“Tender Compassion”based on Psalm 23 and John 10:11-18

April 22, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

We need good images for God, preferably many of them. The ways we think about the Holy One impact our theology, our prayer life, and even who we seek to become. I think we are lucky that today’s scriptures center on a beautiful image of the Divine, and give us a chance to contemplate the implications of it.

The comparison of humans to sheep and their leaders to shepherds was a pretty obvious metaphor for the pre-industrial, agricultural lands of ancient Israel. Sheep were everywhere, and they have some remarkably human tendencies. (I am told my last name is Polish for sheep, except that there is another words that is more commonly used for sheep. Baron is special word for stupid sheep. So, yes, sheep with human tendencies…) It could be tempting to consider the metaphor of God as shepherd as outdated, but I think it is worthy of serious attention. To get there though, we have to consider ourselves as sheep. It mostly works.

Take, for example, how flocks of sheep like to be led: “Cows are herded from the rear with shouts and prods from cowboys. But that does not work with sheep. If you stand behind sheep making noises, they will just run around behind you. They actually prefer to be led. Cows can be pushed; sheep must be led. Sheep will not going anywhere that someone else – their trusted shepherd – does not go first, to show them that everything is all right.”¹ By my personal experience with humans, myself included, this applies to us also. We aren’t big fans of being pushed, prodded, or shouted at. We prefer to be led, and most especially like being lead by example.

As one scholar put it:

“In the agrarian culture of ancient Israel, before fences contained grazing livestock, shepherds were essential guardians of economic capital. The Israelite marketplace and sacrificial rites required sheep for wool, milk, and for those who could afford it, meat. In the daily life of the shepherd, however, these fluffy creatures could be at turns affectionate, stubborn, stupid, aimless, passive, easily startled, and always hungry. Sheep are prone to wander off and become easily vulnerable. Foxes, wolves, and jackals knew this. A shepherd, therefore, needed to be strong but not overpowering. If the shepherd came on too forcefully the flock would scatter and run away. If the shepherd was too gentle or inattentive, ovine passivity and distraction would bring a host of troubles.”²

Sheep are inherently dependent on shepherds. They’re vulnerable by themselves. Predators want to hurt them, they wander off and lose their way, they can’t heal themselves without help when they get hurt. At the same time, shepherds are also dependent on sheep! The sheep are the shepherd’s work, and livelihood, their companions, and the source of much of what the shepherd needs. A sheep and their shepherd are interdependent.

God as shepherd is a common image in the Bible. In Ezekiel 34 the prophet condemns the kings of Judah for failing to be good shepherds, and says that they’ve done so badly that God is going to take over directly. The condemnation is interesting because of what specific issues are named.

“Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.” (Ezekiel 34:2-6)

So that’s what BAD shepherding looks like. The comes the contrast.

For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. …I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak”. (Ezekiel 34:11, 14-16b)

While kings were supposed to act like good shepherds, they usually failed. They forgot to take care of the people and focused on their own needs. Yet, God is the best shepherd– exactly the sort of shepherd the people need. God is strong enough to keep them safe, and gentle enough not to scare them off. It is within this regular metaphor of the people as sheep in need of a good shepherd that both the 23^rd Psalm and the Gospel reading emerge.

The 23^rd Psalm is the best known metaphor of God as the good shepherd, caring for the needs of the sheep. The Psalm comes from a personal perspective, the speaker is an individual who is well cared for by the shepherd, even though the shepherd is responsible for the whole flock. The Psalmist’s needs are all cared for by the shepherd: for food, rest, and even beauty in the green pastures; for safety, comfort, and thirst by the still waters; for restoration of the soul itself – for healing from the inside out – for solace. But it doesn’t even end there! The shepherd who leads the sheep, leads them down good paths so they know where to go to be safe and well. The Psalmist asserts that even the shadowed and frightening places of life aren’t scary with the shepherd leading them. Then comes a line I’ve often ignored, “ your rod and your staff– they comfort me.” A scholar writes, “The rod and staff, the shepherd’s instruments of prodding, directing, and defending, are ever present.”³

For the most part, the metaphor of God as Good Shepherd gets dropped at this point in the Psalm, because even more needs to be said and it requires human imagery. The Psalmist feels safe with God even when other people are attacking, and has their needs cared for even then. The table is set, by God, for food to be eaten. God offers hospitality, and abundance – the cup overflows with goodness. Before this tiny little poem is over though, it offers STILL more goodness. Goodness and mercy “shall follow me” – goodness and mercy are are the essence of God. Goodness is sort of circularly defined with God, and mercy is one of the most consistent descriptors of God in the Bible. Mercy is compassion (or forgiveness) shown to a person whom it is within one’s power (or right) to punish or harm. God’s presence with the Psalmist is expressed with the powerful, “goodness and mercy shall follow me.”

The 23^rd Psalm is a truly spectacular poem, with excellent theology. Particularly in the midst of upheaval, it is good to remember that God is our Good Shepherd. The Gospel extends and expands the shepherd metaphor. It may be useful to remember that the Gospel of John was written several generations after the death of Jesus, and the human tendency to make meaning out of events had time to work its magic on this speech of Jesus’.

“I am the good shepherd” is one of the many “I am” statements of John, in this case it speaks of a role that clarifies the connection between Jesus and God. Uniquely, this passage contrasts the shepherd with the hired hard. That may sound a bit like the condemnation of the kings from Ezekiel, but has its own flavor. The shepherd’s life is interdependent with that of the sheep, but the hired hand is not, and that impacts the care they give!

In John we hear, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” Sheep know and come to their shepherd’s voice. It is a very intimate relationship, yet another reason it is a good metaphor for our relationship to God! Then comes something that doesn’t work in the same way with real shepherds and sheep, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” We are told AGAIN, as we have been many times before, that God’s love doesn’t have the boundaries we’d expect. The flock that we are a part of isn’t the only one, and we should be expecting God to keep on expanding the flock until all are included.

Some of this is a bit uncomfortable for me, as one of the most common descriptions of the work I’m call to is “pastor” which is a reflection of clergy as following in the way of the good shepherd. Given the strength of the metaphor, it feels over extended to use it to refer to human clergy people, who are always more sheep than shepherd, no matter how hard we try. However, I suppose the reminders to be tender and compassionate the way that God is tender and compassionate is never out of line.

The 23^rd Psalm really does wonderful work with the balance between the individual and the communal. God, the God who is OUR shepherd, is also MY shepherd. The one who cares for the flock, and indeed all the flocks, is also caring for me. And that one is trustworthy, I can relax in the shepherd’s care. That one is also tender, I can trust that the shepherd will find me when I’m lost, care for me when I’m injured, cajole me when I’m scared, and reconnect me with the flock when I stray away. The shepherd is a strong and tender caregiver, and the Lord is my and our shepherd. And, God has those metaphorical rod and staff to prod, direct, and defend us!!

John’s Good Shepherd passage adds even more to this stunning imagery of God. It invites us to consider deep intimacy with God, to consider what God’s “voice” sounds like and if we are tuned into it. It continues the interdependence between the sheep and the shepherd, between God and God’s people, and invites us to see each other as fellow members of God’s flock.

Our God is like a good shepherd, who takes care of the sheep – both individually and collectively. Our God is a Good Shepherd, tender and compassionate. Thanks be to God for God’s good care, and for the opportunity to learn of the Divine in this imagery. Amen

Sermon Talkback Questions

What part of the care of the sheep in Psalm 23 are you needing most? (to lie down in green pastures, to be led beside still waters, to restore my soul, to be led on the right path)

Is the image of God as shepherd still something that resonates today? Why or why not?

What other images might serve in similar ways, and connect more to our lives?

What parts of the imagery of God as shepherd help you connect with God?

Are there parts that don’t?

Are there entirely other images or names for God that help you connect with good theology and a loving God?

Who are the sheep of other folds?

What ways do you seek to tune yourself to God’s voice so that “my own know me”?

1Nancy R. Blakley, “Pastoral Perspective on John 10:11-18” in “Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 2” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2008) page 450.

2Kent M. French “Exegetical Perspective on Psalm 23” in “Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 2” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2008) page 437.

3French, 439.

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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

“Finding Peace” based on Psalm 4 and Luke 24:36b-48

April 15, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It seems possible to me that most of us missed a lot of what was going on the Psalm in the first reading, and all the scholars I’ve read have offered a lot of insight into it that I didn’t get on my own. So I’m going to try ruining the beautiful poetry for the sake of clarity. (This is my gift to the world, I make things clear but less pretty.):

God, answer me! I trust you will. After all, you are excellent.
Also, you have before.
When I was feeling crowded in with no space to move,
you made abundant space for me.
Because of that experience, I trust to ask you again:
have mercy on me and hear me.
I need you, because PEOPLE are not excellent right now.
People are after me, trying to take away my reputation, my name, my family honor.
They want to shame me!

O people, how long will you lie about me?
You should remember that I follow God’s ways,
and God listens when I pray.

Instead of lying and shaming others when you are hurting,
spend some time in quiet, in contemplation, in prayer.
God will listen to you, too. You aren’t alone.
Trust in God.

Of course, some say that there is no goodness in the world, no God-ness.
But I remember the blessing,
The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make God’s face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up God’s countenance upon you, and give you peace.

You, O God have given me so much more joy
than those who have food and drink in abundance.
Because of my connection to you,
I will sleep peacefully tonight, despite what the people say about me.
You, O God lead me to sanctuaries for rest and recovery.
That’s the experience I get, even from this brief prayer.

The psalmist finds ways through fear through remembering God’s spaciousness, through finding empathy for her accusers, and through remembering God’s trustworthiness. I love that in the Psalm we are taken along for the ride with her – entering into her hope for what God can offer, entering into her dismay at the struggles she is finding in life, entering into the wisdom she finds within, and then entering with her into the rest she finds in remembering that God is with her and she’s OK.

