Discernment

March 15, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Discernment” based on Ephesians 5:8-14 and UMC Social Principles on Military Service (Part 2 of War and Military Service)

The heart of our scripture passage today as I hear it is “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” This is a pretty obvious part of faith – to try to figure out what is pleasing to God and do it. That’s living the life of faith.

And, of course, it is easier said that done. Sometimes we have easy clarity on what is right, what is wrong, what is pleasing to God and what would be displeasing to God. We know we shouldn’t kick people when they’re down, we shouldn’t ignore the pleas of the hungry, and we should take a few breathes before speaking in anger, take the time to savor the good parts of life.

But, truth be told, we don’t struggle with knowing what is pleasing to God when it is easy. Though sometimes we struggle to DO it. We struggle with knowing what is pleasing to God when it isn’t clear.

In my last church I served a church that was basically built for IBM engineers and their families. While there I was given advice about engineers from someone who had managed them professionally. The advice was: if an engineer comes to you to ask you to pick between two options, then just pick one. The premise, I’m told, is that if there was any significant differences between the two choices the engineer would have simply picked the better one. The only reason you’d be asked to decide as their supervisor, then, was if they were entirely equal and thus the engineer was stumped. In that case it doesn’t matter what you decide because they’re equal and what the person needs is a decision so they can move on – preferably done by someone they can blame later if it was wrong. So, I was told, if you trust the engineer, just pick one. That’s what they need.

Clearly, that was very particular to IBM engineers 😉

It is also relevant to the times when we struggle with figuring out what is pleasing to God. If one choice clearly worked better than others, then we’d just make that choice. Or, at least, we’d try to. Discernment is the spiritual activity we engage in when we are trying to do what is pleasing to God and the answer isn’t obvious in advance.

As I examined The United Methodist Church’s words on Military Service, I was struck by how deeply they’re reflective of a need for good discernment. It is abundantly clear that we need good people to serve in the military, including people of faith who do so with their convictions and conscience, and who will seek the well-being of all to the greatest extent of their abilities. It is also abundantly clear that some people of faith are called to refuse military service out of their faith. And the answer is particular to the person, and their faith, and their gifts, and their circumstances, and their callings, and is not the same for different people. Together, as a Body of Christ, and as a nation, and a world we are strongest when we have both people in the military who serve with integrity and people who choose not to serve as a means of expressing their faith.

For some people, knowing where to land on that question is easy, for others it could be the ultimate discernment. But, for all of us, there are times when we face questions of importance where we need to engage in discernment to find our way.

Now, I need to offer a little bit of my own nonconformist framing to this, simply because I am me and this was imperative to my development. For many years when I heard people talk about “finding out what is pleasing” to God, or discernment, or in the words I heard most often “doing God’s will” I thought of it was… well… obedience. My framing was that God – the creator of the universe – had expectations and plans for me and my job was to “discern” what God wanted and then obediently enact that. Which, I’ll be honest, got me to about 30 without significant issues.

And then it became really uncomfortable.

I didn’t like the implications about God and me that came with that framework. I wanted to be more than a cog in a wheel doing what some external being desired of me. And I wanted to fit the framework into the understanding I had of God as compassionate and kind and intimately involved in my life. The framework started to splinter because it didn’t really fit either the God I experienced nor my theology.

As I sat with my discomfort, and engaged in conversations about it, and wrote about it my prayer journal, and generally pondered about it I built a different understanding of what it means to “try to find out what is pleasing to” God.

While I do think of God as Creator, and that is huge in my personal belief system, when I pray I really think of it as becoming aware of the Holy Spirit who is everywhere – in me and around me and in and around everyone else – connecting us and loving us and just being the foundation of love in everything and everyone. Prayer is attending to and bringing my awareness to God who is with me, NOT to God is above me or beyond me.

And that means that discernment – for me – is not about figuring out the will of some OTHER being. Instead it is about listening to God-with-me, who I know through my own body and being, whose wisdom I access through my own. This, of course, has some dangers. The big one is that my own perception bias can impact how I hear God and lead me wrong. However, that’s always true! But, trusting myself as human who is able to to listen to the whisperings of God within is what discernment looks like for me. And it is hard, sometimes, to trust myself to do it. But it feels a lot more real and honest and even comfortable for me than my old framework did.

A few years ago our Church Council created a “Futuring Committee” to consider where our church is headed. We engaged in a process of group discernment. Our meetings were heavy in prayer, and we moved to silence when we got stuck. We did careful thinking and listening, but we also paid deep attention to what delighted us AS A MEANS of knowing what God might be nudging us towards. Eventually, in conversation with the church that went both ways, we landed on a plan to try to use our building as a resource to the community that will also help us build a more financially sustainable future. In specifics, we planned to make our space particularly available to dance and music groups, to increase the use of our space by outside groups (like All of Us in the Pine Room), and to renovate space we aren’t using for people to live – without having to do the development or oversight ourselves.

(Please note that as in any discernment, finding the way is one part and enacting it is a different part and we’re trying but not getting as far as we’d like with using our space for housing as of yet. But we’re still trying!)

I’m still happy with the work we did, primarily because we took a chance in trusting ourselves to be people who could “find out what is pleasing to” God. And, I think we did.

It seems important here to end on some practical notes about discernment. So, here we go.

First important thing to know: emotions are a TOOL of discernment, not a distraction from it. Does something excite you, bring you joy, energize you, delight you? THAT MATTERS!!!! Does something fill you with dread, bore you to tears, elicit disgust, make you recoil? That matters too! At least in my model of discernment, we have to take ourselves seriously as part of the data set we’re working with as we work with God.

Second important thing to know: when you get stuck, get curious. Why are you stuck? What values are in conflict? What is scaring you or holding you back? What would you need to feel more confident about your way forward? Does anyone else know what you’d need to know to figure this out?

Third important thing to know: discernment often involves a lot of time and silence, because sorting through our own emotions and wisdom and sorting what is real from what we’re afraid might be real, and sorting the past from the present, and generally just finding clarity is slow and takes attention and looks like nothing is happening for a really long time until it does.

Forth and final important thing to know about discernment: there are books written on this and practices that people have found really useful. For me, the ones that have helped the most are:

Prayer journaling. That is, writing it all down where the audience is God) which is helpful because I can sort it out as I write it down
Daily examen where you take time every day to notice the best and worst parts of your day, or the parts most and least connected to God, or the most loving and least loving parts and notice the patterns in them over time. (This can also be done with a journal where you write down both the best and the worst and review it on occasion).
Talking things over with those who are willing and able to hold the space for my own wisdom. I’ve most often practices this in Sacred Circles that come out of the Center for Courage and Renewal and Parker Palmer’s teachings, but really this is a Quaker practice with a long and beautiful history.

The real key here is to know that if you want to engage more deeply in intentional discernment, there are resources and you can find them or I can help you and you need not flail on your own!

We are people who are always trying to figure out what is pleasing to God. Thanks be to God for our trying, and our succeeding, and for the resources that can help us along the way. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 15, 2026

Sermons

Radical Nonviolence

March 8, 2026April 1, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Radical Nonviolence” based on Matthew 5:38-42 UMC Social Principles on War (Part 1 of War and Military Service)

There are 4 really specific pieces of advice in our short scripture reading today and are are more radical than they first appear. Some of you have heard this before, and for you it is a review. Some of you haven’t, and this is new information. Both are good.

When I was a child I was taught that these recommendations were to be a doormat -to allow violence to be done to me and to… well, I guess to suck it up as passively as possible. That’s not what the text says.

Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek. Why? Because there was a difference in ways people were hit. Equals were slapped (or punched). Subordinates were backhanded. To be backhanded was to be put in one’s place, and that place was “lower.” To turn the other cheek is to REFUSE the other person’s narrative that you are lesser.

Important note here, only the right hand got used for hitting people, the left hand was unclean. Not because lefties are bad, but because left hands were used for unclean tasks so one hand could be clean.

