“Grieving What We’ve Lost” based on Psalm 69: 1-3,…

July 3, 2022
by Sara Baron

I don’t even know where to begin.

There are so many layers of lament.

For many years, I have regularly advocated for
Reproductive Justice at the New York State Capital, with both Planned
Parenthood and Clergy for Reproductive Choice. Often, one of the
older women in the groups I was advocating with would wear a hanger –
a hanger necklace, hanger earrings, or carry one with them.

Confession: I thought that was sort of tacky.

Especially before 2016, I didn’t think Roe v. Wade could
really fall, and the reminder that people die from illegal abortions
felt like a narrative from another era.

So, once again, I feel the need to apologize to my
elders for not heeding their wisdom. As I remember those moments
with other advocates, I’ve been considering their ages, and noticing
that they were of reproductive age before 1972. They KNEW the impact
of those hangers. It wasn’t just a part of history to them, and I
think that’s why they KNEW better than I that it could become a part
of the present as well.

That’s one part of it all.

I want to acknowledge that not just women can get
pregnant. There are men and non-binary people who are also at risk.
And for the sake of this sermon, I am going to say “women” and
“mothers” sometimes. These words doesn’t encompass men and
non-binary people, but women are the broadest category of affected
people, and I am going to acknowledge that by using the words “women”
and “mothers.”

Another piece of it all is the is the awareness of how
unequal the impact of this decision will be. Not just in terms of
red states and blue states, although that’s a big deal. But also in
terms of socio-economic status – people of means have ALWAYS had
access to safe, medically appropriate abortions, even if they had to
fly to Europe to get them. As per usual, those who live in poverty
will pay a higher price. AND, it is impossible to ignore that
maternal mortality is abominably high in the United States, and most
of the deaths are black women*¹,
followed by other brown women*, while WHITE women* have pretty
reasonable maternal mortality rates. Which is to say, in stark
terms, that an impact of this decision is that more black women* are
going to die.

To make this even move problematic some of the unspoken
and underlying motivation for abortion bans is white supremacy –
whereby there is a desire to prevent white women* having white babies
from ending those pregnancies, and a willingness to end all abortion
access to keep white women* pregnant with white babies. So that
motivation then ends up killing black and brown women.* There was
Freudian slip this week when a congresswoman called the Supreme Court
decision “a historic victory for white life.”²
It was odd to hear it stated directly instead of just being implied.

That’s a part of it all.

Then there is the normal, obvious part of grief around
this decision: the impact on those who are pregnant and don’t want
to be, and the incredible variation of how that came to be and what
impact it will have on them. Earlier this month The Atlantic
published an article entitled “The Most Important Study in the
Abortion Debate” which reports on the research of Diana Green
Foster looking the difference between what happens to women* who were
or were not able to access an abortion.³
They study lasted for 5 years, and included 1000 people seeking to
end pregnancies. They found that those who were denied an abortion:

were more likely to end
up living in poverty. They had worse credit scores and, even years
later, were more likely to not have enough money for the basics, such
as food and gas. They were more likely to be unemployed. They were
more likely to go through bankruptcy or eviction. “The two groups
were economically the same when they sought an abortion,…one became
poorer.”⁴

Also, those who were denied an abortion were more likely
to be with a partner who abused them, more likely to be a single
parent, had more trouble bonding with their child, felt more trapped,
had more anxiety, had lower self esteem, and were less likely to even
have aspirational life plans. They were sicker. Additionally, two
of the pregnant people denied an abortion died from their pregnancies
(none of the people who had abortions died.)

Since most people seeking an abortion already have kids,
the research was also able to study the impact of not being able to
access an abortion on the existing kids. That is, they were less
likely to hit developmental milestones and more likely to live in
poverty. This truth ALSO applied to children born after the abortion
or lack of one.

And, of course, there
were emotional impacts. “Afterward, nearly all said that
termination had been the right decision. At five years, only 14
percent felt any sadness about having an abortion; two in three ended
up having no or very few emotions about it at all. “Relief” was
the most common feeling, and an abiding one.”⁵

This decision made by the Supreme Court condemns
impoverished women* and families to harder lives, because – as we
know – the ones who are pregnant are the ones who know what is best
for them and their families. The data backs it up. They know when
they can’t adequately care for a child or another child.

So, that’s another part of it.

And also, there are the
pieces where some states are having FULL bans on abortions, without
exceptions for the life of mother**⁶
nor for rape nor incest. Now, I have major concerns about the impact
of having to convince someone you were raped or experienced incest in
order to access healthcare, but nevertheless, the impact of being
forced to carry that child to term is enormous. And, many people
will die simply because of the lack of exception for the life of the
mother**.