(Btw, I have no way to know the Psalmist’s gender. One of the scholars I read this week simply used the feminine for the author, and I thought it was a good exercise to derive the fullness of humanity from the female pronoun, so I followed that person’s lead.)

It has been said that the Psalms are God’s favorite book of the Bible, because the rest of the Bible is primarily concerned with what God is saying to the people, but the Psalms are about what people are saying to God. The full range of human emotion is found in them, often to rather uncomfortable degrees. In this Psalm we hear the anxiety of being hemmed in, particularly by people who want to harm us. We also hear the witness of a person who has known God’s loving grace. She informs those who seem ready to harm her of the goodness she’s found in her relationship with God, and it almost seems that in reminding them, she is reminded that God is the one whose steadfast love endures forever.

The Psalms always remind me that emotions are OK, and that STRONG emotions are OK, that God is big enough to deal with us as we are, be that anxious, sad, angry, or even numb. In this case, I think the Psalmist was most of all afraid, and that is very similar to how the disciples are presented as feeling in the Luke reading today. Luke says they were, “startled and terrified” when Jesus appeared and spoke words of comfort and assurance to them. This seems reasonable to me! Once Jesus had assured the disciples, and their fear had lessened, he took the time to teach them. It seems like there is a good life lesson in that. Frightened people aren’t able to absorb new information, so taking the time to connect with someone and calm their fears seems imperative to any form of teaching!

Then he gives them a new undertaking. Those who had been his students and companions were now to be “witnesses.” They had seen his ministry, and his life, death, and resurrection, and they were supposed to start talking about it. The final command to the disciples in the Luke version we read today that says, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” I think the awesome part here is that it is “to be proclaimed in his name to ALL NATIONS.”

Jesus spend his ministry teaching repentance and forgiveness of sins. That was the core of his message, as a means to open people to the kindom of God. It is always important to consider what sins he was talking about though! Life wasn’t what God had planned for the people, the vision of the Torah wasn’t the way of life anymore. The communities weren’t caring for each other, and the vulnerable were slipping through the cracks. Life wasn’t focused on God, or on God’s ways of justice. To say that the witnesses were to take the message to all the world is to say that the whole world could be transformed from violence to nonviolence; from fear to hope; from selfish ambition to communal joy! The WHOLE WORLD could be healed and become the kindom.

But first, he had to deal with their fears. They needed to be seeped in hope to offer this message! Whether it be like Jesus working patiently with the disciples, or like the Psalmist working through her own fear by remembering God and instructing others in God’s grace, there are ways through fear to hope. May we find them when we need them. 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

Sermons

“Expansive” based on Luke 23:32-43

March 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I started really struggling with “atonement theory” at the end of high school, well before I knew what “atonement theory” was. For the record “atonement theory” relates to how it was that Jesus’ death on the cross united God and humanity, the way to remember it is that is about how “at-one-ment” happened.

At that time in my life, I’d only heard of one atonement theory, “sacrificial atonement” sometimes called “blood atonement” which says that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins. I was trying very hard to be a “good Christian” in those days, and to comply with what I thought I was supposed to believe, but this didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t figure out to whom was the payment made. As time went on I learned that there are various schools of thought about this. The answers can be: God, humanity, or justice.

Some say that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and the payment was made to God’s own self. But, if Jesus is God, then God required God’s self as a payment to God’s self, then…. why? Worse yet if we think of the God-Jesus relationship as Parent-Child in which case this becomes an obscenity of parental abuse and child sacrifice.

Some say that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and the payment was made to humanity. Frankly, I was always able to believe that God loved me and was willing to forgive me, so the idea that we needed this act to believe that God loves us and forgives us just didn’t hold water.

Some say that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and the payment was made to a need for balance the scales of justice in the universe. This one made less than no sense to me because if God’s actions are bound by a power that is greater than God, then God isn’t God. (To be fair, some said the payment needed to be made to the Devil, but that also implies the Devil is more powerful than God; and even as a teenager I’d foregone the assumption I had to believe in the Devil.)

Twenty years after I started asking this question, no one has convinced me that an answer I can accept exists. However, my initial desire to believe in sacrificial atonement theory, because I thought I was supposed to, was based in reality!! Most Christians today believe this. Once, as a pastor, I taught a course during Lent based on a video series by Marcus Borg. In the first week’s video Borg explained many ways of understanding Easter, explaining that the metaphors of “life” and “new life” and “hope to the hopeless” can be understood in many ways, but in all of them the metaphor is powerful. The course participants thought that made a lot of sense. The following week Borg outlined many different theories of Good Friday, and “atonement”, explaining that “sacrificial atonement theory” is one among many and was not particularly evident for the first 800 years or so of Christianity. The course participants balked. The centerpiece of their faith felt under attack.

Thus, I come into this sermon with some trepidation. What I intend to share is, I think, important. Yet, for some it will be inherently threatening. I speak truth as I know it, trusting that all of you are strong enough to disagree with me and to discount what you don’t find useful.

When I got to college I did a research paper on atonement theory and learned that there are a LOT of them, and that they’re rich and varied, and most of them are older than the one I’d thought was “normal.” I say this in case you want to know more about them, but I’m going to focus now on just one other one.

During Lent we’ve been talking about God’s desire for Justice, as found in the Bible. We looked at the first creation story to see the priest’s enthusiasm for Sabbath rest for ALL of creation built into creation itself. We examined the Torah vision for a just society, one that calls upon the people to care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger as expressions of God’s own caring. We looked together at the role of the prophet in speaking truth to power so that kings didn’t start believing God allowed them to pick on the weak. We looked, as well, at one of Jesus’ parables to find that in it Jesus told a story of how oppression works so that those victimized by it could be freed from it.

Throughout these sermons we’ve been comparing and contrasting “domination systems” with God’s vision for the kin-dom of God. As a reminder, “Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid.”¹ God’s vision is for justice is a reflection of God’s love and care for all. This means God seeks a world that cares for ALL people, which involves access to adequate food, clothing, shelter, rest, education, and meaning, for starters – we call this the reign of God, or the kindom of God .

Domination systems are supported in part by ideology, usually in the form of religion. One of the most dominate of the ideological myths that supports the violence of domination systems is the myth of redemptive violence. Walter Wink was a professor at Auburn Theological Seminary and he wrote the seminal book Engaging the Powers that I finally got around to opening this week. He says regarding the myth of redemptive violence, “The distinctive feature of this myth is the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. This myth is the original religion of the status quo, the first articulation of ‘might makes right.’ It is the basic ideology of the Domination System. The gods favor those who conquer.”² Christianity is often used to support the ideology of domination systems. Wink again:

“The myth of redemptive violence thus uses the traditions, rites, customs, and symbols of Christianity in order to enhance the power of a wealthy elite and the goals of the nation narrowly defined. It has no interest in compassion for the poor, or for more equitable economic arrangements, or for the love of the enemies. It merely uses the shell of religion – a shell that can be filled with the blasphemous doctrine of the national security state. Emptied of their prophetic vitality, these outer forms are then manipulated to legitimate a power system intent on the preservation of privilege at all costs.”³

I think sacrificial atonement theory is one of these ways that “Christian” theology can be used as an ideology of redemptive violence to support Domination Systems. After all, in sacrificial atonement theory, there is a demand for a VIOLENT DEATH in order to bring resolution and peace. I think the ancient myth of redemptive violence has taken deep root in Christianity this way, and it is destructive of good living as well as good theology.

So, let’s look at another option! Wink uses “Powers” to describe the Powers in the world that support domination systems, through violence or the threat of violence. He thinks THEY killed Jesus, and that the work of God and Jesus was in resisting and exposing them. He writes:

“The cross also exposes the Powers as unable to make Jesus become what they wanted him to be, or to stop being who he was. Here was a person able to live out to the fullest what he felt was God’s will. He chose to die rather than compromise with violence. The Powers threw at him every weapon in their arsenal. But they could not deflect him from the trail that he and God were blazing. Because he lived thus, we too can find our path. Because they could not kill what was alive in him, the cross also revealed the impotence of death. Death is the Powers’ final sanction. Jesus at his crucifixion neither fights the darkness nor flees under cover of it, but goes with it, goes into it. He enters the darkness freely, voluntarily. The darkness is not dispelled or illuminated. It remains vast, untamed, void. But he somehow encompasses it. It becomes the darkness of God. It is now possible to enter any darkness and trust God to wrest from it meaning, coherence, resurrection. Jesus’ truth could not be killed.”⁴

Jesus died without being complicit in violence at all, he didn’t participate in it, sanction it, or fight it.

Now, I’m going to share a very long quote from Wink about what he thinks the death of Jesus does and doesn’t mean, because I’ve thought about it, and I can’t say it better.

“Jesus’ own view of his inevitable death at the hands of the Powers seems to have been that God’s nonviolent reign could only come in the teeth of desperate opposition and the violent recoil of the Domination System: ‘from the days of John the Baptist until now, the reign of God has suffered violence….Now, however, Christian theology argued that God is the one who provides Jesus as a Lamb sacrificed in our stead; that God is the angry and aggrieved party who must be placated by blood sacrifice; that God is, finally both sacrificer and sacrificed.” … But what is wrong with this God, that the legal ledgers can be balanced only by means of the death of an innocent victim? Jesus simply declared people forgiven, confident that he spoke the mind of God. Why then is a sacrificial victim necessary to make forgiveness possible? Does not the death of Jesus reveal that all such sacrifices are unnecessary?