Walter Wink explains, “This action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, ‘Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status doesn’t alter that fact. You cannot demean me.’” 1 Because if the person strikes the second cheek the only way they can do that is to treat the person as an equal! Which is to say that the Biblical themes that all people are created in the image of God and are beloved by God is the basis of this advice! To turn the other cheek is to refuse the position of subordinate and to reclaim one’s status as a full human being!

Similarly, comes the bit about suing a person for their outer garment. Let’s be clear, only someone who has nothing else would put up their (one) outer garment as collateral. And the Bible knows this well enough that there are repetitions of the law that if an outer garment is taken as collateral it must be returned to the person every night so they have it for warmth while they sleep.

As Wink says, “Indebtedness was endemic in first-century Palestine… It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy. Emperors had taxed the wealthy so stringently to fund their wars that the rich began seeking non-liqiuid investments to secure their wealth. Land was best, but it was ancestrally owned and passed down over generations, and no peasant would voluntarily relinquish it.”2 So high interest and high taxes were used to squeeze landowners out of their land and get their land into the lands of the wealthy. Note that Jesus assumes his hearers are the poorest of the poor, the ones whose outer garments are their debt security.

So why does he tell them to offer their inner garment as well? Because it would leave them naked. They couldn’t win in court, they couldn’t change the system, but they could expose it. “Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell less on the naked party than other person viewing or causing the nakedness.”3 Thus, nakedness became a prophetic protest! And, it took back power and dignity for people who didn’t have any in the systems of the day.

So, too, is the recommendation to “go the second mile.” The context here is that Roman soldiers could require someone to carry their heavy (65-80 pound) packs ONE mile, but not more than one. And the soldiers were known to abuse this regularly, so there were various punishments for them, although it wasn’t ever clear what the punishment would be it if was violated. Offering to carry it a second mile would take a person whose labor had been forced and give that person back their dignity. The solider wouldn’t’ want the second mile, would have to ask the person not to, would have to acknowledge the person. And meanwhile the person whose labor had been forced would “have taken back the power of choice.”4

The final piece of advice is to give to everyone who asks, which is hard and complicated and like the rest of these deserves its own sermon, but here we are. The gist seems to be that the only way the peasants could survive was if they engaged in mutual support and sustenance.

Taken as a whole, these pieces of advice establish a radical system of nonviolent resistance. They are a significant part of the reason that the first few centuries of Christianity were emphatically nonviolent, and nonviolence was considered the essence of living out Christian faith. But nonviolence isn’t passive, nor powerless. All of this was mean to empower, to connect, to expose, to invert the system.

These are teachings central to Jesus’s third way. That is, NOT violence, NOT passivity, but nonviolence. This is one of the cores of our Christian tradition. And, as we heard in our shared reading of our United Methodist Social Principals, there is now a debate about whether or not violence is ever acceptable and while I think that conversation has immense value, we’re not focusing there today either.

However, it seems worth mentioning that those who believe violence and war are sometimes necessary usually would do so within the confines of Just War Theory which states that before a decision to go to war can be considered justified these conditions must be met:

The war must have a just cause.
It must be waged by a legitimate authority.
It must be formally declared.
It must be fought with a peaceful intention.
It must be a last resort.
There must be reasonable hope of success.
The means used must possess proportionality to the end sought.5

Note that for Christians and United Methodists, stating that Just War conditions have been met and it is thus legitimate to go to war is the most permissive standard within our Christian tradition, and others would say that there is no such thing as a just war, nor any justification for violent action.

Walter Wink is one of the thinkers who lands in that second position, but he points out that there are places where those who believe in just war and those who believe only in non-violence line up:

Both acknowledge that nonviolence is preferable to violence.
Both agree that the innocent must be protected as much as possible.
Both reject any defense of a war motivated solely by a crusade mentality or national security interests or personal egocentricity.
Both wish to persuade states to reduce the levels of violence.
Both wish to hold war accountable to moral values, both before and during the conflict.6

I would suggest for us that those are the principals we use was we make our shared assessments about what our faith requires of us in the days we are living. And, I’m going to go ahead and state the obvious that the current war in Iran does not meet the standards we hold.

Furthermore, the non-profit “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” reported this week that complaints have come in that commanders are telling their troops that the war in Iran is part of God’s plan to usher in the return of Christ.”7 More than 200 such complaints have come in, from more than 40 units (as of Thursday). The first one was. “A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer on behalf of 15 of them.”8

Now, we around here are not well versed in the premise of Armageddon, so let me clarify a few things. The first is that the book of Revelation was written as a letter to support people living the violence of the Roman Empire while trying to live the nonviolence of Jesus. It is written as vision, and with some warping of time to give it deniability as being about the Roman Empire. Some parts of American Christianity have globed on to an idea of a final battle based on Revelation 16:16, “And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.” That said, while the battle lines are drawn, in the book of Revelation they never occur, and instead Jesus comes in and ushers in the new heaven and the new earth. Which is to say that the WHOLE of “Armageddon” premise is just… made up.

And using those myths to justify war, which is what happens every time the US enters a war in the Middle East, is an abuse of Christianity and Christian tradition to serve the values of the empire. The debate within the Christian tradition is about if ANY war can be justified. What is being articulated to try to motivate our military is a perversion of Christianity that is antithetical to our scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Christianity, like other world religious, holds that are people are of sacred worth. We never take killing lightly, and the power of the state to kill doesn’t change that standard. For now, we need to hold firmly to our own tradition, and refute any premise that tries to use Christianity to justify unjust war. We need to hold firm to the sanctity of human life, and commit to nonviolence in all the ways we are able.

We need to live out the love of God we have experienced, and trust that love has its own power. And, while we are at it, The United Methodist Board of Church and Society has some trainings for us about how we can respond with nonviolent resistance like Jesus taught us.9 Thanks be to God for a denomination that helps us know how to follow in the ways of Jesus. Amen

1 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), p.176.

2 Ibid, p. 178

3 Ibid, p. 179.

4 Ibid, p. 182.

5 Ibid, p. 214.

6 Ibid, p. 224.

7 https://myemail.constantcontact.com/MRFF-Inundated-with-Complaints-of-Gleeful-Commanders-Telling-Troops-Iran-War-is–Part-of-God-s-Divine-Plan–to-Usher-in-Return-o.html?soid=1101766362531&aid=3OTPFAZxIrI

8 https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for, accessed 3-

9 https://www.umcjustice.org/latest/lenten-webinar-series-ashes-to-action-lent-as-non-violent-resistance-8953

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

March 8, 2026

Sermons

Lifting Eyes to the Hills

March 1, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Lifting Eyes to the Hills” based on Psalm 121 and Preface to Social Principles “Community of All Creation”

I am told that the Ancient Israelite temples were creation themed. I love that. I love how it connects our faith tradition to other traditions that were and are more earth based. I think about a tour I once took of a cathedral in Ecuador where the tour guide pointed out places the builders of the cathedral snuck in their own faith symbolism. The people doing the actual building had not been building of their own free will, and they’d not been converted to the faith that forced their labor. The symbols they added, though, were symbols of Mother-earth. And it is interestingly full circle that the “inserted” symbols were also a part the ancient Temples that pre-date our Christian tradition.

I also love that the Temple was creation themed because I think my own faith is creation themed and I like reminders that my faith is a valid expression of a long standing tradition – since sometimes I get messages that I’m too far out of the norm to count. Knowing God as Loving Creator is the foundation of my understanding of the Divine. Seeing glimpses of God in creation is a constant affirmation of my faith itself. Gleaning wisdom from creation has always been at least as important to me as gleaning wisdom from ancient patriarchal texts (the Bible, I’m talking about the Bible – I love it and struggle with it).

I’ve always read Psalm 121 and resonated with “I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” I’ve done that. A lot. When I’m driving on the interstates or country roads, I’m pretty constantly lifting my eyes to the hills and soaking in their beauty and wisdom. They speak to me of God. This is for me a comforting Psalm, a reminder of the ways that Creation speak truths to our souls, an affirmation that God is with us, a reassurance that all will be well.

