“The Kindom of God”based on Psalm 42:1-6a, Luke 8:26-39

June 19, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I spent a large portion of my seminary years at a gay nightclub called Oasis, which, as it was located in “The Inland Empire” in Southern California was largely populated by Latino men. Being a pastoral intern and learning how to be a pastor often felt like walking on a tightrope. Being a seminarian felt like being a head without a body. I went to the club to hang out with my friends. I went to the club to dance. I went to the club in defiance of what everyone expected me to be doing in seminary. I went to the club because it was so much nicer than going to straight clubs and being creepily hit on.

Mostly though, I went to the club to be more fully human. The darkened space, the deep pulsing of the bass, the squeals of delight, the sweating bodies, and the freedom to MOVE balanced my life. It got me out of my head, and into the wholeness of my body. It was a sanctuary from TRYING so hard to BE and to BECOME someone other than who I was. It was part of being a whole person, and not just a desexualized, dehumanized, pastoral person. It was fun, it was ridiculous at times, and it was definitely fully embodied.

As a straight, white, cisgender seminary student, the mostly Latin gay club was a sanctuary for the fullness of my humanity. It was safe space to be. For the men I went dancing with, the space was far more important. It was community, it was family, (it was a dating pool), it was space where they were allowed to look at (and often touch) other men without reproach. For the men and women who might otherwise have been closeted, I suspect the space was even more important. It was a place to be accepted as who they were, even if mostly anonymously. For those from families and communities who believed that God’s grace had limits, it was space to shake off those shackles and be free.

All week I’ve heard of the gay club as “sanctuary,” and all the more so on Latin night for people who are Latino, Latina, and Latinx. Personally, I believe it, because on my own micro scale, I’ve lived it. I believe it, because I can imagine a little bit, how much more important the experience of sanctuary has been for those for whom the space was actually made – the very same people for whom most churches are places of violence rather than safety.

As followers of Jesus, our lives are meant to be focused on building the kindom of God. It is the work that Jesus was doing in his life time, and it is the work we continue as the Body of Christ through our lifetimes. The kindom of God is the world as God would have it be: a time when the resources of the world are shared with freedom and all people have enough to survive and thrive. The kindom of God is the time when all people treat each other as the closest of kin, taking care of each other and supporting each other’s needs.

This was the work of Jesus. He found ways to help people connect with each other and support each other even in the midst of the challenges of the Roman Empire’s occupation of Galilee and Judea. This is the work we are still at. Weeks like this past one are ones when we are particularly aware of how far the world is from the kindom.

Like broken Gentile man in the gospel, the brokenness of our world is Legion. Thinking only of Orlando, there are so many ways that the kindom of God was desecrated. The work of the kindom is toward peace and wholeness: violence defiled it. The work of the kindom is toward safety and security: gunshots profaned it. The work of the kindom is to end racism and acknowledge the profound beauty and humanity of people with all skin tones: the kindom was violated when ever more vulnerable brown-skipped bodies were filled with bullets. The work of the kindom is to eliminated xenophobia and acknowledge our shared humanity with people from all nations and ethnicity: the kindom was profaned in the targeted attack on the Latin community. The work of the kindom is to build up the vulnerable and enable all people to live full and abundant lives: the kindom was defaced when the targeted population was the vulnerable LGBTQI community. The work of the kindom is to care for the sick and injured, including the mentally ill and injured: the work of the kindom was dishonored by the ways the shooter failed to be treated.

Friends, a massacre happened at a gay club on Latin night. The horrors are Legion. The world is so broken.

Yet, our question today is the same question we bring everyday: what is our role in bringing the kindom of God today? It seems that there are many ways forward. One is living into the grief, which must be one. Another is in letting the anger within us rise and motivated us to action, which also must be done. But for today, for this one day, my sense is that our role in brining the kindom of God is to at rest and to be comforted. The comfort won’t take away the grief, and it won’t take away the anger. But in the midst of tragedy, one of God’s yearnings is to comfort the people, and one of our responsibilities is to receive the comfort.

In our tradition, even Sunday is seen as a mini-Easter, a day to remember the power of God to bring life into the world. In our tradition, as in many, the space in which we gather to worship is a “sanctuary.” The word itself comes from Latin through French, deriving from Latin “sanctus” for “holy.” Because the law of the medieval church held that no one could be arrested in a sanctuary, another meaning derived as well, one that indicates that a fugitive is safe and immune from those who would harm them. At times, our church sanctuaries still function in that way.

Gathering together in holy space, where all are meant to be safe, to celebrate the work of the Living God over and over again is part of the rhythm and ritual of building the kindom. Our sanctuaries are the places we experience enough safety to be able to connect with God, with each other, and with the deepest parts of ourselves. They are imperative to the creation of the kindom, as they are what the kindom will actually be (just on a bigger scale!) They are imperative to the creation of the kindom because they form us into kindom people.

Gathering in this space today, we bring with us grief, anger, confusion, and fear – at least. In this sacred space I hope we are able to let go of our grip on each of those and let God’s love and hope find a home in us again. We gather in this space, letting God comfort and heal us, resting in faith that God’s comfort and healing will be with all those who need it.As one scholar reminded me this week, “the words ‘heal’ and ‘save’ are the same in Greek.”¹ That’s a fact to put in your memory bank and keep the next time someone says something theologically stupid. It will keep your head from exploding. 😉 One of the most consistent messages of Christianity has been “Our God saves.” When translated to “Our God heals” this is a message to soak in. In the Gospel lesson, God working through Jesus heals a man whose harms are “Legion.” In and through us, and others, God is at work to heal the world’s Legion harms as well.

Some of our response requires us to pay attention to grace, wonder, and beauty around us. Today we had the opportunity to participate in the sacrament of baptism, officially welcoming Kate Rosemary into the Body of Christ, and promising to teach her how to love God and God’s people. What a source of wonder she is! What a joy it is to see her thriving! What a source of life renewal and energy she is! This beautiful, happy baby and her loving wise parents remind us of the goodness of life. The wonder of baptism reminds us all that we are welcome among God’s people. There is a lot to be grateful for.

Today we also have the opportunity to celebrate the High School graduation of Chris Rambo Jr. As many here remember, Chris Jr. and his faith Chris Sr. came to this church when Chris Jr. was young and many pieces of his soul still hurt. Chris Sr. was in the process of adopting him, a call he had known for many years. This church baptized Chris Jr., and confirmed him, has celebrated him and occasionally scolded him, loved him, and expressed how proud they are of him.

I don’t know what Chris Jr.’s live would have been like without Chris Sr., but I imagine most of his achievements would not have been possible. He would not have been on the Academic Honor Roll at the Capital Region Career and Technical School in his Junior and Senior Years. He would not have volunteered for the Crop Walk, fundraised for the BOCES Christmas Toy Drive, packed Thanksgiving dinners, insulated homes for Habitat for Humanity and Global Volunteers, walked dogs at the Damien Center, performed hurricane relief in Schoharie County, sang Christmas carols to shut-ins, performed maintenance at Sky Lake Camp & Retreat Center, and served many breakfasts and dinners at First United Methodist and Schenectady City Mission. He would have not become a volunteer fire fighter, nor a certified scuba diver, nor Red Cross certified in First Aid and CPR for Adults, Children,

and Infants. He likely would not have been able to play volleyball, wrestling, and basketball for Guilderland. And quite likely his life would not have made it possible for him to enter the Automotive Technology Program at Hudson Valley Community College this Fall.

God’s love has been the motivating force in Chris Sr.’s life for a very long time. God nudged Chris to become a father to someone who needed him, and Chris to the call very seriously. Chris Jr. was a hurting, struggling kid whose life has been transformed by his father’s love and by the love of the adults he has come to know through his many activities and this church. His life and his successes are proof of the power of the love of God in the world. Healing has come. Life is good. There is much to be grateful for.

Friends who went to Orlando this week reported the existence of dance parties. The LGBTQI community was healing itself through dance. The Latino/Latina/Latinx community was healing itself through dance. The same experience that had been violated with horrific violence was reclaimed to continue its work of healing. There are many too deep in grief to dance. There are may too profoundly wounded to dance. There are way too many who will never dance again. Yet those who could and would, danced. The life-force in them required reclaiming their bodies, their anthems, their lives, their space, their sanctuaries.

It is time to reclaim sanctuaries. I say this as act of defiance. Acts of terrorism and violence, particularly mass murders in communal spaces are intended to make us afraid. Sanctuaries have been violated, but they must be reclaimed. Fear has been poured into the water of our country and our world, but we cannot continue to drink from it.

