“Breathe” based on Exodus 32:12-23 and Matthew 22:15-22

October 18, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today’s
gospel is one of those really deceptive ones. You think you know
what it means, and then you go to explain it, and it splits out of
your fingers.

The
Jesus seminar puts Jesus’s words, “Give therefore to the emperor
the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are
God’s” in red, indicating that they think this reflects an
authentic teaching of Jesus. In fact, it is one of the statement they
are most sure of, it ranks 7^th.¹

The
challenge for me is that I read the Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels this week (which I usually do), and it took issue
with how this text is usually understood.

“In
the twenty-first century, Europeans and Americans generally believe
there are four basic social institutions: kinship, economics,
politics, and religion. These are conceived as separate social
institutions, and people make arguments about keeping them separate.
However, in the world of the New Testament, people attended to only
two institutions as distinctive: kinship and politics. …

In
trying to understand the meaning of Jesus’ statement about rendering
to Cesar and God what belongs to each, therefore it would be
anachronistic to read back into the statement either the modern idea
of separation of church and state or the modern notion that economics
(including the tax system) somehow has a separate institutional
existence in a realm of its own. To assert here the frequent notion
that “two kingdoms” one political/economic and the other
religious, one belonging to Cesar and the other to God, are each
being given their due in the reply of Jesus is to confuse ancient
social patterns with our own.”²

Sooooo….
what does it mean?

I’m
not sure, but my best guess is that the clue comes in Jesus’s
question, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer when
it comes to the coin is “Caesars” What equivalently bears God’s
image?

Well,
our faith tradition says… we do. We are made in God’s image, the
latin is “imago dei” – image of God. The equivalent of the coin
is…. people.

This
is a fantastic answer. It is faith-filled, deep, and sidestepped the
trap they were trying to put Jesus into. Even better, it took a
while to sink in. You hear, “Give to God what is God’s, and you
have to think, ‘well, what is God’s?’” And that is a very useful
question. The coin suddenly seems a lot less important, when both
people and creation are God’s!

For
me, this is a primary identity. Who am I? I am a beloved child of
God, made in God’s image.

It
is also expansive. Who are you? You are a beloved child of God,
made in God’s image.

In
a symposium I did this week, Adam Foss shared about being a District
Attorney, and slowly awakening to the depths of injustice in the
justice system. As he woke up, he realized he needed to ask the
community he worked for what they needed, and he was surprised by
their answers. They told him that what they needed most from him was
“to be seen as humans” and “to be treated with dignity.”

This
has me thinking about how and when society dehumanizes people. There
are, unfortunately, A LOT of answers, but I’ve been wondering mostly
when society has convinced ME to dehumanize people. And, the answer
is sort of difficult to sit with.

Rather
than share my own list, I’m going to give you a moment to consider
yours.

Foss
also talked about the culture in the DA’s office, where if anyone
expressed discomfort (or any other emotion), they were told they were
“getting too close to the case.”

Maybe
that’s what really hit me. Because, if I’m honest, there is so much
pain visible to me, that I have to look away from some or numb myself
from some in order to function. But to do that FEELS like
dehumanizing the ones I look away from (perhaps it is.)

This
week I also came across a suggestion from Nanea Hoffman which said,
“Note to self: you don’t have to continuously monitor all the
disaster and heartbreak in the world. You are not in charge of
outrage and grief. Witness it. Feel the feelings. But remember,
love is where you live.”

And
with that, a deep breath came out.

It
is important to know where injustice is happening, where people are
being dehumanized, and in particular where people are struggling
close to home. BUT, not to know for knowledge sake. To know for
action’s sake – and studies say that the more we know the less
likely we are to act, likely because we get overwhelmed.

One
of the INTENTIONAL strategies of the past few years has been to
overwhelm us with despair. (It has worked far too well.)

But
we are not made in the image of Caesar We are made in the image of
God. We cannot solve all the problems in the world – at once. But
we CAN make significant differences in the world, and in the world
around us. The small actions we take every day matter, because we
are MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. We are God’s hands and feet and LOVE
in the world.

So,
what can you do to live in love this week? How can you let go of
despair? (Feel it but then let it go) How can you, like Moses, savor
the closeness of God? How can you connect with the humanity of
others?

A
suggestion, or two.

Take
deep breaths, stomach expanding breaths, often. Let them out with a
sigh.

It
helps. It may help even more if you remember that you are breathing
and breathing out the Divine.

And,
feel your feelings. Be with the despair, or the grief, or the joy,
or the anger, or the exhaustion. Even better, if you can trust
someone with them, name them. The more you accept your own humanity,
the better you will be able to accept the humanity of others.
Emotions are a reflection of souls.

And
that’s it, my friends. We are ALL made in the image of God. Thanks
be to God. Amen

1Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993).

2Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p. 397-8.

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

“By Whose Authority” based on Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16, Matthew…

September 27, 2020
by Sara Baron

There
are fantastic people in life who are able to quickly assess a
situation, and make a solid decision on a response. I deeply envy
those people. I’m a different kind of person, one who wants access
to as much information as possible, and then often internally
oscillates repeatedly. A good friend doing committee work with me
once told me that “our meetings would go a lot faster if you would
stop debating with yourself – outloud.” #truth.

Because
I’ve been examining the Gospel lesson this week, I am aware that
decisions require deciding where we put our trust. That is, who or
what has authority. That is because the central question in today’s
Gospel lesson is one of authority. Jesus was teaching, but as a poor
man without a formal position or education, he didn’t have a whole
lot of authority. The chief priests and elders had the education and
the positions. They held formal authority.

In
that time and place, like any other, authority mattered. They seem
genuinely confused. “why is this guy speaking like he has
authority when he has none? Does he have a powerful patron he is
speaking for?” The answer Jesus gives amounts to “I have the
authority of the respect of the people.”¹

DANG.

That
itself uprooted everything in his society. This was bottom up power
and everyone knew that power came from the top down. Those crowds,
however, knew that the power from the top down was profoundly corrupt
and corrupting.

So,
who or what has authority for you?

And,
if you say it is God, (*great*) what does that mean for you?

One
of the gifts of the Methodist movement has been a way of thinking
about authority that creates some balance. The “Wesleyan
Quadrilateral” suggests that when looking for truth about things to
do with God, faith, and people, we take into account Scripture,
Tradition, Scholarship²,
and Personal Experience. If something can be made sense of with all
4 of those areas of authority, it can be trusted. If not, it has to
be handled more carefully.

That
said, each of the pieces of the quadrilateral is more complicated
than it may seem. For instance, how scripture is understood seems to
be a range wide enough to include pretty much every opinion and its
opposite, and yet somehow with great conviction on every side. 🙁 I
believe it is pretty clear that the authority of “church tradition”
is similarly broad, as is personal experience. I think the Psalm
tries to answer the authority question with some sort of balance of
scripture and tradition – it says that because God has cared for
us, we can trust God. That’s all fine and good, but it still doesn’t
answer our deeper questions.

For
example, there is the question of what our faith community looks like
during this global pandemic. The issue, as you may be aware, is that
the first general rule of John Wesley is “First do no harm.” But
that is ALSO not simple (nothing is simple with me, sorry). Because
doing no harm means not exposing anyone to increased risk of COVID
exposure. BUT, it also means not letting people who are hungry
struggle with their hunger when we can give them food (so we have
kept Breakfast open, even while offering it as take out). It means
making sure that families living in poverty still have toilet paper,
diapers, and hygiene products (so we have been giving away our
SUSTAIN supplies while our distribution has been closed.) It means
making sure people have access to others, in community, to be heard
and to share life (our Zoom Check in, the Midweek Coffee Hour, the
Bridging the Distance Groups.)

And,
still, we know we have excluded. Not everyone has internet. Because
the internet is PROFOUNDLY not the same, not everyone gains a sense
of connection via the internet. There has been a yearning for being
in our worship space, for sharing space, for being more together.

And
yet, still, “do no harm” with a pandemic! So, what to do? After
MONTHS of internal oscillation, and lots of conversation with others,
the best plan I have to offer is this: we keep our worship online.
We keep our Zoom check in as worship part 2. We ALSO offer a
“Contemplative Prayer Service” at 10AM in the Sanctuary. This
service won’t involve singing, or even congregational speaking. It
will be quiet, still, reflective. There will be masks and social
distancing. It will be short (30 minutes or less). All of this will
minimize risk – but also respond to need.

Truth
be told, I also LOVE contemplative prayer, and I think many of us
need some time of stillness and prayer, and this may be good for our
spiritual journeys.

