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  • August 8, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“God, Stress, and Abundant Lives” based on 1 Kings 19:4-8

I’m mad. Mad that we – the big collective we – might have beaten this virus if we trusted our experts and prioritized collective well-being. Mad that we “can’t have nice things” still, EVEN THOUGH science provided amazing vaccines in an unbelievably short time. Mad that I have to make decisions no one– including me – likes because the first rule of John Wesley is “first do no harm” and I really believe we have to do that.

But, a friend sent an article this week that pointed out that I’m not mad. I just think I’m mad. Or, more so, that anger is a secondary emotion that works well to mask primary emotions. The article said the emotion that I’m actually feeling is fear. (Note: do not try this at home. Do not tell someone what they’re “really feeling” when they tell you what they ARE feeling. Really, truly. DO NOT DO THIS. The article got away with it by taking about generic people and I personalized.) The article speaks about people choosing not to be vaccinated and vaccinated people’s anger responses:

Though this new flavor of outrage might look and sound like righteous indignation, mental health professionals say that what’s behind it is fear.

“It’s scary to admit that somebody else has power over you and you’re at their mercy and you’re afraid of them, but showing that is not a very American ideal,” said David Rosmarin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinician at McLean Hospital. “Instead of expressing that fear, it’s a lot more comfortable to blame somebody else.”

Anger is what people in his profession refer to as a “secondary emotion.” It’s a feeling that arises in response to a more primal emotion, like fear and anxiety over having some aspect of your life threatened. “The reality is that there are millions of people who are miseducated about something, they’re making a big mistake that will have massive consequences that might affect you and your family and that makes you scared,” Rosmarin said. “But nobody is saying that.”1

That article also says that part of what people are struggling with is that this was always going to be a “long war” but we didn’t get that message from the outset. That fits for me too, I deal better when I have my expectations set correctly.

Two years ago I preached on this passage from 1 Kings 19, and afterwards several of you mentioned that you could hear in it my yearning for a break. (It was fairly soon before my renewal leave.) I hadn’t meant to be that transparent then, and it makes me want to be a little bit cautious now, but….the story hasn’t changed.

This remains a story of Elijah, prophet of God who has worked diligently for what he believed God wanted him to do. The response to his faithfulness has been a threat of murder that came directly from the palace.

Elijah is too tired to fight anymore. He fled for his life, but in the midst of the flight he lost even the will to live.

He prays, asking God to let him die, which would at least be less violent than the death otherwise planned for him. He’d walked into the desert for a day, and when he prayed he sat under a single broom tree, the only bit of respite he could find. The Bible seems to suggest this is a particularly sad story, it is the same one told of Hagar, having walked into the desert, exhausted her provisions, sat under a broom, and prepared to die. Just like with Hagar though, God meets Elijah there.

You may already know how much I love this story. He falls asleep, and wakes up when provisions have arrived. He eats, he drinks, he falls back asleep. When he awakes, provisions have arrived. He eats, he drinks, AND THEN he was able to go on.

I really love that he needs to sleep, eat, drink, sleep, eat, and drink before he can rouse himself. He has gone far beyond the “have a cup of coffee and keep going” point. He is exhausted. He is out of will power. He is out of a will to LIVE. If I were writing this story though, I’d add in some breathing. “He took intentional deep breathes until he was able to slow his body enough to sleep…” and then the rest of the story. It would make it just a smidge better.

Probably because of the book I just read, I’m noticing that the story as written (and more so as adapted), Elijah is given the chance to “complete the stress cycle” in this story. The book is “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” written by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. In their opening chapter, they distinguish between stressors and stress. They point out that we need to complete the stress cycle, no matter what is happening with the stressors. And they name, concretely, how to do that. The first and best option is to “do literally anything to move your body enough to get you breathing deeply” for 20-60 minutes a day.2 Elijah walking into the desert for an entire day seems to qualify.

The Nagoski sisters offer 6 other ways to complete the cycle though: 1. “deep, slow breaths down regulate the stress response”3, 2. positive social encounters (even causal ones), 3. laughter – but the real deep belly laughter kind, 4. physical affection from someone you trust (they suggest a 6 second kiss between partners or a 20 second hug with someone you like, snuggling a pet), 5. crying, and 6. creative expression. In other chapters they also talk about meditation and spiritual connection, so I’m going to add a #7 – whatever prayer practices work for you. They’re suggesting that we do at least one of these, and better many of these, every day. Because the stressors keep coming at us. And their book was written in 2019, so it is WAY MORE TRUE today.

So Elijah. He took a long walk (check), I’m all for pretending he took some slow breaths, he maybe had a positive encounter with the angel? (does that count??), and I’m quite sure he cried a lot, the Bible just forgot to mention it. He also took care of his bodily needs for rest, nourishment, and hydration. (Chapter 7 of their book is all about rest.) He also named his despair to God, and naming emotions has a lot of power too.

This little story has a lot of good responses to despair and burnout. Which is good, because many of us are in despair and/or burnout in at least some aspects of our lives.

The pandemic has challenged all of us. The challenges have differed, because we’re different, but we’ve all been challenged. Having another wave is definitely not helping anybody. We’re mad, whether or not that’s a primary emotion, sad, fearful, and maybe even detached. We’re exhausted.

And most of us are comfort seeking. We want things to be easier. We NEED things to be easier. We’re looking for things that sooth, ease, comfort, and console. Often, we’re looking for things to be “back to normal,” familiar, and make sense like we’re used to. We’re human. That’s how we work.

Another facet of how we work is that when we’re in high stress, we revert to earlier and lower levels of emotional functioning. We blame. We over react. We fight. We flee. We gossip. We triangulate. We take all our anxiety and we try to get rid of it by sharing it with others or throwing it at them. This too is human. It is how we work.

No one I know is operating at their best right now. We can’t.

What we can do is seek to complete the stress cycles – we can’t change most of the stressors, but we can give ourselves the best possible chance to change the stress. Our bodies, minds, and spirits are all connected, they’re all “us.” When we care for each of them, we give all of them a chance to do better.

I believe that God calls us all to life abundant. To full, meaningful, connected lives. To spiritual depth and work that matters and relationships that give life. Elijah went from that broom tree to the Mount of Horeb where he deepened his relationship with God, and then on to meet his protege Elisha and started to pass on his labor to the next generation. It wasn’t God’s intention that Elijah struggle alone, or burn himself out. It isn’t God’s will that we struggle alone nor burn ourselves out either. God wishes for full, abundant lives for us all. That’s part of why we take care of each other, and share love in the world. So, dear ones, I encourage you to complete your stress cycles, name your emotions, connect with your dear ones, engage in prayer, and live life as abundantly as you can. God wants it for us, we want it for each other, and the world needs us as healthy as we can be! May God help us. Amen

1 https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/02/belated-realization-that-covid-will-be-a-long-war-sparks-anger-denial/

2 Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski Burnout: The Secret to Unlokcing the Stress Cycle (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019) p. 14.

3 Nagoski, 15.

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  • July 10, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“God’s Plumb lines and Our Values” based on Amos 7:7-15 and Mark 6:14-29

There are days when I struggle to care about ancient kings and the problematic things they said and did to ancient prophets. Tracking royal lineages, and power battles in far off lands from times long past isn’t actually all that interesting.

And it certainly doesn’t seem like a formula for speaking a relevant word to God’s beloveds today.

This may even be one of those days.

One of the more distressing parts of the Bible, though, is that when talking about the power battles of men long dead in cultures I need explanatory books to understand, the dynamics of human life appear to be fairly constant over time. We may not have kings. We may not engage in beheadings in this country. But somehow, when it comes right down to it, things aren’t actually as different as I’d like them to be.

Which, actually, is the whole point as far as I can tell.

The teachings of Jesus are absurdly brilliant in their social analysis, questioning of norms, and in the way they make space for people to come to their own conclusions and then claim truth for themselves. Much of the rest of the New Testament uses the examples of Jesus to do the very same work. And, Jesus was a product of his Jewish upbringing, a tradition with a wealth of knowledge in asking great questions, using stories to help people think, and using prophets to clarify that God’s concern includes concern for those who are marginalized.

Or, to say it more simply, the Bible helps us see things as they are, so we can know what we are up against, and work to change it.

In our text from Amos, Amos is having visions, the king sees it as threatening and thus tries to threaten Amos, Amos responds claiming the King has no authority over him because he is doing what God called him to do.

Well, isn’t that power dynamics in a nutshell?

Someone, with God’s support, speaks uncomfortable truths. Someone with power gets threatened by it and responds by trying to silence the truth-teller. But the one who is working with God’s help isn’t silenced by threats. Because God’s power isn’t a part of human power struggles, and God helps us face our fears. Amos even says, “I’m not a prophet, I’m just saying what God tells me to say.” (Fair question on how we know that, but that’s for another day.)

The King Herod / John the Baptist story in Mark is similar in its function. As I was trying to remember all the details of the relationships of the characters and the political plots they were maneuvering, I came across a line in the Wikipedia article on Herodias that made me stop, “Herodias’ second husband was Herod Antipas (born before 20 BC; died after 39 AD) half-brother of Herod II (her first husband). He is best known today for his role in events that led to the executions of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth.”1

The gist of things is that King Herod had been married off by his father in a political allegiance, and yet he was seeking to consolidate power. He thought that his brother’s wife would be more useful to him in that, so he exiled his first wife and Herodias divorced her husband, and they married. Ironically, perhaps, he was eventually displaced by the angry father of his first wife. Similarly, the things he did to consolidate his power and then to protect himself from accusations against him are exactly the things history remembers him for.

So what’s that story in a nutshell? The King ignored common decency, political allegiances, family ties, and generally accepted morality in order to seek power. The story told in the Gospels is maybe not factual. Instead, it is reflective of the differences between the moral standards of the common people and the fast and loose dealings of those on the top of the pyramid with the lives of those on the bottom.

Our story says that as Jesus was gaining fame, King Herod was living in fear that he was John the Baptist resurrected. That would mean that the Government’s power to KILL wasn’t powerful enough. #Foreshadowing. It also suggests that the King feels a little guilty.

Common morality of the day wouldn’t have permitted a woman to dance in public. So judgement is also present in that. The story also seems to parody how decisions get made about people’s lives. One person is drunk and makes excessive promises, another seeks an easy way out of a difficult situation, and voila, a prophet is killed. As one scholar put it, “A more sarcastic social caricature could not have been spun by the bitterest Galilean peasant.”2

Underlying this story is the knowledge that Jesus was a disciple of John’s, that Jesus largely took up John’s mantle, that the early Christians think of John as the messenger sharing that Jesus was coming, and that the powers of the world would also kill Jesus, and he wouldn’t conveniently go away either.

What strikes me in this story is how many times I’ve heard it. That is, a person with large amount of power in something – government, an industry, finances – wants to accumulate more, does so by illicit means, and then does even worse things to cover it up. And, usually, they get away with it. And, often, everyone knows but no one feels like they can do anything about it. This is the narrative of much of the #MeToo movement. This is the narrative of cover ups in COVID policies. This is the narrative of pretty much every scandal you read about in the news.

In this case, the prophet is the one willing to share the news that others are too scared to say, and to name that immoral behavior is – in fact – immoral.

I think it is fair to say that being a prophet is no fun. And it is very dangerous. (Although I have friends who I think it is fair to say are prophets, and they tend to think some parts of it ARE fun. It may just be that I’m a naturally more cautious person than they are.)

To bring the world from how it is to how God wants it to be requires prophets though. Did you know that the vast majority of theft in the US is wage theft, which almost always goes unpunished?3 One report concludes that wage theft (not paying workers what is owed to them) costs $50 BILLION a year in the US, as compared to the grand total of all robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts in the nation costing their victims less than $14 billion.

Yet somehow petty theft often results in incarceration, and wage theft – in the rare case it is prosecuted – results in fines. The system that lets those with power and money play fast and loose with the lives of people in poverty is still going strong, and our “justice” system empowers it.

This is, of course, one of innumerable examples of how the structures and systems of the world keep on finding new ways to look the same, and what should be outdated in the Bible turns out to be just the same today.

The world tempt us to look away, to justify the actions of those in power, to ignore the cries of the marginalized, to care more about “the economy” then the lowest paid workers in it, to side with the modern kings of the world. There is something deep in human nature that assumes that the ones in power got their by their own merits and the same is true of those without power. But it isn’t so.

God keeps helping us open our hearts so we can see more clearly. God reminds us that the purpose of an economy is to find ways to care for everyone in it, the purpose of a society is to create real justice for everyone so everyone can thrive, and the purpose of a church is to help people expand their own humanity so they can let their hearts be broken by other people’s pain. God’s values aren’t the world’s. God sees fully, profound, beloved value in each and every person, and wants good for all.

And we, dear ones, seek to do the same. May God’s values transform our own, again and again, and again. Amen

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodias Accessed 7/8/21.

2 Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008,) 216.

3 https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-workers-hundreds/

July 11, 2021

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  • July 4, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

If I’m honest, I’m not a fan of my own weaknesses. (I pause now to await the ones who know me well to stop laughing at my understatement.) I would really like to be strong, capable, and impressive in all ways.

I’m not.

I’m a normal human mix of capable and incapable, strong and weak, impressive and profoundly not impressive. It is truly annoying.

From conversation, I’m under the impression that some of you are more at peace with this than I am, and that is such good news. You are all living proof that wisdom, maturity, and the grace of God are profoundly powerful. I’m also aware that some of you are with me, in being frustrated in your own imperfection, and always pushing yourself for more. May God’s grace transform us too.

Anyway, my own sense of self, and my own impatience, are quite a lens to bring to our Epistle reading today. Paul talks about a “thorn in his side,” one that he has asked God to remove repeatedly, and one that he has come to believe is USEFUL in his ministry. The use of the thorn in the side? Keeping him humble, and reminding him that “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul, who in this whole passage is modeling a different kind of leadership is refusing to play the games asked of him. Others have come to the church in Corinth bragging about who they are, what visions they’ve seen, and what authority it gives them. Paul has been asked to justify himself and his authority.

The passage we read today is part of him refusing to play along.

It opens with a weird piece about “someone” having a vision, which ends up being Paul, but he refuses to give any details or use it to gain any power over anyone else. Furthermore, he refuses to engage in even arguing about what form the vision took. Paul is NOT PLAYING by the rules.

He is facing people who boast, but he refuses to boast, OTHER than about God, so instead of bragging about himself, he talks about his WEAKNESSES. He talks about the thorn in his side. (No, no one knows what it is. Options in likeliness order include physical ailment, mental illness, outside persecution, or spiritual torment.) And then he talks about God.

I found a wonderful passage from a commentary I was tempted to share, but it was so dense I didn’t think it would help anything. So, instead, I’m going to summarize it for you, and put it in the footnotes.1 2

Paul is being told that the thorn in his side, that weakness in him, is a place that God’s grace can work. For Paul, this connects to Jesus being “crucified in weakness” but raised to life by the power of God. If Jesus’ life was defined by his weakness and God’s strength, then sharing the Good News of Jesus is also about letting God shine through our weaknesses. So Paul doesn’t try to overcome his weaknesses, nor dismiss them (like the Cynics and Stoics of his day). He also doesn’t try to be self-sufficient, which would involve limiting his own needs to limit his dependence on others. Instead, he accepts his “thorn in the side” and other weaknesses, and lets them guide him to dependence – on God.

So, to those bragging about what they’ve experienced of God, Paul refuses to boast, except about his WEAKNESS. To those seeking self-sufficiency, Paul responds with his dependence. This is definitely one of those cases where I can see why Paul was such an effective messenger of the story and love of Jesus.

This humble Paul, who only brags about his weakness, who acknowledges his dependence, who speaks highly of others but not himself, and who names the work of God in anything others might praise in his own life – THIS is the faith I grew up with. This is what I saw in my own church, and at church camp, and in the Annual Conference leaders when I started attending as a young teenager. I watched this being modeled, and I internalized it. The faith of bragging about the accomplishments of others, but not of ones self. The faith of seeing remarkable transformation happening, and thanking God. The faith of humility. This all feels like first language faith to me, the way that things are without even having to think about them.

From where I stand today, I don’t know if that’s good. Or, at least, I don’t know if it is equally good for everyone, or for every time. And I wonder if another person had been with me in those faith-forming experiences if they would have heard it and internalized it in the same ways.

This is funny, because there is a HUGE part of me that says “OF COURSE THIS IS GOOD, this is WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE, this is what being GODLY looks like.” But I’ve learned, over the years, to question everything, especially things that refuse to be questioned.

I wonder if “be humble, only speak of the accomplishments of others, praise God for anything praise worthy in yourself” ends up taking especially strong hold in women, in people of color, and in others who are marginalized, which ends up supporting the status quo in ignoring the wonders and accomplishments of many of God’s beloveds. And, I think about the quiet ways women and people of color are shamed for appearing to be insufficiently humble. I wonder if there are ways that those who are not marginalized are immune to the message of humility, and end up being the only ones comfortable with touting their accomplishments. And then, since others are also touting theirs, they seem the most capable.

I wonder if my first language, faith of my childhood ends up doing more harm than good by reinforcing exactly the ways that society wants to ignore the giftedness of many of God’s children.

Rev. Dr. Eric Law in The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb says, “Our vision of the Peaceable Realm is not based on fear. Instead it is based on lack of fear….This lack of fear is created by the even distribution of power.”3 When humility is used by some, but not others, we end up protecting those in power, instead of moving towards power sharing. Law’s book discusses a cycle of Christian living between death and resurrection: 1. Giving up power, choosing the cross 2. Cross, death, powerless 3. empowerment, endurance, faithfulness 4. Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Powerful. He emphasizes that we need to hold things in balance, not staying in one part of the story, but living the cycle over and over again. In fact, he talks about those with power giving power away, and that is if this is a way of life, power gets shared.

I think that maybe the faith I grew up with is one with GREAT value, especially in any situation where I have power. It is good to brag on others, lift others up, focus on inter-dependence, be aware of one’s weaknesses, and take it as an invitation to invite another’s strengths.

However, I think it is, maybe, only part of a fuller story. It is also important to see how God has gifted us, and think about how we want to use those gifts for the kindom. It is important to hear how what we have to offer blesses others. It is important to receive power, particularly when we are in a situation where we don’t have much. I think the full cycle is bigger than the one I’d internalized.

So, I don’t know what message you need today. (I don’t know what one I need today.) Maybe the reminder to look for God at work in our weaknesses, maybe to brag on each other, maybe to give up on self-sufficiency – and maybe to get REALLY REALLY clear on your own strengths and gifts and not let anyone take that away from you.

But I do know that Paul in 2 Corinthians and Jesus in his own hometown know a thing or two about being human, being limited, and finding God in the midst of it. And whatever else the message is in these passages today, I appreciate the reminder that God can bring good out of my weaknesses, and that makes them rather wonderful just as they are. Finally, I appreciate the struggle, to reach for a fuller faith, and acknowledge the complicatedness of trying to live as a follower of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“The apostle is directed to understand his affliction as part of that weakness in and through which God’s powerful grace is operated. It is clear that, from Paul’s point of view, the decisive demonstration of this oracular pronouncement is Christ himself, ‘crucified in weakness,’ but alive ‘by the power of God.’ This is why weakness is the hallmark of his apostleship, because he has been commissioned to the service of the gospel through the grace of this Christ – a grace whose power is made present in the cross. Paul therefore does not, like the Cynic and Stoic philosophers of his day, strive to transcend his weaknesses by dismissing them as trifling. Nor does he, like them, hold to the ideal of self-sufficiency, striving to limit his own needs and therefore his dependency on others. Rather, precisely by accepting his tribulations as real weaknesses he is led by them to acknowledge his ultimate dependence on God.” Victor Paul Furnish II Corinthians in The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company Inc, 1984), 550.

2 Funish, 550.

3 Eric H. F. Law The Worf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 1993) 14.

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 4, 2021

Photo Credit to Barb Armstrong.

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  • June 20, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“God’s Peace – In the Midst of the Storm” based on Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 and Mark 4:35-41

Two years ago at the Upper New York Annual Conference, Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball guest preached for the ordination and commissioning service. She preached on this text, and what she said was memorable enough that I can no longer hear this passage without her interpretation of it.

You may remember that two years ago the United Methodist world was in turmoil over the passage of “The Traditional Plan” at the 2019 Special Session of General Conference. That is, our denomination has been explicitly homophobic since 1972. Thanks to the decades of work by organizers, activists, and people of conscience there was sufficient pressure to create change. A special session of our denomination’s global legislative was called to respond to the church’s continued exclusion of God’s LGBTQIA+ people. There were several proposals on the table that brought positive change, and one that multiplied the harm already being done.

I still remember standing in shock after the final vote was taken, and watching my phone explode with the global news outlet alerts that – as the NYTimes put it “United Methodists Tighten Ban on Same-Sex Marriage and Gay Clergy.” The homophobia of this denomination had already been an abomination, yet people stayed knowing that the best way to bring change was from the inside. It was long, hard work, but we had felt confidence that God’s Spirit of Love would win in the long run. The decision to pass the Traditional Plan changed all that, and made it clear that over the long run people of conscience CANNOT stay in a homophobic denomination.

That was February. We were still reeling, grieving, and furious when Annual Conference came. Thanks be to God, we’d also organized, and Upper New York will be sending a very different delegation to the next General Conference (whenever the pandemic allows that to happen). Nevertheless, the conviction remained for progressives and even many moderates: one way or another, we will NOT STAY in a homophobic denomination. One way or another, we will be part of a church that welcomes all of God’s people, and soon.

It was into that reality that Bishop Steiner Ball preached. And she did so as a guest preacher in an Annual Conference whose Bishop had been a leader in writing and passing The Traditional plan. She took this passage and asked us to stay in the boat with Jesus. She acknowledged the storm raging around us, she named the reasons we would have to simply bail on the entire endeavor, she made space for hurt, anger, and fear. At the same time, she claimed that Jesus was in the boat with us, in the midst of the storm, and powerful enough to respond to the storm. She believed that Jesus could bring resolution, IF we just stayed in the boat. She offered that while the storm was raging so strongly it could be tempting to just jump into the sea, that the sea itself was not without its own issues. She urged us to stay long enough for Jesus to act, to bring resolution, to find a way forward for the people called Methodists.12

Here we are, two years later, still in that storm, and still with Jesus. The biggest change is that with the global pandemic, we are dealing with multiple storms at once. The storm that is the pandemic keeps United Methodists from gathering to split into different denominations that will be able to live their own faith with integrity. The storm that is the church’s homophobia prevents the denomination from being able to speak with moral authority, even of issues of death and dying brought on by the pandemic.

So here we are, in a boat, in the midst of raging storms. But, Bishop Steiner Ball says that Jesus is in the boat with us. Further, she reminds us that Jesus is able to calm the storms.

I am aware that the global pandemic storms, and the global church storms are themselves far from the only storms attacking our boats.

In truth, I suspect that for many of us the storms raging most strongly are inside us. Narratives and traumas from our childhoods continue to attack within. Existential anxiety has its way with us, often in ways we don’t even see. Assumptions about others, fear of the the unknown, and a tendency to see enemies were there are only people who are different also keep us on the defensive. The whole world turning upside down on us, not yet being righted, and likely to find a balance somewhere other than where it used to be obviously doesn’t help either. People are comforted by the familiar, which means that the past 15 months have been particularly discomforting at exactly the time we’ve most needed comfort.

Which is all to say that I think there are storms raging within us, probably all of us to a greater or lesser extent.

To support this theory, mental health professionals have never been so busy. Now, I’d say that in an ideal world, we’d all get regular mental health care as a means of simply being healthy. But most of the time, most people don’t seek mental health care until they’re well into a crisis/storm and can’t find their way out alone. So very busy mental health care professionals is a signal that many people are really struggling.

There isn’t anything wrong with struggling. It is a human reality. The “Disciple Bible Study” curriculums call such things “the human condition.” There isn’t actually anything wrong with being in a storm. It is also a human condition, and quite often it is well out of our control.

That said, being in the midst of a storm, particularly one like our scriptures talk about today are NOT comfortable. These are the sorts of storms that make it seem more likely that death is on the horizon than life.

And Jesus sleeps through it.

Either he was beyond exhaustion, or he was living non-anxious presence or both. Impressive, Jesus.

The story says Jesus awoke, rebuked the storm, and rebuked the disciples. I feel like it forgets to tell us that he then curled back up and went back to sleep. The storm was silenced. The disciples were awed.

I wonder if any of the storms that rage within us are ones that God would be happy to silence and bring to peace, if we were willing to let God do it. I suspect so. Some storms we are aren’t ready to let go of. Some storms just aren’t done yet. But some of them are only causing us harm, and are ready to be silenced.

Can you tell? Can you feel any of them that have run their course and would be response to “peace, be still!”? Can you even imagine what life would be like without that storm?

To go back to the storm we started with, I learned about the church’s homophobia when I was 13, and started working against it then. I have worked for and dreamed of being a part of a big-C Church that welcomes, affirms, and loves all of God’s people. You have too. This church has been explicitly committed to changing the UMC’s life-denying policies for 25 years now, and was already committed to it before then too!

Yet, it boggles my mind to try to imagine life without this fight – or at least changing this fight from one fighting explicit policy to fighting implicit bias. My identity will need a reboot.

And I think that’s often true of our internal storms too. We’re used to them. They’re familiar. They’re a part of who we are, and we aren’t entirely sure who we’d be without them.

But, friends, that’s exactly what God is there for. God doesn’t want to leave us in the pain of the past, or even the anxiety of the present. God is a source of healing, and energy of revival, a vision for wholeness, a hope for the future. Some of the things we’re afraid to give up, God is ready to take away.

God’s peace is stronger than the storms. God’s peace can hold its own EVEN in the midst of the BIGGEST storms. It has a different kind of strength. It has a deeper kind of being.

So I invite you, to hear the words of Jesus resound in your soul. “Peace, be still.” And I invite you to listen to see what storms God has silenced. Because God is up to good in you, in us, in the world, and when we make space for it, God can transform even the most hurting parts of us. Thanks be to God!

Amen

1Please note that these are my memories of a sermon I heard 2 years ago. As memories are faulty, and tend to have holes filled in with one’s own assumptions, this is likely a high bred of what she said and what I wanted to hear and remember.

2 I take no authority to tell anyone they need to stay in the UMC boat. There are good reasons to leave, all the more for people who are LGBTQIA+. I’m sharing that it was meaningful to me, knowing that I’m not the center.

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  • June 6, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Only Love Can Do That” based on Psalm 130 and Mark 3:20-35

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nurturing love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,ngdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand,” were rephrased by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King into, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.“

In the Gospel, Jesus is experiencing attack. He was a healer, and a successful one. This disconcerted some people. Isn’t that the way things go sometimes? Someone is doing their thing, their uniquely gifted by God to take care of each other thing, and somehow or another people get upset about it. Maybe Jesus was undermining the revenue streams for other healers. Maybe he was getting a little too famous a little too fast. Maybe the way he went about it decreased dependence on the official religious mechanisms. Maybe he was supposed to be “nobody” and it upset things far too much for him to turn out to be “somebody.”

But somehow or another, this attack on Jesus feels… normal. He was doing a good thing that helped people and others took offense. Welcome to life itself, right?

In this case, the ones who went on the offensive against Jesus didn’t have much to work with. After all, how offensive is it really to heal people and not ask for payment? So they SAID that the reason he had the power to heal was because he was evil. Or, in their language, he was given the power over demons by the head demon.

Now, Jesus tends to be pretty patient with people who are struggling, or downtrodden, or under attack. But, according to the gospels he usually wasn’t above defending himself with quick wit. Mark says that Jesus replied, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” AKA, if evil were being used to drive out evil, it would work against the power of evil.

Or, again, in the way that speaks far better to me, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”1

While I was pondering all of this, in the midst our Wednesday night study “Caring for Inactive Members” Rev. Bob Long shared his understanding of the difference between anger and hate. (Note that is what I remembered him saying, so please assume any faults are mine, not his.) Anger is a sign of caring, a sign that something one values is being violated, and that the person experiencing anger cares enough to want to change what’s wrong and maintain the relationship. On the other hand, hate is a desire to no longer be in relationship with the other, and does not involve caring.

PLEASE NOTE: While I really appreciate this, and all ways of humanizing the experience of having emotions, and any reminder that anger can be fruitful in bringing justice and resolutions, I am also sorely aware that anger can also be used as an excuse for harm, punishment, and abuse. ANGER is a part of life, one that can useful as a way of noticing what we value and guiding us towards actions that fit out values. Anger is not, however, excuse for violence in words or actions. There is a fundamental difference between being angry and taking anger out on others. The former is normal and good. The latter is not.

In this moment in time, we live in the midst of deep and deepening divisions. We’re told that some of the divisions in society are intentionally created by outside nations, seeking to lessen the power of the United States in the world. Others are flames intentionally fanned for the sake of political power. Still others have been used to break apart the mainline denominations, so that our voice in calling for justice and the building of the kindom would be lessened.

And NOW we’ve added to all of this various ways of responding to a global pandemic, questions about masking, vaccinating, social distancing, opening and closing of various businesses, and schools, and places of worship.

There are deep and deepening divisions. Many of them move people to anger. Anger fits, positions on issues of life and death are deeply held. I fear, however, that some are moving people from anger to hate.

Further, I fear that with each and every deepening division, we get better at division and less skilled at connection. I fear we’re getting better at hate, when we’re called to get better at love. To quote MLK again, “Psychologists and psychiatrists are telling us today that the more we hate, the more we develop guilt feelings and we begin to subconsciously repress or consciously suppress certain emotions, and they all stack up in our subconscious selves and make for tragic, neurotic responses.”2

I also fear we’re letting the energy of division come home to roost. The way the outside world works in soundbites, and us vs. them, and gossip, and triangulation, and fear mongering and a refusal to engage in direct communication… all these pieces of division are getting NORMALIZED. So are attacks, like the ones against Jesus that started this whole story in the Gospel.

So, let’s take a few moments to remember again what being a part of the Jesus-movement, kindom building, God-centered, beloved community is all about. It is far easier to focus on what we’re meant to be when we remember what that is.

In the end of the Gospel passage, Jesus says “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

He expands his family. He refuses the boundaries that tell him who he is to love, protect, and care for, and he simply embraces more people in that role. He expands the kindom, his own kindom, to include those working with him in expanding God’s love in the world.

To expand kinship is to expand who is “us” …eventually until there is no “them.” To expand kinship is to have enough trust and respect for other kin to discuss disagreement, disappointments, hurts, and fears directly. To expand kinship is to listen, even to long-winded, indirect stories that may or may not eventually come around to the topic at hand (but … I mean… maybe not DURING a meeting?? ) To expand kinship is to disagree and not let that disrupt relationship. I hope that you’ve seen this in your life, family members who like each other immensely and have enough space in that liking and loving for real differences.

It is my hope that some of what we do in worship is expand kinship. Worship is seeking to connect to the Divine together. Over the past 1 ¼ years, the “together” has taken on new meaning, and has proven to us that there are a lot of different ways to be together. Worship itself is quitea wide range of things. Silence, and word, and music – sometimes a particular worship has only of those forms! Prayer, scripture, and reflection – again, sometimes one is dominant over others. The forms of prayers vary. The types of music vary. The length of service varies!!! The structure and form of the service, and even of the reflections can also vary greatly. I’m reminded that there are a significant number of people in our midst for whom the more profound form of worship is service, and others for whom the Divine is most reachable in nature.

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nuruting love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in [God’s] word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm130:5-6)

Worship make space for that connection. It is time set apart to connect. May worship bring us closer to love, to God, and to each other. May worship even help us gain the strength and courage to keep on connecting with each other across differences. Or to put it another way, maybe worship can function a way to prevent anger from becoming hate. Or maybe it is even more powerful than that. Maybe worship is able to nurture love in us, and love is the thing most powerfully able to drive out hate. May it be so. Amen

1Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010 – originally 1963), 47

2 Martin Luther King “Loving Your Enemies” sermon Nov. 17,1957, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Found at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church (He’d edited by the time it was published in Strength to Love.)

June 6, 2021

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“Sacred + Ordinary” based on Isaiah 40:21-31 and Mark…

  • February 7, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

I
can’t get past Peter’s mother-in-law.  There is so much more in this
passage, and there is so much in the Isaiah passage that I want to
get to, but she won’t let me go.

For
those who don’t know I’m using the name Peter for the man in the
passage called Simon, because he has a name change later, and because
of the name change we’re more familiar with him as Peter, “the rock
on which the church is built.”

Now,
there really isn’t much of a story here.  It is two verses. “Now
Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him
about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her
up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” (NRSV Mark 1:30-31)

Yet,
somehow, the story just won’t let me go.  

One
part may be obvious.  I try, regularly, to let my feminist guard
down, and say, “well, those were different times” but COME ON.
She’s unnamed, which indicates Mark didn’t think she was that
important – even important WOMEN get named in the Gospels.  And
after she is healed, she gets up and SERVES.  

While
not entirely resolving this issue, Debie Thomas offered some helpful
insight about the word used here for “serve” in Greek.  She says:

The
verb St. Mark uses to describe the mother-in-law’s service is the
same verb the gospels use to describe the angels who attend Jesus
after his forty days in the wilderness. It is the same verb Jesus
uses to describe himself when he washes his disciples’ feet: “I
am among you as one who serves.” And it is the same verb the early
church uses to commission deacons, the “servant” leaders of the
church.

What
if Simon’s mother-in-law is not an undervalued woman in a
patriarchal system, but the church’s first deacon? The first person
Jesus liberates and commissions into service for God?1

That
helps a bit.  I still don’t love that she gets healed and starts
serving, but if I’m honest, I know those people.  The ones with such
profound servant hearts, that nothing short of profound illness could
keep them from offering exceptional hospitality.  The ones who would
get up from a sickbed and start cooking immediately, if the
opportunity arose.  And, to be honest, they’re not all women.

The
other little bit of new insight into this passage came from my
beloved commentary “The Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels” which pointed out the obvious.   Galilee in the time of
Jesus was patriarchal, and in particular that meant that when a
couple got married, the woman left her home and went to live with her
husband’s family.  Which means that it is actually quite weird that
Peter’s mother-in-law lived with them.  It indicates that she’d run
out of who should take care of her:  her husband, her sons, her
father, her brothers. I think even her cousins would have been
responsible for her care before her son-in-law.  But nevertheless,
she was there.2

Somehow,
this little story keeps getting further under my skin.  Peter’s
mother-in-law was a widow without sons.  She was living in the home
of some  fishermen, and while there is some debate on this, I don’t
think fisherman were doing well in the socio-economic systems of the
day.  They’re all in Galilee which was the backwater part of the
backwater Jewish portion of the great Roman Empire.  

Peter’s
mother-in-law is yet another figure in the Gospels who would have
been ignored and counted as unimportant by society.  Peter’s
mother-in-law is yet another piece of proof that the Way of Jesus
isn’t the way of the world.

I’m
still sad she’s unnamed.  I’m still a little sad she jumps up to
serve them.  

But
at the same time “they told Jesus about her at once.”  The family
cared about her, and Jesus cared about her.  Just because she was a
poor widow didn’t mean she was unloved by her own family.  DUH.
Value in society really doesn’t have any relation to the value a
person has to their own people.

Many
of the most moving celebrations of life I have presided over have
been for caring mothers, many of whom never worked outside the home,
others of whom had jobs that were notably secondary to their roles as
caregivers.  As far as today’s society is concerned, stay at home
mothers aren’t particularly notable.  But as far as their families
are concerned, they were the center of the world.

Similarly,
most of the imperative lessons I’ve learned in life have been from
campers with Special Needs and from those living without homes.  Both
are populations the world tends to overlook, yet inter-personally
people are people, with wisdom, and gifts, and love to share.

I
think, deep down, we all know that the things that make a person
MATTER in society aren’t at all related to what matters in day to day
life.  And, of course, in the eyes of God, EVERYONE matters.

When
it came to Peter’s mother-in-law, they didn’t hesitate or confer
about whether or not she mattered, thank God.  Because of course she
matters!  Would any of us decline to ask for help for a beloved
family member?  Since Jesus had JUST healed in the Synagogue, in
front of her family members, there was good data on his abilities.

I
keep thinking about how society teaches each of us our place, and
teaches us how to inhabit that place.  The things that don’t REALLY
matter in life, still get under our skin.  Who walks down the street
head held high?  Who carefully avoids eye-contact?  Whose language is
considered appropriate for a business meeting?  Whose appearance is
considered appropriate?  Or, even, who has a right to be angry about
how life turned out, and to take their anger into explosions of
violence on others?

We’re
well trained by society, enough so that it is notable when people
buck trends.  

I’m
now at an age where most of the time people assume I’m reasonably
capable.  But 10 or 15 years ago, as a young woman in ministry, that
was less true.  I often got invited to sit on committees where I was
the only young woman, and often I could tell people thought I should
be grateful to be allowed to be present, and keep my mouth shut while
people who knew what they were talking about made decisions.  

Thanks
be to God, I was raised in the Jesus movement, and formed in the
radical Ways of Jesus, and I assumed that if I had a place at the
table I had a responsibility to use it.

It
is clear that Jesus doesn’t give two figs about the roles that
society prescribes to us.  A beloved child of God was sick, Jesus had
the capacity to heal, and he healed her.  He reached out to touch
her, even though she was an unknown woman to him, even though she was
ill.  

And
if this perfectly ordinary woman was seen and healed by Jesus, then
we can be assured that our perfectly ordinary lives are also seen by
Jesus, and healing energy is available to us as well.

For
me, Peter’s mother-in-law serves as a reminder of the sacredness of
the ordinary.  God is in each of us, God’s value is on each of us,
and ordinary lives are saturated with the capacity to be lived with
love and to thereby change the world.  

In
a culture, like many others before it, that often pushes us to think
we have to be extraordinary to matter, it is good to be reminded of
the sacredness of the ordinary.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

1https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2897-a-day-in-the-life

2Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Mark 1:21-34” p. 150

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

February 7, 2021

Photo by Barbara Armstrong

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“What Did They See?” based on Psalm 62:5-12 and…

  • January 24, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

I
was lucky enough to be raised in the church, and a thoughtful loving
church at that.  I liked church, I liked Sunday School, I loved
church camp.  Nevertheless, feeling a call to ordained ministry felt
like it came out of no where.  The call came during a worship service
at camp, when the leadership of Jesus was being described.  The camp
director compared the characteristics of a worldly leader with the
way that Jesus led, and invited us into the second kind of
leadership.  She talked about worldly being “important,” and
having people serve and take care of them so they can do “important”
things.  She compared it to the leadership of Jesus, as seen in
foot-washing, where leaders lead by serving others.

I
immediately, viscerally, wanted to be a part of that.  The inversion
of what was important.  The service.  The care of people.  The values
of the Jesus movement.  My desire to be a part of THAT was strong
enough to change my life plans – from a desire to be an
environmental scientist to a desire to be a minister.

Whenever
I read the story of the call of the disciples, I can’t help but
wonder, “What did they see?”  What was it about Jesus that was so
compelling that they changed not only their life PLANS like I did,
but their LIVES?  Why did they go?  

I
bring a lot of skepticism to Biblical texts, but I do tend to think
that a lot of people left their lives behind to follow Jesus.  Thus,
this story contains some big T Truth, whether or not it happened
exactly this way.  

So,
what was it that made Jesus and his message so attractive?  Why did
people walk away from lives they knew just to follow him?  Why was he
so popular it began to threaten the Roman Empire?  

There
are a few pieces that may come into play.  One option is that
people’s lives were really awful, so any alternative was better than
the status quo.  This may have come into play, but most people are
still hesitant to leave what they know, so it isn’t SUFFICIENT.

Rev. Rob Bell has a
video series called NOOMA, and in one of them he points out that in
the time of Jesus, all Jewish boys got some basic education, and the
brightest and the best got to have more.  There was continued
education and continued weeding until the point when Teachers
(Rabbis) would pick a few students to teach, and the rest settled
into other lives.  Thus, the very best Jewish scholars got to spend
their lives working on questions of faith, Biblical interpretation,
and things of God.  The rest …. didn’t.  Rob Bell suggests that
when Jesus called the fisherman, and invited them to follow him – a
teacher – a rabbi, he was inverting that system and inviting those
who’d been weeded out first into the best sort of education.

That is, perhaps the
disciples followed because Jesus called – and no one else had.
They were welcomed to be students of Jesus, but no one else had
wanted them.

I haven’t heard this
theory elsewhere, so I’m not sure if it is true, but it also seems to
contain some big T True.  

Even so, even if
life was hard and even if Jesus was the first one to invite them into
a life of Spiritual goodness, there had to be something about Jesus
himself that was simply attractive enough to follow.  Based on how
stories are told of him, it seems most likely that what was amazing
and attractive in Jesus was his connection to God.  

Now, it is important
to remember that connections to the Divine are not a Jesus-only
thing, nor a Jesus-movement-only thing.  Today’s Psalm, which comes
from Christianity’s Jewish roots, speaks profoundly about connection
to the Divine.

The Psalmist says,
“For God alone my soul waits in silence, my hope is from God” –
and then goes on to name all the ways that God is the source of
dependable goodness that allows for life to be lived well.  The
Psalmist compares the inconsistencies of life with the constancy of
God, the un-importance of wealth and measures of power with the
importance of steadfast love.  

That sort of
mystical connection to God, that trust, that wisdom – seems much
like what the disciples may have seen in Jesus.  Embodied love and
grace are profoundly attractive.  (If Im totally honest, I prefer the
sort of “evangelism” that is being such a happy, kind, and loving
person that people want to know how you became like that.)

I wonder if the
choice of the disciples to follow Jesus had some of each of the
components we’ve talked about – and one more.  I wonder if those
who followed Jesus had always been looking for something, that is
that they’d always been nudged by God towards more, and when Jesus
came they had “ah ha moments” and recognized that this was what
they’d been waiting and looking for.

That way of God
working in lives fits what I’ve lived and what I’ve seen in people’s
lives.  I wonder if it fits in yours?  Have you felt God nudging you
along the way?  Has God pushed and prodded you towards something?
Have you found it?  Are you still looking?  

I think that God is
always calling us, prodding us, nudging us — that is, guiding us.
Calls aren’t one time events that can be answered and then
disregarded.  Rather, calls are continual guidance on the next steps
of our lives.  Sometimes God’s calls are rather small, urges to be
“good” or “kind.”  Sometimes they’re huge – reminders to
build the kindom – to take on the issues of injustice and change
the world.

But  I think there
are also particular asks for particular people (at particular times).
Jobs or volunteer positions to take (or not).  Relationships to
build or let go of.  

In what way are you
being called right now?

Is it just to offer
care in and love in the world – a call that might be met with one
of the Lenten projects coming up?  Is it something bigger?  Or
something different?

Are you listening?

Will you be ready to
respond?

I suspect many
factors were involved in the way the disciples choose to follow
Jesus.  They were disenchanted with their lives, they were yearning
for something more, someone finally invited them, they could SEE
God’s hand in the life of Jesus, and God had long been at work
preparing them for that moment.  I suspect many of those factors are
alive and well among us as well.  May we be ready to answer, when God
calls.  Amen

January 24, 2021

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

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“Magnificent Magnificat” based on Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and Luke…

  • December 13, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Years
ago, I read the book, “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David
Graeber which probably sounds incredibly boring and yet was one of
the most mind-boggling books I’ve ever read.  It took me a year to
read it because the ideas contained in it required me to readjust my
thinking on many things I thought I knew (including money, the
military, violence, poverty, government, theology, and religion)1.
In the final chapter, when I thought my assumptions were safe,
Graeber quotes Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech;

In
a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the
architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the
Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence,
they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to
fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as
well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights”
of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is
obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note,
insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring
this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad
check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”2

Graeber
builds on this, speaking particularly of the West after WW II:

To
put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic
countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a
deal.  If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally
changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep
their unions, enjoy a wide variety of social benefits (pensions,
vacations, health care…), expanding public education institutions,
knowing that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the
working class entirely.  One key element in all this was a tacit
guarantee that increases in workers’ production would be met by
increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s.3

I’d
marked that whole section with an exclamation point, as it had never
occurred to me.  Then I turned the page.  Graeber continues, speaking
of this  deal, “… it was offered only to a relatively small slice
of the world’s population.  As time went on, more and more people
wanted in on the deal.” That is, minority groups, nations not in
the North Atlantic, women, etc.  He says, “At some point in the
‘70s things reached a breaking point.  It would appear that
capitalism, as a system, simply cannot extend such a deal to
everyone.  … The result might be termed a crisis of inclusion.”4

This
particular point has stayed with me so strongly that I knew which
side of the page the to scan in the final chapter to find it!  And, I
thought of it again this week, when I read an opinion article in the
New York Times entitled, “The Resentment Never Sleeps”  by Thomas
B. Edsall, which
wasn’t at all about what I expected.  It was about social status, who
has it, who seeks it, who is losing it, and how that impacts
politics.5
This struck me as particularly meaningful for two reasons, in
addition to how well it fits with MLK and Graeber’s explanation of a
“deal.”  First, because one of the most useful commentaries on
the Gospels I have (Social Science Commentary on the Synpotic
Gospels) is always talking about how the world order in Jesus’ day
was defined by the gain and loss of honor and shame, which were a
zero-sum game.  Secondly, because the Bible, the Jesus movement, and
the Magnificat itself are ABOUT upending assumptions about social
status.  

I
request your patience as I outline the primary points of the article,
because I think it will help us understand the meaning of Magnificat
for us today.  Edsall starts by saying, “More and more, politics
determine which groups are favored and which are denigrated,” then
suggests that the major political parties are working at odds with
each other, one to enhance the status of historically marginalized
groups, the other to enhance the status of the white, Christian
working and middle class.  (I’ll go ahead and leave it to the reader
to determine which is which.)

Edsall
then quotes two government professors who said, “social status is
one of the most important motivators of human behavior.”6
Now, I’m not sure why this is a major breakthrough in theoretical
thought, but apparently it is.  It feels clear, both because social
status is valuable in and of itself and
because social status impacts every part of life, including access to
the things that promote life and access to resources.  

Anyway,
the point is that people fight for social status.  Which is to say,
people fight for a place on the HIERARCHY, for ranking.  And how the
hierarchy is build impacts where people land on it, so it is a fight
many people are willing to engage in, with a lot of passion, whether
or not they’re conscious of what they’re fighting for.

Into
this reality, we people of faith hear the words of the prophet
Isaiah,

The
spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me;
[God] has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to
the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day
of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for
those who mourn in Zion– to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead
of a faint spirit.  (Isaiah 61:1-3a)

If
the oppressed,the broken (hearted), the captives, the prisoners, and
the mourners are getting good news, then those at the bottom are
being picked up.  That is, the Spirit of God is at work to pick up
the people at the bottom of hierarchy, one might even say, to
eliminate the bottom!!  

From
the prophetic calls for justice, to the Torah’s dream of a just
society; from the aching of the Psalmists to be dealt with fairly, to
the responses of Jesus to the oppressed; the Bible shows us that God
is NOT in support of hierarchies.  

That’s
how radical this faith thing is.  

God
and faith aren’t about MODIFYING hierarchies, or fixing who is where
on them.  God and faith are about ELIMINATING hierarchies, and
reiterating time and time again that EVERY SINGLE PERSON is a beloved
child of God, of inherent worth simply because they exist.  

As
a Christian who has spent a lot of time with the Gospels, I am most
clearly able to see this in the life and ministry of Jesus, and I
think Luke does a singularly amazing job of foreshadowing the
entirety of Jesus with the words coming out of Mary’s mouth in the
Magnificat.

Mary
herself is lowly by social standing.  She is female, she is young,
and she is poor.  Her words start by acknowledging this, and naming
that God is the one who calls HER anyway, God is the one who favors
HER, and thereby ignores the normal world order. She then extends
this single act of lifting her up out of the hierarchy to a reminder
of who God is and how God is in the world.  She says God scatters the
proud, brings down the powerful, and lifts up the lowly.

That
is, God flattens hierarchies.  God eliminates social standing.  God
fills up the hungry, but gives no more to those who have enough.
God… equalizes.

Because,
each and every person is a beloved child of God.

That
is, social standing is a thing of the WORLD, but not a thing of God.
Hierarchies do not serve God’s purpose in the world, they are the
antithesis of the kindom God is building (hopefully with our help).

So
what do we do with that?  The obvious piece is that we work for
policies that benefit everyone, and not just the few.  The challenge
piece is that we may end up needing to work for a restructuring of
our whole society as well as our church, because the hierarchies are
so deeply entrenched.  But the immediate piece is to think about
hierarchies of power in society, and where we fit on each:  age,
wealth, race, ethnicity, ability, gender, sexuality, education,
language, health, and immigration status might be places to start.
In which parts of our life are we seen as more value-able than
average, and in which less?  And how does it feel to have God shake
that up and reject it?  It may be that in places we are higher in the
hierarchy, we’re less comfortable with the hierarchy being rejected –
that seems pretty normal.  It may be in that places we are lower in
the hierarchy, we’re relieved at the hierarchy being rejected –
that seems pretty normal too.

In
the moments when I have attempted to connect with God and understand
how God sees me, I have been flooded with compassion and grace.  The
ways I judge myself and find myself lacking are not shared by God.
The inverse is true too, but that hasn’t felt nearly as emotionally
relevant.

That’s
the weird thing.  Because we live in a society run by hierarchies,
just like Jesus did, we’re socialized to judge ourselves and others
ALL THE TIME and to FIGHT to be worthy.  But that’s not how it is
with God.  We ARE worthy because we are God’s, and the worth is
inherent, and doesn’t require us to do anything to earn it or keep
it.  That also means we don’t have to worry about judgement, because
our worth CANNOT go away when it comes from God.  (Instead, Biblical
“judgement” is about creating justice, which is about caring for
all of God’s people no matter where they are on the world’s
hierarchies.)  Furthermore, God’s “economy” is one of ABUNDANCE
not scarcity, so we don’t have to fight for basic resources if we do
things God’s way.

Mary’s
song, like Isaiah’s prophecy, is good news for everyone.  Hierarchies
are like hamster wheels that keep us fighting with each other to
prove our worth, in hopes we’ll have enough.  The earth is abundant,
like God’s love.  There is enough.

When
we participate in the Jesus movement, when we work toward the kindom,
we are building the world that God envisions, without hierarchy and
with PLENTY for all.

Your
job, for now, is to savor God’s inherent love for you, and allow that
love to help you shake off the world’s judgements of your worth.

As
we do that, we enable the kindom building that God requests of us
all.  May God help us.  Amen

1For
some reason, “This book is so heavy it took me a year to read”
has never been a great selling point to get others to read it.
Which I regret, because it drew back the curtain on so many of my
unexamined assumptions, and I think I’m a better person for it.

2Because
I was too lazy to type this from the book, I grabbed it from:
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

3David
Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
(Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2011), p. 373

4Graeber,
374-5.

5Thomas
B. Endsall, “The Resentment That Never Sleeps” published in the
New York Times  Dec. 9, 2020.  Found at
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/opinion/trump-social-status-resentment.html
on Dec. 9, 2020.

6“Hypotheses
on Status Competition,” William
C. Wohlforth and David
C. Kang

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 13, 2020

Uncategorized

“Giving Thanks – 2020 Style” based on Deuteronomy 8:7-18…

  • November 22, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Growing
up, we had big Thanksgivings.  It was the holiday set aside for my
mother’s side of the family, and she is one of 5 siblings who have a
combined 11 offspring.  The holiday moved around between their
houses, with 20-30 of us gathered however we would fit.  There was
definitely a kid’s table, and I was always at it.  It was loud,
chaotic, and intense.  As a child that meant a lot of play, a lot of
playmates, and a lot of fun.  I’m told there were also a lot of
dishes.  Because it was the only time we got together, there were
Christmas presents too, and because it was the only time we got
together, there was plenty of family drama too.

I loved
those big Thanksgivings.

My
first year of seminary, in California, I decided not to fly home for
the short break.  Instead a dear friend from college – also from
the northeast, also living in California, came down to be with me.
The two of us stayed in pajamas all day, read for pleasure, and ate
what we wanted when we wanted to.  There was no turkey, because she
was vegetarian.  I was happy to cook.  She was happy to clean up.  We
grazed on pies, side dishes, laughter, and books all day.  

That
was the day I learned that holidays don’t have to be stressful.

This
year, a lot fewer people are going to have the big, loud, messy
Thanksgivings.  I hope this year more people will have surprisingly
lovely small, quiet, unstressful ones.

However,
I know there is a lot of real grief in being separated from those we
love.  This has already been a difficult year, and coming into the
holiday season, it is especially difficult.  When we stopped having
in person worship in March, I wasn’t able to REALLY believe we’d have
to do Easter from our homes.  You may remember that we decided to
“just wait until we could be in person” to do the Easter
photoshow.  (Submissions are still being received on that basis.)

As time
went on, I became aware we weren’t going to get back together before
I went out on Family Leave, and started to hope to be together for
Homecoming.  

Now it
is November, we aren’t having worship in person again in 2020, and
people are figuring out how to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
New Years over zoom.  Christmas worship planning involves a lot of
pre-recording.  The church’s advent wreath is staying upstairs this
year, while the amazing Altar Guild made us at home ones so we can
wait in hope together … but apart.

Now it
is Thanksgiving week and giving thanks has gotten a lot more
complicated than we’d like.

I’m not
sure we identify with the leper who gave thanks nor the lepers who
don’t.  As a society at least, I think we feel like the lepers who
weren’t healed, the ones not in the story, the ones who didn’t happen
to meet Jesus that day.

Or, in
the metaphor of the Hebrew Bible Lesson, it doesn’t feel like we are
living in the goodness of the Promised Land.  Perhaps it feels like
we’re still wandering in the desert, perhaps like we’re still living
in oppression in Egypt.  Maybe like we lost the promise and are in
exile.

The
opening words of Psalm 137 may meet us in this moment:

By the
rivers of Babylon—
   there we sat down and there
we wept
   when we remembered Zion.
On the
willows there
   we hung up our harps.
For
there our captors
   asked us for songs,
and our
tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
   ‘Sing us
one of the songs of Zion!’

How
could we sing the Lord’s song
   in a foreign
land?

How can we sing praises
when things are so HARD?

How can we celebrate
Thanksgiving when fear, death, and destruction surround us?

Sure, we can participate in
Advent, and name how much we NEED God, and how much we are WAITING
for things to be better.

But, how can we celebrate
God’s breaking-into-the-world (Christmas) when we are still in the
yearning?

And, dear ones, if you are
overwhelmed, sad, grieving, weary, lonesome, annoyed, or exhausted, I
don’t think you are over-reacting.  Things are HARD, and there is no
end in sight.

By the rivers of Babylon
(which, it is clear, are the WRONG Rivers, they are not the River
Jordan), there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered.

These words may be a model
for us.  It is OK to sit in grief and remember what was.  It is OK to
be horrified by what is.  It is OK to not like any of this, at all,
and be angry to be stuck in it.  It is OK, even to be sad that “at
least the exiles got to cry TOGETHER, we have to cry apart.”  

That’s fair.

It cheapens gratitude to be
forced into it, and it cheapens gratitude to come to it without also
naming the things that are broken and hard and awful.  It cheapens
gratitude to tell ourselves that others have it worse, so we don’t
get to be sad or mad.  It isn’t a competition.  The pandemic is
allowed to be hard for everyone.

So, this is my proposal, my
suggestion, my “means of grace for this week.”  I invite you to
take an HOUR to sit down with your accumulated grief from this year.
You may want to write it out as a long list, you may want to journal
it, you may want to draw it, or paint it, or play it on the piano,
walk it out, or just sit with it.  Do this on or by Wednesday.  If
you can’t get an hour, take 6 minutes.  If you complete and hour and
you aren’t done, give yourself more time.

But, BE WITH your grief.
Let it live and breath and exist.  I know for some of us, it is scary
and it feels like we will break if you even start to let it out, but
you won’t.  You are stronger than you think and you are held up by
the God of Love.  (How else would you have made it this far?)

Then, and only then, I
invite you to spend some time on Thanksgiving reflecting on what you
are grateful for.  Ideally, I’d say give this an hour as well, but
maybe only 6 minutes can be found, and maybe it will take all day.
Don’t skip this part though.  Some of the things we are grateful for
are sly – and if we don’t look for them, we might miss them.  This
process won’t work unless you can name your grief, but it also won’t
work if you ONLY name your grief.

I know and trust that God
is with us, that God is doing amazing things, that God is at work to
make things better.  But I don’t believe in cheap grace.  We can’t
pretend the hard away, and we can’t keep pushing through it.  We may
be a resurrection people, but that requires acknowledging the things
of death first.

THEN we get to notice the
amazing power of life.

So, I wish you a wonderful,
if unusual Thanksgiving.  And, because of that I wish you an hour to
grieve and an hour to be grateful.  May you feel God’s presence in
both times of prayerful reflection.  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

Uncategorized

“Compassion” based on Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 and Matthew 25:31-46

  • November 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Hello
dear ones.

While
I desperately miss the chance to be present with you in worship and
embodied conversation, I am so grateful for this chance to speak and
for your willingness to listen.  I hope that the Divine Spirit will
bless this message both in my speaking and in your hearing so that
space may be made for compassion and grace to grow in you and in me.

I
am speaking to you after a break!  For this first time in 2020, I
took a FULL week of vacation!  (Thanks to all whose work made that
possible)  Despite my own admonitions about refreshing the news, it
wasn’t the MOST relaxing vacation I’ve ever had.  Then, I spent 3
days on retreat.  Well, virtual retreat, but retreat none-the-less
(thanks to all who made THAT possible too.)  The retreat is a series
aimed at clergy, and focused on deep listening.  By making space to
listen to each other space to be heard, we trust that the Spirit will
be able to be seen more clearly.

After
the retreat I am feeling refreshed, renewed, and grateful.  And…
almost strong enough to tackle this Gospel lesson 😉

This
gospel lesson gets my heckles up, because I don’t like talk of hell,
I don’t like threats presented as God’s, and I don’t like binary
splits between people as if some are good and some are bad when we’re
all just complicated.

And
yet, I do like the means by which the judgement is made –
the care of the vulnerable.  Which means my whole relationship with
this text is complicated.  In the “Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels” Bruce Malina and Richard Rorhbaugh say, “The
basis for the division here is a person’s compassionate action toward
the weak and the poor.  Its condemnation of the refusal of those able
to help people who are in need is nearly complete.”1

God
calls us to compassion for those who disempowered:  the hungry, the
thirsty, the stranger (or foreigner), the naked, the sick, the
imprisoned.  Those are according to Matthew.  Ezekiel mentions the
lost, the injured, those who have strayed, and the weak.  In Ezekiel,
God will care directly for the sheep so that the lean are able to
become healthy, and the strong and fat are no longer able to oppress.

This
all reminds me of mercy – that word that gets used for God so often
it isn’t even heard anymore.  Mercy is “compassion
or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to
punish or harm.”2
Similarly, the compassion being asked for in these texts is not
generic compassion.  Rather it is compassionate ACTION towards those
who need it most.

It
is good to be kind and compassionate towards one’s peers, or those
with more power and influence than one has, but the judgement named
here isn’t on that.  It is about compassion to those who have LESS
power and influence, and more need.  (Although, intersectional
justice reminds us that power, influence, privilege and need are
complicated and multifaceted.)

As
I think these admonitions to be compassionate towards those who have
been disempowered is CORE to the Bible as well as to God’s desires
for a just world, the question of how to build up our compassion
muscles becomes really key!

For
me, at least, compassion starts with God’s compassion.  That is the
foundation for EVERYTHING.  Rather than starting with judgement or at
attempt to be worthy, my faith starts with the grace, love, and
compassion of God that I can trust in.  It changes how I see myself,
as well as how I see others.  It helps me be more gentle with myself
as well as more humble.  It challenges me to be better, but lets me
find peace with myself as I am.

To
keep on learning those lessons requires reconnecting with the Divine,
and the Divine’s compassionate gaze.  Prayer, spiritual exercise, or
simply letting myself BE without trying to DO anything more than be
all let me soak in God’s compassion and let it transform me once
again.

The
second piece is related to the first.  To become a more compassionate
person requires compassion WITH MYSELF.  This is actually the hardest
of the three I think.  This also starts with prayer, but also
requires self-examination, and feedback from others.  This, I
suspect, is a lifelong journey.

The
third piece of building compassion is the one we usually jump right
to: compassion for others.  However, I really think it develops
naturally and effortlessly once we work on connecting with our
Compassionate God and allowing self-compassion.  It turns out that
most of the judgments we put on others and the world are really our
judgements on ourselves externalized.  

The
world needs more compassionate people, because the world needs to
become more compassionate.  The irony is that the way we get there is
so indirect!  To transform the world first requires allowing God’s
compassion to continually transform us.

During
this time of pandemic, when everything is different from what we’ve
known, we still have the capacity to work on our compassion.  And
based on everything I’ve seen, the world is in desperate need of it
AND God has it in abundance.  

May
we become stronger in our compassion, through God’s.  Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Matthew 25”

2Apple
Dictionary.

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 15, 2020

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