“Role Model?” based on Luke 16:1-3

September 18, 2022
by Sara Baron

Parables are not fables. They don’t
teach us a direct lesson that can be immediately applied to living a
good life. Case in point: the parable of the dishonest manager. If
I were giving awards for the most morally ambiguous parable, this one
would be in the running.

For starters, the issue presented is of
a DISHONEST manager, that’s who we’re dealing with as the… hero?
The dishonest manager gets fired, but before the word gets out, he
cancels some of the debt of the owners debtors, presumably aiming to
get hired by one of them for his next gig. So he is dishonest,
underhanded, and self-serving. And he gets commended by the person
who had fired him and used as an example of kindom values by Jesus?

This guy is our role model?

Let no one say the role of the preacher
in interpreting the texts for a modern audience is easy.

But… let’s give this a try.

First of all, I think we better have a
solid sense of this
story in its historical context so that we read less into it and hear
it more as first hearers would have. Here is redacted commentary
from the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

Rich landowners
frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the
household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and
liquidate debts in the name of the master. Such agents were usually
paid in the form of a commission or fee on each transaction they
arranged. While token under-the-table additions to loan contracts
were common, all the principal and interest had to be in a publicly
written contract approved by both parties. There is no warrant for
the frequent assumption here that the agent could exact as much as 50
percent above a contract for his fee. If that had been done, the
rage of the peasants would have immediately been made known to the
landowner ,.. who would have been implicated in the extortion if he
acquiesced. This is clearly not the case in this story.

Traditional
Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss
incurred by his employer for which he was responsible. He could also
be put in prison to extort the funds from his family. If the
dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been
seen as damaging the reputation of the master. Severe punishment
could be expected. Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply
dismissed.

In the case of
the dismissal of an agent, the dismissal was effective as soon as the
agent was informed of it, and from that time forward, nothing the
agent did was binding on the person who employed him. The plan
worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his
dismissal got to the village. …

The scheme of the
manager is to seek new patrons….

The debtors here
[paid a fixed amount of the produce]. The size of the debts is
extraordinary. Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they
are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of
wheat. Storytelling hyperbole may be involved, or as recent
investigations have suggested, debts are large enough that they may
be the tax debts of an entire village. …

The “rich man”
presumably has …an interpersonal attachment to his manager. Having
discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or
demanding repayment, the manager depends on a similar reaction in the
scheme he cooks up. It is a scheme that places the landowner in a
peculiar bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks
serious alienation in the village, where villagers would already have
been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the
reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the
manager for having made the “arrangement”) as a noble and
generous man. It is the latter reaction upon which the manager
counts.¹

The more I read about the Jewish
peasants of Jesus day, the more I am convinced that they were well
aware of the systems of injustice that kept them down. I find this
to also be true of people living in poverty today.

I’m not sure if there is an actual
protagonist in this story, really. The rich man is definitely not
seen as a good man, in a society were wealth was assumed to be
stolen. But, the person whose job it was to enable the rich man’s
continued wealth accumulation was ALSO not seen in a positive light.
Many people I know can identify with the managers bind. He was
better off being a manager and getting a decent cut of the accounts
he created than he was in most other positions he was eligible for,
but working for “the man” whose very wealth oppressed others was
also inherently dishonorable work. Or at least, I believe the
peasants would have seen it that way.

And quite often when I think too hard
about what it means to work for “The United Methodist Church”, I
fear it too is inherently dishonorable work, even if I believe
working for THIS church is a moral good. There are SO MANY jobs like
this though. Working for the health care system – YAY, caring for
people! But also, making wealth for investors in insurance
companies. Sigh. Working in education – YAY, teaching people
things they need to know! But also, participating in a system that
maintains income INEQUALITY over lifetimes. Groan. Actually, come
to think of it a lot of jobs, probably most jobs, are really morally
ambiguous given the fact that we live in a society that treats a
large percentage of people as expendable, and the institutions and
systems of society are part of how we maintain this system.

(Right now I feel like John Oliver when
he talks about how incredibly cheery his show.)

So in the midst of the realities of
income inequality, injustice, and violations of Jewish law, comes
this incredibly morally ambiguous parable. I think the way I can
most easily make sense of it is if the debts forgiven are the debts
of the whole village. That brings the whole thing together for me –
including that it suggests the Rich Man owns the whole village which
was common enough in the Roman Empire but INHERENTLY immoral in the
tradition of the Ancient Jews who believed that every family got land
access that could not be taken away from them. This is related to
the banning of INTEREST, which keeps people from being stuck in
poverty cycles. The rich man owning the village means that the
morals of the community have been deeply violated, and both the rich
man and his obsequious servants are at fault.

