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October 13, 2024
by Sara Baron

“For Everyone Born” based on Luke 14:7-14

Today, in our gospel lesson, we hear Jesus giving dinner party advice. Which is, let’s be honest, kind of unexpected from Jesus. To be fair, the Jesus Seminar thinks this narrative is Luke’s creation – it fits both Hebrew literature and Jesus’s priorities but seems a little bit too much like a narrative device. That said, it does fit both the values we hear throughout the Bible and from Jesus, so I think it is plenty worthy of our attention.

According to my beloved commentary A Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

“Dinners were important social occasions that were used to cement social relations. … It was very important who was invited. Moreover, accepting a dinner invitation normally obligated the guest to return the favor. Sometimes guests refused invitations knowing that the return obligation was more than they could or wish to handle.

… Table fellowship across status lines was relatively rare in traditional societies. In the inclusive early Jesus groups, it was an ideal that caused sharp friction on several counts. It was especially difficult for the elite, who risked being cut off by families and social networks if seen in public eating with persons of lower rank. That was especially so in the city (the setting for the text), where status stratification was sharp and members of the elite were expected to maintain it.”1

Well, that helps make sense of why this is in a gospel – this reflects the radicalness of the early Jesus movement and just how significant it was for people to dismiss the social norms. The early Jesus movement mixed people across class lines and dismissed the concept that anyone mattered more than anyone else and it was … well, just the opposite of how things worked then.

And maybe now.

While sometimes I want to think things are better now, when I look at social policy, I notice that our systems and structures treat those living in poverty as expendable. When it would be easier, cheaper, and more just ease people’s lives and we don’t – I can’t find many explanations other than we CHOOSE to enrich the elites at the cost of the lives of the poor and marginalized.

Maybe there isn’t social cost to going to the wrong party in the same way anymore- although that may depend on one’s social circle – but we still function as if some people are expendable and that’s the same core problem.

Thank God the Jesus movement saw through it. Thank God the Hebrew prophets saw through it, and Jesus helped too.

Thank God for each and every person who refuses to be at peace with anyone being expendable and truly believes we are all made in the image of God! My goodness it matters, and my goodness it requires us to keep reminding each other to pay attention!

It requires that we let go of hierarchies – for ourselves and for others. The gospels tells us to always sit at the bottom, instead of fighting for the top. And, we are to invite those whose presence will lower our social standing, instead of those who can help pick us up.

I wonder, if someone had followed Jesus’s advice in this (and I think they did), what it would be like to be one of “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” invited to a fancy dinner party for the elites. It seems like it might be terrifying. Would people have declined because they were playing by the rules and couldn’t repay the invitation – or agree because they were too hungry to care? Would they worry about what to wear and who else would be there? Would they be comforted or upset when others in their own social class were the other attendees?

Because, it turns out that the narratives of who matters are also taught to those society says don’t matter, and it isn’t easy to let go of it even when you know it is a falsehood.

What would it be like to be a host used to formal dinner parties with people engaging in social climbing, to suddenly be at a table with people you are used to ignoring and dismissing? Might it be uncomfortable? Refreshing? Would there be a lot of laughter? What might the host learn?

One of the things I learned in seminary studies of urban ministry is that people do best in mixed income housing situations. And they mean all people. Because we have so much to learn from one another. It benefits kids of families who are living in poverty to see other ways of life. It benefits those who are well off to see that those who are struggling are real people with gifts and passions, and to see their way of life. It creates stronger communities, with more empathy and more creative solutions when we don’t segregate ourselves – by any measure. Further, it encourages everyone to be generous with what they have which benefits all the givers and all the receivers. It makes generative space for everyone born.

It is funny to think of this dinner party. The host might teach about expected table manners, but the guests might be honest enough to admit what doesn’t taste very good 😉 Or exclaim with delight at a delicious bread the host had stopped noticing years ago. Or just be happy to be full, and remind the host that such a gift is one to be truly thankful for.

In our We Cry Justice reading, Carolyn Jean Foster imagines that shared table as a place for meaningful conversations between equal conversational partners – a pretty beautiful image that fits the Jesus movement well. She reminds us that people who are well off often try to solve issues of systemic poverty – but don’t actually understand them, “People who live in poverty know the solutions that would alleviate their suffering; they just do not have the resources. They need to be at the table.”2

In the world, this is still an oddity!! The world still seems to believe that those who are successful are more capable of solving problems for others instead of trusting that those who have experienced injustice are most capable of identifying their own problems.

But what a wonderful thing it is when people follow God’s way instead of the world’s ways! What a wonderful thing it is when we refuse honor, invite the unexpected guests, accept unexpected invitations, and learn from each other!

Now, you may not have noticed it, but socio-economic differences are not the only kind that exist. Around here they may not even be the ones we struggle with the most. I think for many of us, listening to those whose values differ from ours can be incredibly difficult, and even triggering. What would this gospel passage feel like if it said, “don’t invite those who already agree with you, invite those who are voting for a party line you abhor?”

Feels a little harder to me already. But, then I remember all the times God has worked in me to undermine my assumptions.

These floods and hurricanes recently have had me thinking about 2011 when there was major flooding in the town where I was pastoring. I ended up coordinating volunteers who came to help people, some of the holiest work of my life. It also put me in some positions I wouldn’t have otherwise agreed to be in. Some of the volunteers came from churches that didn’t permit women clergy, and refused to accept women’s authority – but they cared more about helping people than avoiding my leadership role. Some of the UM volunteers came from what are now GMC churches and we’d sit down and eat lunches on muddy former lawns and talk about things and realize how many places we disagreed – and how it didn’t seem to matter one little bit when we were both there to share love.

A few weeks ago I shared on facebook a recommended set of questions for just such a dinner party, “How to have conversations with people who disagree with you” which suggested asking:

Which life experiences have shaped your views?
Imagine for a moment that you got what you wanted in regards to this issue. How would your life change?
For those who disagree with you, what would you like them to understand about you?
What do you want to understand about those with whom you disagree?
What is this personally important to you?3

Those aren’t questions about changing each other’s minds, but they are about actually hearing each other- about re-humanizing each other – about learning! I may never agree with someone who wants to cut SNAP benefits, but it is entirely possible that I can learn form their perspective and come to a more nuanced understanding of what could work better than what we have now!

We are in conversations right now about creating some spaces to talk with those with whom we think we disagree. I think those are exactly the holy places Jesus wants to invite us into. The Gospel tells us so.

Thanks be to God for holy moments when we can speak and listen and be formed by our compassion into people even more able to love all of God’s people – everyone born. Amen

1Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 285-6.

2Carolyn Jean Foster, “50: Band-aids or Justice” in We Cry Justice, ed. Liz Theoharis (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021) p. 217, used with permission.

3Source: Solutions Journalism, posted by “Unfundamentalist”

October 13, 2024

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

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October 6, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Don’t Get in the Way” based on Psalm 133 and Romans 14:13-23

Every year when we prepare for World Communion, we ask ourselves where in the world our hearts are already extended. Which of our siblings in faith are we thinking of the most right now? Whose plight are we especially worried about? The whole world is hard to focus on – its just too big – but when we notice the reality of some of our siblings who are struggling, the compassion we send out to them helps us extend our compassion to the world.

This year we knew that our siblings in Western North Carolina and the whole swarth of the US Southeast impacted by Hurricane Helene hold our heartstrings. But so too do the Gazans, the West Bankers, the Lebanese, and those living fear in Israel. We hold the Ukrainians near and dear, but know was well that Russian citizens are struggling in the war path. Gaza and the Sudan are in the midst of catastrophic hunger, as are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria.