Which means, if I’m honest, that I love it and savor it and inherently distrust it. Because, dear ones, not all is well and not all has EVER been well. This fact doesn’t even require keeping up to date on the news. So I looked this Psalm up in the Word Biblical Commentary and discovered some new ideas. The first is that there is significant debate if the opening line reads the way I always read it, “I lift my eyes up to the hills – this beautiful piece of creation that soothes my soul – from where will my help come? From the God of creation of course!” OR if it means something more like “I lift my eyes to the hills – those mountains I must climb, where dangers abound in my path, from where will my help come in having to traverse them?”

Well then, I’d always missed THAT possibility. But, its valid. And in both cases the answer is the same “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” Which is kinda great, that whether the hills are soothing or terrifying, the answer is that the God of Creation is with us.

The commentary suggests that in this Psalm the speaker has been at a Temple festival, and has been fed by being in that worshipful place and experience. The festival is ending, and the Psalmist is trying to find a way to live out the wonder of the Temple experience in day to day life. I can’t quite tell why they assume all this is true, but neither can I find a reason to disagree with it, so I’m going with it. The question of the Psalm then is how to trust in God in the day to day, and the Psalmist expresses convictions of how trustworthy God is. That said, I feel like the Psalmist goes overboard. The commentary explains, “Life is full of dangers, but Yahweh’s help is a match for them all. … In practical terms life cushioned from all unpleasantness was never the lot of the Israelite… but believers in any age hear this message deep in their hearts and are encouraged thereby to bear the heat and burden of the day and to sleep with contentment.”1

By the end of that, I hear the famous words of Julian of Norwich, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Julian found those words after decades of prayerful consideration of a single deathbed vision. They come out of pain, fear, and isolation to speak to the truth under it all.

Beloveds, there are all kinds of things that are not well. We could spend days making the lists of what is not well. Hmm, maybe months?

And at the same time, God is with us all. They’re both true. The worst things happening in the world, God is with the people experiencing them. They are not alone. Even more so, God is at work to care for God’s people, all of them, all the time. But quite often people get in God’s way.

God may be trying to shade us from the sun, but sometimes people cut down the trees! God has created plenty for us to eat, but we don’t distribute it well. God wants full and abundant lives for all of us and sometimes we humans drop bombs and missiles on people.

And STILL God is with us all.

God, the creator, dreams good dreams for us where we share in the abundance of God’s resources and take loving care of each other. And, in the meantime, in this world we live in, our help comes from God, who made heaven and earth.

Thanks be to God who is always with us. Amen

1Leslie Allen, Word Biblical Commentary Psalms 101-150, ed. Bruce M. Metzger et al (USA: Zondervan, 2002), p. 154

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

March 1, 2026

Sermons

Life Giving Bread

February 22, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Life Giving Bread” based on UMC Social Principle on “Food Justice” and Matthew 4:1-11

Welcome to Lent, let’s talk about the temptations the Tempter was tempting Jesus with. 😉

The last one is obvious, I think. Jesus is tempted with worldly power, and instead chooses Godly power. That one is a big deal, after all most of the expectations of the messiah at that point were for the messiah to restore Ancient Israel to its worldly power. And power over others is highly valued in a lot of places – but Jesus was into the power with, into relationship, into the well-being of the collective – not into using people to benefit himself.

In the middle one we’re told that Jesus is tempted to test God. But that one has never made sense to me. I’ve never had a temptation to test God by engaging in self harm and expecting God to change the rules of physics to protect me. And, really, we’re talking about Jesus here who ends up being killed by the powers of the world, so…. What? My guess is that this is a story of early Christianity, when people had come to believe that Jesus was “special” and maybe even started to think of Jesus as “God” and then thought he’d have temptations to excuse himself from the laws of nature.

But is actually the first one that confuses me the most. The stones into bread one. The idea here is that Jesus has been fasting and he is famished. So the temptation is to … well… eat. To feed his body. To stop the pains of hunger.

Jesus responds that he is in need of God, not of physical nourishment and that’s really lovely and all but the fact does remain that he would have been REALLY hungry. So I got to wondering about this. I started to wonder what would be so bad about breaking a fast with some bread. Particularly if we suspect disbelief and think about it as if Jesus could ACTUALLY make stones into bread. What would be wrong with that?

And then I realized that to make stones into bread to break a spiritual fast would pretty much negate the purpose of the fast. Fasting is meant to be a way of CONNECTING, that every time a person feels hunger they use it to remind themselves to turn to prayer rather than food. But it has to be a choice, simply being hungry and not having access to food isn’t fasting. That’s being hungry, whether the person is spiritual about it not.

In traditions that use fasting regularly, the end of a fast is as intentional as the rest of it. Part of the temptation here is to circumvent the process and meet the bodily need before completing the spiritual process.

But the other thing that occurred to me is that in real life, bread is INHERENTLY communal. To make bread you need: flour, water, salt, and a leavening agent. In the time of Jesus the leavening agent it would have been sourdough. NONE of those ingredients are things that exist in a vacuum. To have flour you need land, and seeds, and time to cultivate and knowledge. You also need a way to grind grains into flour, which is pretty challenging to do. Water required a well in those days in that part of the world. Salt required harvesting and transportation. And sourdough … well, truthfully it dies sometimes and you need someone else to give you some again. Oh, and you need an oven, which is a thing that has to be build, and heated, which requires fuel.

That is a long way of saying – you can’t make bread by yourself. Bread is communal.

Then I got thinking about how it may look like bread is less communal today – after all we aren’t standing around a grinding stone with our neighbors or buying salt from the person who harvested it- but it takes many MORE hands to eat bread today than it did then!

I buy flour in a paper bag from the co-op. So to get it to me involves the co-op, roads, the company that grinds and sifts it, the farmers whose grain they grind, the people who make the equipment the farmers use, the seed companies, the water systems for the land, AND the people who made the paper bag, and the glue. And the paper company, glue company, co-op and flour company are places that have finance departments and HR departments and hire custodians and gardeners. Also, to buy the flour I participate in the finance system of the US, using a card, connected to my bank, all based on the worldwide value of the US currency.

I get water from my tap. Which is a miracle. And involves the city water system, those who maintain it, those who budget for it, the NYS regulations on it, the EPA regulations on it, the lawyer who are suing the EPA to keep regulations on it, the engineers who designed it, the workers who installed it, and the work of the plumbers I call if it goes wrong in my house!

I get my salt from the co-op too, I notice it has a metal spout and think about how many humans’ labor that spout adds. And I think about the work of maintaining the roads to get it to us, and the labor of doing it and the machines required and the labor of building and maintaining and dreaming the machines.

My sourdough I got from my brother’s college roommate’s stepmother, a lovely woman named Kathy who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, and could trace her sourdough to the time when Russians were in charge of Alaska.

The oven I use … oh my. People designed it, tested it, marketed it, transported it, and installed it. Others had to run electricity for it to work, and people connected my house to electricity and other people maintain the electrical grid. Oh, and the people who created, designed, perfected, transported, and installed the solar panels that sometimes provide the electricity for the house! I won’t go into it but most of the time when I make bread, I use olive oil too, and bowls, and pans, and tools! 😉

So when I “make my own bread,” I’m indebted to the labor of more people than I can fathom. And for those people to do their work, they need others too! Someone helped birth them, someone took care of them as children, people got them the medicine they need, people taught them, people wrote books they’ve read, people acted in shows they like and movies they make sense out of, someone recorded their favorite music, and someone is ready to answer the phone if they call 911. So, by the time we really think about it, the capacity for me to “make bread” requires …. a society.

To eat bread is to be nourished by the abundance of creation, the energy of the sun, the gifts of mother earth herself AND to be nourished by the interconnections of humanity itself.

Which means that magicking stones into bread is skipping out on the people and connections and communal wisdom and societal implications that are actually all a part of getting bread. If you skip out on that part, you’ve taken care of yourself in ISOLATION, taken care of only yourself while bypassing all the people who should be a part of it. You take your needs out of the community you live in. And when you take your needs out, you take your gifts out too, and you aren’t a part of the community anymore. To turn stones into bread is to act as if you can thrive in isolation.

And that’s why one shouldn’t make stones into bread – if one could.