The God whom Jesus revealed as no longer our rival, no longer threatening and vengeful, but unconditionally loving and forgiving, who needed no satisfaction by blood – this God of infinite mercy was metamorphosed by the church into the image of a wrathful God whose demand for blood atonement leads to God’s requiring of his own Son a death on behalf of all of us. The nonviolent God of Jesus comes to be depicted as a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is closest and most precious to him, but also holds the whole of humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipated and required. Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure religion.”⁵

Wink then summarizes what this means for us, “To be this God’s offspring requires the unconditional and unilateral renunciation of violence. The reign of God means the complete and definitive elimination of every form of violence between individuals and nations. This is a realm and a possibility of which those imprisoned by their own espousal of violence cannot even conceive.”⁶ John Dominic Crossan comes to a very similar conclusion, “Christians choose between the violent God of human normalcy and the nonviolent God of divine radicality, between peace through violence and peace through justice, according to which one they find incarnate in the historical Jesus”.⁷

The question is, “is our God violent?” Despite very good evidence from the Bible, from humanity, and from Christianity otherwise, I don’t believe so. I believe God is nonviolent, and calls all of us to nonviolence as well. I hope the chance to consider various understandings of Jesus’ death on the cross makes space within you to consider the question, and frees you to answer it in ways that are life giving. Amen

Questions for Sermon Talkback

What other atonement theories have you heard? (Or other nuances of the ones mentioned)

What sense can you make of the “Myth of redemptive violence”?

Does it make sense that sacrificial atonement is part of the myth of redemptive violence?

Is anything missing from our faith if we don’t accept sacrificial atonement?

Does Wink’s theory of Jesus’ death make sense?

How have you made sense of Jesus’ death?

How do you connect Jesus’ death to Jesus’ life?

For you, is there anything inherent about forgiveness in Jesus’ death? If not, do you find this in another place in your story of God/Jesus? If not, is it important to you?

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

2Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Fortress Press: 1993 it seems), 15.

3Wink, 28.

4Wink, 141.

5Wink, 148-9.

6Wink, 149.

7John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (USA: HarperOne, 2007), 141.

–

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 18, 2018

Sermons

“What is Fair?” based on Matthew 20:1-16

March 11, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I have preached on this parable before, in this church. It was in September of 2014, and I laid out in that sermon that I was seriously confused by the parable and couldn’t figure out some basic problems. I had noticed that a denarius was not actually enough, and I couldn’t figure out why Jesus would tell a story about a landowner (and stand in for God) who “generously” paid all the workers “not quite enough.” I offered multiple options to try to explain how this could happen, but left the sermon without any certainty.

I have since come across a far better explanation of the parable Jesus told, which does explain why Jesus told a story about a landowner paying the workers “not enough.” It seems that I got pulled in by the first few words of the story “for the kingdom of heaven is like” as do most preachers and scholars. When you do that, then it leads to thinking that the landowner represents a generous God, and the day laborers God’s people. Then the problem in the parable is that the first-hired day laborers resent the equal payment others receive. It is a lot like the prodigal son, and the elder brother struggling with the (F)father’s generosity.

The problem with that interpretation is that the landowner is NOT generous. A denarius was enough money for a day laborer to feed HIMSELF, poorly, THAT DAY. But they didn’t work every day so they didn’t get to eat every day. Generally they were unmarried men, because they couldn’t even support themselves much less anyone else. So, even paying people who’d only labored an hour this “daily wage” doesn’t make the landowner generous because none of the laborers made enough to fill their bellies WELL that night.

William Herzog wrote Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed in 1994 when he was a professor at Colgate Rochester Divinity School. His take on this passage finally makes sense of it. Everything else I say is informed by him.

Instead of assuming that this is about the goodness and generosity of God (which doesn’t fit the parable itself), it is possible to consider that this parable might have illuminated the systems of oppression that God so vehemently stood against. To see it, we’re going to delve deeply into the advanced agrarian (agricultural) society of Jesus’ day. All agrarian societies worked like this, it isn’t particular to the Roman Empire, although it does also apply to the Roman Empire. Jesus’ ministry happened in the backwaters of the oppressive agrarian society of the Roman Empire, in the midst of a people who believed in a God who had freed them from oppression, repeatedly.

The system worked like this: “the economy was still based on redistribution of wealth through tribute and other forms of enforced obligations, whose effect was to leave rural peasants near destitution while urban elites lived in inordinate luxury.”¹ The ruler got about 25% of everything, and the ruling classes, which constituted 1-2% of the population got the same or more. Thus, Herzog says, “the top 2 percent of the population controlled between 50 and 67 percent of the annual wealth of their societies.”² The ruling class was supported by 3 other groups: the military which used force and the threat of force to keep order; the bureaucrats who created and maintained the systems to bring the wealth up the ladder; and the religious leaders, “whose priests justified the emergent order and tended the temples that embodied that order’s traditional legitimation. The role of the priestly retainers was to produce an ideology that either could motivate cultivators to turn over their surplus to the rulers or, failing that, would justify the coercion of those cultivators and their subsequent oppression by the ruling class.”³

All together, those three supportive classes were 5-7 percent of populations. Meanwhile, “The vast majority of the population, about 70 percent, were peasants who worked the land and lived in towns and villages that dotted the countryside. Peasants provided the labor that generated the wealth on which agrarian societies were based.”⁴ The purpose of society was to glean that wealth for the ruling class, who needed it, in part, to gain power over each other. Herzog says, “the goal of the aristocracy was to push exploitation to the limit in order to maximize their yield. Because the limit beyond which they could not go was the extinction of the peasants themselves, urban elites learned how to extract everything but the ‘barest minimum needed for subsistence”⁵

There were two groups of people UNDER the peasants in this hierarchy of society: the “unclean and degraded” who did despised trades, and “the expendables.” The so-called expendables (thought as such by society, but not by God) were usually “the excess children of peasant farmers who could not afford to divide their small patrimony”⁶, or the ones whose land had been ripped out from under them. The expendables comprised 5-10 percent of the population, or 15% if things were going badly. Herzog says, “The presence of expendables was the inevitable outcome of a system driven by unbridled greed. … For the expendables, life was brutal and brief; characteristically they lasted no more than five to seven years after entering this class, but the size of the expendable class remained more or less stable because its ranks were being constantly replenished”.⁷

Now, that we know how the system worked, remember those day laborers in the parable? They’re the so-called expendables. In real life, the landowner wouldn’t REALLY have hired his own day laborers. That was a job for his steward, his steward’s servant perhaps. The parable works better, and the exploitation becomes clearer, when it is him directly. Herzog thinks Jesus puts the landowner directly in this role for the sake of clarity of who is really gaining the benefit. After all, vineyards tended to be owned by the wealthy, and “The owners of great estates increased their holdings through foreclosures on loans, leading to hostile takeovers of peasant farms.”⁸ Those foreclosures also created more so-called expendables. Often the land take overs would change crops from wheat and legumes that fed the people to vineyards that provided their owners with greater wealth. The way the parable is told, the wealthy landowner is doing very well, “his imminent harvest is so great that he cannot even calculate accurately the amount of help needed.”⁹ The labor market is over-saturated with day laborers, so they all take him up on his offer for work, and after the first round they all agree to “whatever” pay the landowner claims is fair. They don’t argue about pay, because they can’t afford to lose the work.

Once the laborers have all been hired, the parable switches immediately to the payment cycle. This is where discussions of parable are usually focused. So, what does Herzog think the first hired were complaining about?

“What is their complaint? They have been shamed. The landowner has aimed a deliberate insult at them, … he has told them in effect that he values their day long effort in the scorching heat no more than the brief labor of the eleventh hour workers. He has shamed their labor, and as day laborers who have nothing left to offer but their animal energy, they must respond to the provocation. If they consent to his judgment, namely that their labor is worthless, then they have nothing at all left to offer.”¹⁰

The landowner would have been intentionally humiliating them as a part of maintaining differentiated social order. Then he goes on to particularly shame the one who spoke out. “The spokesperson has been banned, shunned, blackballed, or blacklisted; he will not likely find work in that neighborhood again.”¹¹ The landowner’s final point is that he is entitled to give what he wants to give, as it is all his. He is the one who says he is generous! There are a few inherent issues in this. He might as well have said, “’I choose to give [dounai] to this last the same as I give to you.” (20:14b) Here there is no question of paying (apodos) laborers for their work done. It is all the gift of the landowner, his charity robs the laborers of any sense of honor.”¹² Furthermore, he claims that he pays out of “what belongs to him.” By Jewish faith and law, that wasn’t true at all. All land belonged to God, and those who lived on it and worked it were God’s stewards. The Torah even makes clear the expectation of redistribution of land on a regular basis so that all have enough. The landowner is operating under those principles at all.

Overall, “Jesus’ parables codify systems of oppression in order to unveil them and make them visible to those victimized them.”¹³ Herzog thinks that, “the landowner’s final remarks likely would have met with initial approval from the peasants and villagers who had, after all, internalized the oppressor’s world.”¹⁴ However, he says Jesus would have talked it over with them, drawing them into further questions, deeper discovery, and new insights. They might even have noticed that this parable is placed “at one of the few moments in the economic cycle in which the elites were dependent on the lowliest of laborers. … [the landowner] smothered the truth that he was dependent on them, and as a result, that they could have power but only a power that grew out of their solidarity. Divided they would fall one by one before the withering hostility and judgment of the elite.”¹⁵

That is, Jesus seems to be telling this story because he sees the plight of the so-called expendables. He doesn’t find it acceptable. In fact, I think Jesus wanted to change the whole system of oppression and of wealth flow to the top. Jesus articulates again and again that God cares about those that society is willing to marginalize, ignore, or exploit. The parables of Jesus are yet another expression of God’s yearning for a just society and world. God isn’t like that landowner, God is truly generous, never an oppression, and always worried about the exploited. God yearns for distributive justice, for societies that care for all people, and God acts by urging prophetic language and creative story telling to expose and eliminate oppression.

Now, here is where this parable gets really scary. Thanks be to God, you may have been thinking, that we don’t live in that agrarian society. Except that we don’t talk much about the wealth of the top 2% in our society, because the wealth if far more concentrated than that. The top 1% own 40% of our country, and really the top .1% owns the vast majority of that.¹⁶ We still have systems where bureaucrats, the military, and religious organizations function to support, empower, and legitimize the systems of oppression. And, while we might want to claim we don’t have “expendables”, in our country as of 2016, 12.7% of the US population currently lives under the poverty line, and nearly all of them people are food insecure.¹⁷ ¹⁸ “In the U.S., the richest 1 percent of men lives 14.6 years longer on average than the poorest 1 percent of men, while among women in those wealth percentiles, the difference is 10.1 years on average.”¹⁹ It seems that many of the things said about society back then add up to talk about society today.

