then I have the
chance to consider what that can look like and if I’m willing to make
a request related to it.

All
of this means that feelings, which we have all the time, can be great
sources of wisdom about who we are, what we need, and that opens up
the door for some great discernment.

It
seems like a good moment to point out that in Nonviolent
Communication, needs are considered universal, and they’re not a bad
thing. They just ARE. The goal is to become aware of them when
they’re flaring up and then become aware of the MANY ways they can be
fulfilled, so that we start getting creative rather than trying to
force the same solutions over and over that don’t work.

Discernment
is very different from decision making. It is deeper. It is about
the why even more than the what. It can be reached through Daily
Examen, or Nonviolent communication considerations, or even just
through the quiet of contemplative prayer. I appreciate a difference
between petitionary prayer – asking God for stuff- and
contemplative prayer – being present with God. Personally, I enjoy
and find much more value in the latter. It also helps with
discernment.

I’ve
been told that when Quakers have an extra long agenda for a meeting,
they spend twice as long in silent prayer before it begins. There is
wisdom in that. Rushing to decisions can be as bad as avoiding them
all together. But discernment, deep consideration, gives us all a
way to make good, spiritual decisions.

It
turns out, of course, that pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’s feet
was a perfectly acceptable option. I maintain that selling it and
giving the money away would have been too. The key is probably in
the reasons underneath and around each decision, and figuring those
out takes discernment.

May
we practice it – regularly and well. Amen

1Gail
R. O’Day, “John” New Interpreter’s Bible page 702.

2Apple
Dictionary, “discernment” accessed 4/4/2019.

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 7, 2019

Sermons

“Crying Out” based on Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29 &…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
long thought that Palm Sunday was a big Yay-Jesus parade, where
people shouted Hosanna to say “YAY God!” and it was clear that
everyone got how great God really is and how God was working through
Jesus. I thought that the enthusiasm for God and Jesus was just so
big that the stones themselves were on the brink of crying out. Then
I read John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg’s book “The
Last Week”
and learned that wasn’t it.

The story of Palm Sunday is so
much bigger, so much deeper, and so much BETTER than what I
originally understood. It was, indeed, a Yay-Jesus parade, and it
did, indeed, reflect people celebrating their excitement over God’s
acts in the world. But a WHOLE lot was happening underneath and
around it, and to understand that, we need to look at the Jesus
movement itself, the thing that was being celebrated.

I’m
working today largely from John Dominic Crossan’s book “Who
Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel
Stories of The Death of Jesus.” When
he was here last fall for a Carl lecture we learned that he goes by
“Dom.” As he often does, Dom manages to get into the heart of
things by explaining the context. Context is what makes his
scholarship so awesome.

Jesus was a Galilean, whose
ministry was centered in Galilee, right? What was Galilee? Galilee
was a colony of the Roman Empire, and it was a part of what had been
the Northern Kingdom of Israel. We talk about the Northern Kingdom
of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judea because under King David
and his son King Solomon there had been a single united Jewish
country, Ancient Israel, for about 80 years after 1000 BCE. It then
had a civil war and split into two – north and south. The Northern
Kingdom of Israel lost a war to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and its
leadership was taken into exile. The Assyrian empire took over the
land and imposed their customs. The Southern Kingdom did better, it
didn’t lose and go into exile for another 150 years, AND the Southern
Kingdom also got the chance to return from exile and rebuild.
Afterward, it became extra judgmental of its secessionist northern
neighbors, both for the differences that had been present in the
civil war AND for the fact that they were no longer a pure Jewish
state, in faith or custom.

We know some of this history
because of the stories of the Samaritan woman at the well and the
Good Samaritan. Samaria is, after all, directly north of Judea, the
Southern kingdom. What we sometimes forget is that Galilee is the
region NORTH of Samaria. It was ALSO a part of the old Northern
Kingdom. The difference is that in the time of the Maccabees, about
150 years before the birth of Jesus, faithful Jews from Judea moved
up to Galilee to try to resettle faithful Judaism up north. The
Galilee of Jesus day was multicultural and multilingual, rural, and
full of faithful Jews as well as lots of people who weren’t Jewish at
all. It was also a colony of the Roman Empire.

Now,
as Dom says, “The Jewish peasantry was prone … to refuse quiet
compliance with heavy taxation, subsistence farming, debt
impoverishment, and land expropriation. Their traditional ideology
of land
was enshrined in the ancient scriptural laws.”^¹
Galilee itself was a fruitful place, and the land was useful to the
empire. Dom explains, “Lower Galilee’s 470 square miles are
divided by four alternating hills and valleys running in a generally
west-east direction. It is rich in cereals on the valley floors and
olives on the hillside slopes.”^²
It was also pretty rich in radicalism, perhaps BECAUSE of the
percentage of very faithful Jewish people who believed land to be a
gift from God for the people of God.

Now,
John the Baptist did NOT do his ministry in Galilee. (I JUST figured
this out.) His ministry across the river in Perea, in the DESERT. I
hadn’t realized that Galilee didn’t have deserts until Dom pointed it
out. The other side of the Jordan is the side people had waited on,
it is the side they entered the Promised Land from. Galilee, like
Samaria and Judea, had been part of the Promised Land. According to
Dom, John the Baptist “is drawing people into the desert east of
the Jordan, but instead of gathering a large crowd there and bringing
them into the Promised Land in one great march, he sends them through
the Jordan individually, baptizing away their sins in its purifying
waters and telling them to await in holiness the advent of the
avenging God.”^³
He was re-enacting the entrance into the Promised Land, that gift of
LAND for the people. Thus he was challenging the religious,
political, social, and economic bases of Roman control.^⁴
This got him killed.

Being a colony isn’t a great
thing for people. That’s obvious, right? Colonies exist to bring
wealth to the country that controls them, and that means that the
people in the colony are means of wealth production. Dom explains a
bit more:

“When
a people is exploited by colonial occupation, one obvious response is
armed revolt or military rebellion. But sometimes that situation of
oppression is experienced as so fundamentally evil and so humanly
hopeless that only transcendental intervention is deemed of any use.
God,
and God alone, must act to restore a ruined world to justice and
holiness.
This demands a vision and a program that is radical, countercultural,
utopian, world-negating, or, as scholars say eschatological.
That terms comes form the Greek word for ‘the last things’ and means
that God’s solution will be so profound as to constitute an ending of
things, a radical new world-negation.”

The best known example of this
in the Bible is when God acted to free the people from slavery in
Egypt. The people were oppressed, they cried out, God heard them,
and sent Moses and set the people free.

That particular story is
celebrated and remembered at the Passover. The Passover is holy
celebration of God’s action to set the people free when they had no
power to free themselves. The Palm Sunday parade was a formalized
entrance to the Jewish celebration of Passover in Jerusalem, at the
time when Jerusalem was ALSO under Roman Imperial control. It was,
thus, a very dynamic situation. The potential for Jewish upraising
at Passover is the reason that the Roman Governor showed up then,
with a lot of military might and show.. In fact, the Roman Governor
came into the West Gate with a LARGE military parade, at about the
same time that the Gospels say that the Jesus movement came in the
East gate with a populist God parade.

Can you feel the tension rising?

Dom
goes further into explaining how religious ideas of eschatology, of
last things, work. He says that there are two models, and John the
Baptist used one while Jesus used the other. The John the Baptist
way was passive for humans and active for God. It was the idea that
God is going to come save “us,” where us indicates a single group
defined by those who know that God is about to act. This sort of
eschatology is based on a future
promise that God will
act to save us. Dom says, “This future but imminent apocalyptic
radicalism is dependent on the overpowering action of God moving to
restore justice and peace to an earth ravished by injustice and
oppression.”^⁵
That might sound pretty good, until you hear the one Jesus used.

As
a reminder, Jesus was baptized by John. That means he was a DISCIPLE
of John (a student of John’s), but one way or another he branched off
of John’s teachings and went his own way. The second way that Jesus
ended up going is called sapiential
eschatology. Dom
says, “The word saptientia
is
Latin for ‘wisdom’ and sapiential eschatology announces that God has
given all
human beings
the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so
live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to
all observers. It involves a way of life for now rather than a hope
for life for the future. … In apocalyptical eschatology, we are
waiting for God to act. In sapiential eschatology, God is waiting
for us to act.”^⁶

As
far as I can understand it, this is the crux of it all. We follow
Jesus, who taught us about God who is already present to us, who
works with us to change things for the better. We aren’t waiting on
God. We’re working with God. Jesus’s ministry was one of
proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Dom explains this well too, “the
sayings and parables of the historical Jesus often describe a world
of radical
egalitarianism
in which discrimination and hierarchy, exploitation and oppression
should no longer exist.”^⁷
The Jesus kingdom movement, “is not a matter of Jesus’ power but
of their empowerment. He himself has no monopoly on the kingdom; it
is there for anyone with the courage to embrace it.”^⁸
All of this may explain why they could kill Jesus, but not his
movement.

