“Joy and Protest” based on Psalm 98:1-6, Isaiah 55:10-13

October 30, 2022
by Sara Baron

“You shall go out with joy, and be
led forth with peace, the mountains and the hills will break forth
before you, there will be shouts of joy, and all the tress of the
field shall clap (shall clap) their hands.” So goes our final hymn
today, and so has gone our stewardship campaign this year.

Isaiah 55 for the win.

Joy!

Peace!

Imaginatively imagery of pure delight!

So, I went to Walter Brueggemann to
understand better what is going on, and the great Prophetic Scholar
did not disappoint. He reminded me that Isaiah 40, the start of
second Isaiah, begins with
the words, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem.” The entirety of the passage is written to
the exiles, with affirmation that God is not done with them yet.

That while the worst has come, it will
not be their whole story. That when things get hard, God still wins.
That God’s love remained with them, and hope continued.

Our passage today is the very last part
of what scholars call 2^nd Isaiah – this part of the book
written to the exiles to PREPARE them for God’s work of restoration.
And today’s passage imagines the joy of their homecoming. The
passage ties together some of the work of the exodus with the work of
restoration. The rain and snow that can be counted on to produce
crops remind the people of the desert wandering, and God’s
provisions. The verb even “go out” is a verb of the exodus. But
here, in the “2^nd exodus” it is quite different. The
first exodus was hasty and fearful. But the restoration, this “new
exodus” is joy, peace, and well-being.

Bruggemann writes, “Before there can
be any geographical departure from the [Bablyonian] empire, there
must be a liturgical, emotional, and imaginative departure. Israel
in exile must be able to think and feel and imagine its life out
beyond Babylon’s administration. Israel must so trust the rhetoric
of assurance and victory that it can flex its muscles of faith and
sense that the cadences of faith are more compelling than the slogans
of the empire.”¹

And, this is that imaginative
departure. It imagines creatures and … well, mountains and hills
and trees gathered on the roadside to watch the spectacle of the
people returning. As if it is a parade and nature itself is
healed by the
restoration of the people to their homeland.

Instead of thorn and brier – symbols
of judgment and punishment – there are cypress and myrtle – signs
of growth and life and beauty. The restoration of ancient Israel is
envisioned to be the restoration of sustainable living, of the fair
distribution of goods, the return of the ban on interest, the care
for the vulnerable. And that means the restoration of God’s values,
which was very significant for people who had been living in the seat
of power of a large empire because empires ALWAYS involve domination,
hierarchies, debt, and oppression of the vulnerable. Brueggeman
suggests even creation itself would be healed by this restoration
because empire destroys nature, but sustainable equitable living
exists in harmony with nature.

If it takes dreaming of leaving the
exile in order to prepare the people to actually leave the exile,
this is some excellent writing getting them ready. This is writing
for life. This is writing to remind us that life is possible, that
loveliness exists, that hope is reasonable. As Brueggemann says, in
this writing, “All are now at home, safe, beloved, free, free at
last, Thank God Almighty, free at last.”

As rain and snow leave the sky, to
bring life on earth, and grow food so too is it with God’s word that
accomplishes what it aims at – and it aims at joy, peace, and
restoration.

In order to be ready to leave the
empire, to leave the exile, to return, to be restored, the people
needed first to dream God’s dreams. And God sent them dreams.

Before they could leave in fact, they
had work of letting go – I love his phrasing, “there must be a
liturgical, emotional, and imaginative departure. Israel in exile
must be able to think and feel and imagine its life out beyond
Babylon’s administration.”

I preached a few weeks ago about how
ready I am to NOT resonate with exile literature, and that does mean
that I’m pretty excited to hear “end of the exile, beginning of the
return literature.” But I keep noticing that leaving the exile
meant not only leaving the exile but ALSO leaving behind the
pre-exile-ancient-Israel.

Which is to say, I’m all for starting
to vision a post-pandemic life, but I have to keep reminding myself
that to leave the pandemic behind also means finishing the work of
letting go of the pre-pandemic life. It means seeing with clarity
what has changed, and not FIGHTING it anymore. It means accepting
this reality as it is, so that God can dream with me and with us HERE
AND NOW without my too-tight-grip on the past keeping me from
listening.

And, to be honest to these passages, it
also means making more space for joy.

Loosening my grip on what was helps me
make space for joy. Even, loosening my grip on what joy USED TO look
like makes space for how it looks now. And generally speaking,
loosening my grip helps with joy 😉

The thing I’ve noticed about joy, the
continuity of it, is that for me is about connection. I find joy in
connecting with others, in connecting with God, in connecting with
nature. That is, joy happens in togetherness – at least for me.

Which is probably why I’ve been so
moved by our stewardship campaign this year, “Together for joy.”
I simply adore the order of the words. For me, I know joy comes in
togetherness, but I love the INTENTION in being together FOR joy.

It is another wonderful take on the
Psalm:

Make a joyful
noise to the Lord, all the earth;
   break forth
into joyous song and sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with
the lyre,
   with the lyre and the sound of melody.

With trumpets and the sound of the horn
   make
a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

The normal take is the wonder of making
music to praise God, but I love adding to that meaning by seeing each
of our lives as a piece of the music and our lives together as
creating that joyful noise!

In many churches, today is Reformation
Sunday, the day when they remember the initial act of Martin Luther
in nailing the 95 thesis on the church door and starting the
Reformation. We are, curiously enough, a part of Protestantism, but
direct descendants of the Reformation. Lutheran, Presbyterian,
Reformed, and even most Baptist churches descend from the
Reformation, but we split off of the Church of England, which itself
split from the Roman Catholic Church for rather different reasons.
(The king wanted a divorce, the pope didn’t grant one, so the king
nationalized the church.)

Our roots are not in the reformation,
but our identity is in Protestantism. That is, by nature, we PROTEST
the abuses of the church and the world and advocate for God’s people.
Thanks be to God! We are active in the face of injustice, and we are
actively seeking God’s kindom (although, to be fair, this is true of
more people than protestants, so we claim this but not exclusively.)

We are, together for justice, together
for joy, together for compassion. We witness the mountains and the
hills breaking forth before us, and the trees of the field clapping
their hands.

Dear ones, God leads us TO joy. God
leads us to PEACE. Not just for ourselves, for all people, but for
ourselves too. We are blessed with the joy of being together, and we
are together for joy. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Walter
Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p 162.

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

October 30, 2022

Uncategorized

“Pride vs. Humility?” based on Psalm 84:1-7 and Luke…

October 23, 2022
by Sara Baron

My
favorite seminary class was “Prayer in the Christian Tradition”
and it was kind like a lab class for prayer. We prayed a lot, in a
lot of different ways, and then we reflected on it. We read books
about what other people thought of as prayer, and we discussed it,
and then we tried it, and we reflected on it, and then we discussed
it again. We learned about prayer types, and we had time to assess
which prayer types we tended towards and which ones… well, drove us
nuts.

Most
of the prayer in that class would have qualified as “contemplative
prayer”, in that it sought to be a means of opening ourselves to
God. Generally speaking I think of contemplative prayer as being a
separate category from “petitionary prayer” where the goal is to
ask God for things, although I admit to that being overly simplified.

So,
anyway, one day in my prayer class we’re given the assignment to pray
“The Jesus Prayer.” We were supposed to do it for a while, maybe
30 minutes or an hour or something, and the professor suggested that
we actually pray it “as is” for a while before changing it. So
we got the experience of praying it as it was, and then got to see
how we would change it and how that would feel. Now, the Jesus
prayer is, “Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This is not exactly my God
language. Had the assignment not been clear (and the professor not
had my respect) I would have changed it immediately. But, I gave it
a try. And that day at least, it was a moving thing to pray.

It made space in me for
different things to emerge than in the prayers I tend towards. It
made space in me for different things to emerge than in the language
I would usually adapt towards.

This week, I was given the gift
of praying the Rosary with someone for whom it is a favorite prayer
practice. Much of the Rosary is – also – not my preferred
language for God. (Although some of it is amazing!)

In
both cases, the repetition made meditative space within me for some
insights that otherwise wouldn’t have had a way to be heard. Which
is one of the great gifts of contemplative prayer, and why I love it
so much.

Now, I can’t hear the Gospel
lesson and the tax collector’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a
sinner!” without thinking of how it got adapted by tradition into
the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me, a sinner,” and how (eventually) freeing it was to have a
sense of mercy and forgiveness for things I was usually trying to
forget I felt guilty about.

The Gospel lesson is inverting
expectations. Normally, the Pharisee would be seen as the one doing
things correctly, Pharisees were famous for their meticulous
commitment to following God’s commandments, and the Pharisee’s prayer
indicates he goes above and beyond even the requirements. Meanwhile,
many people thought very poorly of tax collectors, and they were
rarely the heroes in any stories.

The Gospel praises the tax
collector, for the humility of his prayer while throwing shade at the
Pharisee for his – which is rough since the prayer the Pharisee
prayed was a pretty well known prayer at the time and he wasn’t the
only one doing it.

Now, the Pharisee’s prayer does
strike my ears as arrogant, but I wonder if nuance could help it.
What if instead of “God, I thank you that I am not like other
people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” he said,
“God, I thank you for what I am able to do, and for your help in
making it possible. I thank you for the temptations I don’t have. I
thank you for the ways I’ve learned that spiritual practice helps me,
and the capacity to do it. I thank you for growing in me a
willingness and capacity to give back.” And, I mean, I’d like to
add, “I open myself to what you want to do next.”

And then I want to ask Jesus if
that prayer is OK. Because I’m not really sure.

I
have been driving by another faith community that has on their sign a
condemnation of self-sufficiency which reads, “You sufficiency is
God’s.” Now, I think self-sufficiency is a horrid myth that does
great damage and I very much hope that they’re trying to encourage
people towards connections with the Divine. But I fear that they may
be making the same error that I hear in the Pharisee.

Because I think there is a
temptation in the phrase, “God is your sufficiency” to believe
that what you have in life is a gift from God. But, the logical
corollary of that position is to believe that what others do NOT have
is a lack of a gift from God. Thus God chooses who has enough to eat
and who does not, who has safe housing and who does not, who
struggles throughout life from childhood trauma and who does not.
And, it entrenches capitalism as God’s will – that if one is doing
OK that is because of God, if one is not doing OK that is because of
God, and thus no one is responsible for creating a system where
everyone is doing OK as a form of justice and righteousness.

(end rant)

I think though, that there has
to space in prayer for utter truth between us and God. And
sometimes, I think we can look at another beloved of God who is
struggling and wish for their struggles to be lessened, and be
thankful that we don’t share that struggle. That might sound like,
“God, I see how horrid it is to live with and fight with addiction,
and I am grateful not to have that challenge.” Or maybe, “Holy
One, my dear friends are divorcing and their hearts ache, and I’m
feeling a little bit guilty even for the love I have in my life, but
I’m thankful for it anyway.”

What
I hear in the Pharisee’s prayer is a dismissal of other people, their
lives, their temptations, their struggles, the external factors
facing them. Scholars tell me that while all tax collectors get
dissed in the Bible and other ancient literature, many of them took
the positions because no other options were open to them, many of
them were honest, and most of them who were dishonest didn’t even
reap the gain from it – their bosses did. The Pharisee’s prayer
dismissed everything about the tax collector except his job, and
didn’t make space for his humanity, needs, or decision making
process.

I don’t know what Jesus (or
maybe Luke, I think signs point to this one being by Luke) was
offended by in the Pharisee’s prayer, but that’s the struggle I hear.

And, it leads me wondering about
what we can be proud of. Years ago now I did a Celebration of Life
service for a church member who had lived through plenty of struggles
in his life. Yet, I was told, he held each of his accomplishments
dear – each certificate of completion, each acknowledgement of
merit, each authorization to try something new. He had a folder in
his backpack that he always carried with him, and in it he kept the
records of his accomplishments. I was delighted by this detail of
his life. I was thrilled that he took what he was able to do
seriously, and made it so that no one could take away from him what
he worked hard to accomplish.

Meanwhile my diplomas and
ordination certificate, et al, sit in a pile in our attic because it
feels pretentious to display them. This isn’t the only story in the
Bible that urges humility, and celebrates the one who comes to God
and the faith community without pride. It is a pretty constant
theme. The urging not to be like this Pharisee is deep seated in our
faith tradition, enough so it can be hard to figure out how to claim
with joy what God is doing in our lives without appearing to brag.

What can we be proud of? What
are we allowed to celebrate? Are we stuck only coming to God with
that Jesus prayer? (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy
on me, a sinner.”)

Heavens I hope not! It is a
viable PIECE of a full prayer life, but it isn’t complete. I think
when we silence what is good in our lives, we also end up silencing
God. In fact, I fear it is easier to focus on sin (individual or
communal) than it is to focus on goodness. And sometimes the urgings
away from pride and towards humility can encourage this.

So,
case in point. In the next few weeks, there are going to be
elections of Bishops in the United States portion of the United
Methodist Church. Some people, God love them, are gifted for
administration and willing to take on the pressure and challenge of
attempting to steer a sinking ship. But conventional wisdom says
that no one who wants to be a Bishop should become one, and those who
wouldn’t ever want the job are the ones who would be best at it. The
ASSUMPTION is that if one admits one’s gifts for administration and
one’s willingness to do truly horrid work, one disqualifies oneself
by lack of humility. (I would note that women and people of color
pay a higher price for not being “humble” than white men do.)

This seems to fit how many of us
think about politicians as well: that those seeking power shouldn’t
be trusted with it (in case the elections of UMC Bishops seemed too
boring for you, which is fair.)

If we are pushing ourselves into
humility at all costs, we are missing the chance to pay attention to
the gifts we have and how we might use them. If, say, a person with
a truly brilliant financial brain thinks of themselves as “below
average with numbers” they might not pay attention when there is a
need for… say…. a church treasurer. (HINT HINT THIS IS NOT
SUBTLE).

Perhaps it will seem ironic to
some of you, I think it does to me, but one of the great gifts of
contemplative prayer for me is the chance to see myself more clearly.
I bring to prayer all the angst, guilt, worry, horror, and fears I
have of how I have erred, failed, and disappointed myself and the
Divine, and then God helps me sort through them. And, while I am
always afraid of God’s judgement, it has turned out pretty much every
time that my judgement is harsher than God’s who tends to reply, “oh
honey, maybe try out a little compassion on yourself too.” The
prayer time helps me see myself and others with compassion, which I
think is related to seeing myself and others more clearly. And
having a clear sense of self involves knowing both strengths and
weaknesses, and admitting them despite the Pharisee.

Or, to share this in a far more
memorable way, this is the poem “God Says Yes To Me” by Kaylin
Haught:

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Dear ones, Yes, Yes, Yes! Amen

October 23, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Now” based on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

October 9, 2022
by Sara Baron

Sometimes,
I get tired of preaching about the exile. I get tired of thinking
about the exile. I get tired of the fact that the exile metaphors
resonate with me, and I’d strongly prefer that they didn’t.

But
I’m ahead of myself, because we don’t talk enough about the exile to
assume that people can follow what I mean by it. So, a quick
historical summary: After King David and King Solomon, the ancient
nation of Israel split into two. The northern part had the name
Israel and the southern part the name
Judah. That was stable for a few hundred years, then the northern
nation was subsumed by Assyria in 722 BCE. The southern
kingdom held on for a while longer (mostly by paying tributes to
larger empires) but was destroyed in 586 BCE.

At
that point the leaders, the literate, and the priests were forced
marched to Babylon, while the poor, illiterate majority were left in
the ruins of a destroyed Jerusalem without the protection of city
gates.

That’s
what we call “the exile.” In 539 BCE (47 years later) the first
of the people who’d been exiled were freed to come back. Meanwhile
the people who stayed had been decimated by famine, disease, and
attackers, and “home” wasn’t what people had remembered or been
told about.

The
reality of the exile is formative in the writing down of the Hebrew
Bible, and the questions that were being asked and answered in how
the stories got written down. It is also one of the great narrative
arcs of the Bible, and I think that’s true because it was written
down when it was still so vibrant in people’s lives and memories. I
also think it is true because the sensation of being displaced from
life as we know it and/or life as it should be is quite common, and
having the narrative of the exile helps us make sense of life as we
know it.

And
now we’re back to the beginning. I appreciate the ways the stories
of the exile make sense of life, but I’m rather tired of identifying
with it. I’d rather resonate with some stories of stability instead.

But,
here we are.

And
in the midst of this is Jeremiah’s profound, shocking, amazing,
unexpected communication on behalf of God. He writes to those in
exile, the ones who have been torn from their homes, the ones who are
prevented from going home by exactly the people who tore up their
home and tore them from their homes and he says on behalf of God:

Build houses and live in them;
plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take wives and have sons
and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in
marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and
do not decrease.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have
sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its
welfare you will find your welfare.

I
can’t imagine that this is what the exiles wanted to hear.

I
would imagine this was the opposite of what they expected. Wouldn’t
they want to be ready to leave at any time? Why settle in? After
all, the passover celebrates God calling the people from Egypt so
quickly they had to cook unleavened bread! Build houses and plant
gardens? That sounds wrong.

Get
married? Have kids? Keep on living? Keep on trying to thrive and
grow? But, that doesn’t fit either. They’re in a temporary place,
shouldn’t they wait until they get home and can be in the “Promised
Land” and connected to life as they know it, life as it is supposed
to be? Why bring kids into the mess of the exile? I mean, does an
exile marriage even COUNT?

And
then, then God gets INTO it. This is one of the most shocking things
attributed to God in the Bible, and that’s saying a lot. God says,
“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find
your welfare.” Seek the welfare of…. Babylon? Pray for Bablyon?
Work for the wellbeing of Babylon? Our well being is correlated
with the well being of our oppressors?

We
aren’t trying to undermine them? We aren’t trying to destroy them?
We aren’t trying to … at the very least just keep our heads down
until we get to leave? We’re working for their WELFARE? (It may be
helpful to know that I don’t think the exiles were slaves, but nor
were they free to leave.)

That’s
about how I think the exiles would have responded. But maybe I’m
wrong, because while everything God says is counter-intuitive,
everything God says also sounds like God. And they, too, knew God.
So maybe they knew to expect the unexpected, to know compassion for
others would come at the most annoying times, to experience God’s
reminders about loving everyone when they least wanted to hear it.

I
hear the echos of this message from God when Jesus heals the
senator’s daughter, when Paul has compassion for his jailers, and
when MLK reminded his listeners that the goal was not to harm the
oppressors but transform them so they too could live a more wonderful
life.

This
is a very, very Godly message, this “But seek the welfare of the
city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its
behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

I’m
not sure when it gets easy.

Because,
right now, this feels like a message to settle into this
late-pandemic reality. Let go of what was, and build houses HERE.
Plant gardens HERE. Savor relationships and build up families HERE
and NOW. And, seek the welfare of the city where we now are.

But
most of us still aren’t all the way here yet. (Maybe the young are?)
We’re still remembering what was. Maybe, even, we’re still letting
God know that we are ready to bake the bread – even the unleavened
bread – and walk away from this mess right now! We don’t want to
settle into this reality. We want to go HOME. We don’t want to seek
the welfare of this time, we want this time to be different than it
is.

But
God meets us in the now.

Not
the past, the future, nor the time we wish it was. The now.

That
pre-exilic time never returned. But there was a vibrant post-exilic
time, which included things like the Bible being written, the Second
Temple being build, the walls of Jerusalem being restored, and as a
thing that is pretty relevant to us, the life of Jesus.

It
seems to me, from where I’m standing, that the temptation of the
exile is the yearning to return to how things used to be. But God
urges the people to be present in their NOW, which prepares them for
the next things God is going to be up to with them.

I
guess, like the exiles, God is dragging us into the now – sometimes
while we kick and scream like toddlers. And I think that’s the word
as I hear it today. God is with us in the now, calling us into the
now, and preparing us for the future.

And
this is where we meet God.

May
we be open to meeting God here. Amen

October 9, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Bread of Life” based on Psalm 37:1-9, Habakkuk 1:1-4,…

October 2, 2022
by Sara Baron

Sometimes I hear people say that they’re angry with God,
but are afraid to let themselves feel it, or express it. To those
people, I often suggest Biblical reading. The Bible has no problem
being angry with God nor expressing it. Habakkuh does a great job
with this.

How long, O God!

How long shall I cry for help without getting help?

How long will I tell you of the violence I’m living
without you intervening?

Why help me see what’s wrong, without helping me change
it?

Why is trouble all I see?

Why is destruction all around me?

Why is there never justice?

Why are your laws ignored?

Why is everything getting WORSE?

I’m listening God.

I’m standing here, watching and listening, to hear your
response,

waiting for you to acknowledge my complaints.

Right? Excellent work Habakkuk.

And, way to speak the universal even though you were
speaking to a specific context. It feels like Habakkuh holds today’s
paper in his hands as he writes!

Now, as much as I like the truth of his words, and as
much as I appreciate him finding words when I can’t always do it, the
great part for me in this reading is that God DOES respond.

God says:

Write down my vision.

Write it so big someone running by will be able to read
it.

I still have a vision for justice.

I’m still working for good.

My visions are not a lie.

If it seems too slow, be patient.

Justice is coming.

It will not always be true that injustice wins, or that
those who do harm prosper.

Keep your eyes on my vision.

That’s what we’re doing here. We see, we acknowledge,
we name the injustices of the world. We bemoan them. We advocate
for change, and we are required to see what’s wrong in order to
change it. BUT we also have to see what could be in order to change
it. And we don’t stay with the injustice forever. We keep our focus
on God’s visions.

We keep our focus on the transformational power of love.

We keep our focus on God’s dreams of a just world.

We keep our focus on hope of what is possible.

We don’t believe the injustices of the world are the
final answer. We believe God wins, and that love wins.

And that’s the table we gather at together. The one of
hope, the one of EVERYONE, the one that brings us together to work
for God’s vision. People in different countries, people in different
denominations, people speaking different languages, people with
different bodies in , people with different theological
understandings of sacrament. United by vision. Being fed by the
bread of life so we can be for the world a gift of love. Receiving
the gifts of God’s love so we can share it. Remembering hope, so we
can live it. Expanding the table, because that’s an imperative part
of the vision itself.

We receive the bread of life.

We are the bread of life.

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

October 2, 2022

Uncategorized

“Hell and the Mid-Terms”based on Amos 6:1a, 4-7 and…

September 25, 2022
by Sara Baron

If
you want to watch me get internally up in arms quickly, you can give
me a Biblical narrative about heaven and hell that directly suggests
that God sends bad people to suffer in hell. I’ve spent much of my
life trying to counter the narrative that God is someone to be afraid
of, along with countering the idea that God arbitrarily punishes
people with eternal condemnation. Therefore I can get rather quickly
irritated at scriptures supporting condemnations to hell.

Enter:
this week’s gospel lesson, in which a rich man and a poor man die and
the poor man is carried away by the angels to be with Abraham while
the rich man is being tormented in Hades. HEY BIBLE, I’m trying to
teach people about loving God because God first loved us, NOT trying
to scare people into conformity. COULD YOU TONE IT DOWN A LITTLE?

Obviously
not. Getting myself up in arms about a text doesn’t actually make it
go away, so I’m going to have to deal with this story. I can calmly
remind myself that it is a parable, and parables are meant to help us
break down our assumptions about how the world works, NOT be taken
literally. That helps some. I can remind myself that the Jesus
Seminar doesn’t’ think this story goes back to Jesus, but rather to
Luke. But that doesn’t do too much for me, because I find Luke to be
a pretty significant teacher in his own right.

Or,
I can let the story stand as it is written, try to put my concerns
aside, and see what the story can teach as it is. Which, I’m pretty
sure, is the best way forward.

So,
who is Lazarus? He is a poor man, reduced to begging, whose body was
covered in sores. He was hungry, and he was aching, and the comfort
he received was of dogs licking his wounds for him. Oh my. Unlike
in other parables and unlike the rich man, he is given a name. His
name means “One God has helped.” In having a name, we are
confronted with his humanity. We are invited to look at him, and see
his pain.

Many
of the first followers of Jesus were people like Lazarus. Or people
one step from being people like Lazarus. They knew his pain, they
saw his humanity, they could look at him and see his reality because
it was familiar. They also knew the ways other people looked away
from them, and worked to not see them. They knew people wanted them
to be invisible so they could go on their merry way.

In
a conversation I once witnessed, a person who had recently been
housed was asked about how to best respond to people begging on the
street. While only one opinion, hers has stayed with me. She said
it mattered much less to her if people gave money or not, but it
mattered a lot if they looked at her and acknowledged her. She often
felt invisible, and dehumanized, and someone responding when she
spoke mattered a whole lot.

Lazarus,
I’m thinking, knew what that was like.

Who
was the rich man? We know he was rather seriously rich and had 5
brothers. We also know that he didn’t see Lazarus. Not in the
beginning of the story, nor in the end. He thought Lazarus was
disposable, he thought Lazarus should be sent to do his bidding.
Lazarus should be sent to soothe him, Lazarus should be sent to warn
his brothers. (Not warn EVERYONE, mind you, just his brothers.)

As
Debbie Thomas, theologian and writer of “Journey with Jesus” puts
it:

But here’s the scariest
part of the story for me: even after death, the rich man fails to see
Lazarus.  Privilege just plain clings to him — even
in Hades!  Though he piously calls on “Father” Abraham,
he refuses to see Lazarus as anything other than an errand boy:
“Bring me water.”  “Go warn my brothers.”  No
wonder Abraham tells him that the “chasm” separating the two
realms is too great to cross.  Let’s be clear: God is not
the one who builds the chasm.  We do that all by
ourselves.¹

That
is a scary part, that the things separating us from seeing each
other’s humanity are so powerful that they could remain even beyond
our deaths.

When
I stop myself from having an instantaneous defensive reaction to this
parable, I can see it has some powerful truths. It rejects the
world’s hierarchies, and humanizes everyone. Similarly, it
challenges the assumption about who is “good” or “worthy.”
For those who are living in poverty, it showed them that they were
seen in their full humanity. For those not living in poverty, it
makes people who live in poverty visible. It also makes clear that
the rich man may have been rich, but he was definitely poor in
understanding. Finally, we are reminded that this is not a new
teaching brought by Jesus, but the essence of the Hebrew Bible spoken
in a slightly new way.

Now,
I’m always grateful for reminders like those, but I want to also
point what I don’t think we should take from this parable: I do not
think it should lead us to condeming others to hell; nor to feeling
complacent about this world assuming that what is wrong here will be
fixed “in the next”; I don’t think we should dismiss the rich man
as heartless without looking at who in the world we try not to see;
nor (finally) should we use this parable as permission to dismiss
ANYONE as other – not the rich man, not Lazarus, and not anyone
else either.

One
of the great costs of a theology that includes hell is the idea that
the division between good and bad people is between PEOPLE, instead
of accepting that all of us are good people and bad people, and
trying to work with God to maximize the good. That is, a theology of
hell makes space for us to dehumanize and “other” some of God’s
beloveds.

John
Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said, “if your heart
is with my heart, give me your hand.” He understood the
difference between disagreements about details and implementation and
disagreements about what matters in the world. He feared people
would let little things divide them, instead of working together on
the things that really matter.

Similarly,
my colleague Rabbi Matt Culter has invited fellow members of
Schenectady Clergy Against Hate to speak this weekend about divisions
in our society and how to not let them live in our hearts. We have
an election cycle coming up, and as he said, “Intense rhetoric is
only exacerbating the tensions. We are in a unique role to help
de-escalate the tensions that surely will grow in intensity as
the mid-term elections grow closer.” (He didn’t even know about
this parable coming up in the lectionary!)

This
weekend, Rabbi Culter will remind his congregation that every voice
matters so no one should be dismissed, that there is a need to
respect each other’s character – which means not speaking of or to
one another in anger, and finally that we are all on the same
journey.

Now,
I have to admit that I struggle with attempts at peace or unity that
do so at the expense of the vulnerable or minoritized. And I think
there are real differences in vision for our country, ones that
include very different perspectives on – say – Lazarus and the
rich man. I think those are the sorts of differences that matter,
too. AND, I think that those whose values are different from mine
also have reasons why they think their system is best over all, they
are also on this journey called life, they are also worthy of respect
and being heard. (Not the sort of respect that is obedience, the
sort of respect that honors humanity.) I don’t have to agree with
someone or their values to find them worthy of full humanity, care,
access to health care, enough food to eat, and respect.

Divisions
between us make space for hate. Dismissing someone because of a
different point of view makes space for hate. EVEN dismissing
someone for a different set of values makes space for hate.

NOW,
what about the times when someone else’s “point of view” is one
that, say dismisses the humanity of others? For me, the answer comes
from Rev. Dr. King’s sermon “Love Your Enemies” (which quite
clearly also goes back to Jesus, but I like how Dr. King says it)

Now there is a final reason I
think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love
has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that
eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, “Love
your enemies.” Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to
redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies,
you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of
redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even
though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a
neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of
that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them.
Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and
they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the
beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because
you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and
sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period,
but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will
break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive,
and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that
builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears
down and is destructive. “love your enemies.”²

I
wonder what would have resolved the parable? Perhaps, the rich man
seeing Lazarus as a fellow human, another person beloved by God, and
in need of care. Giving him a blanket, or inviting him to a feast,
cleaning his wounds, offering him a job, maybe just letting the table
scraps fall to him, maybe as much as welcoming him into the household
for care. Yes, I know that means another person would have replaced
Lazarus at the gate, maybe two if generosity was known. Because a
single act of mercy doesn’t create social change and prevent people
from being poor. But until the humanity of the rich and the poor can
be seen TOGETHER, the will to change society can’t be created either.

Oh,
also, a pragmatic suggestion: maybe try to use social media less? It
is designed to create division, and we want to create space for love.
Thanks be to God, the God of love.

Amen

1 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2374-the-great-chasm

2 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church

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 25, 2022

Uncategorized

“The Art of Choosing What to Do With Your…

August 28, 2022
by Sara Baron

I lack the patience and the
commitment to read any newspaper or magazine cover to cover, but I do
scan headlines and read what looks interesting. Two weeks ago there
was an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, “The Art of
Choosing What to Do With Your Life” which caught my attention. It
was a plea for liberal arts education to include in their curriculum
“initiating students into a culture of rational reflection on how
to live”.^¹
I found myself both emphatically agreeing with their ideas about
helping people make conscious decisions about how they wanted to live
their lives, and also getting a little bit offended at the idea that
this is particularly the role of education and not faith. But, once
I became aware of my sense of being offended, I realized that I’m
actually all for sharing and not being possessive over meaning
making. Phew.

Also,
as I continued to read, I found myself laughing that the ways they
are teaching their students about building a meaningful life is by
using one of the greatest teachers of the Christian tradition. This
really isn’t a competition! They said:

Aquinas
usefully suggests that the ultimate objects of human longing can be
sorted into only eight enduring categories. If we want to understand
where we’re headed, we should ask ourselves these questions: Am I
interested in this opportunity because it leads to wealth? Or am I
aiming at praise and admiration? Do I want enduring glory? Or power —
to “make an impact”? Is my goal to maximize my pleasures? Do I
seek health? Do I seek some “good of the soul,” such as knowledge
or virtue? Or is my ultimate longing to come face-to-face with the
divine?^²

The
authors point out that some of those first options (wealth, praise)
don’t work out to bring a satisfying life. Now, having started
reading that article with both interest and caution, I came around to
thinking that it was a useful article for church too!

Because,
it occurred to me, those are valid questions for us too. Both
individually and collectively, but today I’m talking about
collectively.

“The
Art of Choosing What to Do With Your Life as a Church”

Thinking
that way, we can eliminate some of the options. We are not a church
so we can build wealth, be praised, gain glory, or simply maximize
pleasure. Occasionally I think we do want some power so we can make
an impact, but that isn’t an end goal in itself, and I think we know
that. I sometimes note that being part of a community is good for
one’s health, and community connections are good for community
health, but that too is an aside and not a primary goal.

Which
is to say, that I think only the last two questions are likely to
have significant resonance: Do we seek some ‘good of the soul’ such
as knowledge or virtue? Or, do we primarily seek to connect people
to the Divine? I’d love to hear your answers and reflections on
this. I’m going to offer my best guess as to this community’s
answer, but please note I’m ALSO wanting to hear what you think!

The
thing is, that I don’t think every church has the same reason for
existing. And I suspect our reasons may be quite different from the
norm. That is, I think many churches exist to make more Christians –
as an end goal in itself, which for them is related to keeping people
out of hell. This may be simply about saying a proscribed set of
words, or may be about living a particular set of rules, but avoiding
hell is the end game. Other churches exist, I think, to praise God.
This strikes me as a far more worthy use of time and energy, but, if
I’m honest, not the one that resonates here. (OK, I do think it is
better, but I also am not convinced it is a sufficient end it
itself.)

Around
here we most often talk about our goal as “building the kindom of
God,” and I suspect that falls most directly under seeking good of
the soul, with an awareness that connecting to the Divine is quite
important for building up the desire and capacity to build the
kindom.

Lee
Tupper wrote convincingly that the point of the church is to
“optimize prime values.” I’d take that to be another way of
saying the thing about good for the soul. Lee put it this way:

A
desirable function for the church is to aid in shaping personal value
systems so that they are consistent with prime values. The ultimate
objective of this process is maximizing the degree to which the human
system evolves to ever-higher levels. … The function of the church
here is a crucial one. It
involves three major facets – the first is that of the promotion of
the idea that a concern with this subject is important, the second
is to help in the continued educational process necessary to
understand its implication and the third is to aid people in carrying
out the activities necessary to achieve these objectives.”^³

Lee
was humble about naming the prime values themselves, but took as
examples, love and justice which I’m entirely convinced are prime
values as well. Love and justice, and I’m pretty sure compassion
too, are means toward the kindom.

It
turns out that this wondering about why we exist as a church and what
we think we are aiming to do matters… say, rather a lot. It
impacts everything about what we do and how we make decisions, who we
are and who we seek to become. It impacts what we are trying to do
when we worship, what I am trying to do when I preach, how we related
to our communities and neighbors, what we prioritize, and how we
decide what to let go of. I think it also relates to how we
experience and understand God and God’s wishes for us and our
communities and society.

The
Art of Choosing What to Do With Your Life as a Church matters quite a
lot.

I
think this is obvious, but just to be sure, let’s look at an example.
If the primary goal of a church is to save people from going to hell
by having them profess a faith in Jesus, it would make sense that
they’d put a lot of energy into evangelism, and teaching effective
evangelism, and that worship would be both focused on emphasizing how
good it is to believe in Jesus and how bad it is in afterlife if one
doesn’t. Right? It all follows.

However,
“building the kindom of God” is a really multifaceted thing. It
is not as well defined as a goal as getting people to speak some
particular phrase. Even as we get clearer that building the kindom
is related to optimizing prime values, and that that means “the
first is that of the promotion of the idea that a concern with this
subject is important, the second is to help in the continued
educational process necessary to to understand its implication and
the third is to aid people in carrying out the activities necessary
to achieve these objectives,”
and even if we took as the three prime values love, justice, and
compassion – we are still dealing with multifaceted ways forward.

How
does one build up love? Is it best to start with one’s self and
build up self compassion? Is it best to deepen relationships with
loved ones, and build up skills in good listening and communication?
Is it best to seek out new relationships particularly with people who
are different -and if so, people who are different HERE, or people
who are different in another part of the country or world? Or, do we
best build up love by savoring the love of God and letting it
infiltrate our lives?

You
see how it isn’t entirely clear?

This
has been a struggle for this church for decades at least, a desire
for better clarity of purpose and a reality that it is really
complicated. But, I’d like to point something out that maybe hasn’t
been a sufficient part of this conversation.

What
this church has been doing for these decades has WORKED. How do I
know? Because this church is full of people of mature, thoughtful,
careful, LOVING, JUSTICE-SEEKING, COMPASSIONATE faith. Both those of
you who have been here all along and those of you who arrived here
and discovered it fit who you are are living proof that something
here is working. People are becoming more loving, more
justice-oriented, more compassionate in their time here. These are
shared values. These are lived values. When we, as a church, make
decisions, these are inherently in the conversations, and we end up
discussing how to best live them out.

I
have seen very few other faith communities that so effectively build
up people of faith in these ways. I admit to being a little confused
as to how it happens, because we definitely don’t have a linear
educational paradigm to develop it, but something here WORKS.

The
kindom of God is being built by this community and by the people of
this community in the places they go. We’re doing the stuff we want
to do!

We’re
living our values! We’re working with God! We’re existing in a way
we care about!

THIS
IS AWESOME – and we should probably celebrate it more.

Those
dry cisterns of Jeremiah – those aren’t ours! We’re in the fountain
of living water. Those exclusivist banquets that poor people can’t
attend because they can’t reciprocate? Those aren’t ours. We are
intentionally offering banquets for those who aren’t going to invite
us back.

A
commentator on Luke said, “Exclusive fellowship required an
exclusive table, while inclusive fellowship required an inclusive
one.^⁴”
That was beautifully said, and seems to name another prime value
around here: inclusion. We often ask ourselves about what inclusion
looks like and how to create intersectional inclusion.

Dear
ones, there are a lot of leaking, empty cisterns out there. I’d lump
all of the competitive values of the world into those. But God is
faithful. There are a lot of ways to be church, and I’m not sure
ours is the easiest, but it is a really great one, and it is WORKING.
We’re transforming each other into more loving, more just, more
compassionate, more inclusive beings and taking those values and
skills into the world. Or maybe we’re just making space together for
God to do the changing – I really don’t know how it happens.

We
are people of an inclusive fellowship, of taking the bottom seat, of
inviting everyone to the banquet. And it matters. And it is going
to keep mattering. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that it isn’t
always clear is part of how we have developed some skills at it –
we’ve had to struggle and that’s helped us grow. 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

August 28, 2022

1 Benjamin
Storey and Jenna Silber Storey, “The Art of Choosing What to Do
With Your Life” in the New York Times, August 15, 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/opinion/college-students-happiness-liberal-arts.html,
accessed again 8/25/2022

2 Ibid.

3 L.C.
Tupper “Eschatology and Related Matters” Nov. 20, 1976.

4 Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Meals”.

Uncategorized

“Queen Sabbath” based on Isaiah 58:9b-14 and Luke 13:10-17

August 21, 2022
by Sara Baron

I’m
not sure when Sabbath got lost. Perhaps it was a well intentioned
thing, a part of recognizing that Christianity isn’t the only way to
be in the world, and making space for other traditions. After all,
Christians and Jews both have traditions of Sabbath, but on different
days. (We changed ours to line up with a weekly celebration of
Easter.)

I
suspect, though, that what really happened was the long term impact
industrial revolution and the desire of factory owners to get more
profit from their expensive machines by having them worked for more
hours.

I
don’t know for sure though.

I
do know that Sabbath is lost.

And
I also know that it is problem.

Because
before I can even talk about Sabbath I need to acknowledge that the
minimum wage is so low in our country that people can’t live off of
full time work, and people working multiple jobs often cannot afford
to take a day off. That is, our MINIMUM wage is so low that people
can’t afford to live without working themselves to death.

Additionally,
and I think intersectedly, many retail, restaurant, and other low
paying jobs like to schedule erratically and at the last minute,
keeping workers hopping to get to work and pick up hours at any time
of the week. And they punish those who put boundaries on their
working hours.

Additionally,
and I think this TOO is intersected with it all, we live in a culture
that values overwork and expects it of most people in even salaried
positions. The expectations on teachers beyond their working hours
are obscene, and that seems to apply from pre-school teachers to
college professors. And, they’re not unique. Medical professionals
have hours and hours of unpaid paperwork to do beyond their paid
labor. Rare – and valuable – is the job that pays a livable wage
and expects only 40 hours a week of work.

In
the book “It’s Not You, It’s Everything”, Eric Minton helped me
put together what’s going on under all this pressure. I already knew
that businesses, institutions, and non-profits are all trying to get
as much as they can out of their workers – even when they have
fewer workers and more work. But Minton points out that the social
inequality of our society helps to maintain the frenetic work life of
our society. That is, because people can fall through the cracks and
become homeless, and/or food insecure, and/or lose everything to
medical bills, and because this happens on a terrifyingly regular
basis, our whole society is in a rat race to not be the ones
struggling the hardest.

Middle
school and high school kids are experiencing unprecedented anxiety
and mental health issues. Ones that look a lot like the ones their
parents have. And this is what is under all that: an assumption that
if you don’t work hard enough and pass that French test with a high
enough grade, you won’t get into a good college, you won’t get a good
job, and you could end up bankrupt, homeless, and food insecure. For
some kids, whose families already live some of those realities, that
French test is already eclipsed by the need to get a job and bring
home some money to prevent eviction, or to buy some food.

By
having an insufficient safety net in our society, we motivate people
to work hard and harder throughout their lives (which does
effectively enrich the already rich) to try to prevent themselves
form being the ones who fall through the net. And to keep this all
going, we have a societal narrative that the ones who do fall through
that safety net just didn’t try hard enough.

This
couldn’t be any further from God’s desires.

This
couldn’t be any further from the practice of Sabbath, either.

Walter
Brueggemann has been my primary teacher on the meaning of Sabbath in
the Hebrew Bible, and here he is commenting on our Isaiah passage for
this week:

Sabbath is the alternative to a
restless, aggressive, unbridled acquisitiveness that exploits
neighbor for self-gain. The ancient command provided rest for
members of the community and for all the household members including
workers (Deut 5:12-15) All will rest and enjoy the abundance of
creation (Exod. 20:8-11). Sabbath is a cessation of feverish anxiety
and control. But the people addressed here are strangers to the
sabbath. They “oppress all your workers” (v. 3) and impose a
cycle of exploitation. That is, the disciplined act of finding life
outside of feverish acquisitiveness is rejected by serving one’s own
interests.¹

Now,
I’ve been talking this whole time as if you all know what I mean by
Sabbath. On a practical level, Sabbath is taking a day off from
productivity and consumption every week in order to focus on
relationships and others things that bring LIFE. For Jews, this is
practiced on Saturdays, for most of Christian history this was
practiced on Sundays, and at this point any day or even a revolving
day is a great thing.

The
Bible says that we rest every 7 days because God rested after
creation. And that we NEED that rest to maintain our full humanity.
The Bible is also explicit that this isn’t just something that
landowners or rich people get, it is for everyone, and sometimes the
Bible even includes WORK ANIMALS in the expression of Sabbath.
Clearly humanity has been practicing various forms of work
exploitation for a LONG LONG time, and those listening for God’s
voice heard the commandment for Sabbath, to ensure that people get to
live and not just work themselves to death.

Now,
in Luke, there appears to be a debate over Sabbath, but is a strange
one. What is strange is that the healing that Jesus did wasn’t a
violation of Sabbath and pretty much everyone agreed on that. The
healing was seen as a gift from God, so it wasn’t “labor” on
Jesus’ part (this is not to dismiss the labor that is medical care
today). And the healing brought the woman back into the community.
One of the interesting side effects of Sabbath is that by stopping
work and focusing on relationships, Sabbath ALSO creates community.
So doing something that healed a woman and her community was a very
Sabbath activity.

So
what was the Synagogue leader upset about? I don’t know for sure,
and the story doesn’t tell us, but to project onto it a little bit,
perhaps the faith leader felt insecure about his work and leadership
and threatened by the clear connection between Jesus and God and was
trying to reestablish what felt like slipping control? Again, who
knows 😉

But,
let us be clear, Jewish practice of Sabbath didn’t prevent Jesus from
healing, Sabbath is meant to be a source of life and life abundant,
and the Jewish crowd clearly understood and agreed with Jesus’
assessment that freeing a woman from bondage was worth doing on the
Sabbath.

So
what does this all mean? How do we respond to our tradition of
Sabbath, the reminders of what it means, the affirmations that it
connects us to God, the concerns about its misuse, and the desire
from God that we might live life and live it abundantly?

(And
why can’t I ever just ask easy questions?)

I
think there are a lot of conclusions that can be drawn from this
conversation. One big one is about continuing to work for justice in
our society, to work towards making it possible for all people to
have regular life giving time off, and to work towards securing the
societal safety net so that people don’t slip through. But another
piece of this is about HOW we work towards justice, and that means
working towards justice while also taking Sabbath. We can’t
effectively bring love, peace, and justice into the world if we don’t
experience them. Those of us who can have Sabbath need to take it,
for ourselves, for our faith, for our community, for our families,
for God, and for the sake of those who can’t yet. We won’t get other
people closer to full and whole lives by working ourselves to death
either. We have to both work for justice and savor the goodness of
life.