So, given all that, we still listened to our hearts and let them lead us to our neighbors in the Southeast first and foremost. I looked up Western North Carolina bread and discovered Appalachian salt rising bread. It is a bread with a history of struggle – believed to be created by pioneer women on what was then the frontier who needed ways to help bread rise as they moved west. This is, of course, a story complicated by the fact that Native Americans lived in the lands they moved to – and there is an irony that the bread itself is made with ingredients that the European decedents moving west wouldn’t have known about if not for their Native American neighbors (cornmeal.)

We set the table to reflect those without abundance, even as we believe in God’s abundance. We thought about those who might not have tables, or whose tables likely lack tablecloths. We thought of those who now lack water, and may be drinking from bottled water for months.

Compassion has a way of leaking out. Because even as we think about those with damaged water systems, we thought of others who never had access to water, and of refugees trying to fill canteens along their way, and of those living in droughts, and of those whose water systems are unsafe… and the table expanded.

We picked one bread, even when sometimes we fill the altar and the table with bread and wheat in abundance, even when one bread can’t represent all the breads of the world, because while God has made abundance, many can’t access it. Some because of natural disasters, some because of human disasters, some because of the structures of human society. But also, one bread may represent all bread just as well as 10 or 20 do, because humans are SO diverse, and we make food in a lot of different ways. I didn’t know about this Appalachian Salt Rising Bread, and I’ve lived in the Appalachians for almost all my life. (I’m told Western New Yorkers may be familiar with it in some cases.)

Paul, in Romans, admonishes the followers of Jesus’s Way to avoid judgment and avoid hindering each other. I’ve always been particularly fond of this passage, and the way it acknowledges different places people may fall on their faith journey. Someone may need to avoid alcohol to be whole, if so, don’t tempt them with alcohol. Someone may need to avoid meat to meet their moral conscious. If so, feed them without giving them meat. If possible, avoid drinking alcohol or eating meat in front of someone who needs to abstain. Let people be faithful as they need to be faithful but most importantly DO NOT GET IN THEIR WAY.

I like the pragmatism of it, and the open-mindedness. I also adore the reminder not to judge, including not to judge how someone chooses to be faithful.

It fits this World Communion mindset of remembering how different we are. Some denominations will set their tables with wine – we don’t to make our table accessible to alcoholics, but each tradition has its value. Some will kneel at a rail, some will gather for actual meals, some will receive God’s gifts in groups, and the words of blessing will be offered in so very many different languages. And yet, in all the differences, one table remembering God’s love as known though Jesus.

Psalm 133 nails it.

How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!

Amen, and may God help make it so, and may we help too! Amen

October 6, 2024

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

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September 22, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Who We Are” based on Exodus 3:1-14a and Mark 9:30-35 (Homecoming Sunday)

I was once lucky enough to spend a term studying at Oxford, specifically at Magdalen College, where a portion of the campus was referred to as the “New Quad” and dated to about 1733. The day after I arrived back in the United States I heard on the radio about a “great historical find” of a 100 year old Buffalo Bill poster. I remember wondering what the people at Magdalen would call something so new as to be only 100 years old.

This congregation was founded in that same century as the new quad… although a little later. We were founded in 1789, and our current church building dates to almost a hundred years later, in 1872. We’ve now been in this building for 152 years, although like Americans, we don’t refer to it as the new church anymore 😉

Our history books tell wonderful stories of the faithfulness of our fore-bearers in faith, and their commitment to God and each other. They also tell stories of change! This is the 3rd church building this community built – 4th location, and as it was being built the first worship space as over the fellowship hall in a space we mostly don’t use anymore. The now Wesley Lounge was the original church office, and the education wing didn’t come along until the 1950s. Bill Isles once said he’d been fighting leaks in the roof since then.

I’m often awed as I look at the long list of pastors who have served this church – found on the walls just before you enter the Narthex. It is also notable how many years of one-year service there was in those early days. Maybe the biggest change in the list of clergy is the relatively recent inclusion of women, staring 45 years ago with Rev. Eileen Demming.

I also think about the technological changes that have happened over the course of this church’s history. When the church began the US Postal Service was brand new and Post Offices were just beginning to be build. This church saw the advent of the telegram, the radio, the telephone, electric lights, television, fax machines, the internet and email, cell phones and text messages, social media, and even Zoom. Thanks Thomas Edison and GE! These all impacted how life was lived, and thus how ministry played out. Honestly, 5 years ago we lacked live-streaming and Zoom meetings – can you even remember that??

This week we had a meeting to plan our fall retreat – and it was so interesting to hear the beloved traditions of the past meet the needs and values of the present day. I loved it because that’s pretty must the gist of everything. In Christianity we talk about the “Living Tradition” where we honor and respect the past, and use its wisdom, while bringing it into the present day and leaving behind what no longer serves us while adding in what we now need. Everything in church is Living Tradition as I see it – from the church retreat to the worship liturgy, from coffee hour to the church library.

We have this constant awareness of and gratitude for the past, while also holding the present and the future together. Over the course of the past year we’ve made some plans for more change. While this building was bustling with ministry activities in the 1950s, it is now more building than we really need. The maintenance and upkeep of the building take a lot of energy and resources, we love it, but it drains us. This church has decided to go forward, looking at ways this building can be a resource for the community while also becoming a source of financial stability.

I’ve was awed and amazed to watch the Holy Spirit at work in this community as this way forward was discerned. The part I loved best was watching various groups of people gather together with fear and trepidation about the future, and then think about what it could mean if our building could be used fo provide low-income housing AND financial stability, and see each group get excited and hopeful.

It is a huge change, and it is going to take a lot of work, but the decision is one that was made with incredible faithfulness. And, it is a continuation of the history of change and the reality of the living tradition.

In Exodus this morning we heard the familiar story of Moses encountering the burning bush and hearing God’s name. The New Interpreter’s Bible emphasizes the verbs of God in this passage. God says, “I have seen… I have heard… I have known… I will send…. I am.” It may just be me, but I hear the living tradition right there! God is “The Great I Am”, or “I Am Who I Am” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be” but God is also impacted by what God sees and hears, and acts accordingly. God’s nature is constant – loving mercy all the way through AND God is responsive to human needs and activities.

I loved that our “We Cry Justice” reading reminded us that after Moses saw the burning bush, and went to do what God directed, and the people were freed, and they came out to the wilderness, they returned to the burning bush. And it is there, in the place they are told that God heard them, saw them, considered them, cared for them, and that God simply was, that they work together to figure out the future as God’s beloveds.

In this story, the burning bush is sort of interesting in that it’s only purpose was to get Moses’s attention so that he’d listen to God. Also, there is an angel, but the angel does say or do anything, the angel’s only purpose is to get Moses’s attention so that he’ll listen to God. The bush isn’t the message. The angel isn’t the message. God just wants Moses to pay attention.

I suspect that God puts burning bushes in front of us multiple times a day. Thich Naht Hahn taught that in the communities he founded every time a bell rang the community members were to take a moment to stop, listen, and pay attention to the wonder all around them. He said that it changed the way they answered the phone. I believe there may be fewer bells and notifications in monastic life than modern life, but perhaps that makes it far MORE important for us to try that exercise. Every time a bell rings, a phone vibrates, or an app gives us a notification we too could stop, listen for a moment, and be grateful for the wonder around us.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of times a day for me. And that’s just BELLS. It is also true that in every other human being we encounter a beloved of God, and they may each be a burning bush inviting us to attend to the wonder of each human.

Sometimes God calls us to sit still, and just be. Sometimes God calls us to move, and just be. (I think all of us are called to both at various times.)

I suspect we all could get better at listening to those calls. How do you get them? What is your burning bush? Could it be bells? Notifications? Other people? An internal sense of unease? Maybe just hungry – it may be that we want to think anew about the tradition of table grace, and face each time we nourish our bodies as the true and wonderful miracle it is, and take a moment to be grateful to God and all the people who make it possible for us to eat and drink each thing before us.