The idea of Jesus telling this story to the ones who were most exploited really strikes me. Even the exploited would have tended to buy into the system, that’s just how the systems work. It means that part of what we need to do today is SEE how the system works. We need to take off whatever blinders we’ve been given by society and notice how oppression and exploitation harm the lives of God’s beloveds today. In order to see, just to see, not even to do, I think there are two parts: (1) study, including words by those who have lived the oppression and (2) prayer and spiritual practice that remind us holistically that there is more to life than consumerism, hierarchy, competition, or violence. It isn’t easy or comfortable to see how this stuff works, but whether or not we want to “know how the sausage is made” it IS made, and I think God calls us to see, to know, and to loosen the grips of the system on our own lives and thought processes. This is necessary before we can do anything to change it. May God help us, even with this part. Amen

1William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech, (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), p. 58.

2Herzog, 61.

3Herzog, 58.

4Herzog, 63.

5Herzog, 64.

6Herzog, 65.

7Herzog, 66.

8Herzog, 85.

9Herzog, 85.

10Herzog, 91.

11Herzog, 93.

12Herzog, 93.

13Herzog, 87.

14Herzog, 95.

15Herzog, 96.

16 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/?utm_term=.4dc91658ec90

17 https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states

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

19Peter Dizkes, “New study shows rich, poor have huge mortality gap in U.S.”http://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411

–

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 11, 2018

Sermons

“Prophetic Justice”based on 2 Samuel 12:1-9

March 4, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It can seem like the word “scandal” and the phrase “abuse of power” were created to describe this period of history, but the Bible begs to differ. King David had more than his fair share of scandals and abuses of power.

At this point in the story, King David had been crowned king, and had the accouterments of power: he’d married the previous king’s daughter, he’d moved into the palace, he had a large harem and many children. The Bible says that all these were God’s gifts to him, a statement that I take core issue with, but am going to let lie for now.

Presumably the palace was higher than the rest of the buildings around it, in any case we’re told that David was out walking on the roof deck and had the vantage point to see Bathsheba bathing. What he saw, he wanted. Worse yet, he had the power to get what he wanted. He sent his servants to find out who she was. They told him. They told him not only who she was, and whose daughter she was, but also who she was married to. Knowing this, he sent other servants to fetch her.

And then he raped her.

The Bible only says that he “lay” with her, but she didn’t have the power to decline, and lacking the power to decline means that there is no possible way for there to be consent. We don’t know if it was violent or not, but it was rape. Bathsheba was impregnated by the rape, and let David know.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t get any better at this point. David didn’t want to take responsibility for his actions, so he started working on a cover up. Bathsheba’s husband was serving in David’s military, so David sent word to the general to send him home, under the cover of asking for a report from the front lines. It is also useful to know that at this time, kings tended to function as their own generals, and David staying home safe from the fighting was perceived by many as an inherent abuse of power.

David hoped that while home for the night, Bathsheba and her husband Uriah’s marital relations would cover his rape. It turned out that Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, was a man of high integrity though. He felt that it was unfair to the fighting army for him to have the comforts of home while they were on the front lines, and so he slept with David’s guards at the palace. Then David thought the man’s integrity would break with just a bit more pressure, so he got Uriah drunk. However, it still didn’t work. Uriah slept among the guards. So David wrote a letter to his general and sent it back to the front lines in the hands of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah.

The letter instructed the general to put Uriah in the front line of fighting and then pull back all the rest of the troops, to assure Uriah’s death. His general followed orders, Uriah died, Bathsheba mourned, and then David had her moved into the palace and married her himself, adding her to his royal harem.

This, apparently, displeased God, the Bible tells us. (2 Samuel 11:27b) Nathan comes to speak God’s truth to David’s power. As we heard today, Nathan tells David a story about a rich man with a large herds and flocks and a poor man who had only one lamb and treated it like family. The rich man wanted to look hospitable and good, but didn’t want to actually kill any of his animals, so he stole the other man’s lamb and fed it to his guest.

Like any of us, David was immediately able to see the injustice and wanted to do something to fix it! He thought the rich man had no compassion, he thought the man should have to repay what he’d done 4 times over. In fact he thought the man deserved to die over it (although I’m told what he said didn’t constitute an official judgment condemning the man to die, this was merely passion.) Nathan’s story worked. It not only raised the issues of abuse of power and basic injustice, it found a way to get at the most basic problem: David’s actions valued David more than other people, they indicated that David thought he mattered MORE. God doesn’t work like that.

In the New Interpreter’s Bible, Bruce Birch, comments on this passage saying, “Power is always tempted to live in the illusion that it is autonomous and self-sufficient. Powerful people in powerful positions often imagine that they can define reality in their own terms.”¹ However, “In the eyes of God, the powerless are as valued as the powerful, and the exploitation of the powerless ones is evil.”² That is, God’s justice doesn’t have favorites, but human action often does.

I don’t know what was going on in David’s mind when he took those actions. Did he think he was God’s favorite who could do no wrong? Was he just high on power? Did he simply WANT and act on that desire without thought of consequences, and then want to avoid consequences?

Although I am generally not a fan of David’s, in this story I think he acts as an extreme version of all of us. He isn’t the only human to have desire for someone or something out of bounds. He isn’t the only one to break rules (or laws) to get what he wants. And he certainly isn’t the only one to make things worse with the cover-up. It does turn out that when Nathan is done speaking his accusations, David actually acknowledges what he’s done and expresses repentance! That is worthy of notice. Most scandals and abuses of power aren’t acknowledged. Most of the time people double down on their “rightness” no matter how much harm they’ve done. In terms of acknowledging what he’d done and not repeating the same mistake, David IS an example of what humans can be.

It seems like David actually did know that what he was doing was wrong, even though that didn’t stop him. Now, in those days what he was doing that was wrong was taking another man’s property by sleeping with that man’s wife, and then the murder. Today we add rape to the list of acts of evil he perpetuated. I suspect he knew that was wrong too.

In addition to my curiosity about David’s motivations, I’m rather curious about Nathan’s. Why did he bring this up to the king? I don’t tend to think that God’s connection to humans was actually that different in those days than today, so I think it is likely that “the Lord sending Nathan to David” is much more likely to be Nathan’s deep sense that something was wrong and that God wanted his help in naming it. He may well have known that this had to be brought into the light, but it was still a frightening thing to do. Other prophets had been killed by kings, or threatened by them. David was already a murderer when someone got in his way.

Yet clearly Nathan’s sense that this had to be spoken was MORE powerful than his concern for his own well-being. Why? Why was this worth it for him? Was Uriah one of his friends? Was David one of his friends? Was God just a really good nag? Did this seem to matter? Did he want to prevent it happening again and again? Did he think David needed help finding the right ways to use power? Was he worried the whole country would fall apart if leadership like that continued?

Furthermore, of all of the issues of injustice that were present in that day, why was this one the one he spent his time on? This I might have an answer to! Human societies, at least ones with successful agriculture, naturally become domination systems. Some people end up with more power and they do what they can to keep it.

God’s vision for the Israelites was a society without a domination system. It was carefully designed to prevent generation poverty or cycles of debt; to welcome the stranger and care for the vulnerable; to offer rest to all, no matter their status; and to prevent the creation of social classes or nobility. In fact, in the original system the Levites were the teachers who taught God’s vision and tried to motivate people to keep it, but they were prevented by it from owning any land. Thus they couldn’t adapt it to their own benefit!

I think the most significant deviation from this vision occurred at the creation of the kingship. The bible itself expresses DEEP ambivalence about the practice of having kings. It suggests that God didn’t want a kingship for the country, but the people “wanted to be like other nations.” Since the people had been called by God to be a “light on a hill” the desire to be like their neighbors isn’t exactly flattering. For the most part, the Bible is unimpressed with the kings personally as well as in theory. David most certainly included, and in his case it gives us good examples of why!

I suspect that Nathan knew all this. He knew that kings tend to create domination systems, and they tend to justify them with divine “favor.” And he knew that the well-being of the masses in Israel was dependent on limiting the power of the king to dominate. If that’s true then his actions in calling out the king were meant to take care of the people. He might have only been calling out one action, but he was stopping the acceleration of domination.

It also seems worth noting HOW he did it. The use of the parable to bring his point home was brilliant. It raised David’s yearning for a just world, and that was necessary to bring David around to seeing his own acts of injustice and evil. This may be a very good strategy to keep in our own toolboxes for the difficult conversations God nudges us to.

Time and time again in the Bible, prophets have to tell those in power that their actions are against God’s will and are doing harm to God’s people. The role of the prophet is HARD, and dangerous. It was dangerous when Jesus did it too. And now, the role of the prophet is now shared within the Body of Christ. Jesus’s lifework was multifaceted, there is much to do as the living Body of Christ today. One piece of our shared work is to name injustices to those in power, to try to limit the destructive power of domination systems. For each of us individually, this is part of our work but the portion is different. At some times we have to speak to friends or family members. At others we have to speak to institutions or their leaders. All of it is difficult, but we are responsible for holding God’s vision of a just society in the midst of the many illusions about power and its right to dominate others. Our God is a God of the powerless AND the powerful. Our work is to reflect God’s: by seeking to eliminate the exploitation of the powerless. May God be with us that we might be as creative and successful as Nathan. Amen

1Bruce C. Birch, Commentary on 2^nd Samuel, New Interpreter’s Study Bible Vol 2 (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 1294.

2Birch, 1294.