So, that’s another part of it.

I’m hoping breaking this up actually helps a little. I
mean, it is depressing, I know. But when all of it swirls together
into one huge overwhelming grief, it feels even more out of control.
Knowing there are layers helps me distinguish between them.

I am now at the personal layer, the place where grief is
for me. Not just for me, but for me. The decision tells me that I
do not have authority over my own body. I don’t have a right to my
own body. “Big brother” has the right to tell me what I can and
cannot do with MY BODY.

When this decision came out, I became a second class
citizen. SOME PEOPLE in this country have rights over their body. I
am no longer one of them. SOME PEOPLE have bodily autonomy. I am no
longer one of them. SOME PEOPLE have a right to life-saving
healthcare. I am no longer one of them.

To go back to The
Atlantic, “The legal and
political debate about abortion in recent decades has tended to focus
more on the rights and experience of embryos and fetuses than the
people who gestate them.”⁷

My body, in this country, has more value as a womb for a
future human than as an existing human.

The Supreme Court gaveth, and the Supreme Court tooketh
away.

The history of women* as being property of men is still
present, and still having impact. We are now, it seems, property of
the state who can tell us what we can and cannot do with OUR BODIES.

That’s another part.

And, a friend on FB this week put things into some
context. She is a person of color. She said, “If they’re willing
to do this to white women, I shudder to think what they’re willing to
do to us.” I’m aware that some of the strength of my horror at
having bodily autonomy taken from me comes from the fact that I
thought it was mine to begin with. Which has a lot to do with my
places of privilege in society.

That’s another part.

And along with it, is the fact that I live in New York ,
which not only protects the right to abortion but isn’t even one of
the border states people will flock to when they lose privileges in
their own state. (OK, fine, I hope. May my birth state of PA hold
strong.)

What I’ve lost is more theoretical than for those who
have actually lost the rights to their bodies in their states, and I
have to hold that in tension too.

That’s another part.

Those are many of the pieces of grief and tension I’ve
been experiencing. These are my current lament, and I think the
Bible shows us that lament is important.

But what do we do NOW?

Where is that good news God appointed Isaiah and Jesus
to share? Where is the good news for the POOR? For the captives in
their own bodies, the oppressed?

I may be stating the obvious, but it isn’t here yet.

But, we don’t stop there.

We also do what we’ve done today. We grieve, because
there has been loss. AND, we deny the narrative. The state has said
I don’t have authority over my body, and many of the rest of you
don’t too.

That may be LEGALLY true, but it is morally and
ethnically bankrupt. The state cannot take away the sanctity of
bodily autonomy, the value of human rights. We deny the power of the
state to bureaucratically take dominion over human bodies, and we do
so in whatever means necessary. Because GOD is the one who said we
are created in the image of God, and our lives are sacred, and the
state can’t take away what God has endowed.

There is a wonderful tradition of progressive Christian
activism to support those in need of abortions, and the strength of
that tradition will be a part of what guides us now. There are
amazing new leaders emerging, and part of our work is to listen for
great ideas and support them. There are groups led by those who know
EXACTLY what to do to support the most vulnerable, and we support
those groups.

In the meantime, I suggest we all take some inventories
of the spiritual and physical resources we have available to us
(communal and individual) so we know what we have to offer when
support is asked of us.

God doesn’t let oppression stand. We’re working with
God towards justice, and listening to the urgings of the Spirit and
the wisdom of those impacted as we find our ways forward in this new
(and old) struggle. Amen

1*women,
girls, and people who can get pregnant.

2 https://www.npr.org/2022/06/26/1107710215/roe-overturned-mary-miller-historic-victory-for-white-life

3Annie
Lowry, “The Most Important Study in the Abortion Debate”
published in The Atlantic on
Jun2 11, 2022. Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/abortion-turnaway-study-roe-supreme-court/661246/

4Lowry.

5Lowry.

6**Mother
or parent.

7Lowry.

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

July 3, 2022

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Untitled

August 1, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Every. Single. Time.” based on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

As far as I can tell, the stories of the wandering in the desert are stories of the people learning dependence on God. Many of the stories of Exodus repeat the narrative “(1) Something was wrong, the people were worried. (2) The people complained. (3) God provided.” Since deserts aren’t super hospitable to life, they make sense as places people can learn their dependence. The writer of Deuteronomy ends up worrying that once the people enter the “land of milk and honey” they’ll forget that they are dependent on God. In the early centuries of Christianity the “Desert Fathers and Mothers” returned to the desert to seek connection with the Divine, and learn again the lessons of dependence.