It
wasn’t easy to figure out how to go forward, and more difficult
questions will keep coming, but this is where we got to for now. My
authorities have been the medical and scientific communities, the
responses we’ve gotten from the church, the reopening committee, and
my own personal experience.

If
I’m actually honest about how I make decisions, it all comes down to
love. My question is, “what is the most loving option” and then
I have to take into account “for myself,” “for others,” “for
the whole.” And that still doesn’t create easy answers, but at
least it means I’m making decisions in ways I can respect.

(Let
me take this time to say that pandemic decisions are ALL HARD, and we
all come to them with different bodies, different risks, and
different risk assessments. We aren’t all making the same choices,
but I hope we are all trying to care for each other in our choices.)

So,
for a moment, I’m going to assume that you want to go with me down
the “what is most loving” path. I imagine you’d ask, “what
about when I’m stuck or unsure?” In the past several years, I have
been working on…. trusting myself a bit more. Now, when I find
myself stuck (including procrastinating), I ask myself “why” and
explore it. While there sometimes feels like urgency, I’ve found
that when I (prayerfully) explore my stuckness, I usually discover
something really important that isn’t being cared for. (This is
really how we got to a contemplative prayer service, I couldn’t
figure out how to make in person worship work for enough people!)

The
other piece is to trust other people to tell you when you are wrong.
This, actutally, is very Wesleyan, and I think it is one of the most
important aspects of faith community. We’re all wrong sometimes.
Which means we all need to be corrected sometimes. Which means it is
really good to work on the skill of listening to others, and
admitting our errors.

This
isn’t a lot of new advice, is it? Trust yourself when you are stuck
that you are stuck for a reason, let love guide your choices, and
admit it when you are wrong? Like most faith stuff though, this is
all easier said than done. That, and it is pretty clear that
authority and decisions are still hard for me!

Let
me offer one more little thing then. I’ve often heard it said around
this church, “question everything” and I agree. We question
everything, and we try to come down on the side of love, and we seek
to be open to correction and then …. we need on more piece. The
final piece is to practice forgiveness of self and of others, because
we’re all going to err even when we do our best.

With
all this, may we get ever better at using God, and God’s love, as our
utmost authority. Amen

1Based
on the work of Bruce J Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh in “Social
Science Commentary on the Synpotic Gospels” pages 108-109.

2Usually
called “reason,” but that leads to misunderadning,

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

September 27, 2020

Uncategorized

“Hunger” based on Matthew 20:1-16

September 20, 2020
by Sara Baron

On
Thursday morning I opened an article about the impact of COVID on
hunger around the world. The article started with a picture of a
malnourished child reaching out to a caregiver.

For
better or worse, I closed the article right then, my stomach already
roiling with horror and my whole being already feeling overwhelmed by
the scope of the issue.

As
these things go, a few minutes later I turned to sermon research, in
this case re-reading the chapter on Matthew 20:-16 from William R.
Herzog’s book, “Parables as Subversive Speech.” Herzog reminds
us that the day laborers in Jesus’s day were people who died of
malnutrition, people that society thought of as “expendables.”
Furthermore, these “expendable people” were the ones whose labor
enriched wealthy vineyard owners along with kings, emperors, the
military, the bureaucrats, and the religious leaders. The work of
agriculture was profitable, but as with any other industry, the
cheaper the labor, the more profits for those on top. Thus, the work
of day laborers was considered so invaluable as to be worth less than
what a person needed to eat in a day.

This
did not make my stomach feel any better.

Then,
I thought of the book, “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of
Class in America” by Nancy Isenberg that the Intersectional Justice
Committee book club read recently. In that book, Isenberg explains
that this country was colonized and founded while assuming that ~15%
of the WHITE population was “expendable,” in this case referred
to as “white trash.” This is IN ADDITION TO the dehumanization
of Native Americans as their land was stolen, the enslavements of
Africans and their descendants, and the consistent dehumanizing of
all people of color.

When
I read “White Trash,” I was horrified to realize that the people
who were considered “expendable” as our country was founded and
as it has continued – the ones sent to work in mines regardless of
safety conditions, the ones sent to build the railroads and to
dynamite mountains, for example, whose safety didn’t matter because
there were always more people who could be brought in to work – and
whose wages didn’t matter because there were always people willing to
work for anything, the ones who died young after hard lives — were
just the same as those day laborers that Jesus talks about. AND
they’re the same people who live with food insecurity in the richest
nation in history, the same people for whom subpar education is
deemed sufficient, the same people from whom wages are often stolen
without recourse.

We
still have “expendable” people in our society, we just don’t talk
about it explicitly. Worse yet, our country’s policies exacerbate
wealth inequality around the world, so that there are even more
people even more desperately poor and “expendable” outside the US
than in it (and within the US the number of people we deem unworthy
of sufficient nutrition is a moral atrocity.)

And,
of course, the pandemic has made this all worse. Were we once had
10-15% of the population of the US going hungry, at least double that
amount are now estimated to be hungry. 30% of our population.

Now,
there are some things we can do, if we are able. We can give to
SICM, to help the food pantry provide food in Schenectady. (They
also need volunteers.) Similarly we can give to or help with the
Sunday Morning breakfast here, or at the Regional Food Bank. The
organization “Bread for the World”¹
is our long term partner in education and advocacy to end hunger, and
they have many ways for us to respond.

But,
for now, I want to look at this parable.

Because,
not only do I believe Herzog that this parable was about the
struggles of day laborers and the ways that vineyard owners and the
systems they were a part of excited to oppress the poor and extract
wealth for the wealthy – I think Jesus TOLD THIS STORY to day
laborers.

Because
I think that God and Jesus are on the side of the people the world
sees as “expendable.” And, in particular, I think Jesus’s
ministry was PRIMARILY to the poorest of the poor. So, his teaching
was teaching for those who were struggling, including this story.

Which
should impact how we hear it.

The
people the first hearers of the story associated with was the day
laborers – the people who had lost their ancestral land, had no
notable trade or craft, and had fallen through the safety net. The
people waiting and hoping to be needed in the fields and paid so they
can eat that day.

The
first shock in the story is that the landowner comes out to hire them
himself. That didn’t happen in real life, but it helps the story
exemplify WHO is benefitting the most from their labor. The second
thing to note is that while the laborers hired first got to agree to
a wage – not a good one, but the normal one – the next sets of
laborers went into the fields without even an agreement. The final
set didn’t even get a say – they were SENT to the fields without
being told if they’d be paid.

Another
thing to notice is that this a VINEYARD and not a wheat field or
vegetable plot. The owner of a vineyard had to be wealthier than
average, because a vineyard took 4 years of intense labor as an
investment before profit would come in. That said, it was more
profitable than other land use. So wealthy people liked to buy other
people’s ancestral sustainable farmland and make it into vineyards.

The
owner’s response to the complaints of those who worked 12 hours being
paid the same as those who worked 1 is to dismiss the value of their
work. That was especially insulting because WORK was all that day
laborers had to offer. That is, the owner told the laborers they
were worthless.

However,
the parable tells us something else. The landowner had to keep
hiring people all day because there was so much work to do that he
wasn’t even able to estimate how much labor he needed. The vineyard
would not have been able to exist, much less produce anything,
without labor. The sub-subsistence wages of the laborers were part
of making the vineyard owner even wealthier, but moreso, the LABOR of
the day laborers was IMPERATIVE to his wealth. Wealth that, again,
he is making off of the land that they once used to LIVE and not just
struggle to survive.

The
parable also makes clear that the owner’s actions aimed at keeping
the day laborers competing with each other. Herzog says,

To
ensure a timely harvest, the landowner needed their labor. Yet the
lack of cohesion so evident among the day laborers allowed the
landowner to conquer them by dividing them. This is why the owner
spoke only to ‘one of them.’ The banishment of that one served to
intimidate the others and put them in their place. … [The owner]
smothered the truth that he was dependent on them and, as as result,
that they could have power but only a power tha grew out of their
solidarity. Divided, they would fall one by one before the withering
hostility and judgement of the elite. (Herzog, 96)

Jesus
told a story that let his hearers see more clearly the power they
had, the worth and value they had, and the need they had to work
together instead of competing with each other. The system is was
designed to oppress. The system today is too. And opting out isn’t
really an option for most people – at least not alone. But
together we can choose a different system.

Our
country has more than enough food for all the people. Our WORLD has
more than enough food for all people. The issue is not food, the
issue is distribution. And Jesus reminds us that people working
together can work for the common good.

May
Jesus inspire us to work for the common good, and may God strengthen
us and offer us wisdom so our work is productive. Amen

Questions
for reflection:

What
do you see being done for the common good?

How
should food be distributed?

In
what ways does society treat some people as “expendable”?

What
do you see being done to change that?

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

September 20, 2020

Uncategorized

“A kindom parable?” based on Romans 15:1-12 and Matthew…

September 13, 2020
by Sara Baron

There
are some simple takes on today’s parable. If you read it the way
Matthew wrote it, is an allegory about the importance of forgiveness.
As a reminder, the STORY itself says,

“A king called one of his
servants to settle accounts, the servant owed an extraordinary amount
of money. When the servant couldn’t immediately produce the money,
the king ordered that the servant, his family,
and all their possessions be sold to cover the debt
(worth noting, it wouldn’t have covered the debt.) The servant
grovels, the king not only relents, but FORGIVES the whole debt.

However, upon leaving, the
servant encounters someone who owes him money, requests that it be
repaid, and when that is impossible,
the servant threw the man into prison.

This got reported to the king,
who then had the servant tortured until he could pay back the debt.”

(It
is worth noting that the amounts of money in this parable are
OBSCENE. I’ve seen scholars guess that the first figure is as low as
$10 million or as high as $6 billion. The second figure is lower,
but not trivial. It is still more money than most peasants would
ever see, perhaps in the $10,000 range. The Jesus seminar actually
thinks this parable goes back to Jesus, in part, because the numbers
are so huge and they believe Jesus’s parables tended to exaggerate.
Other scholars point out that the first figure essentially equated to
“the largest figure one could ever name.” Our version of a
gazillion dollars, so, A LOT of money.)

So,
when the parable is taken as allegory, it is simple: God is like the
King, God forgives us our debts, we are then supposed to forgive
others their far smaller debts, if we don’t, we will go to hell.

HOWEVER,
despite what I learned in Sunday School as a child, parables aren’t
fables. They don’t tend to be easy to understand. Instead, they
tend to be things that make us think.

So,
when we come to a parable that seems easy to understand, it usually
indicates it has been cleaned up a little bit from what Jesus said
into what the Gospel writer thought it should mean.

If
we take the story just as Matthew wrote it, then God is vindictive
and while we’re instructed to forgive 70*7 times, God forgives once
and then gets unforgiving immediately. That should also give us
pause, since it simply doesn’t fit how we understand the Divine.

Now,
if we take out Matthew’s final scolding at the end, we un-fable the
story and get back to a parable. To take the parable as a parable
first requires that we do NOT assume that the earthly king is a stand
in for God?

If
we read it as parable, the whole thing gets uncomfortable. How could
anyone ever owe a king that much money? How does even the king have
enough money that he can forgive a figure like that on a whim? Where
does the money come from (hint: the laborers who are dying young of
starvation so the money can flow to the top)? Why doesn’t the servant
respond with generosity? Why did the other servants tell the king?
Why did the king respond with such venom? Who or what is good in
this story? What are we supposed to do? Does the second man get
released from prison when the first one gets sent to be tortured?
Does anyone win?

That’s
a solid parable.

However,
if we take out the BEGINNING line about this story being about the
kin(g)dom of God, things get even more interesting.

William
Herzog II in “Parables as Subversive Speech” suggests that we
first look at the story on its own merits – in the context of the
day. What follows is my adaptations of Herzog’s work. The king in
this story is most likely a client king of the Roman Empire. Someone
placed by Rome, and replaceable by Rome. He is in charge of
extracting wealth from the area he is king of, keeping some, and
sending the rest on. The system by which he does this is pretty
complicated, including many levels of bureaucracy that does his dirty
work for him – and is paid well enough to be grateful not to be the
peasants. The bureaucracy is kept on its toes with fear, and as such
the “work environment” is deeply suspicious, prone to untruths,
and manipulative. Everyone is “playing politics” with everyone
else because that’s how you survive.

When
leaders exist to extract wealth, they have to use their power to
terrify, and when power is inherently violent, the systems that
support it won’t be healthy. One could simply say that bad leaders
create bad systems, and that’s true, but under it all is a question
of what is the POINT of leadership.

The
Hebrew Bible suggests that the point of a leader is to care for the
people and pay attention to the needs of the whole, by
creating a system of justice that is fair, a society that enables
even impoverished people to survive, and an economic system that
distributes livable wages and sustainability as broadly as possible
(and prevents both generational wealth and its counter generational
poverty). Because the Jewish people knew this, the way the Roman
Empire worked was seen as inherently immoral. The Roman Empire, like
any empire understood the king to “own” the whole land and the
people, and to be responsible for using them to to extract wealth
from and to send to the top, and to do so by creating an unjust
system and threatening everyone with death and destruction. You can
see their point on this being a bad system.

OK,
so we have a Roman client king, and the first Jewish hearers would
have STARTED with distrust of this guy. Helpful to know, right?

And,
while the king was inherently immoral, SO WAS HIS COURT, as they were
the ones doing his dirty work. In fact, that first servant, was a
top level bureaucrat, and that large “loan” he was supposed to
replay was actually the “taxes and tributes” he and his
department were responsible for extracting from the people and the
land. Calling in the “loan” was demanding his money, perhaps as
a test of the servant, in order to threaten violence and keep the
fear up in the system. Being arbitrary and making unreasonable
demands helps create a culture of fear. The man doesn’t have the
full amount yet, possibly because it wasn’t “due” yet.

Now,
the first hearers likely would not have had a lot of identification
with this servant, because he was … basically a cabinet level
official whose own actions had done incredible damage to their
country and their lives. The king’s anger and threats are par for
the course, but, in fact, so is his forgiveness. Because the king
has now RE-ESTABLISHED his dominance, which was always the point. I
suspect the “Forgiveness” of the loan in this case is inherently
untrue, this was just a show of power, forcing the otherwise powerful
servant to be submissive and reminded of what can happen to him.

This
servant goes out after the “forgiveness” and then demands a
smaller BUT STILL LARGE sum be paid back to him. Again, it is worth
noting that the people Jesus spoke to would not have identified with
the man owing the smaller sum because it was still more money than
they ever had. And in this case the top level bureaucrat does not
forgive the debt, probably because most of the time debts are not
simply forgiven. Then other people in the court, who gained power
and prestige by lowering someone else’s, used this to take down the
top level official. And the king’s whims take him down this time.

That
is, perhaps this is not
parable of “what the kindom of God is like” and more a
description of “what the kingdom of Rome is like.”
By making plain how the systems of power work in the world,
Jesus was able to invite people to consider how they are complicit in
the system as well as if they want to continue to be.

Because
I, for one, don’t want to be part of systems like that.

Recently,
I’ve seen how beautifully another option can work. The practice that
I went to for care during my pregnancy and birth is one that prides
itself on putting patients first. And they did! My medical care was
profoundly humane, I was taken seriously all along, and my caregivers
took the time to talk with me – and not just about medical issues!
This seemed to penetrate the whole system. From the person who
greeted us at the desk, to the one weighing me, to the ones
scheduling next appointments, there was grace abundance, as well as
patience and kindness.

I
also noticed that the practice was humane to its workers. People at
various “levels” in the practice could be seen talking and
laughing with each other. It felt much more like people were doing
various tasks that all mattered than like there was a hierarchy in
the office. I also heard, at the hospital (as we were there for a
while) how incredibly well respected the group is!

Truthfully,
I found it mesmerizing. I wanted to know all their secrets. I asked
a bit, and what I heard was that the whole group was deeply committed
to putting patients first
and people came to work there to do that. The nature of the
organization was created by its primary value being lived out.

On
a smaller scale, I love the story of a very VERY mild mannered man
becoming the roads supervisor in a small town. As you’d expect,
people tended to call that office in a fury when something was wrong
with their roads, and lots can go wrong with roads. Those that loved
the man worried about him being eaten alive by other people’s fury,
but instead, his mild manners, calm assurances, tendency to listen
and commitment to doing his job well transformed those who called.
Even one person can make a huge difference.

Many
of Jesus’s stories teach us how to subvert broken systems. I think
this story teaches us how those systems work so we can make decisions
about engage with them. Funny enough, the reading from Romans goes
through this as well. Either we can take people down for making
different choices than we do, or we can participate with God in
building the kindom. Judgement, like manipulation, fear, and
suspicion keep us participating in systems of oppression.
Compassion, equity, listening build the kindom of God. In every word
that we say, and every action we take, we get to choose where we put
our lives. We can choose fear and violence or we can choose to build
the kindom of God for all people. May God help us choose well. Amen

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

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 13, 2020

Uncategorized

“Life” based on Romans 12:9-21

August 30, 2020
by Sara Baron

My
normal preaching style is to argue with the text, but I can’t do it
with this one. Romans 12 speaks for itself. That is, it preaches
for itself. It doesn’t need to be argued with, just amplified. It
preachers better in the Message, paraphrased by Rev. Eugene Peterson.
Hear it again¹:

Love from the center of who you
are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear
life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing
second fiddle.

Don’t burn out; keep
yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master,
cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the
harder. Help needy people; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless
your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy
friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get
along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with
nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t
hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get
along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not
for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take
care of it.”

Our
Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that
person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity
will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of
you; get the best of evil by doing good.

This
is one of those passages that doesn’t speak the name of God – but
tries to speak about what it means to be followers of
Jesus. Its good news that following God means being good
friends. Modern theologians and scholars spend a lot of time working
on the idea of a “relational God.” which is to say that God is in
relationship with us and cares deeply about our relationships with
others. To take it a step further even, God is in the midst of all
of our relationships with others. To be in relationship with God IS
to be in good relationship with those around us. To harm those in
our lives IS to harm God.

So
we hear that we should be good friends who love deeply – and thus
we become better friends with God.

The
next line is one of the best pieces of advice in the Bible. As
Peterson puts it: practice playing second fiddle. Imagine if we
did this. Imagine if we could practice and perfect second fiddle.
If we didn’t dream of having the top seat, but dreamt of being as
supportive as we can be from the place we are. Imagine if we all saw
ourselves as important people because of the ways that we play the
harmonies….. and not for the ways we play the melodies. To
practice playing second fiddle is also to put emphasis on God as the
band leader who knows how to make the music – it is to be willing
to play the role most needed instead of the role most prestigious.
There are people who do this, and do it well – you probably know
some. Think of how precious they are…. It
is good advice– practice playing second fiddle.

“Don’t
burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame.” We hear so often
about burn out. People throw themselves wholeheartedly into their
jobs, and their bosses take advantage of their willingness, and there
is more work than any person can handle, and eventually they have
nothing left to offer. We know this happens in the church too.
People get excited about being in a place where they can serve God –
and where they can feel God’s love through the people around them –
and they want to help however they can. Yet the meetings can get
tedious. And the excitement can fade as things don’t go as they’d
dreamed and maybe it seems like nothing ever changes – or like
everything has changed – and there is burn out. But this passage
tells us, as it continues, how to avoid it…. “ be cheerfully
expectant. Don’t quit in the hard times! Pray all the harder.” (I
would suspect, as well, that constancy of prayer and mediation would
guide each of us to be strong and wise enough to say no to roles in
the church that are currently dragging us under instead of lifting us
up. So prayer really is the answer!)

I
love the line: “Be inventive in hospitality.” That feels like a
task we are particularly called to right now, when all the forms of
hospitality we’re used to have suddenly become moot. What does it
look like now? How can we practice it? How do we experience it?

“Bless
your enemies, no cursing under your breath.” Oh that we might all
become people really able to do that. It is true that praying good
for our enemies, blessing them, changes them and us. Sometimes we
have to be careful about how we say it – its not real to say “May
every blessing fall on the person who annoys me most in the world.”
but its usually real to say “may the person who annoys me most AND
I manage to be more civil today.” And transformation happens –
particularly when we work hard enough that we don’t leave a piece of
ourselves behind muttering nasties.

We
have another piece of God caring about how we are with one another:
“Laugh with your happy friends when they are happy; share tears
when they’re down. God along with each other; don’t be stuck – up.
Make friends with nobodies; don’t
be the great somebody.” We are to be with those we love – and
share lives with them. What helps neighbors and families to share
tears and laughter today? It takes more intentionality to be
“present” with people right now, and it has always been
challenging for many of us not run away at the first show of emotion
(especially grief
and anger.) Also,
it is to try to be “THE GREAT SOMEBODY” – but we already know
we’re supposed to try to play second fiddle.

“Don’t
hit back, discover beauty in everyone.” You know, I have found,
especially over that when I let God show me what God loves about a
person, the beauty of the person is really visible. There is
stunning beauty in everyone. Mary
Lou Kownacki says, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once
you’ve heard their story.” I buy it. Of
course, it takes some serious work to let go of my own annoyances and
do so – but there is beauty in EVERYONE. “If you’ve got it in
you, get along with everybody.” I love how this is phrased. It
acknowledges that it won’t work for all people. Particularly because
getting along with some people means giving up who you are – and
that’s not the point. But WHEN ITS POSSIBLE, for WHOM its possible,
get along with everybody. Its a worthy goal!

“Don’t
insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do.
I’ll do the judging’ says God, ‘I’ll take care of it.” I
like this translation way better than the NRSV 🙂 It is in any case
a good reminder that the world is God’s, and justice is God’s, and
our goal is to do the blessing of our enemies, not the seeking of
retribution. I also like that it acknowledges our DESIRE to get
even, which is honest, without making space for us to act which is
moral.

“Our
Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that
person lunch, or if he’s thirsty get him a drink. Your generosity
will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you:
get the best of evil by doing good.”
It is so true that evil never overcomes evil, just like hate never
drives out
hate, and violence doesn’t bring peace.
Peace brings peace. Goodness brings goodness. Love
brings love. Love and goodness and peace transform evil. I hope
you’ve all seen it. I’ve seen it time and time again, particularly
in faith community. People who are afraid of being hurt come to camp
or church with a chip on their shoulder, ready to pounce at the first
person they see. With gentle love for a few days or weeks or years,
a sweeter and gentler person emerges, ready to soak in the goodness
and affirmation. People change more when you welcome them for who
they are and what they do well than when you disparage what they do
wrong. People change a lot – and you change a lot – when you
have lunch with your “enemy.”

Romans
12 teaches us a lot about how to be – how to be human, how to be
Godly, how to follow the way of Jesus. May we live our lives guided
by it. Amen.

Questions
for Reflection

How
do these instructions seem to you? Do they feel like useful
guidance? Do they feel different from or similar to the 10
commandments or the greatest commandments?

Which
piece strikes you the strongest?

What
part is hardest for you?

Where
do you hope to be able to do better?

What
DOES it mean to “love from the center of who you are” and how can
you do so more fully?

1 I
fixed one word, FYI.

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

“The Garden of Eden in Context” based on Genesis…

March 1, 2020
by Sara Baron

Six years ago I
shared with the worshiping community in this church my learnings
about the Garden of Eden story. Some of you weren’t here yet, and
some of you don’t have perfect memories. The challenge of serving
THIS church, though, is that some of you DO seem to have perfect
memories, and I don’t want to bore you. So… if I do, I’m sorry. I
promise I’m getting to new and different points, but we all need to
get there together, and that requires reviewing the information about
the story first.

The Creation
story that starts in Genesis chapter 2 is the Yahwist version, which
means it is folk literature, aimed at explaining why things are they
way they are. Folk literature and shared communal myths are pretty
deeply related. While the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible never
comes back to mention the Garden, or Adam, or Eve again, the
Christian tradition has been quite obsessed with this story. That’s
likely due to the work of Paul in Romans, and the way that Paul’s
understanding became a normal way of understanding the point of
Jesus!

However, the
story itself makes the most sense when we look at it in context, and
the context for the story is the Ancient Near East, and the creation
stories of the Ancient Near East. For transparency’s sake, my
understanding about this text comes from the brilliant Roman Catholic
priest and scholar Addison Wright, who shared with “Ecumenical
Scripture Institute” in 2011.

The Canaanites,
neighbors and frenemies of the Ancient Israelites, have a creation
story centered around their tribal god, Baal. Baal
was for them the storm god and fertility god. He fought Leviathan in
order to bring order out of chaos. He dispensed well-being on the
earth. He is called rider of the clouds, and much of this is
appropriated for YHWH. Baal has a holy encampment on his holy
mountain after the intentional flood at the sea – like YHWH with
Sinai and Noah. Some text fragments of Baal’s creation story have
incantations against snake bites, with a story about a man in the
east near the Tigress called Adam who touched a tree he shouldn’t
have touched, and got bit by the snake, and by calling on the gods he
got the incantations to avoid death, and the enmity between humans
and snakes. That tree was the tree of death.

OK,
so hopefully I’ve done my job in convincing you that the early
Genesis stories that the Yahwist tells fit into the Ancient Near
East. Now, in the Ancient Near Eastern people believed that
you could EITHER be immortal OR reproductive. You probably can see
the problem – if you let immortals reproduce, you get to infinite
people very quickly. You can probably also see then, that for the
people who believed this, sexuality was inherently related to death
and mortality. The capacity to procreate came WITH the reality of
dying. And, lest we forget the rather long era of human history
before effective birth control, sexuality and children were tied
closely together. So again, parenthood and death was one option and
immortal life without sexuality was the other. One could not have
both, as they saw it.

Furthermore, in
Ancient Near East stories, paradise gardens are places that IMMORTALS
live. Thus, children do not live there. Given this assumption,
eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”
transformed Adam and Eve from being immortal, asexual beings into
mortal, sexual beings. That knowledge seems like it may have had a
lot to do with sexual maturity.

Now, when I
first heard this, I liked it a lot. Mostly I liked it because it
pulled us out of blaming women for everything, and out of a hyper
focus on sin. I wasn’t really convinced by it though.

Then, Father
Wright pointed out that the punishments given in the story fit this
understanding. After they eat, they see that they are naked, which
fits a burgeoning sexual awakening. We stopped reading before the
rest of the punishments, but they are: the couple is thrown out of
the Garden, the woman will have pain in childbirth, sexual desire
will complicate life, you will have to work to stay alive, and you
will now die. Which it turns out, all fits. Leaving the Garden is
what happens when you aren’t immortal. Pain in childbirth is only
relevant when childbirth is going to happen. Sexual desire IS
complicated, and wasn’t when they didn’t have any. Having to work to
stay alive isn’t necessary when you can’t die. Finally, being mortal
means death will come. Perhaps most interestingly, at the end of
the list of punishments, the woman is named for the first time. Adam
(whose own name means mud-creature) calls her “Eve, because she was
the mother of all who live.” Eve means to breath, to live, or to
give life.

At that point,
I was convinced that Father Wright was not only onto a cool
interpretation, his interpretation was superior to any others I’ve
ever heard. The only problem is that it doesn’t work with Paul’s
take in Romans, at least as it has been used through the millenia.
Paul argues that as death came into humanity through Adam, the sting
of death is removed from humanity by Jesus. In fact, Paul is sort of
taking on the whole Ancient Near East, because he is claiming that
with God’s work in Jesus, one can have children AND be immortal, just
not an immortality on earth. Paul is trying to make sense of Jesus,
and of the impact of his life, and this is how he does it. I don’t
think Paul meant to create quite the firestorm of misogyny and
sin-guilt that he accidentally did.

Which then
leaves us free to be rather grateful to Adam and Eve, since if they
hadn’t eaten of that tree, none of us would exist 😉 Moreso, it
gives us freedom to reconsider our understandings of both gender and
sin. It feels like a good reminder that by “sin” the Bible means
“missing the mark” which always feels a lot lighter than what I
would otherwise assume.

One of my
curiosities is about why we’ve held onto this story so tightly.
Again, the ancient Jews did not, and while Paul makes this argument,
we could have rather ignored it as well. Yet this story is still one
of the living folk narratives in our culture, for Christians and
non-Christians alike.

I’ve wondered
if it relates to a yearning for “paradise.” It is all sort of
interesting, right? Because once we bring Paul into it, paradise
comes back in the form of afterlife. And I think people yearn for
paradise, quite possibly because the world we live in is so full of
suffering and we’d like to consider other options. The Garden of
Eden itself though, according to the story, was quite small! It was
small enough for one person to tend to it, and it contained only two
people. That would be REALLY boring for ETERNITY. Exiting
definitely seems like the right option.

And yet, the
world is not as it should be. We know this in our bones. And we
YEARN for it to be better. Sometimes our yearning takes the form of
remembering the past in a way that cleans it up and makes it seem
closer to perfect than it was. Sometimes our yearning encourages us
to close our eyes to the pain and suffering around us. Sometimes our
yearning for better closes our eyes to the harm we are doing, and the
shame we live with. Sometimes our yearning for better erupts in
anger for how things are. Sometimes our yearning for better makes us
afraid of what is and what might come.

AND, sometimes
our yearning for better is how God works with us to make the world…
better. Isn’t it complicated that the same yearning can do harm and
do good? Oh, human life. I think there are two best ways to respond
to our shared yearning for a better world. One, as you might guess,
is to work with God and each other to make the world better. The
other is to put our energy on noticing the things that are already
good. There may be a natural desire for paradise, and we don’t live
in one, but we do live in a world filled with wonders, and when we
forget to attend to them, we can miss out on all the goodness that is
already with us. The kindom, they say, is already here in part and
is coming in completion. Let us pay attention to both parts – as
they are the work of co-creating that paradise with God. Amen

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

March 1, 2020

Uncategorized

“High Standards?” based on Deuteronomy 30:15-20 (really) and Matthew…

February 16, 2020
by Sara Baron

Choose
the things of life, not the things of death. That’s the gist of our
Hebrew Bible lesson today. Following the ways of God is choosing
life. Turning away from God is choosing death. In the passage,
these are seen as communal decisions. The desire of God is that the
people choose life, but the passage admits it is their choice.

Deuteronomy
is written from the perspective of the Exile, where the big question
was “why did this happen to us?” The answer Deuteronomy gives is
“because we weren’t faithful to God and to God’s vision for our
society.” Thus, when they look back on their communal life, they
yearn to have made better choices, to have been more faithful, to
have chosen the way of life rather than the way of death.

I
have no idea if more faithful choices on the part of Ancient Israel
would have prevented the Exile. It seems a bit unlikely, but who
knows. It is clear that Ancient Israel was not faithful to living
out God’s vision, but it is also clear that the emergence of
mega-empires and being a little country at an intersection of major
trade routes was a dangerous reality.

Nevertheless,
the questions of what way we choose to live still resonate. It seems
useful to point out that although the words “choice” and “life”
have particular connotations in the debate over whether or not women
have the right to control their own bodies, the phrase “choosing
life” has nothing to do with that. Rather, it is about the
patterns of decisions that either turn towards God or away from God.
To put it another way, it is about living in a way that enhances life
for everyone and everything, or …. not.

Choosing
death, in terms of Deuteronomy was oppressing the poor, the widows,
the orphans, and the foreigners. It was wanting a king and creating
wealth differentiations. It was allowing the justice system to
become unjust for the poor. It was putting God second and personal
prosperity first.

While
all of that has resonance today, I think there are also personal
aspects to this metaphor. They may make the most sense from the
perspective of a person who is nearing the end of their life. What
are people yearning for more of at the end of their lives? What do
they regret? What are they grateful for?

While
people and their answers are different, patterns certainly emerge.
An article on the topic from Business
Insider
offers 5 of the most common regrets of people at the end of their
lives:

1. I
wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life
others expected of me.

2. I
wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I
wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I
wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.^¹

These
give us some really good answers as to what are the things of life
(courage, authenticity, feelings, friends, joy) and what are the
things of death (expectations, overworking, fear, distance, and
disconnection.)

The
only thing I think is actively missing from the list is the choosing
death of distractions. So much of modern life is just a wide-ranging
smorgasbord of things willing to distract us from our feelings, from
discomfort, from our authentic selves. Many of these distractions
come in the form of screens, but not all do. It is EASY to numb our
selves out, rather than face our feelings, and (oh my!) respond to
what the feelings tell us about how we need to change our lives.

Some
of you have heard me say that during my renewal leave I disconnected
from social media and email. It was GLORIOUS. I still found myself
picking up my phone more than I expected, and I eventually got
curious about why. Quite often, I pick up my phone to play Sudoku
(the only game I permit on my phone). And so then I got curious as
to why I was doing it. Two reasons: either because I was feeling
anxious and wanted to be distracted from it or because I was feeling
overwhelmed deciding between things and wanted to procrastinate the
decision. Those motivations have held true since then as well. The
smorgasbord of distraction options that keep us from making hard
decisions, or from dealing with our emotions are things of death. I
suspect they are also things we may regret on our deathbeds, when
time feels precious and like a thing not be wasted away.

In
an attempt to change that pattern, to be more at ease with myself and
less worried about making the “wrong” decision, since coming back
from leave, I’ve been slowly working my way through Brené
Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection.” This week I read the
section entitled “Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of
Perfectionism.” Brown says “Where perfectionism exists, shame is
always lurking.”^²
Now many of us are trained to think that perfection is a GOOD goal,
that it is about striving to be one’s best or self-improvement, but
Brown disagrees. She says, “Perfectionism is the belief that if we
live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid
the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. …. Perfectionism, at it’s
core, is about trying to earn approval and acceptance.”^³
(OUCH.)

Now,
if I’m honest, I have had an unusually difficult year. Almost a year
ago now, the Church (big C) to which I have committed my life
declared itself morally bankrupt, and that has been …. heavy.

At
the same time, this church (little c) has been struggling through
incredibly difficult decision making that has resulted in much higher
anxiety in the system than usual. And, as family systems predicts, a
lot of the anxiety got passed to
me
as the leader. That’s to be expected. That’s what happens when
there is anxiety in a system, it gets focused on the leader.

Now, I
know that pastoral ministry is an impossible task to do perfectly.
There is a reason why there is no universally agreed upon definition
of perfect pastor. Context matters a lot in ministry – so do
people and their expectations. Each person in each church has
different expectations of what a pastor IS and should be doing, and
most of those aren’t even conscious. So those expectations aren’t
clearly articulated, and yet there is a hope that they will be met –
all of them, from all of the people, all the time, all at the same
time. My own expectations are that I should spend about half my time
on each of the following: visiting the hurting and keeping in touch
with all the people, sermon and worship work, administration and
meetings, keeping up to date with great research and scholarship and
teaching it, considering structural reorganization and systemic
change, making change within our communities, meeting people and
bringing them to church, maintaining a deep and profound prayer life.
At a minimum.

As the
anxiety has risen, my fears of my own failures have gotten sharper,
and the critiques coming at me have kept pace with my own fears. Yet
my capacities haven’t changed – I still can’t meet my own standards
in any aspect of ministry, and I don’t know that I can meet anyone
else’s either.

Now, my
suspicion is that I’m talking about something more universal than
pastoral ministry, or even leadership. I think that most of our
lives have times when we feel like what we’re doing isn’t enough, and
even worse there are times when others agree with us about that! It
feels awful, and it can be a really ugly downhill spiral. This is
the stuff Brown is talking about as perfectionism, and boy oh boy
does it make sense to me that perfectionism is about avoiding the
awful feeling of being judged lacking.

Brown
shares about people who are less stuck in perfectionism, and she says
two attributes make them different, “First, they spoke about their
imperfections in a tender and honest way, and without shame and fear.
Second, they were slow to judge themselves and others. They
appeared to operate from a place of ‘We’re all doing the best we
can.’ Their courage, compassion, and connection seemed rooted in the
ways they treated themselves.”^⁴
She concludes that people were operating from self-compassion, and
that it is LEARNABLE.
It has 3 parts:

“Self-kindness:
Being warm and understanding towards ourselves when we suffer, fail,
or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating
ourselves with self-criticism.

Common
Humanity: Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of
personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience –
something we all go through rather than something that happens to
‘me’ alone.

Mindfulness:
Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are
neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and
feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness also requires
that we not ‘over-identify’ with thoughts and feelings, so that we
are caught up and swept away by negativity.”^⁵

So,
difficult as it is, authenticity and choosing LIFE are about facing
shame and failure, being vulnerable, and letting go of perfection.
I’m really quite sure that our self-judgments don’t happen in vacuums
like we think – most
of us believe that it is OK to be harsher with ourselves than we’d be
with others, but the truth is that judgement itself slips out
unaware, and the only way to be truly kind to other people in their
vulnerability is to become more gentle with ourselves in ours.

Perfectionism
is choosing death. Compassion is choosing life. May God help us all
as we strive to choose life. Amen

1Susie
Steiner, “The 5 Things People Regret Most on Their Deathbeds”
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-things-people-regret-on-their-deathbed-2013-12,
Published December 5, 2013. Accessed February 13, 2020.

2Brené
Brown, “The Gifts of
Imperfection” (Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden, 2010), p. 55.

3Brown,
56.

4Brown,
59.

5Brown,
59-60. Please note, the same researcher offers other great stuff at
www.self-compassion.org

February 16, 2020

Sermons

“The Work of the Kindom” based on Matthew 5:13-20…

February 9, 2020February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
often hear it said, “Like a fish in water,” reflecting the idea
that a fish isn’t aware of water, which is meant to help us notice
our own contexts. During a wonderful and life giving conversation
with a person from a FAR more conservative Christian upbringing, that
person said to me, “Your Christianity sounds exhausting.” I was
unclear about the meaning of that and asked about it. The person
replied, “All I have to do to be right with God is profess my
belief in the right things and then trust that all is as God wills it
to be. But you think that you are responsible along with God, so you
think you have to fix all the things that are broken, and so you
never get a break as long as the world is still broken.” I sat
with that for a minute and then admitted, “Yes, it is exhausting.”

I
hadn’t seen it until it was pointed out to me though, and I remain
very grateful for that conversation and that person’s willingness to
be in those conversations with me.

As
much as I adore Isaiah, and as much as I adore Isaiah for passages
like this, the temptation towards exhaustion is certainly raised.
Walter Bruggemann¹
does wonderful work with this passage, pointing out that it
criticizes “feel good worship” that doesn’t lead to action,
worship done to manipulate God, worship without humane economic
practices, and a lack of neighborliness. Three things are asked of
God-worshippers: “(a) shared bread, (b) shared houses, and ©
shared clothing.”²
Food, shelter, and clothing being imperative for life, worshippers
of God are to see those who are struggling as beloved members of
their own families and provide for them.

Doris
Clark told me once about her childhood in rural Western NY. Her
family, like all the other families around, lived on a small family
farm. Their lives were sustainable, but not wealth producing. One
of the nearby families was impoverished because they’d had many
children and the resources they had didn’t stretch far enough for all
the mouths they had to feed and bodies they had to clothe. Doris
reflected on the fact that her family, like all the other families in
the area, shared their excess with that one family and were able to
keep them afloat. She also reflected that what had seemed possible
with one family out of many, when all were interconnected felt VERY
different from responding to poverty and need in this place and era.

That
was another fish noticing the water conversation for me. I knew I
was overwhelmed by the needs around us, but I hadn’t ever experienced
anything different in order to be able to make sense of it. As of
the last census, more than half the kids in our city live under the
poverty rate, and recent administrative changes to social service
programs has made that far worse.³
The Schenectady City School Districts puts it this way, 79% of our
school children are “economically disadvantaged” which translates
to “eligible for free or reduced lunch.”⁴
On these statistics alone, it feels like a different world than the
one Doris grew up in.

And
the challenge is that these aren’t the only problems we are aware of.
Just to put it into perspective, we are aware of gross injustice at
our borders, including nearly 70,000 children in cages and
deportations of integral members of communities; we are are of gross
injustice in our so-called justice system, which has the impact of
decimating communities of color with imprisonment, probation, and
life-time bans on social service supports for crimes that are
committed equally by people of all races; we are aware of a gross
injustice to our the youngest members of our society when parents
don’t have paid leave and aren’t able to spend the time with their
infants that is needed; we are aware of a raging climate crisis that
has one of our continents burning and then flooding at unprecedented
levels, seas rising, extreme weather events becoming normal, and mass
migration pressing the capacities of nations; we are aware of
governmental instability around the world, of dictatorships and wars
and genocides…. and I just picked SOME of the big issues floating
around us today.

And
so when I hear Isaiah speaking for God saying, “Is this not the
fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of
the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is
it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless
poor into your house, when you see the naked, to cover them, and not
hide yourself from from your own kin?” I admit to some feelings of
utter exhaustion, and sometimes even hopelessness. I know God is big,
but humanity isn’t terribly faithful to God and our problems are
ENORMOUS.

So,
a person might say, pick one problem, one close to home and work on
that! I’m game for that, let’s look a childhood poverty in
Schenectady? Where does it come from? This one I know the answer
to! People who are the caregivers of children in Schenectady don’t
have enough money. (Mathematical proof complete.)

So,
why don’t the caregivers of children in Schenectady have enough
money? Well, that gets complicated. Some of it is because there
aren’t enough jobs; some if it is because there aren’t enough jobs
that pay a living wage; some of it is because people don’t have the
knowledge, training, or skills to get the jobs that exist; and some
of it is because people aren’t able to participate in the workforce
get so very little money to live off of; some of it could even be
because people don’t have good skills in financial management. But
that’s only the beginning.

When
we root down deeper in these questions we get to a lot of other
issues. Schenectady definitely deals with impoverished people of
color being being imprisoned – with the greatest impact being in
the African American community, and a person in prison can’t make
money while in prison and is profoundly impeded from doing so
afterwards (not can they get the support they need.) Schenectady
City Schools have been underfunded by the state for decades, making
it exceptionally difficult to provide the services our students need
to thrive, ESPECIALLY given the struggles students have when they
grow up in impoverished neighborhoods. This also means that many of
our graduates aren’t prepared for the job market. We clearly also
have struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, which is complicated
by drug companies that have decided to make profits off of people’s
lives. We in this community are deeply impacted by the cost of
medical care, which has impoverished many and prevents even more from
getting the care they need. We also struggle with old housing stock
and a high water table that results in some of the highest asthma
rates in the country.

There
are also the complicating aspects of poverty – the part where
everything in poverty is more expensive: the cost to cash a check
without a bank account, bank fees if you don’t have a high enough
balance, buying things on credit and paying much more with interest,
INSANE interest and fees, trying to eat cheaper food and paying for
it with health, the pure cost of eviction and then the increased cost
of housing after eviction, the increased cost of buying food near
one’s house when that isn’t where the grocery store is but the store
is far away and costs too much to get to, the smaller earning power
of women – with larger impact when men are imprisoned, the impact
of stress on the body and the family, and the list goes on and on.

Right,
so everything is intersecting and it isn’t easy to change. A few
years ago I went to TEDx Albany and heard some great speakers offer
wonderful inspirational stories. Most of them that year were about
the speaker’s intentional work to change the lives of people living
in poverty, and that was great! But I was a little horrified to
realize that all of them were working on poverty on an individual
level. That is, “if I help this person (or these people) in this
one small way, it increases the likelihood that they’ll be able to
get out of poverty.” Excellent, for sure, and a great use of
compassion and capacity. What scared me was that no one seemed to be
looking at poverty on the larger scale. Because in our society,
when one person or family fworks their way out of poverty, someone
else falls in.

Our
capitalist system depends on there being a lower class and an
impoverished class… because all those ways that poverty is
expensive are ways that other people are able to make money of of
people’s suffering.

This
isn’t new, it isn’t news, and it definitely isn’t just the USA. One
of the things that is most helpful about the gospels for me are that
they are based in a very similar economic system, and so the analysis
of Jesus is particularly applicable for us today. The context of
Isaiah is a little bit more complicated, and that’s good too. This
passage is from Third Isaiah, reflecting the struggles of the
community newly back from exile. So, they were still a vassal state
to an external empire, but they also had some freedom, and were
trying to rebuild their society. Thus, the normal struggles of “what
does justice look like” were relevant for them. During the exile,
the people left behind were defenseless and struggled mightily for
generations. And, during the exile, the people taken into exile were
used as slaves and struggled mightily for generations. That’s a hard
place to start rebuilding from! And it might be an easy place to
become individualistic. After all, everyone has had a hard time,
there aren’t a lot of resources, it might make sense to gather what
you can and share it sparingly.

But
also, the people were FREE, and they were REBUILDING, and they were
grateful to God for this new era were particularly faithful to their
worship and religious rituals. Which is where we find this passage.
The people are worshipping, yes, but aren’t living out God’s values.
God’s values are ALWAYS for the well-being of the whole, the care for
the vulnerable, and the acknowledgment of shared humanity with those
who are struggling.

And,
yes, sometimes this is really hard, and it is almost always
overwhelming. And these problems are big, and complicated. There
are three pieces of good news here though: 1. God is on the side of
vulnerable, and God is a really really good ally, 2. The Body of
Christ works so that if each of us do our part, big changes happen,
but we only have to do our small part, 3. The Poor People’s Campaign
is working on all of this and they’re amazing.
(Copies of my sermon have the NY state fact sheet attached.)⁵

Actually,
there is a 4^th
piece of really good news, and this is one I should talk about more.
One of the most valuable ways to change the world is to settle into
God’s love for us. Because when we are TRYING to be lovable, we tend
to get really defensive about our errors and then that leads to us
judging others to protect ourselves, and things can go downhill
quickly. But when we TRUST that God loves us, and also that God has
good work for us to do in the world, THEN we can participate in the
world as expressions of that love, and things just go far better. As
we allow ourselves, and our humanity, and even our weaknesses and
failures to be acceptable to ourselves and visible to others, we tend
to get better at letting other people be human too. And as we do
that, we increase our capacity to see other people as fully human and
fully beloved by God – and THEN we have the best possible
motivation to work towards bettering the lives of those around us.

So,
dear ones of God, I invite you to do what you can do to settle into
God’s love for you, and also to follow God’s will in the world: to
create more justice, to break more yokes, and to bring freedom to the
oppressed. May God help us all. Amen

1Yep,
it is paragraph three and I’ve now cited Isaiah and Brueggemann.
#ProgressivePastorCredentials. Also, if you were wondering, my
computer knows how to spell Brueggemann.

2Walter
Bruggemann, Isaiah
40-66
(Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 187-189

3 https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Census-Most-Schenectady-kids-live-in-poverty-3925563.php

4 http://www.schenectady.k12.ny.us/about_us/district_dashboard/demographics

5 https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/New-York-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Sermons

Untitled

January 19, 2020February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Two
years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas: Harry Potter,
Hogwarts Battle. We usually spend New Years together, and it is a
great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with
our niece and her mother. It is now fair to say that this is our
favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond
the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game
design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative
game. The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the
end either everyone wins or everyone loses. Which also means that no
one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost.
Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play
have winners and losers, and I’m generally OK with that, but there is
something really great about a collaborative game. It is especially
engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we
have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each
person’s strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of
their strengths.

The
game is hard, and we lose sometimes. Really, we lose about half of
the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing
just because the starting conditions are too difficult. But the
collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn’t THAT
bad. (Most of the time.)

I
find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun. When
I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was
mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive,
and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was
the least fun game imaginable. Yet,
there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is
inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and
competing against each other – and I’m really, really glad that
there are now super fun games that don’t buy into that model.

Collaborative
games seem more like the model of working for the common good. Maybe
it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word
“commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening
for me. I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways
of speaking about the kindom.

Over
the past 3+ years we’ve talked about Intersectional Justice and
Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy
for you, here is MFSA’s definition of its “intersectional
organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization
and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is
tied to concepts of power and privilege. Intersectional organizing
recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels.
Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is
imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space
for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework
led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of
resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical
intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and
relationship building.

To
bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means
acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as
possible so you can make some gains really doesn’t help that much.
For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to
vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women.
That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of
women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing. There have
been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time
it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During
an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically
about power. That is, we all know what traits are most associated
with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English
speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness,
educated, tall… etc, right? In each case, there is an opposite to
the description that is disempowered. I’m expecting you are
following thus far. Well, because the people who have the traits
connected to power control the resources, they use most of them! And
then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up
fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful
are willing to share. There are two
REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those
resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have
power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight
AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.

That
is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves,
and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to
play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance
themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and
needed. And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality
is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the
complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways
and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while
working for good. It is really, really hard.

It
is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week. The
passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you
should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore
the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“ The way I
heard that was, don’t just work for the benefit of a few, even if
they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of
ALL. And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational
work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better.
Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was
organizing around poverty. As several of the past year’s
Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers
that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to
divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and
impoverished people of color wouldn’t start working together against
their common oppressor. Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign was
designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly
for every’s good. As King once said, “In your struggle for
justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to
defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that
he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking
justice for him as well as yourself.” Because, truly, oppressing
anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today,
other’s have picked up Dr. King’s mantle, and there is an active Poor
People’s Campaign underway. While their “Fundamental Principals”
are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I
couldn’t edit them down. I want you hear, and be filled with hope,
and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they
are:

We are rooted
in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and
constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is
necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.
We
are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those
most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and
ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of
division.
We
believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that
exploit poor communities and communities of color and the
transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy”
that values all humanity.
We
believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.
We
believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the
richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the
United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome
poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic
exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.
We
recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic
oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally
and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be
understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.
We
aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by
religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in
school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how
our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of
these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and
the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire
for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.
We
will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve
as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to
transform the political, economic and moral structures of our
society.
We
recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many
of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level,
and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even
executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.
We
will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or
candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee
of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or
Republican but about right and wrong.
We
uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a
way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We
are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues
and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that
are affecting us all.
The Campaign
and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent
tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This
campaign is DEEPLY good news. I encourage you to look them up, their
demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read.
There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the
Poor People’s Campaign, and I’d be happy to connect to to those who
are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.