It
also explains why the crowds were so excited on Palm Sunday and
throughout Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was speaking to their problems,
oppression, debt, loss of land, loss of subsistence, loss of dignity
AND he was offering them the reality that God
was already with them and they could change it themselves!
No wonder they were having a Yay-Jesus parade.

I
think the big questions this leaves US with today are about how we
best live the Kingdom. If it is already here, if God is already with
us, if we can partake in the radical egalitarianism, if God has
given all
human beings
the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so
live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to
all observers… then what is it that we need make space for so that
we can LIVE it!??? How do we access that wisdom we already have, how
do we live that life that God has made possible?

Or, to put it another way, how
do we step out of the world’s obsessions with consumption,
acquisition, fear, existential anxiety, competition, hierarchy, and
distractions SO THAT we can live the GOOD life God already made
possible? Since the goal is to live in love and allow lovingness to
expand in us, and I wonder if it is a matter of balance. There is a
need for rest, to savor the goodness; AND there is a need for
activity, to respond to the goodness. There is a need for more
learning to know how to best respond, AND there is a need to teach
others what we know. There is a need to attend to the goodness of
life AND there is a need to attend to the brokenness and see it
clearly. There is definitely a need to play – to live into joy,
laughter and delight AND a need to be courageous and loving in
seeking justice for all. Because part of the call of Jesus is to
live a good life, and the other part is to make it possible to for
others to live a good life – but not JUST a good life! The call is
to a life that is a transformed, courageous, God-soaked with love.

In
the end of our story we hear, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd
said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered,
‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”
This is the part I had entirely wrong. It isn’t that the stones are
bursting with joy. It is that the people cannot be silenced because
they’ve been empowered.
God’s empowering love is with them, and they’ve learned that they
already have what they need to change their lives and change the
world. And once people know that, they can’t be silenced. Thanks be
to God! Amen

1John
Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of
Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA:
HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 40.

2Crossan,
42.

3Crossan,
44.

4Crossan,
44.

5Crossan,
47.

6Crossan,
47.

7Crossan
48.

8Crossan,
48.

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 14, 2019

Sermons

“Words to a Warring Church’

February 4, 2019February 4, 2019
by Sara Baron

based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:16-30

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”1 Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

Earlier in the letter, Paul worked with a common Corinthian saying, “All things are lawful”. He reflects, “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (10:23-24) Over and over again, Paul seeks to encourage the Corinthians to take care of each other, and use their power for the communal well-being.

Luke 4 contains another example of a faith community misbehaving. In this case it is said to be the synagogue in Nazareth, although historically speaking there are some reasons to be doubtful of the factuality of this story. Some of them are: we aren’t sure there was a synagogue in Nazareth; if there was, we don’t know that they would have been prosperous enough to have a scroll of Isaiah; and perhaps just as importantly, Nazareth isn’t built on a cliff.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke, based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Believable or not for those who heard it, the Isaiah passage emphasizes God being on the side of the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed, and working towards their good, and Luke believes this work is embodied in Jesus.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

Having done adequate work understanding the texts on their own merit, I believe we are now free to excavate them for meaning for us today. I believe most of you have heard that The United Methodist Church is a bit, shall we say, Corinthian? For the uninitiated into the infighting in The United Methodist Church, let me offer a few disclaimers: 1. The fights in the church at large are NOT reflected in this congregation. After two years of careful study and conversation, in 1996, this congregation voted to be affirming and celebration of God’s LGBTQIA+ children, and we hold FIRM in that position today. 2. The General Church has pretty much always been a big fight for power, money, and influence. This is a discouraging fact (I’d love it if the General Church were a spiritually centered experience in collaboration and sharing agape around the world). However, it is a fact. In part this is true because we have a democratic process – we neither have a leader at the top telling us what to do NOR have complete freedom for our own churches. Furthermore, we are super diverse, and that means we often have very different values, and ideas of where power, money, and influence should be used. It isn’t ALL bad.

Now that I’ve offered the disclaimers, this month the Global United Methodist Church is getting together in Saint Louis to have a big old fight. (February 23-26). Officially, the church will be discussing, “human sexuality.” Really, the church will be fighting over whether or not people who are LGBTQIA+ are beloved by God. (Yes.) More deeply, I believe the church is still fighting over who has control of money, power, and influence, and the fight has been put on the backs of LGBTQIA+ people when really it is about whether or not the old-school power brokers (most commonly older, whiter, richer, Southern US, conservative, men) can make other people do their bidding anymore. (Thanks be to God, no.)

In First Corinthians, Paul is VERY concerned about the WAYS the church treated each other in their disagreements. He seems more concerned about this than about the answers that they come to. They were told to build each other up. This is a super duper hard thing to remember coming into General Conference. I believe we are all called to see each other’s humanity, and to see each other as beloved by God, even our disagreement. I do NOT believe it is acceptable to see another member of the church as the ENEMY. I believe that the way we disagree is important, and Paul’s teaching is very important.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

However, I’m going to play fair right now. I’m going to start by telling you what our side (the side for inclusion of all of God’s people) does that infuriates the other side (the side that likely thinks of itself as for “purity”). First of all, we disobey. The conservatives have had the majority power in the church since 1972, and have used it to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and thus “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained or appointed and UM clergy can’t preside at same sex weddings. Because we don’t believe that these rules have authority in the eyes of God, we’ve disobeyed them.

Furthermore, we’ve protested them. We’ve gone to General Conferences, and other meetings, and protested, and people have been uncomfortable with that. In 2000, we (I wasn’t there, this is the “we” of the inclusivity movement) even shut down General Conference. Our Bishop at the time – yours and mine – chose to be arrested with the protesters in solidarity, which was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

Our refusal to obey oppressive authority, and our refusal to be quiet about it has been a problem for the other side, and is taken as unfair tactics. Now, clearly, I disagree, but I thought it would be nice to share their viewpoint first for once.

On our side, the complaints are a bit different. First of all, our primary issue, is with the church claiming that some of God’s beloveds aren’t God’s beloveds. That said, James Baldwin once said (and Jan Huston was nice enough to post on my FB this week to remind me) “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Thus, I do not believe that both sides are equally valid when it comes to discussing the humanity and right to exist of LGBTQIA+ people in the church.

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals2, minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals3, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church4

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

However, I’m willing to settle for a bit less. I’d like to be blessed with the ability to keep on loving, and keep on seeing God’s light in those with whom I disagree NO MATTER HOW BADLY THEY BEHAVE. I keep on praying, and practicing love, in hopes that I will be able to do so.

This feels like a lesson far larger than General Conference or The United Methodist Church. But it also takes a second step. I want to know people are beloved by God, no matter how badly they behave, but I do NOT think that means I have to let them walk all over me, nor over God’s other beloveds. Walter Wink teaches that when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” he means “use subversive methods to require your opponent to respect you.”

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

1 The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2 See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3 http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html

4https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html

Image is of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition logo.

Sermons

“One and Many, Many and One”

January 28, 2019
by Sara Baron

based on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 and John 2:1-11

If you talk to people about their faith, there are a lot of stories about personal experiences of the Divine that come up in the answers. The stories themselves vary widely – God seems to be infinitely creative – but the power of experiences themselves and the impact they have on people afterward are more consistent. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said that the way you can tell if someone has had a authentic experience of the Divine is if they are more loving afterward – to God, to others, and to themselves. I haven’t heard a better way to tell. Those experiences can really matter.

Given how many people have had personal experiences of the Divine, it is a little bit surprising how few of the Biblical accounts of God’s miracles are said to impact only one or a few people. The healing stories could count in this way, but the healing of any individual inherently heals their community as well. Similarly, you might think that the stories of women’s wombs being opened by God are individual, but as they usually occur when the baby is either one of the new patriarchs or one of the new prophets, it isn’t really. Most of the miracles are communal. I’m told that within the Hebrew Bible, the major exception to this happens in the Elijah/Elisha cycle, where some miracles are more individual, and as such, this wedding in Cana story fits most with those stories.