–Rev. Sara E. Baron

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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 4, 2018

Sermons

“Awe, Walk, Love, Serve”based on 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26…

February 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
believe that God loves all people unconditionally, completely, and
uniquely. It might make sense, even, to say that I think God loves
all people unfathomably – that it is more love than any of us could
ever even begin to comprehend. A few times in my life I’ve had a
sense that scales have been lifted from my eyes so that I can catch a
tiny glimpse of how much God loves God’s people, and it has blown me
away.

My
friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green has theorized that
Jesus’s healings were simply this: that Jesus was able to see people
and love people as a reflection of God’s knowing and seeing them and
being loved like that healed. I still haven’t decided if I agree
with her, but I think she makes an excellent point. God’s love is
that big, that powerful, and that wonderful.

This
is the starting point for everything I believe about God. Is is the
thing I am most sure of, and everything else is secondary. However,
those secondary things flow pretty readily from the first. If God
loves all of us this much, then God wants us to live good, full,
abundant lives – with meaningful contributions, full of beauty, and
defined by deep connections. Then it means that God has a lot of
balancing to do between various people and peoples with various needs
at any given time, and that means that the particular work needing to
be done is wide, varied, and not all parts are equally obvious to all
of us. A final secondary point before we move on to tertiary ones 😉
– I believe that God’s PRIMARY way of working in the world is
through people who are aligned with God’s vision. That isn’t meant
to limit God or God’s actions, just that it is the primary way God
acts.

For
me, this moves quickly to another set of conclusions: then there are
things getting in the way of what God wants for God’s beloved people
(*everyone). Clearly God doesn’t want any of God’s people starving,
so anything that results in starvation is against God’s desires. I
can draw similar conclusions about slavery, about abuse, about rape
and murder, about war, and the list starts getting pretty long.

One
word that I know that seems to encompass the way I think God wants
the world to be so that all of God’s people can be thriving with
good, full, abundant lives is: justice. Or, at least, that’s what I
mean when I say justice. Justice is working toward good, full,
abundant lives for all of God’s people. It sometimes means
supporting great things that are happening; it sometimes means
learning about complicated realities in order to understand them; it
sometimes means slowing down and making sure we’re living those good,
full, abundant lives so that we are signs of hope and centered in God
to make a difference; it sometimes means slowing down to connect with
God or each other or beauty; and it sometimes means naming what isn’t
fair or right in the world so as to work towards what is fair and
right.

Nevertheless,
the work of justice is the work of living God’s love for God’s
people. Often, it involves trying to support and empower the most
vulnerable people. God’s energy seems like it is often focused on
transforming the lives most desperately in need of change.

Now,
this all fits in with today’s passage, which clearly states that God
cares about vulnerable people and that God expects those of us who
are in relationship with the Divine to care about vulnerable people
too. When this was first proposed though, it was radical rather than
obvious.

The
neighboring traditions of ancient Israel thought that the gods cared
about … well, themselves: about being sacrificed to, praised, and
cajoled. Moses really may have been the first one to figure out that
God cared about how we treat each other.

During
Lent we are examining God’s vision for justice, how we see it in the
Bible, how we can feel its urgings now, and what that means for our
lives. Last week we examined Genesis 1, the priestly creation story,
and heard within it faith statements of the priests. They believed
they served the God of Sabbath, who built into creation itself a
rhythm of rest and justice. They articulated that God’s rest on the
7^th
day of creation was meant to create a rhythm of rest for all of
creation, in particular rest for Israelites and those who served
them. The equal access to rest is the beginning of God’s intention of
distributive justice, and those priests thought it was built into
creation itself.

This
week we are examining the Torah’s vision for a just society in a
passage Walter Brueggemann subtitles “Imitations of a Caring God.”
It starts with a question familiar to us from Micah, but this one
asks in the communal, the plural: what does God require of US? The
answer is pretty similar to the know we know too. Micah answers, “to
do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
(Micah 6:8b NRSV). Deuteronomy answers, “to stand in awe
of YHWH; that you walk
in God’s ways, that you love
and serve
God…” and then goes on to say that it also involves keeping the
commandments. Those commandments are the ones that envision a just
society where all are cared for, thus they’re also about “doing
justice” and “loving kindness.” Deuteronomy also reminds the
people that the commandments and decrees are “for your own
well-being.” This God that they were serving was one who wanted
good for them, all of them.
God’s dream was for a society
that could show the world how to live together so all could thrive.

Walter
Brueggemann summarizes this passage as “is a summons
to be fully Torah people of YHWH, supported by a series of
motivations.”¹
The motivations are ALL descriptions of God, and the commandments
seem to be to follow in God’s ways. God is the God of heaven and
earth, the text says, but God chose to specially love you and work
with you!! Because of this, you can trust God and follow God’s ways.

God
is a God of power, might, and fairness! God doesn’t take bribes.
God “executes justice” for the orphan and widow, and loves the
stranger by providing food and clothing. Because of this, and
because God took care of you when you were strangers in Egypt, YOU
should LOVE the stranger!

Brueggemann
puts it this way, “YHWH cares about the specificities of justice
and the victims of injustice. This is a God who cannot be bribed by
the wealthy and powerful but who attends to the needs and wishes of
orphans and strangers, who cares about the concrete implementation of
justice that has to do with the elemental requirements of food and
clothing.”²
This moves onto a commandment for Israel, the one to love the
stranger. This, too, might sound obvious, but really isn’t.

He
says, “Israel
is not permitted to become a homogeneous, ethnic community turned in
on itself, but is mandated, as a part of its most elemental
responsibility, to reach beyond itself to those who do not quite
belong, who are unlike Israel, but who are committed to life in a
community of obedience.”³
He also notices that we usually hear about the Israelites being
SLAVES in Egypt, but this talks about strangers. He has an
explanation for it, “We are accustomed to think of Israelites as
slaves. It is important, however, to remember that their status as
slaves was an economic development from the vulnerable status as
aliens and outsiders, because unprotected sojourners are almost
certain to become economic slaves.”⁴
(131) So, God took care of them and thus, “Israel’s distinctive
covenantal work, in response, is the economic practice of hospitality
and justice that will prevent other vulnerable outsiders from sliding
into the wretchedness of slavery through indebtedness.” (132)

This
is a huge deal, although it might not appear to be at first. In most
societies, or tribes, or groups of people, there is a stronger
requirement to care for insiders than for outsiders. Strangers and
outsiders are allowed to be vulnerable, while the insiders say “we
have to take care of ourselves first.” Perhaps this is best seen by
looking at the concept of nations themselves, and how they treat
their own citizens vs. people who aren’t their citizens (at home or
abroad). This moral code in the Torah though, doesn’t allow for it.
This moral code requires that the people who follow this God of the
Stranger find ways to protect OUTSIDERS. They don’t get to do “us
first” policies. Their God, who is the God of all people, may have
special work for them to do, but that doesn’t mean that God allows
them to ignore the needs of others. They have to find the ways to
care for themselves and others at the same time, no matter how hard
it is. They don’t get to take advantage of anyone, because their
God isn’t a God who takes advantage.

The
widows and orphans are “brought justice” by God as well. Widows
and orphans were “insiders” but ones without resources or
recourse. They didn’t have an adult male with full status in society
to care for them, but according to this passage, God’s own self steps
in to execute the justice they need. God serves as the one who is
missing for them – but in reality, this is also what God is asking
of the people in the society they create:
may even those without an advocate have enough.

And
may that be true because of who your God is, and what your God has
done.

All
of this talk of who God is, and what God is working toward, seems to
me to raise some questions about our work. We know that we are about
building the kindom of God, or alternative language options: about
sharing God’s love in the world, or about taking care of God’s
vulnerable people, or about creating justice for God in the world.
(All the same thing, as far as I know.) But I wonder what our
particular part in it is.

1
Corinthians 12 draws a wonderful metaphor about the work of
individuals in the Body of Christ: that we are to do our part, and do
it well, and trust other parts to do their work also, without
assuming any part is more important than any other. It might also be
a way of saying: work to your strengths, and trust that God spread
the strengths around well. 😉 It works within this Body of Christ.

However,
I think the metaphor applies more broadly. If The United Methodist
Church, OR the Church Universal are all working together as The Body
of Christ towards building the kindom, what is this church
community’s role in it? (Btw, I could easily expand further to
mention people of other faith traditions, as I think we’re working
together there too, but I don’t want to force Body of Christ imagery
on them.)

It
seems to me there could be a lot of possible answers. We might be
the head – we’re good at thinking deeply. We might be the
conscious, we’re good at seeing what is right and calling for it. We
might be the feet, we’re good at showing up where we are needed. We
might be the hands, we work well at sharing God’s love by handing
people tangible gifts. My best guess (and I offer this with humility
as I’m really not certain) is that we might be the heart – filled
both with expansive love for God’s people AND broken by the ways
God’s people are harmed. (Just not the cheesy kind of heart, we’d
hate being the cheesy kind.)

In
any case, I wonder if it is time for us to work together to what our
role is. It is my suspicion that being as clear as it is possible to
be about what God calls us to together will help us do it more
effectively! (First step in this is to fill out the survey that was
emailed out and will be handed out later…) What is our role in
sharing God’s love and caring for God’s people? May God help us
listen well, and find clarity in our shared answer, so we can do it
and do it well! Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Deuteronomy
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 129.

2Brueggemann,
130-131.

3Brueggemann,
131.

4Brueggemann,
131.

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 25. 2018

Sermons

“Distributive Justice”based on Genesis 1:1-2:4a

February 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the early days of Christianity, new Christians were baptized on Easter and spend 40 days in preparation for that baptism, much like Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness preparing for his ministry after his baptism. (I don’t know why the order was reversed.) This included time included fasting, prayer, and teaching.

Eventually, the 40 days before Easter became a time that baptized Christians used to reconsider their lives, their faith, and the next sets of commitments they were ready to make to make space for God to sanctify their lives. The math oriented among us may have noticed that there are more than 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, our tradition says that Lent does not include Sundays because all Sundays are celebrations of the resurrection, and as such are not fasting days but feasting days! Lent is 40 days, not including Sundays.

