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Sermons

O Land, Land, Land, Hear the Word of God

  • December 21, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“O Land, Land, Land: Hear the Word of God” based on Jeremiah 22:2-9

We have reached the 4th and final Sunday of Advent, the Love Sunday, where love joins with hope, peace, and joy to prepare our hearts for the Work of God in the World known at Christmas. This year in Advent I’ve been on a sermon series from the book “Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance from the Third Reich” and this is the final sermon in this series. Unlike last week when I spent Joy Sunday sharing a sermon of a martyr, this week’s text fits the theme of love. (Phew! Although I did scrap my initial plan and pick a better fitting sermon from the book to make it work.)

This week I am working with a sermon by Rev. Julius von Jan and my sense is that his entire sermon is a message of love. It is a sermon written with love for his people and his nation (although not what his nation was up to at the time). It is a sermon profound in its love for all of God’s people, and explicit in naming Jews as God’s people. It is a sermon that is also the work of a prophet in loving by calling out injustice and it was received like the work of a prophet.

Rev. Julius von Jan been a solider and then a prisoner of war in WWI. He was part of the Confessing Church which was the resistance Christian movement in Germany during the Third Reich. The book’s editor says of him, “As a confessing pastor he considered it his Christian duty to alert his congregation to the deep conflicts between Nazism and Christianity and to advise them of the Nazi outrages and abuses. But even more than pointing out where the state was interfering with Christian practice and adopting a pagan worldview, he never tolerated the Nazi persecution of the Jews. He was also quick to stand up publicly for pastors who had been persecuted by the state or arrested.”1 Luckily he had a supportive congregation. He was a clergyman who refused to take oath to Hitler. And, regarding this sermon, “When the Nazi pogrom against the Jews occurred in November of 1938, von Jan was adamant that these sinful and disgraceful events had to be exposed for what they were. Silence was no option. He knew full well that speaking out in his sermon would endanger him and his family.”2

And, it did. “Following this sermon, Julius von Jan was “severely beaten by a group of some five hundred Nazi thugs, and dragged to the city hall where he was tried and then thrown into jail. A few days later the SA plastered his parsonage with the sign Judenknecht (Jew Servant.)”3 For a year afterward he dealt with arrests, interrogations, being exiled from his parish… and was finally tried and “found guilty of ‘misusing the pulpit’ and ‘treachery’ by a Nazi judge in a ‘special court’ and sentenced to sixteen months imprisonment. These courts were not subject to civil laws and were known for quick and severe sentencing.”4 Released in May 1940 until 1943 when “he was drafted into an artillery until for political prisoners, and served on the Russian front.”5

Are you ready to hear what he had to say that made them THAT mad?? He preached on the passage that we just read from Jeremiah, and while he focused on the opening piece that in his version read “O Land, Land, Land: Hear the Word of God,” I think it is worth noticing what that word of God actually was. This is verse 3, “Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.” For von Jan, preaching on Germany’s “National Day of Atonement” this Jeremiah text called the people to justice and to atone for their lack of Justice.

In helping his congregation understand the context he reminds them that Jeremiah is a Jewish prophet to the Jews and he “is standing among a people (Volk) to whom the Lord has revealed himself throughout a long history as father and redeemer, as guide (führer) and helper filled with power and grace and glory.”6 Note use of Nazi words used with Christian meaning, to support Jews! He reminds them that Jeremiah has by this point been preaching for 30 years. Von Jan says that Jeremiah“contradicts the sermons filled with lies preached by those who announce salvation and victory in their nationalistic intoxication.”7 SNAP.

After explaining Jeremiah’s message, he brings it into his present, “Where is the prophet in Germany who is being sent into the king’s house to speak the word of God to him? … God has sent us such men! They are today either in concentration camps or muzzled. … and painfully our bishops have not recognized their duty to side with those who have spoken the word of God”8 He was naming some truths there, definitely including that the hierarchy of the church was working against the will of God and model of Jesus. He continues, “If therefore today some have to keep silent and others do not want to speak, then certainly we truly have every reason to observe a day of repentance, a day of mourning over our sins and the sins of the nation.”9

Now, many of you are better at history than I am, but for those whose timelines of Jewish oppression and attempts at annihilation in Germany in the 1930s isn’t very good, a historical note. In early November 1938 a Polish Jewish man murdered a German diplomat in Paris, which was the event used by the Nazis to justify using “storm troopers against the Jews throughout Germany.”10 Von Jan preached:

A crime has occurred in Paris. The murderer will receive his just punishment because he has sinned against the commandment of God.

Along with our people (Volk), we mourn the victim of this criminal act. But who would have thought that this one crime in Paris could be followed by so many crimes in Germany? Here we see the price we are paying for the great falling away from God and Christ, for the organized anti-Christianity. Passions have been released, the laws of God jeered at, houses of God that were sacred to others have been burned to the ground, property belonging to the foreigner plundered or destroyed, men who faithfully served our nation (Volk) and who fulfilled their duty in good consciousness have bene thrown into concentration camps simply because they belong to another race, and all this without anyone being eld accountable!11

I note his use of “houses of God” to talk about the burning of synagogues and connect Christian folk to Jewish folk. This is a man who spoke truth when it was clear how violent the opposition to truth telling was, and he has my deepest respect. This sermon is 4-5 years after the others we’ve looked at in Advent, when conditions had gotten worse and worse. But still he goes on. And, as a veteran of WWI he emphasizes that the Jewish Veterans deserve better! This is a man who follows Jesus of Nazareth.

As the sermon wraps up, von Jan calls on his congregation to pray, “Lord, grant us and our nation (Volk) a renewed hearing of your word and a renewed respect for your laws! And begin with us!”12 He worries they aren’t praying enough, “We are so busy with many things and take so little time for the silence in which we may hear the God’s word, be it in the house of God, be it in our prayer closet. … A Christian who fails to seek every morning this silence to hear his God endangers himself and harms God’s affairs.”13 I am simultaneously delighted that he calls on his people to maintain a constant connection to the Divine – and affirm all that – and I feel like this is a clue as to how he became the person he was. Because preaching a sermon like this took courage and conviction and faith. The majority of German Christians and preachers took the easy ways out and pledged themselves to Hitler presumably with various ways of justifying it to themselves.

Rev. von Jan, and the others whose sermons we’ve read did not. They stayed the course. They followed Jesus. They stayed true to God. They loved when it was as difficult to love as it could be. And they paid the costs for it.

I agree with Rev. von Jan that we need time to stop and listen to God EVERY day. And my preferred way of doing it is in silence – although I know very well that we’re all different and silence is a form of torture for many of you! But, when we think about how we listen to the call of God, and especially how we do it when the call of God says “Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place” and that’s the call we get when we live in a nation that is doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE, I think his conclusions hold. We need to stop taking in everything else and make time to take in God’s love and wisdom. All of us, every day, in the ways that work for us.

Because, dear ones, when push comes to shove, I hope we are people who follow Jesus and not ones who justify taking the easy way out. We are people of Love, of God’s love, and we need to soak in it so we are ready to act from it when we have to. And, oddly enough, I think that’s how this becomes an Advent sermon series. We are readying ourselves for the demands of living out God’s love, we are readying ourselves for the coming of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, Dean G. Stroud (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardman, 2013) page 107.

2107.

3106.

4107.

5108.

6109

7110.

8111.

9111.

10112, footnote.

11112.

12113

13113.