I wrote in the August newsletter about my hopes that we would take this election cycle and time of uncertainty as an invitation to deepen our spiritual practices so that we can respond out of being centered in God’s grace. I intended to keep talking about it through August but… well, life went ahead and changed on me and here I am back in the pulpit as of today.

It is so easy to be pulled off kilter by the truly concerning realities around us.

I believe the question for us today, the question of who we are becoming, is how we can care as deeply as ever, while also being able to hold our center. Psalm 1 talks about the people who delight in God as being like trees planted by streams of water, “which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” It is my conviction that God is a constant source of love, hope, peace, and joy. God is always with us, God is calling to us with our own burning bushes, God is accessible. We are able to connect to the source of love, hope, peace, and joy. We are able to be like trees planted by the streams – with deep roots in God’s goodness. And when do so, we are able to be stronger in our compassion for others AND our centeredness that cannot be shaken.

Many of us are worried about what will happen. We are also, of course, worried about what is happening and what has happened. Things are not as they should be, and even the most optimistic outcomes aren’t going to solve issues like hungry, homelessness, war, and violence. We are people of faith in the midst of a broken AND beautiful world.

The Bible is full of stories of being in a beautiful and broken world, and finding God in the midst of it. This is just how things go. We don’t get to wait for things to be OK before we deepen our faith. Faith happens in the midst of reality.

In Mark, we hear the line, “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus saw the hierarchies of his world, and he had no patience for them. He inverted everything he could, and led people to question the very idea that someone should be at the bottom (or top) of a hierarchy.

This is one of the core messages of our faith. This is part of who we are becoming as we connect more and more deeply with God. God’s unconditional love for all people becomes the most important truth and everything else fades away. Along with changing how we see others, this also changes how we see ourselves and loosens the grip of the narrative that we are supposed to compete to be “good enough to be loved.” We are loved. That’s the first thing we teach each other in faith. God loves us. All. That’s where it all begins, and I think even where it all ends.

We have a long history of sharing God’s love with each other and the world. And the changes that are coming are yet another expression of love. And, no matter what the world throws at us – let’s deepen our roots into God’s goodness so we are ready to respond with love and love alone. Amen

September 22, 2024

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

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July 14, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Leave a Little” based on Deuteronomy 24:17-21 and Luke 12:22-34

Our essay today started with a quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I want you to hear it again, it is very important:

“The church must reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”1

Some of us, these days, are struggling a little bit with “the state” and both how it is in present and how it may be in the future. Dr. King reminds us of our role. Guide, critic, conscience, prophet. Dear ones, things are not as we nor God want them to be, and it is possible they’re going to get worse before they get better. Still, called to be guide, critic, conscience, prophet. In some ways we have little power. Doesn’t matter. The world won’t get better if we stop dreaming God’s dreams and sharing them. In these roles, we are people called to speak to the power of nonviolent, peaceful change.

We are to be a lovelight to the world. That lovelight shines out hope into the world, reminds people of the love in which we were all formed, directs us to peace – AND that lovelight illuminates injustice and brings attention to places love is needed, that lovelight doesn’t become complicit with harming the vulnerable, it seeks the common good, it shows us all the way when we fear there isn’t a way.

Our passages today remind us of God’s visions and what the lovelight is meant to illuminate. Deuteronomy tells the people how things should be, and that includes careful care of those who are struggling. Everyone is told to only go through their crops once to harvest, and whatever is dropped or forgotten should be left for those who are hungry. The people are told, as well, to be careful with widows, to offer justice to the ones without legal standing – the immigrants and the orphans. Those who had once been without power are told to treat those without power well.

Dear ones, we can’t create that world by sheer willpower, but we can love on it until it softens and moves in that direction. And our own actions can matter along the way – however it is that we practice “leaving our fields for the poor to be able to glean.” These are the means of peace.

In Luke we hear Jesus speaking – and I am reminded that he is speaking mostly to people who are vulnerable. Where in Deuteronomy the vulnerable were those without standing and without power – the widows, orphans, and immigrants, by the time of Jesus the Roman Empire had ensured a much larger portion of the population was struggling. Jesus mostly spoke to, for, and about those who were poor.

And he tells them not to worry. Which doesn’t really make sense. Hungry people worry about food. Those without clothes worry about clothes. But Jesus says, “don’t worry.” Jesus reminds them that God’s wish is for them to be well fed, well clothed, and unafraid. It is, I think, a retelling of Deuteronomy – God’s way is for everyone to have enough. Live your lives so those who have less than you do will still have enough. Leave a little, and everyone will get a little. God is interested in a society that cares for those who are the worst off, God judges society by how they care for their most vulnerable.

So, dear ones, that’s how we focus our interest and how we judge societies too. That guides where we shine our lovelight, and how long we hold it where people need to see.

The fields left for the poor to glean is a hard thing for me to wrap my head around – maybe it was for Jesus’s followers too. I think about lawsuits I’ve heard about where gigantic seed companies sue small farmers for growing crops without buying their seeds – when the seeds could well have been carried by the wind. I think about no trespassing signs, and gated communities, and even ancient Roman compounds presided over by a patriarch, and all of it sounds so different from an assumption that you should leave a little bit in your field, and let anyone who needs it come and gather it.

In the book of Ruth one of the plot points centers around this gleaning. Ruth and her mother-in-law were widows and had no one to advocate for them in the legal system of their day. Ruth went out to glean in Boaz’s fields and Boaz was unusually generous. He instructed water to be share with her, he asked the field workers to drop more than they needed to. He fed her lunch, he told the workers not to bother her even if she gleaned first. All very generous, all – we’re told – a form of courting. But nevertheless, the assumption in the story is that Ruth had the right go into the field in broad daylight and gather whatever she could, and take it home to feed herself and her kin. The gleaning wasn’t done in secret, or under the light of the moon, or under the threat of violence. The fields were left for those who needed them, and those who needed were WELCOME to come gather what they needed. Without fear. Without accusation. Without having to hide. Maybe even without shame. Just – able to get what they needed from anywhere they could find it.

Meanwhile, in our society, our Supreme Court ruled that it is ok to arrest people for sleeping outside – even when they are homeless and have no place to sleep inside. We made it ILLEGAL to be a person who has to sleep. Pretty much the poplar opposite of this Deuteronomy passage and the society it sought to create, huh?

Friends, things are not now as they should be. Things may get worse. The very purpose of a society – to care for the vulnerable – may continue to get lost in the shuffle.

What we can do is remain steadfast. Listen to God’s dreams, and let them soak in. Shine our love-lights. We can see and name what isn’t write, see and name how things should be. We can support each other in our dreaming. We can keep on listening for God’s nudges in our lives. We can soak in peace, hope, and love so we have them to share, we can seek out joy so we can keep on keeping on.

Gleaning is an old, old concept, but it is a beautiful one. It is one that maybe we can play with, work with, consider how it might be lived out today. Gleaning can give us hope about other ways to form society, about remembering that God’s dreams are reachable.

We can give each other hope. We can be peace.

We can give the world hope. We can be peaceable.

And the best part is that God’s dreams are available to us in the Bible, through each other, in nature, and through modern prophets. God’s goodness is everywhere, God’s love knows no ends.

The world may say there isn’t enough, but we say there is so much that even the gleanings are enough for those in need.

We can be people of abundance even in a world that believes in scarcity. We can be people of peace, no matter what the world brings.

We can be a lovelight. Let’s keep on shining. Amen

1Claire Chadwich “A Harvest for All People” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 33.

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July 8, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Shared Burdens, Shared Resources” based on 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 and James 5:1-6

When we gather at the communion table, we are reminded time and time again that we are united by sharing from one loaf, by receiving from one cup. We receive the body of Christ to be the Body of Christ. We TOGETHER do the work of Christ in the world, we are fed together so we can act together.

We also talk a lot in the church about being church family, it happens enough that it becomes a struggle in hymn selection! I love kinship language, but I want us to use the more inclusive “siblings” and instead of the far more common “brothers and sisters.” Not that brothers and sisters is bad language, its good, its just not BEST.

Our Biblical passages today are also about being united in Christ, and becoming family to one another, although they come at it from a slightly different angle.

As we heard in Rev. Dr. Theoharis’s essay, the often abused quote “He who does not work shall not eat” is not about condemning the poor and declaring it a person’s own fault they live in poverty. Instead, 2 Thessalonians calls out the rich who aren’t doing their fair share to care for the community. Because, those who can do so have been resting on their wealth without worrying about those who are starving. They are called on to share the burdens of the community, and to share the resources they all have.

Get up, the writer implores. The writer isn’t calling everyone to labor in the fields, but he is calling everyone to contribute.

Sometimes, I find my internal voices telling me that only some work counts… and somehow the work that “counts” is NEVER the work I’ve been getting done. That’s my own internal voices not God 😉

The writer is urging followers of Christ to interdependence. If one person has enough not to work, but their sibling in Christ does not, then the work is not done until the sibling can eat too!

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movements, grew up in poverty as a preacher’s kid and became a preacher. He was an unusually good preacher though, enough so that his sermons were printed and sold, and made a lot of money. John Wesley was convinced by his understanding of God and the Bible that his wealth was not his own, and so he gave it away. He shared what he had with those who were struggling the most. One winter, when he was 80 years old, the cold was especially bad and the poor were struggling immensely. John Wesley begged on the streets of London – not for himself but for those who were impoverished – the ones he’d already given his own wealth to.

I’m pretty sure that fits with God’s vision.

You may have noticed that as much as 2 Thessalonians pushes on the rich, James is harsher. James is vicious against the rich. (For some of us, this is pretty squirmy stuff. I’m not going to resolve that reality, but I am acknowledging it. It turns out following Jesus is hard.)

James says that those who are rich now will suffer later. All their wealth will rot and rust, and they’ll be held accountable for the ways their wealth was accumulated. “The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” James warns those who live in luxury build on the labor of others that they are culpable for the harm done to the others.

These passages are saying the same thing. We are responsible for each other. We are community, kin, interconnected. And if we treat others unfairly, that’s on us. If we are in community, we need to work for everyone’s well being. Following Jesus isn’t about getting comfortable or “taking care of number 1.” It is about expanding our hearts and our lives until we are able to truly “love our neighbors as ourselves.”

We now live in a world with fairly permeable boundaries. Where once it was easy to think of a neighbor as a person in one’s village or neighborhood, there are many ways we live in a global village now, and the needs of neighbors are immense and overwhelming. The degree of concentrated wealth in this world is also immense and overwhelming.

We are mean to help each other, inter-personally, and even when it is hard.

I do want to say that it is possible for a society to organize itself in DIFFERENT ways than the ones we’ve chosen. It is possible to have tax codes that move wealth down rather than up. It is possible to house all the people in our country, and in our world. It is possible to feed people healthy and delicious food. It is possible to take care of everyone. It isn’t even that hard. What isn’t possible is to take care of everyone while consolidating all the resources at the top. It can’t be done. This one can’t be both and. We can share and take care of each other or we can let a few people have ridiculous wealth. But the ridiculousness of the wealth at the top right now – it makes it impossible to care for the many.

The writers of the New Testament lived in a world like the one we live in. Jesus and James at least had very little power in that system. They all called on the rich to see and care about the poor, to notice how they’re treated, to take responsibility for not trampling on the poor.

Don’t trample each other, God says! Also, seek the goodness that comes in a society that cares for all of God’s beloveds.

And also, eat this bread, drink this cup – they united us, and that unity is a holy and wonderful gift. (And challenge.) Amen

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

July 7, 2024

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June 30, 2024
by Sara Baron

“God’s Subversive Tactics” based on Matthew 5:38-42 (please read!)

The groundbreaking scholarship on this Matthew passage isn’t new, it was published in 1992 by Walter Wink in his book “Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.” I remember hearing it in High School, I’ve preached it before – here – and some of you have ridiculously good memories. But also, not all of you have heard me preach it before, and it is SUCH GOOD STUFF and so central to how we understand the entire Jesus movement. So, anyway, if you already know this stuff, prepare for an excellent review. And if you don’t, hold on to your pew – this is going to be fun.

Those of us who have heard this passage without Wink’s scholarship have probably heard it as an invitation to be doormats, right? “Don’t resist. Let someone hit you repeatedly. Be passive. Be… weak.” And, heavens that’s concerning, that anyone would teach such things in a church. What a way to empower domestic violence, maintain the status quo, and teach those in positions of less power (women, racial and ethnic minorities, children) that the Godly way is to accept the harm that comes their way.

However, if you accept a perspective that the choices are violence or nonviolence, I can see how you might conclude that following Jesus is NOT a violent way, so you have to pick passivity. BUT, this passage doesn’t mean that AT ALL, this passage is about a third way. This is about how to engage in nonviolent resistance to undermine the powers that oppress. This is Jesus speaking to people who lived lives of oppression. This is the way called nonviolent ENGAGEMENT.

It seems especially fitting on this day when we are also thinking about Juneteenth because when we celebrate the freeing of those who had been enslaved, it also makes sense to talk about the ways that people who were enslaved resisted. We sometimes read in history about slave rebellions, but there were lots of ways that people engaged in regular, consistent resistance of the oppressive power of slave holders too. They pretended to be ill. They worked slowly, and badly. They “lost” or “accidentally damaged” equipment. They took what they needed, or just what they wanted. Papers were displaced. Things caught on fire. I suspect a lot of individuals were geniuses at such work, engaging in subversive actions that created immense disruptions without ever seeming to be fault.

Slave holders tried to break the spirits of those they enslaved, but the core human dignity, the reality of imago dei (that we are all made in the image of God – ALL OF US), seems to be quite resilient. And I think that’s the core of what Jesus was talking about too.

Let’s unpack each of Jesus’s suggestions. “Turn the other cheek.” First thing to know – you didn’t use your left hand for anything in ancient society because toilet paper wasn’t a thing yet and left hands were used for “unclean tasks.” This was a hard and fast rule, even gesturing with the left hand was illegal and carried a strict punishment. So, we are talking only about right hand hits. Which means that a person who is hit on the right cheek has been backhanded, which was ALWAYS AND ONLY diminutive. It was a common and normal way of putting people in their place. “A backhanded slap was the usual way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves, husbands, wives; parents, children; men , women; Romans, Jews.”1 Most people would cower.

One did NOT backhand a peer, it was actually illegal.

But if people can only hit with their right hands, and one has already been backhanded on the RIGHT cheek, then to turn the other cheek – to invite another hit – is NOT to passively accept violence. It is to invite the person who is trying to humiliate you to either back down, or treat you like an equal. “This action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, ‘Try again, Your first blow has failed to achieve its intended affect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me.’”2

Which, then, puts the one who hit into a conundrum. Which is EXACTLY Jesus’s point. (Can you now see how this advice fits the one who also told parables?) “In that world of honor and shame, he has been rendered impotent to instill shame in a subordinate. He has been stripped of his power to dehumanize the other.”3

The second image is to give cloak along with coat, right? We are going to call them the outer-garment and the inner-garment so we can track it. Note that impoverished people only had those two garments, their were not backups. And, Hebrew Scriptures provide for someone to be sued for their outer-garment:

If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate. – Exodus 22:25-27

Note that even in this passage it is clear that only a poor person would be in this situation, and it is so tenuous that you can’t even take the outer-garment consistently, you have to take it for only the day so they can sleep with it at night. It seems, even in this passage, that the creditor is being pretty severely demonized for deciding to demand retribution on the poor, right? (Matthew’s language is wrong in implying it is the inner-garment, just ignore that – Luke gets it right, it is the outer-garment.)

Back to Wink, “Indebtedness was endemic in first-century Palestine. Jesus’ parables are full of debtors struggling to salvage their lives. Heavy debt was not, however, a natural calamity that had overtaken the incompetent. It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy…. By the time of Jesus we see this process already far advanced: large estates owned by absentee landlords, managed by stewards, and worked by tenant farers, day laborers, and slaves. It is no accident that the first act of the Jewish revolutionaries in 66 C.E. Was to burn the Temple treasury, where the records of debts was kept.”4 And Jesus is talking to people at the bottom of this system. “Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their undergarments as well? This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Imagine the guffaws that must have evoked. There stands a creditor, covered with shame, the poor debtor’s outer garment in one hand, his undergarment in the other. The tables have already been turned on the creditor. The debtor had no hope of winning the case; the law was already entirely in the creditor’s favor. But the poor man has transcended this attempt to humiliate him. He has risen above the shame.” You may remember that there was a taboo against nakedness in ancient Judaism, but it turns out the larger taboo was against SEEING someone’s nakedness, not being naked.

“Jesus provides here a hint of how to take on the entire system by unmasking its essential cruelty and burlesquing its pretensions to justice. Here is a poor man who will not longer be treated as a sponge to be squeezed dry by the rich. He accepts the laws as they stand, pushes them to absurdity, and reveals them for what they have become. He strips naked, walks out before his fellows, and leaves the creditor, and the whole economic edifice that he represents, stark naked.”5

The third one – the “second mile”. Roman soldiers had the right to require civilians to carry their heavy packs for a mile – a form of forced labor. People hated it. However, if they asked someone to carry it for MORE than a mile, they were subject to discipline, and the discipline could vary immensely, including really severe punishment. So the soldiers regularly demanded their packs be carried a mile, but ONLY a mile. As he has in the two prior examples, Jesus recommends to the disempowered that they reclaim their human dignity even in the midst of oppression.

Wink says, “Imagine the soldier’s surprise when, at the next mile maker, he reluctantly reaches to assume his pack, and the civilian says, ‘Oh no, let me carry it another mile.’ Why would he want to do that? What is he up to? Normally , soldiers have to coerce people to carry their packs, but this Jew does it so cheerfully, and will not stop! Is this provocation? Is he insulting the legionnaire’s strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to violate the rules of impressment? Will this civilian file a complaint? Create trouble?”6 By messing with the soldiers head, the pack-carrier has taken back their human dignity and reclaimed their own power to choose! Regarding the soldier “If he has enjoyed feeling superior to the vanquished, he will not enjoy it today. Imagine the situation of a Roman infantryman pleading with the Jew to give back his pack!”7

He continues, “Jesus does not encourage Jews to walk a second mile in order to build up merit in heaven, or to exercise a supererogatory piety, or to kill the soldier with kindness. He is helping an oppressed people find a way to protest and neutralize an onerous practice despised throughout the empire.” Now, one final note on these suggestions, all of them. “Such tactics can seldom be repeated. One can imagine that within days after the incidents that Jesus sought to provoke, the Powers That Be would pass new laws: penalties for nakedness in court, flogging for carrying a pack more than a mile! One must be creative, improvising new tactics to keep the opponent of balance. To those whose lifelong pattern has been to cringe before their masters, Jesus offers a way to liberate themselves from servile actions and a servile mentality. And he asserts that they can do this before there is a revolution.8”

That is, Jesus so deeply believed that everyone was created in the image of God and deserved to have utterly wonderful lives, that he took the time to assess the situations and come up with some really subversive answers to the problems people faced, solutions that restored their dignity. There is, you may have noticed, one more piece of advice, and it is one that is a challenge to many of us. “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” Wink says, “Such radical egalitarian sharing would be necessary to rescue impoverished Palestinian peasants from their plight; one need not posit an imminent end of history as the cause for such astonishing generosity. And yet none of this is new; Jesus is merely issuing a prophetic summons to Israel to observe the commandments pertaining to the sabbatical year enshrined in Torah, adapted to a new situation.” That is, for those who were poor to break out of the realities of staggering interest and taxes, they need to work together and not apart. They needed to overcome the stragety of divide and conquer with radical sharing.

In each of these recommendations in this tiny little piece of the gospel, Jesus recommends third ways. Neither passively accepting the oppression that dehumanizes the people nor fighting violence with violence. He recommends, wit, humor, solidarity, and making visible the problems that the system created. We don’t face exactly the same issues, but the SPIRIT of these commandments are a gift to us as a playbook for how to deal with oppression. Violence begets violence. Passivity in the face of violence changes nothing. But there are third ways, and I will say that I think God is really in favor of third ways and I’ve noticed that when I am stuck between two unacceptable options, and sit with them (and with God), God often nudges me toward a third way – a far more creative one that I could find on my own.

God calls the world from violence and oppression to peace and the radically embraced humanity of all. And the way from here to there, it turns out, involves creativity, wit, and humor. Let’s go! Amen

1 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) p. 176.

2 176.

3 176-7.

4 178.

5 179.

6 182.

7 182.

8 182-3.

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

June 30, 2024

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June 23, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Step One: Prepare the Soil” based on Hosea 8:1-7, 10:12-13 and Matthew 13:1-9

In my household we are determined, amateur gardeners. To be fair, we like it that way, we are well aware that there is a whole lot of knowledge out there if we wish to consume it. But mostly we like putting seeds in soil and watching to see if they’ll grow, and putting plants in soil and seeing how they’ll grow.

We’ve learned SOME things along the way. Among them: it is unwise to plant a garden in a place it is hard to water it. It is even more unwise to plant a garden in a place it doesn’t get enough sun. Oh, and also, not getting enough sun isn’t a problem that can be overcome. Let’s see – we’ve learned seedlings can’t be ignored for very long 😉 We’ve learned you CAN have too many tomatoes (but it is still a fun problem), and raspberry bushes grow AMAZINGLY fast – in the sun 😉 We’ve learned that full grown, orange pumpkins can HIDE in high clover. That was fun. This year I learned that I can mess up seeding soil, hopefully I won’t repeat that one.

And, of course, we’ve learned about weeds. Weeds are a funny – thing they’re very localized. Every time I’ve moved in my adult life I’ve had to learn by trial and error which things growing were weeds and which weren’t, and when we moved two years ago – all of 0.8 miles from our last home – we found ourselves fighting some very different invasive species. I’m not terribly fond of using the label weeds lightly – dandelions are a delight after all, but I’m OK with using it for invasive plants. Mostly. OK, I worry even then. God did create us all, even the ones labeled weeds.

But when I think about all I’ve learned about gardening – and heavens all I COULD learn about gardening – I’m also reminded of how radically different growing things is HERE versus in the climate of the Bible. To be fair, I haven’t attempted to grow anything in the Middle East., but I did spend 3 years in Southern California and on our seminary campus we had a Biblical garden because the climates were so similar it was easy to cultivate plants we wouldn’t otherwise know but read about in the Bible.

And Southern California, if you don’t know, is DRY. As a Northeastern-er, it boggled my mind how DRY it was. Much of the populated area is watered, so you see these green lawns that look a lot like the ones here (but take a lot more chemicals to maintain, and are really a terrible use of water…anyway…) but sometimes along a stretch of a road there would be spots that weren’t watered and they’d just be … barren. Like rocks and sand and nothing growing there. And my northeastern brain was just …. shocked? Amazed? Horrified? Mesmerized? I don’t know. It was really weird. I mean, we have raspberry pushes that sprout up in between the concrete blocks of a garden wall, or in mulch barely covering that plastic weed cover stuff. You can’t stop life around here if you TRY. Right? I mean, I’ve used a weed-wacker in the non-existence space between the road and the sidewalk – MANY TIMES.

But in the desert, where there isn’t water, there is just… space.

Which is helpful for me to remember when I hear this parable. Indeed, it is hard enough for things to grow in that climate that they can’t overcome being in rocky ground where roots can’t get down far enough to reach enough water. Plants can’t overcome being in the midst of thorny weeds, it is just too hard to fight for survival.

But oh, the seeds that do get into good soil, the things that they were able to do! Step one – good soil!

Yet, I think, it didn’t just take getting the seeds into good soil – although that part is imperative. It took getting them into good soil, and then getting water to them. It took getting them into good soil and then keeping those thorns from grown into the field. It took tending.

The sower did the first part and WOW, look what happens when seeds fall in the right spot. Seriously, this is why I garden – because I like this part. It is amazing, and wonderful, and also reminds me of the great mysteries within life itself, and the wonder that is life, and the ways that God is more than what we can perceive. We know that seeds need soil, water, and sun, but the something that helps a seed sprout is still a little miracle, every time, one that I imagine makes God smile too.

The growing isn’t done by sowing alone, but the sowing and the spouting is a particularly awe inspiring part. And, as Paul tends to remind us, it can be OK that one person sows and another waters and another tends, each part matters! And I think there is wonder in ALL of it. In each and every step.

Hosea urges the ancient Israelites to pay attention to what they’re planting. To stop plowing wickedness, so they stop reaping injustice. So they can stop eating lies. And instead to sow righteousness, and reap steadfast love. To see the harvest that can come come from sabbath and rest (for the land just like the people), to seek God and God’s goodness and let the kindom come.

Sow the seeds of goodness and wonder, says Hosea.

And watch the miracles unfold, says Matthew.

And then, in our book of modern day prophets, We Cry Justice, we are told to keep on sowing despite it all. To sow hope as an act of faithfulness. To plant peace because of war – because alternatives are needed. To seed love so that we can grow it long enough for it to bear more seeds to grow next time around.

There are a LOT of weeds in our societal garden – thorny ones. There are a lot of hungry birds swooping down to steal the seed. There are plenty of huge rocks, and there are places with too much sun and some with too little and heavens but most of the best soil is being cash-cropped by huge corporations spraying poisonous insecticides onto our food and into our water.

Which, I think, is the 21st century version of what Matthew was talking about anyway!

But God’s abundance made a lot of good soil, plenty of rain, and enough sun that shines on all of us. We can grow our contemporary versions “victory gardens” of peace, hope, and love. Even better, this applies both to the physical gardens some of us tend, and even more so to the metaphorical ones in our beings and our society.

Perhaps this is a good reminder to consider how our lives are being seeded -and with what. And what we are able to do to nurture the seeds we want, and to weed out the ones we don’t. How God is always there to help us tend the goodness within us, any time we’re ready to tend to things with God.

With God, we get to chose to hope, “despite of all the evidence.” We God, we get to pick peace, because God has planted it in our souls. With God, get to share love, because we have been lucky enough to know love.

Dear ones, I really do mean it. I think every seed that grows is a little miracle. Tomato, pepper, eggplant, hope, peace or love. And I’m grateful for our writer this week who said, “Whether we win or lose in the short term, we struggle against the wickedness of immoral policies. We sow righteousness as we plant seeds of organization and leadership and nourish them for times of even greater possibility.”1 That plants seeds in me – of hope, peace, and love. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Daniel Jones “A Hurt and Angry God” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 149.

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June 2, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Restore Us to Joy” based on Psalm 51:1-12 and John 3:1-10, 17-21

I chose as our “We Cry Justice” reading today the end of the essay, where the Rev. Chadwick powerfully invites us to think about transgressions as “lack of justice” – to move from a focus on individual sin to national/communal ones. She invites us to hear the words “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” as an invitation to remain steadfast in the work of justice, to move for structural change.

It is the core of her essay and it is fantastic. But it turns out that to make sense of the power of what she’s saying, you need to hear the beginning too:

Throughout history, the phrases of this psalm – “Have mercy on me, O God” and “Create in me a pure heart”- have often been read as words of penitence. They have been reworked and added to music, sung as a tune begging for forgiveness after individual transgression. And, indeed, they read easily that way: as though the writer has committed a sin and is seeking repentance and forgiveness for that individual act. … What if we read the psalm as lamenting something far more wicked: the sins of society that turns its back on the poor.1

I rather liked this idea, this movement from the individual transgressions to communal transgressions. It isn’t that I don’t believe both exist, but I don’t think individual transgressions ever happen in a vacuum apart from communal transgressions.

Her point about the psalm being set regularly to music is true too, although none of the 4 United Methodist hymnals I pick from most often had a song based on Psalm 51 that I could read without gagging. So I skipped them all. But there were plenty.

I got curious then, about if there is a reading of this Psalm in the communal that could be supported, say, by reading it in Hebrew or something. Quite often when you want a particular answer from the Bible you can find a scholar to tell you that thing. I pulled out my best commentary on the Psalms, the kind that devotes 30 pages to this one Psalm, and read along in order to discover that I could maybe make that point, but it would be a significant stretch. However, I did find some other great nuggets.

One I’m sharing not to make a broader point but because I simply adored it and can’t help myself, “Thus in Psalm 51 the supplicant appeals for mercy on the basis of God’s willingly assumed and continued obligation [God’s] “loyal-love” to act for the removal of anything, including guilt, which threatens the welfare of the individual (or people) for whom [God is responsible.”2 Isn’t that just beautiful? Both the assumption that God’s “loyal-love” is enough to rely on for forgiveness and that God’s desire is to remove anything INCLUDING GUILT that harms us? We may not spend a lot of time around here focusing on individual sins, but know that if we did, I’d be making that point EVERY TIME. And reminding us all that God is willing to help us even with our guilt, something we may need a lot of help with.

What I found most striking in the commentary on the Psalm were the lines that said this Psalm is hard to categorize because, “there is a full confession of sin which is without parallel in any other biblical psalm… The paucity in the Psalms of the confession of sin and pleading for forgiveness is striking.”3 So, I’ve heard A LOT about Psalm 51 in my years of Christianity. I’ve heard a lot of quotations of “Create in me a clean heart” and “purge me with hyssop” and even “against you and you alone have I sinned.”

Its been almost omnipresent in some parts of the church. Now this is when it is a little bit hard to be preaching here because a lot of you have no idea what I’m talking about and are now wondering what sorts of messed up conservative Christianity I’ve exposed myself to and I LOVE that you don’t know this. Those of you who have come along more recently though – please affirm that I’m not making this up? Thank you.

Psalm 51 is the Psalm for Ash Wednesday, and it comes up 3 other times in the Revised Common Lectionary, but I think it’s power is still bigger than its exposure in the Lectionary. Perhaps, we might say, people just need a way to express their need for forgiveness. Or, perhaps, we might say, Christianity has created a system whereby people are expected to feel awful about themselves and spend a lot of time begging for forgiveness. (See: mainstream Christianity how it thinks about sex.)

I fear there is far too much truth in that idea – that Christianity invites us to feel badly and beg for forgiveness. Now, I’m all for apologizing when we err, I’m delighted when I see signs of forgiveness between people, and I’m well aware we all make LOTS of mistakes every day. But I think a lot of Christianity sets us up to feel guilty about our humanity itself, and that’s where I get bent out of shape. Good news we got reminded God is willing to work with us on our guilt, huh?

Now, I think making people feel guilty is bad, full stop. But I am also concerned about Christianity telling people they’re bad for being humans because people feeling guilty and down on themselves fail to notice the bigger picture. They fail to see their goodness. AND they fail to see the real sins happening around them.

The opening quote to our We Cry Justice reading this week was from MLK.

“One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved… Instead of getting bogged down on one thing, Jesus looked at him, and said, ‘Nicodemus, you must be born again.’ … In other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.”

I believe that part of the work of faith development is the work of letting God unravel our internal “whole structure” over and over again, and build it back up better. And as we keep on moving closer and closer to grace, it enables us to see more clearly the world’s structures in need of change too. John reminds us that God wants to SAVE us, that is, bring us into wholeness, bring a new structure, make it one that works for everyone. And, John says, it requires us letting go of some of the things we think we know and making space for God stuff.

God stuff like everyone is made in the image of God, even the ones you like the least. God stuff like everyone deserves rest, and food, and shelter, even the ones who mooch. God stuff like the whole creation is sacred and we are called to care about all of it. God stuff like there are no hierarchies – no one is worth more than any other – and it is always a tragedy when God’s beloveds are harmed. God stuff like peace is the goal, and violence isn’t a part of the path to peace. God stuff like consuming will never bring us true joy. God stuff like we are already enough, and we need not fight to be worth God’s love for us. God stuff like healing is possible, and so is resurrection, and more can happen than we can even dream. God stuff like hope… despite it all. God stuff like being asked to let go of guilt so fuller life can happen in us.

AND God stuff like creating in us clean hearts so we can dream with God, and have mercy on us so we can learn mercy and do it.

God stuff. That salvation is also where our reading in the Psalm ends, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.” Joy! Being with God is a source of joy. To be with God is mean to be joy (not guilt.) Let’s attend to it. Amen

1Claire Chadwick, “Steadfast Spirit for Justice” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 151-2.

2Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51-100 in World Bible Commentary Series (USA: Zondervan 1991) Psalm 51 p. 13

3Ibid, page 8.

June 2, 2024

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

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May 26, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Starting With Care” based on Genesis 2:1-3 and Matthew 6:26-34

We’re going to start with the bad news: you can’t control anything.

Or, at least you can’t control anything important.

You can’t control how long you’ll live, what the quality of that living will be, what illnesses or injuries you will endure, how long your loved ones will live, if or when traumatic events will occur, nor how they’ll be responded to.

I was recently a part of a conversation about suffering led by a medical professional who – rather appropriately I thought – was worried about the fact that patients sometimes assume their suffering is God’s punishment. I agreed with him that this is just not TRUE, and it is awful to think that you are both in pain and that you deserve it. But, I am also aware that if pain and suffering aren’t a punishment from God, another option is that life is a crapshoot and there isn’t any meaning to be found in it – and for a whole lot of people that’s MORE uncomfortable than thinking God wills it. Because if God’s punishing them, or teaching them a lesson, then the suffering AT LEAST means something and maybe even has redemptive value. But if it was just a random thing, and it could have happened to anyone and just happened to happen to them – well, for a lot of people that’s WORSE.

Because then it is entirely out of their control. If God is punishing them, then IF ONLY they’d acted differently, then they could have prevented this from happening.

Right? It is an awful theology, but the human desire to pretend we have control is really quite powerful.

And, let’s be honest, we can’t control things but we can …. impact probabilities, right? Cancer is MORE likely if you smoke, if you don’t exercise, if you don’t eat well. Even better, you aren’t likely to get hurt falling off a rock wall if you don’t attempt to climb a rock wall. Right?

That said, once I broke a toe because a container of chili fell out of my freezer and landed on it. No rockwalls involved. Another time I sprained an ankle horribly – at the ski mountain – on the INDOOR stairs when I was grabbing lunch. Probabilities aren’t guarantees.

I find some comfort in the Matthew passage that tells us that worrying and trying to control the uncontrollable is in human nature. This one isn’t a modern day problem and we don’t have to blame the 24 hour news cycle, smartphones, or social media. This is a human problem. We are aware enough of the uncertainties of life to worry about what may happen.

Jesus seems to recommend not worrying about the little things – about eating and drinking and finding clothes. Which, funnily enough, were exactly things that most of his audience was worried about most of the time because he was speaking to people who often didn’t enough enough food, or drink, or a change of clothes.

In the face of their daily struggle for survival, Jesus says,

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

And I get his point. Life is vivacious, nature takes care of itself, hoarding is unnecessary, and truly no one is as beautiful as a flower. But also, I don’t get his point. Because it sounds a whole lot like saying, “Sure, there is a system of oppression out there that took away your family’s land and livelihood, and now you are hoping every day to get hired back to work the land so that you can afford to eat tonight, and sure you are likely to die soon of malnutrition, but don’t worry about it, God will take care of you.” And, while I TRULY believe that God does want to take care of everyone… well, deaths from malnutrition HAPPEN so it seems like that “promise” isn’t one that often works out.

Compassionate people don’t say to starving people, “don’t worry about food.”

So, what the heck is Jesus doing?

I think I did a bad job in picking this passage, particularly that I didn’t look at the verses PRECEEDING these ones. Namely, “No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” These lines are a big deal in the Bible. For a world in which people thought being wealthy was a sign of God’s favor, it really turns the tables. This passage encourages the poor while challenging the wealthy. And it is placed before the bit about the lilies of the field.

And I wonder if Jesus is at this point talking to wealthy people. The ones who DO have enough to eat, but are worried about it anyway. The ones who do have clothes, but fret that they’re not enough.

And I wonder, too, if Jesus is doing one of those really deep teaching things where he is saying to the poor – if you work together you’ll have enough, but when you have enough don’t worry about getting more like the rich people do. Trust in each other and God, don’t horde.

Furthermore, I think maybe Jesus wants those who are oppressed to look up long enough to see they system that is oppressing them, and that it isn’t God’s will. God made a world of abundance, PEOPLE are keeping each other from accessing it. Part of the problem of trying to survive is that you can be so pre-occupied with it that you don’t notice you shouldn’t have to fight that hard.

God made enough. It was true then, and it is true now, just as it is true that people died of not having enough then and people die of not having enough now. God made enough, people have distribution problems. And I think it’s OK to worry about the distribution problems.

I really appreciated this week’s essay from We Cry Justice. I’d like to read a little more of it to you:

God creates human partnerships. In short, God created a system whereby all material and emotional life is tended to. So if we are to be fruitful and multiply – if we are to add to creation – the systems we create must extend the provision of care.

…

Within us lies the potential to create and re-create a system that revolves around and produces care, a system where needs are met. We will need each other to do so. We will need to be in partnership, working together to be fruitful and multiply.1

We can’t CONTROL anything, although we can do a lot of damage trying. We can, however, be in partnership with each other and God and seek to “extend the provision of care.” We can choose to notice that care is inherent in creation, and that God’s care hasn’t changed. We can remind ourselves that there is ENOUGH, and that’s good. We can remember the lilies of the field – when they’re useful – that creation is beautiful and awe-inspiring.

(Image of mutual care: Ellis Nurses with supporters picketing for better care for their patients, and for each other. Photo by Sara Baron)

We can remember that things aren’t now as they should be, but they CAN get better, that God is working with us to make them better, that we’re working together, that many people are in this together. That we want a world where no one has to worry about what they will eat or drink or wear, because the resources of the world are abundant there is enough for everyone – and in the kindom of God the resources are shared with the abundance of God.

It is a dream worth holding onto, and remembering, and seeking. We can start with care. And every little bit helps. We can’t control it, but we can shape it. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Solita Alexander Riley “In the Beginning, There Was Care” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 145.