We must reclaim sanctuary in this space and for the world for the sake of the kindom. We be formed into full expressions of God’s love while we live in fear. So, our work is to make space for the wonder: for Katie Rosemary, for Chris Jr, and for dance parties. Our work is to attend to the goodness along with the horrors. Our work is to find space and people among whom we feel safe and to soak in the goodness. Our “work” is to let God comfort us, and bring us rest. Having hung with God before, I suspect this work will transform itself soon enough! We might as well enjoy Sabbath, Sanctuary, rest and comfort for now – for the sake of the kindom. Amen

Sermon Talkback Questions

What emotions did you bring with you today?
Are there other aspects of the Legions of horrors that need to be named?
When have you experienced sanctuary most profoundly?
What do you sense God calling you/us to today?
What else is necessary in you/us to feed us for the building of the kindom?
I listed Kate’s baptism, Chris Jr’s graduation, (really, Chris Sr’s adoption of Chris Jr), and dance parties in Orlando as signs of hope. I really wanted to add the “act of nonconformity” passed by the New England Annual Conference. What else did you want to add?
How else do we reject fear?
Where and how else can we work to reclaim sacred space? (Dancing works for me, what works for you?)

1 James W. Thomas “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 8:26-39” , p. 171 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 19, 2016

Sermons

“Power, Privilege, and God” based on 1 Kings 21:1-10 and…

June 12, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

King Ahab wants something. He really really wants it. It isn’t at all clear WHY he wants it. He wants a piece of land that is adjacent to his palace property in the village of Jezreel. Now, the capital and primary palace was in Samaria. Jezreel was, at best, a secondary palace. Why would anyone care so much about space for a vegetable garden near their second home? I mean, the story says that after he asked for the land and was rebuffed, he was physically ill. As one commentator put it, “King Ahab is made sick by his greed for a vineyard he cannot have.”¹

Why? Because from the perspective of nearly 3000 years later, this doesn’t seem worth getting bent out of shape about. I guess that isn’t really a reasonable standard for humanity though. 😉 Most of us, most of the time, can’t really figure out if something will matter tomorrow, much less next month.

Now, King Ahab of Israel is said by the Bible to be the worst king who had ever ruled (to that point). He was particularly terrible. Six chapters of the book of 1 Kings exist primarily to talk about how awful he was.

Even given that, I’ve been trying to figure out how a person could get obsessed with having one particular property for a vegetable garden. In some ways it feels familiar, this way of obsessing over wanting something that doesn’t matter at all. It feels familiar to how I’ve watched myself function at times, and it feels familiar to how I’ve seen others function as well. There are a few ways I’ve watched us all do this:

We decide we want something – just because we see it and think to want it. Sometimes, we then become obsessed.
We decide we want something because we can’t have it, and that makes it attractive in and of itself. Sometimes, we then become obsessed.
We decide we want something because someone tells us we can’t have it, and we want to prove them wrong. Sometimes, we then become obsessed.
We decide we want something because we really need something else entirely and we tell ourselves that this will help us get what we really need. Sometimes, we then become obsessed.
We decide we want something because some one else has it. Sometimes, we then become obsessed.
This has been known to happen to humans – with some frequency. I suspect that most of the time, when we as humans want someTHING, we’re wrong. We don’t want that thing. We want whatever it is we associate with that thing as its meaning.

That is, I wonder what King Ahab REALLY wanted. Was he undernourished and wanting more satiating food? Was he hoping to entertain and make connections with someone and worried that the food he had to offer wasn’t sufficient? Was he continuing the normal human system of searching for safety and security through a constant desire to acquire more? Was he wanting to build community by having enough food to make gifts of it to others? Did he actually really like growing food and intend to spend time in the beauty of the space?

It seems likely his desire was motivated even more deeply than that. If he was like the rest of us, he probably wanted the land because of some story he was telling himself, that he wasn’t aware of as a story. What could the story have been? Was he looking for affirmation that he mattered by telling himself the story that if he could build a bigger secondary palace he would be more respected in the world? Was his story about trying to be as good at being king as his father was, and thinking that he could gain (posthumous) acceptance from his father by building up his holdings? Was his story about seeking a deeper relationship of love with his wife by being able to be more impressive to her? Was he trying to prove to himself that he had a purpose in the world, and needing to have a pet project at all times to feel at peace with the fact that he would die?

That’s what the Biblical account doesn’t tell us – it doesn’t tell us what the land meant to Ahab. I don’t think it is possible that the land was really about the land, because that’s not how humans work! We are, usually subconsciously, telling ourselves stories about what things mean beyond what they actually mean. And those stories that we tell ourselves impact our emotional realities in how we respond to the world.

Whatever story Ahab was telling himself was pretty big, since he was SICKENED by Naboth’s refusal to sell. Now, I think Naboth’s refusal makes a lot of sense. We need much more information to understand it. His land WAS his ancestral inheritance, which in theory at least could not be sold, and tearing down a vineyard to make a vegetable garden was pretty insulting. As one scholar points out, “The same Hebrew phrase ‘vegetable garden’ occurs in Deuteronomy 11:10 to describe Egypt in contrast to the promised land.”² Furthermore, vineyards took many years of labor to make profitable. They were serious investments. He was under no obligation to sell to the King, and he had no reason to want to. So he said no.

Ahab couldn’t handle the no. I’m still curious if the land purchase was just a passing fancy, but being told no utterly enraged him. They stories may not have been as important as being denied something he vaguely wanted. It may be that when he was told no, he started telling himself some other stories! Perhaps stories that said being told no was a lack of respect. Perhaps stories that being told no meant he was wrong to have asked. Perhaps stories that said that important people weren’t told no. Perhaps he was shamed by Naboth mentioning the “ancestral inheritance” and some part of him told him he was a bad person for wanting the land at all. Perhaps the story suggested that he wasn’t a good man if he couldn’t convince someone to do things his way.

I don’t know what stories he told himself, but the text seems to indicate that the stories were pretty potent. They sickened him. Then comes Jezebel. Now, Jezebel makes me squirmy, because she is ultimate anti-heroine, and I don’t like it when evilness is associated with women. This isn’t just a vague woman thing about not wanting to be associated with evilness, this is because we are associated with evil way too often and in ways that do harm to humanity. Yet, no fairy tale nor Disney movie has ever been able to make a character as utterly evil as Jezebel. I’m not even sure Lady Macbeth is as bad, and if she is, I suspect it is because Shakespeare modeled her in part on Jezebel.

Worse yet, part of the way Jezebel is so darn evil is because she is such a powerful woman willing to use her power to get what she wants. In this story, what she wants is a false accusation that would lead to a stoning. That is, she wants a murder, and she has the tools to get it. Actually, likely, she got several murders because the accusations that she brought would have gotten both Naboth and his male descendants killed. This she gave to her husband as a gift so he would feel better because he got his stupid garden. She’s the worst, and she’s female, and I can’t fix it.

I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the acquisition of this garden, even through these means, seemed to ACTUALLY sooth Ahab’s spirits. Clearly getting what he had decided he wanted mattered to him more than the means of acquisition. As hearers of the story though, we might hope that it wouldn’t end there. We don’t want the anti-hero and the anti-heroine to win in the end. It almost seems for a moment that they have. They got away with murder. They got the land he was seeking. He’s the king, and he has all the power and all the privilege, and it has just been proven that saying “no” to the king is a a death sentence.

When he gets to the land, God’s prophet was there. The prophet’s role was usually to tell the king when the king had acted unjustly. Therefore, the-king-who-was-the-worst-in-history-to-that-point responded to the-prophet-who-kept-having-to-tell-him-he-had-messed-up-again with “Have you found me, O my enemy?” Did I mention that my take on Ahab is that he wasn’t particularly self-aware, nor good at differentiating reality from the stories he tells himself? A good leader might see the person who most often whistle-blows their work and think “Ut oh. I must have messed up again!” A great leader would see the same person and say, “I wonder what I can learn now.” A poor leader would simply think, “I’m in trouble now.” Ahab was terrible. He actually saw the person whose job it was to call for God’s justice AS HIS ENEMY. Talk about stories we tell ourselves!!

Of course, I really hate what Elijah said to Ahab. It doesn’t sound like God’s justice to me at all. It sounds like a threat and a punishment. This is one of those cases where I choose to believe that the people who wrote and edited the story were more interested in good story telling than they were in considering what they were implying about God. The story will go on to tell a gory and miserable account of Ahab’s death. Likely some people thought it was fitting after the life he had led. As the story was told through the ages, that sentiment became a part of the story itself. I think that reflects a human longing for justice and a world that makes sense.

In life these characters reflect all of us at times. Sometimes we are irrationally obsessed with the acquisition of something, like Ahab, and we can’t even figure out why we care so much. Sometimes we are going about our normal life when someone else’s whims end up ruining everything (EVERYTHING) like Naboth. Sometimes our desire to make someone we love feel better motivates us to do great harm to someone else, like Jezebel (although almost always to a lesser degree). Sometimes we are the voices of justice who have to call for accountability, like Elijah.

But, truth be told, while each of these aspects of life are real in each of our lives, they aren’t all proportioned equally. Some people have more power, like Ahab and Jezebel. Some have significantly less power and are more vulnerable to injustice and the whims of others, like Naboth. Some of have more privilege, and many have less. Our various levels of privileges intersect in multiple ways.