Historically, there are some reasons to question the overarching narrative of the 40 year wandering in the desert. It may be MORE true that some of the proto-Israelites were desert nomads for a prolonged time in their history, and some of the proto-Israelites were slaves who had escaped from Egypt, and some of the proto-Israelites were Canaanites who decide to follow YHWH when the nomads and former slaves told their stories about YHWH. I rather like this idea, because it is pretty easy to see how nomadic hunter-gatherers in a harsh desert climate would definitely experience the gift of life as a gift from God. And, that their descendants who lived a more settled and fertile existence could relatively quickly change their minds about how lucky they are to be simply alive.

I rather like how these stories begin. The people are frightened for their lives. There is a lack of FOOD or WATER, and those are seriously dangerous lacks. The stories present frightened people as appropriately and realistically negative. They grumble. They mumble. They complain. They romanticize their former lives. In this case, they say, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.“ And, I’ll admit, I feel for Moses and Aaron. That ISN’T FAIR. It isn’t even TRUE. But, I also feel for the people, because when humans are frightened for their lives, they really can’t be held accountable for being “unfair” much less have reasonable perspective.

In these Exodus stories, every single time, God intervenes and provides. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Sometimes Moses and Aaron get annoyed, sometimes God gets annoyed, sometimes as a reader it gets annoying that they don’t learn how to trust faster, but God provides EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And I have some feelings about that, because in our world today there is both an abundance of food and an abundance of hunger. Based on both the stories of our faith and the miraculous food producing capacity of the earth, I’m pretty sure that the story is STILL that God provides. But… human beings get in the way. We hoard (the US government is one of the worst), we promote “competition” for who gets to eat, we blame the hungry for being hungry, and we permit wealth to rise to the top no matter the cost to the bottom.

God provides.

Humans intercept.

The challenge is not scarcity – there is enough. There is MORE than enough. The problem is distribution . That is, the problem is acting out the belief that all people are worthy of surviving and thriving, as beloveds of God.

Around here, we try to do our part to change that story. We promote the humanity and belovedness of all people. We have a free breakfast, and we give people extra food to help them make it through the week. We advocate for policies to alleviate hunger everywhere in the world. We donate to SICM and help with summer lunches. We educate ourselves about food distribution, and work with “Bread for the World.” Our tithes and offerings promote justice and compassion programs around the world, and our extra gifts to UMCOR just add on to it.

But, it is a big problem and there is lot of work to be done to BOTH feed all of God’s people AND change policies so we don’t allow anyone to be hungry.

Some of the reason I said all that is because it is true. Another reason is because I’m about to take this story metaphorically, and I could not do so in good faith until I also took the literal meaning of hungry people seriously as well. Especially now when A LOT more people are hungry world wide then were before the pandemic.

When I first considered this passage, my attention was drawn to that complaining and yearning for Egypt. It seemed worth talking about our yearning for what used to be, and how the yearning can erase the realities of the past – things like slavery for example. Much of what I hear, and a good portion of what I experience these days is a yearning for pre-pandemic times. Recently, after I’d shared a bit about how odd it was to give birth during a pandemic and how unexpected parenting a baby during a pandemic has been, a perspective person said, “Well, and you got pregnant before the pandemic, you didn’t sign up for any of this.”

I sighed with relief, like you do when someone really understands. Also, I think that applies to all of us a little bit. The things we were thinking about, planning, and even worrying about 2 years ago all changed on us in early 2020. And we didn’t sign up for this! The stressors and conflicts we live now we wouldn’t have been able to dream 2 years ago. And we didn’t sign up for this.

2 years ago wasn’t great. It really wasn’t. There were serious injustices happening, and the things we were worried about were real. Comparatively though, I see why we want to go back. I can even see why the people grumbling in the desert would have wanted to go back. With death looming, anything else looks better. But Egypt wasn’t their future, it was their past. And we aren’t going back to pre-pandemic times either.

The wandering in the desert, as the story says, was important for forming the people, forming their faith, teaching them their dependence on God. It got them ready for the Promised Land, but it was so hard and so terrifying, there were a lot of times they thought going back was worth it. Without knowing what the Promised Land would be like, or when they would get there, the only things they knew were the terrifying lack of resources of the desert and the utter oppression of slavery.