And while we’re at it, stones don’t actually nourish, kind of like the cheap, self-stable food that many are forced by circumstances to rely on. Food that is high in sodium, low in nutrients, specially designed to make you overeat without being satisfied. Stones. And, what our society offers people as “food.” Because each loaf of bread we make is inherently dependent on others, and yet many of the others the bread depends on aren’t able to access good bread itself.

Our Social Principles make a strong point about the importance of local control over food justice. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways we actually can participate in the systems as justly as possible. This church was an early adaptor of Equal Exchange Coffee, when that was the only way people could access fair trade coffee and ensure that some of the costs of coffee were used to provide for the people doing the work! Now, we’re more able to access fair trade coffee in more places, as it became clear that “fair trade” is something that people want! We don’t want food systems that oppress, food systems that dehumanize, nor food systems that make us sick! We want just systems! We want those who labor to be able to eat – and truthfully, we even want those who don’t labor to be able to eat!!!! We want the abundant resources God has provided in the earth to be used to feed God’s people.

So, I’ve been thinking about where we are able to make a difference in these sometimes really complicated systems of our society. Which means I’ve been thinking about the wonders of food co-ops. When I arrived here I was told about the Niskayuna Co-op by a church member and I’ve loved it ever since. I’m also really excited about the Electric City Food Cooperative that is supposed to open this year. From their website, ““Community-owned grocery stores … are jointly owned and democratically governed by their member-owners – by the people, for the people.” They operate differently than grocery stores. Co-ops are “where Profit serves People and Planet, rather than the other way around.”

Because, “in conventional supermarkets, financial profit is the bottom line. In these companies, profits are distributed to shareholders or private owners. For corporately-owned grocery stores, the primary legal responsibility of the business is to generate profit margins to be redistributed to shareholders (typically people who are disconnected from the local community served by the store). Profit margins in grocery stores tend to be low compared to many other businesses and most corporately-owned supermarkets are only willing to establish stores in places where they can be assured that the population’s spending power and trip volume is high enough to generate profit for their shareholders and executives. They tend to favor car-dominated suburban areas more than locating in urban neighborhoods.”

“Research shows that community-owned grocery stores like co-ops are the best recipe for increasing access to nutritious and healthy foods, especially in areas like downtown Schenectady that have a history of disinvestment and are currently experiencing economic revitalization. Cooperative management models paired with significant community engagement with local government and nonprofit support make the difference.”

To my delight, it is about to get EASIER for people in our city to access good quality food, that connects us to local food sources, and distributes wealth more equitably! That is, while we can’t solve it all, we can do our best and maybe have the bread we eat that connects us to each other do a little more good along the way. And, more people will be able to access life giving bread. Thanks be to God for every single step towards food justice! Amen

February 22, 2026

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

Sermons

Sacred Sabbath

February 15, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Sacred Sabbath” based on the United Methodist Social Principle on “Sabbath and Renewal Time” and Matthew 17:1-9

The final Sunday before Lent begins is Transfiguration Sunday, when we read one of the Gospel’s versions of the story of Jesus heading up the mountain with his favorite disciples and a transformation happening before their eyes. The story is blatantly placed on this Sunday to give us a foreshadowing of Easter right before we start Lent. It is a story when the truth of God’s work in Jesus shines through.

Most years when I preach on this I focus on the truth that shined through and the disciples’ hilarious responses to it. This year though, I found myself asking, “What was it that helped them gain clarity?”

It was understood in those days that mountaintops were holy places. This was even one of great debates of the time, as the people of God in Jerusalem said God was to be worshiped in the Temple and the people of God in Samaria said that God was to be worshiped in high places. I’ve been on a few mountaintops in my life, and I tend to understand why people find then holy. The views, the distances from normal life, the work involved to get there, the wonder of it all adds up!

Even more so though, I think there is intentionality in this. Jesus is always going off by himself to pray, but in this story he brings Peter, James, and John with him. I think this is a story of the ways that prayer can change us, and in particular of how prayer can free us. We’re bathed in the stories of the world, around here were are bathed in capitalism and competition, consumerism and hierarchy. But when we settle down to be with God, we make space for transformation to happen within us and for God’s stories to bathe us instead.

Prayer gives us time to soak in God’s grace and love, in the inherent value of all people, in the wonders of creation, in the abundance of resources on earth, in the validity of our emotions, in sacred interconnectedness.

We read together the UMC Social Principle on Sabbath and Renewal Time, and I’ll admit that one isn’t as strong as I’d like. I’d prefer if we urged people to engage in a weekly practice of Sabbath keeping, if we celebrated time away instead of just affirming it, and if we named spiritual practices as integral to excellent Sabbath. The good news is that I’m allowed to disagree 🙂

Of the many gifts of Sabbath keeping, I think the one we need the most right now are the space away from the narratives of the world, and with the narratives of God. This is particularly true because the powers of the world are quite factually trying to drain our life energies away from us and leave us overwhelmed and unable to respond. We need to step away- regularly and with great intention – and be restored.

Now, as a United Methodist in the 21st Century I don’t actually hear a whole lot about Sabbath keeping from others. Ideally, to keep Sabbath is to have whole day every week set aside for things OTHER than production and consumption. We’re not supposed to work! We’re also not supposed to be catching up on chores. (Oye.) We’re supposed to send the time connection – with God, with those we love, and even with ourselves. So Sabbath is practiced in worship and prayer time, taking walks or savoring nature, playing games with those we love, creating something for the fun of it, having a meal or hot drink with people we care about, … anything that feeds our souls, slows the pace, brings joy, re-centers us, builds relationships, and reminds us of the goodness of life itself.

Beloveds, our faith tradition says we should spend AT LEAST one day every week in this way. And, heavens, people choose to ignore this. It is one of the 10 commandments, and it is one of the keys to a full and abundant life and people just… don’t.

Now, if you currently can’t, that’s real. But perhaps like trying to move toward tithing over the long run, I’d invite you to ask what you can do to take steps towards a regular practice of Sabbath. I’ve been interested to note that I usually take Saturdays as Sabbath and I’ve been leading Family Faith Formation every other Saturday since fall of 2021. This is a potential Sabbath violation …. I’m working. But it is work that connects me to others, my family to others, gives me time with my family, and connects us to God. I’ve decided it is well worth it, since I’m not interested in playing Sabbath police but I am interested in things that are good for me and mine! (This example is used to give you freedom.)

Beloveds of God, I encourage you to move more deeply into Sabbath. And, if you have just no idea where to start, our Spiritual Formation Committee has a whole lot of ideas and would be delighted to engage you in it!

Or, more specifically, I’ve been slowly working my way through Tricia Hershey’s book “Rest is Resistance.” She’s working much more on rest than Sabbath but they’re deeply related and she’s brilliant. She asks, “How can we afford to rest when the colonizing Empire we live in daily continues to rage on and grow stronger?… Yes, the system continues raging and destroying but we will not be able to tap into spaces of freedom, joy, and rest by pushing our precious bodies and minds in abusive ways. … Treating each other and ourselves with care isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we are going to thrive.” (58, 58, 61) And she, the “Nap Bishop” would tell you that if you aren’t sure what to do to start a practice of rest or Sabbath, she’d recommend you take a nap.

Now, it is Black History Month, and while I’ve mentioned that, I haven’t really taken the time to savor it yet beyond our music. I was reminded that Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was enslaved in Upstate NY, and was an early abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and preacher, one who is known to have preached in United Methodist Churches. (First UMC Kalamazoo, where at least one beloved of this congregation once moved their membership.) She is particularly famous for her speech “Ain’t I a Woman” and I think it is time we hear it in whole:

May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter.

I am a woman’s rights.

I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.

I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?

I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can © eat as much too, if (d) I can get it.

I am as strong as any man that is now.

As for intellect, all I can say is, (e) if women have a pint and man a quart – why can’t she have her little pint full?

You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, for we cant take more than our pint’ll hold.

The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont know what to do.

Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better.

You will have your own rights, and they wont be so much trouble.

I cant read, but I can hear.

I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin.

Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.

The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right.

When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother.

And Jesus wept – and Lazarus came forth.

And how came Jesus into the world?

Through God who created him and woman who bore him.