My intention during this Lent is to reconnect to those roots, in a different way. John Dominic Crossan theorizes that the primary difference between the way of Jesus and the ways of human empires is how they hold power. Namely, Jesus lived and taught nonviolent resistance, whereas human empires inherently engage in violence. If I were to come down to one difference between the ways of God and the ways of the world, I’d have to agree: God is nonviolent and the world is violent.

I’d give you examples, but I doubt a single one of you needs me to. 🙁

Nonviolence is way to create a world of justice, a world without anyone dominating anyone else, a world of fair distribution of good, a world where the people can thrive. You’ve likely noticed that this isn’t the world we live in right now. It wasn’t the world Jesus lived in either. Nor was it the world that the ancient Jews occupied.

Last week in my sermon I mentioned domination systems, “Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid. Domination systems of various types have existed since the beginning of recorded history.”^¹ I proposed that one of God’s primary aims is to disrupt systems of domination and oppression by building cooperation and connection, to bring justice and wholeness.

This Lent, I intend to focus on God’s vision for justice, how we see it in the Bible, how we can feel its urgings now, and what that means for our lives. In other words, I think God wants wholeness for all people, and the only way to get that is by creating a just world. This seems to me to be one of the strongest overarching themes of the Bible, and I’ve chosen 5 passages as examples of how it plays out.

As you probably noticed, the first passage starts at the beginning of the Bible. Our Biblical scholars think that this story is the creation of the Southern priests of Judah. The priests were not intending to claim that they knew how the world had really started, but they were intending to make meaning out of existence itself. (Since the priests were likely also some of the most significant editors of Genesis, if they really thought they had “the answer” to creation, then they wouldn’t have included another answer immediately after this one.)

John Dominic Crossan presented some great ideas about this text during is Carl Lecture this fall. Thanks be to God, they are also written down in the 2^nd chapter of his book God and Empire, which has made it much easier for me to recreate his brilliance for you. Dom, as he invited us to call him, points out that the priests present God as first “building a house” and then “furnishing it.” Each of these takes 4 steps, so you might expect creation to take 8 days, or 9 to add a Sabbath. Yet, there are double actions taken on days 3 and 6 to force it all to fit into 6 days of action and a 7 day week. He thinks the 8 parts fitting into 6 days is actually intentional, it draws our attention to the work done to make it fit, it emphasizes getting to 7 at the right time! Dom concludes that this is intended to mean, “in creating the universe, not even God could skip the Sabbath. Put another way: in creating the universe, God crowned it with the Sabbath.”^²

He also notices that in day 7 there is a repetition of “rested from all the work he had done”, namely, “And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.” (Genesis 2:2-3) Dom explains the repetition this way, “It is not humanity on the sixth day, but the Sabbath on the seventh day that is the climax of creation. And therefore our ‘dominion’ over the world is not ownership but stewardship under the God of the Sabbath.”^³ Those priests really were thinking theologically (like they do). This creation story tells us again and again that God sees creation as good and tells us that God is the God of the Sabbath.

Now, the sabbath is one of the ten commandments, likely the one we take the least seriously. Perhaps because our understanding of it has been limited! I want you hear how it is put in Exodus, where the commandment reflects back to this creation story:

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

Dom says, “The Sabbath Day was not rest for worship but rest as worship. It was a day of equal rest for all – animals, slaves, children, and adults – a pause that reduced all to equality both symbolically and regularly.”^⁴ In some texts it even says that the Israelite males should rest SO THAT their slaves and animals could also rest. (Exodus 23:12 and Deut 5:14). This wasn’t something I’d noticed before Dom pointed it out, but he adds even more meaning into this, it gets even juicier! Dom suggests that because the Sabbath was the crown of creation, and one of the first things we know about God is that God is the God of the Sabbath AND because the Sabbath is about equal rest for everyone THEN the Sabbath is about DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE of rest, AND our God is a God who built distributive justice into the fabric of creation.

This creation story then suggests that everyone, all of creation, has a right to rest built into the rhythm of time itself! Furthermore, time itself beats to the rhythm of justice, with the rest as the centerpiece of time keeping. Dom concludes that the sabbath tradition itself is a distributive justice, one that starts by distributing rest equally, and then seeks to distribute food, education, and health. The desire for these to be well distributed is inherent in both God and in creation.

However, distributive justice is not inherent in most human societies. Domination systems are the opposite of this proposed rhythm of creation. Domination systems aren’t about rest OR justice. Sabbath tells us of God’s own need for rest that makes space for our shared rest. Sabbath is a gift, and one we are to share.

Today, we desperately need Sabbath. We need time away from the 24 hour news cycle. We need time for in person relationships. We need time for play! We need time to let our attention wander and not need to pull it back. We need time without pressure to be producers or consumers. We need a break from our “normal” to be more fully humanized. We need time for prayer and contemplation, for laughter and celebration. We, like all other humans in all other times, need rest.

But God doesn’t force us to take it, we have to let ourselves have it. Our tradition says that while God does set things up to be good for us, God does not force us nor dominate us to make us do it. Domination systems are bad for humanity, but God doesn’t force us out of them either. God works against them, and God’s people are asked to work against them, but no one is forced to do so.

Furthermore, the work against them can only be nonviolent and in love, or else we become a part of what we’re trying to dismantle.

This Lent, I invite you to Sabbath. Find rest, hold it dearly, and do whatever you can to enable rest for others as well. Remember the rhythm of creation, take note of the God of Sabbath, sense the yearning for justice in the world – and rest. It is the first step towards justice. It is an imperative step towards living nonviolently, as it is living nonviolently with ourselves, and thus modeling it for others. Thanks be to God for being the God of Sabbath. Amen

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

2John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (USA: HarperOne, 2007), page 51

3Crossan, 51.

4Crossan, 54.

–

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

“Regrounding”based on 1 Kings 19: 11-16 and Mark 9:2-9

February 11, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

God works in the world to disrupt systems of domination and oppression, to build cooperation and connection, to bring justice and wholeness. This is both God’s long-term work, and true in the eternal now, and God does it without dominating us or requiring us to get on board. As people of faith, we seek to work with God in the the world to disrupt systems of domination and oppression, to build cooperation and connection, to bring justice and wholeness. In short, we fundamentally believe that all people matter, and we work to make the world better for all people, not just for the people at the top, and not just for ourselves.

We get together in worship to center ourselves in beauty and wonder, to connect to the Divine and to each other, and to find meaning and direction to take into the rest of our lives. We center worship around readings from the Bible that have been helping people figure out how to do this work for many, many years.

The problem is that the very same texts that we gather around for clues of how God is at work disrupting domination systems have regularly been appropriated BY the domination systems TO dominate. So, we bring our whole selves to these conversations: our bodies to check when things seem wrong on a gut level, our brains to engage in critical thinking, and our spirits who yearn for justice as deeply as God does to see if God’s justice is found in the stories. We seek to be sure that we are working with God, not with systems of domination. There are no guarantees that we’ll get this right, but we try anyway.

With our critical thinking in tact, we might be tempted to disregard the story of the Transfiguration. After all, it doesn’t fit into how the world works as we know it. That is a sensible critique, but not a holistically reasonable one. The stories in the Bible are meant to help us find meaning and learn of God, but that doesn’t indicate that the best way to make meaning from them is to assume they’re objectively true and historically accurate. Instead, it means that we look carefully at their symbolism and metaphors, taking those seriously as part of how meaning is made from them.

That’s a wordy way of saying that I’m not particularly interested in the question, “did the transfiguration happen?” but I’m VERY interested in the questions, “What was the writer of the Gospel of Mark trying to communicate to us with this story?” and, “What meanings can be drawn from this story that still hold relevance for us today?”

Mark is telling a story with deep ties to the stories of his (Jewish) faith, building meaning on top of meaning. Elijah has already been connoted in the Gospel. John the Baptist was set up as a “new” (or returned?) Elijah making way for Jesus. The arrival on the mountaintop of Moses and Elijah symbolizes “the law and the prophets” as well as the two most significant prophets of old. I also think it is interesting that the two are Moses and Elijah and not Moses and David. The Jewish people had expected a Messiah who was a king, a king in the line of David, but the early Christians use symbolism of the prophets who called for justice to explain Jesus, NOT the symbolism of power over people!

Ched Meyers of the distinguished Mark commentary, Binding the Strong Man, wrote, “each of the two great prophets represent those who, like the disciples at this moment, beheld Yahweh’s epiphany on a mountain at crucial periods of discouragement in their mission.”²

To be specific, Meyers is connecting the journey that Jesus and the disciples took up the mountain to the one that Elijah had taken in the story we read today, and the one that Moses took to get the 10 commandments.

A refresher on those stories is in order. Elijah was a northern prophet called by YHWH during the reign of King Ahab (who may be most famous for being married to Queen Jezebel, whose reputation is distinctly undeserved). There was great fighting between the prophets of YHWH and the prophets of other gods at that time, and the palace was not in support of the prophets of YHWH. After a particularly intense defeat of the other prophets, Elijah fled the wrath of the palace. He was exhausted, overwhelmed, and feeling defeated. The story says God took care of him on his journey, and he came to rest in a cave on a mountain in the desert. Then comes our reading today – Elijah coming out of the cave to experience the Divine and God not being in the terrible displays of power and destruction but rather in the silence.

After the time to go away, the time to be cared for, the time to rest and recuperate, and the time to experience a connection to God again, Elijah was sent back down the mountain to continue the work to which he’d been called. He also was sent to find his own replacement, since his work would outlive him.

The story of Moses coming down a mountain with the 10 commandments is well known; it is an image seen regularly and a story alluded to often. Yet, we often forget what happens when Moses gets to the bottom! It turns out he was up on the mountain for a LONG time. The people left behind had gotten scared, and they started looking for reassurance, which took the form of creating out of a statute of a calf out of gold as a new “god” to worship.