December 21, 2025

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

God With Us

  • December 14, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“God With Us” based on Luke 8:22-25 and Matthew 14:22-32

(Jesus MAFA image)

This little story about a boat crossing a lake is one that has occupied a lot of space in my brain over the years. As a child I was mesmerized by it, awed by the power of Jesus and desperate to be one with more faith than those hapless disciples. As a seminarian I was taught about Greco-Roman myths of gods and goddesses walking on water and the New Testament narrative “our God is better than your god” which made me a bit dismissive. And then as a pastor I have often used this as a passage for Lectio Divina, giving people a space to listen for God’s nudgings through scripture and have been astounded time and time again at the layers of meaning people can find in the text. Our most recent confirmation class loved this passage and the experience they had with it in Lectio Divina, reminding me of the hard times of life and the powerful reminders to be found in the reality that God is with us.

Another time, when The United Methodist Church was at the height of its struggles in 2019, two Bishops at our Annual Conference seemed to have a battle over this text. Our Bishop at the time tried to convince us that the boat was sinking and it was time to exit. The visiting Bishop who was invited to preach at ordination preached “no matter how strong the wind, no matter how high the waves, since Jesus is in the boat with us, we will be ok.”

Perhaps some of the reason that this story has such resonance in our faith is that it is one of VERY few stories that shows up in ALL 4 gospels (although Luke lacks the walking on water part), and is thus a story we come across pretty often. I’ll admit, I’ve also spent a little bit too much time wondering about why THIS of all stories would be one of the few that are in all of the gospels.

And, one final connection with this story: when I had been appointed to this church but before I arrived, I had the chance to meet some church members at one of the Upper New York Camp and Retreat Centers when UNY Volunteers in Mission and the UNY Leadership Team did some work together. That was the day I met Pete and Jan Huston, and Pete came up to me greeting me with the words, “I hear you walk on water.” I spluttered. He continued, “But it isn’t that hard in winter.”

This Advent I’ve been focusing on Christian sermons preached during the Third Reich in resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. In January of 1934, Rev. Paul Schneider was a small town pastor who preached a sermon on this text to the church he had been serving for 8 years at that point, which had been the church his father served until his death. Rev. Schneider was a WW I vet, but a bit unique in that “Rather than the war making him hard and cold, it made him sympathetic and tender towards the suffering of others.”1 After his service in the war he went to seminary and did a practicum with coal miners whose life experiences challenged his faith. To keep us on our toes around here, he was a conservative preacher, and his experiences with the struggling coal miners led him to leave his liberal faith behind for a far more literal and conservative faith. In fact, for the most part, the churches in Germany during the Third Reich that resisted were fairly conservative, and they seem to explain it as rejection of the world because of their commitment to faith. I appreciate how this makes me a little uncomfortable.

Rev. Schneider chose these two texts, the story from Luke without walking on water and the one from Matthew where Peter joins Jesus in walking on water and preached on them as one. He used them to talk about the fear people were experiencing and what their faith called on them to do about it. So let me give you some of his word: “The little boat of the church of Christ is traveling on stormy seas.”2 “We cannot close our eyes to the high storm-waves we see surging towards our people in the Third Reich.”3 “We Evangelical Christians can never say that we agree with these things that many leading figures of the new Germany are voicing and declaring in speeches.”4 “We as evangelical parents, want to know that our children are unequivocally being raised in our evangelical faith and taught its content and we want to be sure that they have not been contaminated with the current racist religious spirit.”5

To be sure, many people are still asleep and have not recognized that it is the hour to rise up. They still think that since all around us things have changed, certainly in the church, of all places, things must remain exactly as they were before. Or perhaps they just want to subject the church to the political authority of the state and shape the life of the church to fit the current political views as the ‘German Christians’ are currently doing.

To be sure, they can only support this practice by preaching the heresy that the gospel does not rest solely on the good news of our savior Jesus Christ and the kingdom (Reich) of God, but that somehow race and the gospel together constituent the church.6…

Now, you Christian in your church, you are surrounded by waves that are coming over you from the church and from the nation and the state. And we are anxious and we are afraid. We are experiencing what the disciples were going through on the stormy lake. We call out, ‘Lord, help us, we are perishing!”7 “Where is the storm? It is not so much around you as in you, in your heart.

There, deep in your heart, you see, as Peter did, the heaving winds blowing against you, and you become afraid and begin to sink. But even then the Lord holds out to you his saving hand and holds you firm in order to strengthen your weak faith.” 8

And it is curious, at least to me, that he makes so many good points and does such good work this this text. That I can be with him so far into this sermon. And then at this point he goes on to say that a true Christian believes in miracles and trusts in God’s capacity to preform them, which is imperative to him. I can support and respect his faith and its perspective, even if I don’t share it. I love reminders like this, that differences in worldview sometimes don’t matter all that much. Finally, he says, “I would rather die for my faith than live a cowardly and cultured life with the rest of the world.”9

Rev. Schneider used this sermon as an introduction, I think. “Following the sermon was a reading of the Kanzelabkündigung (message from the pulpit) from the Confessing Church, which was read from many pulpits that Sunday: “We raise before God and this Christian congregation the complaint and charge that the Reich bishop in his decree has threatened violence against those who have been unable to keep silent for the sake of their conscience and their congregation concerning the present danger of the church. And in addition has set into force laws that run counter to our confession of faith which he had earlier lifted in order to satisfy the church. — We must hold the Reich bishop accountable to the scripture: ‘One must obey God more than men.” 10

Rev. Schneider was telling his congregation that the government was threatening Christians who weren’t supporting the work of the Third Reich. He was forced out of that pulpit the following month, was reassigned to a church more receptive to his message, and five years later became the first Protestant pastor to die in a concentration camp.

So, um, happy joy-Sunday from your pastor who knows how to make Advent really cheery.

I am awed by this self-described “simple country preacher” who simply refused to bend. Like prophets and martyrs before him, he stayed faithful in the face of persecution, told truth despite the consequences, and kept his heart focused on God and God-things. He took on powers and authorities far “above his pay-grade” because he was a follower of Jesus who didn’t care about pay-grades. I wonder about his transition from liberal faith to literal faith and how that impacted his capacities to stay true to God. (It is my suspicion he would have said it was imperative.) I’m horrified that he was killed, but also a little bit shocked that it was a “simple country preacher” that the powers-that-be felt the need to silence first. It almost seems like they made this point in this sermon, the boat may seem small but the church being faithful has great impact.

Like Jesus before him, and Martin Luther King Jr after him, and along with an unfortunately large great cloud of witnesses who did the same, Rev. Schneider stayed faithful to end, dying for his faith rather than quieting his voice for the comfort of the oppressors.

Thanks be to God for the people who follow God’s love no mater the cost, and may we not only follow God’s love, but also be part of changing the world so that this cost may someday not need to be paid. God help us. Amen

1Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, Dean G. Stroud (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardman, 2013) page 76.

2Ibid, 80.

3Ibid, 81.

4Ibid, 81.

5Ibid, 82.

6Ibid, 79.

7Ibid, 83.

8Ibid, 83.

9Ibid, 84.

10From the footnote on page 84.

December 14, 2025

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

Jesus Was a Jew

  • December 7, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Jesus Was a Jew” based on Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 and Romans 15: 4-13

This Advent I’ve been reading sermons of Christian resistance from the Third Reich, working from a book edited by Dean G. Stroud entitled “Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow.” I have to admit this week’s sermon “Jesus as a Jew” by Karl Barth was one I was inclined to skip. However, it was a sermon preached on the second Sunday of Advent in Lectionary Year A (which we are also in) and that seemed like a good reason to include it. That and it was courageous as all get out, which I have to respect.
The issue is that while Barth is considered by many to be “the greatest protestant theologian of the twentieth century”1, I read his seminal book in seminary and found it a combination of repetitive, boring, and offensive. Rather to my dismay, this week, I found that I still HAVE the book on my bookshelves in my office which indicates it is likely time for me to curate my library.