Sure, all the wedding guests benefited from being able to drink good wine, but the recipient of the miracle was the host, who avoided shame because of it. Shame, and its inverse honor, were the MOST important facet of life in the Ancient Near East, and they were assumed to be a zero sum game. One could not gain honor without someone else losing it. They were also assumed to be a family matter, if any family member lost honor, so did the rest.

It is worth considering that Jesus and Mary may have been related to the host of the wedding. It is, after all, one of the common reasons that a person gets invited to a wedding, and since Cana was likely about 9 miles away from Nazareth, this was less likely to be an immediate neighbor. Furthermore, if the host of the wedding was family, then the lack of wine DID have something to do with Mary and Jesus, because it had to do with their honor and shame as much well as the host’s.

Also, it seems that it was common in those days for wedding guests to bring wine to the wedding. The story tells us that Jesus showed up at the wedding with disciples in tow, so this was likely a rather large entourage. It was also a poor one, so they probably didn’t bring enough wine to counterbalance their presence, so it may have sort of been Jesus’ fault that there wasn’t enough wine.

In any case, the story says that Jesus produced WAAAAAAY too much wine- about 454 bottles of it, by today’s measure. This probably relates to the gospel writer’s tendency towards exaggeration, so we don’t have to fuss over it much. There is probably also intended significance in the fact that the wine was made into the jars used for ritual purification. By the time the Gospel of John was written, the early Christian community was seeking to distance itself from their Jewish roots, including by foregoing purification rituals. So, basically, this story was a diss on the Jewish ritual of purification – and we should notice whenever our texts have an anti-Jewish bias. (Because we should.)

Now, you may think I’m babbling on about this story in too much detail and for too long (and you may be right), but this is a curious little story. This is the ONLY miracle in the Gospel of John that is unique – it has no parallel nor corollary in the other gospels. John says that the “signs” of Jesus reveal his “glory” – which is actually another way of saying his honor (and thus the same as saying his lack of shame). Because of showing his glory/honor, it said that Jesus’ disciples believed in him. I’m not sure that this is exactly how most of us today think about miracles, but it is interesting to think about how the Gospel writer thought of them! The gospel writer tells this story to say that Jesus was honorable, and so that we know why people believed in him, and presumably so we will too. That’s, as far as we’re told, the point. The Gospel wants to help people follow Jesus, and to do so means convincing them that Jesus is an honorable man worthy of being followed.

Thus, I think I know what I’m supposed to get out of this story: motivation to follow Jesus. I’m not entirely sure that is what I get out of this story though. The most interesting part for me is the reminder that Jesus was likely POOR. He and his disciples may have accidentally shown up at a party without an appropriate gift and nearly shamed their host.

While my study of the Bible has brought me to this conclusion many times (that Jesus was likely poor), it remains an insight to me. It wasn’t something I was aware of growing up, and I don’t think it is a shared assumption when we come to the text. In the US today, where we live in a meritocracy of sorts, our cultural assumptions tend towards thinking rich people are better and more worthy than poor people. This was likely even more true in prior eras of Western Civilization when it was further assumed that rich people were chosen by God to be rich because God liked them better. (I’m not entirely convinced that this idea has been eradicated from our collective consciousness.) It can be a little bit shocking to consider Jesus, who most of us think of as the most important human to ever live, as … poor.

It certainly messes with a lot of our assumptions.

When I was in seminary and being trained in various schools of theological thinking, I was really shocked to learn that Liberation Theology claims that God has a “preferential option for the poor.” The concept, however, is well established in the Bible. Much later on, when I read Debt, A History of the First 5000 Years, I was better prepared to learn that the author, David Graeber, believes that the world’s major religions emerged as counter movements to the world’s developing market economies and their inherent devaluing of human life..¹ As a person of faith, I’d take this a step further and suggest that as systems developed to devalue human life, God worked in the world to counter that and value God’s beloved humans, and God’s counter work became the world’s faith traditions.

When we think about Jesus as poor, and God working for the benefit of the poor and vulnerable, we can see more clearly what God is up to today. Jesus, like many others in his day, and many others in our day, lacked food security. He often did not know where his next meal would come from or if it would be enough, like the 1 out of every 8 Americans who is food insecure..² God worked through Jesus, who was poor. God worked through Jesus, who was poor, to take care of others who are poor. I believe God is still up to the same work – taking care of those who are poor, and vulnerable, and most often being very successful doing this work through others who are poor and vulnerable.

If this feels uncomfortable because you don’t identify as poor, I’ll remind you that according to the theory in Bridges out of Poverty, there are many facets to poverty including financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, in support systems, in role models, and in knowledge of hidden rules. When we look at it this way, we are all impoverished in some ways, and those areas of our life may be exactly where God is at work. The other option, however, in discomfort is to just sit with it – often God is up to something in our discomfort as well.

In any case,, there is inherent value in remembering that Jesus was poor, and that people who are poor are like Jesus in being poor. This is an inversion of the ways of the world, one we desperately need so that we can acknowledge the full humanity, and sacred worth of people who are poor.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, . “I have the audacity to believe,” he exclaimed, “that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education, and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”.³

“Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all [hu]mankind with the basic necessities of life? Even deserts can be irrigated and top soil can be replaced. We cannot complain of a lack of land, for there are twenty-five million square miles of tillable land, of which we are using less than seven million. We have amazing knowledge of vitamins, nutrition, the chemistry of food, and the versatility of atoms. There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will. The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst.”.⁴

He makes an excellent point, one that is equally real now. Our responsibility as people of faith is to counter the narratives that only some people matter, and advocate for those who are poor and/or vulnerable. We are to dream with God, and with MLK, of a world that uses its resources to take care of ALL of God’s children (which means all people).

1 Corinthians talks about the gifts of the spirit – that we don’t all get the same gifts, but that together we have all the gifts we need to do God’s work. I have learned that this is one of my core believes. I LOVE that God gives us such different gifts and abilities – that we don’t all want the same jobs, responsibilities, or committees. And I love that because of our diversity of gifts we’re able to be a healthy whole. It always strikes me as amazing when we get to the end of a nominations season to see how many people we have willing to share their gifts with the rest of us, and that together we have more than enough.

I believe this is how the world works. We have enough food, we have enough wisdom to know how to distribute it, we even have enough people to have a will get everyone fed. We just have to get past some barriers to make it happen. It is possible, and as it is God’s will, we can be a part of making it happen. Some of that work is already being done, and the work that remains – will get done. We are each only one, but we are many. God works with individuals and communities. Feeding the people is part of the building the kindom, God is a kindom builder and so are we. And, as the gospel writer of John says, when God is at work, there is MORE than enough. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 I cannot recommend this book enough.

2 https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx

3 https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-blog/food-insecurity-social-justive

4 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-b-escarra/martin-luther-king-hunger-in-america_b_809275.html”>https://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-b-escarra/martin-luther-king-hunger-in-america_b_809275.html . MLK, The Quest for Peace and Justice, Nobel Lecture

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

January 27, 2019

Sermons

“Do Not Fear, Beloved” Page 6Rev. Sara E. Baron…

January 14, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
words we heard from Isaiah today were spoken to a community abandoned
to despair. Isaiah chapters 40-55 is called “Second Isaiah” and
Second Isaiah was written to the exiles who had been force-ably
marched across the desert to Babylon after the defeat and destruction
of Jerusalem. The exiles in Babylon were despondent. They’d watched
their city, their temple, and their nation be destroyed. They’d seen
entirely too much death. Those who were left behind had all of their
possessions and food taken from them, and were left without city
walls to protect them. And the ones in exile were supposed to be the
leaders of the people who took care of them, but instead they were in
captivity in a foreign land.

In
the midst of all of this, they were likely struggling with their
faith. Not only do terrible events tend to make most people struggle
with their faith, the faith of the Israelites at that time centered
on two things: 1. The story of the God of Liberation who had freed
them from slavery in Egypt and 2. The gift of the Promised Land to
God’s beloved people as a sign of God’s intention to keep them from
other nations. You can probably see how a faith based on freedom and
land would be seriously shaken by being taken back into slavery after
losing the land.

To
those struggling former leaders, now slaves, Isaiah send a message of
hope. Isaiah was a prophet, so he spoke what he believed to be a
message from God for the people. The message is shocking. It may
help to know that “To be redeemed according to Israel’s law means
to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin, a close member of the
extended family.”¹
More specifically, “The verb refers to a family intervention and
solidarity whereby a stronger member of the family intervenes to
assure the well being of a weaker member.”²
So with that, we can hear the first verse again.