Man, where is your part?

But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them.

But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between-a hawk and a buzzard.

[I originally preached the version form https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm – but have corrected it based on this https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/]

I find myself back at the Transfiguration…. That is, I don’t’ think Sojourner Truth could have spoken so clearly the truths of God unless she had taken the time to savor the truths of God. That is, I think she rested, and practiced spiritual practices, and likely took Sabbath. I mean, she’d been enslaved! I can’t imagine she’d want to work more than 6 days a week when she gained her freedom. (Perhaps a thing to ponder in this culture.)

Also, I think the capacity to hear the truths she told, particularly in that time, depended on people being willing to slow down, engage in Sabbath, practice spiritual practices, and get good at listening to God. In a few words, she took down the hierarchies of the day and named God’s desires for the world. People might have gotten defensive of the world as they knew it – unless they’d been bathing in God’s dreams for the world as it could and should be.

In the delight of Sabbath, God plants seeds that change the world, and all we have to do to receive them is simply BE. God has given us gifts, many of them, including the gift of the practice of Sabbath. Beloveds, I urge you, receive the gifts from God for a full and abundant life. You are worth it AND the world needs you whole. Two true things, two reasons to move towards a fuller Sabbath practice. Amen

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

February 15, 2026

Sermons

Blessed Are We

February 8, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Blessed Are We” based on Social Principle on “People with Disabilities” & Matt. 5:12

I was a very happy camper, I mean this literally. I really loved going to camp. Well, I really loved going to my local United Methodist Church Camp. I found other camps suspect, and usually thought they did it wrong. I was an awkward kid who struggled socially in school and church camp was the place beyond my home that I was welcomed, loved, and celebrated for who I was! I wasn’t asked to be different. Awkward was OK! At camp, as I experienced it, I was ok.

Which means that I thought that church camp was the best place on earth and church camp staff were the coolest people on earth. [Giggle.] I’m not sure why I’m using the past tense, I may not be a kid anymore but I still love my church camp with my whole being, and I still think camp staff people are AMAZING although I guess I have changed a little. I now think campers are the coolest people on earth.

When I was finishing High School I applied to work on camp staff and to my utter and complete amazement I was hired and got to be a camp counselor and I loved it SO HARD. Then I got to run the counselor in training program (which at Sky Lake we call SNAP for Special Needs Assistant Personnel) and it turned out I loved that just as hard.

I had thought I’d spend time with kids, taking them swimming and taking walks in the woods, and playing silly games. Sometimes I did! But it turned out that Sky Lake has a number of camps for people with disabilities, and I was mostly assigned to them and … well, that’s one of the best things that has ever happened in my life. I mean it, up there with finding my spouse, being a parent, and getting to be a pastor.

To be clear, since “disability” is an incredibly wide ranging description, our “Special Needs” campers at Sky Lake are people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. (At least most of the time, few of the campers who come to the camp for those with physical disabilities do not have intellectual disabilities.) And, it should be said, people with disabilities, including those with intellectual disabilities, are a diverse group of people with their own personalities, preferences, pet peeves, and… well, humanity. Broad strokes rarely apply to this group, as a whole people with intellectual disabilities are more diverse than any other group I can think of.

And, at the same time, the experience of working with people with disabilities is profound gift in my life. This, if we’re honest, is about ME even more than it is about the campers. Our campers who are people with special needs are the best teachers I’ve ever had, are some of the longest running relationships in my life, and are sources of pure joy and delight. Without them I would not be who I am, and I would know so much less joy.

When I read the Beatitudes as part of Worship planning, I was trying to find ways to fit together the scriptures and the Social Principles. I was then asking “what Social Principle fits best with the Beatitudes?” and it is my personal bias in life that landed on the answer “People with Disabilities.” Here in the United States with live in unfettered capitalism which is a profoundly broken system that exists at odds with our faith. It is a system of universal competition where people are seen to have value because of what they have and not because they are. It is a system where humanity is secondary profits. It is a system where some people matter and some do it.

Unfettered capitalism doesn’t value people with disabilities. Maybe, sometimes, those of us with vision impairment that can be resolved with glasses can sneak by without much devaluing but most of the time any ways that people are different or any ways that people struggle are seen as LESS THAN.

This is profoundly at odds with the values of the kindom of God where every person is made and beloved by God as they are and where differences are valued and celebrated. It is also profoundly at odds with my life. The Beatitudes invert the values of the world and claim the values of the kindom. The world devalues poor people, honestly in the time of Jesus and today people who live in poverty die younger and struggle more. But God knows that people who live in poverty are blessed and important, loved and gifted, valued beyond measure.

The world devalues meek people, because it values the sort of strength that is the power of violence and obedience. But the kindom of God knows that the meek among us are the ones that offer the best care, the ones on whom the fabric of society depends, the wisest of all. The kindom of God knows that it is the powers of love and relationship that really matter, and where strength really lies.

Similarly, the world devalues peacemakers. War is profitable and fighting over resources is our global norm. But peacemakers live the values of the kindom, caring about all members of the community and seeking win wins and breaking down barriers and letting love shine through.

Within all the inversions of the Beatitudes, I hear the unspoken one “Blessed are those with disabilities, for they know true wisdom and true strength.” When people are dismissed because of their disabilities, there is not only damage done to the one who is dismissed. The whole body that doesn’t get to receive their gifts is damaged by missing out on them.

OK, so this has been a little bit vague so far, and I want to bring it into a more concrete story. The first week I was a camp counselor, when I was green and basically useless, I was assigned to a camp for people with physical disabilities, most of whom also had intellectual disabilities. It was a camp where most of our campers were in wheelchairs, and the pace of camp was SLOW. One of the campers was a man named George who started attending camp in 1973, meaning by the time I showed up on staff in 1999 he had 26 years of camp under his belt.

George was dangerously fond of flirting and women, going so far as to write plays where he saved damsels in distress so that in acting out the play women would give him kisses on the cheek in gratitude. He lived for his one week at camp a year, spending the rest of the year buying treats he could give away during camp. He particularly enjoyed giving out nerds candy because it was a treat and an insult wrapped in one.

George liked to tell jokes but had a really severe life-long speech impediment. So, he wrote down his favorite puns on pieces of cardboard – the joke on one side and the punchline on the other and when he wanted to tell someone jokes they’d be responsible for reading them out-loud and then laughing at them. The jokes remained the same day after day and year after year, so for some of us they got fairly familiar. One of George’s favorite moments of his life was when one of the staff members pretended to laugh so hard at his joke cards that he had to run off to pee before there was a problem. That individual had read them about a hundred times before.

The thing that always amazed me most about George was his patience. One time we were practicing one of his places in preparation for the camp talent show and another counselor asked George if he would like some lemonade. George replied, “spleetd.” Fifteen minutes later, and after several attempts at spelling the word for us (he could spell beautifully but his speech impediments made it hard for us to even understand the letters he spelled) we were still lost. Finally, we realized that he was asking us if the lemonade was spiked. He stayed with us, speaking and spelling and trying to be understood for 15 minutes in order to make a joke about whether or not the lemonade was spiked.

I’ve often thought about that moment, and what I might have been like in his shoes. I imagine feeling so frustrated. I imagine giving up. I imagine deciding my joke wasn’t so funny and wasn’t worth the effort. I imagine crying and screaming and shutting down. But George cared about us enough to keep trying to help us understand, and that is a gift I’ll aways be grateful for even if the joke wasn’t THAT good.

In addition to spending 51 weeks a year buying treats to give away, George spent those weeks writing letters to camp staff. He wrote on legal paper, with ¼ inch margins, single spaced, on a type-writer. He put them in envelopes marked S.W.A.K for “Sealed with a Kiss” and they were a godsend for understanding him more than I ever could from spoken conversations. He’d write about friends and family, about trying to cheer people up, about favorite memories – usually of camp- about the stupidity of racism, about his frustration with his body’s decreasing capacities. He also wrote about frustration with a time that someone at camp washed his clothes without asking his permission, which was a fabulous reminder to me about the importance of consent.