That said, the claim of “greatest protestant theologian of the twentieth century” would probably be a good enough reason to read one of his sermons, and having read this one I found I liked it a lot more than “Church Dogmatics.” Barth was born in 1886 in Switzerland, educated there and in Germany, and when Hitler took power he was a professor at the University of Bonn, a position he held until “He was forced to leave Germany in 1934 after refusing to swear the loyalty oath to Hitler that was required of all university professors as civil servants.”2

This sermon, from 11 months after Hitler consolidated his power and became chancellor, took on a major support leg of Nazi propaganada:

To fortify the indoctrination of racial propaganda, Nazis peppered the media and the schools with lies and caricatures about Jews. Schoolchildren learned that Jews were like poisonous mushrooms; they may look like other people, but they were deadly to Germans. Running through every speech by Hitler, Goebbels, and other Nazis was the two-pronged idea that Jews were the lowest animals in existence and yet due to their remarkable cunning they were the number one threat to German life and culture. Nazis passed law after law to isolate Jews from fellow Germans and to make their lives difficult and miserable 3

Furthermore:

Given the rising tide of anti-Semitic hatred in Germany, Christians who favored the Nazi worldview faced the awkward situation of worshiping a Jew, a man like those the Nazis were railing against. Jesus was a Jew. This basic truth of history made Jesus unacceptable to Nazis. Something had to be done to ease the tension between the Christian faith and the new politics. The solution was to transform Jesus from Jew to Aryan. Those wanting to change Jesus’ identity simply asserted that he never was a Jew in the first place. Thus it was that a pro-Nazi teacher of religion in a German school simply told students that Galilee had never been a Jewish region and that the Jews had captured the territory in 104 B.C. Galilee’s majority population had been Aryans living under Jewish domination. Jesus was an Aryan, the man told his pupils, whose way of thinking and acting was in sharp contrast to Jewish ways. The teacher then quoted John 8:44, where Jesus tells his opponents that their father is the devil, to prove that Jews were the sons and daughters of evil. Once they had turned Jesus into an Aryan hero, they could make him serve Nazi intentions.4

In this environment, where power was being consolidated by dehumanizing Jewish people, Barth wrote this sermon about “Jesus as a Jew,” preached it, made copies of it, and SENT ONE TO HITLER. In response to a critic in his own congregation, Barth responded, “anyone who believes in Christ, who was himself a Jew, and died for Gentiles and Jews, simply cannot be involved in the contempt for Jews and ill-treatment of them which is now the order of the day.”5

I may not have liked this guy’s seminal work but my goodness he was the real deal. His sermon emphasizes that Christians are LUCKY to have been brought into God’s fold which was originally intended for only the Jews. He really goes to great lengths to point out that our inclusion is a sign of God’s mercy, and not our worthiness, for example,

This then is the reason that the Gentiles also glorify God, because God has shown and confirmed his mercy also to them in Christ crucified in the midst of Israel.” And in the middle of the sermon he just says it, “Jesus was a Jew. But by his bearing and carrying away the sins of the whole world, including our own, in the sin of the Jews, this salvation that comes from the Jews has come also to us. We rejoice at this door opening so wide if we can also rejoices that there is a word of God and a church of Jesus Christ…

Now we are able to understand the other thing our text has to tell us about the church of Jesus Christ: “As Christ has received us to the glory of God, so receive one another.” This is a law without exceptions. This is an order, a strict and inflexible order.6

He goes on to say that Gentiles and Jews are to receive each other, as united by God’s covenant, as united in God’s work in the world, as united more than anything by God’s mercy. We are, he reminds us, both “children of the living God.”7 (Hosea 1:10)

Now, nothing Barth says about Jesus and his Jewishness is to my mind particularly radical. That said, others seem to disagree. When I was in seminary, while home on break I had a particularly confusing conversation with my grandmother. She had been raised Roman Catholic, in what turns out to be a very conservative diocese and had not spent time as an adult learning more about her faith. So, somehow I mentioned that Jesus was Jewish, and she replied, “don’t you say that about our Lord!” To which I replied, “no, really, Nana, he WAS Jewish” and she repeated “Don’t you say that about our Lord!” This went on for some time.

Anti-semitism was alive and well in her Roman Catholic upbringing in Wilkes Barre, PA, even as her brothers and classmates fought to defeat Nazi-ism in World War II.

So, just so we are all on the same page, the propaganda of the Nazi’s and my grandmother’s church were WRONG and Jesus WAS Jewish. And it shouldn’t be radical to state facts like that, unless of course those in power are changing facts for their own benefit. Somehow, it feels like the gutsiest of things to preach “Jesus was Jewish” and sent the sermon to Hitler even though basic truth telling isn’t supposed to require radical moral courage.

And yet, particular times call for particular realities. In Hitler’s time they called the changes they were making to Christianity “Positive Christianity” and that included things like the Aryan Jesus, and the worship of Hitler and Nazi-ism. In our day, it is “White Christian Nationalism” which funny enough seems to have a lot of imagery of a very white Jesus as well.

It turns out that religion is a very significant factor in meaning making in societies, in naming right and wrong, in shared stories and shared myths, in supporting or defeating those in power. Those who want to abuse power need to find ways to abuse the traditions of a God who calls us to “receive each other” without limits and draw limits in who counts as a beloved Child of God and who doesn’t.

So, while we’re on the most basic truths of all today, let me add: EVERYONE IS A BELOVED CHILD OF GOD, THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. Or, as my new BFF Barth said it, As Christ has received us to the glory of God, so receive one another.” This is a law without exceptions. This is an order, a strict and inflexible order.8

Beloveds, when we all live by these simple truths, we will be living the kindom of God, where shalom is found and peace prevails. And until then, we can bring about the kindom by practicing the kindom values and treating everyone as a beloved child of God. Thanks be to God! Amen

1 Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, Dean G. Stroud (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardman, 2013) page 62.

2 Ibid, 63.

3 Ibid, 14.

4 Ibid, 17.

5 Ibid, 64.

6 Ibid, 71-72.

7 Ibid, 72.

8 Ibid, 72.

December 7, 2025

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

Gideon

  • December 1, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Gideon” Psalm 31:1-5 and Judges 6:15-16, 7:2, 8:23

It is Advent, a time when we join with those in our faith tradition who have yearned for God to take action to transform the world. This Advent, I’m going to preaching from a book entitled “Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich.” Unfortunately, the book seemed topically appropriate. Others before us have faced the circumstances of trying to be faithful to God and follow Jesus in the midst of a society crumbling under the pressure of authoritarianism AND a nation where religion is being co-opted to support the authoritarianism.

So, it seems worth hearing how others have faced this sitatution.

The first sermon is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I have known primarily as a Christian leader so faithful that he choose to return to Germany when he was offered asylum elsewhere, in solidarity with those in concentration camps. Truthfully I’ve been meaning to read his books for decades, but my to-read pile is … well… high.

He was, of course, more than my trivial biography remembered. Bonhoeffer was very well known as a brilliant scholar, one who got his doctorate at 21 and whose thesis is STILL being read and discussed. This is particularly notable because Germans had the corner on great theological scholarship at that point in history, and he was one of their shining stars. In 1930 he came to the United States and studied at Union Theological School in New York City where he connected with the African American community in Harlem. Getting to know people who were minoritized helped him see his own society’s treatment of Jews more clearly. He was also exposed to and formed pacifism while here in New York. He returned to Germany and taught in an underground Protestant Seminary in the “Confessing Church” movement which stood in opposition to Hitler’s attempts to use the churches to propagate his agenda.

Let me translate: Bonhoeffer was a professor in the hidden underground seminary that prepared clergy to follow JESUS and reject that age’s “White Christian Nationalism.”