For most of us, our pre-pandemic times weren’t THAT bad, but I hear people saying now, “Having had a break from it all, I don’t want to live like that anymore.” We’re different. We’ve been formed by this time in the desert. We’re still being formed by this time in the desert. I’m not sure when the Promised Land is coming.

As much as the desire to go back to Egypt caught my initial attention, I couldn’t help but notice that it is only the beginning of this story. This isn’t the story of landing in the Promised Land. This is a story of having God provide. This is a story of there being BREAD on the ground in the desert that would sustain the people AND quails flying overhead for protein, and both of them being gifts of life from the God of life. (In the desert, where other people didn’t interfere with God’s gifts.)

This is the story where God says, “’At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’” And then when it happened, and the bread showed up, the people said, “What is it??????”

And this is where I think God is leading me today.

We’re in the desert, dear ones. Whatever our roles and circumstances were in Egypt, it is far behind. Whatever our roles and circumstances will be in the Promised Land, we aren’t there yet. We are DEEP in the desert, learning our dependence on God. And that means that God is giving us gifts that we desperately need to survive.

And most likely we’re responding along the lines of “Huh?” or “What is THAT?” Or “I’m not sure I want that.” Maybe more than anything we’re thinking, “I’d rather have bread from Pereccas, or Gershons, or Friehofers.” These gift that God is giving, we might not even recognize them. We might not want them. We might be a little horrified.

Today’s story ends with Moses telling the confused and hungry people, “It is the bread that YHWH has given to you to eat.”

What is the bread that God is giving to you to eat right now? How are you feeling about it?

Holy One, help us see what you are giving us, and help us receive nourishment from what you offer. We are tired, weary, weak, and frightened people. Your nourishment is what we need to go on, and we know that this desert wandering is not your final plan for us. Amen

August 1, 2021

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

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“Angry Jesus” based on Psalm 19 and John 2:13-22…

March 7, 2021
by Sara Baron

Growing
up, I saw a lot of images of Jesus as a clean, well groomed man of
European descent. You have probably seen these images too. His hair
is shoulder length, his mustache and beard and visible but trimmed,
his eyes are light, and the whole thing has an aura of “air
brushed” all over it. His expression is neutral, yet somehow
lightly angelic.

Without
going into the issues with presenting a Middle Eastern man as
European, or even the annoying prevalence of this presentation of
Jesus in our culture, I want to talk a little bit about the facial
expression. My first year here, I was given a image of a smiling
Jesus, and I savor it. Ludwig Fruerbach says that we humans project
what we think are the best and most important characteristics of
humans onto God. If that’s true, than a neutral expression on Jesus
suggests we think emotions are NOT holy. A smiling Jesus is a Jesus
with emotions, rather than a stoic, and I strongly prefer it.

If
you search online for images of “Angry Jesus” they mostly portray
today’s Gospel Lesson. Angry Jesus ALSO has an arm raised with a
whip of cords. For people who were raised with an un-emotive
understanding of Jesus or God as well as for people taught that
emotions are bad, today’s Gospel lesson can be rather distinctly
uncomfortable.

Jesus
gets angry. He acts out his anger. It has consequences. Other
people’s livelihoods are impacted. This is neither a neutral nor a
sugary sweet Jesus.

These
days when I hear this story, I hear it through the ears of the
trainings I’ve done on nonviolent direct action and I think how
brilliant it is! From that perspective, Jesus and his disciples
would have been working together on an action that brought people’s
attention to the issues with the Temple. I’m not exactly sure how
they would have said it, but the Temple had been the center point of
Jewish faith for nearly 1000 years, and as such it was hugely
important to Jewish people of faith. Because of that, the Roman
Empire had taken over control of it. The Empire appointed the high
priests, and the high priests were removed by the Empire at will. So
the Temple was at one and the same time the spiritual center of
Jewish life AND a system that had been appropriated for the exact
opposite of its purpose. It likely is helpful to remember that in
the Jewish faith the first 5 books of the Bible, the Torah, are
central in casting a vision of how God wants society to work. And
how God wants society to work is in a just and equitably way where
even the most vulnerable and impoverished are cared for, and no one
gets rich of of anyone else’s suffering.

Empires,
however, work the opposite way. Control is maintained with violence
or its threats, and the entire point of the system is to consolidate
wealth and power.

Now,
likely most people at Jesus’s time knew this. All of this. But,
they largely ignored it because… well… what are you gonna do?