The story says that when Moses got to the bottom of the mountain after his intense and powerful experience with God and saw the actions of the people he got so mad that he threw the 10 commandments down and broke them! Eventually Moses went BACK up the mountain to get a new copy of the commandments.

After the time of connection with God, a time of visioning a new kind of society without domination, and soaking in the hope of it all; and after seeing the fear of the people and how hard it was for them to trust in God; and then after climbing the mountain to start again, Moses finally came back down the mountain and was heard by the people. His ministry continued, starting with communicating with the people what he’d heard on the mountain. The 10 commandments would be part of the legacy of the work of the people that would outlive Moses.

Meyers is suggesting that those mountaintop experiences of God were not just life-giving moments in the lives of the prophets. They came in the midst of great struggles and discouragements, and those are part of the meaning intended by Mark. Mark puts this story in the midst of the major transition in his book. In Mark 1-8 we hear of Jesus’ ministry, primarily in Galilee. Then, at the end of Mark 8, we hear for the first time that Jesus’ death is coming. Immediately following is this story of the transfiguration. Then, soon after this story is a reiteration of the teaching that Jesus is going to be killed.

Jesus’ ministry started in Mark with a blessing from God. After his baptism, the story reads “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,‘” (Mark 1:11). This transition to the next era of his ministry, the march to his death, starts with a blessing that sounds very similar, “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 9:7). The primary difference seems to be that an instruction for the disciples is included in this blessing. Those disciples are the ones who will continue Jesus’ ministry after his death.

While it is easy to see the glory of the transfiguration as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ resurrection (which it is), it also looks like the transfiguration is a step on the way to the cross. Now, you don’t often hear me say “the way to the cross,” but this week I found someone who put words to what I mean by that, and since I can share his words, I can feel OK saying “the way to the cross.” In this way, we see how Jesus’ death on the cross served to break the domination system, and did so with the tools of the kindom. These words come from Rodney J. Hunter:

“It is important, however, when speaking of the way of the cross, to be clear about what it does not mean. It does not mean that we should seek or regard suffering as a spiritual good in itself or as inherently saving and redemptive – as centuries of misguided Christian theology and piety have often maintained. Jesus did not die because his suffering as such could purge the world of sin and evil. He died because the powers of evil sought to destroy his witness to nonviolent love, justice, and truth. His passion revealed, not only the ‘evilness of evil’ – its intrinsic, deadly violence – but the transforming power of divine love, a powerful, assertive love that does not dominate and defeat evil so much as challenge, expose, and seek to transform it. Such love alone ultimately carries the day; it alone is truly redemptive and saving.

Christians are therefore not called to exhibit a passive love that simply tries to be good and avoid evil. Nor is the way of the cross a private beating of personal woes for the sake of Jesus. It is rather a vigorous, assertive pursuit of social and personal righteousness through a love that refuses to play the world’s power game of domination, exploitation, greed and deception.”³

This gospel moment of transfiguration blesses Jesus for the work he will do to reveal the evil of the domination system AND to prepare the disciples for the next steps of their work to learn how to live that passionate love that will transform the domination system itself.

After that time up on the mountaintop, to see clearly the wonder of God’s work in the world, to understand the depth of the call Jesus had to follow, the disciples were sent back down the mountain. They were sent down to keep on learning, to see healing, to build connections, to struggle with the domination system, to be witnesses to death, and to find the strength to go on anyway.

The transfiguration story certainly foreshadows the rest of Mark, it also foreshadows life as a follower of Jesus for all time. May we keep learning its lessons. May we be instruments that continue Jesus’ ministry. Amen

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

2Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1988, 2008), page 250.

3Rodney J. Hunter, Pastoral Reflections on Mark 9:2-9 in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 1 edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) 454.

–

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

“Growing Strong” based on Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39

February 4, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A mentor once told me, “Every crisis is an identity crisis.” In case that isn’t an obvious platitude for you, I have taken it to mean that whenever a group or an individual is in crisis, they no longer know who they are. That is, the stories that explain them to themselves don’t make sense out of things any longer.

It does seem that we form identity in the stories we tell of ourselves. Our stories are sometimes called myths, and that reminds us that they’re both meaningful and inherently biased. They tell us where we came from, why we are here, what we are supposed to be doing, and how we most often mess it up! (Again, this is true both individually and collectively.)

The problem is, things keep changing on us! And that means we have to either tell different stories or change the ways we tell the same ones! In normal circumstances we change things in little ways as we go, and all is well. We add new stories that make sense of things, we tell some stories more, some less, and adapt details here and there. Normally we can keep up with ourselves. However, when radical change occurs and our stories haven’t caught up with our reality, we land in identity crisis.

Isaiah 40 speaks to a people in an identity crisis, and an epic one at that. The stories of the ancient Israelite people told of a trustworthy God who had chosen them, took care of them, who helped them overcome their adversaries, and who freed them from oppression. They WERE the people who were in relationship with that God. God was their identity, and God’s strength and steadfastness were the core of how they understood God.

And then … they lost. The Babylonian empire defeated them in battle, destroyed their city and society, and left them without leadership, hope, or defenses. (Interestingly, the Hebrew Bible was written down during the aftermath of this defeat, as if the people needed to work with the stories to try to make sense of their new reality. They may also have been afraid that their identity would be forever lost if they didn’t firm it up.) It was into this void of identity and meaning that the prophet Isaiah spoke in chapter 40.

The prophet reminded them of their stories, and of their God in whom their identity was formed. The prophet ALSO reflected on the stories and adapted them a bit to meet the circumstances, as was desperately needed. Isaiah connected the ancient to the present. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” and then reminded the people of who God is. In doing so, Isaiah reminded the people that God is ETERNAL and POWERFUL, and the rules of the earth are NOT, “ Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.” This served to acknowledge that a ruler of the earth HAS bested the people, but not God.

Isaiah acknowledges that the people feel abandoned by God, but then brings them back to their own stories. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” Then Isaiah adapts a bit more, reminding the people that God never runs out of energy, and that the people can pull from God’s energy and strength when theirs seems lacking. Sure, Isaiah says, humans get weary, “ but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

It was, even then, an old, old story, but it was also a story retold to fit the time frame, to give the people back their identity while acknowledging their reality. In many ways, the Gospels are doing the same work. The crisis when Isaiah wrote was the Babylonian defeat and the exile of the leaders. The crisis when Jesus started his ministry was the Roman Empire and its dominance over the territories that were the Jewish homeland. Ched Myers, whose outstanding book Binding the Strong Man offers GREAT insights on the Gospel of Mark, wrote:

“Economic and political deterioration, especially in the decade prior to the upheavals of the Roman-Jewish war, had dispossessed significant portions of the Palestinian population, especially in the densely populated rural areas of Galilee. Disease and physical disability were an inseparable part of the cycle of poverty (a phenomenon still true today despite the advent of modern medicine). For the day laborer, illness meant unemployment and instant impoverishment.”¹

Our gospel passage today includes the first healing in the Gospel of Mark. Healing passages can make some of us squirm uncomfortably, they remind us that the Bible is an ancient text from a very different worldview, and sometimes that leads us to reasonable questions about how useful the Bible is to our formative identity stories anyway! Meyers proposes a helpful perspective on Biblical healings.

He thinks they’re subversive! In Mark, this is the first one and it takes place on the Sabbath,so Jesus is starting trouble right from the get go. The last section of Mark 1, last week’s Gospel, included exclamations of Jesus’ authority. People were noticing that Jesus was wielding power usually held by the scribes. This is continuous in today’s passage. The scribes would have been part of the system of authority that called for the strict observance of the Sabbath, including refraining from healing. Jesus seems to care more about the people needing the healing than the authority of the scribes.

Meyer’s thesis is this: “Jesus healing ministry is thus portrayed as an essential part of his struggle to bring concrete liberation to the oppressed and marginal of Palestinian society.”² His insights are profound, but his language is often obscure so I’m going to try to summarize his perspective in my own words. This is an exercise that will result in a terrible lack of nuance and subtlety. I’ve footnoted his work so you can find it for yourself and regain that nuance.

After Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was healed and as soon as the sun went down, the masses arrived at the the door seeking healing. Jesus as healer was in high demand because many needed healing. Those many who needed healing were the poor and vulnerable. Often, those in need of healing had always been the poor and vulnerable, at times the need for healing itself had made people poor and vulnerable.

If we, as people of faith, try to focus on those needing healing from our 21^st century eyes, we will look at the symptoms and the disease, and get distracted by our theories of healing. In doing so we can miss the symbolism that brings the greatest meaning. Illness isn’t actually as simple as we moderns like to think of it. It is more than physical symptoms. Illness itself is perceived culturally and has cultural impacts. Of course, it impacts those around the one who is ill (family, friends, neighborhood, village) but it is also understood within the stories of the time and place. Stories form around particular illnesses, often quite potent ones. Worse yet, illness serves to distance the individual from their community!!

Understanding the stories of Jesus’ healing requires us to enter into the perspective of illness from that time, and what it meant then. In that time and in that place, when a person was healed, their capacity to rejoin society was healed, which means those around them were also healed. This also meant that those who had been considered “sick” or “impure” and thus on the bottom of the hierarchy of society were pulled up. The whole body of the community was healed and brought to wholeness, AND the hierarchy was disrupted when Jesus healed! In his healing, as in his teaching, the social order was ignored and messed with! 🙂

Furthermore, Meyers says that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ healings are connected to the faith and action of the healed, the healing itself empowers and acknowledges the humanity of the healed! Healing empowers the disempowered, both culturally and through affirmation of their power.

Jesus healing is consistent with the rest of his ministry. It brings up the downtrodden, it diminishes the power of those who hold power, and it reverses the dominant social code!³

Thus, the stories of healings of Jesus served to reclaim God’s identity, to disrupt the narratives of the Empire, and thus to restore the identity of the Palestinian people!