The seminary was closed by force, and the students taken into Nazi jails in 1937. Bonhoeffer was given ways out, he came to the US, but then returned home to be part of a group trying to assassinate Hitler. He went to England, but came home again. He was arrested in April of 1943, and wrote letters from prison, refusing to allow confinement to silence him. “By special orders of Hitler, Bonhoeffer was hanged on April 9, 1945, just days before Germany surrendered.”1

The sermon we are working with today is from 1933, the year Hitler. took power. Dean Stroud, the editor of the volume writes about it:

Hatred of jews and preparation for war were daily fare for Germans. When Bonhoeffer preached his first sermon following Hitler’s coming to power, he surely must have known that Jewish Gideon would present a sharp contrast to German rhetoric against Jews and for war. His repeated emphasis on Gideon’s lack of military forces in the face of greater military strength must have made an impression on the congregation. Also, the talk of altars reflected the altars in German churches that had been profaned with Nazi flags and pictures of Hitler. The sermon on Gideon offered Germans in the new Reich a radical choice between the Judeo-Christian God of tradition and Germanic paganism.2

That said, I’ll be honest. I had to review the story of Gideon from Judges 6-8 in order to make sense of the sermon. It just isn’t a story I’ve spent much time with. The story is this:

Ancient Israel was in the promised land, but the neighboring Midianites had beaten them down and dominated them for 7 years, including by destroying all their crops and livestock so people were hungry. Gideon was off dealing with some wheat they’d managed to grow in secret when “the angel of the Lord” appeared and told him “the Lord is with you, mighty warrior” and tell s him he is to defeat the Midianites. Gideon is skeptical, full of excuses, and told to do it anyway.

He asks for proof, he gets it. So, he gathers an army. Then he asks for more proof, and even more. He’s clearly a little nervous. God, on the other hand, makes Gideon cut his forces from 32,000 to 10,000 and then to 300!! Finally, they go and attack the Midianite camp, and defeat them soundly, all 120,000 of them. Eventually the people try to make him king, he faithfully refuses reminding them that God is their King.

And this being a story in Judges, all is well as long as he lives and the trouble starts again after he dies.

Vector Illustration of Gideon's Army of 300 Men Defeat the Midianites Biblical Story found at https://www.wannapik.com/vectors/52140ALT

So what does the renowned scholar and man of faith Dietrich Bonhoeffer have to say about Gideon in the beginning of the Third Reich?? Well he starts by saying, “This is a passionate little story about God’s derision for all who are fearful and have little faith, all those who are much too careful, the worriers, all those want to be somebody in the eyes of God but are not. It is a story of God’s mocking human might.”3 Well, OK then, I guess we see where this is going.

He does, also, take issue with something happening in a lot of churches where altars were being decorated with Nazi flags and images of Hitler. I have to say, that I dearly wish this was not something that resonates today. But it is. So let’s here his take down:

In the church we have only one altar – the altar of the Most High, the One and only, the Almighty, the Lord, to whom alone be honor and praise, the Creator before whom all creation bows down, before whom even the most powerful are but does. We don’t have any side altars at which to worship human beings. … Anyone who wants to build an altar to himself or to any other human being is mocking God, and God will not allow such mockery. To be in the church means to have courage to be alone with God as Lord, to worship God and not any human person. And it does take courage.4

Gideon becomes this beacon of courage because he does what is asked of him, despite his many misgivings. He relies on God and not on himself. And, crucially, he doesn’t accept the power others want to give him. He declines kingship, and redirects people to God. Bonhoeffer says, “The picture of someone who has learned to have faith has the particular quality of always pointing away from the person’s own self, toward the One in whose power…he or she is.”5 Bonhoeffer also doesn’t fail to notice that is a story of Israel’s redemption from bondage, which it clearly IS, but was itself a noticeably radical fact that upset the anti-Semitic apple cart of the day.

Bonhoeffer speaks to a church that feels too small to do what is asked of it. A church that experiences itself “without influence, powerless, undistinguished in every way”6 and thus burdened with the call from God to “set the people free from the chains of fear and cowardice and evil that bind them.”7 And this man who has the courage of which he preaches says, “And then suddenly the call comes to us: Put an end to the bondage in which you are living; put an end to the mortal fear that gnaws at you, to the power of human desire that is burning you up, to your tormented and self-satisfied keeping to yourself. Put an end to your fear of other people and your vanity and set yourself free.”8 Well then, I have to say, this guy is making me think I haven’t been PREACHING recently.

Bonhoeffer asks:

“Is this a tall tale like all the others? Anyone who says so has failed to understand that Gideon is still with us, that the old story of Gideon is being played out in Christendom every day. …[In the story God says] ‘If you have faith, lay down your weapons, I am your weapon. Take off your armor, I am your armor. Put away your pride, I am your pride.’ Do you hear that church of Gideon? Let God alone; let the word and the sacraments and the command of God be your weapons; don’t look around for other help; don’t be frightened. God is with you.”9

He concludes:

The people approach the victorious Gideon with the final trial, the final temptation: “Be our Lord, rule over us.” But Gideon has not forgotten his own history, nor the history of his people…. “The Lord will rule over you, and you shall have no other lord.” At this word, all the altars of god and idols fall down, all worship of human beings and human self-idolization. They are all judged, condemned, cancelled out, crucified, and toppled into dust before the One who is alone Lord. Besides us kneels Gideon, who was brought through fear and doubt to faith, before the altar of the one and only God, and with us Gideon prays, Lord on the cross, be our only Lord. Amen”

Bonhoeffer thus reminds me that to proclaim Jesus crucified as the Messiah is the most ridiculous and radical of statements from the perspective of the world because most of the time people don’t want to follow condemned criminals and most of the time people are afraid of the power of violence to kill, and most of the time people are self protective but Jesus wasn’t and actually Gideon wasn’t and God calls the church not to be either.

Beloveds of God, I do not know what the future holds. I do not know what may be asked of us in the future, I do not even know what God is asking each of you today. I do know this: God is always with us and we need not be afraid. That doesn’t mean that things are OK. They’re not. It doesn’t mean that the horrible things that happen to people are OK. They’re not. But it does mean that we can take courage, and let go of fear. Those who want to do harm also want to keep us off balance. But God is with us, and God can do amazing things, and we are able to face the world unafraid.

So God speaks to us today, through an ancient story and a modern prophet, who remind us that God is God and we are not and that’s good. Thanks be to God, Amen.

1Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, Dean G. Stroud (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardman, 2013) Quote from 53. Prior paragraphs 51-53.

2Ibid, 53.

3Bonhoeffer, 55.

4Ibid 55-5.

5Ibid, 56.

6Ibid, 57.

7Ibid, 57.

8Ibid, 57-58.

9Ibid, 59.

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

Nov. 30, 2025

Sermons

Christ the King

  • November 23, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Christ the King” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Philippians 4:4-9

Today is “Reign of Christ Sunday” or in more historical language “Christ the King Sunday.” It is the final Sunday of the Christian year, as we start a new one next week with Advent. We’ve been counting Sundays after the Pentecost for a while now, this is #24. Fun fact, the times when we are counting Sundays after something are called ordinary time. It is really easy to presume that’s because nothing special is going on and they’re thus “ordinary” but it actually refers to ordinal numbers “1st” “2nd” “3rd” etc. OK, fine, my fact wasn’t that fun.

Anyway, at this culmination of the Christian year we find Christ the King Sunday where we celebrate the ways that the Kindom of God is here on earth and anticipate the Kindom coming in fullness. It is a time when we can contrast the ways of the “kingdoms” and “empires” of the world with the dreams of God for an earthly reality of abundant, communal, sustainable living.

This year, there has been more conversation about kingship in the United States than we tend to have. There have been condemnations of those who seek to use democratically elected positions in authoritarian ways like monarchs do. That condemnation is really in the spirit of Christ the King Sunday. (Yes, I do prefer “Reign of Christ” language but my point is clearer with “Christ the King.”)

