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Sermons

“Connecting Joy and Gratitude” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and…

  • November 25, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Kevin
and I have three cats, which is one more than we think we should
have.  However, all three are very sweet, and unusually
human-centric.  It is difficult to walk in our house without a cat
underfoot, and unusual to sit without a cat making space for
themselves on one’s lap.  I cannot tell you how many sermons I’ve
written with a cat sitting on a wrist, although before you worry too
much, I’ve stopped allowing that out of fear of carpal tunnel.  

Because
we have three, sweet, human-centric cats, we experience a lot of
purring in our lives.  This is unconditionally a wonderful thing.  We
fall asleep to cat purrs.  We wake up to cat purrs.  Often, our cats
will walk up to us, look at us, and start purring – expecting that
as soon as we see them, they will get petted.  (Yes, they are spoiled
rotten, we know.)

It
is so easy, if you are noticing it, to hear a cat’s purr, or a
brook’s gurgle, or the wind whispering in the trees as songs of
praise and contentedness to the God of Creation.  When listening to
those sounds, it can feel like all is well in the world, and that as
creation itself sings a love song to God, my soul is moved to join
in.

I
love those moments when it feels like all is well in the world, and
the majesty and wonder of God is visible and celebrated in creation.
I love it just as much as when I see unexpected grace and kindness
between people – which also seems like the majesty and wonderful
God being visible and celebrated in creation.

Those
sorts of moments used to come to me a lot.  After all, I have been
blessed to spend a lot of time in the beauty of creation and with
wonderful people who show grace in shockingly beautiful ways.

One
of the great honors of being a pastor is being allowed into the
vulnerable parts of people’s lives.  In moments of transition and
identity shifting, to be welcomed in feels like a miracle.  I am
always grateful when people are willing to let me be with them when
things are at their hardest, and God feels particularly close when
people are in their deepest needs.  God’s care meets people’s
tenderness, and I get to see it happen.

Over
the course of years, cumulative patterns within people’s hardest
times have formed for me.  Some of the patterns are beautiful and
striking – from God’s grace, to people’s capacities for strength,
to the ways we can build up each other’s resilience.  However, some
of the patterns have also been heartbreaking.  I am able to see the
impact of poverty on people’s lives, the prevalence of family
violence, the profound lack of effective mental health care for the
most vulnerable, the enormous number of traumas in our society, the
depth of the impact of the -isms on individual and communal life, and
the myriad of ways the church itself has harmed God’s beloveds.

Some
of you wish that I was more comforting in the pulpit, that I could
ease the anxieties of life and lead you to a higher plane of praise.
Dear ones, I do too.  I would love to ease your lives,  as well as to
offer you comfort and hope for the future.  Those are reasonable
desires, particularly when the world feels so heavy.  

The
challenge is that the world feels heavy to me too.  Further, the
brokenness I see in the world and the impact it has on wonderful
people’s lives feels like a broken promise to me.  I know that many
people were raised to see the brokenness, in large part because they
didn’t have a choice not to, but I thought the world MOSTLY worked
and only OCCASSIONALLY didn’t, and when it didn’t all we had to do
was work together to fix it.  And I believed this for a very long
time.  And still, today, I notice in myself that I’m shocked every
time something I thought worked fine actually doesn’t.  While my
mental and spiritual analysis of the world is – I think – largely
clear-sighted and aware of power and privilege, I’m still emotionally
disquieted with every new piece of information about avoidable harm
that is done.

While
this may be appropriate human development in one’s 30s (or, I fear,
one’s 20s – I may be behind based on how lucky I’ve been), many of
you are well beyond it.  You’ve seen the brokenness, made peace with
it, and are ready to focus on the good stuff again.  And you have
every right to be impatient with me while I struggle to catch up with
you.  In the model Marcus Borg suggests, I’m still working out
critical thinking about how the world and God work, while many of you
are already fully in post-critical naivete (which is a WONDERFUL idea
and place to be), ready to make meaning out of life – however
beautiful and broken it may be.

I’m
pushing myself to try to catch up, but I’m not sure the pushing will
work.  I’m pretty sure my only option is to be where I am, and try to
hold in tension that other’s aren’t in the same place.  I do want you
to know that I hear you, and I’m trying.  I am also open to learning
from you, how you moved beyond being aghast at what is wrong and into
a fuller connection to life as it is.

There
is one trick I’ve found, and I think it might be useful to others, so
I’m going to share it.  I’ve been taught to see anger as a USEFUL
thing.  This was not immediately obvious to me.  My prior
relationship with anger had been one of strict avoidance (in myself
as well as with others).  The teachings of Nonviolent Communication
say that anger is a red flag – not the bad kind- that lets us know
that something we really value is being violated.  Thus, when we feel
anger, we can know that something we care about is being harmed, and
we can stop and find out what it is that we value so deeply.  That
gives us two incredibly important gifts:  first, knowing what we
value is always important to know (although it isn’t always obvious
to us), and secondly that now we have a potential productive path
forward.  Anger itself is rarely productive, other than as a way to
point out that something is deeply wrong.  However, once we know what
we value, we are a big step closer to finding out how we might
respond to that value and ask others to join us.

So,
for example, there is a lot of anger in this church right now.  The
work being done to attempt to balance the budget has arisen great
passion.  Almost everyone is upset, most are angry, and many of you
want to stay home and avoid the whole mess.  However, there have been
some amazing insights from the anger, already, even though no
resolution is in sight.  We are able to see clearly that MANY, MANY
people care deeply about this church and are willing to show up to
care for it.  Similarly, people are willing to sit through long and
uncomfortable meetings out of their love for this church.  I’m hoping
that some of that care and passion might be shared in stories (like
the HW you got two weeks ago to share your faith stories with another
member of this congregation, just in case you didn’t do it yet…).
One of the things I’ve heard most consistently, under the anger and
under fear, is that people want this church to survive and continue
to be a gift from God to its communities for the long run – and
thus there is strong motivation not to make decisions that might harm
the church’s long term well-being.  That’s a value on this community
and its positive impact in the world.  Thanks be to God that so many
people care so much about this church and its impact!!  

Similarly,
I hear a lot of anger about the possibility of changing the way that
we do some of our ministries, making it clear that the ministries we
do are of value in people’s lives and are worth taking very
seriously.  I’ve also heard a passionate desire to be just in our
decisions and to be good and fair employers, values that we advocate
for in the world and want to enact in our lives together.  So, yeah,
there is a lot of GOOD that anger is a clue for, and anger can be
mined for many valuable insights.  

That
is not to say that an obvious way forward has emerged from those
passions or values.  To some degree, they conflict, and other
constraints exist.  However, as long as everyone’s passion comes out
of a love for this community and a desire for it to be well, we have
a better starting place to hear the possible ways forward.

For
me, all of this is really about the gratitude we are encouraged
towards in the Epistle reading which tells us to “rejoice in the
Lord always, again I will say: Rejoice” and “whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever
is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and
if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  

It
is easy to tell people to be grateful, and it is easy to show
evidence that gratitude is a good spiritual gift that leads to
improved lives.  I suspect that we all agree on gratitude being good.
However, that doesn’t make it easy.  Sometimes to get to gratitude
we need to work through anger and notice what is actually wonderful
and valuable underneath.  Sometimes we have to slow down and smell
those proverbial roses.  Sometimes we just need a moment to savor a
cat’s purr.  

I
do think that there is a whole lot more worth celebrating in life and
in the world around us than we could name if we spent the rest of our
lives naming things.  And I think spending a significant amount of
our time working on noticing and appreciating those things is
worthwhile. Even better, it think anytime we are getting angry, we
have a clue about something we really care about – something we are
already grateful for.  So, however you get there, may you find the
ways to “rejoice in the Lord, always” because God IS good and
creation has innumerable wonders for which we can give thanks.  May
we do so.  Amen

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

November 24, 2019

Sermons

“The New Covenant” based on  Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Luke…

  • October 21, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Formally, a covenant is an agreement or legal contract,
although the word is used more often in the religious arena.  In
fact, in the religious arena, LOTS of agreements get called a
covenant.  The “marriage covenant” the “covenant of the
ordained” (which, btw, doesn’t actually exist but the powers that
be in the church like to hold us to one anyway), behavior covenants
at camp or on mission trips.  I was a little shocked when John
Dominic Crossan was here a few years ago to learn that covenants
aren’t as morally neutral as I’d thought.

Religious groups use covenant language because our Bible
does, but it turns out that our Bible uses it because that was the
normal means of making agreements in its day.  And covenants are
inherently power dominant.  The dominant party sets the standards and
tells the less powerful party what the consequences will be if the
less powerful party doesn’t meet the standards of the dominant party.
It isn’t some particularly holy thing – it’s a form of agreement
between unequals, that functions as a means of naming the punishment
if the less powerful party doesn’t hold up to their end of the deal.
(Which they may not have had much choice about getting into anyway.)

The Hebrew Bible is full of covenants, and almost all of
them have condition in them and punishments delineated as well.  They
tend to say, “If you do this, then I will be your God and you will
be my people and things are going to be OK.  If not, then it follows
that the inverse will happen.”  However, today we are talking about
the exceptions.  The first exception is in the covenant made with
Abraham, mostly.

The story of Abraham’s covenant appears 3 times in
Genesis, and in 2 of the 3 versions it is unconditional.  The the
3rd, it is conditional on circumcision.  The three
versions relate to the three different “voices” in Genesis, and
this story is important enough that all three versions are known and
told.  My favorite is the Priestly version in Genesis 15, whereby God
intentionally takes on the roles of both the powerful and the
powerless in covenant making and thereby takes all the responsibility
for the relationship continuing to work.

That covenant is the one most like what we hear in
Jeremiah 31, where we hear of the “new covenant.”  Jeremiah is
generally considered a downer prophet, as his role was to say that if
the nation of Israel didn’t change its ways, it was going to be
destroyed.

However, Jeremiah 31 is the middle of three hopeful
chapters whereby the prophet names that after the destruction that
would come, an even better relationship with God would be possible.
The hope is even more potent in the midst of the the rest of the
book, and its threats of dire destruction.  The particulars of the
new covenant are worth noting.  Let’s hear that part again:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a
covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I
will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to
each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive
their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

The comparison for the “new covenant” are the
covenants in the Torah.  In those covenants God made promises to the
people that were CONTINGENT on the people upholding their promises to
God. In this new covenant God takes all the responsibility on God’s
self.  The people don’t have to learn, or memorize, or interpret the
Torah because God will “put it within them” and “write it on
their hearts.”  And in this way the people and God will be
inseparable.

The part that is particularly inspiring to me is, “ No
longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know
the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to
the greatest.”  God’s self is not entirely knowable within the
human realm, and it is easy to get lost in figuring out God even when
we’re trying our hardest.  The idea that everyone could know, and
intuit the goodness and love of God AND act out God’s kindom is
really powerful.

The final line is both really powerful in its original
context, and likely the reason that the Christian Tradition has so
strongly claimed this text.  The line is, “for I will forgive their
iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”  For those who heard
Jeremiah, and for those who complied his remembered speeches into a
book, the reason for the exile was that the people had been
unfaithful to the covenant with God.  They had not followed the Torah
laws, they had allowed the rich and powerful to abuse the poor and
powerless, and they had forgotten God’s will.  Whether or not that
was the reason for the exile, it is the reason that is assumed within
the book.  To forgive iniquity and sin, then, was a form of
restoration.  To continually forgive iniquity and forget sin is to
take away the threat of punishment and create the hope of security.

Now, as the Christian Tradition has strongly claimed
authority over God’s forgiveness of sins, it makes a lot of sense
that it has strongly claimed this “old” (by the standards of
Christianity) idea of the “new” covenant.  However, claiming
Jeremiah’s vision of the new covenant is a really radical claim for
Christianity to make!  Sure, Christianity also claims that we and God
have made an eternal covenant, God is our God and we are God’s
people.  That one is easy.  We also claim forgiveness, that fits.
But we aren’t yet in a time, as far as I know, where we are past
having to teach each other of God and God’s goodness.  Nor are we
living in a time when all people intuit and live out right action
that allows the kindom to come and continue.

The “new covenant” of Jeremiah in some ways reminds
me of the kindom itself – it is here and now!  But it is here and
now IN PART and we are working towards the day when it is here and
now in completion!  I love, though, that Christianity is claimed this
deep and profound dream as ours.  Of course, I hope we all remember
that the dream is one from our Hebrew Bible and we don’t have a
unilateral claim to it.

A while ago, one night at Bible Study we came across our
Gospel passage for today, and someone raised a question, “What is
this ‘new covenant’ thing?”  The answer referred us to the Jeremiah
passage. For a lot of people present that night, things CLICKED.  The
United Methodist communion liturgy refers to the new covenant twice.
The first time it shows up describing the life and ministry of Jesus
where it says:

Holy are you, and blessed is your Son Jesus
Christ.
…
By the baptism of his suffering, death, and
resurrection
you gave birth to your Church,
delivered us from
slavery to sin and death,
and made with us a new covenant
by
water and the Spirit.
When the Lord Jesus ascended,
he promised
to be with us always,
in the power of your Word and Holy Spirit.

The second time is when the communion cup is named and
raised, where it says:

When the supper was over, he took the cup,
gave
thanks to you, gave it to his disciples, and said:
“Drink
from this, all of you;
this is my blood of the new
covenant,
poured out for you and for many
for the
forgiveness of sins.
Do this, as often as you drink it,
in
remembrance of me.”

Those who had grown up hearing those words, over and
over, without context, were excited to know the context of it.  

In addition to showing up in our communion liturgy, the
concept of the New Covenant is also found in our language for our
Scriptures.  The so-called New Testament which is alternative
language for, yep you got it, “New Covenant.”  Our Bible itself
claims that the stories of Jesus and the early church ARE the stories
of the new covenant of Jeremiah being lived out on earth.  And, I
think this is claimed because it is believed.  And, I think the claim
that our faith tradition is an expression of Jeremiah’s “New
Covenant” is both excessive and hopeful.

Someday, may it fully be so.  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

Sermons

“Communion with Migrants and Refugees” based on Exodus 17:1-7…

  • October 6, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Our faith says, a wandering
Aramean was our ancestor – that is, Abraham and Sarah, displaced
people from Syria, are our shared ancestors.

Our faith says our people were
enslaved, oppressed, and hopeless until God acted to free them.

Our people were desert nomads
for generations, looking for a home but not finding one.

Our people, when they found a
home in the so-called “Promised Land” struggled with those who
already lived there, and centuries (ok, millennia) of unrest
followed.

Our faith says, that a poor,
foreign widow came to live in Israel, and became the great
grandmother of the King of Israel.

When our people had lived in the
land for centuries, had built a temple, had established a government,
and had found peace and stability  – a foreign empire defeated them
in battle, destroyed the temple, killed the king’s descendants, broke
open the defensive walls, and took the leaders away as exiles.

Our leaders in exile were told
to “work for the good of the city they were in” because it was
going to take a while.

Our faith says that generations
later, God worked to bring the exiles home, and guided the people to
rebuilt, and restore, and it was hard and there were disagreements.

Other nations fought for power
and control over the land of the Israelites, empires grew and empires
fell, tributes were paid and governments were seized.  The people
sought freedom, and sometimes they got it.  

Eventually the Romans came to
power, and 30 or so years later, Jesus was born.

Matthew says that Jesus’s family
fled to Egypt to protect him from death, and resettled in Nazareth
after they returned.  

Nazarenes knew destruction and
its power, but Rome didn’t yet know the power of the stories of the
Jews, who knew their God to be one who overcame oppression time and
time again.

Jesus’ ministry was most often
with people who were poor and had been displaced from their families’
lands.  His was a ministry in motion – homeless and dependent on
the hospitality of strangers.  He sent his disciples off with nothing
but the clothes on their back and trust in God.

Our faith says that our
ancestors have known displacement in all of its forms.  Our faith is
the faith of slaves, of immigrants, of refugees – people who have
had nothing but hope in God, who  has proven faithful time and time
again.  The fact that God is with and for displaced people is
particularly important as our world has more displaced people than
ever.1

Today in 2019 there are known to
be 70.8 million people2
who have forcibly displaced from their homes, and that number is
likely lower than reality.  Of those, this year the USA says it will
welcome at most 30,000 (and likely only half that).3
In this country we hear horror stories about people trying to enter
our country – but we often don’t hear about how small the numbers
are compared to the global crisis.

In the USA, the stories we hear
are of concentration camps at our Southern Border, children being
torn from their parents, and atrocious conditions for people who are
simply trying to survive after being displaced from their own homes
and countries.  These  situations are worthy of our strongest
condemnation and protest.  Tthe situation in our own southern border
is AN ATROCITY and, because the USA is welcoming so few of the
displaced people in the world we must also look beyond our country to
see the extend of the problems.

For me, step one in wrapping my
head around the experiences of people who are displaced is simply an
act of empathy.  What would it be like?  While I have spent most of
my life in the United States, there are two exceptions: 2 months in
Ecuador when I was a teenager and 3 months in England when I was a
college student.  My brain simply can’t wrap itself around what it
would be like to have to leave this country and never come back.  I
know from my time in Ecuador how HARD it is to be in a place where my
brain struggles with the language, and how disconcerting it is to
have intelligent thoughts in my head and no way to communicate them
so that other people know they exist.  I know how much I can yearn
for familiar things – food I know, using water directing from the
tap, the plants and terrain that feels familiar.  But I don’t know
what it is like to leave those things behind and NEVER be able to
come home again.  Nor can I wrap my head around the atrocities being
committed at our Southern Border to people who have already been
displaced, who have already had to show resilience, who have left
their homes and their communities, their people and their dreams in
order to (hopefully) live– only to be dehumanized again by our
government.

While things feels stable, to
me, here, the world is noticeably destabilized.  There are twice as
many displaced persons as there were FIVE years ago, and the trend is
only upward.  Half of displaced people are children.  Less than 3% of
those who have been forced to leave their countries are able to
return there.4
It is important to stretch our imaginations, our empathy, and our
LISTENING to those who are refugees, because from their stories we
can learn how to be allies to those who are struggling.  

The book of Exodus, in our
reading today, gives us a great example of the challenges of being
displaced.  The people, having been freed from slavery in Egypt, are
in the midst of their wanderings in the desert before they settle
into the Promised Land.  The people are displaced, all that is
familiar has been stripped from their lives, and even though the
familiar was awful, it was the familiar and the unfamiliar is
overwhelming.  The people were whining, and grumbling, and
threatening Moses.  God took mercy on them and their fear, and
provided for them when they needed affirmation that they would
survive.

It is a powerful reminder that
it is hard to leave home EVEN when home is AWFUL, and that even when
where you are going is GOOD, it is still new and different.  Worse,
for many displaced people, a new home isn’t on the horizon yet.

Our faith tradition, the one
that KNOWS the reality of displacement, also knows that we can forget
or ignore the pain of those around us.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul names
that at the early communion table some were eating and drinking too
much while others had nothing at all, and he says that the table is
to be SHARED.  Those who have plenty share with those who have
nothing.  This is the earliest teaching we have in Christianity about
communion.  

There are those in this
community who have plenty, and there are those who don’t have enough.
Together, though, we have this table.  It isn’t something we tend to
pay a lot of attention to, but a table, in a shared community of
faith, is something many of God’s displaced people no longer have
access to.  For us, today, this table is extended, and we seek to
share it with God’s people who are displaced around the world,
including at our own southern border.  We know God’s table is big
enough for all people, and we ask God to extend our hearts until they
are grow as large as God’s table.  May the blessings of God’s table
be with all who need them, and may we who receive of these gifts be
mindful of those who can’t access them today.  Amen

1https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/10-infographics-that-show-the-insane-scale-of-the-global-displacement-crisis/

2https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html

3https://immigrationforum.org/article/fact-sheet-u-s-refugee-resettlement/

4https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/

October 6, 2019

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

Sermons

“God With Us” based on Psalm 139:1-18 and Matthew…

  • September 29, 2019February 11, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Children’s
Time:  Let’s play an
imagination game.  If you were going to play hide and seek in this
church, where would you hide?  OK, now what if I change the rules?
If you were going to try to hide from God where would you hide?  Is
that a ridiculous question?  Why?  (OH…. you can’t hide from God
because God is everywhere?  Well, then let’s thank God for that!)

Sermon:
“The One in whom we live and move and have our being,” is a
description of God used by Paul in the book of Acts.  It is one of my
favorite descriptions of God, because it fits so well with my
experiences of the Divine.  I FEEL surrounded by and supported by the
Holy One.  I love the idea that the boundaries between “me” and
“not me” are irrelevant to God, and God is as much in me as as in
you as in the air between us.  Thus, the phrase “the One in whom we
live and move and have our being” is often repeated inside my head,
a regular reminder that the God of Love is the foundation of all that
is, and can be accessed in all times and places.  I suppose it would
be fair to say it is one of my faith mantras, something I come back
to regularly, ponder often, and draw strength from.

In
Acts, when Paul uses this phrase to describe God, he is intentionally
appropriating a Greek poet speaking of the Greek god Zeus, and
applying the idea to YHWH instead.  This makes me giggle, but it
doesn’t make the attribution feel less true.  At the core of our
faith is a believe in God who is “omnipresent”,
a Latin-derived word meaning All-present, used to say that God’s
presence is everywhere all the time.   This is why you can’t hide
from God.  Further, this idea means that God is within us as well as
around us, so that not only our words and actions but even our
thoughts and feelings are known to God.  To believe that God is
omnipresent is to claim that nothing can separate from the presence
of God, just as nothing can separate us from the Love of God.


Our
Jesus-following faith also teaches that that God is “omnibenevolent”
another Latin word that means that God is “all good” or “all
goodness.”  It might make more sense to say that God is “all love
for all of creation.”  It isn’t JUST that God is with us, it is
also that God is FOR us, seeking good at all times.  I’ve said it
before, and I think it is worth saying again:  I don’t find it
particularly important whether or not people believe in God.  I do,
however, find it VERY important how they understand God.  Whether or
not a person believes in God as all-present and all-loving is
significant in who it is they think God is.  Very different belief
systems develop when you believe in a God who is all-present and
all-loving … or not.

Today
we’re going to look at two belief systems that disagree with my
belief system at the core.  Right now we are comparing three
different belief systems: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the
Christian Right, and “Jesus Following”1.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism was identified by sociologists through a
large research project with US teens, and is the actual belief system
of most teens, despite any religious tradition they claim.
Furthermore, as teens are most heavily influenced by their parents
when it comes to faith, we have reason to believe that a rather large
segment of the population actually believes “Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism.”  So, we are looking at it, and finding where it does and
doesn’t match our actual faith tradition.

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points:

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

This
week we are taking a closer look at the fourth one:  "God
does not need to be particularly involved
in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.“
In essence, I think this statement stands against the idea that God
is “all-present.”  Or, at least, makes God so irrelevant that
God’s presence doesn’t matter.  Now, the Christian-Right definitely
believes in God as all-present.  However, I am not convinced that
they believe in God as all-loving.  (Or, if they do, the words mean
something so different that it doesn’t count as the same idea.)


Let’s
look at Moralistic Therapeutic Deism first.  This perspective, which
reflects the generic belief system in the US, says,  "God
does not need to be particularly involved
in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
This makes God the last resort – and our LAST resort tends to be
something we don’t have much investment in.  It also seeks to control
God.  (Which those famous 10 commandments seem firmly against.)  A
person who only reaches out to God when that person wants God to DO
something for them …. that person is thinking of God like a big
gumball machine.  That is,  “Insert prayer, and God gives you what
you want.”  God becomes a means to an end, de-personalized,
unimportant for God’s own self, just there to please us.  

I
suppose the statement doesn’t actually SAY that God isn’t all
present, but it make’s God’s presence irrelevant – other than as a
TOOL one uses for one’s own needs.  I think it also denies God as
all-loving, because if you believe that God is all-loving, then you
believe that there is a SOURCE OF LOVE IN THE WORLD YOU CAN CONNECT
TO.  And if you believe that, then I guess I figure you’d do so.  Or
try to do so at least.  Because humans are hungry for love – so we
seek it out (in productive and unproductive ways) all the time!  So
this indifference to the Divine itself tells me that people aren’t
thinking of God as GOOD, or LOVING.  Rather, they’re thinking of God
as …. well, meh.

Now,
I suspect this meh-ness about God is actually reflecting some of the
influence of the Christian-Right.2
(The Atlantic seems to be agreeing with me on this, they’re writing
a lot these days about how the decline in US religiousity is linked
to people associating the Christian-Right with Christianity and
opting out of it.)  Now, I’m pretty sure that the entirety of the
Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-  teach and
believe that God is all-present.  I don’t know of any part of any of
those traditions who argue against it.  There are some stronger
understandings of it, like pan-en-theism which says that everything
that is exists within God and yet God is more than all that is. (I’m
a panentheist.)  But the all-presentness of God isn’t in any way
controversial.

However,
the all-loving part of God IS.  In fact, I think this is the breaking
point between the Christian-Right and Jesus-followers.  While both
sides may make the claim, what we mean by it is profoundly different.
When I say God is all-loving I mean:

  1. God
    loves and wants good for ALL people, regardless of their
    acknowledgement of God, desire to “worship” God,  or the
    morality of their actions.
  2. God
    seeks the COMMON good, and works to create the kindom in the world –
    a time and place where ALL people can both survive and thrive.
  3. No
    one is more valuable than anyone else, and no one is less valuable
    than anyone else in the eyes of God.
  4. God
    encourages us, nudges us, and calls us into loving words and actions
    – all of us all the time – and we get to pick whether or not we
    respond.  
  5. God’s
    nature is to be loving, which is an awesome and delightful reality.
    If we want to respond to that love, then we are led by gratitude and
    by love itself.  God’s request of us when we attend to God’s love is
    that we RESPOND to it – by letting love grow in us and change us.
    The love that grows in us is for God, for others, and for ourselves.
    Another way to think of this is that deepening our relationship to
    God is growing in compassion.
  6. NOTHING,
    no NOTHING  – not death,
    nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
    come, nor powers, or height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
    creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
    Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

When
the Christian-Right says God is all loving, it starts from a
different place.  The Christian-Right worldview starts with “the
fall” – the idea of original sin.  Within this perspective, there
is a separation between God and humanity that exists in two parts.
First, the fall itself is understood as fundamental to reality, it
create a separation between God and humanity as a whole.  Secondly,
as each individual person sins that sin separates them from God.
From here, the Christian-Right considers ways to move from this
brokenness into “right relationship with God.”   God as loving,
then, is God who gives humans the means to move from broken
relationship into right relationship.

Right
relationship with God consists of fulling a required set of actions
and beliefs.  In this view, because God loves everyone, God gives
everyone the opportunity to be in right relationship.  As God wants
to be in right relationship with everyone, God steers people towards
the correct actions and beliefs.  Thus judgement and even punishment
by God of people are seen as corrections that are part of love, like
a parent correcting their child for the child’s development.  (The
fact that punishment is a terrible motivator and, at the core,
doesn’t work, isn’t acknowledged from this perspective.)  

In
the Christian-right view, wrong belief and/or wrong action can
distance one from relationship with God.  And, at the point of death,
the opportunity to move into “right relationship” is cut off.
Thus, those in the Christian-Right try to encourage others to choose
right beliefs and right actions, so that they too can be in right
relationship with God and thus not spend eternity in hell, cut off
from God.  It is possible to see, from this viewpoint, how judgement
could be seen as an expression of love.

I
haven’t actually been directly exposed to much Christian-Right
theology, but I actually was exposed to the core of this viewpoint,
one time when I was a teenager at my Annual Conference session.  The
Bible Study leader showed us a video in which the human sin created a
chasm with us on one side and God on the other.  The video then
showed us how Jesus’s death on the cross changed the nature of
reality, and that if we accepted God’s forgiveness (right belief),
then the cross would become the bridge we could walk to connect with
God.  

I
think I was 13.  The next day I complained about the video to my
pastor, and that particularly youth bible study leader never
returned.  At that point I didn’t understand exactly how that
viewpoint was different from mine, but I could FEEL it.  Somewhere
along the line I realized that I think the idea that sin separates us
from God is blasphemous because it indicates that SIN is more
powerful than God and God’s love.  

Like
the passage from Matthew suggests, God does not call us into being
afraid of God. Rather, God is with us and we need not be afraid.  God
loves us, all of us, and nothing can separate us from the love of
God.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

(Sermon
feedback leads me to add a PS to the end of this sermon:  Therefore,
as people connected to the all-present and all-loving God, as people
freed from the fear that pervades the world around us, go and be
present and loving in the world!)

1The
use of the phrase “Jesus following” is not meant to suggest that
the Christian-Right are not Jesus followers.  Rather, I find that
because of the hateful action of many people who claim the word
Christian, many of us are uncomfortable claiming that language and
prefer to take on “Jesus-follower” as a way of recognizing the
core figure of our faith tradition without the baggage of the word
“Christian.”

2I
love it when people do research that supports my assumptions:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-is-helping-drive-liberals-away-from-religion/.
(Don’t we all?)

Sermons

“Central Goal of Life” based on Rev. 21:1-6 and Matthew…

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

The
original meaning of the word “believe” didn’t have anything to do
with what we think or what we mentally affirm.  It had to do what
what we “belove” – how we act.  We’re looking at beliefs right
now, for the purpose of considering what we belove, and to check and
see if our lives are lined up with what we belove.

We
are comparing three different believe systems: Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism, the Christian Right, and “Jesus Following”.  Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism was identified by sociologist through a large
research project with US teens, and is the actual belief system of
most teens, despite any religious tradition they claim.  Furthermore,
as teens are most heavily influenced by their parents when it comes
to faith, we have reason to believe that a rather large segment of
the population actually believes “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
So, we are looking at it, and finding where it does and doesn’t match
our actual faith tradition.

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points.

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

This
week we are going to take a closer look at the third of the them:
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel
good about oneself.”  For me, at least, this is a complicated
statement.  I don’t disagree.  However, before you get your hopes up
for a really short sermon, I don’t actually agree either.  I have no
objection to happiness or feeling good about yourself – I’m all for
that – but I still think it falls short as the CENTRAL goal of life.
So,  YES, we are meant to be happy and it is great when we can feel
good about ourselves BUT….

And
the BUT has three parts.  We’re gonna take two of them together.  So
first,… BUT we don’t really know how to seek our own happiness and
actually find it! And, secondly, … BUT we are not called to be so
individualistic.  We are meant to increase joy in the world, yes, and
to increase the ways that people notice goodness and God-ness in
themselves, but not JUST for ourselves – for each other!  More
interestingly, most studies suggest that the best way to make
yourself happy is to bring joy to others.  

In
one of those studies, they gave people money with instructions.
Those told to spend it on themselves did, and those told to spend it
on others did.  And who was happier the next day?  Those who spent
the money on others.  The boost in their joy was bigger and longer
lasting – having given someone ELSE a gift.  They tried it with
various amounts of money, in a few countries, under different
scenarios, and it held.  Further, they also found that if people were
given money and instructed to spend it on a team member, the success
rates of the whole team when up!  (True of sports teams and business
teams.)

Studies
also say that the happiness of our friends friends friends impacts
our own!  We are social animals, impacted deeply by one another, and
the best way to increase our own happiness is to increase the
happiness of others.  On the converse, self-indugence doesn’t  bring
happiness.  

If
you want to increase your happiness, spend more time with people you
love – engaging with them – and bringing them joy.  These two
objections really end up being similar.  We are called as Christians
to seek goodness together, and that’s how it really works.
Other studies also point out that when we are doing the work we love
best we are profoundly happy.  This suggests a way of understanding
our roles in the world as our calls by God.  Amazingly though, that
happiness that we have when we lose ourselves in a task we love –
we all tend to describe it as a way of NOT being in ourselves.  There
is something to giving ourselves away that is deeply related to
happiness.

I
chose two scriptures this week to offer the Christian perspective on
happiness, mostly because either of them individually seemed
incomplete.  The Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes,
the “blessed are they…” which are sometimes actually translated
“happy are they….” or could be translated “fortunate are
they…” but the blessing or the happiness are definitely NOT the
assumed ones.  

The
beatitudes don’t say blessed are the rich because they can buy what
they want or blessed are the young because they don’t have aches and
pains or blessed are the aged because they have enough wisdom or….
or anything like that!  They say, blessed are the peacemakers,
blessed are the humble, blessed are those who mourn!  The beatitudes
turn upside the idea of who is lucky, and with whom God’s presence is
found, but they can be read, easily, as a means of social happiness.
This fits with the Gospel message itself.

Let’s
look at them:  Blessed are the:

…the
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3) – those
who do not seek wealth for themselves, or well-being for themselves,
but for others.

…those
who mourn: for they will be comforted. (5:4) – those who have
loved.

…the
meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (5:5) – those who let
others get what they need.

…those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be satisfied.
(5:6) – those who care for the needs of others

…the
merciful: for they will be shown mercy. (5:7) – those who are
merciful and kind to others

…the
pure in heart: for they shall see God. (5:8) – those who love with
purity.

…the
peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. (5:9) –
those who bring wholeness to others

…those
who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. (5:10) – those who believe enough to be willing
to take on pain for others

Who
are the happy?  The blessed?  The fortunate?  The ones in deep and
wonderful relationships with others – the ones giving themselves
away to others. The ones whose lives intersect.  

The
second scripture is a vision of the completion of the kingdom of God
on earth, the coming of God’s spirit to dwell with the people, in a
time without death or pain or sorrow.  Its the ultimate “happiness”
and its for the people as a whole.  Its the goal toward which we aim,
as Christians, the completion of the kindom of God.

Which
gets us to the third objection.  YES,
we are meant to be happy and it is great when we can feel good about
ourselves BUT….it is not the central point.  The central point is
building the kindom of God.  Because I believe these two things are
the same thing expressed in different ways, I can also say, the
central point is sanctification – creating space for the process of
growing in love for God, self, and others.  Our Jesus-following
tradition says that sanctification is a gift from God, but there are
known “means of grace” that are likely to open ourselves to the
process.

I
think joy is a means of grace, and hope that people take their joy as
a source of wisdom about their particular roles in the world.  I
think God wants us to be joyful both because God loves us AND because
each instance of joy in the world is a blessing to others and
increases the wholeness of joy.  But in the end I agree with the
often shared (and regularly misattributed) quote , “The meaning of
life is to find your gift.  The purpose of life is to give it away.”
Yes, this bring joy and happiness, but it also blesses the world.
And, dear ones, we are blessed TO BE blessings.  Not just so we’re
happy while others … aren’t!!

Thus
far I’ve left the Christian-Right out of this conversation.  I’ve
argued only with the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism perspective, and
shared from the Jesus-follower one.  In this case the Christian-Right
perspective is radically different from both.  Within the
Christian-Right, suffering is seen as redemptive.  This one has bled
into mainstream Christianity in ways I’ve often worried about.  In
other churches I’ve served there has been an innate fear of too much
pleasure, as if it is unholy to enjoy the goodness of life.  But in
the Christian-Right this goes deeper, suffering is assumed to be a
punishment from God, a “gift” in the form of a lesson to be
learned, a way of knowing that one needs to seek forgiveness from
God.  I’m told, however, that this assumption is sometimes biased:
other people’s suffering is thought to be good for them, but in one’s
own life the goal is to be blessed through righteousness rather than
suffering.  The idea that the righteous are blessed directly and the
unrighteous are blessed through correction is inherent in this
perspective.

The
part of this that REALLY concerns me is that if suffering seen as
redemptive, the desire to lift people out of oppression is hindered.
You see, if suffering is … necessary… then there isn’t a reason
to worry about people in poverty, or about people being mistreated by
employers, or about people being abused…. because their suffering
brings them closer to God’s desires for them so it is … sort of
anyway… good.  And, since the Christian-right is focused on
afterlife, the idea is often presented that suffering in this life
will be rewarded in the next… another motivation to allow the
suffering of people or groups.

Now,
I’m not entirely sure that the Jesus-following movement has a
fantastic theology of suffering.  We tend to do one of two things:
ignore it and hope it goes away, or fight against suffering as
oppression as hard as we can.  While the latter is something I value
in our believe/belove system, there ARE some sufferings of life that
are simply unavoidable.  Making space for people to be in pain, and
to be heard and valued when they are in pain definitely matters to
making space for all of God’s people – and we can’t solve
everything.  We can’t solve cancer, we can’t solve trauma, we can’t
solve grief.  What we can do is be with people where they are, and I
hope that some of our work on sanctification/ kindom building is work
in increasing our capacity to sit with people who suffer.

I
think God is with people in suffering, and sometimes suffering can be
very holy work.  However, I don’t think God ever GIVES people
suffering as punishment NOR as a lesson to be learned.  That’s where
the Christian-Right and the Jesus-follower movements disagree.

So,
in the Jesus-follower perspective, happiness and joy are GOOD, but
they’re not everything.  Suffering and pain are real, but they’re not
“gifts from God.”  The central goal of life is not our own
happiness.  Instead, the central goal of life is
sanctification/building the kindom. That is, the central goal of life
is increasing communal well-being – and with it communal joy and
happiness.  God is working with us to bring more joy into the world –
for all.  Thanks be to God.  Amen 

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 15, 2019

Sermons

“Find Joy” based on  Isaiah 66:10-14 and Psalm 66:-19

  • July 21, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Weeping
may linger for the night,
but
joy comes with the morning.

–
Psalm 30:5b

I have a fondness for
… um… expressive language ;), and that fondness was significantly
stronger when I was in college.  However, in April during every year
of college I cleaned up my language to  pristine levels.  I did it so
that when I got to camp, I would not accidentally speak a word that
would harm, or offend, or get repeated by any of our campers with
special needs.  We were also careful then, as we are now, not to
offer too many hugs or to permit any loosening of manners – not to
allow anything at camp that would cause potential harm in the real
world.  

I did this because I
loved our campers, and I wanted them to be safe, secure, and at ease
both at camp and in the world.

During my second year
of seminary I started an internship with an urban church, one that
was doing important ministry with people who were homeless.  People
who are homeless are more likely to be assaulted – both physically
and sexually.  People who are homeless are often hungry, unable to
get clean, struggling with physical health, and most people who are
homeless for a long time end up with an addiction even if they didn’t
start out with one.  Being homeless is one of the hardest and most
vulnerable positions in our society, if not THE hardest.

The history I’d
learned in college about the closing of state hospitals for people
with disabilities, and the resulting (continued) failure of the
system to care for the most vulnerable people in our society suddenly
became very clear in reality.  People who were in the same population
as Sky Lake’s beloved special needs campers were homeless on the
streets of Los Angeles.  The disconnect between the intentional care
I’d been offering to God’s beloved people with special needs at camp
and the reality that people with special needs were being assaulted
every day on the streets of LA, and that society was doing NOTHING to
change it broke open my heart.

I have not recovered
yet.

Instead, over the
past 15 years, I’ve discovered more and more ways that the world is
fundamentally broken and been disillusioned repeatedly.  Some wise
ones have pointed out that is it because of the color of my skin and
the stability of my childhood that I was able to be so naive to begin
with, and they’re right.  Yet, for me seeing the world as it is, and
seeing clearly what its priorities are and are not, is painful.
Similarly, seeing the church as it is, and seeing clearly what its
priorities are and are not has been painful.

I believe that part
of the purpose of church is to offer a God’s vision for the world to
the people, and as such to offer hope that we can build the kindom
together.  Further, I believe that the pastor’s role is to be a
speaker of the vision, and of hope.  People NEED hope, and our faith
tradition offers it.  It has been hard at times, though, to have
integrity and be truthful about the brokenness, and simultaneously
offer real hope.  The challenge, I think, has been in my own
discomfort with reality.  Once reality is accepted, then it can be
worked on, but I’ve been struggling for years to accept that things
really are as broken as abundant evidence points to.

The realities of the
world, however, are exactly WHY we need to speak hope – real hope –
and be inspired by God’s visions of justice.  We can’t just let
ourselves wallow, we have to face reality, but we can’t offer weak or
trivial hope.  The world, and its people, NEED to know that another
way of being is possible, and we can create it together.

Family Systems theory
teaches us that when we are anxious, we get more close minded.  When
systems (groups of people) are anxious, they get more close-minded
too.  They take less risks.  They make worse decisions.  They create
anxiety in their people, and then people with raised anxiety tend to
revert to old ways of functioning and coping mechanisms that often do
more harm than good: gossip, triangulation, demonizing others,
consuming, addictive behaviors, lashing out, etc.  Anxiety can easily
become it’s own self-perpetuating cycle.

Dear ones, the
anxiety in our systems right now are at unhealthy levels.  I remember
reading articles during the 2016 election cycle about the impact the
election was having on our shared mental health (it was bad).  It has
gotten worse.  The injustices around us take a toll every day, and I
hear from all of us how much we want to create change.  It doesn’t
help right now to be part of the United Methodist Church, because
being part of a CHURCH that is an oppressor is really darn
depressing, and adds our anxiety and dismay.  Further, in this
particular congregation, we’ve been working on something that is also
really hard: we’ve been in conversations about balancing our budget,
which we have not done since 2004.  (And even that was a bit of an
anomaly.)  We have been living beyond our means for a long time.
Balancing the budget requires making difficult decisions about who we
are and what we do and what is imperative to our shared life
together, and it requires that we have really difficult conversations
where we don’t all agree – and that is anxiety producing as well.

It is tempting, in
these days, to give up:  to stick our heads in the sand, or to lash
out in anger, or to become comatose on the couch.  It is REALLY easy
to let the anxiety win.

But.

Dear ones, beloveds
of God, we aren’t going to do that.  We
aren’t going to give in and we aren’t going to lash out.  We aren’t
going to let anxiety take over.  We are going to keep on
keeping on, working towards the kindom, loving each other, spreading
love and goodness in the world, and trusting that God works with us,
through us, and when necessary despite of us.  We are going to find
the ways to let go of the anxiety, and find some trust and some hope,
and be sources of transformation.

We are going to break
out of the cycles, because anxiety is terrible for us, it is terrible
for the world, and it enables all the things we don’t want to see!
Now, here is the weird twist.  Given all the brokenness of the world,
it can feel really disrespectful, or trite, or privileged, or even
mean to …. have fun, seek joy, laugh, and play.  (Or even just to
take breaks and deal with reality for a bit.)  That’s real!  I know
how hard it can be to enjoy life when we know the awful things that
are happening, but I want to share with you wisdom that I heard
second hand.  This wisdom came from a person who was impoverished and
disenfranchised in a country with dictatorial rule.  That person was
asked, “Why are you so joyful when things are so bad!?” And they
responded, “Why would we let them take our joy too?  It is all we
have left.”  

Joy, it turns
out, is resistance.  Joy is OURS to claim, and we shouldn’t give
it up, because giving it up won’t help anyone – in fact it will
hurt everyone.  The world needs more joy.

Joy, unlike anxiety,
creates space for creativity, for connection, for hope.  Out of the
box thinking can happen when joy replaces anxiety, and the problems
of the world today REALLY need new solutions.  Joy makes space for
people to regain their humanity.  And laughter really is the best
medicine (trust me, I laughter until I cried at camp – twice –
and I haven’t felt so whole since before General Conference).
Whatever you do, dear ones, don’t cut out joy from your life.

And, if you need help
getting to joy – which is totally fair – most wisdom teachers say
gratitude is the way to get there.  So, practice advice here: keep a
gratitude journal, and take 5 minutes at the end of each day to
notice what you are grateful for in that day.  Putting our attention
on what is good is a great way to create more good, and to make space
in our lives for joy.

Now for the REALLY
good news.  Our God is a God who knows all about oppression, and has
worked to overcome it throughout all of history.  In all these years
where I have become further and further disillusioned with society
and the world, I have found great comfort in the Bible.  The Bible is
VERY WELL AWARE of the brokenness of the world, of the reality of
domination systems, AND of the power of God to break them open.  

The Bible tells this
story innumerable times, but there are three really big versions of
thie story:  (1) The Bible says that God knows about the oppression
of slavery, and moves to free the people who are enslaved.  (2) The
Bible says God knows about the oppression of exile, and moves the
people to restoration.  (3) The Bible says God knows about the
oppression of being part of empire because of the force of the
military, and moves the people to empowerment, to resistance, and
ultimately to freedom.  That is, the stories of (1) Exodus, of (2)
Exile and Return, and (3) of the ministry of Jesus.

The passage from
Isaiah today is a response to Exile and Return, and it speaks in the
language of God as mother of the people, nursing them and caring for
them.  After a WHOLE LOT of condemnation of the injustices of ancient
Israel, in the end of Isaiah we hear, “ Rejoice with Jerusalem, and
be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all
you who mourn over her– that you may nurse and be satisfied from her
consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her
glorious bosom.”  Rejoice with Jerusalem, despite it’s history of
oppression, despite its history of exile and destruction, none of
those are the final words.  The final words are that God cares for
the people and finds a way to nurture them and it brings great joy.
The final words in the book of Isaiah are God’s comfort, and care,
and the people’s JOY.  

I’ve told you before,
but this bears repeating: Our faith says that Love wins in the end,
and if Love hasn’t won yet, then it isn’t the end yet.  (In this case
Love and God are interchangeable.)  The brokenness of day is not
the final answer, God is still at work.  We are still partnering
with God to make things better.  So, in the meantime, practice
gratitude, find joy, allow for rest, and in doing so let go of
anxiety.  God is working, and looking for for open-hearted, loving,
partners to work alongside.  May we find MANY ways to be those
people, and encourage each other towards joy.  Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Finding Compassion” based on Luke 10:35-37

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

The
Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best known stories from
the Bible.  Some of you are likely sick of it, some of you are bored
by it, and some of you don’t know a thing about it.  Any of those
responses are acceptable around here, but I am going to review the
basic facts for those who haven’t heard them, I’ll let the rest of
you know when you may want to tune back in…

The
Samaritans were hated by the Jews.  They had a shared history, to a
point.  Both were part of the formation of Ancient Israel, both were
led by Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but after Solomon the Northern
and Southern Kingdoms had a civil war and separated.  The North kept
the name Israel and had two parts: Samaria and Galilee, the South
became the nation Judah – from which we get the language “Jew”.
As you’d expect, the two nations that had fought a civil war to
separate from each other had some resentments towards each other.
Then, the Northern Kingdom fell in battle to Assyria in 922, its
leaders were taken into exile, and those who remained intermarried
with foreigners.  Thus, the 10 northern tribes of Israel were “lost.”
Except, they weren’t really.  They didn’t become a self-governing
nation again, but the love of YHWH and the Jewish tradition remained,
it was just different.

Of
course, the southern nation also fell, and also went into exile, but
it was nearly 350 years later, and they WERE able to rebuild their
nation.  Because of these differences (and similarities) the Jews
HATED the Samaritans, enough that those who were going from Judah to
their Jewish colonies in Galilee would tend to walk AROUND Samaria
even though it made the trip much longer.

Thus,
having the hero of this story be the Samaritan is a really big deal,
it shakes up all kinds of assumptions about who is good in the world.
In fact, the Jewish law scholar can’t even admit that it is the
Samaritan who does right, he instead answers “the one who showed
mercy.”  Indeed, the priest and the Levite (also a religious
leader) should have been the models of good behavior, and aren’t.
This story not only talks about what it means to be a neighbor, and
how showing mercy is what defines a good neighbor, it also upsets
assumptions about WHO can be good, and who IS good, and how we see
possibility in those we might identify as our enemies.

YOU
CAN COME BACK NOW


Now
that we’ve reviewed the characters in the parable, I want to zero in
on one line that jumped out at me this week.  It is verse 33, “But
a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he
was moved with pity.”  (NRSV)  Or, in the Message, “A Samaritan
traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition,
his heart went out to him.”  Or in the New American Translation,
“But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with
compassion at the sight.”

The
thing is, that every time I’ve read this story, I’ve read into it
something along the lines of, “The priest passed by on the other
side, even though he was supposed to be a person of God, the Levite
passed by on the other side, even though he was supposed to be a
person of God, but the Samaritan did what a person of God should have
done.”  I’ve missed the ATTRIBUTION of motivation.

For all these years, I thought
the Samaritan did what was right because it was right, and because
God wants us to take care of each other, so we’re supposed to.
However, the story doesn’t actually say that!!  The story says that
the Samaritan was “moved” and then acted on his response.  The
hero didn’t do the right thing simply because it was the right thing,
the hero was moved to do it.  His heart went out.  He felt
compassion.  He saw the man who had been robbed and something in his
humanity connected to something in the man’s humanity and he
responded to that.

Hearing it this way, it is
almost as if we aren’t responsible for fixing every single brokenness
in the world, and we don’t have to stop what we’re doing for every
hurting person we encounter, and … well, we don’t always have to be
THE Good Samaritan in every situation.  Now when I say that, you
hopefully think I’m crazy, because OF COURSE we don’t, because we
can’t.  Humans are finite and we simply can’t do everything for
everyone.  Further, we can do a lot more good if we focus and do what
we do well than if we try to respond to every little thing that we
see.

And yet, like most people I
know, I’m so overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world, and I feel
responsible to do my part, and often unclear about where the
boundaries lie on where my part is.  Which is to say, I often feel
guilty that I’m not doing more.

Two Sundays ago I was at camp,
and I invited the staff to do a little introductory ice breaker which
included the question “what kind of toothpaste do you use and why?”
I have previously found this to be an amusing question, which has
ended up giving shocking amounts of insight into people’s choices.
This time, however, the first two people to introduce themselves had
found ways to minimize their plastic use and carbon footprint in
their toothpaste choices (cool!), and were happy to share that their
WHY was out of love for creation.  That was awesome.  However, it
meant that for some other people who pick their toothpaste for other
reasons, and for those who hadn’t (yet) decided to make
eco-consciousness in toothpaste purchasing their priority, there was
a lot of guilt in answering the question.  

That
sort of guilt isn’t productive (if any guilt is productive, which I’m
not sure it is).  But it did serve as a good reminder to me of how
many things there are to pay attention to: how are we treating the
people we see in day to day life?  How are responding to those who
make requests of us?  How are we deciding what to buy, and who to buy
it from, and how much to pay for it, and what factors should impact
our purchases?  How do we decide what to give, and where to give, and
how much to give?  How do we decide when to work, when to play, when
to connect, when to rest?  How do we decide where to advocate, and
for what, and how?  How do we know if it has been effective?  How
much attention do we give to our physical bodies and their needs,
what about our emotional needs, what about our spiritual needs, what
about mental needs, and what about worrying about if we are being too
selfish thinking about all this?  How do we invest, if we can?  How
do we use our time, our energy, our resources, our responses, our
responsibilities, … our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our
service, and our witness 😉 … to do the most good, and the least
harm without burning out?

The only clue I have is the one
in this story.  The Samaritan didn’t act simply because it was the
right thing to do, because there are a lot of right things to do and
we just can’t do them all.  He acted on the need in front of him that
MOVED him.  He let his compassion guide him.

As far as I can tell, that’s
REALLY important.  For the Camp Staff who care about eco-choices in
toothpastes, thanks be to God!!  For the ones who don’t, whose hearts
go in other directions, thanks be to God!!  If we try to push
ourselves to care about everything, we will burn out and be able to
care about nothing.  If we try to become someone we aren’t, someone
who cares about things we don’t really care about, we’ll exhaust
ourselves and ignore our actual gifts.

Each of us in this room have a
wide range of things we’re good at, and enjoy, that support and
benefit others.  Each of us have ways that compassion naturally moves
in us, and if we follow the compassion, if we allow the movement of
our hearts to guide us, we will be doing GOOD work that benefits
ourselves AND others, and the kindom, and we might even be able to do
it in sustainable ways.

But
wait, you may be asking.  What if NOTHING moves me?  What if I have
no compassion? What if my heart is broken and it simply doesn’t go
out to anyone?  Am I damned to be the priest and Levite in this
story, the one who showed no mercy and are the examples of bad
neighborliness?

No, dear ones, you aren’t.  If
NOTHING is moving you at all, if your compassion doesn’t reach out
beyond yourself then there are two possible realities.  One is that
you haven’t found the place where your gifts lie yet, and it would be
useful to expand your exposure to the world until you find where it
does move.  More likely though, knowing all of you, if your heart
isn’t moving and compassion isn’t flowing it is because you’ve given
too much of yourself away, and you don’t have anything left to give.

If that’s true, and I’d lean
towards thinking that is true in this beautiful collection of Jesus
followers who try to be Good Samaritans in the world, then your job
is to sit with YOURSELF and offer your heart, and your compassion to
YOURSELF until you are filled back up.  You might even need to seek
out others who can offer you their hearts, and their compassion,
their listening ears or supportive shoulders.  

The world can be a very
difficult place, and if you are a person with empathy, it can be
incredibly draining.  If your heart isn’t moving, then it needs some
tender loving care, from God, from yourself, and from God’s other
beloveds.  If compassion doesn’t move you, then give yourself
compassion.

I know this is a
funny way to preach on the Good Samaritan, the normal method is to
tell you to be a good person and take care of your neighbor, but
instead I’m telling you to follow your hearts, and to trust that God
works in you through your compassion and energy – and not to push
further than your heart leads you.  Let mercy guild you, as the
parable says.  But if your heart doesn’t move, then stay put.  You’ll
be needed later, and being ready and rested will be good too.

Dear ones, follow
your compassion, and if you can’t find it, give it to yourself.  God
wants full, whole, loving beings, and that means we need to make
space to be them – even if it means walking on the other side of
the road!!!  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

July 14, 2019

Sermons

“Find Hope” based on 2 Kings 5:1-14

  • July 7, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Leprosy is understood by the Bible to be highly contagious, dangerous, and even deadly.

The ancient Israelites had laws about how to identify leprosy, how to know if it had been healed, and how to prevent it from spreading. Leviticus chapter 13 deals with nothing else. After an extensive 44 verses about how to examine sores to determine if they are leprosy, the chapter concludes, “Now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare; and he shall cover his mustache, and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall be unclean. All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Lev 13:45-46, NRSV)

Now that doesn’t sound awesome at ALL, but the New Interpreter’s Bible informs me that it is far worse than it sounds. They say, “All three of these actions – tearing the clothes, messing up the hair, and covering the lower part of the face – are signs of mourning for the dead. So serious is the state of uncleanness that it is similar to the state of death.”1 Leprosy in Ancient Israel, referred to a wide variety of skin diseases, some of which likely were highly contagious and potentially deadly, but most of which were not. Yet, it because it was poorly understood, and dangerous to the community, a person with leprosy was exiled from the community, which is itself a form of death.

The Bible is primarily a communal document, a reflection of the way that society was supposed to act. As such, it was worried about the spread of dangerous disease within society, and took the well-being of the whole more seriously than the well-being of the individual. That is, the stigma of being removed from society, and having to go around yelling “unclean” so no one would touch you, was clearly TERRIBLE for the individual, but kept the community safe. Leprosy was the ultimate stigma: something entirely beyond the individual’s control that isolated them from their entire community. (Hmm, what else is like that?)

The irony of course is that germ theory hadn’t come into being yet, and there wasn’t much differentiation of skin diseases. In fact, the Bible spends a lot of time differentiating between a SCAR and a SCAB, indicating that people thought that was important – that people not become lepers because of SCARS. Medical science still had some development to do, but people had noticed the contagion idea, and they did what they could to care for the whole.

If there is any good news in this, it is that there was a way to be UN-DECLARED a leper, it was not a permanent stigma. Or at least, it didn’t have to be if one’s skin cleared up. Heaven help those with eczema though. And, of course, we want to be aware in any conversation about leprosy that this not an ancient problem that is now simply a good metaphor. Today, about 180,000 people a year contract leprosy, although it is now treatable. Also, it isn’t really THAT contagious. You have to have repeated contact with “nose or mouth droplets” from someone who is infected. It isn’t, say, the measles. (Perhaps the measles were also considered part of leprosy in Biblical times??? That would actually explain A LOT.)

I’ve gone deep into explaining leprosy in Ancient Israel, because the story indicates that leprosy was understood differently in the neighboring country of Aram (modern Syria). While the Israelites expelled lepers from society, in Aram the general of the King’s army had leprosy, and was regularly talking to the king. I’m not sure what to make of this. Perhaps this is a bit of a Biblical dig at Aram, indicating they didn’t know how to care for society. Perhaps, though, it reflects some historical memory. What if Aram didn’t expel its lepers? What if something that created a stigma in Israel, didn’t in Aram? The two countries were neighbors, and were eternally in skirmishes with each other, so were likely pretty equally matched, which would indicate that perhaps excluding lepers didn’t really help.

What if there didn’t have to be a stigma, and people could still survive as a society without kicking others out?

What if, instead of observations about contagions, Ancient Israel was really allowing the natural human tendency of “ick, get away from me!” to have its way? What if people just didn’t want to see the ways that skin diseases can disfigure? What if fear simply got the best of them?

The human response “ick, get away from me” is real. It has applied to many individuals and groups over the eons, perhaps it is a defining factor of society about who is called “icky” and who has the power to decide who is “icky” and who isn’t. This is the power to define stigma.

People who are transgender are most likely to be violently assaulted and murdered in our society, and the greatest danger is for tranwomen of color. There isn’t any logical reason for this. It has basically come down to a response from individuals of “But gender is supposed to work the way I thought it did when I was a kid, and if it doesn’t, ick.” The power of stigma is the power of murder.

In the past few years there have been culture wars over bathrooms, and who gets to use them. (eyeroll) Somewhere along the line, I read a piece2 that clarified that bathroom wars were an old trick being revived. In our shared past of segregation, bathrooms were segregated. White women sought to maintain segregation by indicating they were afraid of getting diseases from sharing toilets with women of color. That is, they said they were afraid of contracting sexually transmitted infections from toilet seats. That was another way, among a myriad of ways, that white society indicated that bodies of people who weren’t white were “icky.” This is how marginalization works. 🙁 This is also how we get concentration camps on our Southern border filled with people with dark skin, because stigma dehumanizes and allows inhumane treatment of God’s beloved people.

As a child I was taught not to sit on the toilet seat in public bathrooms by my Grandmother, but was told I could by my mother, and it took a loooong time to figure out why they disagreed about that. Today the fear of bathrooms has been transformed to create fear of sexual assault in bathrooms, when the truth is that what we’ve done is make going to the bathroom a terrifying experience for transgender people – who are themselves especially vulnerable.

Yet, there are Arams. Many societies in the past, and many in the present, recognize more than 2 genders, and a lot of countries have better protections for trans people than we do. The United States has created racism in its own image, and we have managed to export it along the way, but societies and countries in the past and the present are able to show us other ways to understand race, identity, and ethnicity.

Years ago now, Sylvester stood in this pulpit and preached about what it was like when he was first diagnosed with HIV. He talked about visiting his sister and knowing that his cup would be thrown away and his sheets burned when he left. A United Methodist retreat for people living with HIV and AIDS that I once got to volunteer at offered massages for the retreat participants – because of reality that people with HIV and AIDS don’t get enough human touch. I’m not sure I know of places in the world where this has been solved, although basic education and the passing of years has decreased the stigma some, and intentionality to include and TOUCH has mattered.

I also think there is a stigma in our society around poverty. “Don’t get too close, or it will get you” seems to be an unspoken fear. I suspect the danger really is, “don’t get too close, or you’ll be motivated to change things, and that will change your life forever.” Yet, we live in a society that is comfortable with obscene wealth for a very few at the expense of the lives of nearly half. Yet, by associating a stigma with people living in poverty, it becomes “their problem” instead of the reality that poverty is the natural outcome of our societal laws and priorities.

Stigma is POWERFUL. It is dangerous. It is contagious, and it is deadly.

It is a far bigger problem than the people who get forced to hold it. One of the worse parts of stigmas is when they get internalized by the people who have been stigmatized.

In 2 Kings, God has the power to free Naaman from the stigma of leprosy. Elisha is God’s prophet in this story, and he is able to offer a means of healing in God’s name. Of course, Naaman doesn’t have all the stigma of leprosy in Ancient Israel, but he does have leprosy, and then he comes into Ancient Israel with it at which point he was a foreigner, who had bested them in war, who had the stigma of leprosy too. (They must have been terrified.)

The story says God healed him, and he was clean, and free of stigma, and very, very grateful. Just because was healed doesn’t meant that others were, and that also draws some big questions about who gets access to let go of stigma and why. However, I’m firmly in the camp that God is anti-stigma. Or, perhaps I should say, God doesn’t DO stigma. God is against stigma, and the ways that it gets used to dehumanize, violate, dismiss, and separate people. God is about shared humanity, peace, acknowledgment, and connection. Stigmas work against God.

We know and love a God who welcomes and delights in a lovely diversity of human beings and human bodies. God is the one who who says, “Blest are people who are transgender; they shall know my complexities. Blessed are people who are marginalized because of their race; they are able to build the kindom. Blessed are the people who live with HIV and AIDS; they are holding my hand already. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kindom. Blessed are the lepers, for they shall be healed.” Stigma just doesn’t hold up under the weight and power of God’s love.

And it isn’t supposed to hold up for us either. May God heal us, that the stigma society places on God’s beloveds might lose their power for us. May we, like Namaan and Elisha, trust in God’s power to eliminate the power of the things that keep us from a full and abundant life. May we build a society more like Aram – able to welcome people into our midst as full partners in our shared work, regardless of the stigmas others would want to put on anyone. May we follow our God who is against stigma and for connection. Amen

1Walter C. Kaiser Jr. “The Book of Leviticus: Introduction, Comment and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol 1., ed. Leander E. Keck, convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 1097.

2Maybe this one? https://psmag.com/magazine/how-social-bias-is-segregating-americas-bathrooms

–

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

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 7, 2019

Sermons

“Sheer Silence” based on 1 Kings 19:1-15a

  • June 23, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Elijah
had it rough.  In his time, the people were uncertain about their
loyalties.  Their shared story of being led out of bondage in Egypt
and to freedom in their own land by a God who cared about them and
how they treated each other… wasn’t primary anymore.  Their current
king was worshiping another gods.  Elijah was a prophet for YHWH,
called to speak out for justice, and for YHWH-God’s vision of people
treating each other well and creating a society where everyone could
survive AND thrive.

The
other gods weren’t into creating fair and equitable societies.  They
were into power, and control, hierarchy, and wealth – and most of
all they were into themselves.  They were easier to worship because
there felt like a direct correlation between sacrifices to those gods
and personal success.  (Aka, the prosperity gospel isn’t new.)

Worshiping
the God of our tradition isn’t always easy, and Elijah was proof of
that.  He was a prophet when neither the power structure nor the
people tended to want to hear him.  He was asked to bring bad news,
time and time again, and it was NOT appreciated.  For most of his
life he is presented as a very lonely creature.  He is said to have a
servant, but he seems to be on his own for the most part.  In the
preceding story he claimed a great victory for God over the other
gods  –  in a way I find utterly horrific – and gained the
attention of some of the people in doing so. He also upset the king
and queen, and was running away, certain of his impending death for
what he’d done, on the basis that the queen said she was going to
have him killed.

He
ran, by himself, into the desert.  It seems to me that he decided it
was better to control his own death than be tortured and shamed as he
died.  Running into the desert was claiming the right to at least die
alone.  The Bible, remember, thinks of the desert wilderness as a
place where there is not enough to survive without God’s help.

I
mention this, because I think there are a lot of deserts out there
–we have deserts of loneliness, we have deserts of grief, and
deserts of exhaustion, deserts of confusion, and deserts of
hopelessness, deserts of meaning, and deserts of beauty.  Research
says 45% of people in the US don’t have enough money for rent and
food1,
so there are a lot of people dealing with exactly the kind of deserts
that the Bible is talking about, no metaphor needed.  However, the
rest of the deserts also exist, both for people with enough money for
food and rent, and for those without.  For those of us who believe
that ALL people are beloved children of God, and who thus want to
work for a world where justice rolls down like waters, and mercy like
an every flowing stream, our country can feel like one big desert
of injustice and mercilessness.

Elijah
goes off into the desert by himself, too exhausted and scared and run
down to do anything but find a broom tree to lie under.  A broom tree
is a little desert shrub.  A devotional about broom trees says “Its
deep roots draw in the moisture of land that is otherwise barren.
…In the desert, water is invisible. It lies hidden beneath the
surface and is often too deep to reach on our own. But water
is there and the roots of a broom tree prove its existence. In the
same way, hope can be discovered even in the deepest moments of human
suffering.”2
Hagar also lay down under a broom tree to await oncoming death.
Hagar, too, was taken care of by God.  It seems that in the Bible
utter despair and hopelessness happen in the desert – and because
the desert is so HOT and the sun is so unyielding, the little shade
that the broom tree offers ends up being the place that people lie
down to give up their fight and let the despair win.

And,
in the Bible, that means that the broom tree, like the desert, is
where God steps in.  For Hagar, that meant helping her see the well
that was going to sustain her life.  For Elijah, it is a bit more
complicated.  He lies down under the broom tree to give up, and the
first thing that happens is … he falls asleep.  He stops fighting.
He lets the exhaustion win.

And
then, a messenger of God (I’d lean towards assuming a human one, but
that’s just me), delivers food and water – good food and water from
what I can tell – and wakes him up to eat it.  And then get gets to
go back to sleep.

I
like this part.  I may like this part best.

I
like that Elijah doesn’t have to do anything more.  He sleeps, he
eats and drinks, and he goes immediately back to sleep.  Sometimes,
friends, that’s all we have left when we’ve given our all to the work
of kindom building, and we have NOTHING left.  Sometimes finding food
and drink is too much, and someone has to help us, and even when they
do, all we can do afterwards is go back to sleep.  This is also
lovely encouragement for the people who tend to be messengers of God
who show up with food and drink.  The prophet may get a lot of glory,
but the prophet wouldn’t make it without those others who prop them
up.

Even
Elijah, even the one known for standing alone in his generation, even
he didn’t do it himself.  The food and water to sustain his life came
from outside his capacities.  They were gifts to support him.  The
work of building the kindom takes many people doing their part, never
just one standing alone.  In this church, we do some of those
“messenger under a broom tree” type ministries.  We support the
people of God by making the journey a touch easier, by seeing what is
needed and offering it.  Our breakfast is food and drink in some
people’s desert.  Sustain is too.  

This
passage is good to remember and see the valuable work of those who
are “messengers of God” with hidden, quiet support.    I think is
also honest about the times when life has drained EVERYTHING we have
from us, and that sometimes in life we sit under a broom tree without
any intention to ever get up again.  At those times, we don’t even
have a choice.  We can’t do any more.

And,
friends, I think that’s OK.  I think we’re allowed to be exhausted,
drained, horrified, and in despair.  Elijah is a pretty deal in the
Bible, and he gets just sleep under a broom tree!  I don’t want to
rush out from under this broom tree.  In the stories of the Bible,
sitting under them in despair is honest, and real.  It is a
reflection of what has happened, and what is happening, and that
there is no where else to turn.

AND
YET, God is the one who makes a way out of no-way.  God lets Elijah
sleep under the broom tree, BUT God also makes sure that Elijah gets
the sustenance he needs for the next part of the journey.  I guess
that means we get to sit under broom trees, we get to recover, we get
to be aimless, we get to rest and rebuild strength, but … it is
always a stop along the journey and never the journey’s end.
However, before anyone feels rushed out of their broom tree offering
shade in the desert, let’s note that he got to sleep, eat, drink, and
sleep again and eat again and drink again.  He got rebuilt before he
had to leave.  If you aren’t rebuilt yet, I’m not sure you have to
leave yet.

But,
leave the liminal space of the broom tree of hopelessness, we will.
God lets us be there, but not stay there.  Elijah gets awoken a
second time by a messenger, who has left food and drink again, and
then he gets kicked out from under the broom tree.  

It
seems to work for him.  On that rest, recovery, and sustenance, he is
able to complete his journey.  His journey is to Mount Sinai, where
Moses got the commandments from God.  Like Moses before him, Elijah
has the chance to know God more deeply there.  The story makes space
for Elijah to name his grievance and be heard, “I have been very
zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have
forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your
prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my
life, to take it away.” (verse 10).  And then and there, from a
cave on mountain far from home, Elijah experiences God.

The
story takes the time to clarify who God is and is not.  God is not in
the destruction, or the fear, or even the awe.  God is not in the
loud and extraordinary.  Instead, God is in the regular, the every
day, the silence.  There was probably silence under the broom tree,
but it seems Elijah needed the journey before he could hear its
significance.  So, Elijah emerges from the cave to stand in the midst
of sheer silence.  Teachers of Centering Prayer call silence “God’s
first language.”  In the midst of the presence of the Divine,
Elijah is again given the space to name his grievance and his grief.
God, who is in the silence, LISTENS to the one who has been
exhausted.

Now,
God’s response at first glance does not appear to be the very
empathetic.   Elijah repeats his claim that “I have been very
zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have
forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your
prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my
life, to take it away,”  and God replies, “Go to Damascus.”
Which, by the way, is like 500 miles away – through the desert.

See?
Isn’t it good there was some time under that broom tree before we
got to the cave?  I think it is because of the time to be, without
trying to do, that Elijah was able to hear God again.  And be ready
for the next steps of his journey.  By the way, Elijah was sent to
Damascus to anoint two new Kings (one for Aram and one for Israel)
AND to anoint his successor.  And, for a while, Elijah and Elisha got
to work together for justice, and Elijah didn’t have any more work he
did on his own.  After the broom tree, things got easier, and
there was more support.

Thank
God for broom trees, and prophets, and messengers (with food and
water), and rest, and restoration, and sustenance, and silence, and
companionship, and hope, and a God who cares for all people even when
we’re too exhausted to care for ourselves.  Amen

1https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html

2https://fivetalents.org/blog/2017/8/21/beneath-the-broom-tree-discovering-hope-in-the-deepest-moments-of-suffering

–

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

June 23, 2019

Sermons

Untitled

  • May 20, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

In
the Gospel of John, we hear,  “I
give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”  Of course,
it is not a new commandment.  At all.  Rather, this is as old of
commandments as commandments come.  Love commandments are
fundamental.  There are two parts, the love your neighbor part
(Leviticus 19:18)  “You shall not take vengeance or
bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your
neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” and the love God part.  (Deut
6:4) “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  You
shall Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
and with all your might.”  Jesus’ commandment to love each other is
grounded in the already there tradition as an abiding commandment.
Further, that’s a tenet of every major religion in some form or
another.  

It
isn’t new, but it is still challenging.  You know that passage from 1
Corinthians 13 that people love to have in their wedding ceremonies?
The one that says
“Love
is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
or
rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or
resentful; 6it
does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. Love never ends.”  The one that is actually Paul writing to
the church in Corinth who are fighting amongst themselves, and he is
telling them what Christian love toward one another looks like?
Well, if Paul had to write that letter to do that, then we can assume
the people weren’t following the commandment too well.

And,
of course, we have the history of Christianity showing us more
examples of how badly we follow this commandment.  If our love for
one another is meant to be way we show that we are Christ’s, OYE.
There was the split between the Eastern and Western Church.  The
Protestant Reformation was a wreck – I can’t even go into the
horrors it other than to say that at least 100,000 people were
killed.  And then, in our tradition, our Methodist Church split all
over the place over the issue of slavery, and power, and money, and
we’re facing a new split now because the church doesn’t know how to
love.  We have NOT loved each other well.  We have not shown
ourselves to be disciples of Christ, at least not on the big scale,
not if it means showing the world how well we love.

Instead,
on the large scale, I think we look like most other human
institutions, obsessed with power, money, and control.  It isn’t
pretty.

While
there are great things that do happen on the larger scale (UMCOR,
Africa University, supporting seminaries, Imagine No Malaria), I
don’t think the larger scale is the one that CAN be reflective of
love.  The blessed ties that bind us together are just not big enough
for the size of organizations that exist.

Have
you heard of Dunbar’s number?  The New Yorker explains it well:  

The
Dunbar number is actually a series of them. The best known, a hundred
and fifty, is the number of people we call casual friends—the
people, say, you’d invite to a large party. (In reality, it’s a
range: a hundred at the low end and two hundred for the more social
of us.) From there, through qualitative interviews coupled with
analysis of experimental and survey data, Dunbar
discovered
that the number grows and decreases according to a precise
formula,
roughly a “rule of three.” The next step down, fifty, is the
number of people we call close friends—perhaps the people you’d
invite to a group dinner. You see them often, but not so much that
you consider them to be true intimates. Then there’s the circle of
fifteen: the friends that you can turn to for sympathy when you need
it, the ones you can confide in about most things. The most intimate
Dunbar number, five, is your close support group. These are your best
friends (and often family members). On the flipside, groups can
extend to five hundred, the acquaintance level, and to fifteen
hundred, the absolute limit—the people for whom you can put a name
to a face. While the group sizes are relatively stable, their
composition can be fluid. Your five today may not be your five next
week; people drift among layers and sometimes fall out of them
altogether.1

Dunbar’s
numbers are about the limits of how many people you can feel
connected to at certain levels.  They’re also about how many people
can feel connected to each other as a group, and how much structure
is required to connect people at different levels.  The gist is, the
larger the group, the less people feel connected, the more work is
required to create a sense of community.

This
may explain a bit about church size and function, as well as a lot of
human behavior.  It also explains why we’ve struggled so much as an
Annual Conference to feel bonded to each other – we get together
only once a year and we’re STILL bigger than the largest group that
can have actual cohesion.  The disconnect between levels of the
church makes sense in this model, although so does the fact that our
church is built in layers, so that relationships can be built.

The
key seems to be, that human beings, human institutions, and human
societies run on relationships, and none of them can be successful if
they outgrow relationships.  Institutions that are larger than
relationship capacity EITHER have to have ways to subdivide to allow
relationships to stabilize OR they will lose their focus and
identity, because they lose their basis in relationship.

I
don’t think Jesus was talking about institutions, I think he was
talking about PEOPLE, and the way they treat each other.  The part of
the command that IS new is that is it no longer love “your
neighbor” but now “love one another.”  It takes the community
from physical proximity to one that is defined by shared work.
(Which may be more similar than it sounds to begin with.)

Only
relatively small groups can have enough cohesion to be defined by how
well they love each other, it just can’t happen on a massive scale.
But let’s be really honest – it doesn’t always happen on a smaller
scale either.  Humans can be REALLY hard to work with.  #shock
Groups can really struggle.

I’ve
really been thinking a lot about group dynamics, OK, I ALWAYS think a
lot about group dynamics, it seems like they’re super duper important
to every part of following Jesus.  One of the harder things about
functioning in a group is that the group is usually looking out for
the group’s best interest, and that doesn’t always line up with each
individuals best interest.   This isn’t that fun if you are one of
the individuals whose needs aren’t aligned.  You’d almost think
groups aren’t worth it, if it weren’t for the great benefits they do
offer:  companionship, connection, shared reality, wisdom, growth,
hope, a place to make a contribution, support, acceptance, belonging,
being known, laughter, inspiration, purpose, stimulation,
interdependence – stuff like that.  (I think groups are TOTALLY
worth it, can you tell?)  

Perhaps
because of the constant need in a group to balance between the needs
of the whole and the needs of individuals, it is common in groups for
individuals to attempt to gain control over one another.  Sometimes
one, or some, or all of the people, just WANT THINGS DONE THEIR WAY.
I expect that sounds obvious, and I expect that you have experienced
it.  Vying for control is one of the basic dynamics of most groups,
and it can unravel them, and the degree to which people are vying for
control can relate tightly to how functional the group is.

Now,
thinking about a person trying to control groups, and trying to
control other people in groups is ALSO interesting, and it leads me
to some self-reflection.  After all, sometimes I’m that person and
sometimes I’m not, and I’ve been wondering about what makes the
difference.  Two pieces of it have occurred to me:  I don’t tend to
seek control when I don’t really care what choices are made (so when
something doesn’t much matter to me), and I don’t tend to seek
control when I trust the group process to come up with a good answer.
That suggests that I’m more likely to seek control when I think
something really matters (duh), and when I’m scared.  This has been a
bit of a relief for me as an insight, because I’m guessing I’m not
the only one who gets controlling when I get scared, and that means
that when I feel like people are trying to control me, it gives me an
option of being compassionate towards them because 1. they care a lot
and 2. they’re scared instead of … well all the other narratives
I’ve otherwise created in my head about other people trying to
control me.  If people are feeling scared, that elicits compassion
from me, whereas if I just respond to my experience of someone trying
to control me, I’m far more likely respond with annoyance,
frustration, and … let’s be honest, defiance.  Now, I dislike that
this has to be said, but it does:  Having compassion for someone’s
fear does not require us to give them their way.  This is inherently
true.  Also, as people of God, we are seeking to be motivated by
love, not fear, so we don’t let fear rule.

Now,
let’s jump over to Peter in Acts.   This is a hard story to preach
on, because I want to be very respectful of the Jewish tradition of
keeping kosher, which I find beautiful and meaningful.  Keeping
kosher is a form of being faithful by paying attention to eating in
just ways, and it forms an identity of faithfulness, patterned into
one’s life.  All that means  that the formative story of why
Christians abandoned our Jewish roots, that were formed in keeping
kosher, is a tender sort of thing.  Giving up keeping kosher was
giving up a primary Jewish identity, and Jesus’ early followers were
good Jews.  Keeping kosher was good practice.

That
said, the history of Christianity is also found in this story.  What
was once a sect of Judaism became a major world religion, in part
because of these decisions – the ones to include Gentiles as equal
partners in the Way of following Jesus, and not to require Gentiles
to become Jewish in order to become Christian.  A GOOD THING had to
be let go in order to make it possible to do ANOTHER GOOD THING.  To
welcome in new people required letting go of what had been very
important.  To make space for what God was up to next in that
community required letting go of something that was already sacred.
Peter is horrified in this story about what is being asked of him.
But we wouldn’t be here if he hasn’t adapted.

That’s
a lesson that we all have to learn time and time again, particularly
if we want to live well in community.  The “love one another” bit
requires adapting to each other, and it requires constant attention
to the living tradition, to see what needs to bend, or adapt, or be
let go.  This loving each other thing – its really hard work.

But,
it is worth it.  We know a God of love BECAUSE we know love through
each other.  Thanks be to God, and may we continue to love one
another.  Amen

1Maria
Konnikova ”The Limits of Friendship“  October 7, 2014
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships

–

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

May 19, 2019

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