This
is a message to you from YHWH, who created you, from God, who formed
you:

Do
not be afraid. You are in need of a family member to pay for your
freedom,

and
I have done so. You are my family. You bear my name.

The
people are ENSLAVED. In a foreign land. After a major defeat, that
most of them took to be a judgement by God. This cannot be what they
expect hear. Not even the beginning, the reminder that they were
formed by God’s own hand. And definitely not the next part that God
was going to pay for their freedom … since they thought God had
sent them into exile. After feeling abandoned by God they got this
message that God claimed them, loved them, acted on their behalf. I
imagine that it was confusing to try to parse out if this could be
true. As a scholar puts it, “Israel is now fully identified with,
belongs to, and is cherished by Yahweh.”³
But they’ve been interpreting their experience as the opposite.

This
experience, while very specific, seems to have some universal themes
underlying it. Life has its ups and its downs, some of the downs are
very far down, some of the downs are for a whole family or whole
community, and quite often the downs feel like God has forgotten us,
abandoned us, punished us, or… maybe like God ISn’t after all.
Today’s Isaiah scripture speaks into those times. “Do not be
afraid, I am with you. I have called you by name, and the name I
call you is ‘mine.’” We are not forgotten, abandoned, nor
punished. We are still connected, beloved, claimed… and when
things are at their worst, God is with us for it.

The
passage then turns to possible threats that could harm Israel, and
assures that YHWH is available to help them if that happens. Floods
and rivers, not too much for God. Fires and wildfires, not too much
for God. This, too, applies to us. Bad things may come, disasters
may come, raging loses may come, they aren’t too much for God and God
is still with us.

Second
Isaiah speaks words of comfort and hope. This is particularly
notable because First Isaiah (the first 40 chapters) come before the
exile and speak rather dire warnings of what might come to pass if
the leaders of the people don’t chance course. As most of the Hebrew
Bible was written down during and immediately after the Exile, I am
convinced that it has two primary questions it is asking is “why
did this happen to us?” and “how do we understand God in these
circumstances?” The Hebrew Bible answers those questions in a lot
of different ways, and Second Isaiah’s take is “it happened, that’s
not the right question. But as to how do we understand God, that’s
the important one – we know a God who comforts us, cares for us,
never abandons us, and claims us. Because of God, we have hope for
the present and the future.”

There
are so many themes that bounce back and forth between our two
scriptures today, it can seem that Luke 3 is using Isaiah 43 as a
source text. However, Isaiah is inherently talking to the COMMUNITY,
and in Luke 3, God is speaking to Jesus – just one guy. Or, at
least, I think that’s what is happening. The story says that it is
of God speaking to Jesus, but I also know the story is much larger
when we consider the baptism of Jesus as one of the primary reasons
we baptize people into membership in the Body of Christ, and that
this story then resonates within all baptized Christians. So maybe
both them are written to communities, but only one of them admits it?
I’m not sure.

Luke’s
telling about Jesus’ baptism is brief but powerful. Jesus was
baptized, he was praying, the Spirit came (like a dove) and then
voice (from heaven) said, “You are my Child, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” Within the Gospel this serves as an
affirmation of Jesus’ identity as Messiah. However, have the words
have echoed through the ages, and been passed on to each Christian at
their baptism, they have come to mean even more. They have become
like the words in Second Isaiah, an affirmation that God knows us,
sees us, claims us, and is with us. These are words that tell us
that we are LOVED, and that God also LIKES us. They are words that
tell us of grace – that we are loved because God loves us and
that’s the final answer – that our FIRST identity is “loved by
God” -both as individuals and as a community.

Our
second identity, then, is to show God’s love. In the United
Methodist Communion liturgy, the second question that is asked fo
parents of babies being baptized or of adults answering for their own
baptism is, “Do
you accept the freedom and power God gives you to to resist evil,
injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”
I have come to LOVE this question. In fact, it has been MY cover
photo on facebook for two years AND the church’s cover photo for a
year and a half.
I’ve considered changing both, but it is too on point.
In these times, when the powers of injustice and oppression feel
like they’re crushing in, both within the church and in the world, it
feels liberating to hear that question again. “The freedom and
power God gives you….” We do not have to be pulled into. We
don’t have to participate. We can choose another path. We are FREE,
because God frees us from the powers of evil, injustice and
oppression.

That’s some great stuff.
And Jesus is one of the examples of what a life can look like when it
is free from evil, injustice, and oppression.

“This is my child, the
beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It is easy to look at the
babies we baptize and see how true those words are for them. It can
be very easy in adult baptism to hear the words echoing as well. One
of the challenges is remembering that it keeps on echoing for all of
us, all the time. In sacred moments, we see it, but it is
omnipresent. Each person we meet is beloved by God, a child of God,
one who God LIKES. Each of us are beloved by God, a child of God,
liked by God – even when we aren’t able to like ourselves.

And then there is the correlated
bigger picture. We, as a church, are a community of God’s, a Body of
Christ together (even as we are part of larger and larger versions of
the Body of Christ in the world.) We are not the entirety of God’s
beloved community, but we ARE a beloved community of God’s. Which
means that we are some of the recipients of the words in Luke as well
of the ones in Isaiah. We are children of God, beloved, and with us
God is well pleased. Also,

This
is a message to you from YHWH, who created you, from God, who formed
you:

Do
not be afraid. You are in need of a family member to pay for your
freedom,

and
I have done so. You are my family. You bear my name.

We
are God’s, together. In fact, as a community, we come together
knowing ourselves to be an expression of God’s love, together. We
are formed together by being people seeking God, seeking to
understand things of God, seeking to live out God’s ways in the
world. We are formed by the Divine stories, by Divine love, by
building the kindom of God together. We bear God’s name.

This
means that God is with us in the ups and downs. God was with us when
this community was large, when Sunday School was overflowing and this
sanctuary was full every week. God is with us now when we are fewer
people, with just as much commitment to God’s ways. God is with us
when new people are joining us, and God is with us when we gather in
gratitude for lives well lived. God is with us when we are
struggling to find our ways of being in this world and in this
community, and God is with us when we know we’re up to just the right
ways of being love in the world.

We
are God’s. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Kathleen
M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective on Isaiah 43:1-7,” in
Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 221.

2Walter
Bruggemann, Isaiah 40-66
(Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 53.

3Bruggemann,
53.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

January 13, 2019

Sermons

“Not a King Like THAT” based on Psalm 93 and…

November 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectadyIt is best, when reading from the Gospel of John, to do with awareness of metaphor and symbolism. Because the Gospel of John was written much later than the other Gospels (a generation or two), it has a tendency to make its points more poetically. Part of what I mean by this is that the Gospel of John lacks historical accuracy, but that is because historical accuracy wasn’t all that valuable to John. John thinks there are important points to make, and John makes them, presumably assuming that those listening know that the stories are being told to make points, and not to tell facts.

Which is to say, this is contrived encounter between Pilate and Jesus that deviates from how the other Gospels tell and and how it actually could have been. AND, that’s OK. John is expressing essential elements of Jesus-following, and he does it beautifully.

John contrasts the domination systems of the world with the nonviolence of Jesus and contrasts the power-hungry methods of leadership in the world, with the power-giving leadership of Jesus. There is significant debate over whether or not Jesus ever thought of himself or spoke of himself as a king, most of the Jesus Seminar thinks he didn’t. There are two reasons, however, why the early Christian community would have wanted to present him that way:

The expectation of the Jewish Messiah was of a Jewish King in the model of King David: one who would restore political, economic, and military might to the nation of Israel, one who would preside over an empire, one who would prove the power and might of God by overcome adversaries. While Jesus was CERTAINLY not THAT kind of king, speaking of Jesus in king language connected him to the tradition and claimed him in a role that people could make sense of. Granted, even in this passage, the sense being made has to acknowledge that Jesus is not a king in the normal ways of the world, but it was an imperative claim to early Christians that Jesus was the fulfillment of what their ancestors had been waiting for.
The Roman Empire which held the Jewish homelands as part and parcel of its Empire claimed many titles for itself. The Roman Emperor was the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the World, the Lord of Lords. Much of the language we now think of as Christian is really reflective of the early church claiming that Jesus was the real deal and the Roman Empire was not. Which to say, most of what sounds pious speech NOW was heresy when it came into Christianity. Within that context, for the Roman Empire the “King of the Jews” was the person that Rome appointed to be the leader of the lands occupied by the Jews. King Herod had been “King of the Jews” but his kingdom had been split upon his death. To even enter into this conversation about “King of the Jews” is to threaten the power of Rome to appoint leaders over God’s people. Pilate was NOT “King of the Jews”, he led ¼^th of the former kingdom and was the “tetrarch” of Judea. For him to be in conversation with Jesus about whether or not Jesus was the king of the Jews was for him to be asking if Jesus OUTRANKED him. The conversation itself, as presented here in John, makes Pilate a comedic figure and therefore dismisses his authority. The entire narrative supports the importance of Jesus, and contrasts him with the power-seeking ways of the world.