The difference between the Kingdoms of the world and the kindom of God is immense. Kingdoms are top down, they benefit the king and those he prizes, and and to do so control the masses, impoverish the many for the sake of profound wealth for the few, use religion to prop up systems of control and dehumanization, lash back at dissenters, blame minority groups for the struggles of the masses to deflect blame from those truly benefiting, thrive on hierarchy and fear, and mostly exist to move resources to the top of the hierarchy.

Sound about right?

The kindom of God is flat. It isn’t a kingdom with a king, it is a kindom where people treat each other as kin. No one is above or below anyone else because we are all made in the image of God. The kindom of God is mutual, it lives ubuntu – the reality that our well-being is inherently interconnected. The kindom of God uses collective wisdom for collective well-being. The kindom of God uses just resource distribution as a means to care for all of God’s people, so that all may live and thrive. Or to go back to the quote that I loved so much last week, in the kindom of God resources will be used “so that all may luxuriate in life as the creator intends.”1 The kindom of God doesn’t require people to live in fear or anxiety, in loneliness nor isolation. It is meant for the thriving of people, all people. It delights in diversity, takes serious the wisdom of minority groups and dissenting individuals, engages in shared decision making (even though it is slow because it moves at the speed of trust), and in the kindom of God there is no longer a need for the church nor clergy because everyone is able to teach everyone else about God and God’s love. (This is under the idea that the goal of every non-profit is to put itself out of existence.)

Deuteronomy is seeking the kindom by giving people instructions about how to live well in a shared society. This is a passage about tithing, about each person sharing 10% of what they have for the common good to balance out the differences between those doing well and those struggling. This is a passage about humility, where the people retell the story that it is God’s goodness that takes care of them and gives them abundance and not their own labor. This is a passage about the practice of faith.

And the ending blows me away. After the tithe has been given, the instructions are, “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.” Now, I LOVE that the gifts given to God are directly used to take care of everyone. The Levites are the ones without land, so without the gifts given to God, the ones who are to use their lives attending to the things of God wouldn’t have anything – including anything to eat. The aliens, the foreigners, were also cut out of land distribution, and were thus dependent on those who grew the food sharing in order to eat.

In these instructions for the people settling into the land they’d long dreamed of, God asks them to take the first fruits, give them to God, and let them be used to care for those without. AND then those with and those without CELEBRATE together the bounty of God.

Because it turns out that there is enough for everyone when the resources are shared.

Because this is a kindom of God vision and not a Kingdom of this world one. The resources are only too small to take care of all the people when the resources are being distributed unjustly and some take more than their fair share and thus deprive others of a share at all.

Both Deuteronomy and Philippians focus on giving thanks to God for God’s abundant good gifts. For life in the land of milk and honey. For God’s care and love and trustworthiness. For the people living out God’s ways in the world by being gentle, and living in communal shalom (peaceful well-being).

The United States tradition of Thanksgiving is fraught with narratives that glorify the European settlers and dismiss the history of those of European descent in the Americas enacting genocide on the Native Americans who were indigenous to this land. And, for some of us, it is also a holiday we love dearly with great traditions and family connections and food we love.

I believe it is necessary to hold those truths together.

And whether or not we want to associate gratitude with the USA holiday of Thanksgiving, the act of giving thanks is an important part of our faith. So, too is rejoicing.

It is my hope that the commitments people make in their pledging for 2026 are commitments made out of gratitude for what God has done in their lives and out of a desire to be part of what God is doing in this community.

I wonder, sometimes, what story we should tell. It may still be that “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor… and when my people were affliction God found a way to get us out.” But there are other stories too, stories of why we give. “I moved here and was alone and lost, and found people who cared.” “I needed to be with other people who believe that God’s love for everyone means everyone has a right to eat.” “I was lost, and God found me, and I found this place.” “God has given me life, and I am grateful.”

The stories we tell ourselves about what God has been up to in our lives, and how that has led us to respond with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness… those stories are REALLY important. Maybe, even, you might want to tell someone else that story? Maybe you’d be willing to share the summary of the story in a moment when we receive pledges, and tell people the fuller story if they ask??

Because I think those are our stories of seeing the kindom of God, of practicing the kindom of God, of deciding use our lives to build the kindom of God.

The stories we have, the ones that lead us to giving back in gratitude, those are the stories of us rejecting the Kingdoms of Oppression and Hierarchy and turning to the kindom of mutual care and connection.

Let’s keep remembering and practicing those stories, with each other and in our hearts, because they help keep us grounded to choose the kindom of life and not the kingdoms of death. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 248.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

 First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

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Nov. 23, 2025

Sermons

Hear the Dream

  • November 16, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Hear the Dream” based on Isaiah 12 and more so Isaiah 65:17-25

To the people who have been in exile, and the ones who were left behind at home to try to pick up the pieces that can’t be picked up. To the peoples who experienced different traumas, now reunited and horrified all over again at how things are. To the people who remember life with some stability and hope, who look around at the bleakness and wonder what is possible. To the people who see what is and start to wonder if it is all dry bones.

To the people, the prophet speaks God’s dreams:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” (Isaiah 65:17, NRSV) This moment of time will not last forever. There will come a time when the bleakness of now will be a passing memory, one no one lingers on.

There is a new thing coming, and it is good.

“But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight.” (Isaiah 65:18 NRSV) Even if you look around and there is nothing to delight in right now, settle in to hear God’s dreams and take joy in them. These are dreams worth living for. These are dreams that are good now and forever. When you can’t find delight on your own, sink into these.

“I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress.” (Isaiah 65:19, NRSV) The people will be WELL. All the people will be well.

Can you imagine?

“No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat, for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD– and their descendants as well.” (Isaiah 65:20-23, NRSV)

Walter Brueggemann says, “The first quality of the new city, stated negatively and then positively, is a stability and order than guarantees long life. As long as the city is both a practitioner and victim of violence and brutality, no life is safe and no one will last very long.”1 But, imagine a city of peace, of shalom. Imagine what it would be like if violence didn’t prevail. Dream with God, dear ones, of the impact of peace.

And then keep dreaming. Brueggemann again, “Moreover, it is possible to think that infant mortality is an index of community life. In a disordered, uncaring community, too many babies die too soon from neglect, malnutrition, from violence, from poor health and bad medical service – but no more!”2 Dream a world where babies and mothers LIVE. What would it be like?

Everyone would be nourished, so life could thrive. Violence would be no more. The practice of medicine could thive.

This would take even more though. Because, if we were have women and babies thriving, it would also mean the end of racism. Because our current maternal mortality rates vary widely by race, even more widely than differences in care can explain. Our current maternal mortality rates are impacted by the realities of microaggressions that women of color live with. And to think of mothers and babies living thriving means dreaming a world without aggression AND without microaccressions.

But, there is more. Because what does it take “to have houses and inhabit them; plant vineyards and eat their fruit?” Brueggemann says “The loss of one’s economic gains might indeed happen by foreign invasion and occupation, for such occupiers brazenly and indiscriminately seize everything; that is, they ‘devour’ the land (Jer. 8:16, 10:25). It may also be that such usurpation happens internally by confiscation or tax policies whereby the “big ones” arrange the economy to take, in an exercise of “eminent domain” what the “little ones have. … Against such social conditions and economic practices, the new city will leave people free of threat from outside aggression and inside confiscation, especially the confiscation of ‘widows and orphans.”3 “Yahweh will be the guarantor of a viable, community-sustaining economy.”4

That is, according to Bruggemann this dream says that “There will be a reordering of resources so that all may luxuriate in life as the creator intends.”5 “Nobody is threatened. Nobody is at risk. Nobody is in jeopardy because the new city has policies, practices, and protective structures that guarantee what must have been envisioned as an egalitarian possibility.”6 And, there is “an agenda of well-being for children in the new city.”7 Truthfully, there is an agenda of well-being for PEOPLE in the city.

The kingdom of God, beloveds of God. It is mighty beautiful, isn’t it?

I can’t read these passages without tears welling up, tears of grief for what is and tears of relief to hear the dream of what should be. These passages are so tender, so holy, so imperative.

Dream it. No violence. No poverty. No mold-infested basements, no apartments without hot water, no one unhoused, food distributed to everyone. No fear of invasion from insiders or outsiders. No threats that if you lose your job you could lose everything. Not even a need to carefully plan for retirement, because the people are all cared for. People work for each other’s good, and their work bears fruit. There is stability. There is space for joy and delight, for connection and rest. The common good takes care of everyone according to their needs. No one is broken, no one is passing down their trauma to the next generation, no one lives in fear of abuse, no one lives in fear of hunger nor being unhoused. The resources of the earth are used for everyone’s good and… as was said, the resources are used “so that all may luxuriate in life as the creator intends.”8

Imagine. Dream. Breathe.

It is a big spacious dream. One with art and music, dancing and delicious food. One with quiet moments and raucous gatherings, one where nature is close at hand and so too are people. Things are distributed well. People are housed, in good safe healthy housing. People have food, and it is satiating and delicious as well as abundant. People wear clothes that feel great, and they’re diverse in style and patterns. Work is distributed well, even, so that all who want to can contribute, but no one is burned out by what is asked of them. Education is available, and is aimed at sustaining good and abundant life. Science can thrive and we can all benefit! Just imagine what progress could be made in each and every field if every child was well fed and safely housed and able to be find their way to using their God-given gifts for everyone’s well being!?!?!?

A new heaven and a new earth indeed.

Imagine. Breathe. Let it settle into you. Let it heal you, even a little bit. Take a break from fighting the world that is and just dream this one.

And, of course, God is easily accessed. No more dark nights of the soul, no more experiences of God’s silence. No more fear of individual nor communal punishment. Just the wondrous, loving, holy, sparkling, divine One close at hand, guiding us and sustaining us. “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24, NRSV)

And yet even that’s not it. “The dream concludes, The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the serpent–its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.” (Isaiah 65:25, NRSV) This is not just a dream for a new Jerusalem, but indeed a new ordering of the world. The wolf and lion, those whose lives depend on eating the vulnerable will CHANGE and be able to sustain their lives peacefully. The lamb doesn’t have to be afraid. It is now a companion of those who were once its predators.

The predators find other ways of being, and discover they too can be well when all are well. The predators aren’t destroyed, they’re transformed.

No one and nothing will engage in violence: not the violence war, not the violence of the threats of war, not the violence of abuse, not the violence of rape nor murder, not the violence of taking away people’s food, not the violence of making people live in fear. “They shall not hurt nor destroy.” That is, “there shall be space for life to thrive.”

The dreams of God for the people of God, to sustain the people of God in the work of God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 247.

2Brueggemann, 247.

3Brueggemann, 248

4Ibid

5Ibid

6Ibid

7Brueggemann, 249.

8Brueggemann, 248.

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

Nov. 16, 2025

Sermons

Teaching Each Other Grace

  • November 2, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Teaching Each Other Grace” based on Psalm 149 and Ephesians 1:11-23 – An All Saints Sunday Sermon

As people of faith following the seasons of the church year, we are blessed with times of waiting, with Holy Days, and with times for growth and development. For most people, Christmas and Easter are the holiest of Christian holidays, which I think is consistent with the way the seasons of the church year are set up. That said, All Saints Day/Sunday is a Holy Day in the church year, and while it gets less attention than the big holidays, it often feels like the holiest of all to me.

According to the United Methodist Book of Worship, “All Saints is a day of remembrance for the saints, with the New Testament meaning of all Christian people of every time and place. We celebrate the communion of saints as we remember the dead, both of the Church universal and of our local congregations.” I’ll amend so far as to say that I think of saints as those who have lived their love of God and/or God’s creation and thus taught me how to be better at loving – and people who have taught me about God and love have come from more faith traditions than only Christianity.

Today we particularly remember the names of those who have died in the past year, and in doing so we are able to see the impact of their collective witness. In this moment in time, it can feel a little bit shaky to be people of faith deeply committed to love, justice, compassion, inclusion, and humility. We see policies and procedures of death and destruction all around us, and sometimes we struggle to hold on to hope.

But, when we look at the lives of the saints, when we think about how they lived their lives and how they impacted us, I believe we are able to be steadied. Those who came before us lived their faith for good and it mattered. They lived grace. We can do it too. These saints today were extraordinary people who changed the world for the better – but that’s true every year.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, we stand in the midst of the great cloud of witnesses, they taught us, they teach us, and we too can live grace.* (God’s unconditional love.)

Or, as the Psalm says, “God takes pleasure in God’s people.” And so do we. As Paul says, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” Amen to that.

So, in remembering our saints and giving thanks to God for them, we are reminded that we too are part of a community whose work is to teach each other grace.

And, on that basis, I’ll end today with a poem about death and life.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,
how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

And, if you are willing to take suggestion, may the plan for your wild and precious life being sharing grace like those who have gone on before us?

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

November 2, 2025

Sermons

Like Ripples in a Pond

  • October 27, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Like Ripples in a Pond” based on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 and Matthew 22:34-46

Leviticus is one of those books of the Bible that we often pass over — I mean a fair portion is instructions for high priests in ancient Israel or dietary rules that we were absolved from following so this might be understandable. Or even worse – rules that are cherry-picked and used to harm. But there are portions of it that help not only with what we’re still commanded to do, but which I think help us make sense of the whole.

“You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am Holy.” The word used in Hebrew is “Kedosh” meaning “holy” or “set aside” – and while in much of Leviticus it’s used to refer to ritual purity, cleanliness that allows humans to be in the presence of God (like in the temple in Jerusalem). But in this case, the verses that follow cast a different light. To be “kedoshim” or “holy ones” requires no dunking in water nor abstaining from certain foods, but rather speaks to how we are required to live in relation to one another. That we must not be vengeful nor slanderous nor hate-filled. But rather kind, just, and loving.

Now often Christians act as if Jesus came up with the loving of God and likewise neighbor – it’s one of those “holier than though” habits that obscures our mission and creates tensions that need not exist. It wasn’t even a new way to interpret the Pentateuch – in fact at least one biblical scholar, Nicholas J. Schaser, notes that “Jewish sages who lived in Jesus’ era described these biblical verses in very similar ways. For instance, according to the Jerusalem Talmud (circa 4th century CE) Rabbi Akiva—who was born around fifty years after Jesus—says that the Levitical command to “love your neighbor as yourself” is the “great principle of the Torah.”1 A famous story preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (circa 600 CE) states that the renowned first-century sage Hillel once paraphrased Leviticus 19:18 for a non-Jew, saying, “Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is all the Torah, the rest is commentary. Go study.” 1

The Talmud, for those who are not familiar, is one of the central texts of Rabbinic Judaism, second only in importance to the Hebrew Bible (which includes at it’s core, the Torah). It’s the combined thinking and arguments of thousands of Rabbis and a major source of Jewish Law or “Halakah” – which actually translates more literally to “the way to go” or “the way of walking”. For what it’s worth, I think the Church Universal would be far less fractured if we had the equivalent of the Talmud…but alas, here we are.

So, we’ve now clarified that “loving neighbor as ourselves” is the heart blood of not only Christianity, but also Judaism and that to be “kedoshim” or holy ones we must be just and kind in the ways we live and treat one another…how the heck do we do that in this world that’s gone mad? How do we look at each and every person and see a beloved child of God – even when that other person is the antithesis of what we want our “neighbors” to be? How do we “reprove our neighbor”, demand accountability, use our voices to end our privilege, while not losing sight of the “Imago Dei” or image of God in the opposition? And how do we keep on keeping on when we’re tired and discouraged?

I think we start small, like the mustard seed that grows into the huge tree and recognize that even the tiniest pebble creates ripples that reach far beyond the water it touched. And just like a tiny amount of yeast will raise 100x it’s weight in flour, our efforts, our voices can start the fermenting, the leavening, that allows all of us to rise. Allows all of us to grab hold of the knowledge that we are kind, capable, beloved people of God – and feel the power that comes with that knowledge, that God is within each of us, we’re not alone in this.

The Pharisees in this reading of the Gospel didn’t give a wrong answer – they just didn’t give a complete one: Jesus was a descendant of the House of David, yes, but also upon his resurrection and triumph over death, he becomes Lord as well. Likewise so often in contemporary Christian preaching, Jesus as God Incarnate gets all the emphasis (often leading to that “holier than thou attitude” again), when in many cases we would do better to remember that Jesus also was fully human. A poor man, with brown skin, living in an occupied land under siege, one who raised his voice and made enemies of his religious authorities as well as the empire, one who fed the hungry, who treated women as equal, who cried out in fear and sadness as he said goodbye to friends and his mother. And in doing so, God became more like us, giving us the chance to become more like God.

May we use that power and knowledge to live into what it takes to help build the Kindom. Amen.

Based on “Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18” and “Matthew 22:34-46”

1) Commentary on Matthew 22:34-46 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

October 26, 2025

Karyn McCloskey

Sermons

Welfare of the City

  • October 12, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Welfare of the City” based on Psalm 66:1-12 and Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Jeremiah is the prophet of doom. His ministry was in the time immediately before the exile and he spends a whole lot of time telling people that unless they turn things around TERRIBLE things are going to happen. And then they do.

Jerusalem is besieged. Jerusalem falls. The temple is destroyed. There are mass casualties. There is extensive looting. The walls and gates are destroyed. The wealthy, the literate, the educated, and the powerful are taken captive and marched to Babylon and those who are left behind have nothing except tears and hunger.

Those who are taken to Babylon say:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? (Psalm 137:1-4)

But the prophet Jeremiah is not done being a prophet. His work didn’t end with destruction and despair. He writes to the captives in Babylon and tells them what he hears God saying to them. And I believe that what he wrote is not what anyone expected to hear:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:5-7)

That is, as one commentator puts it, “the exiles are enjoined to find their life now in this new and difficult place, assured by the command of God that life is possible, that home and family, food and shelter, the things that support and keep human beings human are possible – and over the long haul.”1 Those very same people who couldn’t find it in their hearts to sing the songs of God, are told to settle in. They’re told, explicitly, to LIVE. To live in the face of death. To live despite death. To keep alive the visions and promises of God in the midst EVEN when many of them thought they were in exile as punishment from God.

To make it worse, they’re told to seek the welfare of the city. The city of BABYLON. The capital city of the people who had defeated them, killed their beloveds, destroyed their temple, and ransacked their city. “Seek the welfare of the city.”

I can imagine the exiles reading the letter and muttering in response. “Seek the welfare of the city? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Why would I want to help them? And, wait a minute, we’re going to be here so long we’re supposed to build houses and get married???? I want to go HOME, I don’t want to settle in. And I sure as all get out don’t want to use my life to help THEM.”

I do not think the response of the exiles is unreasonable. It does seem important to note that the exiles were CAPTIVES but not slaves. They were not free to go home, but they were not owned by someone else. They couldn’t go home, but they could do other things. Right? They could build homes, they could plant gardens, they had enough freedom to live and make choices to thrive. This is a hard ask that God made, but it is NOT an impossible one. (That is, this isn’t the same as if God had told those who had been ripped from their homes and enslaved in our country to work for the well-being of our country.)

The people are told, literally “in its welfare shall be your welfare.”2 But we can still miss something with that literal translation, because the “welfare” is really shalom. Shalom is sometimes translated “peace” but is about common well-being. Shalom is simultaneously communal and individual, it is physical and spiritual, it is well-being and wholeness, it is peace and hope.

They are told, “Jews in exile are to work for the well-being (shalom) of the empire and its capital city. The well-being (shalom) of Judah is dependent upon and derivative of that of Babylon.”3 They weren’t given space to abdicate responsibility, they weren’t permitted to just sit tight and dream of going home. They were asked to include the city of their captors in their experience of communal wellbeing/shalom. They were asked to expand the definition of who mattered. Because if shalom is communal, then you work for your siblings well being because it is inter-related with your well-being. The ancient Jews knew that. But now they’re asked to inter-relate beyond their community, to include the people around them EVEN when they REALLY don’t want to for GOOD reason.

There is, of course, truth in this commandment. The people were living in the cities of Babylon. They were interconnected with their neighbors, as the people did better or worse, that applies to the Babylonians and the exiles in equal measure. For the people in exile to survive long enough to go home, this was good advice that kept them alive. But it was really hard.

I’m pretty sure a whole lot of them weren’t sure they wanted to on living. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” Or, at most, they wanted to go through the motions of eating and sleeping and surviving day to day, but not really commit. Not plan for the future. Not sign contracts, or invest in building materials, or envision the next generation. They just wanted to make it through the day and hope the next day was the day they got to go home.

I can relate. I just want to go back to a time when my nation was imperfect and unjust but seemed like it was trying to get better. I want to go back to immigration policies that didn’t feel particularly humane, but didn’t choke me with their disregard for human dignity. I want to go back to SNAP benefits that didn’t make it through the month, but made it through at least 3 weeks for those who are hungry. I want to go back to debates over if people have to make wedding cakes for weddings they judge instead of debates over conversation therapy. I want to close my eyes and open them and be back in the world I knew, where there was SO MUCH to do and so many issues at stake but at least we weren’t racing backwards on justice.

And I hear these words of Jeremiah to the people in exile,

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:5-7)

LIVE, says God. See what is going on, and work for it to be better, but LIVE. Don’t stick your head in the sand, don’t wait for things to be better before you engage. Engage NOW. Life NOW. I hear God saying, “my work hasn’t stopped.”

The exile was, for those who lived it, a nightmare.

The exile was also the time when the Hebrew Bible was written down. It was a time when Jewish identity solidified. It was a time when cultures influenced each other. It was a time when Judaism expanded, permanently, from its homeland into the world. It was TERRIBLE for those who lived it, and the ways the people responded have been a gift to the world ever since. The exiles were still an imperative part of God’s work in the world, and of the future of the Jewish faith. In ways they could never have imagined, “The Exile is the place where God’s faithful promises work a profound newness.”4

We are living in a hard time, and day by day things get harder. To be honest, all the injustices we see now are harder version of things that have always been in our society. There have always been ways that people have been treated as expendable. There has always been colonialism, particularly with regard to Native Americans. Racism is built into the roots of our country. There has always been xenophobia. There has always been transphobia. The same brokenness is just enlarging.

And in the midst of it, in the midst of our exile, God calls on us anyway. We are to hold on to the dreams of the kindom. We are to work together for common good. We are to bring people together. We are to follow the leadership of people who are most impacted by injustice. We are to hold on to hope. We are to believe that something else is possible, that God wants a different way of being, and that we are able to be a part of making it happen together.

We are to build houses and live in them, to plant gardens and eat their fruit, to celebrate love and welcome new life, to remember that we are all interconnected. And for us today, like for the exiles Jeremiah wrote to, that means seeking the well-being (shalom) of those who got us in this mess. Justice is for everyone, for everyone, for everyone, and justice isn’t justice if anyone is left out.

And we may be like those exiles. We may not see the difference it makes to keep the faith, to work together, to care. But it mattered what they did, and it matters what we do, and God was with them, and God is with us, and by the grace of God this too shall pass. When it passes, may the work we do to build communal shalom be a part of creating a better world for all of God’s children. Amen

1Patrick D. Miller “Jeremiah” in New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 6, ed. Leander E. Keck et al (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 792.

2John Bright, “Jeremiah” a book in The Anchor Bible series, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1965), p. 208.`W

3Walter Brueggemann, Jeremiah 26-32: To Build, to Plant, (International-Theological Commentary) ed. Federick Carlson Holmgren and George A. F. Knight, (Grand Rapids: Wm E. Eerdman Publishing, 1991), p. 32.

4Brueggemann, 30.

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

October 12, 2025

Sermons

Weeping

  • October 5, 2025March 17, 2026
  • by Sara Baron

“Weeping” based on Lamentations1:1-6 and 3:19-26

World Communion Sunday connects us to Christians around the world. On this Sunday most people who attend worship in Mainline Protestant denominations, those who are Roman Catholics, and some others will all share at the communion table together. Our table is then much larger today than on any other day of the year. We move, just a little bit, towards the vision of unity in Christ with diversity.

But, pragmatically, it isn’t possible to conceive of the whole world all at once. So we pick one part of it, a part of the world our hearts lead us to, and we focus there. When we start the process of planning World Communion Sunday, our first question is “where in the world are our hearts leading us?” We remember our siblings in faith in that part of the world are eating at God’s table just like we are. Well, maybe. This year our hearts led us to Gaza, and I’m not sure how many people in Gaza are able to gather together in Christian worship, nor how people would be able to scrap together the symbolic elements of a feast that feeds God’s people. There is not enough food, and the people are not safe, so our connection with their table means that we notice their struggles and the fact that few tables – even- remain.

As a part of the United States, where anti-Semitism is rampant and far too often deadly, and where support for Palestinians is often heard as hatred of people who are Jewish, I feel a need to be abundantly clear: when I say “God’s people” I mean absolutely everyone. That includes people who are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, from any other faith tradition and those who don’t participate in any faith tradition. There is no place in my understanding of God for hatred or dehumanization of any person or people. To connect my heart with the people in Gaza does not imply that I do not care about any other people.

That being said, now I want to take face on the fact that worship today is really depressing. This is a sermon entitled “Weeping” and I took out our normal “Regathering Song” of “Halle, Halle, Halle” because it was too cheerful for today. It is possible that you were hoping for a more uplifting worship service. My premise in letting all the sadness and weeping hang out today is that we have a communal need to mourn. People have a right to live. Food access is a human right. Hospitals do sacred work. Homes should not be destroyed. War rarely brings peace. The realities of people in Gaza, especially for the past 2 years, are a reason to mourn.

The world is not as it should be, and so we lament.

We do not lament so we feel guilty about what has happened, nor do we lament to make ourselves feel worse. We lament because things have happened that should be mourned and the only way to face them is to mourn together. We mourn because we need to let the feelings out rather than hold them within us, festering.

We have a human need to mourn the things that aren’t right. It is the counterpart of the human need to express gratitude for the things are good and right. And, when possible, we should mourn and celebrate together because it moves the emotions through our bodies and makes space for the next thing. At the “Luke 10 Congregations” retreat last weekend we were told “Prepare, it is going to get worse” (all of it.) It was said, if we assume that it won’t, we’re always going to be horrified, overwhelmed and joyless. But, even when only horror is around, something else is possible. So we mourn and celebrate together. As we do that we learn again and again that our “smething better is possible and we can be a part of making it so.” (Liz Theoharis.) Mourning and celebrating are part of preparing.

That all being said, I have a poem to offer you as another piece of our communal lament.

Poem: My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter1

by Mosab Abu Toha

November 30, 2023

At night, at home, we sit on the floor,

close to each other and

far from the windows and the red

lights of bombs. Our backs bang on the walls

whenever the house shakes.

We stare at each other’s face,

scared and yet happy that we were lucky,

that our lives were spared this time.

The walls wake up from their fitful sleep.

Flies gather around the only lit ceiling lamp

for warmth in the cold night,

cold except when missiles hit

and heat up houses and roads and trees,

scorching an adjacent neighborhood.

Every time we hear a bomb

falling from an F-16 or an F-35,

our lives panic. Our lives freeze

somewhere in-between, confused

where to head next:

to a graveyard, to a hospital,

or to a nightmare.

Our lives keep their shivering hands

on their wristwatch,

fingers ready to remove the batteries

if and when needed.

My four-year-old daughter, Yaffa,

in her pink dress, hears a bomb

explode. She breathes in deep,

covers her mouth with her dress’s

ruffles.

Yazzan, her five-and-a-half-year old brother,

grabs a blanket warmed by his sleepy body.

He lays the blanket on his sister.

You can hide now, he assures her.

As for me and my wife, Maram, we pray

that a magic blanket would hide all the houses

from the bombs and take us to somewhere safe.

—–

O Lord, hear our prayers. Amen

1https://progressive.org/magazine/my-son-throws-a-blanket-over-my-daughter-toha-20231130/ accessed 10/2/25

October 5, 2025 – World Communion Sunday

The Great Thanksgiving

One:              The Lord be with you.

Many:          And also with you

One:             Lift up your hearts

Many:          We lift them up to the Lord

One:             Let us give thanks to the Lord our God

Many:          It is right to give our thanks and praise.

It is a right and fitting thing to gather around Your table and mindfully extend its blessings to all people, but most especially to those in the devastated land of Palestine, where Jesus was born.  

From the beginning of time You have called us to share hospitality with friends and with strangers.  Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Rebekah, Laban, Lydia, Phillip.. and countless others unnamed in scripture called and chosen to help your beloveds. 

You are the One who called life into existence,

you are the one who lives and breathes in and through all people, always and everywhere.

You formed us in your image, and work with and through us moment by moment to feed the starving, to comfort the sick, to release the captive, to bring hope to the lost, and to protect the most vulnerable.  You are always with us.

Because of all this, with your people on earth and all the company of heaven, we praise your name and join their unending hymn:

Many: Holy, holy, holy One, God of Love and Light.

Heaven and Earth are filled with your glory! Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is the one who comes in your name.

Hosanna In the Highest!

In the fullness of time You sent Jesus, the embodiment of Your love.  He walked with Your people, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, eating with those dismissed and marginalized…and angering those in power.

On the night before he was murdered, Jesus took the bread, raised it, blessed and broke it, saying “Take and eat, this is my body, broken that it may be shared, shared so that you will be connected through me.”

After supper, he took the cup, raised it, blessed it and offered it to his friends saying, “Take and drink this is my life-blood, my love poured out for you and for many so that you know nothing will separate you from me.”

As his followers today, remembering his acts of love toward us, we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving, as we proclaim the mystery of our faith:

Many: Christ was birthed among us.  Christ was killed among us.  Christ lives among us.

Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and cup.  Make them be for us the body and spirit of Christ that we may be his hands and feet in this world.

By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world until your Kindom comes in completion and all the peoples of the world sit to eat together in peace.

        Many: Amen

As we gather around this table, we remember the ones who came before, the frightened ones in an upper room, the ones on the way to Emmaus, and on the River Tiberius.  We recall the ones who worshipped in catacombs, who hid in basements, bomb shelters, and rubble…as they gathered to share a meal like this one that strengthened bodies and minds.   These tables where we gather to share the joy of being God’s beloveds, even in the midst of fear and sadness.  These tables that are as much prayer as protest, where we remember Jesus – but also find the courage to stand up to oppressors and to re-member His Body with those who are dying from floods, famines, bombs, and blockades.   Come and be fed.

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

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