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

May 26, 2024

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May 12, 2024
by Sara Baron

“Hate Evil and Love Good” based on Amos 5:11-15 and Mark 11:15-19

Do you ever wish there weren’t quite so many tables that need to be turned over? I mean, Jesus was totally justified in his action. And it was brilliant, and I love it. In his non-violent direct action he managed to convey that the Temple had been co-opted by the Empire and was serving the Empire and not God. He reclaimed for the people the faith of their ancestors and put them on notice that the Temple was not representing that faith. Which likely they knew, but maybe some of them mostly ignored because it was too hard to admit that the Temple of Solomon was being used as a vehicle of oppression rather than freedom. Like Jesus’ parables, his actions bring into the light a lot of things that people would rather not see.

(Jesus Mafa image)

And, like Jesus’ parables, his actions freaked out the people in power. Mark seems on target in naming that this action was a part of the decision to kill him but Christianity has a terrible historical relationship with Judaism, and I want to be sure we name that the chief priests who are said to be conspiring to kill him were appointees of ROME and that was one of the concerns Jesus was raising. While nominally Jewish, they were a tool of oppression, rather than being guardians of God’s freedom.

I think this is one of the challenges of faith traditions. There is POWER in communities of faith, and there is power in faith leadership. We are working together to make meaning of the world around us, to listen for the voice of God, and we make assessment of what God likes and dislikes about the world around us. Which is our work. The meaning making work. But that means that whoever wants to oppress others really wants us on their side to claim they are doing right and not wrong, and heavens faith leaders quite often follow those leads and end up blessing and justifying all kinds of horrible things.

We have power, so people want to abuse it, and far too often they succeed. And Jesus, God love him, and others of God’s prophets call it out.

And there is a lot of calling how to do – both in the church and in the world. And I, for one, would be happier if there were less need. I read an opinion piece in the New York Times this week entitled “The Happiness Gap Between Left and Right Isn’t Closing” by Thomas Edsall. Apparently people have been studying this for 50 years and the left is simply less happy than the right. He wrote:

Those on the right are less likely to be angered or upset by social and economic inequities, believing that the system rewards those who work hard, that hierarchies are part of the natural order of things and that market outcomes are fundamentally fair.

Those on the left stand in opposition to each of these assessments of the social order, prompting frustration and discontent with the world around them.”1

Well, that’s a fair assessment, huh? Makes me wonder how Jesus felt about doing this Temple Protest. Was he angry? Sad? Simply resigned that it was necessary? All of it at once? Clearly he would have preferred his faith tradition NOT be co-opted for oppression, but I do wonder how he made sense of it.

According to the article,Timothy A. Judge, the chairman of the department of management and human resources at Notre Dame, has also written on happiness and the left and the right. There is an idea that taking on hierarchy, patriarchy, racism, and institutions is depressing because it is HARD, it is harder than believing you have a lot of control in the world. Judge says:

“I do share the perspective that a focus on status, hierarchies and institutions that reinforce privilege contributes to an external locus of control. And the reason is fairly straightforward. We can only change these things through collective and, often, policy initiatives — which tend to be complex, slow, often conflictual and outside our individual control.

On the other hand, if I view “life’s chances” (Virginia Woolf’s term) to be mostly dependent on my own agency, this reflects an internal focus, which will often depend on enacting initiatives largely within my control.”

As I read the article, I noticed that things were getting pretty interesting for me internally. First of all, I didn’t know progressives were less happy than our counterparts and I wanted it to be untrue. But, I couldn’t argue with the fact that it would be nicer to think that things are generally working than it is to notice that a whole lot of things are not working. That’s just TRUE. But by this point I was thinking about the reality of social change. It is unpleasant to deal with the brokenness of the world, but if we don’t deal with it, we just let it continue! And, yes, change is complex, slow, conflictual, and often what we can offer is only a tiny piece of what is needed. AND, … that’s just how it is!!!

Sure, it is nicer to only deal with things that we can control, but that would leave us complicit with injustice.

Furthermore, as I was reading, I found myself reliving so many conversations we’ve had around here. This stuff is really, really true. The author also quotes Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne, who:

“cites studies showing that strong ‘correlates of holding expansive concepts of harm were compassion-related trait values, left-liberal political attitudes and forms of morality associated with both.’ Holding expansive concepts of harm was also ‘associated with affective and cognitive empathy orientation and most strongly of all with endorsement of harm- and fairness-based morality.’ Many of these characteristics are associated with the political left.”2

And, another light bulb went off. We who are called to be compassionate and empathetic, and we who come to the world with some natural compassion and empathy and are able to maintain it despite the costs – it isn’t actually easy to face the world AND feel it.

When I say I wish there were fewer tables to be overturned, I mean I wish there was more justice and less need to work for it.

But, I’m so very grateful we have the example of Jesus overturning tables, and regularly messing with the status quo, and all the rest of the Bible doing the same, to keep us on our toes. I don’t want to be a faith leader who greats meaning for oppressors. I don’t think we want to be a faith community at peace with injustice. I don’t want to NEED to turn tables, I don’t think Jesus did either. But we do what needs to be done.

Interestingly, the article ended with another quote from Timothy Judge:

I know this is perhaps naïve. But if we give in to cynicism (that consensus can’t be found), that’s self-reinforcing, isn’t it? I think about the progress on how society now views sexual orientation and the success stories. The change was too slow, painful for many, but was there any other way?

Well, it turns out that’s pretty on point for us, huh? We’re now 28 years into being a Reconciling Congregation, a decision that was made carefully over 2 more years, and we are newly a part of denomination that doesn’t actively harm queer and trans people. Many of us have turned tables to create this change. Many have made meaning to help it be clear that God’s love isn’t small and judgmental but rather is enormous and life-giving. We have used our voices to bring change.

And, dear ones, I want to point out that from 1972 to 2019 things kept on getting worse and worse. At General Conference in 2016, Love Your Neighbor Coalition Volunteers were prepared to shut down General Conference AGAIN to prevent further harm. That threat, we believe, was part of the motivation to create the 2019 General Conference. And I promise you this – all the tables that were turned along the way were turned ON PURPOSE to bring the change. People know the win wasn’t going to come through legislation, nor the judicatory, and the only answer was to raise the temperature in the room.

And in 2019 the worst possible outcome came. The church doubled down on its homophobia, and in fact defined Christianity as a commitment to homophobia. It was unfathomably awful. We, here discussed if we would stay or go. We didn’t want to be a part of it anymore, but we didn’t want to give up either.

Today, it is clear that the organizing we did after 2019 and the disaffiliation process created by 2019 (which was intended to kick US out) created a new day. But until the votes started coming in for the “2020 General Conference” – the one that ended last week, don’t let the dates confuse you – until the votes started coming in we couldn’t believe it because we’d been hurt too many times.

For the rest of my life when someone says turning over tables doesn’t matter, I’ll know better because I’ve seen it work. For the rest of my life when things are very dark, when things look like death, I’ll remember that 2019 was the death of my hope in The United Methodist Church, AND that 2024 was its resurrection.

I wish there were fewer tables to turn, but it turns out there is ONE LESS table to turn. Thanks be to God. And it turns out it got turned because people stayed with empathy and compassion, because people worked together, because they stayed to do the hard work even when it seemed hopeless, because they didn’t give up. (Note, however, that some people had to take breaks, and some people had to leave, but COLLECTIVELY we kept going. Justice work includes taking breaks.)

Amos nails it:

Seek good and not evil, so that you may live,

and so that YWHW God Omnipotent

may truly be with you as you have been claiming.
Hate what is evil and love what is good

maintain justice at the city games. (5:14-15a, Inclusive Bible)

Dear ones, we are called to seek good and not evil, to hate what is evil and love what is good. And it is HARD to stay in this work and see what is wrong and feel how much harm is done, and have hope. But, hope is worth having, because as we’ve been saying all along, “Love wins in the end, and if Love hasn’t won, it isn’t over yet.” And at least on one thing, Love has won, and that reminds me that I can trust that God who is Love will ALWAYS win. Amen

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/opinion/conservatives-liberals-depression-anxiety.html

2Ibid