Now that we know why this conversation is presented to begin with, we can play with it a little more. Jesus is not presented as giving any straight answers, which I find amusing. He keeps asking questions to answer questions and responding in ways that Pilate can’t follow. To be fair, these do seem to be consistent with other stories of how Jesus plays cat and mouse with anyone trying to trap him.

My favorite line comes in verse 36. Pilate is trying to get Jesus to confess to what he’s accused of. Historically speaking, Jesus was accused of leading a revolt against the Empire, but he isn’t going to say that. Instead of answering the question at all, he says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” The answer he gives has often been “spiritualized,” which I mean in a negative way even though I think spirituality is awesome. Christians have differentiated between the kingdoms on earth and the kingdom of heaven, and in doing so have indicated that it doesn’t matter what happens on earth as long as they manage to enter the kingdom of heaven.

This perspective has done GREAT harm, including by permitting abuses to human beings like slavery and functioning as an argument for not worrying about global climate change, to only take note of the worst offenses. Unfortunately, it also trickles down to other ways of not caring about God’s creation and creatures. I believe this is an inaccurate as well as problematic reading of the text.

John is talking about the ways of the world that are VIOLENT, he is talking about the domination systems of the world and contrasting them with the Jesus movement, which is NONVIOLENT and equitable. Both systems that are being contrasted here are systems of THIS world, and in fact both systems are ones that claim for themselves Divine blessing.

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

Jesus and his followers lived in a domination system, but they lived in ways that transformed it rather than complied with it. The definition factor of a domination system is violence, but Jesus was emphatically nonviolent. This is what is presented in this Gospel lesson. If Jesus was building his own domination system to threaten the domination system of the Roman Empire, than Jesus’ followers would have come to rescue him with their own violent powers. They would have lead a revolution. They would come ready to fight.

They didn’t. Jesus faced violence without returning violence. He also faced it without yielding to its power, and by neither returning violence nor accepting the power of violence over him, he decreased its power in the world. Jesus’ kingdom was one of nonviolence, one without domination, one that has been about changing the world into the kindom of God which is a nonviolent and equitable kindom – rather than being like the normal ones of this world. But, the kindom or kingdom is one that is of THIS world.

Which leads us to some very practical questions. How well are we following in the nonviolent way of Christ? How well are we transforming the world, at least the world around us, from domination into equity? Where are we complicit in allowing violence and/or domination to take hold in our lives and our community? When do we struggle the most to live like Jesus did?

And, once we’ve squirmed with those questions: how can we more fully live into nonviolence and radical equity? At the core, I think all of the offerings of this faith community are meant to support the intersecting goals of nonviolence and radical equity. We study the Bible so we can learn how to do it, we learn about the injustices of the world so we can be part of changing them, we redistribute food and necessities to God’s beloved people to make our community more equitable, we worship to fill our souls with goodness so we can receive God’s gifts of peace and joy (which enable us to treat others with peace and compassion), we gather together for meetings and studies to learn from each other’s wisdom about what is needed and to try to offer it into the world.

Others are working with us in these tasks – other faith communities, other nonprofits, other teachers and students of wisdom and spirituality. It isn’t all on us, but our contributions matter.

Yet, I still wonder what we need – individually and communally – to do this better? Do we need opportunities for shared spiritual practice, to center ourselves on God’s peace? Do we need stories of hope and redemption, to remind ourselves of what God is capable of? Do we need times and spaces for rest from the work that has become wearying? Do we need clearer goals so we don’t feel like everything is on our shoulders, and we can remember that we work with God who has a lot to offer along with us!?

This is the last Sunday of the Christian year, and we start anew next week with the beginning of a new Advent and the return to the beginning of our faith story. So, as we come to the end of this year’s cycle of liturgy and remembrance, I offer it as a time for reflection: how well are we following the nonviolence and radically equitable ways of Jesus, and what do we need in order to keep following and keep deepening our faith?

I hope, perhaps, you’ll tell me what you you think about this, because I’m certain that God works among us in shared wisdom and together we have the answers we need to guide us in this next iteration of our shared journey. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 25, 2018

Sermons

“Lillies of the Field” based on Joel 2:21-27 and Matthew…

November 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A few years ago, at a retreat entitled “Courage to Lead,” we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” We learned it in a very physical way. We were put in groups of threes, one person was to stand tall, and the other two knelt on the ground, holding onto the standing person’s hands. We tried it three ways. The first way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person fought it as hard as they could. The second way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person let them. The third way, however, was neither fighting nor giving in. In the third way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down and the person standing allowed the pulling – without fighting it nor giving in to. In that case, it felt like those pulling on my arms were helping me stretch. While I’d fallen both of the first two times, the third time it was pretty easy to stay on my feet. It felt like mountain pose in yoga – strong and steady.

The exercise, were told afterward, was really meant to be a metaphor about our choices in how we respond to others. We can look and listen with judgement and fight other as they tell their stories; we can receive other people’s stories without reflection or connection; OR we can allow another person’s story to be their truth and something that reflects truths in us. We can learn from and grow with another person, simply by listening to them, in the same way that other people pulling on me could feel like a stretch instead of like an attack. Soft eyes see, but see without to judging.

If I were to take a guess at what meaning is really at the core of the Gospel Lesson today, it would be the message of soft eyes. But to explain WHY, we need to start with Joel. That passage contains words of comfort and hope, of ease and restoration. But, if you listened carefully there is only one theme: a promise of enough food. The soil will rejoice, the animals will be able to eat green grass, the trees will bear fruit, the vines will yield grapes, the rain will come and let the crops grow – and it will come at the right times. The central promise is, verbatim, “”The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” Or, in other words, “there will be enough food.” While there is plenty of metaphorical value in these words, I suspect their first meaning is quite literal.

Food, and food in abundance, in the ancient world, meant life. For the people trying to live after the exile, when what they had known was destroyed, the idea of a return to good life almost meant a vision of the land being able to be productive again. It meant a restoration of a stable, sustainable life. In some ways I find this passage shocking, when I realize that the whole dream of comfort and goodness is simply “you’ll be able to eat!” In fact, it says that the capacity to eat, and eat enough, is the reason that the people will trust in and praise God. “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”

The idea here is that if you have food, God is with you, and if you don’t have food God isn’t. I don’t agree with this premise, but I CERTAINLY see how people could come to that conclusion. And, it helps us understand the oddities of our Gospel passage.

We need to look at the Gospel Lesson on its own first. I’m struck by the difference presented within the Gospel lesson between the natural world and human society. The examples of creatures whose well-being is cared for by God are from the natural world: birds, lilies, grasses. They’re complimented, they’re functional, they’re cared for. The birds don’t have to hoard food because they keep on finding enough. There is a subtle contrast with human societies that have the capacity grow and store food. There should be an abundance of food, yet the people are hungry.

The second natural example, it also ends up being a bit of a critique of human society. The lilies of the field don’t work for their lives, they don’t make cloth, “they neither toil nor spin.” Yet the epitome of wealth and wisdom in Jewish history – Solomon himself, wasn’t able to use all the wealth and all the knowledge he had to make himself as beautiful as those flowers who don’t work at it all, nor seek to acquire wealth. The lily is a regular symbol of beauty in the Bible. In Song of Songs the beloved is compared to a lily among brambles. When the Bible tells us of Solomon building the temple, (1 Kings 7), lilies were used to decorate the space. Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like a lily, and he seemed to know it! He valued their beauty!

The final natural example in Matthew is that of the “grasses of the field.” I can hear in them the refrain from Ecclesiastes, that “all is vanity and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes has a lot to say about work, toil, food, and drink, including a fairly well known passage , “What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. [God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” (3:9-13) It to me seems like Jesus may be continuing that conversation here!

What does it mean when workers toil, and yet do not have enough to eat and drink, to be clothed, or to take pleasure in life? What does it mean when people are stuck in the needs of the present and therefore can’t give any attention to the future? And what does it mean, in the midst of those challenges, to hear Jesus say, “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink , or about your body, what you will wear?”