That,
I’d guess, was the assessment of the issue. Jesus and his disciples
were looking for a way to clarify the issue, and motivate people into
different behavior. What they came up with, a disruption of the
marketplace around the Temple, is pretty brilliant. It always upsets
the status quo when business gets disrupted. (Several years ago I
participated in a Black Lives Matter protest that walked up 5^th
Ave in NYC, on a Saturday, in December. I couldn’t BELIEVE that we
were shutting down Manhattan during the Christmas Season. Clearly,
it was decided it was less problematic to give the people a voice
than to deal with the consequences of silencing the people.)

The
action, I think we can say, worked. First of all, we’re still
talking about it. Secondly, the appropriation of the Temple stopped.
While this story takes place in John chapter 2, in the Synoptics
this happens right before “Holy Week” and is one of the two most
significant actions that led to Jesus’s arrest and murder. It
clearly shook up the powers, and was experienced as a threat to their
power.

Which
I would call a nonviolent direct
action well done. And that reminds me that the consequences of
nonviolent direct action can be an increase in state sponsored
violence, at least initially.

With
that as introduction (too long?), I want to give us some space to
lean into the anger that we see in Jesus in this passage. I like to
think that he wasn’t just acting when he gathered cords into a whip
or overturned tables, it was a genuine expression of his righteous
anger with the life-affirming Jewish faith being used to destroy
life.

This
being the one year anniversary of the last time we gathered together
for worship in person (and funny enough, the last time we had an in
person charge conference!), it seems like a particularly appropriate
time to name some of the facets of this past year that can reasonably
illicit righteous anger.

The place to start seems to be
with 2.56 Million worldwide deaths, including over 518,000 in the
USA, many – if not most – of which were preventable if we had
prioritized people over profit.

Being intentionally misled by
leaders about the seriousness of this virus, about what we needed to
do to be safe, about how decisions were being made, and about who was
dying and where.

The simple fact that when it
became clear that the people most impacted by COVID were impoverished
people of color, our government immediate stopped caring as much.

That some churches and other
faith communities choose to ignore pleas by community health
professionals for safe practices and created super-spreader events,
while claiming to act in the name of God.

That decisions about when to
close and when to open were not guided by our Bishop or annual
conference leaders, but simply left up to us. (Not that I like top
down leadership either, but leadership becomes imperative when safety
is an issue.)

That when it became clear that
we needed masks the way we got them was through the works of
volunteer saints (thank you!) rather than the government we thought
was prepared to protect us.

That reopening plans have
continued to prioritize “the economy” rather than the people.
Yes, small businesses are struggling, but there are POLICIES that
could help, instead of risking the lives of the workers.

That police use of deadly force
on people of color JUST KEEPS GOING.

That the 644 billionaires in the
USA have earned $1.3 trillion dollars in the past year¹
while 1 in 6 Americans are food insecure.²

That somehow, SOMEHOW, there
still isn’t the will to create universal health care or a livable
minimum wage in our country (or at least its government), even though
we now see that we are only as healthy individually as the least
healthy among us collectively.

That all of the inequalities and
injustices of our society have been on display, and they continue to
be deadly, and there still isn’t a communal will to change.

That the things we need to do to
end this pandemic have been clear for a very long time, but between
political propaganda and the culture war and the need for clear
leadership and a priority on care for the vulnerable, it hasn’t been
done.

I
could go on. But I want to leave some for you to fill in on your
own.

There
is a lot to be righteously angry about. And today, I suggest we feel
it. Feel the anger of the last year, and all the people who have
been lost and all the opportunities that have been lost, and all the
exhaustion we’ve experienced.

Now,
I do NOT want you to let it go.

Not
what you were expecting? That’s fair. I don’t necessarily want you
to keep on being so angry that your blood pressure goes up or you
seek out comfort food, because that just does more harm. But I also
don’t want you to get angry and then “largely ignored it because…
well… what are you gonna do?”

Get
mad. Then get organized. That’s how we change the world. And if
now isn’t the time to organize, then it is the time to get informed,
and to build relationship so we can organize, have direct action, and
make change when the time is ripe. Or, perhaps, now is the time to
get centered into spiritual practice with God, so God can start
pushing and prodding on our hearts to let us know how to organize and
act first. So, I want you to keep righteous anger, and use it as
energy to do good.

Because
that’s how Jesus did it, and that’s how I think God calls us to do
it. Thanks be to God.

Amen

1 https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/

2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/hunger-coronavirus-economy/
To be fair, I averaged some stats.