He’d send holiday cards, and track my schedule. He liked to call on holidays too, there were a lot of calls on Christmas morning where he’d play his favorite Christmas song “Grandma got run over by a Reindeer.” This was back in the day, so my immediate family also had to learn to interpret his speech well enough to figure out that they should pass the phone to me.

I spent 5 weeks with George in my life, and he died 20 years ago. I think about him constantly and talk about him regularly. His love, his humor, his passion, and his willingness to show me his interior life was a huge part of breaking me free to see the full and wonderful humanity of people with disabilities. He broke my heart wide open.

I struggle to put words to the degree to which my campers matter in my life. Everything I can say sounds too weak or too cliché. I’ve already said that I believe that people with disabilities are blessed. But truthfully I believe that any of us whose lives are touched by people with disabilities are blessed. Blessed are we who get to spend any part of our lives with those who have disabilities, we will never be the same again.

So, if you want to see the kindom of God at play, if you want to experience blessings you never knew you needed, if you want to laugh harder than you thought possible… talk to me at camp. And, I should say clearly again, United Methodist Church Camp also exists for neurotypical kids and they’re great too. The kids and the camps 😉

But, mostly, dear ones, thank God for the differences among us and the ways those differences bless our lives. Amen

Sermons

To Do, To Love

February 1, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“To Do, To Love, To Walk” based on The United Methodist Social Principle on Civil Disobedience Micah 6:1-8

For many of us, the requirements of Micah 6:8 are profoundly familiar. What God requires of us is that we to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. Justice, kindness, walking with God. To do, to love, to walk.

Micah is one of the prophets, and the prophets are the ones who call out injustice. That is, that most often they speak to the fact that God wants society to take care of everyone, and make sure the hungry have food and the unhoused are housed and the widows and orphans can access life giving resources. Debts should be forgiven, judges should be impartial, there should be no systems of oppression nor domination.

To do justice includes calling out injustice, and acting justly. Paying agreed upon amounts, finding ways to re-balance imbalance, sharing, taking responsibilities seriously. God’s dreams can’t be fulfilled unless individuals and societies DO justice.

I am so grateful that the second one is kindness and not niceness! We are to love kindness. Isn’t that a delight? Not just do kindness but also love it, notice it and be excited by it and celebrate it and embrace it. LOVE kindness. Love how it feels to be kind, love how it feels to receive kindness, love how it feels even to see kindness.

And, finally, “walk humbly with God.” Sometimes I hear this one and the energy is on the “humbly” but I think it should be on the “with God.” Remember we are not alone. Remember that God is with us, and God is powerful, and God is loving, and God is at work doing good in the world, and that we GET TO work with this God of love and also just savor God’s love in our lives.

This week I came across a piece entitled “How to Take Care of Your Mental Health Under Fascism” by Dr. Lauren Fogel Mersy who I know NOTHING about other than she works in Minneapolis as a licensed therapist, but I appreciated her point that we are supposed to oscillate “between coping skills that confront what is happening and coping skills that take breaks for respite.” Every one I know is DOING this, but I – for one – did not have clarity on it is as a model for health. We do the things, whether it is ingesting the news or reading history, calling our representatives, showing up for protests, posting our views, making donations, checking on people… we do the things. Some of the are HARD, they take a lot. (And, for me, I mostly mean ingesting the news is hard.) But then we do the other things… we craft or create, we get together with friends, we play and eat, we do yoga or mediation or puzzles, or watch or read something escapist, or sing, or get exercise or simply pray.

And we go back and forth.

We confront what is happening and we feed our souls. That is, we do the important things, and we do the other important things. And within this we do all the things: we do justice and we love kindness AND we walk humbly with God and it is all in there.

The work of coping skills that confront includes so many of the things we’ve been doing. For me, it helps to connect this with the work of doing justice. And, as we know, sometimes the justice loving requires Civil Disobedience. Jesus did it, and sometimes his followers need to as well, because God’s commandment to love our neighbors take precedence over obedience to immoral authorities. And thanks be to God that our denomination names this important truth.

There are astounding stories these days of the many ways that doing justice is happening. Have you heard the stories of people in Minnesota protecting their neighbors by standing watch over schools and then the stories they tell of other people bringing them coffee, or handing them 3-d printed whistles, or just showing up to keep them company for a bit? People who are doing front line work are doing their work supported by others doing different work and together whole communities are holding strong in the face of unrelenting pressure from the domination system.

The people who do the best organizing are the ones who know the power of art and music and culture to strengthen community and commitment. Singing together matters, beauty matters, COFFEE matters. (Huh, it is almost like churches do know a thing or two about bringing people together!)

The work of coping skills that offer respite connects really well to loving kindness as far as I can tell. Loving kindness for others AND for ourselves. The inspiring stories, noticing the wonder, and of course the imperative escapism of zoning out.

I’ve been loving kindness by noticing good things. When the news troubles our souls, it can be far too easy to focus on the horrible and horrifying things around us. But when we are looking for them, we are able to see that there is an abundance of good too.

This week I’ve been noticing snow removal. This is might sound trivial, but let me explain. I now walk a 5 year old to and from school every day and it makes me very attentive to conditions of the sidewalks. In my neighborhood most people put forth a decent effort and that’s great, but usually a few houses along our route… well.. don’t and it turns out that the ease of the route is really impacted by whether or not EVERYONE has cleared the sidewalks.

This week is the first big snowstorm since we started walking and the sidewalks were in much better condition than usual. This surprised me, and I paid even better attention and found signs that neighbors were taking care of each other. Snowblower tracks flowed continually from one property to another. Rock salt color also crossed property lines. And, my personal favorite right now is the house on the corner across from the elementary school where a 5 foot high pile of plowed snow creates a barrier from exiting the sidewalk… and the people from that house broke through the mess on one side (outstanding work that) and then used their snowblower on their LAWN to create a path around the insanity snow pile to let kids get to school safely. (Please note my child climbs over this pile, but I appreciate the path nonetheless.) Collaboration, creativity, and care are visible on our city sidewalks!

The third piece of what is required of us is to walk humbly with God. That one doesn’t show up in the therapists model, probably because she wasn’t aiming her words at a spiritual community. For me though, the capacity to do justice and the attention to love kindness come out of my walking with God. God holds me and upholds me, makes space for my anger and fears and joys and delights, offers me patience and hope when I run out, and more than anything just is WITH me reminding me that I’m not alone and we’re not alone in the work we do. We’re not alone in doing justice, God is with us sanctifying and strengthening the justice we do. We’re not alone in loving kindness, God is with us sanctifying and strengthening the kindness we love.

God wants full and abundant lives for all people. That’s why we work for justice AND why we love kindness. And that’s why we stay connected to God in prayer and worship, ministry and study, in savoring quiet moments and the wonder of music and art.

We are asked to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. That is, we are called to confrontation and respite. So, in case I haven’t been clear enough yet, truly dear ones, oscillating between confrontation and respite is IMPORTANT, do both and don’t judge your needs for balance. I’m pretty confident God doesn’t judge us for needing respite. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 1, 2026

Sermons

A Little Humility

January 25, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“A Little Humility" based on The United Methodist Church Social Principle on “Colonialism, Neocolonialism, and Their Consequences” and Isaiah 49:1-7

I was once a part of a team that was working fervently to restructure The United Methodist Church for greater equality. We had a diverse group of wise people on the team, we worked carefully and intentionally, we felt the movement of the Spirit, and we created legislation to enable our dream.

And then, as part of other advocacy we were doing, we asked colleagues from outside The United States to read it and support it. I was excited to share it. We were finally going to deconstruct some of the colonialist history of The United Methodist Church and put power where power belongs.

Until my colleagues told me they thought it was a really terrible idea that would harm them greatly, and asked why we hadn’t let them read it BEFORE we got so far. Which was a little bit discouraging, especially because they convinced me they were right.

Years later a new plan for restructuring The United Methodist Church emerged, one that had been created outside the United States and then adapted to fit feedback from people within the United States. It was similar to the one I’d worked on, but without the fatal flaws.

In May of 2024 that plan, “Regionalization” passed our General Conference and The United Methodist Church is in the process of implementing the plan. It means that we are less centralized and have more localized control. It means that our global voice is reserved for global issues, and it means that there is now going to be a space for the US church to work on its issues together (which didn’t used to exist.) There is balance, and equity, and shared leadership and power. It is a beautiful plan that I was happy to support and look forward to seeing live.

It also means that while The United Methodist Church has now removed its structural homophobia, we are going to give different regions in the world the chance to take their own stances on it. Which means that there will be parts of the church that are blatantly and unapologetically structurally homophobic, and I have to admit I don’t love that. But, also, I like it more than the WHOLE denomination being structurally homophobic, and in the end I don’t think that the will the global majority should define localized expressions of Christianity …. even though that means that things I don’t like may happen.

But back to the beginning, the plan we put forward: the whole experience left me humbled. I am horrified that I didn’t realize we needed feedback earlier, and that others didn’t either. I’m embarrassed that I thought that what I experienced as a good idea would be good for others and I was so arrogant that I didn’t think that required double checking with others. In trying to eliminate the colonialist history of The United Methodist Church I ended up being part of replicating it.

This may all be important to explain why I have a strong knee-jerk reaction to this Isaiah passage. Now I love Isaiah, I particularly love Isaiah 40-66, and my knee-jerk reactions to Isaiah passages are usually the equivalent of smooshy kissy faces. But in this case, I read “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel who has chosen you” and I just think…. Ugh.

The people of God are in exile and dreaming of what God is going to do to restore them and then they get these visions of being an empire dominating others and having the kings of the earth bow down and … could we not just let other people do thing their ways and not always be trying to have our religious perspective dominate everyone all at once?

Which is also to say, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and learning about White Christian Nationalism recently and apparently I’m now reading it into the Bible whether it is there or not. I double checked my reactions, and yeah, I’m reading things in that aren’t there. It isn’t even the people of Israel that are going to be bowed down to – it is the Suffering Servant who God is working towards. Although that may help me know why I’m so sensitive about it, Christians have associated Isaiah’s suffering servant with Jesus from the get-go and White Christian Nationalists do extra nasty things with that idea.

Really nasty things. See: the news. See: ICE executing peaceful protesters. See: our country is trying to claim parts of the world it has no right to See: our country is invading the sovereignty of other nations. Maybe it isn’t shocking that I’m reading a lot into Isaiah.

What I read into Isaiah sounds like Colonialism. Probably because I’ve been steeped in colonialism and the work to free myself from its grip is work I’m still doing. It is also work that seems urgent.

So, I offer you the rest of that verse that started bugging me. “Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, “Kings shall see and stand up; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’” That is, the servant is the one “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers” and that servant is the one to whom the powers are going to bow down. Letting go of my fears of empire for a moment, this is a classic Godly inversion of powers. A person who is a slave, who lacks power, who is hated, is the one that God is using in the world and who ends up being God’s representative to the people.

In situations of oppression, it is the people being harmed who have the best view of what’s wrong, how it is wrong, how it impacts them, and how they’d like to change it. That’s what I wish I’d thought of when I was trying to fix the church. The people impacted are the ones who have the right to lead the change, and those of us who want to help get in line BEHIND them and do what those impacted ask us to do.

That’s part of how we participate in building the kindom of God rather that replicating the power structures of the world. And, while I believe I see the evils around us very clearly, I see other things too. Right now, those RADICAL and PROFOUND inversions of God are so very present and precious and wonderful. When impacted people lead and others are willing to follow, even the powers of violence and oppression can’t stand.

State sponsored violence is being used to harm and kill, in an attempt to consolidate power and break the will of people to claim the power love. But the power of love isn’t broken, not even by the powers of state sponsored violence to kill. WE HAVE ALREADY HEARD THIS STORY. We know how it ends. In my mind the biggest story of the week was that people working together incredibly effectively to stop harm and live love! An article I read this week pointed out that the 2020 organizing in response to the killing of George Floyd has been instrumental in allowing the Twin Cities to respond now.1 The organizing has been amazing, the outpouring of love has been amazing, the rapid responses, the breadth and depth of human love being shared is simply awe inspiring. It hasn’t stopped the violence, I know, and I rage and I grieve. But, we are people of a nonviolent revolutionary, and we see once again the power of organized nonviolence. Violence can kill, but it can’t kill love.

Friends, those who wish to dominate others and oppress them and condemn them and continue the history and actions of colonialism and racism and ethnic cleansing are doing everything they can to break the resistance. But love is winning.

Love is winning.

God is with us, and love is winning and even when we or others get it wrong – God isn’t going to stop trying. Love is going to win.

I don’t know how long it will take, but I do not believe that the power of love can be stopped. Let’s hold onto it, with all we’ve got. God is with is, love is going to win. Thanks be to God. Amen

Downtown w:Minneapolis demonstration January 23, 2026 (Thanks Wikipedia)

1 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/20/minneapolis-organizes-trump-ice-crackdown?CMP=GTUS_email

Sermons

The Beloveds

January 18, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“The Beloveds” based on Matthew 3:13-17 and The UMC Social Principle on Racism, Ethnocentrism, and Tribalism

Into a world obsessed with those who have power over others, comes this little story about John and Jesus. The story is a fight to the bottom of the power structure. It is clearly told by early Church to tell us things about Jesus, as it doesn’t really fit the realities of his life. But it is, nevertheless, a rich little story.

While Luke goes to great pains to set up John and Jesus as cousins, that doesn’t happen in Matthew. In Matthew, John is a prophet in the wilderness calling the people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” and baptizing the people in the River Jordan. John was functioning as a prophet, and he acquired students who learned from him and taught his ways. Students are also known as disciples, and the way one became a disciple of a teacher or prophet was to be baptized by him.

Which is to say, that by the best guess of the best historical scholars, based on what we know, Jesus was a disciple of John. He was baptized by John and learned from him. Later on, when John is killed, Jesus continues the ministry of John INCLUDING taking on his theme “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” as Jesus’s main theme. He does, eventually, make it is own.

So we have this historical detail that Jesus was baptized by John, adapted a bit by the early Jesus movement to make sure it is clear that the point of this story is JESUS and not JOHN. So they have John objecting to it, which probably didn’t happen. And they have the voice of God show up… and I have to say I’m less willing to fight about that one.

Why?

Because at every baptism I have ever been present to it has been as if God has been speaking saying, “this is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” So while I’m not about to claim that this voice of God was objectively heard by all present or anything, I think it is one of the fundamental truths of the universe that is especially noticeable at baptism and it seems feasible to me that people could have sensed it at the baptism of Jesus.

In Latin, the phrase is “imago dei” which translates to “in the image of God” and it is the church shorthand for “people are made in the image of God which means that each and every person is holy.” This is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. We share it with other faith traditions, it is a truth that cannot be easily contained.

Everyone is beloved by God. God wishes good for everyone.

And while I always I hear this truth reflected at baptism, let me state explicitly that it applies to people who are not baptized, people who are not Christian, and people who are not religious. Being beloved of God even applies to people who do great harm. That doesn’t mean God is in favor of people harming each other, God’s love for us is just so immense and foundational that it can’t be broken by human action.

(And, yes, sometimes we want to make lists of people who are JUST SO BAD that maybe they’re not included, but dear ones, EVERYONE means EVERYONE. And excluding people from God’s love is not how we practice our faith.)

This is one of the Sundays in the year where I think it is reasonable to engage in extended quotation, particularly of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In my favorite of his sermons, “Loving Your Enemies” he says:

I would like to have you think with me on a passage of scripture that has been a great influence in my life and a passage that I have sought to bring to bear on the whole struggle for racial justice, which is taking place in our nation. The words are found in the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew. And these words flow from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard it said of old that thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”5

These are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries men have argued that the actual practice of this command just isn’t possible. Years ago the philosopher Nietzsche contended that this command illustrates that the Christian ethic is for weak men, not for strong men, and certainly not for the superman.6 And he went on to argue that it was just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth.

But we have come to see today that, far from being the practical, the impractical idealist, Jesus is the practical realist, and the words of this text stand before us with new urgency. And far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, love is the key to the solution of the problems of our world, love even for enemies. Since this is a basic Christian command and a basic Christian responsibility, it is both fitting and proper that we stop from time to time to analyze the meaning of these arresting words.

There are many things that we must do in order to love our enemies, but I would like to suggest just three. Seems to me that the first thing that the individual must do in order to love his enemy is to develop the capacity to forgive with a naturalness and ease. If one does not have the capacity to forgive, he doesn’t have the capacity to love. …

The second thing is this. In order to love the enemy neighbor we must recognize that the negative deed of the enemy does not represent all that the individual is. His evil deed does not represent his whole being. …

The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy neighbor is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. …

Now for the moments left, let us turn from the practical “how” to the theoretical “why,” and ask the valid, the vital and valid question, Why should we love our enemies? …

I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.1

I commend the whole sermon to you, but I’m going to stop quoting now. While the evils of racism have never been defeated in our country, we are now – again – in a time when the “fierce urgency of now” is present. And, that means that as people of faith, we are once again called upon to reflect HOW we want to seek God’s work in the world. Are we people of love and of non-violence, who believe in the transformational power of love to change the world for the better? Are we willing to be people who practice forgiveness? Are we able to be people who believe in imago dei for those who are doing harm? Are we able to remember that people are more than their worst? Are we willing to reach out in love, over and over again, seeking the well being even of those who do us harm, even when they respond with hatred and violence? Are we willing to use our lives to show the power of meeting hatred with love? Are we strong enough to things God’s way?

There are people in this world, people with power, who don’t believe in imago dei. They believe that SOME people are more HUMAN than others, instead of believing that all people are sacred because all people are loved by God.

Beloveds, these are our “enemies.” And, they are people in need of transformation.

The work of responding to hatred with love changes everything. But it isn’t fast. This is the work of our whole lives. We are often going to be frustrated at backsliding and new incarnations of old evils. But we are people of God. We are people who believe in the power of love. We are people of HOPE. We are people who believe that God’s love is found in everyone and can be kindled into even the people most committed to wrongdoing.

We may not see visible progress right now, but I assure you God is at work. And every act of love matters.

We are called to love our neighbors, to love ourselves, and to love our enemies. Because it turns out all of those people are ones to whom God speaks saying “This is my child, my beloved.” Thanks be to God. Amen

1 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten

January 18. 2026

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

Sermons

Human Beings

January 11, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Human Beings” based on Matthew 2:1-15 and UMC Social Principles on Migrants, Immigrants, and Refugees

I spent the week processing the coup in Venezuela, in hopes of being able to offer a faithful pastoral response to it. Thank God for Karyn doing that work last week. And then Renee Nicole Good, an American Citizen engaged in peaceful protest, was murdered by ICE and lies were told about her death. My capacities for faithful processing are not as fast as the crises coming at us.

So, I’m going to revert back to the original plan which was to preach on the Epiphany and combine it with the Social Principals statement on Migrants, Immigrants, and Refugees. We’ll come full circle but when I’m struggling to make sense of the world, I’ve discovered that the Bible can actually be remarkably helpful, particularly because it was well aware of abuses of power and the threats of violence.

In particular, let’s start with King Herod. He was an awful man. Paranoid, murderous, tyrannical, and power hungry, he was overseeing the Jewish homelands for the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus’ birth. We don’t have any historical documents that verify the stories of Matthew, and I suspect they didn’t happen exactly as they’re told. They deserve to be heard as meta-truths and emotional-realities for incredible meaning making, but we hold that without assuming they actually happened.

Given that King Herod was power hungry man with paranoia, he is the sort of guy who would have tried to trick innocent gift bearers from the East. Given who he was, he would have tried to gain knowledge of any threat to his power and eliminate it. And, by placing him in this story Matthew clarifies the conflict between the ways of Jesus and the ways of the Empire quickly and succinctly. And in Matthew Jesus will be crucified under a sign that reads “King of the Jews.” The accusers mean it to be ironic, Matthew means it to be true. So starting with a paranoid King of the Jews is pretty on point, his power IS threatened by the birth of Jesus, even if he didn’t know it.

This year I find my energy isn’t much on the Magi. Of course I love that the represent that the life of Jesus had an impact larger than to just the Jewish people. And of course I love the energy around what it means to follow a random sign because you just think it is yours to follow, even if it means others will not understand. And more than anything I love that they “left for their own country by another road” and in doing so ignored the direct order of the King because it was unjust and because God doesn’t require us to follow unjust laws.

But this year it is the energy around the Magi that draws me. The story of King Herod freaking out and being duplicitous, but NOT getting him what he wants. The stories of dreams and messengers of God being a part of preventing the monarch from successfully harming God’s plans. We read a little further than usual this year, because it isn’t only the Magi that leave by another route. According to Matthew the holy family travels to Egypt to keep Jesus safe. Now, the biblical scholars among you know that this works incredibly well as a literary device to set up Jesus to be “the new Moses” and help the initial hearers of the story make sense of the Jesus story.

But the more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed that the holy family would FLEE to Egypt when their PRIMARY faith story was about God’s actions to free them from oppression in Egypt. Right? I mean, talk about migration and being refugees, the whole story of the Ancient Israelites and the exodus was successfully fleeing a regime that was out to kill them! So, I went to my books ready to have my awesome insight about how weird it was to flee to Egypt affirmed and read, “Egypt, a traditional place of refuge” and was pointed to verses which read:

Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam; but Jeroboam promptly fled to Egypt, to King Shishak of Egypt, and remained in Egypt until the death of Solomon. 1 Kings 11:40

Then all the people, high and low, and the captains of the forces, set out and went to Egypt; for they were afraid of the Chaldeans. – 2 Kings 25:26

And then King Jehoiakim, with all his warriors and all the officials, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death; but when Uriah heard of it, he was afraid and fled and escaped to Egypt. Jeremiah 26:21, etc.

So, there goes that theory! Instead, what we have is more complicated. Egypt was both the place of oppression and a place of refuge. Because, it turns out, life is complicated.

In Matthew, the holy family is said to be political refugees, seeking shelter from a violent regime where they couldn’t survive much less thrive. The layers of truth in that include that human beings and human families who are migrants, immigrants, and refugees are holy and sacred people of God. So too were the Magi, visitors from another land and sacred human beings beloved by God. Sacred too are the people who are migrating around the world trying to survive, including those in the United States – with or without official paperwork, AND, so to are those who show up to be allies to migrants, immigrants, and refugees.

This week’s visible ICE murder of a woman who was an American citizen was an unusually direct act of violence seeking compliance. In our country a very small group of elite white men and their conspirators are committed to minority rule for their own benefit. They see some people as targets and other as obstacles and wish to eliminate both. Historically there has been some restraint, some pretense of an agreement that we don’t simply kill those who peacefully protest, or that we don’t simply take over other countries. The restraint is slipping.

People are being eliminated because they’re getting in the way of the goals of the few.

We are living in a violent time, where a well-organized and protected group of elite men and their conspirators are working hard against the needs of the majority. Far too many people believe their propaganda, and the things we are seeing are abominable.

And, I believe that these are the death throes of our old system of elite white men and their conspirators running our country. They wouldn’t be working this hard for power if they didn’t see it slipping from their grasp. The work of God to take care of all people, to engage in the work of shared humanity, to distribute resources for the common good, to be in sacred kinship relationships is having an impact. The system that benefits the few is scared and lashing out with violence, but in the END it is not going to win.

The Roman Empire was massive, powerful, and nearly indestructible.

The Magi were just a few outsiders who refused to follow the kings dictates.

Jesus was a poor man born to poor family who spent most of his life talking to peasants and listening to God.

But, like Matthew, we know that King Herod was a lot less important in the annals of history than Jesus was. Matthew tells us of a paranoid, murderous, tyrannical, and power hungry king who would stop at nothing for self-gain. And Matthew tells us of a refugee family struggling to survive in the midst of political and economic upheaval. And it is the refugee family that ends up mattering. Thanks be to God. May we follow God’s values on the sacred worth of all human beings, and be faithful along the way to God’s ends. Amen

January 11, 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady