RevSaraEBaron – Page 3 – First United Methodist Church Schenectady

“Shouting Stones” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-19; Luke 19:28-40

March 20, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I heard a story once of a United Methodist Church invited to be a part of a local Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It was a small church, they didn’t feel like they make much of a difference, but they were invited and they went! A few weeks ahead of time they’d left fliers along the parade route letting residents know that they’d be collecting underwear and socks for kids as they paraded. When the day came it was a bit cold and definitely cloudy. They were near the end of the parade, and not all of them wanted to go after all. But they did it anyway.

The parade route wound through a residential area and when the church group passed by (complete with a BIG sign), residents would yell after them “hey! Wait! I’ve got something for you!” and they’d watch as people ran into their houses and ran back out with the gifts for children. It was amazing, as not all of the residents seemed to have much to share.

Near the end of the route, standing in front of a gas station, came a young boy carrying as many cans of soup as he could hold. He stuck them in the arms of the ones closest to him and said, “These are for the hungry children!” The church didn’t correct him, they took the gift and added it to their pile.

Afterward, they reflected on their experience and realized that most of the people on that route weren’t church goers, didn’t have much to spare, and they might have though wouldn’t care about kids needing new socks … and yet they RAN to give their gifts! They didn’t want to be left behind. They -and that one young boy with the soup especially – CARED and they had gifts they wanted to offer. The church had made it possible for the people to give gifts they wanted to give!

In so many ways, that Saint Patrick’s Day parade embodies the spirit of Palm Sunday!

Now, Jesus wasn’t the only one going into Jerusalem around that time. The Passover was a holy celebration, and many pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate it. The city got 5 times bigger at Passover with so many people coming in. In fact, that’s the reason that Pilate, as the Roman appointed governor came into the city at Passover. They were worried that with all those people together celebrating the Passover things might get unruly.

As a reminder, the Jewish holiday of Passover remembers God’s saving actions in freeing the Israelites from their oppressors in Egypt. So, a whole bunch of Israelites oppressed by the Roman Empire were gathering together in their former capital to celebrate God’s actions to free them from oppression, and it made their current oppressors nervous.

That’s why Pilate came in every year. It was a good time to have some extra Roman military power, to remind the people that they would not stand for a revolt or any sort of rebellion. Pilate came in with all the flash and glory of the Empire – showing of the Empire’s power and threatening anyone who would deny the Empire the right to rule Israel. He came in from the coast – from the west, riding a horse, with drums and golden eagle flags and flash and power.

Jesus came in from the East. He came riding on the donkey – fulfilling a Jewish prophesy about God’s appointed King who would free them from oppression. That is, Zechariah 9:9b, “Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Riding a donkey was also the way that King Solomon entered when he became king. In fact, I’ve heard it suggested in that in the ancient Middle East Kings rode horses to war, but rode donkeys when they came in peace.¹ Some of the people were at the Western Gate greeting the power of the Empire. Some of the people were parading with Jesus toward the Eastern gate. Most of them were people without any hope of access to power or money through the economic system that existed within the Roman Empire. Yet, they had hope that God’s actions through Jesus might make a difference for them.

They were excited and hopeful, and they were yelling. The Gospel says they were yelling, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“ To our ears that may sound pretty standard. It certainly excesses exuberance, but it also just sounds like…. the Bible. So, if you aren’t paying attention to it, you might not notice that what they were saying was sedition!²

Israel was a part of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Caesar was the King – God was not, and Jesus was not. Rome ruled Israel, God did not.

Jesus was riding a donkey, which was the way that kings entered Jerusalem. He had a crowd around him supporting him. They were waving Palm branches, which were essentially the national flag of Israel, and they were proclaiming LOUDLY that Jesus was the king – and the one appointed by God. These were words and actions of a rebellion against the Empire – at exactly the same time that the army was coming into the city to stop rebellions.

There were some who tried to silence the crowds – to warn them of what would happen if the Roman Empire found out that people were yelling such things. But Jesus responds that they can’t be silenced. He suggests that the movement has begun and it is unstoppable. He uses the metaphor that if the people were silenced the stones would start shouting. As a child I took that literally, but these days I tend to think it means that the energy and hope of the movement couldn’t be silenced.

Jesus would end up dead by the end of the week, killed for leading a VIOLENT revolt against the Empire. Of course, it wasn’t violent, but it was a revolt. They thought that if they killed him, the movement would stop. We today are the proof that the stones would shout out – the movement can’t be silenced.

It is like the St. Patty’s day parade and the people running from their homes with their hands full of underwear. You’d think they didn’t have anything to give, but it didn’t stop them from giving it! You’d think the Israelite peasants would be too scared to rebel, but they were unstoppable. You’d think the movement started by a backwater Jew in an an Empire from 2000 years ago would have stopped by now, but it hasn’t. The stones still cry out.

For more than a year now I’ve been working with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition in preparation for General Conference in May. As a person who has studied math, and a person paying attention to demographics in The United Methodist Church I have a lot of clarity about what to expect from General Conference: a whole lot of pain and a hard shift towards a more conservative church. The question is how conservative it will become. There have been a lot of times when I’ve wondered why I’m doing progressive organizing in a church where putting our stamp of approval on a piece of legislation almost guarantees that it won’t pass. There have been plenty of times since my first trip to General Conference in 2004 where I have wondered why I stay in this denomination that does such great harm to my sisters and brothers in faith who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual.

I don’t think the people who waved palm branches and shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were stupid. They knew for sure that it was an act of rebellion, they knew it was seriously dangerous for them and for Jesus, and I suspect they knew that it was REALLY REALLY unlikely that Jesus would live to be king. I can’t be sure what any of them thought, but the Gospels themselves make it clear that Jesus knew the actions of Palm Sunday would get him killed, and I suspect most of the participants did too.

So why did they do it? They were desperate and there was very little reason to have hope outside of the Jesus movement. Peasants were dying young after living lives of hard labor and undernourishment. There wasn’t any reason to believe that would change on its own. Jesus brought hope. He brought a message that was different: showing people ways to work together to have enough, suggesting that the values of the world were all messed up, seeing and caring about women, children, people who were ill or injured, and people living in poverty. Jesus was the living reminder that God still cared, that steadfast love endures forever. They voted for that with their lives and their livelihoods. The cloaks they spread were often the only thing keeping them alive at night, protecting them from the desert night’s chill, and they choose to lay their cloaks before Jesus just like they choose to shout the words that could get them all killed.

They knew they might all die, and it was worth it anyway to have a reason to hope in God.

That sure makes General Conference seem less important! But truth be told, as much as I know that General Conference will be a disaster from a progressive perspective, I have a tiny bit of hope. There are some good things that might happen: legislation written by UM clergy with disabilities to expand the denomination’s care for people with disabilities will likely pass! The work done by Fossil Free UMC to get the denomination’s resources out of fossil fuels might pass and similar work done to get resources out of companies that support the occupation of Palestine might too. (And since our pension plan is worth ~$21 billion, what we do with our investments MATTERS.) And maybe, just maybe, even though it is a long shot, we might pass the legislation that creates global equity in The United Methodist Church and makes us true sisters and brothers with United Methodists outside of the United States.

Most of the injustices of the church will stand, I suspect there will be MORE injustice when we’re done with General Conference then there are now, and yet I’m going to go and work on organizing the progressive voice because I believe that calling for justice in the church and the world is the work of God. And maybe, just maybe, the Spirit will find a way to bring more good than bad out of it all. God has done weirder things already, even if it seems statistically unlikely to me!

Those Palm Sunday crowds took risks for the sake of hope.

They paid attention to what God was up to, even when chances were very slim that God’s loving-kindness and justice would end up in charge. They celebrated God, and they celebrated hope, and they came together cheering for possibility – even though it was dangerous to their LIVES.

They took risks for the sake of hope.

May we do the same.

Amen

___

1 http://www.gotquestions.org/king-ride-donkey.html

2The gist of this whole sermon comes from Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan’s book “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem” (Harper Collins: 2006). This is one of the most important books I’ve read in terms of reframing my understanding of Palm Sunday, and a whole lot of other things.

–

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

March 20, 2016

Sermons

“Questions about Mary (of Bethany)”based on John 12:1-8

March 13, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A few years ago at Thanksgiving, my immediate family spent time watching videos from the years my brother and I were kids. My grandfather had acquired a video camera when I was about 8, and I have very clear memories of trying to avoid the camera like the plague, although I seemingly failed. There were a lot of learnings in the watching of those videos, but I want to tell you today about just one. I learned that my grandfather had an accent!

This was mind blowing information for me. We were VERY close to our grandparents growing up, we spent all holidays and birthdays together, and weekends at their house. He was probably my favorite person to ever walk the face of the earth, and it is because of how he loved me that I can comprehend God’s love as unconditional.

However, I didn’t know he had an accent. He died when I was TWENTY, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t until he’d been dead for more than a decade and then I heard his voice again that I was able to hear it. Until that point he’d been so close to me that it hadn’t occurred to me that anything was out of the ordinary about him – mostly I guess because he was my ordinary. It is also possible that I’m an idiot. I’m not sure.

But I’m going with the point that overfamiliarity can blind us. I’m going with that point because I was reading the gospel this week and the WORLD’S MOST OBVIOUS question jumped out at me. It is, of course, not one that I’ve ever thought over before, even though I’ve heard this story and ones like it plenty of times, and likely preached them – often.

Ready?

Why were Martha, Mary, and Lazarus all living together? They’re presented as adults, and their own parents aren’t mentioned. They are said to be siblings, but no spouses are mentioned, and they’re all in the same household. This wasn’t a THING. Unlike 2016 where singleness in adulthood is normal, and this would simply be a notable attribute along the lines of “Oh, yeah, Mary’s cool. In fact, she’s so cool that she can manage to live with her sister and brother! They rent a place in Bellevue.”

Adult singleness and adult siblings living together was significantly less common 2000 years ago in Israel. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to identify a lot of scholarship on this issue. It seems, as per normal, that my questions aren’t what anyone else wants to answer. I did find a few articles, but I have some questions about the validity of their scholarship.¹ Basically there appear to be a few theories about why Martha, Mary, and Lazarus are all living together in their adulthoods:

They are actually quite young, and in fact too young to be married. This would be REALLY young, as average marriage age (of women) was between 14 and 16.

The women may be widows who didn’t remarry.

Martha and Mary may have “belonged to an ascetic sect and had chosen singleness and celibacy.”²

In particular, “It is believed that a colony of ascetics (perhaps Essenes) lived in Bethany. Literary evidence from one the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that these ascetics had a hospice in Bethany for the ritually unclean, which included lepers . The ascetics were known for their acts of charity and it is most likely that their hospice also helped and accommodated the poor and destitute.”³

There are a few other little things that I learned along the way in asking this question that I just have to share with you because they’re wonderful. First of all, Martha may not have been Martha’s name. “The name ‘Martha’ is the feminine form of an Aramaic word meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’, so ‘Martha’ may be a title rather than a name.”⁴ Also, in all of the gospels, Martha is mentioned first which means that she likely was the older, so this makes all the more sense. This implies that no matter how this went down, Jesus kept visiting a female dominated household. (Also, I sort of want to name a daughter Martha now.)

Next, it seems likely that Lazarus was their little brother. He never has a speaking role, which would make the most sense if he was young. This also makes his death (which was related in the chapter prior to our gospel reading today) all the more sad. I think it is unlikely that Lazarus was a child though. Jesus was really open minded, and broke open barriers with his “let the children come to me” line, but I don’t think that a child would be referred to as “he whom you love”. That, for me, suggests that they may not have all been that young. If Lazarus was “an adult” (whatever that meant at the time, but at least a teenager) but was the younger brother, then Martha and Mary were clearly above normal marrying age. Yet, I would guess that if Lazarus was an adult then he’d be called Master of the household. Perhaps Lazarus was a man with special needs, which would make this all even more awesome.

Yet, really, who knows?

There is always the third option. Bethany, the town in which they’re said to reside, means “Poor House” or “House of Misery”.⁵ It is even suggested that as “Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem which made it a perfect location for a hospice for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem who became ritually unclean and were unable to participate in the Jewish festivals.”⁶ As residents of Bethany, it isn’t all that unlikely that the family was involved in running a hospice of sorts. In fact, it would make sense out of this story itself! How did Mary happen to have a nard of perfume worth a year’s wages for a laborer? It would be reasonable that she might have gotten it as a gift from a wealthy former patient.

On the other hand, it could just be that this was a wealthy family headed by Martha, and supportive of Jesus. We don’t know. If they weren’t running a hospice, then it is notable that they had a house large enough to offer hospitality to Jesus AND his disciples (and their families) and the capacity to feed them all, which would be consistent with having enough wealth to own expensive perfume as well. They wouldn’t be the only wealthy, female dominated household that identified with the early Jesus movement either, so that could be.

While I’m muddying waters, I also want to mention that I’m pretty confused about how Jesus MET these siblings anyway. He’s from up north, in Galilee. Its almost a 100 miles away. He is clearly really close to them, and they show up in all the Gospels. This family matters to Jesus. But he spends his life and ministry in Galilee and only visits Jerusalem. In the gospel of John, Jesus is killed because he raises Lazarus from the dead, but he is called to their house because of his existent relationship with them, which we haven’t heard about until he is called. He was already in the area though. How did they know each other? How did they become so close? Mary presents as a disciple. Lazarus is called beloved. Martha and Mary both presume the right to chide Jesus. Don’t you just want to know?

Me too. But I have no theories on this. Sometimes love happens between people (including the deep friendship kind), and it is always amazing. It seems it was amazing for Jesus too. There is perhaps ONE clue. The passage states that the perfume filled the room. That is, it says, “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” This sounds A LOT like Song of Solomon 1:12, “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.” Maybe, just maybe, Jesus and Mary were courting. This is mostly fun because when people tend to theorize about romantic relationships for Jesus, they usually pick Mary of Magdala instead of Mary of Bethany. I’m a rebel.

Now, I have two last things to clarify, this time about our gospel lesson in particular. John’s story is different from the other versions of this story. The setting is different (in the synoptics it happens at Simon the Leper’s house), the woman is different (not a prostitute here), and the location of the perfume is different (it is on his head in the other versions). Only John tells this crazy story of Mary anointing his FEET and them wiping them off with her HAIR. It is also only John who presents the action of Jesus on the last night he was with them as being FOOT WASHING and not the Last Supper. That means that Mary’s action of washing Jesus feet comes before Jesus chooses to wash his disciples’ feet… almost as if Jesus found the experience so moving that he let it define his ritual of goodbye to his followers.

Also, when Jesus says, “the poor you will always have with you” he is likely quoting Deuteronomy 15:11 which in the NRSV reads “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” It isn’t a passive acceptance of poverty (which I always worried about) but a commandment to share. However, even as he quotes the scripture, he goes on to say, “BUT you will not always have me.” Whoever poured the perfume, wherever, in all the stories Jesus defends the action. One commentator says, “What church serious about discipleship does not struggle with the tension between money spent in beautiful acts of worship and money spent on behalf of the poor?”⁷ AMEN to that. The affirmation of this passage is of that tension, that both beauty and a response to poverty are necessary.

As in this sermon, life often has more questions than answers. This passage sure does, even though its familiarity can be blinding. That’s true of a lot of the Bible, at least for me. There are some great take aways from this, even in the midst of all the questions though: Jesus had the capacity to form deep, meaningful friendships – including with strong women. Therefore relationships REALLY matter. Beauty has inherent value, as does taking care of each other. And the way we follow is a way of servant leadership – of foot washing – and radical expression of love. May both the questions and the answer bless us all this week. Amen

1Issues: lack of doctorate; way of describing Christianity; and lack of footnotes. Presumably the last one should matter the most, as I don’t have a doctorate either.

2“Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany” in New Life written by Marg Mowczko found at http://newlife.id.au/christian-living/martha-mary-and-lazarus-of-bethany/ on March 12, 2016.

3Ibid

4Ibid. (I really liked this article, I just wish it was better footnoted…)

5Ibid

6Ibid

7H. Stephen Shoemaker, “Homiletical Perspective on John 12:1-8” in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 2 ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) p. 145.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 13, 2016

Sermons

“On Bread” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Luke 4:1-13

February 14, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It does not require an advanced degree in logic, nor a working knowledge of Greek to have a big question about this passage. Here we go: as Jesus was alone in the desert until the questionable appearance of the Tempter, there was no one there to witness and tell the story. Furthermore, I’m comfortable guessing that Jesus didn’t tell his disciples so they could write it down later. It feels too brag-y for that. These two factors decrease the likelihood that this is the telling of a story that happened, and increase the likelihood that the story is being told to make a point (or points?).

The story shows up in Mark and Matthew as well, with some changes, meaning that a bunch of people found it worthwhile. So, what value is there in telling a story of Jesus’ temptation? Let’s start by considering it’s location in Luke. The story of Jesus’ birth and childhood take up Luke 1 and 2. Luke 3 mostly concerns John the Baptist – his ministry, teaching, and imprisonment – and then moves on to Jesus’ baptism and then Jesus’ genealogy. Then we get this story, which is followed by Jesus’ first teachings and then his first healing and THEN the call of the disciples. This story is really early, as if it is trying to clarify who Jesus is.

I found a few excellent theories on what is going on here. The Jesus seminar says, “Luke utilizes this story in the manner of a Greco-Roman biography: he has placed an ordeal story between an account of the hero’s remarkable birth and the beginning of his career, as a way of foreshadowing his life and destiny.”¹ That seems fair, yet still leave me wondering why THIS story is the one chosen.

Alan Culpepper in the New Interpreter’s Bible comes up with a number of theories, I’m going to share only the ones I found enlightening. He suggests that for those who had been expecting a Messiah, there were significant questions about what kind of Messiah would come. Would the Messiah be a royal Messiah bringing back the kingdom of Israel? Would the Messiah be a priestly Messiah purifying the rituals of the Temple? This story clarifies that Jesus won’t misuse his power and isn’t going to do party tricks with his power either. At the very least then, if he won’t misuse his power, he won’t be a bad king, and if he won’t do party trick with his power, he won’t be a bad priest.

It connects Jesus with the history of Israel (a theory we’ll return to) and gives the followers of Jesus a model for resisting temptation. Culpepper also offers an intriguing point about the gospel of John, which does not include this story. Instead, he suggests that there are stories in the Gospel of John that form a basis for Jesus being tempted and resisting temptation in each of these ways. Therefore, the Synoptic version is a condensed poetic expression of what to expect from Jesus.²

Amy Jill Levine in points out in The Jewish Annotated New Testament made extra clear the connections to the Hebrew Bible. First of all, having Jesus in the desert for 40 days “recalls Israel’s testing”.³ That I could have come up with on my own, but then she points out that it connects Jesus to Moses and Elijah. In Deuteronomy 9:9, Moses says, “When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain for forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water.” 1 Kings 19:8 speaks of Elijah, “He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.” Who knew that the Transfiguration was foreshadowed in Luke? (Not me.) Amy Jill Levine also helps with understanding the role of the Devil in this story. She says that Satan, in Jewish thought is a member of the heavenly court, his role is to test the righteous.”⁴ Now, this doesn’t FIX the story for me, nor does it make me comfortable talking about a personification of temptation, but it softens it enough to make it usable.

Let’s review. Basic theories as to why this story would be included in the Gospels: because Greco-Roman biographies included a story of testing, to clarify what kind of Messiah Jesus was, to show people how to resist temptation (although I’m not sure that quoting scripture really WORKS for this), to establish the trustability of Jesus, to connect Jesus to the history of Israel and Moses and Elijah. If a few of those are actually true, then the story seems to have sufficient reason to exist.

Now that we’re clear on that, I’d like to obsess over the first bit of the story – the temptation regarding bread. I’m still a little testy on this one. It helps a little bit to think of this story as Jesus’ vision quest, but I worry that Jesus simply didn’t have enough money to have enough excess fat on him to be able to survive so long in the desert without food. That is likely taking the story too literally though. More so, I’m concerned about the presentation of food as temptation, and the giving up of food as God-desired sacrifice.

Wandering for 40 days in the desert is certainly a way of recalling the desert wanderings of the people under the leadership of Moses – but they got manna to eat. Of course, both Moses and Elijah are said to go as long with out food, and I suspect the underlying point in both is that God will take care of them, just as the story of the manna in the desert is mean to imply. I am a bit distracted by the rocks that Jesus is said to be tempted to make into bread. I’m not sure why you’d start with rocks anyway, unless you were trying to connect the rocks to the ones that get mentioned in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem story. Remember? The crowds are cheering Jesus and, “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.” (Luke 19:39-40) While in the beginning of his ministry Jesus shows constraint in his power, it seems like the Gospel suggests that there is an unstoppable growth in the power and energy that surrounds Jesus. Perhaps, in fact, it suggests that while Jesus self-constrains, following Jesus has an energy of its own! I’m not sure, but I think it is interesting.

The passage from Deuteronomy is, like all of Deuteronomy, attributed to Moses as a speech. I think it is one of the more profound passages of the Bible. Moses speaks of the future, to the people who are said to be standing outside the Promised Land looking into it with wonder. Moses will die before they enter. He says them, when you have come into the land and posses it, and settled into it… and all of the instructions we hear today are for that time, although they are spoken to people who are not yet in the land. Deuteronomy tends to conflate generations in meaningful ways, moving backward and forward in time through them.

When a generation came who had settled the land and brought forth fruit from it, they were then to take the first fruits of the land to a priest with a particular story of remembrance. I want you to hear it again,

“Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us. A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.”

Do you hear all the generations? There is the one bringing the fruit, and the ones who lived with the promise of the land, but outside of it. There is a reference to Abraham, the wandering Aramean (and PLEASE remember that this reference to Abraham with today’s national borders would make him a Syrian refugee), the sons of Jacob who went to Egypt, and the many generations who lived there, the generation of the exodus, and the generation who settled the land. All of them interact in this retelling of the story, and the speaker is all of them at once. The best part though, is the conclusion. After the first fruits have been gathered, and taken to the priest in ritual, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.” The people are all to eat together in remembrance and celebration.

The generations who knew wealth and plenty remembered what it was to know hardship and hunger, and the celebration of having food becomes the invitation to those who don’t have food to share the bounty. It is a bit like our Community Breakfast, isn’t it? It is a bit like the gifts we give to the church, also.

I’m struck by the contrasting ideas of bread. Granted, the first fruits may not literally have been bread, but let’s assume some of them were grain that may or may not have been baked into bread. It would become bread eventually, so go with me. In Deuteronomy the bread is a blessing, one that moves a person to rituals of gratitude and celebrations of sharing. The bread becomes the reminder of the times without bread, and is thus both a blessing and a symbol of humility. In the Gospel the bread is a temptation, it is a symbol of weakness that the human body would desire food. The comparative Hebrew Bible passages infer that food was unnecessary because of the presence and care of God, but the Gospel acknowledges Jesus’ hunger and need for food, but takes it as weakness. (And people wonder why I like the Hebrew Bible???) In this premise, where bread is temptation, Jesus is good because he doe not bending to the human need for nourishment. This is the same bread that is used in sacrament “This is my body” and in table fellowship, in the giving of the first fruits, and the sharing of the table with Levites and foreigners.

There are those who say that Jesus did well in resisting the temptation, because the temptation was to use his power for his own good. To them I reply: some of our power in life must be used for our own good, God would have it be that way. God does not want us to give away all of our life power and goodness. God calls for everyone to have a full and abundant life. Sometime a sacrifice is called for in order to care for the greater good, but there is no value in sacrificing what is wonderful JUST TO DO SO.

I’m going to assume instead that Jesus had been hungry in the desert long enough to be having delusions, and one of them was that a stone looked like bread. He responded to the delusion with a refusal to break his teeth on a stone, aware that his mind was playing tricks on him. I assume this because along with Deuteronomy and the Communion Table, I affirm that bread and food are good gifts from God with physical and symbolic value. When a person is hungry we are instructed to feed them. That includes ourselves. May we remember the wonder that comes with the food we eat, and the nourishment it gives us, and may we come to every table with gratitude for food and awareness calling us to feed those who are hungry. May we let go of the assumption that sacrifice is inherently good, and return to a sense of the holiness of every day items – including food. Amen

1Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 278.

2 R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994): 97-98.

3Amy Jill Levine “Notes on Luke” in 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), 106.

4Ibid.

–

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

February 14, 2016

Sermons

“The Value of Mountaintops” based on Exodus 34:29-34 and Luke…

February 8, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The story of the Transfiguration, as the Gospel lesson is called, comes up every year the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Conveniently, it is found in each of the synoptic Gospels, so there is a different version for every year. Basically, I’m saying that this is the 10^th year in a row that I’ve preached on this story, and I’m sort of amazed that there are new things to notice in it.

The first thing came from this line, “Just as [Moses and Elijah] were leaving Jesus, Peter said to Jesus “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said.” It is easy to assume that this is just another story of Peter being an idiot, because if you pay attention to the Gospels that’s a major theme. I’ve suggested that in the past, and talked about how human it is to want to hold on to a moment and memorialize it in physical space. I’ve talked about Peter talking because he is anxious, and not even listening to himself, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Another possibility occurred to me this week. I thought to ask, “where is the mountaintop” and while the particular mountain isn’t definitive, the answer is that it is somewhere in Galilee. That answer is enough. One of the major theological splits between the Southern Kingdom (Judah) and the Northern Kingdom (Israel) was over the correct place to worship YHWH. The Temple was in the South, and the Southerners claimed that the Temple had special significance as a worship center. They dismissed the Northerners as “just worshiping in high places” as if that was heathen.

In fact, the Northerners often DID worship in high places. They built altars and worship spaces on mountaintops and (you’d hope) had pretty great worship experiences there. There really is something profound about being on a mountaintop and the closeness to God experienced there. Perhaps it is the view. Perhaps it is the starkness. Perhaps it is the journey required to get there. Perhaps it is the wind, and the clouds, and the experience of exposure. Perhaps it is the oxygen deprivation. (Really, the mountains in Israel are like the medium sized Catskill mountains. It wasn’t oxygen deprivation.) In any case, the people in the North had been settling up worship sites on mountains for many centuries, while the people in the South had decried it as heresy.

Galilee (in the North), in the time of Jesus, was resettled by Judeans (Southern) who were reclaiming it as a Jewish space. It may be that Peter’s seemingly simple/idiotic ramblings reflected a pretty serious cultural clash in the region they were in. The Gospel of John presents Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman by the well and claiming that God can be worshiped ANYWHERE. The Synoptics don’t have that story. The Gospel of John was written well after the fall of the Temple, while the Synoptic were written in the more immediate aftermath of the fall. I think Peter MAY have been expressing a natural human tendency to want to build a space to give thanks to God on that mountaintop. And I think it may have been heard as heresy!! In fact, I think the story may truncate there because the early Jesus followers weren’t quite sure what do to with the heresy.

Of course, the Northerners weren’t the only ones to have mountaintop experiences. The Hebrew Bible reading tells of Moses coming back down off the mountain where he’d been “conversing with God” and he was so strongly transformed by it that he had a freaky glow to him. There IS something about mountaintops. Sometimes the people who go up them come back quite a bit different.

The second thing that emerged from the gospel reading today came from a colleague in my lectionary group who said, “Hey, isn’t the voice of God literally in the feminine?” I had no idea, but I looked it up and it is! “Voice of God” in Hebrew is bat(h) kol which is literally “daughter of a voice.” Apparently, no matter how wonderful Morgan Freedman is at “playing God,” his voice is all wrong! I’ve been at so many plays and skits and movies where God’s voice has been presumed to be a bass, and yet the words “voice of God” connotes the feminine.

It was at that point that I realized that even in the lesson Gospel I’d always heard the voice of God as male. How is it different if it really is just “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!“ without assuming that me saying it is a little bit wrong? Similarly, how different is it to consider that Moses might have been up the mountain for 40 days hearing a feminine voice telling him all sorts of wisdom and giving guidance?

Now, of course, I’m NOT suggesting that God has a gender, and I’m NOT suggesting that God really speaks like a human and therefore I’m certainly NOT suggesting that God speaks like a girl or woman. I am suggesting that projecting a masculine tone onto God’s voice is inaccurate to Hebrew, and that should keep us all on our toes.

Today is “Camp Sunday,” specially designed to try to get everyone excited about camp and the great things that happen there. It is more toned down than last year because… well, you can’t go big every year. So really, this means that the songs are camp favorites and I get to talk about camp. It has turned out to be remarkably helpful that it is also transfiguration Sunday, as the mountaintop experience of God thing is basically what I’m talking about.

Now, camp is definitely for kids, but it isn’t JUST for kids. As a church, we put down a deposit for the weekend BEFORE Labor Day at Sky Lake for an All Church Retreat with Sabine O’Hara. That’s an experience designed for all ages. All of the Upper New York Camps are also retreat centers, and that’s a great gift for anyone needing to get away. Yet, they started as camps, and that’s important too. For some of you, this is a subtle invitation to consider volunteer counseling. For some of you, this is a mostly irrelevant set of (hopefully uplifting stories). For some of you, this is the motivation you’ve been needing to talk to a kid in your life about camp. But best of all, for some of you, this is an invitation to get yourself to CAMP.

I’ve been thinking this week about what camp was like for me as a camper. At first, it was scary. Simply being away in an unknown environment was overwhelming. Luckily, the first time I went to camp, my pastor’s wife was my counselor and one of my church friends was my cabin mate. My brother and his best friend from church were also at camp, and that made for an easy transition. After that first year, I didn’t care who was there, because I’d realized that at camp I was welcome and liked for who I was.

That may not sound like much, but it was to me. I was a really socially awkward kid, and I got picked on a lot at school. I hadn’t experienced social success in my life until I went to camp. Being in the naturally supportive environment, with an emphasis on cooperation and fun, I was able to thrive and make real connections. I was included, and a part of the group, friends with my cabin mates and family group. I “fit.”

The experience of being welcome, included, and connected changed the way I saw myself, maybe a bit like Moses looking different to others when he came down the mountain. I began to believe it was possible that I could be likable, and that was amazing!

Of course, the way that it all happens at camp is sort of mysterious. Having done 61 weeks at Sky Lake, I still don’t quite know how it works. The components don’t seem like they should be able to add up to the whole. There are meals, some of them cooked over a campfire. There are songs, some of them about God. There is time to swim and boat, to hike and do crafts. There is Bible Study, and there are games. There is usually a dance and often a talent show. Ice cream is usually made, tie die is created, and personal hygiene is occasionally cared for. There is a lot of silliness: water ballet, mud hikes, wacky outfits, kumbaya marathons, belly flop contests (ow!), exceptionally loud praying, and/or ridiculous songs. There is a lot of sacredness: fog on the water, the call of birds, quiet stillness, deep friendships, cooperation and support, laughter, tears, healing, worship, and nature. And somehow, each and every week ends up being a mountaintop experience.

Sometimes I get curious about it. How does it ALWAYS work? What are the component parts that make it work? Why does it work just as well when it is cold and raining as when it is warm and beautiful or miserably hot? Why is it just as great with all ages and ability levels? Why is it always the same and always different?

Why does Christian camping share God’s love so well?? Why are people able to be so much more authentic and supportive at camp than anywhere else? Why is it OK to be who you are at camp when it isn’t at home? How does it WORK? It is a mystery, but it always works. Not every camper (or counselor) has a good week every week, but every week amazing and beautiful things happen and people leave transformed. Camp isn’t for everyone – or so I hear – but for many people it is the most loving (and fun!) place they’ll ever go.

Ever since I first went to camp I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the world more like camp. Eventually I learned the language for kin-dom of God and realized that it IS the world as camp (yet somehow with less bugs for those who need less bugs to have a good time). Mountaintops are very important – both physically and metaphorically – because they help us gain a vision of what IS and what can be. Sometimes the descent is rough and the transition back into “real life” is challenging, but the lessons learned on a mountain can change a whole life, and sometimes a whole society (Moses) or the whole world (the disciples). May it ever be so. Amen

–

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

February 7, 2016

Sermons

“Chosen from Many” Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 4:21-30

January 31, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Last weekend the Al-Hidaya Islamic Community Center of Troy and Latham had an open house in their new facility in Latham. It is beautiful space. They’ve been thoughtful about everything. The intersections of ancient symbolism and modern convenience were pretty astounding. In the large gathering space that serves as an entrance to the worship space there are 5 pillars holding up the ceiling to represent the 5 pillars of Islam. There are archways with circles and half circles showing the phases of the moon. The doorways into the worship space are intricately designed with 99 distinct wooden pieces, a reminder of the 99 names of Allah in the Qur’an. Because people enter the holy space without their shoes on, the heat radiates from the floor. There is one of those cool water fountains that exists only to refill reusable water bottles and a nifty machine for making donations to the facility with your credit or debit card.

While at the open house a friend and I were approached by two young women willing to answer any questions we had. So, we asked! Somehow we ended up with the undivided attention of 6 young women, I believe they were all between 16 and 22. I asked them who among them wore the hijab every day, and half of them did. So I asked them why and why not.

Their answers struck me as being remarkably similar to the language of “call” that gets used as part of the ordination process that I know. They spoke about wanting to be visible as representatives of their faith and of reminding themselves and others God’s desire for human kindness. They discussed with each other the issue between wanting to be “good enough Muslim” before wearing the hijab, and wearing it without feeling like their faith was enough but as a process of becoming a more faithful person. They spoke about fitting in – or not – and about norms of behavior in their families. They talked about how their families felt about their choices, and yet how certain they were that the decision was between them and God. They were thoughtful and articulate and incredibly committed to their faith.

Through it all, I was struck by how similar their language was to how I’ve heard clergy speak in Christianity. As I’ve experienced it, the “culture of call” suggests that God particularly picks out people to be clergy and lets them know – usually through a mystical experience, sometimes through the affirmations of others. The call is then assessed through multiple levels of church structure. It is assessed first for a sense of validity and then to see if the “call” lines up with a person’s gifts and graces. At every stage of the process toward ordination there is a conversation about call.

In addition to those young women who got me re-obsessed with call, there are the scriptures this week. The passage from Jeremiah is Jeremiah’s call story. The passage from Luke is Jesus claiming his call, and has Jesus talking about others who were particularly chosen for tasks from God. It seems that the church is justified in its assumptions about call, as they’re well established in the Bible. If God wants a person do to work, God calls that person… or at least that’s how it works in the church… or at least that’s the way the culture of call talks about it.

Having had enough time to move past my naivete with call, here are my concerns about how I’ve heard the church talk about call, particularly with regard to ordination:

It assumes that God has a “plan” for each of us. Or perhaps, only the clergy ;). But I don’t really believe God has a plan, or at least not a stagnant one. We change as we go through life and God adapts to where we are. I don’t believe that God sets us on one particular path in expectation that 30 years later we’ll land somewhere particular. Rather, I suspect that God looks at us where we are and notes where our gifts and skills might be of use, and nudges us towards those places if we listen.
It elevates clergy as somehow “above” laity. To be particular, it suggests that the highest form of faithfulness to God is to become clergy. No experience I’ve had supports this. The church exists because of the faithfulness and commitment of the laity.
It suggests that God cares more about clergy than any other means of building up the kin-dom of God. That is, we usually only talk about call when we are talking about church work. There are A LOT of jobs that need to be done in order to bring in the kin-dom. This whole Jesus-following thing would be useless if all anyone ever did was preach and run churches. If there is such a thing as call it must apply as much to teaching fields, medical fields, administration, sanitation, art, music, caregiving, legislation, supportive work, retail, etc.! The world and the world’s needs are incredibly diverse. God’s work with all people may be to help us find the ways that we can build the kin-dom, but it doesn’t seem reasonable that this happens differently for clergy.
It all sorts of mucks up the difference between God and church. If serving God is about being ordained by the church, that’s a disaster. As amazing as this church is, I’ve always found that when I conflate God and the church I get annoyed with God. Churches are imperfect, struggling, and often beautiful organizations trying to work together to build the kin-dom. But they’re fallible, and they are institutions. Clergy are functionally CEOs of non-profits. God is much bigger and better than that. And, just as a reminder, I suspect that if God does “call” people, the vast majority of those called are called to work outside of churches.
It assumes that God has a “will,” a defined preference for how things go, and our goal is to “discern” it and then “obey” it. This is probably the biggest issue I have with call language. Earlier in my life I believed this, and I’ve struggled to find my way out of it. (#ThanksChrysalis #Sarcastic) These days because I believe that God is present in all places and with all people I believe that God is WITH all of us. Then, the way to access Divine Wisdom is through bodies. Sometimes I access Divine Wisdom through myself (body, mind, and emotions) sometimes through others. If I want to find the “right” or “best” way to act, I need to get quiet enough to listen to my inner wisdom, and trust that God is working in me. This is harder, I think, than it was to externalize the divine. Yet, when I trust that God is at work WITH and IN us as humans, the I’m able to take us more seriously. When the goal was to conform to an external will, then what I cared about was irrelevant. When the goal is to listen to the deepest whispers in myself and remember they are the intersections of God and myself, I become relevant – and you do too.

Now, to be honest, I have a “call story” and I think it is pretty good! It seems only fair to tell you the story that I told hundreds of times on the way to ordination so you can judge it for yourself. It may be shocking, but it was at Sky Lake. I was 13 years old, I had just finished 8^th grade, and I was at music camp. I feel the need to tell you, as I’ve told many others, that I didn’t realize when I went to music camp that EVERYONE was supposed to sing. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gone. (I’ve done music camp 7 times.) The first night of camp we sat by the lakeshore and the director led a footwashing service. She talked about how Jesus was a different kind of leader than any other leader in history. She talked about how usually important people get served, and how Jesus was the important person who served others. I wanted to be a part of THAT. I wanted to turn the world upside down and redefine what “important” and “leader” meant too. Both the director and the woman she’d invited to wash feet with her were clergy. I therefore assumed, without having language for it, that foot-washing was a sacrament and you had to be ordained to do it.

That’s the point where I’ve traditionally made a joke about God “using my ignorance against me.” Anyway, I had this really intense internal conversation about wanting to be a part of the Jesus foot-washing thing, and not wanting to give up my dreams of being a scientist like my mother and owning my own house. That was the first time it occurred to me that I might want to be clergy.

Well, music camp sang at the ordination service of Annual Conference in those days, so nearly a year later I was present when the Bishop did an altar call at the end of the ordination service inviting people forward to respond to the call to ordained ministry. I felt a strong almost magnetic pull toward that altar, and I remembered that night by the lakeshore, but I wasn’t an impulsive sort of teenager. I decided that I’d wait another year, think about things, come back to Annual Conference, and if I still felt that pull, I’d respond THEN.

I talked to my pastor – but only about my desire to go to Annual Conference, and we set it up. The following year at the ordination service I sat with my friends and felt a magnetic pull to the altar. I was crying, and trying to hide it. The hymns were listed in the order of worship, and I knew when the last one ended. I said to myself (or maybe to God… I’ve usually told this story as if I was talking to God), “Oh well, too late, maybe next year.” Bishop Susan Morrison said, “Its not too late.”

So, I responded, making public and visible the experience I’d had of wanting to be a part of the turning the world upside down Jesus movement, one that I’d been privately contemplating for nearly 2 years. At that point I was sure, and I defined my life based on my experience of call. Sometimes I’ve told the addendum. 8 years after that first lakeside foot washing experience I was back at music camp as a pretty senior staff member at Sky Lake. The same clergy women were there. The director was sick that summer, and after she’d washed feet for a while she asked me to help her stand so she could take a break.

Then she asked me to take her place. I was the only staff member invited to wash feet, and it was the first time music camp had done a footwashing in the intervening years. By that point I was ready to apply to seminary. I loved washing feet in that service, I love it every time I get to do it. As wonderful as that experience was though, I knew in those moments that the call which had started as a desire to wash feet and ordination had been a means to an end had become a desire to serve God as a clergy person. Oh, and the director – she had NO idea that my call to ministry had been set in place in the last footwashing service. She just needed a break.

It’s a good story, right? I suspect if you’d spent years perfecting it, many of you could tell one just as good about your profession.

I have wondered if the idea of call comes out of a deep human need to be special. One of my college professors once pointed out that all fairy tales exist in the struggle between the human need to be special and the human need to fit in. It may be that call is exactly the place that fits that need: all are called (to something and usually many things), but all are called uniquely. We are, after all, all uniquely gifted in the world. And God is willing to work with us all to build the kin-dom. The more of us listen to those subtle whisperings within, the faster the work will be done. So, beloved, I believe YOU are called to build the kin-dom. And thanks be to God for that! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 31, 2016

Sermons

“Holy, Joy, Sharing”based on Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 and Luke…

January 24, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It strikes me as likely that most of you don’t know anything about Nehemiah. In fact, I would guess that the MORE Biblically knowledgeable among you would be fairly likely to assume that Nehemiah is one of the minor prophets. (This assumes Biblical knowledge, clearly, in understanding what the Minor Prophets are. Minor prophets are the prophets whose books are shorter. That’s all.)

Nehemiah is a book of history. It is bound up with the book of Ezra – apparently they were one book for the first 2000 years or so, but now are considered two. They are books about the return from Exile. Those of you who are here all the time may be getting sick of hearing me explain the Exile, but I don’t want to leave anyone behind. So, hold onto your seats, I’m about to review Basic Biblical history and catch everyone up. I’ll try to be informative without being boring. Wish me luck.

This is a story that starts with Abraham. Abraham heard the call of God to leave the land of his ancestors and start a new life. God made promises to Abraham that he’d be the father of a multitude, and that his descendants were specially blessed to be a blessing to the world. He was married to Sarah, who may or may not have been his half sister. She was barren for a LOOOOOOOONG time, and to make it sound simpler than it was, she eventually had a kid named Issac.

Issac married Rebecca (whose father AND grandfather were Issac’s first cousins), and they were barren for a mere LOONG time and then had twins named Esau and Jacob. Esau was the older twin, but Jacob was the one whom Rebecca and God favored. Jacob was a bit of a trickster, but no more so than his uncle Laban, his mother Rebecca’s brother. He went to live with Laban for a few decades and when he returned he had two wives, two concubines, 12 sons, an unknown number of daughters, and a lot of wealth. Those 12 sons would become the fathers of the 12 tribes.

Jacob’s two favorite sons were Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of Rachel, his favorite wife. (Did I forget to mention that both of Jacob’s wives were his first cousins?) The older of the two was so obnoxious in his status as his father’s favorite that the rest of the sons sold him to slavery in Egypt. The Bible suggests that God favored him, so Joseph eventually became the right hand to the Pharaoh. He instituted a pretty severe taxation system that involved Egypt having great stores of food and the poor people not having any. Meanwhile there was a famine in Israel (which happens in desert climates). The brothers came down to buy grain so they wouldn’t die, it was all sorts of dramatic, but eventually everyone moved down to Egypt.

Then there was a new ruler, the family stopped being in favor, and they became slaves. Then there was Moses, they say about 400 years later. Or, rather, we should say, then there were two very wise, caring,and manipulative midwives who refused direct orders and helped Moses come into the world. His mother and sister were also wise, caring, and manipulative, and Moses (who was supposed to be killed upon his birth because that’s what they were doing to Hebrew babies) got raised as the adoptive grandson of the current Pharaoh.

Then there are some parts you’ve likely heard about: Moses had compassion for his people, but then he killed a guy, so he had to go away; he went into the desert; he had an experience of God initiated by a burning bush, God sent him to be the leader of the people; he whined about his stammer, Aaron got to help; there were conversations, there were plagues, the people were freed; the Pharaoh changed his mind, and the army died in the sea. Or, at least, that’s one of the versions the Bible tells.

Then the people wander in the desert for a few generations. Afterward, Joshua leads them into the land, and after his death for about 300 hundred years, random leaders emerged when the people needed them and otherwise they just settled in. Then the people wanted a King, and they got Saul, and Saul was crazy (maybe), so they got David, and David was a jerk (for sure) and after he died they got Solomon who was really not a whole lot better than Pharaoh. Which is likely why after the death of Solomon there was a civil war and the North seceded from the South. The North gets called Israel, the South is called Judah.

A little over 200 years later the North – Israel – is defeated by the Assyrian empire, goes into exile, and never returns. That’s 722 BCE. About 150 years after that, the South – Judah – gets defeated by the Babylonian Empire (587/586 BCE) and goes into exile. Then in 539 the Persian Empire lead by Cyrus beats out the Babylonian Empire and the exiles are free to go home.

Except a lot of them didn’t. Some went home. They started rebuilding the Temple. But a lot stayed put. About 100 years later a Jewish man named Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the King, and he he heard a report from men from Judah of the terrible lives being led there. It took him to prayer and prayer brought him before the King asking for a favor – to be sent to Judah to rebuild the walls of the city. He was appointed the governor of Judah.

The walls had been down for nearly 150 years. ALL IT TOOK was for someone to organize – the people COULD do it, the issue was that unless everyone did it t the same time it wouldn’t really matter. With Nehemiah’s hope, vision, and money, it worked. Some organized and rebuilt the gates, and then each family rebuilt the part of the wall that was next to their house (or, more likely) a part of their house. It wasn’t that anyone had that much work to do. It is just that unless your neighbors rebuilt too it wouldn’t really help – invaders could still come in.

It took 12 years for Nehemiah to work with the people, to face down the opposition, and to get the walls back up. That’s where our lesson for today comes in – right after the walls were complete. It seems that the people who gathered at the Water Gate hadn’t heard the whole story, all put together, either. The Water Gate was an interesting choice of location for this event, because the Temple had been rebuild. But the Temple didn’t have space for EVERYONE – for men AND women AND children. So they gathered where they could all fit, and they heard their own story from start to finish. (I’d guess that what was read was an early version of the Torah.)

It seems reasonable that the people would weep after hearing it. It is a good story! Furthermore, the story is intentionally designed to bring the past into the present, and for the people who just completed the restoration of Jerusalem, that would be incredibly powerful. They were hearing their stories within the gates and the walls of the city for the first time in 7 generations.

But the command they’re given doesn’t give them time to live in their weeping. They’re told not to weep – not for the 7 generations that missed this chance – not for anything. They’re supposed to PARTY. (I don’t make up the Lectionary. Therefore I don’t make up the PARTY theme. It is in the Bible.) Nor do I make up the theme that the whole deal is that we get to enjoy life as long as we share the joy. Nehemiah told the people, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Eat the GOOD stuff. Savor the wonder of it all. And share. Because it is holy, and that’s how it works. From the time of Abraham the idea is “blessed to be a blessing.” When you are able to feast on the richest food there is you should enjoy it, and SHARE. Wow. I really do love the story of Nehemiah. It is the story of what can be done when the people work together. And this passage is the story of the transformative power of worship and the stories of God. The whole book is the story of what can happen when one person’s heart is opened to the blight of others, and it is the story of the restoration. Nehemiah doesn’t just talk about the “good stuff” of life, the book of Nehemiah is some of the good stuff.

Thematically, the Gospel lesson and Nehemiah seem like kindred spirits. The Gospel tells of Jesus at his home synagogue reading the lesson from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because (God) has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. (God) has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.“ The other synoptic gospels put this later in Jesus’s ministry, but Luke seems intentional in putting it right in the beginning. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. Or maybe this is Luke’s thesis statement.

The words would have already been known to be connected to the Messianic expectation. (Which by the way is also all about the Exile, but I can leave that for another day.) They’re words we still use in our formal Communion liturgy. They are powerful words. They are words of restoration. They are words that reflect God’s care for all of God’s people, and not just the ones that societies tend to think are of value.

God wants a message brought to the poor – and it is good news for them.

God sends a message to the captives – and it is release of their captivity for them.

God messenger is to bring sight to the blind.

God’s work is to let the oppressed become free again.

God’s story is the proclamation of the jubilee.

The Jubilee is another Hebrew Bible idea that doesn’t get enough press. It is the Torah law that says that every 49 years all the fields are to lay fallow, all debts are to be forgiven, and all land is to be returned to its original owners. Jubilee is one of the ways that God’s vision for community in the Torah prevents cycles of poverty. For Jesus to read this passage is to connect his life with the care for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed, and the incarcerated.

Luke put this story at the beginning of his Gospel because he thought this was the point. The life of Jesus participated in God’s work of freedom, healing, and transformation. To be poor in Jesus’s time was similar to being poor today and being poor in the time of Nehemiah – it increased the chance you would die young after having struggled mightily. God isn’t interested in leaving people in those conditions.

Which means that for Luke, the work of the Body of Christ (US!) is that vision from Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because God has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. God has sent is to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Or, maybe we like it from Nehemiah, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared…”

We are to care for each other, and enjoy the goodness of life, and work toward a more just world. Let’s get back to it! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 24, 2016

Sermons

“My Delight Is in Her” based on Isaiah 62:1-5 and…

January 17, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This strange story, unique to the Gospel of John, is traditionally connected with the Epiphany. It is only relatively recently that it got pushed out the second Sunday after the Epiphany, and is now only included every three years. I’m grateful that this is not a text that comes up every year. It is a story that leads to a whole lot more questions than answers.

Perhaps you didn’t come up with that many questions. Allow me to share with you some of the questions I have about this strange story:

Why were the disciples invited to this wedding? They’ve been “the disciples” for 1-2 days.
Why did Mary ignore Jesus’s rejection of her request?
Why did Jesus do what he tells his mother he won’t do?
Why was Mary sticking her nose into this wine issue anyway?
Who was getting married?
Why did they have 6 ritual cleansing pots at their house? Why were they empty?
How did they fill the pots? Was it from a well? How far away was it and how long did it take?
We know that people drank wine instead of water because of disease at that time, was “really good wine” watered down to 30% potency like the rest of it?

But more so than any of these, the big question is:

WHY ON EARTH IS THIS PRESENTED AS THE FIRST MIRACLE IN JOHN?

Some commentators do some beautiful work trying to justify this story. Before we even get started on that, let me articulate my biggest issue with preaching about “The First Miracle”: addictions exist, they’re real, and alcoholism is a big deal. It is hard to talk about this passage without waxing poetic about “good wine” and yet it is hard to wax poetic about “good wine” while being truly pastoral to people struck with the disease of alcoholism.

I think that is very important to remember that without water purification technology, in settled communities in the ancient world, no one drank water. People drank wine because the fermentation killed the bacteria that would otherwise kill them – although they didn’t know that. They just knew that they died from water and not from wine. Furthermore, people seemed to enjoy drinking. It shows up early and often in the Bible, and there isn’t condemnation of it. That’s cool, and sometimes fun, for those who don’t have drinking problems. Its hard for those who do. Perhaps it is useful to remember that just as the ancient people didn’t know about bacteria, they didn’t know about alcoholism. Therefore, the Bible seems to assume that wine is equally good for everyone. We know it isn’t.

OK, so now that we acknowledged all that, one commentator that I read this week talked about how great it is that Jesus’s first miracle was for the sake of joy and fun. He wrote, “Sometimes the church has forgotten that our Lord once attended a wedding feast and said yes to gladness and joy.”¹ He continued on describing “a God who loves to hear the laugher of people.”² I like this take on the miracle. I think it has some validity. I’ve been around lots of churches, and church people, who take the entire enterprise way too seriously. The whole idea of connecting to a God of love, and communing with God’s beloved people is that it is supposed to be awesome. There is goodness in God, in worship, in prayer, in study, in sharing God’s love in the world. It is FUN. If you don’t believe me, stay for communion. Communities that don’t enjoy each other and have fun are missing something really important about life with God. This isn’t a competition about who can sacrifice the most. This is about sharing and enjoying life! The presentation of Jesus as someone who cared enough about parties to make sure that they kept having the wine flowing surely does remind us that life with God is GOOD.

There are many reasons to believe that Jesus was a bit of a party-boy. There are lots of passages in the Bible that suggest that God wants us to live life, and live it abundantly, and ENJOY the time we have on this beautiful planet. However, they live in completion with the reminder that we’re supposed to enjoy life AND make sure that others get to as well.

This story, taken seriously, challenges us to receive and then share this extravagant generosity and grace. If we consider God to be interested in people enjoying each other at good parties, it follows that understand a God who really cares about the joy of life. Then we get to wonder about how well we’re receiving it: God who is generous and loving and wants us to enjoy the gift of life offers us opportunities for love, connection, play, and laughter. Sometimes we’re “too busy” or “too serious” to take them. We might want to rethink priorities! Furthermore, this is a great set up to consider the Genesis line “blessed to be a blessing.” How can we follow the example of Jesus in offering extravagant generosity and opportunities for great joy to others? When are we giving things to others for the pure joy of watching their disbelief? This angle on the story is productive and interesting, but it doesn’t really explain why this story comes FIRST.

Many have suggested that this is a post-Easter perspective of Jesus. That’s viable, since John was the last of the gospels to be written, this story only shows up in John, and it has the capacity to be understood has highly metaphorical. John is into poetry. So, if John were working with a story to try to explain Jesus, this could sound like something he might create. From that perspective, we would do well to take note that there are two highly visible, detailed miracles in John. One is this one, and the other is the feeding of the 5000. That one is pretty excessive as well. If the two most visible miracles about about WINE and BREAD, it might be reasonable to assume that there is an intentional theme of Communion underlying them.

Jesus provides wine in radical abundance. Jesus feeds all who come to him. Yeah. That works. It still doesn’t explain why this story comes FIRST, in fact, it would work better right after the feeding, right??

This week my reading pointed me to two verses in the minor prophet section of the Hebrew Bible. The verses are Amos 9:13 and Joel 3:18 and they read:

The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who ploughs shall overtake the one who reaps,
and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it. (Amos 9:13)

On that day
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
the hills shall flow with milk,
and all the stream beds of Judah
shall flow with water;
a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord
and water the Wadi Shittim. (Joel 3:18)

That is, in the Hebrew Bible, “an abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol, a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age.”³ I suspect that THIS is the most likely reason for the inclusion of this “first miracle” story in the Gospel of John. John doesn’t have a birth narrative. He starts with the poetry about the Word becoming flesh, transitions to talking about John the Baptist, and then jumps right into Jesus calling the disciples.

This story comes next. Jesus calls a bunch of disciples one day, he calls a bunch more the next day, and on the third day (yes, people suspect that’s intentional too), Jesus and the disciples go to this wedding. It is, at least as told in John, the very first thing they do as Jesus’s disciples. And then Jesus preforms a miracle that is a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age. It is “a rich symbol in the biblical tradition inferring prosperity, abundance, good times; the wine will overflow the water pots.”⁴ The abundance of God’s goodness is expressed in the abundance of the wine. The new age begins here, and it is declared in a way that the ancients can understand. (Apparently, many ancients – not just the Jewish ones. The same commentator wrote, “A miraculous supply of wine as a sign of the presence of a god is a common motif in Greek folklore.”⁵ She warns us not to take this too seriously. I find it worth mentioning.)

I’m so grateful for this connection to the symbolism that the first hearers of this story would have understood. It makes a lot of sense if this is a symbol that would have been understood as the declaration of a new age of God’s work in the world. In fact, this functions much like Matthew and Luke’s Christmas stories function in their gospels.

Now, to take a step further backward, the setting of this narrative at a wedding is likely not trivial either. The metaphor of marriage as a way of understanding God’s relationship to Israel was longstanding. The prophets played with it extensively. Our Hebrew Bible passage draws the prior narratives to bring a new one to light. The idea of God and Israel as married was old. The prophets who spoke of the coming exile talked about God’s right to divorce Israel. The prophets of the exile talked about God’s abandonment of God’s wife Israel. And then, in this passage, God restores Israel to her status as wife. Dr. Rick Nutt, chair of the department of Religion and Philosophy at Muskingum University in Ohio writes:

“God’s liberating action grows out of God’s covenant promise to Israel – for marriage always evokes ideas of covenant. The gods of the ancient world were often capricious, one could not know when favor or disfavor might be forthcoming. YHWH, on the other hand, imposed limits on God’s freedom to exercise power. In the covenant, God promised steadfast love – hesed – as the basis of the relationship with the people, and in return the people promised to love and serve God. Judgement may come, but it will always be on the basis of the covenant – and because of the covenant, restoration will always follow. Liberation renews Israel’s relationship with God to wholeness, because God will be true to covenant.”⁶

I believe that the writer of the Gospel of John was a smart man, well versed in the scriptures of his day. He knew what he was doing, when placing this story at a wedding feast. He was intentionally invoking the concept of God as a loving spouse, even if only as a underlying theme. The words “My Delight is in Her” from Isaiah end up as one of the backgrounds that set the scene for Jesus. The writer was intentionally developing the idea of wine as a symbol of life, and of God’s presence, and of a new age in the history of God’s work among the people. The incredible excess of the story: the presence of SIX empty water jars, their large size, the water filled to the brim and nearly over flowing, and the goodness of the wine serve as symbols of the abundance of God’s love – hesed– in this new age.

There are still plenty of questions, but this story is not accidental. Thanks be to God for reminders of life, abundance, and goodness. May we learn to live fully into life, abundance, and goodness. Amen

___

Sermon Talkback Questions

What are your questions about this passage?
Which interpretation was most interesting to you?
What are the problems, and powers, of the metaphor of marriage for God and “the people”?
What else can wine symbolize?
In what ways did Jesus usher in a “new age”? In what ways are we still waiting for one?
What is your general opinion of the Gospel of John?
What might be good alternatives to discussing the rich wonder of WINE?
What do you take from this passage today?

—

1Robert B. Brearley, “Pastoral Perspective on John 2:1-11” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 262.

2Ibid.

3Gail O’Day, “John” in New Interpreter’s Study Bible, vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 538

4Linda McKinnish Bridges, “Exegetical Perspective on John 2:1-11” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 265.

5Ibid

6Rick Nutt, “Theological Perspective on Isaiah 61:1-5” in Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 246.

–

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

January 17, 2016

Sermons

“A Do’” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-22

January 10, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A
long time ago, before I had realized the wisdom of reading novellas
to children for Children’s Time, I had prepared a Children’s Time on
baptism. This was when I was serving the Morris United Methodist
Church, and it turned out we had a baptism that day. When Children’s
Time began there were two children present: an infant and a two year
old. This wasn’t going to make my work particularly easy.

At
the Morris United Methodist Church, they do baptisms in the back of
the sanctuary. The font is in the center of aisle right in the back,
against the wall. A baptismal banner hangs above it. They do this
on purpose. Their idea is that baptism is the entrance to the church
family, so it makes sense to have it in the area they enter from.
When the time in the service came to do baptisms everyone would stand
up and turn to watch. That is, everyone who could. There was one
man in the church who couldn’t stand: the pastor emeritus who was in
a wheelchair. The space where the pew had been cut out was all the
way in the back row, so he just got turned around in his wheelchair.
As time when on, we got smart, and when babies were being baptized I
would put them in his arms while I baptized them so we got to do it
together.

In
that church I was responsible for the creation of the bulletin (which
meant that there was a game entitled “who can find one of Sara’s
typos first”) and I would pick images for the font cover of the
bulletin. That week I’d taken a picture of the front doors of the
church and made it the image on the cover of the bulletin. As
planned, I asked the kids what was on the cover of the bulletin. The
two year old cheerfully responded, “a do’”. At this point, I was
in trouble. The response “a do’” was entirely correct, but I
couldn’t do much more with it. Somehow, and it felt as amazing then
as it does now in telling it, at that point a 10 year old showed up
and joined children’s time. So I asked, “why would I have a
picture of doors on the cover of the bulletin.” The 10 old rolled
his eyes at the stupidness of my question and responded, “Because
you are doing a baptism today, and those are the church doors, and
baptism is an entrance to the church family like the doors are the
entrance to the church.” The adults responded with an enthusiastic
“oh!” and accused me of prepping the kid ahead of time. (I
didn’t! I swear. He was just that smart. And he thought it was so
obvious as to be beneath him.)

I’ve
always appreciated the wisdom of the Morris United Methodist Church,
and their understanding of baptism as an entrance. There are many
good ways to think of baptism, and that’s certainly one of them.
Martin Luther King Jr. was known to speak of the Beloved Community,
an idea that sounds like another name for the kin-dom of God to me.
According to the King Center,

“For
Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be
confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which
lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved
Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be
attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the
philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr.
King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people
can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community,
poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because
international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism
and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be
replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In
the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by
peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries,
instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and
hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military
conflict.”¹

Rev.
Dr. King’s wording is a smooth fit with the gospel lesson. In Luke
the Divine message doesn’t show up until after Jesus has been
baptized and is praying. The language is similar in each of the
gospels, the Divine message says, “You
are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.“ (Luke
3:22b, NRSV) Luke is one one of the gospel writers to suggest that
Jesus had to wait in line like the rest of the crowd to be baptized.
He was one of many.

It
has always seemed to me that the words of that came at Jesus’ baptism
are the words intended for every baptism. “This is my Child, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It suggests that each
baptized person has been named as God’s beloved in that experience,
and that the community of baptized people IS the Beloved Community.
Of course, to fit King’s vision we need more training in nonviolence
and peaceful conflict-resolution, but if you keep paying attention to
the Children’s Time novella, that may count!

Now,
baptism is a sacrament. Most people agree that a sacrament is an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Or, a
“sign-act” which is an action that also has words to go along
with it. The other sacrament that we acknowledge as United
Methodists is communion. I think it is important to note that God’s
love is available to us at all times in our lives. The sacraments
are simply times when it is easier for us to remember that! God
doesn’t change. We are more attentive to God in those moments.

We
accept baptism and communion as sacraments because the Bible tells us
that Jesus participated in them and instructed other to do so a well!
In baptism, the grace that is offered is the
initiating act of a covenant. Baptism is the covenantal act of
acknowledging the love of God and the way that it is expressed by
family, sponsors, clergy, and church community. The acceptance of
the covenant is an act of inclusion into the Church, the community
that is aware of God’s grace. The candidate for baptism has two
primary responsibilities. The first is to be open to the experience
of being loved, both in the ritual of baptism throughout the rest of
life. The second is to complete the covenant, to seek always to love
God and love neighbors as the response to God’s love.

God’s
grace is available at all times, and thus is available at baptism;
the ritual cannot exist without God’s grace. Baptism is a public
act of accepting God’s love, but God’s love exists for each
person with or without baptism. The
covenant is eternal, even if the person ignores it. God does not
stop loving. The water is symbolic, and as such its efficacy is not
based on its quantity. That is a baptism is real whether the water
is poured or sprinkled over a person OR they are dunked!

I
haven’t ever done a baptism where a person is dunked, although I was
trained in it in seminary. I suspect that symbolism of new life is
more tangible in those baptisms. When I was in college one of the
churches in town left the doors to its sanctuary open at all times.
I would often go there to pray, and to ponder. The entrance to that
sanctuary was though two sets of solid wooden doors. The first set
connected the church to outside. The second set connected the
entrance to the sanctuary. The space between them was pretty small,
and there were no windows or lights. (This was in New Hampshire, I’m
pretty sure the design was intended to keep the cold out.) I usually
paused in that space between the sets of doors. I didn’t yet know
the word “liminal,” but I knew that I liked the in-betweenness
of that space. Between the sets of doors I was not in the outside
world, nor was I in the sanctuary. I was in the middle, in nowhere.
Young adulthood often felt disorienting, and being in a physical
space that reflected that no-whereness brought it some peace.

I
suspect that for those who undergo full immersion baptism, the moment
under the water might be the the space between the doors. The person
is, symbolically, dead to their old life and yet not yet alive in
their new one. I’ve worried, at times, about the pressure a person
might feel under if they understood baptism that way. What happens
the first time that they are cranky, or tempted, or mean! Do they
worry that the baptism didn’t work? Do they feel unworthy?

I
hope that baptism is a reminder that we are Beloved, and that when we
participate in the baptisms of others we remember the covenant also
applies to us! God’s grace is exceptionally powerful stuff. It
counters any argument that suggests that we are not enough, that we
have to work harder or have more in order to be sufficient. It
reminds us that our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits are beloved
JUST AS THEY ARE, and that we need not earn our way into God’s favor.

It
does occur to me at times that believing in God’s grace is much more
radical than simply believing in God. As odds would have it, I
figure that God’s existence is a 50/50. It can’t be proven either
way. (Or, perhaps, the existence of God is equivalent to Schroeder’s
cat. On a strictly logical level, God both is and isn’t! Please
take that idea lightly.) On the other hand, the premise that the God
who exists is benevolent, that the One who Created cares, that the
Energy and Connector of All that Is is by nature Grace – all of
that is much less logical.

Anyone
looking at the injustices and evils of the world could easily
conclude that a Higher Power simply doesn’t care. Because, they
would conclude, if a Higher Power exists AND cares, then why are
there such awful realities? Therefore, a logical person might
conclude, one of 3 things must be true:

God
doesn’t exist.

God
doesn’t care.

God
doesn’t have the power to change things.

To
be fair, I’ve heard people suggest that there is a 4^th
option, that God’s ways are not like our ways and that what we see as
injustice is OK with God, but that’s such a lousy argument that I
refuse to work with it.

My
training has been in a theology that turns to #3, “God doesn’t have
the power to change things.” Process theology argues over whether
God CAN’T interfere with human will or simply WON’T, but admits that
if you want to understand God as existing and loving, you are forced
by logic to concede that God does not stop us from doing each other
harm. Instead, Process Theology says, God works with all of us all
the time. God “whispers” to us suggestions of how we might act
in the most loving of ways. God works with us where we are and
offers us the possibility of turning in good directions. However, we
are truly free to ignore God’s whispers, hopes, and suggestions and
do the opposite. Whether this is because God simply refuses to treat
us as slaves or because creation itself won’t allow the violation of
imposed will, we are free to do good and we are free to do harm, and
we do both.

And
yet, we are Beloved. We are Beloved when we live out God’s love to
the fullest and share love with all we meet. We are Beloved when we
are simply awful, and do profound and lasting damage to others.
God’s love comes from God’s nature, not from our earning it. It may
not be logical, the way we see things. God’s existence is fair game.
God’s GRACE, God’s LOVE, God’s desire for goodness isn’t something
we can derive from pure logic. We find it scripture. We hear about
in tradition and from those we know in the Body of Christ. We can
experience it in our bodies, and we can learn about it through a
variety of fields of research if we look with the right lenses. But
it is a matter of faith to believe in a God of love.

And
yet, the do’ is open to all.

Thanks
be to God. Amen

1 http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy#sub4

Sermons

Untitled

January 3, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

While Luke places the announcement of the birth of Jesus in the hills around Bethlehem with the lowly shepherds, Matthew brings in the wise men from the east. It works pretty well both thematically and as foreshadowing. Matthew ends with “the great commissioning” telling the disciples go “go and make disciples of all nations.” The premise here is that the those with authority within the religious structure misread what is going on in their midst, and yet those who are paying attention – even those from outside of Judaism – are able to see. Jesus’s life was more expansive than anyone could have dreamed, and Matthew sets up this truth from the very beginning.

The magi also play an interesting role in engaging with the political power of the day – dropping by on King Herod and raising his fears about remaining “the king of the Jews.” In Matthew, this is the title under which Jesus is crucified. The words of the magi are terrifying to King Herod. They represent his worst fears, even the rumor of such a thing as what they are saying – that a new King of the Jews has been born – could end his rule. Herod plays it wisely, seeking ever more information, and inviting the magi back to tell him what they have found.

The magi “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,” go home to “their own country by another road.” All week I’ve been hearing the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken in my head.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I first came to know Frost’s poem when I was a teenager at Sky Lake’s music camp and we sang Randall Thomas’ arrangement of it. The words were engraved in my mind at that point, and the beauty of the music and the words have stayed with me. Scholars debate about whether or not Frost’s poem is satirical, and I recognize that it may well be satire, or at least partially self-effacing. The last stanza, starting with “I shall be telling this with a sigh” seems a bit overdramatic not to have SOME irony in it. Yet it also contains some deep truths.

This week, considering the journey home of the magi, their journey kept being informed by “The Road Not Taken.” What would have happened if they had gone back by the same road? How were their lives, and the lives of those around them, changed by their choice to change course? I guess, even more than that, it occurs to me that to take the story seriously to ask how their lives were impacted by their earlier choice to “follow the star.” Their entire journey was “The Road Less Traveled.” They left their country, their homes, their language and customs in order to follow a hunch. Theirs was a unique journey.

The text says that they were overwhelmed with joy when they saw that the star had stopped. It implies that the joy was related to actually getting to see the new-born king of the Jews. The experience seems to have mattered to the magi. While we don’t know much about them, we have heard that they are course-changers. They were willing to travel to follow a hunch, and they were willing to change course on the way home based on another one.

I find myself wondering what happened AFTER this story in their lives. Symbolically, their presence in the Gospel is powerful. They stand in for the importance of Jesus, they foreshadows the breadth of the meaning of his life, they condemn both the political and the religious power structures of the day. But what about THEM?

Now, I’d say that “we don’t know” because the story doesn’t tell us, but even that isn’t entirely true. I think the story of the magi is unlikely to be based in historical fact. However, as John Dominic Crossan is often saying, “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens.” So, let’s go with that. “The Magi never came, the Magi are always arriving AND departing.”

I guess my question, at its core, is: What would it have mattered to magi from the east to see a baby with his mother somewhere in Judea or Galilee? This is, to be frank, not a particularly unusual sight. Most of societies through most of history can offer an opportunity to see a mother with her child. Would it have been special because of the expectations around it? Are we meant to believe it was special because of the parties involved? If so, how would a 18 month old Jesus be different from another 18 month out? (I’m making up months here, we have no idea how long the travel took, but historically it is believed to be more than a year and less than two.)

Actually, I really love that question! What would we expect from a toddling baby who would as a man utter some of the great wisdom of the world? Would he be particularly gregarious? Or rather shy? Would he be absorbing all the information coming at him, or would he be a little bit sleepy at that point in the day? Would he be cranky? Sometimes 18 month olds are cranky. Would he be wandering around, putting everything in sight in his mouth? Would that include the gold, frankincense and myrrh? If we want to think of Jesus as the most perfect human ever to be (and if I had to guess, I’d guess some of you do and some of you don’t), what would that look like in an 18 month old? And furthermore, what does that tell us about what we believe perfection looks like and what we’re trying to be???

These magi met a baby and his mother in some nondescript location. And, for the sake of the story, let’s say that it was an amazing and miraculous experience. I mean, I feel that way about babies EVERY SINGLE TIME, so I can guess that if someone was looking for a miracle and hanging out with a baby, they could leave with the impression they’d had one.

Then what? Were the magi people who tended to travel around the world looking for curious experiences and new wonders? If so, how did they manage to have such expensive gifts to offer? If not, what drew them that time? I think it makes more sense to assume that this was an unusual experience for them. What would their lives have been like afterward? Unlike the disciples, or even the would-be disciples we hear about later in the Gospels who had the chance to talk with Jesus, hear his teachings, experience his healing, and turn around their lives, the magi met a babbling baby.

Did they go home from their journey west and start seeking out the stories of the Jewish people and reading up about their messianic expectations? Did they go home still overwhelmed with joy and wonder, and ponder these things in their hearts like Luke tells us Mary did? Did they go home and eventually forget?

Was it hard to get home after a journey like that, where everything changed, and find that home was still very much the same? Sometimes in the church we talk about mountaintop experiences, moments like the transfiguration where there is clarity and wonder and connection all at once. At the end of the transfiguration, the disciples go back down the mountain. At the end of this time with Jesus, the magi go home.

Coming down from mountaintop experiences for me is usually quiet and sad. Instead of being continually lifted up by the highs I’ve experienced, coming back down after them is jarring and often painful. A friend this year had “post-wedding depression.” All of the hopes and dreams she had, and all of the work she’d gone through (and all of the Pinterest projects she’d completed) gave her life focus and meaning. The day itself was amazing! Everything came into place, everyone was together, and the party went on and on. Even the next day there was brunch and laughter. But after that, there was packing the car, and going home, and unpacking the car and figuring out what to eat for dinner. (The honeymoon did not immediately follow the wedding.)

And it was hard. Her descriptions of the lostness that came after the wedding had such resonance in my life. After intense focus on a project, or after an experience that I’ve been looking forward to for a while, or – let’s be real here – after I finish a book I really really like, I wander around a little bit lost for a while, not quite able to figure out what way to turn or what I’m really wanting to DO next.

If they magi existed, and if they followed an errant star, and if they came to Bethlehem and met Mary and Jesus, and if they were filled with joy and wonder, and warned in a dream to go home by another route – then what happened when they got home? Was it a bit anticlimactic after the journey? Was it a tiny bit boring? What were they going to do NEXT? Did they find themselves wishing they’d gone back to Herod just for the excitement of finding out what would have happened? Did they wander again, following another hunch, soon thereafter, in hopes of finding something meaningful again?

I think perhaps the ebbs and flows of life are meant to include some aimlessness, some post-project depression, some sadness when something is complete and intense focus dissipates. It feels natural. Life isn’t a really really long marathon! There are down times, and in those we are subconsciously deciding on the next course we’ll follow. We don’t thrive with constant intensity (although some of us seek it anyway!) As humans we do best when something REALLY draws us in – and then lets us go so that something else can. We need the thrill of the intensity and the let-down that comes afterward.

Two roads diverge often. We end up at crossroad’s well never get to come back to, regularly. May we be wise enough to stand in them from time to time, even in melancholy, and consider the next stages of our journey. Perhaps we’ll decide to follow another road.

Perhaps it will make a difference. And if not, at least the moment of looking and wondering will serve to steady us on the roads we choose and give us a chance to listen to the whisperings of the Divine. Thanks be to God for that. Amen

–

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

January 3, 2016

Uncategorized

“It is FINALLY Christmas: Now What?”based on Isaiah 52:7-10 and…

December 27, 2015
by Administrator

Second
Isaiah is a cheerful writer. He writes from the exile, to
broken-hearted, broken people. He speaks words of hope, reminders of
the nature of God, and expectations that healing is possible.
Today’s passage is classic Second Isaiah.

For
those who have NO CLUE what I’m talking about – Isaiah is a book
with 66 chapters. Scholars agree that chapters 1-39 reflect one
point of view “First Isaiah”, 40-55 a second “Second Isaiah,”
and 56-66 a third – wait for it – “Third Isaiah.” First Isaiah
comes before the exile. Second Isaiah speaks DURING the exile – in
the immediate aftermath. Third Isaiah has a later voice, debated to
be either near the end of the exile, or post exilic. For those who
still have no idea what I’m talking about – in 587 BCE the
Babylonian Empire defeated Judea, took the city of Jerusalem,
destroyed it, and force marched its leaders across the desert to
serve as slaves in Babylonia. 70 years later they were freed when
the Persian Empire beat the Babylonian empire and the exiles
RETURNED. So I’m saying that this cheerful dude was writing after
his city and country had been utterly devastated.

Our
passage today starts with “How beautiful upon the mountains are the
feet of the messenger who brings peace.” This is not a literal
statement. In those days important news was “brought by a runner,
an athlete whose marathon commitment to good news drove him across
the arduous mountain, where his whole frame ached from the effort of
bringing good news. His feet were crusted with callouses and torn by
the rocks and thorns of his course.”¹

The
messenger’s feet were NOT pretty. The feet were ugly. The news they
brought though, could make even the ugly feet beautiful. The
beautification of the feet continues as the message is shared. God
Reigns, restoration is coming, goodness will return, people will
spontaneously break out in song, God’s comfort will be known, and all
the earth will see the healing power of God.

The
message of Second Isaiah was heartening to its first hearers – they
desperately needed the hope it brought. The message was obviously
heartening beyond its first hearers, as it made the cut to be a part
of the book of Isaiah. Furthermore, this text is part of Christmas
every single year in the traditional readings. (Although not the
most common ones.) Christianity has claimed this text as a way of
understanding Jesus, and the meaning of his birth. That implies that
it has significant meaning beyond the original intention.

Second
Isaiah wrote to a displaced, broken hearted, broken people, with
signs of hope. The concerns of the people were practical. The
meaning is different when applied to Jesus. Connected with the
Christmas story, the messenger gets undertones of angelic messengers
– who very well may have beautiful feet for all I know. Connected
with the birth of Christ, this passage has often been spiritualized,
which I mean in the bad way. The sort of spiritualization that I’m
referring to takes this passage out of the practical concerns of the
world and into some sort of forgiveness of sins/afterlife concerns.

The
ironic change of the meaning of salvation from being a down to earth
act of liberation from oppressors to an otherworldly acceptance into
heaven really weakens this passage. As one commentator puts it,
“Among the affirmations [Second Isaiah] offers are: (1) God cares
deeply about this world –
so deeply, in fact, that God intends not rescue us from it but to
redeem this world through us; (2) where we are matters; that is, if
God wants to redeem that
place (Zion/Jerusalem), God wants to redeem this
place.”²
If WE want to take this passage as our own, and as a valid
interpretation of our Christmas narrative, then I think we have to
start there!

Traditional
incarnation theory suggests that God became human in the form of
Jesus in order to redeem the world. Many of the theologians I like
best are very excited about the incarnation. For some it is the
centerpiece of their understanding of God. My New Testament
professor was one of them. He loved to quote Philippians 1, which
says,

“Christ
Jesus,

who,
though he was in the form of God,
did
not regard equality with God
as
something to be exploited,
but
emptied himself,
taking
the form of a slave,
being
born in human likeness.”

For
many years, I struggled with incarnation. It is such a powerful and
meaningful theological idea for MANY people, including most of the
people I look up to theologically. I never knew why I couldn’t get
excited about it. I felt like I was missing something. (Namely, I
felt like I was missing the entire point of Christmas, if not
Christianity.)

My
dear friend Chad is a much more orthodox Christian than I am. He is
the one who TOLD me why I don’t care. He said to me one say, “You
are a panentheist, right?” (A panentheist believes that all that
exists, is within God and yet God is more than all that is.)
“Yeah,” I responded without understanding. “Well, then the
incarnation would be sort of redundant to you, wouldn’t it? I mean
if you already think God is fully present in the world in all times
and places, then Jesus isn’t really different, is he?”

“OH!”
I responded. Which cleared things up for me. I fully support
anyone, including Chad, for whom the traditional understanding of the
incarnation works. You are in good company. But I’ve never been
able to wrap my head around
it. It doesn’t make sense to me to think that Jesus WAS God, at
least not in a unique way. My favorite succinct summary of Jesus is
Marcus Borg’s, “Jesus was a Jewish mystic.” He goes on to
explain, “My claim that Jesus was a Jewish mystic means Jesus
was one for whom God was an experiential reality. He was one of those
people for whom the sacred was, to use William James’ terms, a
firsthand religious experience rather than a secondhand belief.”³

That
fits what I hear in the Gospels. Jesus was unusually connected to
the Divine, and he had wisdom that most people lack. He was faithful
to loving all of God’s children in a particularly unusual way. He
lived as if he KNEW God. I’m pretty sure that’s so amazing, and so
exciting, that it is why we still talk about him and his teachings
all these years later.

In
some ways this gospel story seems abrupt. Jesus is born, and then
that’s sort of it. The passage from Luke today is unique to Luke.
Only Luke and Matthew present Jesus before he was a grown man, and
Matthew has nothing between his birth and his ministry. Luke has two
stories: the story of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, during
which two wise old sages proclaim respond to meeting Jesus with
praising God, and this story. Both present the “holy family” as
particularly devote Jews. Both conform to common practice of
biographies in that day – including by having the hero show his
precocious talents while still a child. (Jesus is 12 here. He was a
“man” at 13.) This story is the first time that Jesus speaks in
the Gospel of Luke, it serves beautifully to foreshadow Jesus’s
ministry. The story mostly seems to exist in order to remind us that
Jesus was God’s first and only his parents’ second. The story
clearly comes from a separate tradition than that of the Bethlehem
birth, as it seems to come as a surprise to his parents that Jesus is
so… different.

The
interesting piece of the story, whether it is intentional or not, is
the expansiveness of it. There is no boundary around the nuclear
family. Jesus’s parents did not travel alone on the journey to
Jerusalem. They were with a large group of friends and family –
that’s how we can presume he was lose-able. Jesus himself wanders
away from those he knows in order to inquire among the teachers of
the law. Both the holy family, with their large expansive group of
travelers, and Jesus himself, who drew the circle wider, foreshadow
the welcome that will exist in following Jesus. The welcome never
ends.

The
ministry of Jesus was decidedly earthly, and practical, much like the
original meaning of the Second Isaiah passage. Jesus heals broken
bodies. He worries about food and drink for the people . He talks
about animals and agriculture. He takes seriously concerns about
taxation. The sacraments of the church are symbolized with water,
wine, and bread. The salvation that Isaiah references, that
Christians understand to come through Jesus, is an earthy one.

The
work of Jesus is to redeem THIS world, and for us, in part, THIS
city. God’s work of redemption and salvation is also earthy. As far
as I know, “heaven” isn’t a place in NEED of healing or
redemption. Peace is needed on EARTH. Equality is needed on EARTH.
Justice is needed on EARTH. New policies, procedures and laws that
recognize the value of all human lives are desperately need on EARTH.

No
matter how we understand the birth, Jesus served to remind us of
God’s presence with us on EARTH, and God’s work here to bring hope
and healing. The work of the followers of the way of Jesus is to
continue his earthy ministry. May we do so – with the
cheeriness of Second Isaiah himself. After all, if he could speak
words of hope in a time such as THAT, then we can do so in a time
such as this. Thanks be to God for hope. Amen

1Neal
Walls, “Homiletical Perspective on Isaiah 52:7-10” from in
Feasting on the Word Year C
Volume 1
edited by Barbara
Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press:
Louisville Kentucky, 2009), page 125-7.

2Stephen
B. Boyd “Theological Perspsective on Isaiah 52:7-10” also in
Feasting on the World Year C Vol 1, page 122.

3Marcus
Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (HarperOne:
1995), page 60.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady