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Sermons

“Requirements” based on Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12

  • February 2, 2020February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

By
my records, this is the 4th time I’ve preached on the
Beatitudes here, and the 7th time overall.  To be honest,
this makes things a little bit challenging.  To be a responsible
preacher, I think I have to go over the basics each time, but to be
an INTERESTING preacher I need to offer you something new.  The
Beatitudes, however, have been around for a while and they aren’t …
well…new.

In
fact, they’re so not new to those of us with lifetime exposures to
Christianity, that I’m not sure we can hear them anymore.  Bruce
Malina and Richard Rohrbough wrote the “Social-Science Commentary
on the Synoptic Gospels” which is one of the most useful books I’ve
ever met.  They put the Gospels into a social context, and use it to
explain how things would have made sense in the stories and to those
first hearing the stories.

Their
commentary on the Beatitudes is particularly helpful, as they
DISAGREE with the general consensus that “blessed” can be
translated as “fortunate” or “lucky” or “happy.”  Those
are all good translations of the Latin version of the text,
but they miss the social context of Jesus’s day.  Instead, they point
out:

The language used here, i.e. ‘blessed’ is
honorific language. … Contrary to the dominant social values, these
‘blessed are…’ statements ascribe honor to those unable to defend
their positions or those who refuse to take advantage of or trespass
on the position of another.  They are not those normally honored by
the culture.  Obviously, then, the honor granted comes from God, not
from the usual social sources.1

The
honor bit of this isn’t simply honor like we understand it today.
One of the primary points of the book is that honor and shame were
understood as a zero-sum reality in the Mediterranean region at that
time.  One was born into a certain amount of honor or shame and the
only way one gained honor was by gaining it FROM someone else and
that person then experienced an increase in shame.  Honor was the
FUNDMENTAL value in society, and it was a “limited good.”  In
fact, the “poor” and the “rich” in the New Testament are not
actually economic terms to begin with.  Rather, to be “poor” was
to be a person living with less honor than one was born to, and to be
“rich” was to have gained honor from others.  Malina and
Rorhrbough put it this way, “The ancient Mediterranean attitude was
that every rich person is either unjust or the hair of an unjust
person,” one who had stolen from others what they had.2
They conclude that,”The terms ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ therefore, are
better translated ‘greedy,’ and socially unfortunate.’”3
(This isn’t to say poverty wasn’t an issue, it was just such a
UNIVERSAL issue that it wasn’t actually the focus.)

This
understanding of honor, and the connection of honor to “blessed
are…”, is the key to understanding the Beatitudes in their
original context.  The challenge is that sometimes the text has been
used to mean the opposite of it’s intention.  When “Blessed are…”
is translated “lucky” it can SEEM like the beatitudes are saying:
“Lucky are the ones who struggle, don’t worry about them, they’re
better off than you think.”  Thus the social order of the day,
whatever day it may be, is upheld and people’s suffering is
justified.

That
sounds sort of like what a STANDARD set of honor and shame statements
would have been – the ones describing society as it was in Jesus’s
day:

Honorable
are those born into good families.

Honorable
are those who are spoken well of in the town square.

Honorable
are those who own large estates.

Honorable
are the elected officials who make the rules.

Honorable
are those who have many servants.

Honorable
are those who have the status to control others.

Honorable
are those who have the ear of power.

Honorable
are those who can enforce their will with violence.

Honorable
are those who speak, and others have to listen.

That
is, honor belongs to and is used by those are are already powerful,
important, and wealthy.  So, shame belongs to the powerless, the
unimportant, the poor, and those who lose status.  This clarifies
just how different the statements in Matthew’s gospel really are.
Because those that society shames, God does not.

Given
the information we have, the Beatitudes might be heard as:

Honorable to God are those who have lost the
honor of society, while they do not own the kingdoms of earth, they
are part of the kindom of heaven.

Honorable to God are those who are mourn, while
they have lost that which matters, loss is not the final word.

Honorable to God are those who refuse to harm
others, while they may lose out on power and wealth, they will end up
with everything that truly matters.

Honorable to God are those who hunger and thirst
for fairness, righteousness, and justice – it is coming.

Honorable to God are the merciful – those who
do not demand what they have a right to and shame others – they
will also receive mercy when they need it.

Honorable to God are those who are pure in
heart, the kind, for when they look in the world, they are able to
see the hand of God at work.

Honorable to God are the peace-able people, the
ones who reject violence and seek win-win situations, they are like
God.

Honorable to God are the ones who are shamed by
society for making the right choices, they also are a part of the
kindom of heaven.

Jesus
is describing an ENTIRELY ALTERNATE values system, one that ignores
the things that society cared about and instead focuses about caring
for each other, building each other up, not being willing to do harm,
and inverting the assumptions about how honor and shame work.

The
work of Jesus in this Matthew passage tracks well with the questions
posed in Micah.  In this passage God reminds the people what God has
done for them, and they respond with a wish to show appropriate…
well, honor and difference to God.  This leads to the question, “With
what shall I come before the LORD?” and the initial thoughts are
the sorts of gifts one might bring a king to indicate that one
understands oneself to be a vassal – that the approval of the king
is important to your own continued life.    But the answer is that
God does NOT work like that.  God isn’t looking for bribes, like the
kings of the world.  God is looking for something else entirely.

You
may well know this answer: to do justice, and to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God.  Sounds a bit like the Beatitudes,
doesn’t it?

I
asked a question last week about how we as Christians are supposed to
be in relationship with the world.  I think, perhaps, this is a large
part of the answer.  We are to exist within an alternative value
system, one that sees the world with different eyes.  We are to see
the values of justice, and of kindness, of humility, of peacefulness,
of humility, of mercy  – and let those values guide our lives.  How
we relate to the world at large is not in rejection or complicity –
it is with seeing it with different eyes.  

In
the video for the Living the Questions study last week Rev. Winnie
Varghese suggests that as Christians we should be dreaming dreams so
big that the world thinks we are CRAZY, and the dreams are
impossible. The reason, she says, is because God dreams of a truly
just society, and we’re supposed to be dreamers with God.  I think
that both Micah and the Beatitudes point us in the direction of God’s
dreams – of value systems that value compassion, collaboration, and
kindness.  May we dream right alongside of God, and act accordingly.
Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rorhrbough Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Matthew 5:1-12” p. 41.

2Malina,
400.

3Malina,
401.

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

02-02-2020

Sermons

“The Call of Baptism” based on Isaiah 42:1-9 and…

  • January 12, 2020February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Last
weekend, Congregation Gates of Heaven hosted a service of unity for
the Capital Region after acts of anti-Semitism in New York made it
clear that a response was needed.  The event was jointly sponsored by
the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York, the Capital Region
Board of Rabbis, and Schenectady Clergy Against Hate.  By best
estimates over 800 people showed up!

(Interfaith Chapel at the University of Rochester)

The
event was particularly moving, even as the need for it was
distressing.  Schenectady Clergy Against Hate are well practiced in
pulling together community witnesses after attacks on faith
communities.  In our country today, that’s a good skill to have.
That said, I deeply wish we didn’t have the first idea how to respond
to violent attacks in faith communities.  I wish we’d never had a
violent attack to respond to.

Yet,
we have.  

And
while the acts of violence have often been perpetuated by individuals
acting as lone wolves, there is a disturbing connection between them.
Within a society, violence and the threat of violence act as means
of control, particularly of disempowered groups.  

I
would love to believe that in this forward thinking year 2020 we have
reached new heights of open-mindedness and equity, but evidence
proves me wrong.  Violence against people of minority faith
traditions, against people of color, and against women and non-men
continues, and indeed in some areas are expanding.  I believe this
violence functions as a way to maintain control over each of those
groups.  That isn’t to say that is a coordinated effort, but rather
the way that power works in our society impacts who gets attacked and
what impact is felt.  As each “lone wolf” acts, they function to
perpetuate the system of control.

And,
I believe this is against the will of God.

I
hope is is painfully obvious to say this:

God’s love is for Christians,
Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sihks, Pagans, Druids, Agnostics,
Atheists, and members of other faith traditions.  God’s love is not
determined by a person’s faith tradition nor faithfulness, and to
claim otherwise makes God very small and mean indeed.

Similarly, God’s love knows no
national boundaries, language barriers, or income requirements, nor
is it impacted conviction histories.  That just isn’t how God works.

And, consistently, God’s love is
for females, males, people who are intersex, and people who are
non-binary all the same.  

None
of this is news.  We KNOW this.  And yet, perhaps we have not been as
vocal as we need to be about sharing this.  It is painfully obvious
that the world around us does NOT know this.  There are a multitude
of forces around us that define who has value and who doesn’t, and
therefore imply that some people matter more than others – and GOD
DOES NOT AGREE.  

The
Intersectional Justice Book Club discussion yesterday was on Michelle
Alexander’s The New Jim Crow,
in which Alexander names the ways that the War on Drugs has created a
racial underclass by imprisoning mostly men of color and then
enabling discrimination of those with convictions.  She points out
that drug use and drug sales occur across racial groups equally, with
a little bit more happening among white people, and yet 90% of
convictions are of people of color (with the vast majority of those
people being of African American descent.)

She
names, quite directly, that if we cared equally about people of
color, we would not permit such a system in our society.

And
yet we do.  

At
the service last weekend, the speakers gave us work to do.  Their
messages included that we have to:  

Advocate
for religious freedom for each other.

Speak
respectfully and affirmatively of other faith traditions AT ALL TIMES

(For me, this works mostly as:
call out the problems in my own tradition before looking for others,
and I haven’t finished on my own tradition yet. 😉  )

Call
out anyone who doesn’t speak respectfully of a faith tradition

Repent
of the times we have contributed to messages of hate

Remember
the contributions of people of other faith traditions

Seek
legislation that makes attacks on faith groups hate crimes

Have
hope

Become
more loving

Rabbi
Rafi Spitzer, of Congregation Agudat Achim in Niskayuna, specifically
reminded us to attend to the things of the Spirit, as a means of
becoming more loving and more peaceful.  That’s the particular
role of those of us who are part of faith traditions: to become more
loving and more peaceful as part of contributing to the world become
more loving and peaceful.  (May it be so.)

This
got me thinking about how well we are doing at developing the things
of the Spirit.  There are lots of ways that things are going well –
we have many ways for people to meaningfully contribute to building
the kindom, we have space for people to be loved as they are, there
is beauty that feeds us, there is space for questions and for being.

I
think there are also ways we could be making more space for the
things of the Spirit.  The most historic Wesleyan question of all is
“How is it with your soul?”  Let me tell you, this is NOT an easy
question to answer, and it is not a question you can ask others if
you are unprepared to hear the real answers.  That said, it is a
great question.  “How is it with your soul?” invites us to think
deeply about the answer, and share it with someone else.  It brings
our faith journeying into contact with each other.  A course I taught
once invited participants to answer the question with weather
metaphors, which turned out to be amazing (“it is cloudy, with a
distinct change of tornadoes”, “it is bright and beautiful, but
bitterly cold,” “the fog is very, very thick”) but I think that
there is even more value in having to answer the question directly.
So, one tiny little thing we could do: we could ask each other “how
is it with your soul?”  

Perhaps
you might even be willing to ask someone this during the time of
passing the peace?  And, dear ones, if you don’t want to answer,
perhaps a weather metaphor might share the gist without being too
vulnerable?

On
a similar note, I don’t think we check with each other enough about
our spiritual practices.  During Lent two years ago we did a study of
a Richard Rohr book, and thus had a regular shared practice of
centering prayer.  It was amazing.  For many of the participants it
was the most regular prayer practice they had, and it was a wonderful
addition to their lives.  (I believe centering prayer is easier in a
group.)  My suspicion is that many of us in this community do not
have regular prayer practices.  Some of this may be due to not ever
having found a prayer practice that works, some of this may be due to
not being the sorts of people who want REGULAR practices, some of
this may be due to allowing other things to take precedence.  I will
admit to you that while I had INCREDIBLE prayer times during my
renewal leave, I allowed them to become lax again this fall and have
been struggling to pick them up again.  I adore prayer, but it is
very (VERY) easy to allow myself to get distracted with … well,
anything and everything else.

Yet,
I know that my own development as a person, and a person of faith,
and into being more loving and more peaceful is directly correlated
to the time I spend in prayer.  My prayer practices tend to be the
quiet and reflective sort, and thus the kind that let me see myself
clearly and make decisions at the right pace for me.  Without them,
I’m pretty anchorless.

So
that’s the second thing I can think of – we could be more
intentional about checking in with each other about prayer and/or
meditative practices – including sharing what works for us,
admitting what isn’t working for us, and being willing to talk about
what impedes us from practicing.  My personal experience says that
when I’m avoiding prayer, I’m mostly afraid of that some judgement
I’m making on myself is shared by God.  Thus far, it never has been.

Of
course, prayer practices are a WIDE range of things that can include
walking, or dancing, or bike riding, as well as sitting quietly,
writing, or coloring, and for many they even include conversation.
We as a church talk about and develop our prayer and meditative
skills more – I think it would benefit us and the world.  

For
the first time this year, when I read Isaiah 42, I didn’t get worried
about the servant like I always have before.  Instead, I heard it as
being all about the nature of God.  The passage tells us about God
who has joy in people, who wants justice for all the nations, who
doesn’t move us towards justice with violence, who is patient and
consistent and trustworthy.  This God, the very one who made all of
creation, is with us and working towards good with us.  What has been
and has been hurt and broken is NOT all that can be, there is new
goodness that can and will come with God.  Healing and hope are
possible.  

These,
you see, are things of the Spirit.  They are things of seeing clearly
what is, and yet seeing what can be.  And those things of the Spirit
are what our baptisms are all about.  Baptism welcomes us into the
community of the Spirit, so that we can work together towards love
and peace for all.  And baptism teaches each one of us that we are
beloved by God,  which means we don’t need to prove ourselves worthy
of love, and means that we have love in abundance to share.  

Dear
ones, there is a lot broken in the world, but God isn’t done with us
yet.  And as we share with each other and seek out the Divine, we
make it possible to bring more goodness into the world.  May we do
it!  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

January 12, 2020

Sermons

“Hope for Restoration” based on Isaiah 35:1-10 and Luke…

  • December 15, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I did my seminary work in
Southern California (Los Angeles county) which is a desert climate.
The choice to be far away in a different subculture of the USA was
intentional, as I figured I could use some perspective on the
Northeast.  The desert climate part wasn’t intentional.  I just liked
the school, so I decided to go there, and it happened to be in the
desert.  I had no expectation, whatsoever, that this would be
relevant.

So, clearly, it was.  The first
piece of learning came from the campus itself, which was planted with
biblical plants so we as the students could have a better sense of
what the Bible was talking about.  Because I’d grown up in the water
abundant Northeast, I hadn’t really considered the ways that my
visioning of the Bible was insufficiently desert like.  

Then came the fact that I don’t
LIKE the desert.  I hated that the sides of the road were filled with
pebbles with nothing growing in them, because without watering,
things just didn’t grow.  I hated being dehydrated, and the amount of
water I had to drink to be hydrated.  I didn’t like the heat.  I came
to resent Palm Trees for being there when trees I knew and loved
couldn’t be.  (Can you tell LA wasn’t a natural fit for me?)  

Somewhere along the line as we
learned about Christian history it became clear how much of early
Christianity was formed by the words and actions of solitary desert
thinkers, and later monastic desert communities.  The so-called
“Desert Fathers” were new to me, but heavens they were important.
My classmates who were native to the area waxed poetically about the
beauty of the desert, and its starkness, and the rich spiritual
depths of being alone in such a stark environment that was so
unfriendly to life.  I understood part of what they meant, I love the
great outdoors, and I have felt closest to God in nature.  Except, I
don’t actually LIKE stark and dangerous landscapes.  They are
DEFINITELY beautiful.  For me they are startling in good ways too,
but not really in God-connection ways.  My soul isn’t a desert soul,
although I recognize that desert is as good of a climate as any
other.  (This is all about my preferences, not about what is good.)

But then, in the winter of my
second year, a friend read that the recent rains we’d had were
sufficient to make the desert bloom.  The desert blooms erratically,
it isn’t an every year sort of thing.  More than that, this was the
100- year bloom, and plants believed to be extinct were in full bloom
under the unusual conditions.  We drove out to Joshua Tree National
Park to see it, and it was breathtaking.  From afar, the landscape
actually still seemed stark – it wasn’t as if the plants were more
abundant than they’d been before.  But as you looked, flowers were
EVERYWHERE.  The flowers were more diverse and more delicate than I’d
ever seen before.  We saw a burning bush in bloom – you can
definitely tell why it is called that.  Out of what seemed to be bare
rock came tiny flowers.  Rock faces exploded with color.  

There was nothing in my life
that had prepared me for the desert bloom.  Even now, it stuns me,
the transformation of it all.  That hidden in the starkness was
beauty beyond my imagination.  The flowers were bright, and
different, but sooooo fragile.  It was often hard to believe they
existed.  It blew my mind to see yards of dusty pebbles in every
direction, the floor the desert, and then to notice a tiny little
flower breaking through all on its own.  

To say it directly, I have seen
nothing that proclaims resurrection more than the desert in bloom,
and I think it is radically unfair that this desert hating
North-easterner got to to savor the 100-year desert bloom, and see
life emerge from what looked like lifelessness.  But I’m thankful
anyway.  

Isaiah starts this profound
passage with imagery of the desert in bloom.  I shared all that,
because I don’t think that we who know spring flowers, and summer
flowers, and even fall flowers can hear how BIG the vision of the
desert in bloom is for desert people, nor how much of a miracle it
is.  The clear joy of this passage fits incredibly well with the
desert in bloom.  It is abundant, it is colorful, it is unexpected,
it is hope-filled, it is transformative.

Isaiah is talking about the joy
of homecoming in this passage.  The assumption is that the people
will be taken into exile (true, they will) but that someday God will
act and let them come home (also true).  This vision of homecoming is
bursting with joy.  The act of coming home after the exile is called
“restoration” or “the return” and this restoration passage
bubbles with joy in God.

It starts with the imagery of
the desert in bloom, and then it EXPANDS into human healing.
Physical limitations are lifted, healing occurs, strength is given
where there has been weakness.  Then it takes the desert metaphor
even further.  Streams of water will flow, pools of water will
emerge, springs will break out.  I think my favorite line is the one
that says, “the haunts of jackals will become swamps.”  Now THAT
is a transformation.  

In the midst of this beautiful,
blooming, and now lush landscape, with healing for all in need of it,
there will emerge…. a way home.  And the way will be safe from all
attackers, and easy to follow – impossible to get lost on.  On that
path, the people will travel home, and life will be restored to what
it shall be.

And, of course, there will be
joy and singing, and so much of it that sorrow itself will fall away.

What.  A.  Vision.  

It seems hard to believe Isaiah
could start with the desert in bloom and then grow imagery from
there, but he does it.  Exile and return/restoration is one of the
big themes of the Bible, likely because while the story happens once
to the Israelite people, it happens time and time again to us in our
lives.  

When I was 13 I broke my femur
and was put in a straight leg cast.  For months I was unable to
navigate stairs on my feet (well, my foot) at all, I had to sit on
the steps and move up or down them one at a time.  During that time I
restlessly dreamed of the day when I would be restored to walking up
and down stairs on my feet again.  And then, of course, once I was,
it mostly lost its luster.  For better or worse I’ve had plenty of
injuries in my life though, and my capacity to do stairs has
dissipated and then returned rather a lot.  Perhaps because of the
depth of the yearning in my younger years, sometimes while I’m on a
set of stairs, I remember to be grateful for the capacity to use
them.  

I think exile and restoration
have a lot of emotional resonance too, because in large part they are
about “home.”  And home is a big huge deal to humans.  What does
home feel like?  What does it mean to leave home?  How does it feel
to be between homes?  Or homeless?  Or someone with a foot in more
than one home but no one place to call home exclusively?  When we are
sick, or injured, we yearn for home.  When we think of displaced
people in the world, we recognize the pain of being far from home and
without a new place to try to make home.  And, as North Americans, we
come from people who have left homes.  Those whose ancestors came
from Europe or Asia often left home voluntarily.  Those who ancestors
came from Africa were enslaved and torn from their homes.  Those who
ancestors were native to the Americas were displaced by the Europeans
who came here.  I sometimes wonder if some of the displacement in our
society comes from our shared histories of being displaced in the
world.  In any case, “home” is something that matters to humans,
and exile and restoration are all about home.

Now, the imagery of Isaiah is
assumed when we come to Luke.  Isaiah’s vision of restoration and
return home are premised on God’s actions, and so are Luke’s.  John
the Baptist is going to be seen as the forerunner of Jesus, the one
who starts the path in the desert so Jesus can complete it – and we
walk it.  The language of Zechariah’s song is that of redemption,
salvation, mercy, and rescue.  ALL of those emerge out of the desire
for restoration and return.  They are the yearning not just for home,
but for a safe home, and Zechariah names that “fearlessness” is
an impact of God’s work in those days.  As John, whose name means
“God is Gracious” will prepare the way, and Jesus will walk it,
the result will be peace, fearlessness, and light.  Redemption,
salvation, rescue all resonate with people being safely HOME.

It is the tradition of
Christianity to follow Christ, since Christians means “little
Christs.”  I’m all for this, but sometimes I think it is worth
considering when we are being asked to be “little John the
Baptists.”  Often, I think our work is the prepare the way, and to
be prophets of what is possible with God.  Perhaps this is just the
longview of building the kindom, acknowledging that some work gets to
make the BIG changes, but before that happens, there have been years
or decades or centuries of preparing the way for that to happen.

In our Advent Study on John
Shelby Spong’s “Unbelievable” last week we discussed his idea
that morality is always contextual, and thus always in flux.  So, we
talked about how public morality has changed in our lifetimes, and
you know what?  It has been GREAT!!!  Space has been made for people
to be who they are and to be accepted and loved as they are in ways
that once seemed impossible.  LGBTQIA+ rights have expanded, and
rights and opportunists for people with disabilities have been
normalized, people who are divorced as no longer stigmatized, nor are
those who have sex outside of marriage.  Women’s work opportunities
have exploded.  All of us in the room had grown in our awareness of
racism and privilege, and had hope for the country to change its
practices.  The changes were truly inspiring.  Also, work on all of
that inclusion and all of those rights was being done well before any
of us were born.  Many, many people have prepared the way and we are
able to see their work with gratitude.

The work we do to prepare the
way is the work that we may never see the impact of.  But, we trust
that God will make sure the next steps happen, and God’s people will
follow through, and the preparation will not be in vein.

So, dear ones, prepare the way.
Work on building that safe and beautiful highway home for ALL of
God’s people. Because, someday, it will be complete and the people
who walk it will be singing songs of joy and gratitude for what God
has made possible.  And that which God makes possible, God lets us
work on!!  Thanks be to God for that, and for beautiful homecomings
of many varieties.  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

December 15, 2019

Sermons

“Hope for New Life” based on Isaiah 11:1-10 and…

  • December 8, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

It
is common to call the writer of the Gospel of Luke… Luke, which
makes plenty of sense. It isn’t likely to be historically accurate,
but it is pretty simple to remember. Whatever the writer’s real name
was, the person who wrote the Gospel of Luke and its 2nd
volume
the book of Acts, is said to be the best writer in the New Testament.
From my perspective I can tell that Luke does great work with
foreshadowing, telling stories within stories to enrich both stories,
symbolism, and themes. However, the really good stuff, I’m told is in
his Greek vocabulary and syntax which are simply just outstanding.
“Luke” was a VERY well educated person, and a master of the craft
of writing. Given how small the percentage of literate people were at
that time, being so well versed as a writer indicates not only
brilliance and skill but also power and privilege. One simply would
not become that great of a writer without a lot of access to unusual
levels of resources.

Luke
is probably my favorite Gospel writer, and I love Luke for his
emphasis on people who are poor,  marginalized, and vulnerable, and
because they fit those categories, the women. Luke tells the story of
my faith, presenting Jesus as an ally to those most in need of
rescue, and as an organizer able to help people rescue themselves.
This has a bit of cognitive dissonance to it. Based on WHAT he
writes, Luke is a writer of the people. He is empowering, noticing
those society disregards, and telling the stories that the powerful
don’t want told. Yet, based on HOW he writes, Luke is one of
society’s elites.

Which
sounds to me like Luke being a living example of the power of Jesus –
to convince people to work together to build the kindom no matter
where they begin life, to be FOR ALL the people as they grow.

Isaiah
was a prophet, and from what I can tell, a prophet is a speaker for
the people. The Torah set up a society that treated people justly,
and prevented an upper class from ruling over a lower class. Yet,
people being people, power, money, and influence tended to coalesce
at a top and become a burden to the many. God’s prophets spoke out
against it, and called people back to God’s vision of a just, equal,
and equitable lifestyle.

Which
is a long-winded way of saying that we have two passages today that
are “of the people” and yearning for justice. They do so in ways
that can be a little bit uncomfortable. There are not simply passages
that suggest “a rising tide lifts all boats” but rather ones that
talk about REDISTRIBUTION of wealth1.
These are passages that are good news for the poor, the lowly, and
the meek … but not for the rich, the proud, and the powerful. I
find the “rising tide lifts all boats” sort of justice easier to
swallow. This stuff is … harder.

And
yet, my activist friends assure me that we aren’t going to get to
justice only by being nice. So, let’s examine these texts for wisdom.
This shoot that come from Jesse in Isaiah, have you noticed that it
comes AFTER the tree has been cut down. This is a sign of hope after
destruction and hopelessness. The passage as a whole feels like a
cousin of last week’s passage. In this case, the new offspring of
Jesse (which is to say the new Davidic king) is going to be so
perfectly imbued with the Spirit of God that the new King will rule
as perfectly as God’s own self would.

The
impact of life as ruled as God would have it ruled is shockingly
different. When God’s spirit is in leadership, and when the people
are following in God’s ways, there will be peace even among animals
who are in each other’s food chains 😉 Safety becomes the center
point of this – the lamb, the kid-goat, the calf, and the human
child are all safe in the presence of those most apt to harm them.
This is another way of talking about not needing to be afraid,
because there is no motivation to do harm. In this case, it is clear
that there are no people oppressing other people, no one is “eating
up” the resources of the weaker people to make themselves stronger.
Security, hope, and peace are the result of God’s Spirit. That’s the
kindom.

Mary’s
song hits the same notes. Mary is continuing to process that she, who
is lowly by the standards of the world, is now “blessed.” She
attributes this change to God, and notices that this is how God
works. She says it is God’s nature to do great things, to show mercy,
to be strong…. to bring justice. And she names how justice comes.
It is by scattering the proud and bringing down the powerful –
while lifting up the lowly. It is by feeding the hungry but NOT
giving more to those who already have too much. Mary’s song is,
itself, strong and justice seeking. She identifies with the lowly,
who God lifts up. And it is even more interesting to hear that
knowing that the writer of the Gospel probably identifies with the
rich, and wrote her song this way anyway.

While
we know absolutely nothing about Jesus’s mother with any certainty,
we do know Jesus had a mother.  The name Mary was associated with her
a few generations after his death, which isn’t a great reason to
assume it is true, but sort of like “Luke” we can go with it. I
suspect Mary got associated with the name of the mother of Jesus
because Mary is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Miriam. Miriam,
the sister of Moses, has the oldest words in the Bible attributed to
her, and saved her brother so he could save the nation Israel.
Associating Mary with Miriam is A-Ok with me.

Other
conjectures we can make about Mary include: she was Jewish, she was
from Galilee – most likely Nazareth, she was poor, and it is likely
she was young. She may have been a very faithful Jew, as Judean
settlers were intentionally reclaiming Galilee for Judaism around
that time, and the ones who went were often the ones who were
committed to the cause. She also might have been influenced by either
the Roman Empire’s violent destruction of the nearby city of
Sepphoras in her childhood or by the radical Jewish teachers in the
Galilee who taught that the God of liberation was going to liberate
again. In any case, while the leaders of the Temple during her
lifetime were appointed by Rome and the “official” religion had
been compromised, it is possible (probable?) that Mary knew a faith
that was untainted by the influence of power.

Which
is to say, that while Luke wrote the words we hear today, and put
them into Mary’s mouth for our story – they MAY well reflect her
faith itself. At the very least, Mary’s song words as an incredible
foreshadowing of the power of God that people saw in Jesus, and I
believe Jesus’s faith was likely formed by his mother’s.

In
Mark, Jesus is referred to as Mary’s son which is unusual in that he
was not referred to as his FATHER’S son. With the presence of a
punishing military force nearby, before Jesus’s birth, there are some
particularly awful possibilities about his father. What we know is
that at some point Mary was pregnant, expecting a child, and likely
pretty scared. I say that because maternal mortality rates were high,
infant mortality rates were high, and resources in Nazareth were
scarce. It is very likely that Mary herself was hungry, including
during her pregnancy and while she was breastfeeding Jesus. She had
seen extreme violence from the Empire, and had reason to believe it
could come back at any time. She MAY have been facing the possibility
of being ostracized from her community. Thus, I think it is fair to
assume she was scared.

Even
stripping away most of that, scared seems right. For years, Kevin and
I have struggled with some big questions: is it OK for us to choose
to bring a child into this world knowing the dangers of Global
Climate Change? Is it ok for us to choose to bring a child into this
world when there are other children who need to be parented? How much
capacity do we have to offer care and support for a child given our
other commitments?

After
long talks, prayer, and good counsel, we decided that our ideal
family would include a child born to us and a child adopted by us. So
we started trying to have a child and…. well, nothing happened.
Eventually we made an appointment with an adoption lawyer, and
decided to try private infant adoption. We filled out paperwork, got
background checked, had a home study, and were ready to sign a court
petition requesting that we be approved to be able to become adoptive
parents when we learned that I was, in biblical phrasing, “with
child.”

Now,
I live in the 21st
century,
with pretty great access to resources. While our country is weaker
than it should be, particularly in the care of women of color,
compared with ancient Galilee we have low maternal mortality rates,
low infant mortality rates, plenty of food, and low threat of
violence. Yet as an expectant mother, I’m scared. While I find it
excessive to overly identify with “Mother Mary,” preparing to
parent has certainly helped me see why she’s so popular. Also, why
she has every right to be scared. We have been wondering how on earth
will we prepare a child to be kind, compassionate, and moral in this
crazy world? How will we teach them of God in ways that feel relevant
while the world shifts under our feet?

Let
me assure you that we did NOT sign that paperwork and adoption is
officially on hold. Let me also admit to you that being the pregnant
pastor of this church for the past two months hasn’t been the easiest
thing I’ve ever done. I haven’t been puking (WIN) but I have been
constantly nauseated, and instructed to eat every hour. I’ve been
exhausted and my emotional resources have been down. At the same
time, I have experienced significant collateral friendly fire as this
church has worked together on the reality of our budget deficit.

Between
the friendly fire and being less resilient than usual, I have spent
time considering if pastoring this church – or even being a pastor at
all – continues to be the right path for me. Some of this is simply
about parenting: I’m nervous about being away from home 4 nights a
week like I usually am now. Some of this is about ministry’s
demands: what will it mean to have to establish the sort of
boundaries my child will need, and what will I do when the needs of
the church are in conflict, and what will happen when someone feels
that their expectations aren’t being met? Some of it is about our
child and this church. On one hand I can’t imagine any church but
this one being part of raising our child. I love the way children are
cared for during worship. I love our Sunday School and its teachers.
I love the way children are treated here, and I love the ways God is
understood and taught here. However, on the other hand, my stress
level has been sky high, and recently I’ve seen a lot of behavior I
wouldn’t want a child to learn about much less associate with this
church. So I’ve been wondering, is this a safe and secure place for a
child – our child – to learn about God? Will this place fulfill
Isaiah’s vision of a child being able to put their hand in a snake’s
den safely?

In
slow, careful deliberation, with conversation, and consultation, and
prayer, and a LOT of obsessing and worrying, I’ve decided not to give
up on ministry just yet. Then, even more slowly, I realized that –
for now – this church is worth the pain. I simply love you all.
Furthermore, I don’t believe that this church IS its worst behaviors.
Dear ones, I believe that this faith community is an expression of
the kindom of God. I believe it is a little bit of Isaiah’s vision,
and has the capacity to build the world into one of peace and
justice. I’m well aware that we have lots of hard times ahead (and I
am terrified
of
the boundaries I’m going to have to have as a parent, please be
gentle with me) but I believe you are worth it.

So,
anyway, I see why a prospective parent would be scared. And I am
gaining a new appreciation for the ways in which a new generation
provides new opportunities: 1) for regeneration, 2) for making right
the things we haven’t gotten right yet, and 3) hope for the future.
We are hoping to raise a child to know God’s love, follow Jesus, and
speak with and for the people.  And I find myself reflecting on how I
hope this community will continue to exist and teach and raise up
future generations to do the same. Given all this, I see why a
prospective parent would choose to stick with the God of Liberation,
of Hope, and of Peace.  And I see why Mary was amazed at her luck in
getting the chance to do so.  Being a part of the work of God is a
blessing and a great opportunity.   Thanks be to God. Amen

1 Someone
pointed out after worship that a rising tide may lift all boats, but
it doesn’t help people who don’t have boats.

Sermons

“The Stories We Have to Tell (and tell, and…

  • November 10, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Several
years ago I had the honor of celebrating the life of a woman who had
spent her life as a nurse.  She was fiercely independent, had never
married, was wonderfully fashionable, and LOVED being a nurse.  At
the end of her life, she had dementia, and it took almost everything
from her – knowledge of her loved ones, words, mobility, and the
rest.  All that was left of HER at the end of her life was one simple
motion.  It was the careful, life-saving motion of surgical
preparation – washing her hands.  After she’d lost even her own name,
she kept on washing her hands.

I
often wonder what that piece of me would be – the one last
lingering aspect of myself that would go last.  Truthfully, I’ve
never figured it out, but it feels like an important question.
Similarly, when I am spending time with a person earlier stages of
dementia, I pay attention to what stories come up time and time
again.  My theory is that those stories are core identity stories,
they are key to how the person understands themselves.  As such, I
try to notice what stories I’m telling repeatedly (hopefully to
different people), and figure out why those are the stories I’m
telling.

Not
to give away all my secrets all at once, but I also pay attention to
the phenomenon of repeated stories in groups – because I think
stories that more than one person tells are likely stories that
matter.  Also, I find the nuances and differences extra interesting.

The
stories that we repeat are the stories that are important to us.  I
suspect there are at least two aspects to why we repeat them:  first
because they are part of how we make sense of the world and secondly
because we’re still trying to make sense of the stories.  Telling our
stories, and having others respond to to them, helps us figure them
out.  

A
few years ago I came across a distinction between two types of
stories we tell.  Most of us, most of the time, tell what this theory
calls “ego stories.”  Ego stories make us look good, focus on
life’s high spots, portray us as having control in our own lives, are
well practiced and linear, well told, and sometimes well spun.  These
are the stories of interviews, of parties with people we don’t know,
of invulnerability and image crafting.

The
other option, according to this theory, is “soul stories.”  Soul
stories are the stories underneath ego stories, ones that tell about
both shadow and light, suffering as well as gladness.  They have a
lot of twists and turns, including telling about when our plans were
undone by life.  Telling soul stories allows us to integrate the
fragments with the whole, in part because they are unafraid of
change, fear, loss, failure, shame, mystery, passion, or ecstasy.
They are often told in poetry, music, or art.  They are the stories
we hold onto in the hardest of times, and the ones most important for
our loved ones to know.  Soul stories are likely to be the ones we
are revisiting at 3 AM, or when we have dementia, or when we die.1

The
truth is that in most settings, soul stories are hard to tell.  They
make us vulnerable, and they tell about things we are afraid of or
ashamed of.  Yet, when we don’t tell them, they get told through
us without our awareness.

All
of this thinking about stories started for me with the language of
Job and the desire in that passage to immortalize Job’s story.  For a
little context, we are hearing Job himself speak in this passage and,
“Since Job has parodied and rejected the language of prayer (vv
21-22) and realized that his outcry brings no response or justice (v.
7) there appears to be no way for him to bring his words before
God.”2
In part, Job worries about how his story will live past his death.
That’s what this is about – preserving his words as a testimony to
the injustice of his life.  “It appears that Job describes three
materials on which his words might be recorded – scroll, lead
tablet, engraved rock – each more enduring than the last.”3

The
phrase translated “For I know my Redeemer lives” refers to a
“kinsman redeemer”, that is “It designates the nearest male
relative, who was responsible for protecting a person’s interest when
that individual was unable to do so.  The [kinsman redeemer] would
buy back family property sold in distress, recover what has been
stolen, redeem a kinsman sold into slavery, or avenge a murdered
kinsman blood.  The [kinsman redeemer] is the embodiment of family
solidarity.”4
Now, just to be clear, this means that what Job was actually saying
was “I have a family member who will avenge me, and even after I
die, he will be working for justice on my behalf.”  And, further,
the assumption is that the kinsman redeemer will be working towards
justice for Job against Job’s opponent: God.  Which is to say that
this passage means exactly the opposite of what I thought it did when
I first read it.  It is NOT the same gist as the Psalm from a
different angle.  This is a passage really angry with God.  (The fact
that I missed this means I wasn’t really thinking about this being
the book of Job when I read the passage, definitely a poor choice.)

In
terms of understanding the passage, there is one more important
piece.  The very end is distinct from what comes before it.  The
commentator in the New Interpreter’s Bible suggests it makes the most
sense to read it this way, “’I know that my defender lives, and
that at the  last he will arise upon the earth – after my skin has
been stripped off!  But I would  see God form my flesh, whom I would
see for myself; my eyes would see, and not a stranger.”  That is,
Job returns to his constant refrain in the book:  that he wants to be
heard by God, that he wants justice from God, and that he wants a
REPLY from God.  Even having his kinsman-redeemer fix things after
his death, or having his story be immortalized isn’t enough.  He
wants to take up this issue with God directly.  

In
function, the book of Job is one long soul story, interspersed with
some ego story assurances from Job’s friends.  Even God’s answers
take the form of a soul story.  The yearning that Job has to have his
story heard fits with the description that they are the stories we
want the people we love most to know – and I think in this case
that includes God.

I’ve
always assumed that God knows my stories, in fact thats one of the
assurances of life – that even if I forget my own stories, they are
still alive within the Divine.  But that means I don’t tend to tell
God my stories as often, even though the telling of stories to God is
inherently good.  And, the book of Job is the great reminder in the
Bible that God is big enough to handle our anger, and it is OK to
RAIL against God.  God doesn’t punish us for expressing our anger,
and God knows the injustices we’ve experienced, and yet we are
welcome to keep on telling them to God as long as they need to be
told.  Because God, of course, can handle our vulnerable soul stories
with shadows and light, and doesn’t need or expect things cleaned up
into ego stories.  This is sometimes one of the weaknesses of formal
worship.  When we have hymns, anthems, and prayers in poetic and
formal language it can lead us to thinking that God requires us to be
able to express the inexpressible.  When in fact, God can handle any
communication, including “sighs too deep for words.”

Have
you tried telling God your stories, instead of just going over them
again and again in your head?  Sometimes it can really help.  For me,
it is most helpful when I WRITE to God (longhand!).  I keep a prayer
journal and I find that all the things swirling in my head and
smashing into each other can be extricated one by one, examined, and
a bit of order can sometimes be found among them.  Or, at the very
least, I can find out what things are in conflict within me.  What
seems massive within, when written to God, becomes less heavy and
more manageable.  I also notice, as I write, what themes I go back
to.  Which is helpful because it helps me to have a better idea what
my version of handwashing might be.  

I
thought, before I did my research, that I’d be ending this sermon
talking about the stories we have to tell of God’s goodness.  Our
versions of “I know my redeemer lives” before it became clear
that was NOT God after all.  (Oye).  I do actually think those are
important stories, imperative ones even.  None of us are here without
a good reason.  That’s just not how life works.  But do others in
your church family know the core stories of your personal faith
journey?  Do they know why you trust in God, or what you are
struggling with in trying to trust God, or why you keep showing up at
all?  Are these some of the stories you keep on telling?  (Why or why
not?)  Those might be interesting stories to start telling – even
if they are soul stories and more than a little vulnerable.  So here
is your homework this week.  (Homework!?!)  Tell one member of this
community one of your personal faith stories – why you are
committed to being a part of this Jesus-movement.  Together, these
are the stories we have to tell, and tell, and tell.  Amen

1  Parker
Palmer and Marcy Jackson, “Ego Stories & Soul Stories” ©
2012 found at
https://www.clearpathcounsel.com/files/4313/3029/8683/Ego_Stories__Soul_Stories.pdf

2  Carol
Newsom, “The Book of Job” in The New Interpreter’s Bible
Volume IV ed. Leander E. Keck et al (Nashville: Abingdon Perss,
1996)  477-8.

3
 Newsom,  478.

4  Newsom,
478.

Sermons

“Those Who Walked the Walk” based on  Habakkuk 1:1-4;…

  • November 3, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

(Thanks to Kevin Kempf for the great picture!)



Have you heard of “thin
places?””  I’ve heard it described as places where the veil
between this world and the next is thinner – or where God’s
presence can be especially felt.  Ideologically, thin places don’t
make any sense to me.  I believe that God is all-present, so God
isn’t any more or less present anywhere.  

And yet… I have experienced
thin places.  I don’t understand them, but I know them.  You may be
needing some examples.  Mountaintops are commonly thin places, which
I suspect has less to do with the altitude and more to do with the
effort to get to them and the views they offer.  Things just feel
different at the top of a mountain, and many people have experienced
them to be thin places.  Sanctuaries are another common choice –
ones in churches or ones at camps.  I have often wondered if places
where many people have prayed are changed in some way by the
pervasiveness of the prayers – and thus made more holy.  (Again,
this doesn’t fit my understanding, but it fits my experience.)
Sometimes, I think, thin places are not places even, they are
moments.  I once had a chance to ask a church about when they’d most
strongly experienced God and a whole lot of them mentioned the births
of their children.  It is also very common (but not universal) for a
death to be a thin place.  

I
also suspect thin places might have a lot more to do with us being
open to the presence of God that is always with us than a change in
the amount of presence, but however it is, I think they ARE.  And,
further, one of those moments that has often been a thin place for me
is All Saints Sunday.  Over the course of my ministry, more years
than not, this has been the holiest worship service I’ve led.

This year, like every year, the
names we are about to read lie heavy on my heart.  Oh friends, the
saints who have gone on ahead of us taught us so much!  We are who we
are because of them!  It is an honor to read their names and remember
their lives, but it is also heavy to live without them.  One of our
traditions, in this church, is to also name the saints whose loss is
still especially heavy on our hearts, even if their departure was
more than a year ago.  The list of those names is also dear – and
beautiful and sad and heavy.

Today conjures in my mind that
simple line “the great cloud of witnesses” from Hebrews 12, which
is an incredibly comforting image.  Life can feel overwhelming at
times, and sometimes I have no idea where to turn, but remembering
that those who taught me, and loved me, and guided me – guide me
still and show us the way – is very powerful.  It is even better to
notice how many of there are!

So, indeed, All Saints Sunday
is, for me, a thin place, and the names we are about to read and the
lives they represent are an honor to remember and name.

Now,
the gospel passage may not seem terribly well connected to all of
that, perhaps because of the terrible Sunday School song that too
many of us learned about Zacchaeus.  (If you don’t know it, I beg
you, stay ignorant.)  The story itself, however, is not as trite as
the song.  There are surprises all over this story, if you pay
attention to them.  One is that a wealthy and powerful man was
particularly interested in Jesus, who aimed his ministry particularly
at people who were living in poverty and disempowered.  The second is
that the wealthy and powerful man was willing to forgo his dignity to
try to see Jesus, which seems to want to remind us just how exciting
Jesus was in real life and how worthy of seeking out he was (is).
Then there is the amazing turn in the story when Jesus decides to
focus his attention on Zaccheaus, this wealthy and powerful man,
which I think absolutely no one expected.  Zaccheaus, however, was
happy and gracious.  Then there is the unsurprising grumbling of the
crowd, who are peeved that Jesus is hanging out with this guy (tax
collectors being about as popular then as border patrol agents are
today).  And then there is the turn around where Zaccheaus, having
had this experience with Jesus, commits to a moral and fair life.
(I’m going to disregard my assumptions that he probably couldn’t
afford to pay back 4 times as much as he’d over taken…. that’s not
the point.)  It seems that being with Jesus was a thin place for
Zaccheaus, where he could access love, hope, and wonder, and be
changed by it.

The beautiful thing about the
Zaccheaus story is that sometimes we are ALL Zaccheaus, and the story
seems to say that’s OK.  Sometimes we have power, and sometimes we
use it wrong, but we’re still TRYING our hardest to know what’s right
and do it, and when we figure what what we’ve done wrong, there is a
chance to change it.

Now,
that’s where this fits in with our Saints today. Because none of the
Saints we celebrate today were actually perfect in their lives.  Not
a single one.  Our memories may get fuzzy around that, but all the
people we are remembering were fallible.  All of them, as well,
sometimes had power and sometimes used it wrong.  That’s human life.
What’s WONDERFUL is when people realize what they’ve done and seek to
change it.  That’s why they are our saints – because of their
willingness to grow, learn, and change.

Friends, this is an interesting
reminder for those of us trying to follow in their footsteps.  And it
is a two-fold reminder:  (1)  we are not expected to be perfect.
Really.  We can’t be, and trying just makes it all worse.  (2) And,
when we discover how we’ve erred, if we are willing and able to
change, it makes all the difference.  This is, often, a cycle we have
to keep on living.  I see it clearly in myself in working towards
anti-racism, a goal I yearn for.  However, every time I learn
something new, I have to realize how much I’ve erred in the past, and
change it.  AND THEN, you know what, the next thing I learn shows
that I’ve still been erring and I still need to change, and I’m not
there yet.  It feels AWFUL, and yet it would feel way worse to keep
messing up once I know what I’m doing.

The
Habbakuk passage feels a little bit too on point for a while, doesn’t
it?  It is bemoaning the injustices of the world, and THEN it totally
changes!!  The prophet’s concerns are met by GOD’s response, and God
says, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner
may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it
speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for
it; it will surely come, it will not delay.  Look at the proud! Their
spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.”
Oh.  My.  So our work is to dream, and vision, and make the vision
for God’s goodness clear and visible to others.  A commentator
writes, “At at time when the wicked are in control, when the vision
describing God’s intention to reestablish justice has not yet become
a reality, Habakkuk is called in the interim to trust God’s
assurances and to remain faithful.”1
Not to lose hope, not to give up, not even to keep on bemoaning
reality, but to trust and share the vision.  

And the vision that has been
shared with all of us is why we are here.  We want to be part of
building God’s vision in the world into everyone’s reality.  And the
saints taught us it was possible and showed us the vision.  And their
lives have made this a thin place, where we are able to see, a little
more clearly, the beauty of the vision of God and the hope that is
the world for the present and the future. Thanks be to God.  Amen

Sermon Talkback Guiding
Questions:

  1. I talked about “thin”
    places in the beginning, does that idea make sense to you and if so,
    where have you found some?
  2. How are “Saints” related to
    learn, growing, changing – and admitting erring?
  3. What else do you see in the
    story of Zaccheaus that I didn’t bring out?
  4. Did the Habbakkuk reading
    switch too fast for you?  (Or not fast enough)
  5. How do you name God’s vision
    that we’re working on?
  6. Of the saints we celebrated
    today, or have celebrated previously, how did they teach you of
    God’s vision for the kindom?
  7. What helps you remember that
    you don’t have to be perfect?
  8. What helps you have the courage
    to change when you’ve erred?

1Theodore
Hiebert, “Habbakkuk” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume
VII, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abindon Press, 1996), p.
638)

–

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

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 3, 2019

Sermons

“Afterlife?” based on Job 14 and Mark 12:18-27

  • October 13, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I want to start today by asking
for your trust – particularly from those who are here particularly
for the baptism.  I do know that the first hymn and the scriptures
have been an odd match for a baptismal Sunday so far, and it is going
to get worse before it gets better, but it IS going to get better, I
promise.

The question of “what happens
after we die” is relevant to us for two separate reasons.  One
reason is entirely personal: we want to know if we are simply mortal
and if we cease to exist when we die.  The other may be just as
personal, in a different way:  we want to know if the connects we
have to those who have died before us are still alive or if they only
feel that way.

Both of these are good reasons
to want to know, but nevertheless, we don’t know what happens after
death.  And our believes about it end up being profoundly personal.
If we are looking at afterlife through the lens of the Christian
Tradition, there are three big questions people to disagree over:

  1. Does afterlife exist?
  2. If there is an afterlife, do
    both heaven and hell exist, or just heaven?
  3. If both heaven and hell exist,
    how are people sorted between them?

While many people have deep
conviction about their answers to these questions, and believe their
answers to be the “normal” ones, the truth is that Christians
have disagreed about this for about as long as there have been
Christians.

For
centuries, Christianity has taught about afterlife and the existence
of heaven and hell, all while arguing about the means of sorting
people into each.  Yet,  there is also a large group of Biblical
Scholars who think that we’ve gotten those assumptions wrong.  They
say that 1st
century Jews, Jesus, and the earliest Christians did not believe in
heaven and hell the way we do.  At best, heaven and hell were
temporary resting places while waiting for bodily resurrection that
would come along with the Kindom of God on earth.1
 More commonly, people believed that there was nothing until the
moment of universal bodily resurrection, which they expected to come
within the first generation after Jesus.  For some others the
perspective of Job 14 was accurate:  humans die but at least God
doesn’t.

For
the most part, I think afterlife is an aside to Christianity.  The
goal is to build the kindom on earth, not in heaven.  However, the
reality of deaths of those we love and the looming reality of our own
deaths don’t let us go.  We really want to know, and for many people,
what they believe about afterlife profoundly connects to how they
understand God.  

Now,
this is the fifth and final sermon in a sermon series
comparing the salient points of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the
tradition of the Christian Right, and what I’ve been calling
“Jesus-followers”.  (That final group is us.)  Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism was discovered through sociological research on the
belief system on teenagers, and we have reason to believe it is the
default belief system of most Americans.  Unfortunately, as we’ve
found, its a rather problematic belief system, at least in my
opinion.  It consists of 5 intersecting assumptions:

  1. “A
    god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
    life on earth.”
  2. “God
    wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in
    the Bible and by most world religions.”
  3. “The
    central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
  4. “God
    does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
    God is needed to resolve a problem.”
  5. “Good
    people go to heaven when they die.”

Today we are looking at the 5th
and final point, “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

Of course, if you asked most
people what Christians think, that would be a key part of the answer,
“good people go to heaven when they die,” but – of course – our
tradition is far more complicated than is generally known.

Historically,
I think the concepts of heaven and hell came into clarity in the 3rd
or 4th
century, as that’s when the fights over who went where really picked
up.  So let’s look at our three questions:

  1. Does afterlife exist?

Christians
of good faith disagree about this one.  Some, including some in this
community, say, “no.  This life is all there is, so let’s make the
best of it instead of pretending there is more.”  Others, including
some in this community, say, “I think so.  I’ve had some
experiences that lead me to that conclusion and/or it just feels
right.”  Still others simply aren’t sure.  Because the “word on
the street” about Christianity so profoundly conflates belief in
God with belief in afterlife, I feel the need to say this explicit:
all of these are faithful statements that are congruent with knowing
a loving God through Jesus.

So, the second question, which
presumes an answer of “yes” to the first one about afterlife
existing.  The second question is:

2.  If there is an afterlife,
do both heaven and hell exist, or just heaven?

I’ll admit that I nuanced this
one to lead to a particular answer.  While I’m not always confident
about afterlife (and yet sometimes I am, it is a confusing place
inside my head), I never think there is a hell.  It just doesn’t make
the tiniest bit of sense to me that over the long run anything but
God’s grace could win out.  I read one time a suggestion that people
continue to have free will after death, and so if heaven is unity
with God, people can take AS LONG AS THEY WANT to get there, but in
the end, they will because grace wins.  Put another way, I simply
don’t believe in a God of eternal punishment, it is incomprehensible
to me.  That said, I think most modern Christians believe in a heaven
and a hell, and most of them think it is heresy not to.  (oh.  Well.)

I
think that for most people who believe that “good people go to
heaven when they die” and the unspoken but obvious corollary “bad
people go to hell when they die” there is a desire to believe that
there is fundamental justice in the world and that bad things are
punished and good things are celebrated and even if we don’t see
evidence of that on earth, it will get balanced out later.  I can
understand a desire to believe that!  

Now, for me the third question
is null and void, but since Christianity has spent the past 1600-1700
years fighting over it, I guess we should take a moment to hear the
arguments. 😉

3.  If both heaven and hell
exist, how are people sorted between them?

Possible answers:

  • In order to get into heaven you
    have to BELIEVE the right things ( “Justification by FAITH.”)
    This is the primary perspective of the Christian Right, although it
    intersects some with the next idea.
  • In order to get into heaven
    you have do DO the right things.  For many of those Christians there
    is a list of good things and a list of bad things to guide behavior.
    ( “Justification by WORKS” or “Works Righteousness.”)  
  • In order to get into heaven one
    must be baptized.  This is often even subconscious now.  This is one
    of the strongest arguments for infant baptism.  It is also one of
    the strongest arguments against it.  Some in this mindset will claim
    that only baptism in their PARTICULAR part of Christianity will
    matter.  However, when Christianity was much younger, this often
    resulted in people refusing to be baptized until the very last
    moment.  (I think, in fact, this is the historical basis for the
    Catholic ritual of last rites.) They thought that once baptized all
    their sins were forgiven, and if it was done late enough they
    wouldn’t have time to sin.  I’m not kidding.  This was very common
    practice.
  • In
    order to get into heaven we need God’s grace, and God’s grace given
    to us results in our ability to have faith.  (“Justification by
    grace alone though faith.”) UMC option
    Thus it is not what we do or do not do; nor what we believe or do
    not believe that results in our welcome into heaven.  It is simply
    God’s nature.  This does raise a rather large question about those
    who do not believe in God though.

As
a reminder of how complicated all of this is,  I do not think that
our Gospel lesson supports or disproves any of the schools of
thought.  Rather, it urges humility.  The Sadducees were trying to
trick up Jesus, and they brought him a tricky question in order to do
it.  The question supported their belief about what happens when
we die, but Jesus’ answer did not let them trip him up.  He says,
““Is
not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the
scriptures nor the power of God? For
when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being
raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about
the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the
living; you are quite wrong.”

This
passage keeps me humble.  I don’t know what it means, I don’t know
what heaven is like,or if it exists, and that’s OK.  Many of us are
not same worldview as moralistic therapeutic deism who say  “good
people go to heaven when they die” or the Christian-Right who say
that and have clarity over who counts as “good.”  Many of us
simply don’t know what happens after death.

I
think that at the core, the questions of if afterlife exists or not
and whether there is cosmic justice are really questions about
existential anxiety.  That is, as beings who are conscious and who
know we are mortal, we struggle with the reality that someday we
won’t be (at least in this form) anymore.  

I
think that our shared, all the way back to Jesus, Christian Tradition
offers Jesus-followers two ways we can respond to existential anxiety
and the claims of the other traditions.  If we are about continuing
the work of Jesus – about building the kindom and inviting others
to be partners with us in building the kindom – then our work does
not end with our deaths any more than Jesus’ did.  This is not same
as individual afterlife, but is really powerful in a different way.
Certainly the ways that each of us work towards the kindom is unique,
but the end goal is shared, and after we are gone others will be
following up on our work with theirs … until the kindom comes.

The
other piece of our response to existential anxiety is simply trusting
in God.  Whether or not we cease to exist at the end of our lives,
God and God’s memory will still hold our lives, our loves, our
actions, our thoughts, and our feelings.  And, whatever is on the
other side of the proverbial curtain – God IS and God is GOOD and
what will be is possible to trust in.

And
that brings us full circle to say, that while I know it is awful to
acknowledge death while celebrating a new life, I am happy to say
that the kindom building and the goodness of God will outlast even the life of the baby baptized today life and thanks be to God for that!  Amen

1

(http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/13.36.html?paging=off)

Sermons

“Taking Refuge in God” based on  Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16…

  • April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I find it terribly interesting to be human, particularly
the irrational parts of being human.  For instance, I am  quite
capable of articulating the difference between God and the Church.
Here, I’ll prove it to you:  God is the creator of all that is, and
the grounding source of love that universe is build on.  The Church
is a gathering of people who have learned about God largely through
Jesus of Nazareth and try to be responsive to God, including in
sharing in the effort to make the world more loving.

OK.  I know there is a difference.  I believe myself to
be rock solid on the difference.

Except that many, many, MANY times in my life, I’ve
gotten confused between the two.  When the Church (big C) has messed
up, has proven itself to be entirely too human, has broken my heart,
and has failed to be what I think it should be – I’ve responded by
getting distant with God, as if the failures of the Church are God’s
fault.  I’ve done this repeatedly in my life, and I don’t seem to be
capable of remembering the difference between the two, even though I
already know it (mentally).

This seems like a particularly good time to remember
that God is God, and the denomination, the Annual Conference, even
this local church are not.  God is dependable, steadfast, and loving;
even when God’s people “turn away and our love fails.”  Holiness
is present, even when we don’t feel loved or heard by God’s people.
The Spirit offers us rest, support, and abundance; even when life is
feeling frenetic, unhinged, and scarce.  The Divine calls us to
healing, to wholeness, to authenticity, to full life; even when at
the same time we hear voices telling us to form ourselves into
something we just aren’t.

God is God, and God is GOOD.  God’s steadfast love
endures forever, and it is enough.  

In the language of the Psalm, God is our refuge, our
fortress, our dwelling place, our shelter.  We are at home in God,
and we are safe.  We can relax with the Holy One, we can trust in
God’s love, and goodness, and desire for our well-being.  We don’t
have to fight to be “enough” or different than how we really are.
We aren’t competing against each other for God’s love, because it is
not a finite quality.  Our natural state is “beloved by God.”  We
don’t have to earn it or compete for it.  It already is.

That, dear ones, is how grace works.  Just in case it
has been a while since you’ve remembered the nuances of grace, grace
is a word for God’s unconditional love for all of creation, and it is
God’s nature to be loving, to be full of grace.  Grace isn’t earned,
it just is, because it is God’s essence.  As followers of John
Wesley, even talk about various forms of grace including previenent
grace, the grace that comes before (like someone wearing too much
scent).  Previenent grace is God’s love for a person that comes
before that person is aware of God, or of God’s love.  

Wesleyan theology says that later on, if we become aware
of God, and of God’s love, and decide to work with God for good in
the world, we are impacted by “sanctifying grace”, also known as
the process of sanctification.   This is the process by which things
that are not loving in us are allowed to wilt away, while love takes
deeper and deeper root in us.  It is the process of letting our lives
be defined by God’s grace for us and for others.  It is letting love
take over.  The idea of John Wesley is that the work of Christians in
their own lives is to be sanctified, to become every more loving
until love is all that is left.  

I like that part 😉  

Deuteronomy is … it is many things at once.  Walter
Bruggemann, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, often talks about how
the text criss-crosses generations.  He says, “The rhetoric works
so that the speaker who is a belated rememberer of an old event
becomes a present tense participant in that old event.  In
‘liturgical time,’ the gap between past time and present time is
overcome, and present-tense characters become involved in remembered
events.”1
This gets even more criss-crossed when we attempt to put this text
into context.

Deuteronomy places itself on the far side of the river
from the Promised Land, it is a series of speeches by Moses to the
people before they finally enter the Land.  So, from that
perspective, this series of instructions of what to do with the first
fruits of the land – the promised land – is a future tense
reality.  Within the text, the people are dreaming of living in the
land, and haven’t gotten there yet.  Yet, the instructions are for
what people will say with their tithes, and the words people are
saying reflect back on the process of getting to (and into the land)
which in the story hasn’t happened yet.

If you want to add more layers (which clearly I do),
think about the fact that this was likely written down during the
exile – so a person who once lived in the land  but did no longer,
was writing down the  words of one who never lived in the land, to
those who would enter the land, about what they would say when they
got produce out of the land, about their history before they got to
the land.   Which is to say, I think Brueggemann is right, and there
are ways that time gets messy in these texts 😉

I’m interested, as well, in the fact that re-telling in
this liturgical way of the entrance into the Promised Land doesn’t
talk about the wandering in the desert.  It is huge theme in
Deuteronomy, where it is said time and time again that the people
needed to learn that they could rely on God before they could be
ready to deal with the abundance of life in the Promised Land, so
they wouldn’t think it had come to them from their own doing.  It
also functioned to led the old generation pass away, so that those
who had known the oppression of slavery were not the ones who build a
new thing. However, none of that is mentioned in this particular
piece, even though the rest of the history is.

Bishop Karen Oliveto posted on Facebook this week, “You
can take people out of Egypt but the main task of liberation is to
take Egypt out of the people. Perhaps this is why wilderness
wandering is necessary in our journey?”  That was when I noticed
that this particular text glosses over the wandering.  Perhaps it
doesn’t have to be named here, because in the idea that the person is
giving first fruits, we know they haven’t forgotten the lessons of
the wandering.  In any case, remembering that the wandering exists to
teach us liberation is definitely of use!

I’m struck by the way the Promised Land is constructed
as being itself a refuge, throughout the Bible.   Granted, just like
churches, it is an often broken one, and just like churches it gets
confused with God.  When the people lost the land they took it to
mean they’d lost God’s favor.  Yet, it might be easier to read this
text with awareness that land IS sacred, and that means land is HOLY,
and certainly for those who have been without land, land is a refuge
onto which they can build a life.  Space can become home, it can
reflect God’s own home-like attributes.

Did you hear the end of the passage?  After the first
fruits have been given and the past has been remembered, it says,
“Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside
among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God
has given to you and to your house.”  I LOVE this part.  After all
the labor of growing and harvesting the food, after all the
remembering (and bouncing around in time) the end game is a feast of
bounty to which ALL are invited.   All, including those without land.
All, including those who don’t know or worship God.  Those with
plenty, those without, those set aside to do God’s work, those who
are doing normal daily work, those who don’t have work – ALL the
people are coming to the feast.  The work that is given to God is
meant to be redistributed so that everyone can access it together.  

That Promised Land, the one the people were waiting to
enter?  It wasn’t meant to just be a refuge for them.  It was meant
to be a refuge for all.  The “law” of the Torah seeks to ensure
that widows, and orphans, those without someone powerful to care for
them, will still have enough.  The Torah seeks to ensure that
outsiders – the foreigners, the immigrants, the refugees –  will be
welcome and cared for. The Torah OBSESSES over the poor, and puts in
place practices that will prevent long term poverty and allow people
to be lifted up.  The land isn’t meant to be a refuge for some, or
for the lucky, or for those who do right.  It was designed to be a
refuge for all – a refuge that reflects God’s nature.

Now, after fussing over these texts sufficiently, I want
to get a bit practical.  God IS our refuge, and an excellent refuge
at that, but we are not always prepared to receive the goodness of
God’s gifts because we tend not to pay attention them.  We are
something, maybe too busy, too distracted, or too scared.  (Scared
because we’ve been around broken humans enough to be afraid that God
isn’t as loving as we’d hope, since humans often aren’t.)

However, the rest, the refuge, the HOME that God IS for
us, is a gift to us that we can receive if we make time and space to
do so.  I, personally, am best able to connect with this gift when I
practice Centering Prayer.  Centering Prayer is “just” being,
breathing in and out, and letting thoughts float away without
judgment or attachment.  It is a type of prayer that takes practice,
but it is transformative.  Other times, to access the rest, the
refuge, the home that God IS, I need to be in physical places where I
feel safe; other times I need to be with those with whom I can laugh.
Still other times, a quiet walk in the woods, a good deep cry, or
some time coloring mandalas will make space within me to let God’s
gifts in.  What helps you?  Are you doing it?  Do you need help
finding new or different ways to let God’s rest, refuge, offer of
home take hold in you?  If you do, let’s talk.

Because the world doesn’t need us exhausted, aimless,
and scared.   God and the world most need people being sanctified by
grace, and I think we should make space to let God help us be those
people!   Amen

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

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 10, 2019

  • First United Methodist Church
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