The post-firing actions of the
dishonest manager have some accidental Robin Hood implications then.
He cancels debt, creates a better balance, eases the lives of the
people. But, it is still pretty clear that he does this FOR HIMSELF,
and the benefit to the people is mostly accidental.

Now, this has some themes that fit
other parables and other teachings of Jesus. There is a value in the
cornering of the rich man into being generous, in winning the
“shrewd” fight, and in taking care of the people, no matter the
intention.

While I believe that the “moral” of
the story is likely tacked on later, the Jesus Seminar thinks it goes
back to Jesus and I think Luke placed it well. “No servant can
serve two masters. No doubt that slave will either hate one and love
the other or be devoted to one and disdain the other. You can’t be
enslaved to both God and a bank account.” The book “Debt: The
History of the First 5000 Years” says that the world’s major
religions emerged IN RESPONSE (to counter) the world’s first market
economies. That is, there started to be an assumption that markets
were GOOD, and defined what life should be, and those who won at the
market deserved it and those who lost at the market deserved it, and
that was just how life was.

In the face of that, religions said,
“nope.” I would make a claim the author didn’t, that this was
related to the Spirit of God NOT being invested in the markets and
the hierarchies they created in the “value” of human life. But,
in a quite literal sense, religions countered the claims of the
market. Money is NOT what matters most. Individual wealth is NOT a
sign of a persons goodness. Instead, all people have value.
Instead, goodness is related to the way All the people are cared for.
Instead, the COMMON GOOD is the definition of a successful society.

God cares for the peasants, even though
the market does not.

This morally ambiguous parable is
likely NOT one we want to take as a simple role model story. BUT, in
the vein of great parables, it is one that invites us into
consideration of our own lives and our own roles. When are we
serving “the rich man” and harming the poor? When are we serving
ourselves, and who is that helping and hurting? When are we serving
the poor, and why? How are we implicated in the systems that
oppress, and how and when are we motivated to shake them up? And,
maybe – when we are backed into a corner afraid for our own
well-being, can we find ways out that help others along the way?

Serving God and not money is not
encouraged in our society. I often fear our economy is the actual
“god” of our society. But the God of our Bible, and the God we
learn about from Jesus is deeply invested in offering us alternatives
to worshipping the economy. Thanks be to God for being worthy of our
worship for being the worthy center of our lives. Amen

1Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292-3.

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

September 18, 2022

Uncategorized

“Are We Lost?” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2022
by Sara Baron

In
simpler times I have heard the parables of the lost coin and the lost
sheep in simpler ways. One can take the perspective of the 99 sheep
or the 9 coins and be rather irked at the ways the 1 is celebrated.
One can take the perspective of the seeker, and join in the joy of
finding the one. One can take the perspective of the outside
observer and wonder if leaving 99 sheep unattended is really the best
way to move towards having 100 sheep, or if throwing a party worth
more than the found coin is the best use of money.

Of
course, there is the most obvious option of taking the perspective of
the lost sheep and being grateful for the shepherd who comes looking
and rescues one from peril (or perhaps pulls you out of a great
tasting meadow, who knows?) Identifying with the sheep is a little
easier than the coin, but nevertheless, the awareness that when we’re
lost we need help is an easy one to turn to.

These
times, beloveds, are not simple times.

In
this time when I read the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin I
think to myself, “are we lost or found?” and I find that the
answer is “I don’t know.” Or, more honestly, the answer is “Yes,
we are lost. Yes, we are found. Yes.”

I
remember preaching in 2016 about the articles I was seeing about how
the 2016 election cycle was doing heavy damage to our country’s
mental health, and therapists were urging people to engage in breaks
from the news, in meditation, in breathing exercises. They were
worried about the stress destabilizing us individually and
collectively. I remember seeing what they were talking about, in
myself and in this church. Tempers were shorter, nuance got lost,
there was more right/wrong and us/them thinking. Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate grew out of that the time, because of the radical
increase in hate crimes.

Here
is the bad news. At this point I think of 2016 as a simpler time.

Sure,
there were oodles of stress. Sure I saw myself, others, and the
church community get worse at basic functioning. Sure, The United
Methodist Church was a dumpster fire. Sure, polarization was at all
time highs. But, that level of communal chronic stress was at that
point relatively new. (We didn’t know it then.)

For
me, the Trump presidency was a daily kick in the gut, or more
specifically in every value I hold dear. And, because I’m not
actually interested in dismissing people because they think
differently from me, I’m aware that for those whose values were
upheld by the Trump presidency, the squeals of horror and outrage
about everything he did ALSO shook them to the core. And, let us
never forget, that foreign adversaries have taken advantage of
differences between us to further polarization, because it benefits
THEM for us to have more HATE in our society.

So,
the stress of the election didn’t settle down. Things kept getting
worse. Then there was the 2019 General Conference of The United
Methodist Church when our denomination doubled down on homophobia and
it became clear that our church at large is not centered in the love
of God. That was a blow, at least to me.

Then
the COVID pandemic began, and we’re sure sick of talking about it,
not to mention living it, I know. But it is relevant here. The
pandemic shook every single part of our society and our lives. And
nothing is the same.

And
quite often we HATE that. Fine, quite often I hate that. It is
disconcerting. It is depressing. It is overwhelming. And then
there are the STILL present challenges of determining where the right
balances are between risks of infecting others with a serious illness
and risks of disconnection and loneliness (which itself can also be
deadly), and the simple deciding is exhausting.

The
stress level has been rising since 2016, sometimes just a slow steady
beat upwards, sometimes in leaps. There are PHYSIOLOGICAL facts
about stress. It makes us less creative. It makes us less
compassionate. It pushes us into black and white thinking. It leads
us into in-group thinking, and making enemies of others. It makes us
selfish.

None
of which look anything like following Jesus. Right?

That’s
a little squirmy for me. That the impacts of stress impede the
capacity to follow Jesus. Because I don’t really get to control
the world and the stresses it throws at me, nor at us. All
of which gets me around to why I think the answer is “yes, we’re
lost.”

But
perhaps you’d like to hear why I think the answer is ALSO, “yes,
we’re found?”

The
starting and ending point of “we’re found’ are quite simple: I do
not believe it is possible to wander away from God. Or, at least, it
is not possible to wander beyond the reaches of God’s love. And, as
God is everywhere, anywhere we are is with God, and God knows where
we are, so we are found. (By God.)

But,
in case that isn’t actually enough for you (although, it is rather a
lot), I’d like to point out what you are doing RIGHT NOW. You are
listening to a sermon. Now, I don’t know all of your personal
reasons for why you do that, but I know some things. I know you have
lots of other things you could be doing, and when you do this you are
making a choice. There seems to be strong evidence that you would
listen to a sermon because you are interested in what makes a good
life and/or in how to live a Godly life and/or in considering how to
get from the world as it is to the world as God would have it be. It
could be you are looking for reasons for hope, or looking for
analysis of what’s going on, or to make meaning of the world, or to
make meaning of life, or maybe you are mostly doing this because
other people you like also do this and you want to connect with them.

Those,
dear ones, are really beautiful reasons to do a thing.

I
remain shocked that this thing we know as church exists. Hear me
out! So, a bunch of people connect with each other and are connected
by their shared commitment to God and living as followers of Jesus.
So they create spaces to work together and worship together. They
give significant gifts of time to caring for the needs of the church
and the community, to learning together and playing together and
doing important things together.

Then,
and this is the one that keeps on shocking me, they give MONEY to the
church. Enough to PAY STAFF even (AND take care of the building,
another miracle). Staff to help take care of the resources (sexton,
building), staff to take care of the community (breakfast cook),
staff to take care of the communication and connections
(administrative assistant), and even staff to take the time to listen
to the world and the Bible and the people and try to help make sense
of things (pastor.)

I
am amazed that you all do this. It is INSANE.

You
realize how much time, energy, money, and frustration you’ve given to
this place right? When people say “church family” they may in
fact be reflecting that some of the demands family puts on our lives
is similar to the demands church puts on their lives.

But
this is also GOOD NEWS. Because in the midst of this world, people
are giving of themselves in hope that what we do together is part of
building better lives and a better world. Lives are changed here, by
friendship, by theology, by study, by singing, by hope. We are more
together than we could ever be apart.

And
even now, even when everything is different, even when showing up is
in multiple mediums and often feels SO strange compared to what we
knew in the past – even now, you all keep on caring enough to
listen, to try, to work towards good. And that’s about as “found”
as I can imagine existing. I am, quite honestly, profoundly moved
that you exist and keep on keeping on.

There
is a final piece to this though. It isn’t just that we are lost and
we are found, as two separate pieces. It is also that we are lost
and found, both at the same time, and that has its own truth. This
week I got an email from a clergy coach who talked about this, and
while I want to share everything Rev. Lauren Stephens-Reed said, I’m
condensing to this:

leading
innovation is about getting people to co-create the future with you.
This
kind of approach is warranted when your purpose is clear but the
future is not. Is there any better descriptor of – any greater need
in – this time in the Church, in the world?

I
do believe our purpose is clear. We are co-creating the kindom of
God with God. We work together to promote the idea that the kindom
and its values are important, to help each other learn in order to
build the kindom, and to help each other live its values. We don’t
know everything, but we do know that some of the prime values of the
kindom are love, justice, compassion, and inclusion, so we work on
those. We are going it TOGETHER because we believe we are more
together than apart.

So,
we don’t know how to get to the future.

That’s
OK.

God
does, and God will lead us, TOGETHER.

We
are lost dear ones, and we are found, dear ones. And it is hard but
it is OK. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

September 11, 2022

Uncategorized

“To Be Known” based on Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 and…

September 4, 2022
by Sara Baron

For
years now, the book of Philemon has tickled my funny bone. That fact
is now making me squirm.

It
made me laugh cause I read it from a logical perspective, and I was
amused by the choice of argument style. I thought it was
manipulative, but brilliant. From this angle, the line “For this
reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your
duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love–and I,
Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ
Jesus” is potent. Paul points out his power, steps back from it,
but then adds layers of guilt about his age and his position as a
prisoner to strengthen his claim that what he wants should be given
to him “freely.”

Taken
from a pure logic perspective, it is a strong argument, and indeed
manipulative.

But
I wonder what made me take it from a logic perspective.

Because
when I read it now, it sounds like it is an honest emotional appeal.
The gist is that Paul has come to love and depend on Onesimus. Paul
would like to have Onesimus with him, but decides that the right
thing to do is let Philemon make his own decision. It is pretty
clear Paul isn’t enjoying doing the right thing, sending the letter
to Philemon with Onesimus and awaiting the response (hopefully coming
back with Onesimus) is hard. He doesn’t want to be separated even
that long.

Paul
does the right thing, and he does it while making every appeal he can
to Philemon for the thing he needs.

Now,
Paul’s request is not small. Onesimus is a slave belonging to
Philemon, and Paul requests that Philemon free Onesimus, recognize
him as an equal in the Body of Christ, and then send him back to Paul
as a free person to serve the Body of Christ by accompanying Paul as
a companion and equal.

That’s
really living out the line Paul wrote in 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.”
(3:28) Paul says that now that Onesimus is in Christ, it doesn’t
make sense for him to be the slave of another person with whom he is
“one in Christ Jesus.”

This
is about as radical of a notion as one could have. It upends the
entire economic, familial, and societal structure of Paul’s time. It
is VERY Jesus like. It is the reasonable extension of Jesus’s
teaching. It simply disregards the known hierarchies of the world
and replaces them with the bonds of human affection and equality in
the eyes of God.

This
is ignoring everything but the love of God, and appealing on the
basis of that love for things to be different.

And
Paul actually asks for it. He doesn’t just write about it, doesn’t
just indicate this would be an appropriate way to follow Jesus. He
asks for it, in real time, because he both believes in it and because
he needs it to be true.

The
emotions and needs behind his request are what make me uncomfortable
with my prior interpretation. I’ve been working on becoming more
attentive to my own feelings and needs, as well as learning to see
and name other people’s feelings and needs. I’ve been working on
this for a decade and it makes a difference, but I still have plenty
of work to do.

Maybe
I’ve been in too many manipulative situations where people aren’t
honest about their needs, or I’ve felt backed into the corner, or
disregarded and unheard. Maybe that’s why I’ve read this as if Paul
was trying to manipulate Philemon. But right now, it really looks to
me like he is laying all his cards on the table, and yet making his
request one that Philemon gets to decide about. He asks, he
explains, he offers what he can offer, but he makes space for
Philemon to do what Philemon will do.

He
makes a request of Philemon, not a demand. Maybe because it seems
like it would be really hard to say no to this request, maybe that’s
why I read it as manipulative. But Paul asks, and doesn’t demand.
Paul doesn’t use his authority to decree. He ASKS. It is almost as
if, despite his role as a church leader, he doesn’t hold himself
above other people of faith.

You
know, this letter is making me love Paul a little more.

I
love his love for Onesimus, and I love his honesty in really needing
Onesimus with him. I think I particularly love that last part
because it is so … not stoic. Paul isn’t sitting in prison saying,
“I’m fine, no worries.” He is sitting in prison saying, “this
is really much nicer with someone I love around, and I’d like to keep
having that.”

Now,
maybe you are thinking to yourself, “well, sure, someone who is
confined to PRISON deserves
a little bit of comfort and support.” If so, thank God! I’m a
little bit tired of the narrative that people who get confined to
prisons somehow stop being human and stop needing basic human things
like edible food and human connection.

But,
anyway, if you were thinking to yourself that it was OK for Paul to
ask for some comfort in prison in his old age, then I’d invite you to
take the compassion and apply it to yourself. You, too, have needs,
you too have the right to try to get them met. Regardless of age or
imprisonment status.

When
I say needs I am saying things that could fall under categories like
autonomy, connection, meaning, peace, physical well-being, and play.
I’m not JUST talking about food, water, and shelter although those
are part of physical well-being. The other categories are ALSO
universal human needs, ones we ALL have that impact everything about
our lives.

I’m
making the radical claim that in the letter to Philemon, Paul is
showing himself to be a human being with needs, and that reminds us
that we are human beings with needs too. And we, too, have the right
to find ways to get those needs met. I think that it may be true
that in our society claiming everyone has needs AND a right to seek
to meet those needs almost as radical as Paul saying that a slave
should be freed because of equality in Christ.

Now,
this brings me around to Psalm 139 which may or may not have made you
a little bit uncomfortable. Someone asked me in late June what text
is used to claim that the Bible is against abortion, and my reply
was, “Huh, I don’t know. Cause it isn’t there. But maybe they use
Psalm 139?” After all, verse 13 does refer to a human being known
by God even before birth when they say, “For it was you who formed
my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

However,
that doesn’t say what people say it says. Psalm 139 also talks about
God knowing what we have to say before the words are on our tongues.
The idea that God knows us before we are born is a way of saying that
God us before we even ARE.

When
I take away the ways Psalm 139 has been misused, I find it rather
comforting. God knows us, sees us, is with us, AND LOVES us. God’s
love isn’t some generic thing, nor based on how we preform. God
knows AND love us as we are. We have no secrets from God.

That
is, God knows our feelings and our thoughts, and our needs. God
doesn’t expect us to be able to pretend away our needs, or push away
our feelings. God KNOWS them with us, and works with us to get our
needs met and our feelings acknowledged.

God
isn’t asking us to be perfect or stoic, cause God knows what it is
like to be us. That’s comforting.

Now,
it is possible that some of you are wondering why this matters, and
why I’m making such a huge point about having needs, and it being OK,
and working to get them met. Because these are not exactly the most
obvious points to make from our scriptures today. One piece of this
is that discovering that I TOO was a human who also had needs and
that wasn’t WRONG was a pretty big deal to me. I knew there were
universal human needs, sure, but for a very long time I still though
I was supposed to be exempt from that, and I’d like to help you let
that go too if you hold that idea.

But
also, I think there is a lot of fear around being human and having
needs and being “needy.” There is a sense that it is weak or bad
or something. And I think that does a whole lot of damage to the
world and the church. And I think that if we are going to matter to
each other, if we are going to be a community who loves each other
and helps each other grow, if we are going to matter to the world, if
we are going to be people who meet others where they are – then
we need to get more comfortable with our humanity and our needs. I
think this is a way TOWARDS God.

To
be specific, I hear in this church profound fear of talking about
conflict. There is a sense that if we talk about things we’ve
disagreed about, everything may blow up and we will regret it.

I
believe that if we brush aside our feelings and our needs, if we
pretend away our disagreements, if we sweep our history under the
rug, it will poison us from the inside. I believe that the hardest
things about being a church are the ways that old conflicts never got
resolved and keep on bringing new hurts, and if we keep on doing that
we won’t be able to keep on functioning.

AND,
here is the good news in all of this. If we can hold on to our own
needs, and make space for other people’s needs, conflict gets a whole
lot less scary!! If I have a need for space, ease, and
self-expression while you have a need for connection, and efficacy
and closeness that could lead us to conflict pretty fast, right?
BUT, if instead of blaming me for my need for space or blaming you
for your need for connection we just took those as givens, we could
find some really cool ways to meet both of our needs.

(Summary:
blame is not useful in conflict nor conflict resolutions, but needs
themselves are fine and can help us find win-wins.)

I
believe in a God of win-wins. I believe in a God who knows us and
likes us and is at peace with our needs and would like us to be. I
believe in a God who of equality and equity who has no commitment
whatsoever to the hierarchical systems of any age. And I believe God
is with us, willing and able to work with us in this community and
this church. We don’t need to throw our needs to get to God or
connect with each other. Instead, like Paul, we can acknowledge what
we need and ask each other for help. May God help us find the
strength to be so vulnerable! Amen

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

September 4, 2022

Uncategorized

Untitled

September 19, 2021
by Sara Baron

“Speaking” based on James 3:1-12

Well, here I am preaching on James 3 which is difficult because James 3 is about how strict and impossible the standards are for those who preach. Um, great. That doesn’t seem like a set up for failure at all 😉

James is well aware of Greek culture in his time, and Greek culture had a lot of things to say about the power of the tongue and the difficulty in controlling it. What makes James different is that he is HARSHER than everyone else. James thinks it is IMPOSSIBLE to control the tongue, and James is clear on why people should try anyway.

I see no need to attempt to make his point better than he does – the power of speech is immense, both for good and for evil, and even people themselves often lose control of their speech. Furthermore, perfect speech is impossible.

There is a whole field of theology focused on this. To quote from Wikipedia, who did a good job on this:

Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology,[1]is a form of theologicalthinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God.[web 1] It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology, which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is.1

That is, there is a whole field that starts with the idea that you can’t speak truths about God. Talk about a preacher’s bind!!

I do wonder a little bit how time has impacted the truth James shares. He wrote to a primarily oral culture, where most relationships occurred directly face to face. We aren’t in that culture anymore, especially not now. Many of our interactions now happen through screens, typed with our finger tips rather than spoken with our tongues. At the core though, I’m not sure that it makes that much difference. What is said matters.

And, as James eventually points out, his primary concern is how people of faith speak about others. Luke Timothy Johnson, in the Anchor Bible summarizes with, “When one uses the same tongue to bless God, yet curse the human person who is created according to the likeness of God (3:9), one betrays in a fundamental sense the allegiance by which one claims to live. … Something more than the perfection of the human sage is at stake here. What is at issue is the proper mode of perceiving and responding to God’s creation.” (264-5)

If we bless God, we should also bless God’s creation, and God’s creatures.

Our speech should be a blessing.

Our speech should never be a curse. Nothing like being reminded that following in the way of Jesus is challenging, huh?

This feels like the final step in the process of remembering that the way we love God is to love our neighbors (all our neighbors). And then the way we praise and bless God is to praise and bless our neighbors (all our neighbors).

It is to use our words to build the kindom of God.

It reminds of the command to pray without ceasing, and in this case to let the words of our mouths be prayers of blessing whenever we speak.

In the midst of these standards, it becomes a bit of a relief that James doesn’t think perfection is possible. This being James though, I don’t think that means he lets us off the hook. He just says “yeah, it is impossible do it anyway.”

And, that’s practical advice. We have to speak. We have to communicate. We have to speak to God and of God, we have to speak to and of each other. And, quite often, we’re going to get it wrong, and that doesn’t mean we stop trying to get it right.

I find myself thinking about anti-racism conversations I’ve been in, when the space is created for honest conversation and white people become so scared of being called out for what they say that they try just not talking. I’ve done it. It feels safer. But it also cuts of the possibility for growth, learning, vulnerability, and relationship. Perfect speech isn’t possible, but giving up on speaking doesn’t end up helping either.

So what do we do? Our best.

We remember the power of words, and we remember the wonder of God’s creation, and we remember how beloved all of God’s creatures are, and we seek to speak with blessings as much as we can. And when we don’t, we notice, and use it to do better the next day.

(It isn’t so different from the rest of trying to build the kindom, either.)

There are tools. Nonviolent communication theory is one of my favorites. Others like simple reminders like, “before you speak, think: Is it True, is it Helpful, is it Inspiring, is it Necessary, is it Kind?” There are also the most consistent tools of all: spiritual disciplines that keep us connected to the Divine help us to be blessings no matter what comes at us; and breathing exercises and sources of grounding do so too.

In the end, as per usual, I don’t have much more to say than, James is right. And, it is hard to follow his advice. Let’s try anyway.

Amen.

1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology accessed 9/15/2021 at 2:45PM

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

September 19, 2021