Working
towards justice for all is really, really hard work. It can even be
overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of
the whole world. Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind
you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is
called to do all the work. In fact, we’re called to trust each other
and each other’s work, and to carefully discern what our work is to
do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good
people are at work. We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations,
and with God at our backs, we can and we will. And it is possible
because of collaboration. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

January 19, 2019

Sermons

“Hope in God” based on Isaiah 2:1-5 and Luke…

December 1, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

This
Advent we are Waiting in Hope, and our guides for that waiting are
going to be Isaiah and Luke. All too often we jump into Luke chapter
2 on Christmas, without examining Luke chapter 1 to prepare the way.
This means we are going to spend Advent with Mary, with Elizabeth,
and with Zechariah. Which means that we need a content warning
for Advent.

Luke
1, not unlike Genesis, spends a lot of time dealing with issues of
fertility and infertility. These are tender topics for many people,
and I will be seeking to deal with them tenderly. However, you are
not obligated to stay present if these topics are simply too much for
you right now, and I am available to talk if you want to. (Or, I’m
willing to find you someone else to talk to if you’d prefer.)

Luke
starts by telling the story of Zechariah, an old priest, and his wife
Elizabeth. They had no children. This is a VERY common story in the
Bible, in fact it feels like a throw-back to the matriarchs and
patriarchs who all had trouble conceiving until God intervened. (And
this is part of why these stories are so hard. If infertility could
be solved with prayer alone, there would be much less of it.) This
story rings of Abraham and Sarah, of Issac and Rebecca, of Jacob’s
wife Rachel, of Hannah and Elkanah.
This is a familiar story. An angel tells Zechariah, while he is
serving in the temple, that his prayers have been heard and Elizabeth
will become pregnant. Zechariah expresses some disbelief because of
their age, which is punished with being unable to speak until the
baby is born. The baby to be born will be, according to Luke, John
the Baptist.

A few
months later, with Elizabeth pregnant, the story is interrupted with
our reading today. This story is NOT familiar. It doesn’t sound
like the Hebrew Bible at all – although it does sounds like its
contemporary Greek stories. As far as the Bible goes, though, this
is a brand new account. And it is breaking into an old, old story.
In this new account a young woman, who has been legally married to
her husband but is still in the one year waiting period in her
father’s house before she joins her husband in his house, is greeted
by that same angel. The angel says “‘Greetings, favored one! The
Lord is with you,” and the story says that Mary is perplexed.

This
make sense, I think. By the standards of the world, Mary wasn’t
favored. She was poor, she was young, she was female, she had very
little power, and she lived in an unimportant little village that was
outside of a city that had recently been ransacked by the Roman
Empire. She was, by no means, favored by anyone nor anything. Nor
was their any previous evidence that she was favored by God. R. Alan
Culpepper writes in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “’Yet, Mary, God’s
favored one, was blessed with having a child out of wedlock who would
later be executed as a criminal. Acceptability, prosperity, and
comfort have never been the essence of God’s blessing.”¹
Mary seems to still be processing this.

She
is, however, wise enough to keep her objections to herself – unlike
Zechariah. So the angel continues to tell her about her upcoming
pregnancy with the child who would be named Jesus, “the rescuer”,
and would claim a unique connection to the Divine. This time Mary
expresses her confusion, indicating that she understands how
conception works and thus that it shouldn’t be happening to her.
Perhaps because she doesn’t ask for proof, she is given it, in the
form of Elizabeth’s pregnancy.

At this
point, the story comes to one of the greatest acts of courage I know
about. This impoverished young woman, with everything to lose by
taking this risk (including her own life), responds “Here am I, the
servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” I
know that this story is Luke’s creation, Luke’s intentional
foreshadowing of the Jesus story. I know this didn’t HAPPEN. And
yet I can’t help but be stuck by this line. It feels like the sort
of answer that the woman who raised Jesus and taught Jesus of God
would give. It feels true in a way that is deeper than the story
itself. Mary is a risk-taker for God. She trusts in the
Divine even when it makes no sense and by all reasonable standards
should be done.

In this
story, through this brief interaction, Mary moves from confused at
the idea that she could be favored by God to an unquestioning
willingness to do whatever it is God needs of her. The foreshadowing
of Jesus couldn’t be much better. This unique story about Mary has
echoes all over it of Hannah and her faithfulness. These are the
stories of the women’s faith, the women who raised men of great
faith. The men didn’t come to their faith alone.

We
will come back to Mary next week, and to her extraordinary courage
and unique insight. But for now we’re going to transition to the
vision of Isaiah, a vision that came when everything else looked like
it was going downhill. Most of the time first Isaiah (the first 40
chapters) has to warn the people of what will happen if they don’t
trust in God, but this vision is an after vision. Of what will come
SOMEDAY, one way or another. The more I examine it, the more
striking it is.

Many of us
are familiar with the closing lines,

“they
shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and
their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword
against nation,
neither shall they learn war
any more.”

but it
really struck me this week that these lines are about much more than
peace and a lack of a need for war. These lines are about not
needing defenses anymore, about not needing borders anymore,
about being unafraid for safety, and a sense of deep security.

The only
way that people could be so secure is if they AND EVERYONE ELSE
already had enough, and resources were already fairly shared, and
there was no injustice or inequality that needed to be rectified.
I’m told that the threat of violence is what allows for income
inequality. Thus the opposite must be true, where there is equality
there is no need for violence. Furthermore, this has to be
widespread equality and equity, because there is no fear that
outsiders will break in wanting to share in the prosperity –
because they have it too.

Now
this makes perfect sense as a correlation to the earlier parts of the
passage. It has already said that YHWH-God has become acknowledged
as THE Sacred one, and EVERYONE is worshipping YHWH-God.
Furthermore, they’re all learning God’s ways. Well, God’s ways is a
way of speaking of the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, which
contain a vision of a just and equitable society. In that society
land is distributed to all so all can provide for themselves, those
who struggle are helped by their family and community, anyone in need
is cared for by the excess of those who have enough, and justice
itself is blind to power and influence. This is the society that God
dreams of, and this is what people would be studying as “walking in
God’s ways.”

In Isaiah’s
vision, this message is shared far and wide AND God’s self is the
judge arbitrating between people – so justice is definitely just.
So, yes, this is a reasonable set up for what otherwise feels like an
overly idealistic vision of peace.

In this
context, it is the reasonable extension. If everyone buys into God’s
vision and enacts it, of course there would be equity, equality,
justice, and peace. Of course weapons of destruction could become
tools of creation and means of food production. That’s what God is
capable of doing.

And this
got me to thinking. Do we dream this dream deeply enough? Do we
consider what it would be like to be fearless? To feel safe? To
live in peace?

I
haven’t spent nearly enough time living into this dream. What would
it be like to assume that all people, as they age, will have enough
resources to be cared for with tenderness and love in ways that
respect their humanity and maintain their freedom? What would it be
like to know that all children, whether or not they have living and
able parents, will be nurtured, played with, fed well, have safe
places to sleep, clothing appropriate for the season, and access to
great education to help them thrive in body and spirit? What would
it be like to remove locks from all doors, knowing that no one aims
to do us harm, and no one would have a need to take anything we have?
What would it be like to know that all people, regardless of their
employment status, or marital status, or socio-economic status, could
receive great healthcare when they need it? What would it be like to
know that people all around the world shared all these gifts, and no
one in any other nation wished us harm because of harms we’d caused
taking resources we needed? What would it be like to know that there
were no guns left in the world, and no one had motivation to make any
more? What would it be like to live without the threat of nuclear
war, nor biological warfare, nor even internet viruses????

What if we
weren’t afraid, and didn’t need to be? What if we could all care for
each other, and support each other, and grow together?

Friends,
that’s the sort of hope we’re preparing ourselves for in this season
of Advent. Not because we necessarily expect to see it in our
lifetimes, but because that’s what we’re working for and we have to
keep God’s vision in front of us so we can be a part of enacting it.
May we, indeed, beat swords into plowshares, nuclear warheads into
flower gardens, and study war no more – because it isn’t needed!
Amen

1Alan
Culpepper, “Luke,”
in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 9
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) 52-3.

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

December 1, 2019