Yet, we can rest assured that God still works and moves in the world toward justice, and calls us to account for the ways power is used. Injustice is still a reality in the world, but God is never at peace with that. Thanks be to God. May we learn to be speakers of truths, and to call for justice like Elijah (although maybe we can do it with few less threats!) Amen

1Carolyn J. Sharp “Theological Perspective on 1 Kings 21:1-10 (11-14), 15-21a”, p. 122 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

2Marsha M Wilfong “Exegetical Perspective on 1 Kings 21:1-10 (11-14), 15-21a” , p. 125 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 12, 2016

Sermons

“Mother’s Only Son” based on 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke…

June 5, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Two groups of people, each with their own purposes, happen upon each other outside of a small village. This scene could go a lot of ways! The one it takes is probably not the most expected. Both groups are in motion. The grieving widow and her crowd are a funeral procession from her village. Jesus and his disciples (also a large group) are in transition from place to place.

The widow in Nain doesn’t approach Jesus. Unlike so many other gospel narratives, Jesus isn’t responding to anyone else’s request. Instead, it was simply compassion that moved him to act. He sees her. It is likely that her son was her means of economic survival. As a widow, she’d lost her husband already, so her son was her only family. Furthermore, “the death of an only son would leave a widow without an heir and therefore unable to retain whatever means remained for her. Without an heir, all personal property reverted to her husband’s family after his death.”¹ This meant she was both grieving as a parent grieves the loss of their child, but there was also an added complication of desperation.

Jesus is said to “see her” and “have compassion for her.” The word for compassion means “an intense inner emotion and sympathy that accompanies mercy. Luke uses the word in two later stories, when the Samaritan sees the stripped and beaten man (10:33), and when the prodigal father sees his lost son for the first time far down the road (15:20). … For Luke, compassion, while entailing great emotional capacity, also leads to action.”²This is a BIG deal. The gospels were written during the Roman Empire, with Greek influence everywhere. “For readers situated in a Hellenistic and Roman culture in which being moved by another was a sign of weakness, here (as in 10:330 and 15:20) that supposed ‘weakness’ is associated with Jesus, and through him, God. Compassion and mercy are the apex of God’s character and of the new communal life in the Spirit.”³

That is, this is a story of Jesus being compassionate, and moved by the suffering of others. It is a story of Jesus’ compassion in the midst of a cultural context that would have seen it as weakness. Yet, Jesus is an active agent in this story. His compassion is his motivation. He sees the grieving widow, and he is moved to help her.

Interestingly, in our stories today, the dead/dying sons are sort of objects. Their mothers, and the prophets of God, are the subjects. I think we should always be concerned about the ways we tell stories, and how stories can dehumanize people into objects. Yet, I find it surprising WHO becomes an object and who doesn’t in these stories.

That is, the impoverished, widows with one (dead/dying) son are the subjects. This is a surprise because we aren’t supposed to notice them in society, unless God is turning things upside down. Both of our stories today are of God turning things upside down. Likely the two stories are intentionally similar, intended to reflect light back and forth between themselves.

Luke has Jesus touch the bier. This touch would have made him ritualistically unclean. Elijah doesn’t touch that mother’s son, but he has to stretch his body over the boy’s body three times and pray out loud. Jesus is being presented not only as prophet but as an especially strong one. Jesus is being presented as caring about the widow, even though he doesn’t know her. Elijah has to be shamed into action. Jesus, in Luke, continually cares for widows, orphans, and strangers. This is particularly notable, since in the Torah, God is pretty obsessed with how widows, orphans, and strangers are treated. The prophets tended to end up having to tell the Kings that they were mistreating God’s widows, orphans, and strangers. In this story, Luke is establishing Jesus as a prophet, and reminding us that prophets express God’s compassion, especially for widows, orphans, and strangers.

Throughout Biblical history, “Widows, orphans, and strangers had this in common: they did not count on the protection offered by a citizen adult male in their family.”⁴ In the two stories we have, we don’t know the names of the mothers or the sons. That is “something common in biblical narratives, yet another sign of injustice. Women and children were, more often than not, referred to as the wife or child of male adults, in those days the only ones with any power in social and religious life.”⁵ Yet, these unnamed mothers are the subjects of their stories.

In the beginning of 1 Kings 17, Elijah begins a take down of the Canaanite god Baal, who is the god that the Israelite King’s wife worships. The Israelite King at that point was Ahab. He was officially declared one of the worst. His wife was Jezebel. She was hands down the worst. In the 3 chapter cycle in 1 Kings between Elijah as God’s prophet and the followers and prophets of Baal, there are a series of contests between “the G/gods.” It may be helpful to think of these stories as … oh, what’s that called? Those contests where two men compete to see who can pee farther, higher, and longer? Whatever that is, that’s what YHWH and Baal are presented as doing in these 3 chapters.

Since the Canaanite god Baal was known as a god responsible for the rain, YHWH creates a drought. In the beginning of chapter 17, YHWH’s prophet Elijah declared to the King Ahab that there would be a long drought until YHWH called it off. This was to prove that Baal was … ineffective. Then the story turns to show how YHWH provided for Elijah during this terrible drought. That helps YHWH appear… effective.

At first, Elijah is sent to a ravine to drink water from the stream and be fed by ravens YHWH would send along. Then the water dried up in stream because of the drought. This is the point when our story today begins. Next, Elijah is sent to Sidon, the home village of Queen Jezebel, right in the heart of Baal worshipping. He is sent to Sidon and is told he’ll be fed by a widow. This should have raised some red flags for him.

As one scholar put it, “We don’t know that he would have been optimistic about a widow feeding him. In the best of times, most widows lived a very tenuous existence. In a time of drought, their need would have been even more pronounced.”⁶ It would likely not have raised his hopes when the widow he met was out gathering sticks, a sign of her profound poverty.

I think Elijah sounds pretty awful in this story. He is demanding things from a woman he never met, and he isn’t even polite about it. “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” Makes me want to say, “excuse me??” Then he follows up with “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” I’d be likely to respond, “Dude. Why do you think I’m your servant?”

However, I’m not sure that’s the actual point of the story! In fact, I’ve been reminded recently that women have so few words attributed to the in the Bible that I should pay attention to what they say rather than get upset at what is said to and about them. The widow replies to Elijah, and says, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” She claims her own voice. She doesn’t actually seem upset at his request. She’s past that. She just lets him know how desperate she is, and that she can’t care for him too.

After Elijah convinces her to try it anyway, and they are all blessed with a miracle of abundance, her son becomes deathly ill. She is afraid that Elijah’s presence has brought YHWH’s attention to her and that YHWH is thus punishing her. She speaks again (this is a big deal) this time starting the conversation instead of responding to Elijah. “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” Her words motivate/shame Elijah, and Elijah heals her son. She also gets the last words in this story, saying to Elijah after the many days of food was provided and her son was brought back from the brink of death, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of theLord in your mouth is truth.” The unnamed widow gets a lot of voice.

The capacity to heal is associated in many parts of the Bible with a connection to the Divine. But it is only in the Luke story that the motivate to heal comes from the compassion of Jesus reflecting the compassion of God.

Like many of you, I struggle with most parts of these stories if I try to take them as factual accounts of historical events. So, I don’t. I do take them as stories meant to convey deep truths, often on multiple levels at the same time. I find myself wondering who the widows, orphans, and strangers are today. Clearly, actually, widows, orphans, and immigrants/refugees ARE still vulnerable populations in the world. That hasn’t changed.

There are others as well. Because of mass incarceration in the United States, particularly of men of color, there are many families who are vulnerable with both lack of income and lack of family connection. Our society creates functional widows and orphans.

Because of our immigration laws, strangers are at risk, and when deportations happen, families become essentially widows and orphans.

Because of a raw hunger in our world for access to sexual pleasure without mutuality or consent, we live in a world where women and children live in slavery and are trafficked for the pleasure of (usually) men. Women and children moved around the country or the world for this purpose become strangers in a strange land without access to resources. They become widows, orphans, and strangers in multiple ways.

Because of the prevalence of violence in our society, and the unconscionable number of murders, many are left as widows and widowers, orphans, and strangers.

Because of the fears and anxieties that abound, and the lack of adequate mental health care, many in our society are particularly vulnerable to those would would gain profit through addition. Drug use, abuse, and overdoses make people both living widows, orphans, and strangers and actual widows, orphans and strangers.

There are so many ways that our way of life as a society and a world MAKES PEOPLE more vulnerable and puts their livelihoods at risk. Yet, we worship a God of compassion who sees the struggles of those whose hearts and lives are broken, and is moved to change the brokenness. May we continue to learn how to receive God’s gifts of healing in our own lives and how to participate in God’s gifts of healing in the world. Amen

1Verlee A. Copeland “Homeletical Perspective on Luke 7:7-11” , p. 119 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

2Gregory Anderson Love “Theological Perspective on Luke 7:7-11” , p. 118 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

3Ibid, 120.