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

March 7, 2021

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“Self-Denial and A Plague” based on Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16…

February 28, 2021
by Sara Baron

In
the book “Debt: The first 5000 Years,” David Graeber says
economic history as we know it is a falsehood. Instead, he says,
currency came into being this way: in order for empires to expand,
they needed armies at their ever expanding borders; in order to have
armies further from home there needed to be a way to feed them; in
order to convince people to feed armies, they gave the coins to the
army as pay and REQUIRED all the people have some of those coins to
give to the empire. Thus the creation of taxes, coins, expanded
military might, and markets came into being together. Furthermore,
coins made it much easier to calculate and charge interest, which
made it much easier to keep some people in poverty and make the rich
richer.

Graeber
also says that the time when “markets” were created in history
was ALSO the time that the world’s major religions were formed. (It
was a LONG era.) He proposes the religions were an oppositional
force to the value system of the markets. Instead of valuing coins,
interest, and violence, religions emphasized the inherent value of
people and our responsibility to care for each other.¹

When
I read that conception of the history of religion, I was excited and
relieved. First of all, it sounds like God. God works in contexts,
and expansive religions weren’t needed until expansive markets needed
to be countered. Smaller, tribal expressions of faith worked just
fine. It also makes sense of our Bible, which if we’re honest,
bounces back and forth between utterly radical critique of the
systems of power and empire and — well, justifying systems of power
and empire, as if there is a tug of war about the empire trying to
appropriate religion. Over all though, I found it a relieve to see
the 40,000 foot view of what we’re doing.

Both
of our passages today are about following God’s ways. In Genesis we
God hear claiming Abraham and Sarah and making plans to work with
them in the future. In Mark we hear reflections of the early church,
which was undergoing significant persecution, reflecting on the
powers of life and death.

So,
what does it mean to follow God’s ways?

This
was an open question in Genesis, and in Mark, and has been one in our
lives too.

This
is an open question in modern times too, and I hear people offer a
variety of answers. For some following God includes and is expressed
by particular clothing or diets. For some it includes and is
embodied in particular prayer types or times. For some it is
reflected in personal choices – everything from what words are
said, to abstinence from drugs or alcohol or sex – or just dancing
to what is purchased and where and why. For some this is reflected
in choices to join or be present with a faith community for worship –
or more. For some this is related to particular ways of seeing unity
with the divine. For yet others it is related to energy and effort
being used to build the kindom of God.

John
Wesley broke things into 4 categories: personal acts of holiness
(prayer, Bible Study, healthy living), communal acts of holiness
(worship, study, group decision making, sacraments), personal acts of
mercy (doing good works), and communal acts of mercy (seeking
justice.) Sometimes I hear people focus on only 1 of those 4, but
they work best as a whole.

To
break that down into really direct language – I sometimes hear
people think that speaking without swearing and abstaining from
caffeine are SUFFICIENT ways of being faithful to God. More power to
those who find spiritual power in those choices, but I don’t think
they’re sufficient in following God. Following God requires
connecting with others, as well as caring for others, not just
behaving “properly.” (Whatever that means.)

And
all of that gets us to today – to what some of my friends call
“Coronatide.” (If you don’t get it, don’t worry, it isn’t funny
enough to explain.) When reading a passage so emphatically about
self-denial as a means of following Jesus, how do we hear it TODAY?

It
seems to me that two mostly distinct forms of self-sacrifice have
been occurring over the past year:

There has been the sacrifice and
self-denial of those who have directly cared for others at risk to
themselves –which has included people who have gotten sick and
people who have died because of taking this risk.

There has also been a quieter
sacrifice and self-denial of those who have put life as they know it
aside for the well-being of others. (Masks, distancing, not doing
things they love, not being with people they love). To some degree
this sort of sacrifice comes with privilege – many would choose
this one and couldn’t. That doesn’t meant that this sacrifice has
been easy (it hasn’t), nor unimportant. These quiet sacrifices have
taken care of the whole, including those in the first group offering
care.

At
first glance, Mark’s passage seems to be about making a choice to
follow Jesus, and sticking with it. Upon close examination, the Mark
passage is more radical than it first appears. One scholar
summarizes, “The threat to punish by death is the bottom line of
the power of the state; fear of this threat keeps the dominant order
intact. By resisting this fear and pursuing the kingdom’s practice
even at the cost of death, the disciple contributes to shattering the
powers’ reign of death in history. To concede the state’s
sovereignty in death is to refuse its authority in life.”²

Religion
> market/empire indeed!

Mark
suggests here that to choose to follow Jesus is to deny and ignore
the threats of the state. It is to pick a full and abundant life,
and not fear.

Does
that feel strange right now? I don’t know if anyone feels like their
life has been full and abundant in the past year. And there has been
LOTS of fear.

Unless…

Unless
we change out we think about it. No, the past year has not been
“full and abundant,” but this past year we have picked LIFE for
ourselves and for others over and over again. We have prioritized
the full and abundant life of the COMMUNITY over ease and delight in
our own lives. We have tried to maximize the number of people who
will have long, full, healthy lives – with each and every difficult
choice we make.

And
sometimes it is a really important thing to remember that the stuff
we do – masks, and social distancing, and zoom (eh) and lack of
hugs, we do for a reason.

For
life.

For
each other.

For
Jesus.

For
the kindom.

We
have been following the way of God in new, different, and difficult
ways. We have been denying ourselves the joy of in person worship;
we have been carrying the crosses of wearing masks, forfeiting the
lives we know for … all for the sake of other people’s continued
lives.

We
have been trying to take care of all of God’s beloveds. We have been
reminded that the way to care for one is to care for the whole. It
has been hard, and it has mattered – and it still matters. While
what we’ve done has largely been quiet and seemingly small, thanks be
to God for what we’re able to do for each other!

Amen

1David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011).

2Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, 274. He is quoting
Taylor, 1963: 247.

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

February 28, 2021

Uncategorized

“Rainbows and Rain” based on Genesis 9:8-17 and Mark…

February 21, 2021
by Sara Baron

When
do you look for rainbows? After it rains, right? The Genesis story
connects the rainbow with God’s promise not to flood the earth –
again. It is an oddly timed symbol for such a promise, because by
the time it stops raining and the rainbow shows up … it has stopped
raining and the fear of flooding is likely already relieved.

Or,
maybe that’s the beauty of it.

Because
during a rainstorm we can anticipate it. “When this is over, we
can look for a rainbow!” So, even during the storm, we anticipate
it’s ending and the reminder that all will be well.

Of
course, in these days of climate changed by humans, rain can be
rather scary at times. Floods come more often, and more destructive
than usual. But that actually fits. The ancient Israelites were
desert people and deserts have weird relationships with rain. That
is, they need water for life, and have less of it than most, but
because the earth is so parched most of the time, and water tends to
come in deluges rather than sprinkles, heavy rainstorms quickly lead
to flash flooding.

The
ancient Israelites may have had some of our current misgivings about
torrential rain, and this story may have been a way to center in the
midst of their fears. While it rains, you can anticipate God’s
promise. When it is pouring, you start preparing for God’s sign of
hope.

While
I believe that the rainbow became a symbol for LGBTQIA pride because
of the diversity of colors representing celebrating the diverse ways
of being, I have always appreciated this anticipatory hope aspect of
it as well. The choice of the rainbow symbol, to those aware of this
Genesis story, is a choice to say, “things aren’t good now, but
they’re gonna be.”

Or,
in the language of the African American church tradition, “God is
the one who makes a way out of no way.” (I’m so thankful for the
creation of pride flags that intentionally include people of color as
well as the trans community in the beauty of human diversity.)

Dear
ones, the rainbow feels like a good symbol in the midst of our
current “Rainstorm”, doesn’t it? Or perhaps you want to call it
a monsoon. Your choice. 😉

Which,
come to think of it, is also the Jesus narrative, and our gospel
lesson today. So much of what happens in the story assumes a greater
knowledge of the time of Mark and Jesus than we generally have, so
let me retell the story with some context put in:

“In those days, Jesus came
from Nazareth (Nowhereville) of Galilee (sketchy!) – leaving behind
his family, friends, and village – everything he knew, everything
he was. He was baptized by John – a rural Holy Man, in the River
Jordan, the traditional waters for the Ancient Jewish People.
Baptism marked Jesus as a student of John’s, it also symbolized his
choice to leave behind his society and culture and obligations, and
follow only the Divine.

As he was coming out of the
water, he had a God-experience, a rather beautiful one. It was as if
the heavens were torn open and God was more accessible, and the
Spirit came right there to be with him. Jesus heard a voice offering
a blessing, claiming him! “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased.” In such a way, he who had left his kin
was adopted into God’s family.

After such a profound blessing
though, the Spirit of God send Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus did
not choose it, the wilderness is the place where it is hard to
sustain life, and he was alone, and he struggled, and he was tempted,
and he had to figure out what it would mean for his life to be a
Holy Man too. He was there for 40 days, like Moses was awaiting an
audience with God. With God’s help – again proving Jesus as God’s
kin – Jesus made it through.

When he came back out of the
wilderness, his teacher John had been arrested. He was on his own as
a Holy Man. He went back to Galilee, that suspicious place he was
from, and started speaking God’s ‘good news.’ Which didn’t sound
exactly like people expected it to. He said, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good
news.’”¹

That
“good news” seems to require a little bit more examination. One
scholar points out, “’Gospel’ was most commonly used in antiquity
to announce benefits to the populace.”²
Another summarizes what Jesus says with, “He boldly announces that
the reign of God – with its dreams of justice and love, equality
and abundance, wholeness and unity- is dawning.”³

Jesus
is a rainbow.

He
is a sign of hope, in the midst of the storm. He comes out of
nowhere, is claimed by God, and offers a message of hope and promise.
The world with its power hierarchies, the world that counts some
people as “disposable”, the world where economies exist to let
rich people get richer on the labor of the poor, the world that wants
to appropriate religion to support the powerful, the world that tells
the 99% to fight each other for the scraps left over after the 1%
have been fed, the world which says to take care of yourself and your
own first and let other’s fend for themselves – the WORLD’s powers
are at an end. A new reign is coming, and it will look entirely
different.

In
God’s kindom, there is no hierarchy, everyone is working toward for
the common good. In God’s kindom there are no disposable people, all
are treated as beloved children of God. In God’s kindom, there are
neither rich nor poor. Instead, each person offers their gifts and
labor for the betterment of the whole, and resources are distributed
according to need. In God’s kindom, we all treat each other as
“insiders” and work for each other’s well-being as well as our
own.

To
repent is to let go of the fear, the competitiveness, and the
judgements of the WORLD, and allow the love, the hope, and the
compassion of the kindom to take root.

This
isn’t easy. It never has been. Nor is it now. Judgements are hard
to let go of, including judgements of ourselves. They’re extra hard
in matters of life and death, like vaccines, and access to health
care, and decisions about masking and distancing and schooling and
childcare and caution vs. risk these days. Right? The issue is that
these judgments slip far too easily into shame, including self-shame
from people who have gotten COVID, which IS blaming victims.

I
don’t claim the authority to know about the best vaccine distribution
plan, but I do think it is useful to take a kindom look at our
pandemic lives. What does it look like when we look from love, hope,
and compassion?

From
that angle, I see a lot of gratitude: for the ways people have
adapted to make all of us healthier, for creativity and hard work in
trying to keep things going as they need to, for those offering care
or services even when there is risk to self involved.

I
also see more clearly the injustices of the moment: that not all
“frontline workers” have had a choice about if they want to be in
the frontlines at all, and that far too many people are forced by
economic circumstances to take risks they don’t want to take. That
people of color have been impacted in a multiplicity of ways: with
less access to adequate housing, with more people doing “essential
work”, with less access to protective gear, with higher poverty
rates that require taking greater risks, with less access to health
care, and with less responsive health care when it is accessed. (To
name a few.) Each of these systemic pieces of racism in our society
are highlighted by the higher infection rates and higher death rates
among people of color, and show us yet again the impact of disparity
on people’s very lives. Lack of equity kills, and movements from the
world-as-it-is to the World-as-God-would-have-it-be are movements
from death to life.

Looking
at the pandemic from the kindom view, mostly, I’m overwhelmed with
compassion: for the impossible decisions everyone is making to the
best of their ability; for the dehumanizing isolation so many are
living with; to the life-draining balancing acts being asked of
mothers, fathers, and caregivers. From this view, judgements
lighten, and love grows.

Finally,
the kindom view reminds us that we are no stronger than our “weakest
link.” That is, we are unable to be healthy in isolation. Until
the WORLD is vaccinated, all of us are at risk. And that’s always
been true, but now we can see it clearly.

We’re
all in this together. We’re all in this storm together (although it
impacts us differently.) And from the midst of this storm, we’re all
reminded that at the end of the storm, the rainbow comes. God
doesn’t abandon us in the storm, hope doesn’t die, the kindom is at
hand, repent and believe. Entering into the kindom’s values will
help kindom come. Remembering the rainbow helps us live through the
storm. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Summary
influenced by:

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, ~128.

Bruce J. Malina and Richard L.
Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) 146-7.

Debie
Thomas, “Beasts and Angels”
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2924-beasts-and-angels
2-14-21, accessed 2-18-21.

2Malina
and Rohrbaugh, 148.

3Myers,
91.

February 21, 2021

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