This all leads me to think about our stories, particularly our collective ones. We have stories of our communal identity as part of the United States, and as New Yorkers (actually I’m not sure how strong those are), as part of the Capital Region, and as part of Schenectady. We also have collective stories as monotheists, as followers of Jesus, as United Methodists (gee, that one is certainly undergoing crisis), as a part of Upper New York, and as First UMC Schenectady.

I’m wondering which sets of these stories are in good shape, helping us make sense of who we are and why it matters, giving us direction and hope! I’m wondering which sets of these stories are a bit outdated, needing minor edits to make a bit more sense of things. I’m also wondering which sets of stories are wildly out of wack, reflecting a bygone era and not helping us at all anymore.

Certainly in the recent past I’ve realized that the myths I held to be true of the United States as a place that welcomes and celebrates many kinds of people, and cares about the vulnerable and marginalized have been shaken to the core! So to have the stories of The United Methodist church following John Wesley’s advice “if your heart is with my heart, give me your hand.” New stories are forming, even by their own power, to replace the ones that have lost their power.

We are in the midst of significant cultural and religious shifts, possibly seismic ones. Even the internet itself has changed reality so deeply that those of us who remember it coming into our lives are shocked! And that’s only one piece. Many of our social and religious institutions are in crisis, which means they’re in identity crisis. Their stories aren’t up to date, their myths don’t make sense of things anymore. It is time to let go of what isn’t working, and that can be REALLY hard. It is also unsettling to be between functional myths!

I invite us all into reflection: What stories do you still find yourself telling? What do they mean to you? What stories have you recently let go of? Why? What stories are we adapting? Are we adapting well?

Our stories not only tell us who we are, they tell us who we think God is. Like Isaiah’s brilliant work in chapter 40, we need to connect the stories to the past AND help them respond to our present. May we pay attention so that we might do so with grace. Amen

1Meyers, 144.

2Meyers, 144.

3Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1988, 2008), page 144-150.

–

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 4. 2018

Sermons

“Change Bearer” based on 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 and Mark 1:21-28

January 28, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the midst of all the news that swirled around this week, one little line caught my ear. A Congressman was accused of sexual harassment of a staff member, and within his reply was the idea that he didn’t think he had any power over her. He thought she could consent, or could reject his advances, because he ran an egalitarian office. In fact, he was quoted as describing his office saying, “There is no hierarchy.”¹

I’ve heard such malarkey before, and it infuriated me then too. Most significantly, at one point a District Superintendent informed me that he didn’t think of himself has having power “over” the clergy in his district. This came up in a conversation when I was indicating that I didn’t think he should date clergy he was supervising, and he was justifying his behavior. Simply denying the power one has isn’t the same thing as not having it.

To be fair, at almost the same time, I had an awakening that resulted in an ah-ha moment of my own. I was serving on the “Conference Leadership Team” for the Upper New York Annual Conference. I was regularly in meetings making big decisions, had regular time on stage during Annual Conference meetings, received subtle deference from colleagues because of my role, and had even shared in DRAFTING the structure of the Conference itself. AT THE SAME TIME, I was really unhappy with the way the conference existed in the world and felt helpless to make the changes I thought we needed. During an Annual Conference session, when I was on the floor with everyone else, someone mentioned feeling disempowered and uninformed in the Conference. I ALMOST empathized by saying “me too!” but JUST BARELY kept my mouth shut.

I realized that while I felt disempowered, uninformed, and generally cranky, I had about as much power in the system as ANYONE did. In particular, I had a heck of a lot more power than the person who was (rightfully) expressing his own concerns. And I realized that if I had spoken, and claimed to be as disempowered as he was, I’d have created a false equivalency. I simply wasn’t disempowered in that system at that time, even if I didn’t feel like I had the power to do what I wanted.

In that moment, I realized that I’d done a similar thing to the District Superintendent – I’d internally downplayed my own power. Downplaying, or ignoring, the power I held was dangerous because it made it much easier to abuse the power. Whenever a person ignores a power they hold, and pretends it doesn’t exist, that enables the person to wield it irresponsibility and ignore the consequences for those who don’t have as much power.

At that point I made a commitment to myself to ACKNOWLEDGE and NOTICE what power I do hold, and attend to holding it carefully, so that I wouldn’t do accidental harm with it. I wanted to operate differently than those I saw abusing their power, and I wanted to have more integrity than I started with, once I saw the error of my ways.

Sometimes it is uncomfortable to acknowledge power differentials. Actually, it is often uncomfortable. (Perhaps especially in progressive circles where hierarchy is less valued.) It is far easier to pretend away hierarchy and to claim that the limits on our power make it useless. However, it is irresponsible and hugely dangerous.

The District Superintendent was engaged in sexual harassment (at least), and his SELF-JUSTIFICATION for it was in pretending away his power. His power over those he supervised didn’t dissipate when he pretended it away though. It didn’t give those he supervised easy ways to ignore or dismiss his advances. It just meant he didn’t take that into account, and he got what he wanted without acknowledging to himself that he’d done so with the power he wielded. It meant he took away both others’ consent and his responsibility for having done so.

This congressman did exactly the same thing. It is hard to believe that anyone who has the power to hire and fire their staff could be under the impression that their office is egalitarian, but clearly this misconception benefited the congressman and in his head justified his actions.

I suspect that ignoring the power one has over another is a common part of justifying sexual harassment, and many other abuses of power.

There is, however, an even more sickening reality. There are also those among us who claim the fullness of their power and authority and use it to harm others. In this case I’m taking about the Larry Nassars of the world, who not only set himself up to be in a position over young girls, he ENJOYED the ways that he was able to harm and humiliate them.

Larry Nassar, the “medical doctor” who worked with USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, who used his power to sexually assault more than 100 girls. Around Larry Nassar and those like him, are a set of people around them who functioned with their power in a third problematic way. Unlike that congressman who pretended away his power and thus allowed himself to use it inappropriately, AND unlike Larry who claimed his power fully to do harm, there are those who had the opportunity to use their power for good and didn’t. There are likely more reasons for this than individuals who didn’t act, but the results are all the same: more children traumatically abused.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”² There have been many, many people in the world who have passively accepted evil, and even used their power to silence those speaking of it.

One of the many gymnasts abused by Nassar was Rachael Denhollander. She was far from the first to speak out, but she was the first one to do so with her evidence and accusations prepared to force herself to be heard. Those defending him tried to silence her in many ways, but she kept talking anyway. She spoke with clarity and authority during his sentencing hearing saying, “I believed the adults at MSU surrounding Larry would do the right thing if they were aware of what Larry was doing, and I was terribly wrong. And discovering that I could not only not trust my abuser but I could not trust the people surrounding him has been devastating. It is part of the consequences of sexual assault, and it needs to be taken seriously.”³

That is, Larry Nassar’s actions were an atrocity. So was the enormous cover up, people who decided that maintaining the status quo, or getting the next win, or keeping the organization from liability, or not upsetting the apple cart was more important than the protection of CHILDREN from sexual assault. Many, many people had the power and authority to step in and stop his actions, and they did not do it.

Thus far, I’ve mentioned three ways power and authority is misused:

by being dismissed or ignored, and thus held irresponsibility.
by being used directly and intentionally to cause harm.
by being held passively, not being used to help those in need, which functions to support an abuser over the abused. (In some cases this crosses the line into intentional harm as well.)

This is all very interesting to consider when we have a Gospel passage that takes note that Jesus held power and authority very differently than the religious authorities of his day! Oye ve. “He taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” This the thesis statement of or Gospel reading! His authority is said to be amazing to the people who heard it, it was one of the first things that drew a crowd to him.

The early Christian communities whose stories of Jesus formed the Gospels may well have thought that Jesus’ authority seemed different because it was different. They may have thought that his connect to God was different than everyone else’s, and this may have been their point. Or, it may be that the scribes taught as if they were a bit removed from the text, teaching what other people had taught them, raising the historical questions, doing everything other than speaking about God from their own experience and claiming authority from their experience. (I may also be projecting myself onto the scribes, as I often choose that path.)

Or, perhaps it was something else entirely. When I listen holistically to the stories of Jesus, it seems that one of the themes is his work of empowering the people. Apparently “authority” in Greek means more fully “the freedom to express one’s powers.”⁴Perhaps he was using his “authority” to build up those he was speaking to. In this case, I’m drawing on the line from 1 Corinthians, “Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.” Authority used well builds up people, in love. It isn’t used for the sake of the one who holds it, it is used for the well-being of the community that gives it.

Jesus speaking in the synagogue would have been speaking in his own voice, not just that of the tradition, but I suspect he was using his voice and his authority to encourage others to claim their voices and their authority in building the kindom of God. He was building them up so they could build others up and everyone together could build the kindom.

That’s what it looks like to change the world. Power and authority used in the ways of the world are used to PUFF up the one who holds them, and to push down those who don’t. We’ve talked about many ways they can be used to do harm. But our goal is not only to “do no harm” but ALSO then to “do all the good we can”. (The first two of John Wesley’s “Three Simple Rules” as rethought by Reuben Job.) That means that ALL power and authority we have should be used to BUILD up.

This is a rather high calling. And it can be difficult. There are pitfalls in many directions, and discomfort to go along with it all. But that doesn’t mean it should be attempted. We are, all of us, leaders in building up the kindom, and the first work of the kindom is building others UP.

So, dear ones, may we follow in the way of Jesus, and find the ways to use our power and authority to BUILD others up. Amen

1Chris Cillizza, “Oh, Pat Meehan. No, no, no, no.” on CNN politicshttps://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/politics/meehan-analysis/index.html accessed on 1/25/18

2 https://paradoxologies.org/2010/08/28/martin-luther-king-jr-on-complacency-mlk/accessed on 1/25/18

3 Alanna Vagianos ”She Was The First Woman To Go Public About Nassar. Read Her Statement In Full” ttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rachael-denhollander-nassar-impact-statement_us_5a690ef6e4b0e563007627aa 01/24/2018 08:46 pm ET accessed on 1/25/18

4The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 61.

–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

January 28, 2018