4Carolyn J. Sharp “Pastoral Perspective on 1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)” , p. 98 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

5Ibid, 100.

6H. James Hopkins, “Homiletical Perspective on 1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)” , p. 101 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 5, 2016

Sermons

“The One Who Began a Good Work” based on…

May 29, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A week ago I returned from a 2 week trip to Portland Oregon, where I was a progressive organizer for the General Conference of The United Methodist Church. General Conference meets only every 4 years, and is a global gathering of delegates who have the power to change the church’s position on ANYTHING they want. I went with the “Love Your Neighbor Coalition” to help the church do less harm.¹

Things started getting really interesting for that work, 8 days before General Conference officially began. That was when 15 Clergy from the New York Annual Conference published an open letter in which they came out as LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and/or Intersexed).² A week later, the day before General Conference began, 111 Clergy around the country joined their voices together in “A Love Letter to Our Church From Your LGBTQI Religious Leaders.”³ (So, they came out too.) That letter just about broke the Internet. The traffic actually broke the Reconciling Ministries Network’s web-page.

The following day, when General Conference started, a letter signed by “hundreds of moms” came out in support of the LGBTQI clergy.⁴ Two days after that, more than 500 LGBTQI Christian Leaders from other denominations signed a letter in solidarity with the UM Clergy who had come out.⁵ From the grandstands outside the plenary floor I looked through the list of names to see friends and colleagues from this area had signed it, and it felt like the Spirit had whispered hope and love right into our General Conference. Words of love came from a lot of directions. There were love letters from the UCC National Office⁶, the New England Quakers⁷, and the Episcopal of the Portland Diocese full of encouragement and hope.⁸

General Conference started on Tuesday, May 10^th. On Saturday there was a letter signed by more than 5000 UM laity declaring their support of LGBTQI clergy⁹, which now has more than 6200 signatures and counting. On Monday the 16^th, there was a letter signed by more than 2300 UM Allies in support of OUR LGBTQI colleagues.¹⁰ (Yes, “our.” It was long time before I got to sign anything.) Reading through the lists of signers of those letters was also a source of comfort and joy.

Finally, on the second Tuesday of General Conference, 16 days after the first public letter was released with 15 Clergy coming out, a response came from some of The United Methodist Bishops.¹¹ If you were wondering, two of your former Bishops signed it: Bishops Susan Morrison and Susan Hassinger. 29 Bishops signed in all. They wrote in response to the SECOND letter, the one from 111 LGBTQI clergy. Among the words they wrote were:

We write our letter now to say to these sacred children of God and members of our United Methodist family that we love them and have been blessed by the many spiritual gifts that God has given them and that they have shared with us. … While they could have left, day by day they choose to stay because of their love for the church that baptized, nurtured and called them to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and to love their neighbor as they love themselves. Even while marginalized and rejected by their mother church they love her back. … God have mercy upon us!

When shall we United Methodists have the courage of Peter to stand and say that nothing that God has made is unclean? When shall we believe that the love of God is truly for all? When shall we learn to live in faith and humility before our God of love?

We call The United Methodist Church to repentance for its lack of love for all God’s children, and for its arrogance in believing that we establish the boundaries of God’s love.

Now, the timing of the Bishop’s letter was quite interesting! It came out on Tuesday of the second week. The night before, news was intentionally leaked that the Bishops were looking at a plan for schism. On Tuesday morning they denied it in a speech to the whole body and then in a press conference. Soon thereafter a motion was made on the floor requesting that the Bishops come up with a plan to find a way forward for the denomination given our disagreement about whether or not ALL people are really God’s people. (The opposition likes to say that we discuss “human sexuality.”) The motion from the floor was a very helpful way to make things happen without the Bishops’ claiming it was their idea.

The following day the Bishops came back with their proposal. That was the day we, the progressives, were ready to shut everything down. I suspect that would have resulted in mass arrest. As we waited to hear the Bishop’s plan and the body’s response to it, I took note of how calm we all were. We, the progressives, were gathered in a clump ready to “break the bar” and shut down the General Conference. We were in rainbow stoles (some short, some long), some of us were in collars. But the Peace of Christ was with all of us. We were ready to do God’s work. We held our breaths, and instead of arrests a Commission got created.

This was the Bishop’s proposal – the creation of a special Commission.¹² The Commission is to be named by the Council of Bishops, and rather than acting on ANY of the petitions about LGBTQI exclusion, they were all referred to the Commission. The Commission is to come up with a plan to move forward. It is possible that they might rewrite large portions of the Book of Discipline, for the better. More likely the Commission will come back letting the denomination know that we are not of one mind, and we cannot continue to function as we’ve functioned. What I don’t know is if there suggestion will be: a schism, a restructuring, or both. We also don’t know that General Conference will take their suggestions. That happens a lot that General Conference sends an idea to a special group and then refuses their suggestions when they’re returned.

This was a step to the side, rather than forward or backward. When it happened, it felt like a victory, because we KNEW that if those petitions got to the floor, it would have been a bloodbath. It was also a victory because the denomination was pushed to a breaking point, but it isn’t worth trusting quite yet that the breaking point will lead to greater inclusion or safety for God’s people.

The breaking point came not just after a bunch of people signed a bunch of letters (although those helped). Rather it came after months, years, and decades of faithful resistance and ecclesial disobedience. The breaking point was created intentionally. It came because of a long term progressive strategy. The “Biblical Obedience” movement named by Bishop Talbert 4 years ago whereby he instructed us to preside over same-sex marriages in the “regular course of our pastoral duties” was also a part of it. Faithful witnesses at General Conferences and Annual Conferences were a part of it. There were many components. The strategy has been “to increase pressure and tension on the institutional United Methodist Church. The purpose has been to force it to look clearly at the harm and ugliness and evil that it commits against LGBTQI persons. The purpose of that has been to force the Church to look at itself, to confront the ugliness of what it has, what it has made itself, what it does, until it can no longer tolerate what it is and must decide to be something else.”¹³

Pushing the church to a breaking point and the creation of the special Commission was a success of this strategy. So was the conservative push for schism at this General Conference. Apparently, the most conservative wing of The United Methodist Church is SICK AND TIRED of people who refuse to obey unjust laws (*shrugs). They don’t want to be in a denomination with LGBTQI clergy, they don’t want to be in a denomination where clergy perform same-sex marriages, and they don’t want to be in denomination where laity as well as clergy are willing to protest for the rights of all of God’s children. They want to leave. They want to split the denomination so that they can exit. They want to take their marbles and go home, even though they have the votes to win on the floor. The most conservative 10-15% of the denomination want to leave.

Many of us think that the Commission will bring forward a plan for schism. Going into General Conference I stood firmly against schism. When the news had been leaked about the Bishop’s plan for schism I was both horrified and relieved. Eventually I found I was a bit excited.

As progressive organizers, General Conference was horrible. The majority of the delegates were conservative. The odds were stacked against us, and despite our best work, a lot went very badly. Of particular note was the resolution that passed which removed the UMC from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice. There were also good petitions that did not pass, including: petitions to pull our retirement benefits out of the Palestinian occupation, petitions to pull our retirement benefits out of companies that profit from fossil fuels, petitions to end overly invasive medical forms for clergy, petitions to support “responsible parenthood”, and petitions to restructure the Church for equity.

As progressive organizers, terrible things almost happened, and we were able to help stop them. (Bad things happened, but we were usually able to stop the TERRIBLE things.) In one case we had a hand in stopping the creation of a $20,000,000 “slush fund.” Unfortunately, we were mostly unable to make good things happen. We WERE able to secure church’s support for the concerns of our racial/ethnic caucus partners, which was grand. We were able to maintain our stance as a pro-choice denomination. No horrible transphobic legislation got passed. Those are weak successes.

We did hard work, and we got very little for it. We lost, over and over and over again despite having done our work well. By the start of the second week, I was exhausted with fighting, and with losing. I am not interested in giving up on The United Methodist Church, but I’m also tired of being in a church that excludes God’s beloved people. The idea of spending the rest of my career working for this justice AND FAILING fills me with dread. Also, being in a denomination that has NO trust in each other is exhausting. At this point, as far as I’m concerned, if the most conservative faction wants to leave, and free the rest of us to be a healthy Body of Christ together, I have lost all interest in stopping them.

This is more than just about our denomination. It is the human condition. Sometimes things are too broken to be fixed. When there is no trust, there is not truly a shared Body. This is true of denominations and non-profits, of marriages and relationships, and even of friendships. Some things aren’t fixable. We are an Easter People, and we follow a God who can make a way out of no way. Sometimes though, the path of hope, love, and justice – that is the path of God – requires letting something die to make space for a different sort of life. Being an Easter people can mean letting God find the way forward to life, and letting go of defining how that that will happen. I don’t know yet if it is time for The United Methodist Church as it has been since 1968 to die, but I suspect it cannot live as it is.

Yet, for today I choose a scripture of gratitude. General Conference was not ONLY horrible. There were too many great people to reconnect with, to work with, and to get to know for it to be exclusively horrible. Being with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition meant spending a lot of time with amazing people who care about God’s justice and love. I am thankful to God every time I think of them, and I trust that the good work that has been done will not be lost but that God will find a way to complete it. I also trust that those who have been working on this progressive strategy for decades will not stop. It is the work that God has begun, and it isn’t stoppable.

As a whole, General Conference was about 20% as bad as I thought it would be. Where I expected to have NO hope at this point, I have some very hesitant considerations that maybe someday things might be OK. That’s a big change. 😉 I sort of hate it when the words of Paul ring true, he and I are still struggling with each other. Yet he puts words to where I am after this 2016 General Conference. These are my words for you, for those who play along at home, for my many partners in the Love Your Neighbor Coalition, and even for the church at large: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.” May it be so. Amen

1 http://lyncoalition.org/about/

2 http://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/call-to-declare-we-are/

3 http://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/calledout/

4 http://www.mindny.org/2016/05/more-than-1000-christian-moms-support-lgbtqi-clergy/

5 http://www.believeoutloud.com/latest/500-lgbtqi-christian-leaders-stand-solidarity-our-united-methodist-colleagues

6 http://www.ucc.org/open_letter_to_our_brothers_and_sisters_in_the_united_methodist_church_05142016

7 http://neym.org/sites/default/files/UMCepistle_5_2016_0.pdf

8 http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2016/05/17/13421849/STATEMENT-OF-SUPPORT-FOR-THE-UNITED-METHODIST-GENERAL-CONFERENCE.pdf

9 https://org.salsalabs.com/o/2507/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=19747

10 http://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/over-1500-united-methodist-clergy-pledge-their-support-of-lgbtq-colleagues/

11 http://westernjurisdictionumc.org/a-pastoral-response-to-a-love-letter-to-our-church-from-lgbtqi-religious-leaders/

12 http://www.pnwumc.org/news/an-offering-for-a-way-forward-umcgc/

13As phrased by Kevin Nelson, Love Your Neighbor Coalition Legislative Strategy Co-Chair, on Facebook, on May 18^th, 2016.

–

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

May 29. 2-16

Sermons

“All Messed Up” based on Acts 16:16-39

May 8, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This story is all messed up. To begin with, Paul is a very questionable hero. He doesn’t seem to act in order to benefit the slave girl. In fact, the text says explicitly that he was “very much ANNOYED” by her and that’s why he healed her. Annoyance – not compassion, love, or concern for her well-being, annoyance.

Truth be told, the story doesn’t really seem to care about the slave girl either. The slave girl is not named, the text does not indicate that Paul ever spoke to HER directly, and it does not tell us what happens to her after she was “healed.” She’s a narrative means to an end.

The spirit in her is used to tell us that the followers of Jesus’s way were in fact slaves of the Most High God. Her status as a slave may exist primarily as a narrative device, whereby the enslaved is able to name the slave-to-God status of others. While it is suggested that her owner’s were angered by losing the money she had been making them, the accusations they made against Paul and Silas don’t even have anything to do with that.

Of the girl herself we know very little. She was a slave. She had a spirit of divination. It made her owners a lot of money. She followed around Paul and his company, and her truth-telling about them got annoying after a few days, so Paul ordered the spirt of out of and it came out. Then she wasn’t worth as much money.

Those aren’t terribly human facts to know about someone. We know nothing of her motivation, although her motivation could reasonably be assumed within the confines of the story, to be the spirit and not her! We don’t know what happens next for her. Is she beaten because she is now worthless? What back-breaking labor does she land in? How old is she anyway? What other work may she be used for now? What she grateful? Was the spirit something that benefitted her life or harmed it (go with the story on this one, we can’t change the story, so we might as well accept its premises for a moment).

Not only do we know nothing about her, we also don’t know why Paul failed to SEE her or have any mercy on her. If he had the power to take away the spirit, then maybe he could have done so earlier. On the other hand, having the spirit made her more valuable, which may have improved her life. But he doesn’t seem to CARE and neither does the story.

At best, this part of the passage might just be a retelling of the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge.

[Jesus said,] ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (Luke 18:2-5)

Paul gets worn down by a spirit, and orders the spirit out of slave girl. Like the judge, he doesn’t act out of justice or obligation, he uses his power because he is ANNOYED.

Later, when he gets out of jail because of his inborn status as a Roman Citizen, he demands HIS rights as a Roman Citizen, and is upset that he was mistreated because HE deserves better because of his power in the world. Paul demands a public apology, but only for how he was treated. He doesn’t ask about her status, or indicate that she mattered.

In Acts, Peter is presented as “the new Jesus.” Paul isn’t. Thanks be to God. I don’t know what Peter would have done in this case, nor can I really speak to what Jesus would have done. Yet, I’d like to believe they would have SEEN the girl, and not just been annoyed by the spirit. I want to think they’d worry about her life too. Stories of Jesus seem to imply that lives matter, even the lives of people who have been beaten down by life.

In this story, Paul fails to do so.

And yet, he doesn’t. The second half of the story is different from the first half. The interaction with the jailer is amazing, beautiful, miraculous, and shows an INCREDIBLE amount of empathy for the very person who was oppressing them. Paul and Silas cared about the jailer, and the ways that they responded to the jailer saved his life and showed him a new way of being. The way that Paul responds to the jailer is exemplary. He SEES him and cares about him, without even knowing him. That feels like how Jesus would have handled it.

The story of the earthquake in jail, and the prisoners staying put is pretty darn weird. I suppose Paul knew that the authorities would figure things out sooner rather than later, so he wasn’t particularly concerned. Yet in most cases in human history, the cycle of oppression wins out. One person or group oppresses another, and if the oppressed ever get a chance to lead, they respond with oppression as well. Prisoners taking gentle care of their jailers breaks the cycle of oppression. That being said, as a GENERAL rule, I don’t think this is a model we have to follow. It is a good thing to keep in mind when you already know you are SAFE, but not necessarily a good choice every time.

Paul’s actions in prison were very effective in proclaiming that the way of Jesus was different than the ways of the world. The jailer converted. Paul didn’t, however, call out the economic injustice, the inherent human dignity of the slave girl, or even the position of jailer in a system of oppression. Paul’s actions mostly left things the same, and didn’t lead people to fuss over them, other than worrying about if they’d get in trouble for misidentifying a Roman Citizen.

I think he could have done better. I think these stories are all messed up. That’s a relief! It indicates that sometimes the people of God mess up, and although we are doing our best, we fail to see the most loving way forward. Sometimes we don’t notice the calls for justice around us. Sometimes we’re just plain wrong! Often we don’t SEE.

Yet, God continues to work through Paul through the rest of Paul’s life. The writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles has told some pretty important stories for the history of human kind. That is, the failure of Paul and the story to get it right isn’t the final answer. (Not that this helps the slave girl one little bit. Nothing does.)

Yet, it doesn’t stop here. Paul kept developing, and learning more deeply how to love. He would eventually write the famous words to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29) Paul would come to know that slaves have value and that women have value. Perhaps if he looked back on his life, he would have regretted how he acted on that one day, but it didn’t define his life.

We can make mistakes, and learn to do better later. It’s normal. It’s human. In fact, we can’t do otherwise! God is certainly capable of forgiving us, and that should lead us to believe that we can be capable of forgiving ourselves.

want to share God’s love and God’s light at General Conference, even with those with whom I disagree. I don’t want to compromise, and I WILL NOT compromise on the inherent dignity and worthiness of all of God’s people regardless of sexual preference or gender identity. (Obviously.) And yet, the people who stand in opposition to inclusion are not the enemy. They simply don’t know better – yet. Many of us in this room have struggled along the journey to get to inclusion. (Some of us who are younger, had open-minded parents, and attended great churches in our youth didn’t have to struggle, but that makes us much more lucky than wise.) If those of us in this room, who now so consistently act out of regard for the wholeness of your sisters and brothers who are LGBTQI, were once not so sure, then it is clear that God’s grace can win in the hearts of others as well.

No one’s mind will be changed by yelling though, nor by nastiness. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Love is the only way forward, especially in the face of hatred and fear. As I get ready to leave, I’m pondering how to make space for God’s love to flow through me to drive out hate. I wonder how I can serve as a light.

Now, as previously discussed, I am convinced that the time has come for acts of disobedience and non-violent direct action that will disrupt the normal system. I believe that The United Methodist Church acts as an oppressor doing harm to beloved children of God, and I believe (as I have believed throughout my life) that I am to be part of changing that. The question is how to keep my heart and mind peaceful, steady, and focused on love while I do so. People are going to say terrible things, and things are at times going to go terribly wrong.

But the people who say terrible things are misguided, not evil. The things that will go terribly wrong are not permanent. God is love, God is creator, God is powerful beyond measure. God’s will win out in the end – either through The United Methodist Church or The United Methodist Church will die so that God’s love can live. Nothing else is the final answer. Nothing else can be. God’s love always wins. That is, the Love of God will win out in the end, no matter how much human beings at the church at large mess it up right now.

Two of my favorite prayer practices interrelate. I’ve mentioned them before, but it is worth a reminder today. One prayer practice is to breath in love and breath out stress, fear, and anything that holds you back from love/God. That one is wonderfully de-stressing. The other is to breath in the pain of the world, and allow God to transform it within you, so that you can breath out love.

It is my intention to pray that prayer over and over again. It is my intention to try to live that prayer through the next two weeks. When you are able, I invite you to join me. When the pain becomes too much to bear it may help. (If it doesn’t, return immediately to the other one and soak up love until you can go forward again!) We are, all of us, called to be God’s love and God’s light in the world. We are to participate in co-creating the world with God. We are to use our power to bring in the kin-dom. We are able to participate in changing hate into love.

Let us breathe. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 8, 2016

Sermons

Untitled

May 1, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I often find myself giggling when Church groups are particularly unaware of the culture around them. Likely, I shouldn’t giggle, as my relationship to popular culture is essentially nonexistent, and I a lot miss more than I get. For instance, did you know that there are radio stations other than NPR? (Why?)

Given that I’m useless at popular culture, when I know something is funny it is likely a problem. One of my favorites was a restructuring proposal for The United Methodist Church in 2012 called “Plan B.” Apparently the mostly people who put it together hadn’t ever heard about emergency contraception, and missed that they were suggesting a church restructure that was named the same thing as what most people call “the morning after pill.” I don’t think that implied good things about their plan, either intentionally or unintentionally. I suspect this related to why much of the world finds church irrelevant.

My other favorite is that the Upper New York Annual Conference’s printed “publication” is called “Advocate.” Now, I know why they call it that. It is because of our Gospel reading today. But I find it amazing that they would choose to do so because, well, the famous paper called “The Advocate” is quite a bit different than the version including a letter from the Bishop and news about new faith communities. In their own words, “The Advocate” is “Gay news – commentary, arts & entertainment, health, parenting, and politics. The Advocate is the leading source for up-to-date and extensive LGBT news.”¹

I titled this sermon “The Original Advocate” because I like that the Holy Spirit is called the Advocate in John. Although, to be fair, other translators use “Comforter” and scholars point out that the word also has connotations of “friend.” Nevertheless, I really like “Advocate” and the idea that God advocates for us and for justice in the world. The idea that the Holy Spirit serves as teacher and “reminder” for us in the midst of the confusion and disorientation life is truly comforting to me. God works with us, which means that full responsibility for the wellbeing of the world does not lie on any of us alone – and that is good news.

Truth be told, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this passage. The first time I remember doing “real” Bible Study was at camp the summer after my freshman year of high school. Before that, both at camp and in Sunday School, we’d done … well, I don’t really now what we did, but some combination of story telling, crafts, morality lessons, skits, and chats about God. But that year the directors at camp trusted us to do REAL Bible Study. We read from our actual Bibles. We had resources that helped explain concepts to us that were difficult to deduce on our own. We struggled and debated. We were permitted to really work on the texts themselves. Obviously, I was in love.

The study that summer was about “peace” and this was the culminating passage. We’d learned that peace in the Bible is more than peace in the world – about the idea of shalom and God’s desire for a world where all people have enough. We looked at texts throughout the Bible about peace, and then we got to this passage where Jesus assures the disciples that his peace is with them and cannot be taken away from them. The sense of wonder about being able to struggle with scripture has stayed with me ever since, and it has created a sense of shining joy every time I return to this passage, remembering the delight I had in it when I first met it. (Yes, I’m aware of just how nerdy this is.)

It was a special bonus this week when Matt Berryman, Executive Director of the Reconciling Ministry Network, wrote an article in The Advocate. It was published on Friday and is entitled, “Dear United Methodist Church, Do the Right Thing.” It starts with this, “In just a few weeks, the United Methodist Church will gather in Portland, Ore., for its general conference to determine church policy and practice for the next four years. ‘Who cares?’ you might be asking yourself. Whether you’re religious, spiritual, agnostic, or atheist, here’s why you should.”² He concludes this thought a few paragraphs later saying,

“Becoming a welcoming, affirming faith would send a message to families of all kinds, to the larger communities where our churches are mainstays and influence the broader public discourse; where Christianity still exerts significant influence and power over people’s lives. And beyond the positive water cooler and kitchen table conversations, a reversal of the UMC’s discriminatory policy would begin to dismantle the widely held view that institutional religion is the biggest obstacle to our equality.”³

He’s right. Those are a good assessment of why what happens in Portland starting next week matters. Unfortunately, the right thing isn’t going to happen.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a training on Nonviolent Direct Actions, hosted by MIND (Methodists In New Directions). They are the Reconciling group in the New York Annual Conference, and this training was part of their preparation for General Conference. I was lucky enough to be invited and have it be on my way home! The trainer and participants were well aware that there are not enough votes to change the direction of The United Methodist Church – this time. (Frankly, so is Matt Berryman, it is just his job to push anyway.) The goals right now are to heighten tensions, create crises, and force leaders into decision dilemmas. Only by continuing to apply pressure to the church and grow the anxiety within it is there the opportunity to create change over the long run. We have to play a long game, and we need people willing to take some risk.

That is, things may not be overly “polite.” I spent time this week with a three year old whose parents are consistently teaching her to be polite. Her parents are my friends. She’s a sweet child, and she’s learning all the rules well. I’ve been wondering about it all though. Politeness is very important to know, and to practice. That is, until it isn’t.

Being polite is generally a good way to communicate respect to other people, and acknowledge their humanity. In that way it is a VERY good thing. However, in our society (like most others I think) politeness can become a constraint that limits the work of justice. It is not considered polite interrupt people, but in the midst of humor that is racist, the interruption is the lesser of two evils. It is impolite to talk with one’s mouth full, but if there is a danger that needs to be articulated, it is the lesser of two evils to do so anyway. This list of examples could be rather extensive, as polite is not as important as safe and just.

Some of the work that will be done at General Conference isn’t going to seem polite! The United Methodist Church currently functions as an oppressor of people who are lesbian, gay and bisexual, and the work of justice trumps the value of politeness. The trainer yesterday pointed out that direct actions happen when you are not seeking someone else to give you power – doing it yourself. She explained this as the difference between the people who petitions for the Confederate flag to be removed from the South Carolina statehouse and the woman who climbed up the pole and took it down.⁴ It is not considered POLITE to claim authority for yourself, to ignore the hierarchy and those who claim an institution’s power much less to disrespect their authority and wishes by doing exactly what they don’t like. Most of the time, that’s a good enough reason not to do something. The exception is when greater harm is done by being polite!

I’m glad my friend’s daughter knows how to say “please” and “thank you.” It will serve her well in life, and those she interacts with will feel acknowledged and respected by her words. However, I hope that when it is necessary she will stand up for herself (and others) however she has to – whether it is polite or not!

The Revelation passage that was read today is one person’s dream of what God’s reign might look like. There is a lot there, and I’m going to resist my urge to unpack all of it. Instead I want to focus on two things.

The first is that the gates are always open. The imagined city is insanely large (1500 miles cubed, think about THAT for a while), and it HAS gates (12 of them), but they are always open. They are ALWAYS OPEN. Anyone can come in at any time. Anyone can leave at any time. There is an implication that there are people who don’t live in the city, so this isn’t merely a redundancy. Anyone who wants to be in the presence of God can be. Anyone who wants to be “in” can be. Furthermore, anyone who wants to leave, can. The gates are open both ways, so no one is forced into a relationship they aren’t wanting.

Permanently opened gates. Everyone can come in, at all times. That’s quite the image, isn’t it?

The second piece of focus relates to the first, in the permanence of it all. The whole city is set up as if it will be forever, and that dream fits the experience of the people who just watched their Temple and city be destroyed AGAIN. They yearn for the un-destroyable. They yearn to be free of the oppression of an empire.

The problem for us here today is that we are citizens of today’s most powerful empire. Peter Storey, a Methodist Bishop of South Africa, once wrote,

“I have often suggested to American Christians that the only way to understand their mission is to ask what it might have meant to witness faithfully to Jesus in the heart of the Roman Empire… America’s preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or by Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage… You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them”.⁵

This is, sadly, true of both our country and our church. May the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, guide us to see our actions clearly and to be brave enough NOT to be polite when God and justice call for it. May the way of God’s shalom/peace be our way.

Amen

—–

1 If you Google “The Advocate” this is the mini description below it as of April 30, 2016. Aren’t you glad I footnoted that?

2 Matt Berrymore “Dear United Methodist Church, Do the Right Thing” published April 29, 2016http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/4/29/dear-united-methodist-church-do-right-thingaccessed April 30, 2016.

3 Ibid

4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/27/woman-takes-down-confederate-flag-in-front-of-south-carolina-statehouse/

5 Quoted by Joyce Hollyday in “Homiletical Perspective on Revelation 10; 21:22-22:5” found on page 491 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009). Worse yet, she was quoting someone else quoting him.

–

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

May 1, 2016

Sermons

Untitled

April 17, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m cheating. The Acts reading is supposed to be the reading today according to the Revised Common Lectionary whose advice I tend to follow most of the time. The Mark reading is not. It simply made sense to me that we should look at these two stories together. In truth, the nerdiest option would have been to use Luke 8:40-56 as the gospel reading, because then we’d be dealing with two versions of a story from the SAME AUTHOR, but Luke edits out Mark’s verbatim, “Talitha, cum” and I wanted to include it, so I let story telling take precedence this week. So I’m cheating on the Lectionary AND on my inner nerd for the sake of this sermon.

In Acts Peter uses the woman’s name. Tabitha, which means gazelle, to say “Tabitha, get up.” In Mark, Jesus says “Talitha, cum” and texts tells us that it means, “Little girl, get up.” The characters are not the same. Tabitha in Acts is a faithful disciple, a follower of the way, well known and well loved for her generosity and kindness. The sweet little detail about her death – that as the people gathered around to grieve, they showed each other the articles of clothing that she had made them – seems to bring the story across time. Those who make handmade clothing still often have that impact on others. (ah hem. Needlework ministry.)

Talitha is not a name. We don’t know the name of the 12 year old girl in Mark. She’s the daughter of a local religious leader, and that’s all we know. In fact, her story is told around the edges of the story of the hemorrhaging woman. The woman had been bleeding for 12 years. The girl had been alive for 12 years. 12 isn’t usually a random number in Scripture, it tends to refer to Israel as a whole. Perhaps the suggestion here is that Jesus was healing all of Israel.

So, the people who are healed are not the same. Tabitha is a grown woman, the little girl is not. Yet, Tabitha and talitha, sound really similar. This leaves us with two options. One is that there is one story remembered in two variations. The other is that they’re told in similar ways in order to make a particular point. In that case, the point is that Peter was presented as being like Jesus. The power that Jesus had possess to heal, even to call someone back from (the brink of) death, now resided in Peter. That’s the story of resurrection – that the Body of Christ which was once limited to Jesus himself now becomes the shared reality of the disciples of Christ. The powers that Jesus once held are now shared among his followers. If the stories are intentionally similar, it is to make just that point. If not, it is worth wondering why this story so pervaded the collective consciousness of the early Christian movement to be remembered in multiple ways.

Now, as the three people who are healed in these two stories are all women, it is a excellent reminder that Jesus (and the early church) cared enough about women to spend time healing them. Unfortunately, to have integrity with these passages requires more than just pointing out that women matter too or that Peter was able to act as a healer as Jesus had acted as a healer. To have integrity requires acknowledging that while these stories made sense in a first century context, they’re quite challenging to faith today, especially faith that does not wish to ignore the gift of scientific knowledge.

Within the first century context in which they were written, it wasn’t so hard. Contemporary medicine was quite un-advanced and both sickness and healing were best understood as demons entering and leaving the body. So, faith healing was as good of an explanation as anything, and to associate Jesus/Peter with raising women assumed dead wasn’t particularly extraordinary, though it was certainly an affirmation of them.

We don’t exist in the same worldview anymore, and I don’t think we’re supposed to. We don’t associate illness with demons. We don’t associate healing with exorcisms. And, I suspect that if we take these stories seriously enough, we can start to get squirmy. They don’t make sense, and yet there are a LOT of healing stories in the Gospels and beyond. What are we to do with stories that present Jesus as having healing superpowers?

Taking the Bible seriously means we have to struggle with healing stories that don’t make a lot of sense to us as 21^st century Christians. So, what are our options?

Obviously, we could simply throw the stories out as fiction, and ignore them. This would fit if we think of the miraculous healings as simply being included so that people would take Jesus seriously as a teacher.
My seminary professors believed that the Gospels were written in the context of the Roman Empire, and were therefore intentionally designed to present Jesus as “better than” the various gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman tradition. Thus, in any given miracle story, they’d find a similar story from Greek or Roman God and point out that the Jesus version was BETTER. Then the miracles and healings are a form of bragging about how great Jesus was, and are designed to bring people to the faith.
Just to be contrary, we COULD take the stories as factual truths. That would likely lead us to assuming that Jesus was categorically different than any other human who walked the face of the earth, and fits very well within the idea that Jesus was God-incarnate. God’s power existed in his human form and was able to bring healing wherever God/Jesus choose. This leads us down a very dangerous path though, because if God is able to step in and heal anyone at any time, and simply chooses not to, then God is responsible for much of the suffering in the world.
My dear friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green suggests another alternative. She believes that Jesus loved people with the love that God has for them. She believes that love – true, pure, unadulterated, unconditional love – is healing to bodies and spirits. She thinks that when Jesus looked someone in the eye or touched them while being connected to the depth of God’s love for them, they were profoundly changed, and often healed. More and more it seems that science shows us how connected our bodies and spirits really are… our stress impacts our heartrates, our sadness lowers our immune systems, our joy helps our digestion. It makes sense that experiencing deep pure love could provide healing to people. It doesn’t quite make sense out of raising people from death or comas, but it sure gets us closer. (And, of course, in this case it presumes that that love was then passed to Peter and therefore to us.)
I think there is one more option (beyond the option to take each of these with some seriousness and bounce between them as we see fit). I think there is an option to see the stories PRIMARILY as metaphor. Or, as John Dominic Crossan likes to say, “there are parables ABOUT Jesus” in addition to the “parables of Jesus.” The healing stories can be mined for their meaning without assuming that they happened as they’re said to happen. That is, think about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Did it happen? Well, probably not. There is no reason whatsoever to think that Jesus was telling a story that ACTUALLY happened, but it doesn’t matter in the least IF it happened, because the story itself is the point. It is possible to consider the healing narratives in the same way.

While leaving you the freedom to choose whichever of the options you like most today, I am going to focus on the last one. In the Gospel lesson two healings are woven together into a single narrative. In one case the young girl is restored to life, she had been (presumed) dead. In another case a woman was restored to life, she had been impoverished and weakened for 12 years, and connecting to Jesus restored her to full life. The two stories interweave, suggesting that the fullness of life restored is as valuable as life restored. Perhaps they suggest that Jesus offers a new way of life and fuller, more abundant form of life. Likely, because they are intersecting and because the both use the number 12, the indication is that the healing of God is both individual and communal.

In any life there are places of brokenness and hurt in need of healing. In most lives there are pieces of ourselves that are presumed dead – or have simply been bleeding for so long that it is unimaginable that they will ever stop. Yet, this story suggests that God’s creative life-force energy is not stopped in the places we presume it will end. Jesus called the young girl back to life. God calls us to a fuller and more whole life, including by healing the places within us that we’ve assumed are unhealable or dead.

I may be more aware of the places that we assume are dead communally than individually. While we believe in a God who calls forth life, and life abundant, taking a look at the world can be deeply troubling. Can God really heal racism when it is so entrenched? What about sexism and heterosexism? Can God really heal the multi-generational brokenness of communities? Is peace truly possible? What about justice? Economic inequality is at its all time peak today, and yet with the powers of the military and the threat of nuclear war, is it truly possible to think that it it can be peaceably rebalanced? More simply, given that corporations are now legally, “people” is campaign finance reform truly feasible? What will it take for people to stop making stupid laws about who can pee in what bathroom and instead focus on providing quality education and health care to all people? More locally, what sort of trust do we have that New York State will ever fully fund it’s own legal obligations to school districts – particularly urban districts with mainly students of color – and give students a fair chance in life? That is, what would it take for society to see that all of God’s people are are deeply and infinitely valuable? Can God really do all that? The stories, and our faith, tell us that God is loving, creative, powerful, and at work in the world in individual AND communal healing.

The continuation of the story in Acts, with Peter, suggests that we have powers of healing as well! The community of faith is able to be a source of healing in the world, and I have certainly known it to be so. I was a quiet and awkward child, but my church loved me as I was and saw potential in me. I was scared and self-conscious high school graduate, but church camp had a place to receive my gifts. When I came here, to this church, I was still aching from the loss of my beloved Annual Conference, and I was afraid that the gifts I had weren’t wanted in The United Methodist Church. Communal healing has also been visible in my life. The power of being loved by a community changes lives. That is, throughout my life, God has been a source of healing – individual and communal – and God’s people have been a source of healing – individual and communal.

Love really does heal. Thanks be to God. Amen

Sermon Talk Back Questions

Where have you seen God at work in healing in your own life?

Where have you seen God at work healing in our communities?

Which ones of the 5 options do you find useful in your life today?

Has that changed over the course of your lifetime?

Are there other options that you use that I’ve missed?

What do YOU make of these two similar stories?

–

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

April 17, 2016

Sermons

“Displacement”based on Acts 9:1-20 and John 21:1-19

April 10, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Before Jesus called them, most of the disciples had been fisherman. It was their occupation. They supported their families by fishing. Likely it was their identity too. They were multi-generational fisherman. They were part of fishing families and fishing communities. (Don’t worry, I don’t intend to make a metaphor out of this.)

I suspect that the story we read from John today comes from different origins than the other Easter stories in John. It got edited in as the third appearance, but it works pretty well as a stand alone story, and it likely was one. Peter is presented as the natural leader. He says he wants to go fishing, and everyone else says they’ll go with him. It makes a lot of sense that fisherman born and bred would return to the Sea in the midst of turmoil when they didn’t know what else to do.

I don’t know enough about fishing the Sea of Tiberias to know if a night’s fishing being utterly unsuccessful was common, but I’m also not entirely sure that the disciples would have spent much of their energy trying to catch fish that night. It seems that the comfort may have been the familiarity of the surroundings and the nighttime freedom to talk or not as they wished. It was a good place to grieve.

Now the bit in the story about casting the nets “to the other side” and having fish essentially leap into them seems like it is set up for allegory, but I’m going to leave those be and simply point out that in that moment Jesus was recognized. In fact, John recognized Jesus, but Peter jumped out of the boat to swim to him. People are different, and have different skills and responses. One can figure out what is going on, another is quick to respond with joy.

I’ve been trying to figure out why Peter would get dressed and THEN jump into the water, when most people would do it the other way. I guessed maybe it was a sign of respect for Jesus, but I looked it up in the Jewish Annotated New Testament and all they had to say was, “It is odd that Peter dresses and then jumps into the sea.”¹

The best part of this story happens when they all get to shore. Jesus has made a fire and prepared some fish and bread, although he adds to the fire some of the fish they’d caught. In the Emmaus story, the disciples know Jesus in the breaking of the bread, but in this story they knew him in the abundance he provided of the fish. Yet the way that he shares the food still rings with celebration of communion. “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.” (v. 13)

This is the first and only meal that it is said Jesus cooks. He makes them breakfast after they’ve been out on the water all night tending their souls. He provides for them when they need it most. It is an extraordinary little story in that way, Jesus is a bit more domestic than we otherwise see him. Before the resurrection he cared for people’s physical needs on a regular basis, but not as the cook. This is a bit earthier!

The story almost suggests that the disciples were silent through the meal, but we really don’t know. The sweet, strange story of the nets full of fish and breakfast waiting on the shore turns toward Peter giving him both an opportunity for forgiveness and a direction in life. Often this part of the story has gotten my fuller attention. Today I simply want to point out that the three questions seem likely to exist in order to erase the three denials that had earlier occurred. Secondly, the three questions have slightly different nuances, but they’re insignificant. Jesus instructs Peter to tend and feed the sheep and lambs as a response to Peter’s love for Jesus.

The work that had been Jesus’ is now passed on. In this case is is to Peter, but by extension to all of us. That’s the Easter story again, for those who are slow to pick up on it. At the end of this passage is a line I hadn’t really heard before. In the end of the conversation Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me.” I find the Gospel of John annoying at times, but it is also a work of brilliance. In John’s version of the call of the disciples, Jesus doesn’t call Peter! Peter’s brother Andrew started following Jesus and invited Peter to come along. Peter’s call to follow doesn’t happen until this conversation! It also become a call to all who hear – those who weren’t called in the beginning of the story are still called to follow by the end of it. Furthermore, the call to “follow” happens during the LAST vision of Jesus’ resurrection, in John. The following has to happen by the guidance of the Spirit and the capacity of the disciples to trust themselves to know what to do!

It has struck me this week how displacing all of this would have been for the disciples. They’d been displaced by choosing to travel with Jesus and had given up the lives they knew. Then they were displaced by the death of Jesus, and lost the life they’d come to know with him. That’s where we found them at the beginning of the story, trying to find their place again by returning to the lives they knew. Instead, by the end of today’s story all sense a security has been stripped from them. They are to continue the work of Jesus, but without Jesus. They are to upset the system of the Empire, without any promises of safety, and indeed Jesus points out that they too will suffer by tending and feeding the sheep and the lambs. The fishermen and their families from Galilee who wandered the Jewish countryside with Jesus end up settling in Jerusalem and leading the rest of the followers of The Way… lives still changed by the words “Follow me.”

I’m stuck as well that their lives moved from pretty “normal” to very abnormal. They were regular people, working hard to make their lives go as well as they could before they met Jesus. They were productive members of society, making money in one of the standard ways. They were contributing to society.

And then Jesus displaced them.

Just as Jesus didn’t work for money during his ministry, as far as I can tell, the apostles didn’t work for money again after his resurrection. They were so busy leading The Way, that they couldn’t. Other people’s offerings supported their lives.

Which is to say they “stopped” contributing to society. They were no longer productive workers. Isn’t that funny? The Protestant Work Ethic is a real thing, and in the USA many of us were practically suckled on it. Yet the followers of Jesus stepped out of the system of productivity in order to redistribute resources and teach another way. It is as if their lives were the Sabbath of the Hebrew Bible, a reminder that life is more than productivity and contributions to society, that we are made in the image of God, and we are whole already as we are. They began to live Sabbath – to focus on relationships and not on work. That’s some serious displacement.

There are rather amazing parallels between today’s Gospel lesson and the story of the conversion of Saul. For the first time, I noticed that the conversion wasn’t REALLY instantaneous, as I’ve often heard people describe it. Yes, he had an instant where he fell, and he became blind, and he had a conversation with Jesus (who was dead.) But he had the scales on his eyes for 3 days, while fasting, before Ananias comes to talk with him and they fall off. At that point he got baptized, but he was with the disciples for “several days” after that and THEN he began to preach about Jesus saying, “He is the Son of God.” (Which, just in case you didn’t know, was blaspheming the Emperor of the Roman Empire who claimed that particular title as one piece of his authority.)

Saul’s displacement happened in about a week. He thought he knew what his contribution to society was. In addition to making his living as a tent-maker (which he continued to do), his passion was caring for the faith by making sure that heresies and bad teaching didn’t take seed in the faith that formed his life. He was convinced that the followers of Jesus’ way were the problem, and he was willing to use his life to fix it – until this happened. Then he took his passion and conviction and used to FOR the good of The Way of Jesus.

Have you ever seen that video of a random person dancing to the beat of their own drum in random places? It ends up making the point that one person dancing is one person dancing! However, the moment a second person chooses to join in, the first time a follower joins in, it usually becomes a dance party. Sometimes it is one person who dances, sometimes it is hundreds, but the difference is not the first dancer – it is the second.

It is possible that Paul is the “second dancer” of The Way of Jesus. Jesus was the first dancer. He is the one who offered a new take on life and way to deny the powers of the world by focusing on the creative love of God. But Paul is the one who, by following, brought people along. I think the rest of the disciples would have continued to share the message and it would have mattered but only within Judaism. Paul was the one who took the message to the Gentiles, which is super ironic since he was the one who cared most about the faith of Judaism to begin with. He is also the one who pushes for full inclusion of Gentiles in The Way, without conversion to Judaism. Jesus may have founded a movement, but Paul made it popular.

Paul’s displacement pulled out of everything he cared about, including his own life, but gave him a way to change the history of the world. He did continue to make a living for himself, but his real contributions were in sharing a story he’d once found offensive enough to stop by any violent means necessary.

In seminary, as in much of Christianity, there was often a focus on stories of conversion. People talked about the rough lives they’d led, and when they’d connected with God anew, and how that had guided them to ministry. At times I’d get annoyed with the stories, but often I felt insufficient by not having a story of my own. I was raised in United Methodist Church that I loved, I went to church camp, I adored it, at 13 I first considered becoming a pastor, and I’d followed that path from that point on.

In class one day we were assigned to discuss something about conversion in a small group and my friend Andre, who had one of those“standard’ conversion stories offered me a great gift. He asked if I had been “converted” and I said no, and I think I hung my head in shame. We weren’t particularly close, but I think he’d listened to me very deeply to that point. He asked if there was a point in my life when I realized that although my life was good, not everyone else had it as easy. I looked up and said YES, and started telling the story of the first time I’d noticed. He smiled at me and said that I was one of the people with an inverted conversion story. My conversion was realizing how broken the world was and being moved to participate in healing it. Put another way, becoming aware of my privileges and that they weren’t shared was a form of conversion. That is a story that I’ve lived time and time again.

It has been displacement for me at times too. As it was for Peter, and for Paul, and as it has been for people who didn’t have a connection to the Divine and later found one. God messes things up. God displaces us so that we can be placed appropriately. And frankly, God seems to do it often. So the next time you are trying to contribute to the world and it all gets turned upside down, remember that God may be displacing you – for the sake of good. Amen

—

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

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

April 10, 2016

Sermons

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

March 20, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They took risks for the sake of hope.

May we do the same.

Amen

___

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

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

–

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

March 20, 2016

Sermons

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

March 13, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

Ready?

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

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

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

The women may be widows who didn’t remarry.

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

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

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

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

Yet, really, who knows?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3Ibid

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

5Ibid

6Ibid

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

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 13, 2016