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in “The Social-Science Comment on the Synoptic Gospels” point out that “For members of any culture (such as the United States), to have a future orientation requires that all one’s present needs be consistently taken care of. Such was never the experience of the preindustrial peasant.”¹ The people Jesus was in ministry with were people who usually did NOT have enough – they were people whose circumstances were dire. Most people did not have enough to eat, many people died earlier than they would have otherwise because of malnutrition.

It is a really weird thing to say “don’t worry about food” to people for whom staying alive means figuring out how to acquire enough bread “not to worry about food.” It seems like the equivalent of saying to a person who is homeless “not to worry about money.” But, I don’t think that Jesus is callous or unfeeling. So, while he is SAYING that, I don’t think it is likely to be his final point.

Thus, I wonder, WHY is Jesus telling people not to worry? Is the purpose of “don’t worry” really that you can’t change it anyway, so it isn’t worth the effort to worry? Or, is the purpose of “don’t worry” that anxiety is simply counter-productive? And/or is the purpose of “don’t worry” that moving out of the status quo and into creative solutions requires the letting go of fear and anxiety? Is Jesus telling people not to worry because worry keeps them from getting what they need???

I think so. ( I might hope so.) I think Jesus wanted the people to have enough to eat, but he thought the best way to make that happen was for them to work collaboratively, and being collaborative requires some letting go. Jesus is saying that worrying isn’t helping, “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” He also says that worrying is the way of the world. He asks his followers to do something else entirely, to work for the kindom instead of working for the necessities of life.

This is where the soft eyes come back in. I think the people were working WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT to survive. The common misconception of this passage would be the opposite of that – that people are to be entirely passive and wait for God to act on their behalf. But I think Jesus is really talking about a middle way. Jesus is telling the people not to worry, and not to be passive, but to work together for everyone’s good – with God.

As a reminder, he kindom is the goal of Christian faith. It is what we are working towards, and what we believe God is working towards in the world. It is a time and a place of abundance. Perhaps today it would make sense to think of it as staring with Joel’s vision of soil, water, trees, vines, and grains that produce enough for everyone to be satiated. But the vision actually goes further. It is not just food that is abundant and distributed so that all have enough, but also clothing and shelter, healthcare and human connection, meaning and purposeful work, comfort and hope. The kindom comes when we treat each other as beloved children of God, and work towards a world when all have enough to be satiated in all of our needs.

This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving in the US, we remember a historical example of the sort of generosity that can build the kindom. The early European settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony had not learned enough to about this land to have food in abundance, but the Native Americans shared what they had to feed those who didn’t have enough. Because of the food they shared, that day and that winter, the colonists survived, and because they survived we remember their generosity on Thanksgiving.

There are other ways to respond. We are not stuck with only the choices of fighting for survival, or passively giving up. We are not stuck with the choices of listening to the 24 hour news cycle or simply staying in bed and ignoring the world. There are middle ways! One of the most powerful is gratitude. When we feel stuck, (and a lot of us feel stuck a lot of the time) we can notice what there is to be grateful for – and there is almost always a lot! It pulls us out of false binaries and into the complicated possibilities of life – gratitude works to soften our eyes and let God and humanity in. Thanks be. Amen!

1 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Matthew 6:19-7:6” p. 50.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 18, 2018

Sermons

“Unbound for Living” based on Psalm 24 and John…

November 11, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I took a course on Children’s Literature in college. It was one of those courses where the professor was so worried about people thinking it wasn’t a valid topic of study that it was 3 times harder than everything else. Despite its difficultly, the course was amazing. During one of his lectures, causally, as if we’d all already known it, the professor mentioned that all fairy tales deal with two fundamental desires of all humans: to be special and to be normal.¹

To be special and to be normal. He used examples to show it off, but the point itself stuck with me. We all want to be normal – to fit in, to be accepted, to be assured that we’re OK. We also want to be special – to be great at something, to be recognized for our talents, to be seen as extraordinary. The balance and struggle between the two changes in various groups and between individuals. In some communities, the normal is more highly valued (studies have shown this happens particularly communities with people living in poverty). In others, the special is more highly valued (studies have shown this happens particularly communities with people who are upper middle class and upper class.)²

To be special and to be normal. Sometimes those two universal yearnings come into conflict with each other, because they are. Yet, sometimes they play together as well. Sometimes we subdivide ourselves into various groups – based on something that makes us “special” – and then have expectations in that group of what looks like “normal.” The internet has been very useful for this, since it makes connecting with others who might share traits so much easier. Take, for example, the myriad of pseudo-physicological “personality tests” and the ways that people subgroup themselves into types and then explain their behaivors as normal within those types. (Admittedly, this can be fun.)

In the beginning of the Gospel reading today, Jesus is as normal as normal can be. His friend has died, and he weeps. He grieves. Jesus values the life and love of one he has known and feels the emptiness when the life has passed. This is a story of Jesus acting like a normal person. He was holding it together until Mary wept, but his emotions were impacted y hers. In the midst of the grief he wants to go, and see, to process, to be as close as possible to the one he has lost. And even in the story an accusation of blame. In this case it is external – Mary blames Jesus for Lazarus’s death, but often it is internal. One of the great struggles of grief is the struggle with blame. Because we wish we had the power to hold onto our loved ones, because death hurts like nothing else, because we want to think we could have stopped it, intermingled with grief is a lot of blame; and often much of it is internalized.

It is all normal.

Until it isn’t.

The story shifts to one about Jesus as special – REALLY special – to the best of my knowledge there are no internet chat groups for those who can resuscitate the dead with a word. Jesus commands that the stone be rolled way, and he calls the dead man back out among the living. As the man struggles to move because of the binding clothes of death he’d been wrapped in, Jesus gives a final command “Unbind him and let him go.”

If there is anything “normal” in this story, it is that Jesus is able to do what the rest of us yearn for. The yearning to call back our loved ones from the dead, to return them to the space of the living, to unbind the bands of death that hold them – that’s one of the MOST normal experiences of humanity.

So, this might be a story of human grief, what it looks like and what it yearns for. Jesus is the epitome of human grief, and the expression of what we’d do if we could, under the assumption that he could do what we can’t. Therein lies the special and the normal!

Theologians differentiate between the story of the rising of Lazarus from the rising of Jesus by calling Lazarus’s resuscitation and Jesus’ resurrection. The difference, they say, is that Lazarus was going to die again someday, but Jesus was not. Some say this story exists merely to foreshadow Jesus’ resurrection, or to indicate his power over death. Yet, in this story this power over death is impermanent. Lazarus will die again. The power over death in this story then, is transient.

And yet, that doesn’t matter! For Mary and Martha, as well as for Jesus, another moment with Lazarus was worth it. Whatever moments they’d gained – no matter how many moments they gained – were infinite worth. In reflecting on the yearning for more time with those we love, we are given reminders of where to set our current priorities. Mary, Martha, and even Jesus would take what time they could get and savor it, without complaining that Lazarus’s life would still someday end. Because the saints we celebrate today are ones who no longer walk among the living, we are reminded of the power of time with our loved ones. We cannot regain time with those we’ve lost; but we can prioritize time with those who are still with us. We cannot go back and learn the stories we never heard from those we’ve lost; but we can ask new questions and listen to the stories of those who are still with us.

There is another lesson given to us by the saints who have gone on ahead – they’ve taught us how to live! In every human life we see a unique glimpse of the divine, and we see a reflection of God’s love. Within the lives we celebrate today there are lessons about how to live a good life.

The story says there were cloth bindings covering Lazarus’s hands, feet, and head. He emerged from the grave still laden with them. Maybe he couldn’t take them off himself because his hands were covered. Perhaps he was still stiff and struggling to regain feeling in his extremities? Maybe he needed help taking them off, or maybe those who loved him needed to experience helping him remove the bindings as a means of unbinding him from death.

“Unbind him from the death cloths” is a powerful image. In this story it is about freeing a living man who was thought to be dead, to free him to be alive and mobile again. Those who were living removed the cloths of death, to allow the one assumed to be dead to be fully among the living again. Those binding cloths of death have resonance in our lives too. They lead us to questions.

What binds us to death, and prevents us from a full entry into to life? Can we become bound to death while we are grieving the death of those we love? Does fear, or even existential anxiety, ironically bind us to death? Can some levels of exhaustion bind us to death? Can the harms we’ve know, and the healing we have yet to find, be a binding to death?

What is it like to be among those who unbind the living from the cloths of death? How does it feel to unravel hands so they can move again, feet so one can walk without tripping, a face to allow clean air to be breathed, eyes to see, ears to hear, a mouth to speak? When have we offered such miraculous gifts? Does it happen when we offer food to people who are hungry? Is it a gift that occurs when we have time to listen to another’s heart? Are these the gifts of medicine and engineering, of teaching caregiving? Are we able to unbind each other? Can we give each other rest? Hope? Healing?

How?

How do we identify when we need help becoming unbound from the things of death? What does it feel like to be in need of help to have the cloths be unraveled? Jesus calls us both to unbind the clothes of death – and to let the cloths of death be unbound form us.

We get to grieve – Jesus modeled grief for us. But we also get to live – and take the lessons we learned from those we loved about how to live, and live well. We remember, on this day, the saints who have gone before us. We remember their lives with gratitude. Because of them we remember to live our lives well, and to savor the time we have with those we love. Today, we thank God for the lives of the saints. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Randy-Michael Testa, lecture, Winter Term 2001.

2Based on research by Nicole Stephens, Kellogg School of Management.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 1, 2018

Sermons

“What Had He Heard?”based on Job 38:1-7 and Mark 10:46-52

October 29, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m told that there are preachers in the world who can speak without putting the readings in context. I am not that preacher. This is my third sermon in a row on texts from Mark 10, and I’m aware of how profoundly this gospel reading exists within its context in Mark.

I recognize the risk of boring people to death, and yet I find that we need to look both backwards and forwards in Mark form this text in order to make any sense of it. #sorrynotsorry Two weeks ago we dealt with the story of the rich man who asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. He was invited by Jesus to sell all he had and follow Jesus, but he went away sorrowful because “he had many possessions.” Jesus then taught his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

Last week, we heard about the disciples James and John who asked a favor of Jesus. Jesus responded, “What would you have me do?” The disciples were looking for security and power, Jesus corrected them by teaching that he wasn’t offering security, nor power. Instead, he was offering a radical way off life where the first become last, the last become first, and those who are leaders are servants first.

As soon as today’s reading is over, the Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem begins.

Crowded in the midst of these teachings and misunderstandings, we have this obscure little healing narrative. It is all happening on the way to Jerusalem, which in Mark is the way to death on the cross. It would be easy to overlook this healing narrative, especially since Jesus just healed another blind man in Mark 8, and that was a far more interesting story. It is the one where Jesus’ healing takes two tries. But here it is, our text for the week, and the more I looked at it context, the more brilliant it started to appear.

The rich man couldn’t bear to sell all he had, yet in this story an impoverished beggar throws off his cloak in order to get up faster to get to Jesus. The cloak was not only his only possession, it was likely his home. His cloak was what kept him warm enough to stay alive at night, and it was also a tool. Beggars spread out their cloaks to receive alms.¹ Yet, in his haste to get to Jesus, he discards it. The rich man couldn’t let go when he was asked to, but the poor man throws away everything he has in one single motion simply to meet Jesus.

The disciples James and John had approached Jesus to gain a favor, and tried to trick him by opening with “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus had responded, “What is it you want me to do for you?” Here, Jesus begins the interaction with the blind man who had been begging with almost the same words. “What do you want me to do for you?” While the established disciples had been seeking status, despite Jesus’ teaching; Bartimaeus requests healing. He says he wants to see again. Jesus isn’t about status, but he is about wholeness.

We sometimes miss the nuances in the healing stories in the Bible because our worldview and the worldview of the ancients are so different, including the fact that they didn’t have germ theory yet. Bruce Malina in the Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels says, “Anthropologists carefully distinguish between disease (a biomedical malfunction afflicting and organism) and illness (a disvalued state of being in which social networks have been disrupted and meaning lost). Illness is not so much a biomedical matter as it is a social one.”² Ancient healers, including Jesus, were working on ILLNESS. Malina says, “the healing process is considered directly related to a person’s solidarity with and loyalty to the overall belief system of the culture in general.”³

So ancient healing was, in effect, a healing of both the individual and the community. The individual who was ill was separated from the community by the illness, and thus the illness impacted the community as well, since they were separated as well. A community is only whole when all of its members are present and connected.

Bartimaeus’s blindness would not be a considered a disease today, nor a reason for him to be outside of community, but I think it was then. This is where the gospel gets a bit confusing. The gospel says that Bartimaeus regained his sight when Jesus spoke. In the act of healing him, Jesus says, “Go, your faith has made you well.” This indicates that the healing of sight was seen as the healing of illness. It also fits with the other healing stories in Mark. The people are to “go,” to leave the live of illness behind and re-enter society. Sometimes they’re even told to go to the priests to be assured of their healing. However, Bartimaeus does not “go.” He does not return to his community. This healing is, sort of, cut off then. It isn’t complete. Instead of returning to the community, Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way.

In essence, this healing story is ALSO the LAST story of Jesus calling his disciples. After this, the story starts to move towards his death. This is a transition point, in function it is the end of his active ministry. Everything changes with the entrance into Jerusalem, and that begins with the verse that follows this story.

The first disciples were called away from their fishing boats. Even at this late point, they’re still very confused about what’s going on. This final disciple though, isn’t told to follow at all. He’s told to “go” not to “come” and he follows anyway. We give the first disciples a lot of credit for following Jesus when he said “come” – do we give enough for the one who followed when he was told “go”?

As a whole, this story is a fantastic example of Mark’s earlier point about “the first being last and the last being first.” The first disciples are still struggling to understand, the last disciple is the one yelling “Jesus, son of David” – and he is the FIRST person in Mark to make that claim about Jesus. To call Jesus son of David was to claim him as Messiah.

I struggle though, to make sense of the healing that didn’t restore community. Maybe I’m not supposed to worry about it because it restored the kindom community around Jesus instead of the community of Jericho? I’m not sure.

I’m also worried about the rest of the beggars in Jericho. You see, as Ched Myers says in Binding the Strong Man, “Jericho was the last stop en route to the city of David; the road out of town, representing the final, fifteen-mile leg of the pilgrim’s journey, would have been the standard beat for much of that city’s beggar population. The odds were good that the pilgrims would have the mood and means to give alms.”⁴ Which is to say that Bartimaeus was likely not was the only beggar on the route – nor even in the vicinity when this healing was happening. The setting means there were a lot of beggars, and Bartimaeus was just one of them.

Why was he chosen? Why did Jesus call for him? Was Bartimaeus the only one crying out? Was he the only one crying out “Jesus, son of David”? If so, was this the first time he’d used a line like that, or did he try some variation of it every day? If it was the first time, what had he heard about Jesus leading him to believe he was the “son of David?” Or, was he the one who needed it the most? Was he the one the crowd spent the most energy silencing (and if so, why)? Was he the squeaking wheel – and that got Jesus’ attention? Or was everyone crying out too?

It is hard for me to hear a story of Jesus picking one suffering person out of a crowd and healing only that one. While it is an unexpected grace for that one person, if Jesus could heal, why did he stop with one?

My struggles with the Bartimaeus story also extend to the Job narrative. Our reading today is well into the book of Job, so I’m going to do a quick plot summary to catch us all up. Job was a wealthy man with a great life, and then it all came crashing down – his herd died, his tents collapsed, his children died, and he got sick all at once. He felt like this was a punishment from God, and an unjust one, because he hadn’t done anything wrong. His friends tried to tell him to repent, and he refused because he hadn’t done anything wrong. He asked God to explain God’s self. 38 chapters into this drama, in the passage we read this morning, God finally does.

It isn’t the answer Job was looking for – Job wanted to ask questions of God and make God answer them! Instead Job got questioned by God. Experientially, that sounds like God. The answer responds to the person’s need, but not their wants! God’s response could be heard as “who are you, and what do you think you know?” It could be heard in other ways too, “there is a whole creation here, it isn’t all about you”, or “things are more complicated than you can see” or “there is a lot of wonder, even in the midst of the horrors.” God’s answer is complicated, and I think our own moods impact what we hear it in.

But, I think the key piece of the story is that God ANSWERS. Job isn’t left to his suffering alone, and God cares. Yet, I have known people whose life experiences feel like Job. They’re at rock bottom and they’ve lost everything, and most of them don’t have an experience of noticing that God is listening or responding when they are at the bottom. Thanks be, some do! But most don’t.

Sure, Job is a story expressing a lot of theological questions. But it is also a narrative telling us that God cares, and God responds. Yet, people don’t always sense that in their own lives. It can feel like the problem of Bartimaeus, YAY for his healing, what about everyone else. YAY for Job’s answer, where is mine?

Or maybe I’m unfair. When, bad things happen to people and I don’t think those are punishments from God. I think they are things that happened, and God is with us to help us through it. So, then, why am I worried about GOOD things happening to people? Yes, some people get healed, and others don’t! There are reasons to be grateful for healings, and for spiritual insights, and for experiences of the Divine.

Maybe, it needs to be said that things aren’t always fair, including the distribution of blessings. I would like them to be fair! But I can hear God suggesting I gird up my loins and get over it. Sometimes blessings come and the last become first. But only sometimes. In any case, in this story, Jesus is still heading to Jerusalem, Bartimaeus follows Jesus to Jerusalem, Job’s life goes on. Our faith doesn’t let us be dependent on miracles, they may or may not come. But they are not indications of God’s love. God’s love is there all the time, equally distributed, fair, accessible, transformational. We can depend on God’s love, and let God’s blessings be bonuses. I think that’s all we can do. May God help us. Amen

1Myers, 282.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p. 368.

3 Malina, 369.

4Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008) page 281.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Twisting Expectations” based on Isaiah 40:3-5 and Mark 10:32-45

October 21, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

James
and John don’t get it – they’ve managed to miss the whole point.
Further, in the remaining 10 disciples’ responses to James and John,
we learn that they don’t get it either. They’ve ALL missed the
point. In the Gospel of Mark, the closest followers of Jesus, the 12
disciples, are absolutely clueless about … well, everything. Jesus
and the disciples are talking past each other. I think it is meant
to be amusing. It might be a little bit more successful in aiming
for amusing, however, if it didn’t feel so very close to home.

James
and John are scared, and as scared people do, they are seeking
security. They were on their way to Jerusalem, they had some sense
of what might be coming, and it was terrifying. Scared people often
behave in suboptimal ways. This fact feels relevant TODAY. Michael
Moore’s 2002 film “Bowling for Columbine” discussed our nation’s
“climate of fear.” He claims we’re taught to be afraid, and to
seek solutions to our fear, even when the reasons we’re to be scared
aren’t articulated. His movie was the first time I’d noticed that
phenomenon, and it was very helpful in insulating me from its effects
– for a while.

Then
it gotten harder. The recent news on climate change is terrifying,
and I think even validly so. In recent years I have been forced to
reckon with the fact that the values I hold most dear, the ways I
think the common good is achieved, and the society I wish to be a
part of building are NOT as widely shared as I thought, and that has
been scary too. Maybe it is only scary to know it – since it was
already there before, but it has been scary nonetheless. While this
has been normal in my life time, it also scares me that the United
Methodist Church at large and each individual UM church I have loved
will someday cease to exist and that day will likely be sooner than I
would choose.

These
large scale things exist on top of the normal day to day fears of
human existence: that one day I will die, that one day all those I
love will die, that illness or injury could come at any moment to
myself or those I love, that among those I care most deeply about
there are ones struggling because they don’t have enough, that a day
could come when I don’t have enough, that maybe nothing I do matters,
and universal fear that no one really likes me after all.

I
don’t think those fears are unique to me, but they also exist in me.
The normal day to day fears also existed back in Jesus day, and James
and John were likely quite familiar with those. They were also
facing some large scale concerns – they might lose Jesus, and the
Roman Empire might be interested in eliminating their whole
community.

At
the same time, they clearly believed that Jesus was going to “win.”
I say that because of how they respond to their fear. They’re
afraid everything is going to get destroyed, so they try to seek
power within the system as they understand it – and by doing so
they display just how much they believe that Jesus is the source of
power. They ask to sit at his right and and his left. We, the
reader, are supposed to be thinking of the insurrectionists who will
be crucified on Jesus right and left. However, the brothers are not.
They lived in an honor-shame society, the ultimate hierarchical
system. Honor was a zero sum game. They thought Jesus had it, and
they were trying to gain more honor by getting closer to him and
acknowledged by him.

However,
because it was a zero sum game, IF two members of the inner circle of
12 gained honor, then it meant the other 10 got moved further away
and lost honor. The other disciples seemed to believe as James and
John did: that things were scary, that this was a time to try to gain
security, that Jesus was the best bet they had, and that Jesus was so
honor-filled that the closer they got to him the better they’d do.

It
seems to me that they DID have the faith of a mustard seed, they just
didn’t have it in the right thing. While the disciples, led by James
and John, are vying for honor in a zero sum game that permeated their
society, Jesus is talking about an entirely different system. They
ask for a favor, and Jesus says, “You don’t get it. I’m not the
honor-source you think I am. I’m here to upend the system, not to
best it. Are you able to pay the price for upending the system with
me?”

This
is one of those places where people are talking past each other. I
appreciated the scholar who pointed out, “In the Old Testament ‘the
cup’ is an ambiguous image, which can connote joy and salvation (Pss.
23:5; 116:13) or woe and suffering (Ps. 11:6; Isa. 51:17, 22).”¹
The same scholar points out that there are reasons to think of
baptism as suffering or as blessing, as well. Jesus seems to be
talking suffering, but the disciples, still hearing things in the
ways of the world around them, hear their honored leader as talking
about blessing.

After
the remaining 10 disciples proof they’re missing the point too, Jesus
makes another attempt to do general teaching. What he speaks seems
to me to be central to Christian faith itself. “You
know that among those-who-don’t-know-our-God, those whom they
recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are
tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to
become great among you must be your servant,
and
whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” In the
honor-shame system, servants and slaves were at the bottom. But
Jesus is twisting up all expectations, and putting servants and
slaves at the top.

He
finishes this teaching saying, “For the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” This
gets interesting. Charles Campbell, professor of Homiletics at Duke
Divinity School says:

“The
Way of the Cross, Jesus affirms, is the way of resistance of the
Domination System, which is characterized by power exercised over
others, by control by
others, by ranking as the primary principle of social organization,
by hierarchies of domination and subordination, winners and losers,
insiders and outsiders, honored and shamed. … Jesus calls the
community of faith, in its life together, to offer an alternative to
the ways of the Domination System – and to bear the suffering that
inevitably comes as a result. Jesus resists the domination system
throughout his ministry – even unto death on a cross – so he sets
us free (ransoms us, v. 45) from that system, so we might become
faithful disciples and take up his way of resistance.”²

Ched
Myers, author of Binding
the Strong Man
expands on the final point. He explains, “The term referred to the
price required to redeem captives or purchase freedom for indentured
servants. Jesus promises then that the way of ‘servanthood’ has been
transformed by the Human One into the way of transformation.”³
In this model, instead of leadership being about gaining power
over, leaders are being trained in the ways of nonviolence, to serve,
to resist, and if necessary, to suffer as well. Leaders aren’t
people who have, gain, or seek status, at least not as Jesus saw it.
That’s how the world works – how it worked then and how it works
now. Jesus presents an entirely different system: servant ministry,
taking care of each other.

By
lifting up the role of servant, Jesus inverted the entire hierarchy.
Furthermore, he established an expectation that his community of
followers would teach each other as extended kin, and as people
caring for the needs of each other. In the old system servant did
the care giving work, but in Jesus’ system, everyone did. The
followers of Jesus weren’t to be in competition with each other, they
weren’t in a zero sum game. They were to live by entirely
different rules.

They
were to LIVE the imagery of Isaiah. They were to become the
preparation for God’s way. They were the ones lifting up the lowly,
AND pulling down the mighty, to be in equal relationships with each
other! The followers of Jesus were to BE the glory of God revealed
in the world, visible for all.

Just
like the disciples though, we don’t do our best work when we’re
scared. I was reminded recently that the limbic system, which is
where our emotions live in our brains, is soothed relationally and
interpersonally. It is MUCH easier to feel good when we’ve connected
with those we love and trust then it is to talk or work our way out
of our fears by ourselves.

This
idea of radical equality with each other, of deep relationship, of
kinship without competition – this is really key. It isn’t just
for the long term well being of the sake of the kindom. It is ALSO
how we make it through the day to day, and how God helps us overcome
our fears and enact our roles as part of the glory of God. We
baptized Anna today, and we welcomed her as our sibling in Christ.
Now we teach her what it is to be loved in a radical community of
faith committed to twisting the world’s expectations into something
far better – the glory of God. May we do it well! Amen

1C.
Clifton Black, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
191

2Charles
L. Campbell “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” iin
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009),
193.

3Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008), 279.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

October 21, 2018