So,
what if, say, you are retired and not even working any more? What
might Sabbath look like for you? I’d recommend picking a day (maybe
Saturday or Sunday) and circling it in your calendar. Then, use it
to connect with those you love, or to do things you love. BUT, keep
away from productivity. No cleaning out closets. No vacuuming. No
filing. No reading church meeting minutes. ALSO, no consumption or
shopping. If possible, keep your Sabbath from being one that makes
other people work. Just…. people you love, spiritual practices, and
activities that bring you life. EVERY WEEK, and without guilt. This
is important, and it brings unexpectedly wonderful changes.

For
the rest of us, if we are lucky enough to be able to, let’s do the
same! And for those who can’t, yet, we’re seeking it with you. May
God help us get there. May Sabbath be found again. Amen

1Walter
Brueggeman, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998) 193.

August 21, 2022

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

Uncategorized

“Bigger Barns” based on Hosea 11:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21

July 31, 2022
by Sara Baron

I love this Hosea passage. I love the
parental vision of God, one that I think many would call maternal. I
love the imagery of holding a child, teaching a child to walk,
snuggling a baby, kneeling to feed a toddler. Hearing of God as one
who cares for us like that has immense healing power.

And, actually, I love hearing God’s
frustration that the people are missing the mark. Because the mark
is peace – not violence, and justice – not wealth accumulation,
and compassion.

And then, too, I love God’s
self-restraint. God’s anger that upon examination turns to sadness,
that the nurturing love didn’t create the society of justice God
envisioned, YET that God’s love isn’t impaired by the people turning
away. God is still defined by compassion – warm and tender, for
the people. The anger melts away, the love holds strong, and God
returns to hope that the people might be transformed by being loved.

God dreams of the people returning to
the Divine, and the Ways of Living that are compassionate, and the
passage ends with affirmation of God’s expectations those hopes would
be fulfilled.

I’d really, really like to preach on
this wonderful passage, but two things stand in my way: 1. I’m not
really that great at preaching at passages I agree with. I mean,
what more is there to say than what I just said? and 2. the gospel
has its claws in me.

The story of the bigger barns is
uncomfortable in a multitude of ways. It forces us to face questions
of security, consumption, capitalism, greed, and existential anxiety.
Which, as 21^st century Americans, are things we spend a
whole lot of energy avoiding as hard as we can.

Oh, and it feels judgy. That’s
uncomfortable too. And quite often when we read it, we feel judgy,
and, well, judged. I’m all for ignoring it, except that the degree
to which I want to look away from it suggests that I probably
shouldn’t.

I feel for the man in the parable.
He’s worked hard, he happened to luck out and have a good harvest,
and he FINALLY feels like he can stop fighting for security and just
relax a little. He can live life and enjoy it, without
fear of hunger. And then he gets slammed for it, and he dies
without being able to enjoy that security, and judged for doing it
all wrong.

And this, as my first response, is
real, and I suspect involves a whole lot of projection from the 21^st
century to the 1^st, and an awareness of the many, many
people who struggle to have enough food to survive.

But this initial, instinctual response
to the parable also required that I ignore the actual details
of the parable. Because the set up Jesus gives isn’t the one I
heard. Jesus says, “The LAND of a rich man produced abundantly.”
Which creates two immediate distinctions: the man was ALREADY rich
when the story began, AND he didn’t actually do the labor for this
harvest. In fact, I think maybe it is set up to make us aware that
OTHERS did the labor. From the man’s perspective, maybe “the land”
produced, but land doesn’t farm itself. The laborers do. But the
rich man doesn’t even acknowledge them. Nor, clearly, does he share
the bounty their work produced with THEM. Because he owns the land,
he owns the harvest, and seeks to secure it, probably AGAINST the
laborers themselves.

That is, he wasn’t lacking security to
begin with, but he kept others from having enough to survive.
According to the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels,
in ancient Mediterranean culture, it was assumed that “all good
existed in finite, limited supply and were already
distributed…Because a pie could not grow larger, a larger piece for
anyone automatically meant a smaller piece for someone else.”¹
Now, we don’t share that assumption in the same way anymore. We
tend to think of most goods as producible, so more can be produced if
more is needed. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in the middle.

By thinking there can always be more
produced, we end up taking unhealthy quantities of raw materials from
the earth, and we also don’t pay as much attention to when some
people acquire more than
their fair share. When the pie is assumed to be fixed, taking
the biggest slice is UNFAIR. But when there are several pies, even
taking a whole one for one’s self doesn’t create the same outrage.

The authors remind us that in that
culture, “An honorable man would thus be interested only in what
was rightfully his, meaning what he already had. He would not want
‘more.’ Anyone with a surplus would normally feel shame unless he
gave liberally to clients or the community.”²
Furthermore, “Anxiety about the future was not a peasant outlook;
anxiety about daily bread certainly was.”³

So. My first reading of this passage
involved identifying with and feeling compassion for the rich man
who was taking an unfair share of the community’s resources, and
feeling bad for him that he got judged for it. Just in case anyone
was wondering how “internalized capitalism” is going with me. 😉

I keep getting shocked by these
parables. I keep noticing, as I read the parables of Jesus, how much
they illuminate the economic systems of TODAY, and how much I buy
into them. John Dominic Crossan helps make sense of this by pointing
out that Jesus lived in a pre-industrial agricultural domination
system while we live in a post-industrial non-agricultural domination
system. I keep noticing that I don’t naturally have a 1^st
century peasant outlook on life, which seems pretty obvious, but also
maybe important.

For those who believed that goods were
all limited resources, and a zero sum game, it was then really
obvious to conclude that those who take too much aren’t being good
neighbors, or fair participants in the game. But in the USA in 2022,
there are other narratives that counter that simple fact. We live in
a society that believes that winners have a right to take what they
win, and that means that everyone else just has to deal with less.
Which means that we have taken away the moral assumption that people
shouldn’t build bigger barns.

Now, let’s get to the REALLY hard part
of this story. The rich man dies in the end. A la Steve Jobs,
having all the money didn’t make him immune to death.

While the poor people were worried
about if they could eat TODAY, the rich man was worried about the
future, and mortality was about come calling. Not even the security
of wealth and abundance changed that outcome.

But, whenever people build bigger barns
(physically or metaphorically), I think they are doing so to try to
create more security, and in doing so prevent death from coming for
them. Or at least coming for them as soon. Which
in our society is FAIR, because having more resources DOES
increase a lifespan, until a certain point. Because we live in a
society that says you have to fight with others for resources, and
some will get them and some won’t, our shared narrative as a county
is that those who are poor “haven’t worked hard enough” and we
shouldn’t help them and take away their motivation for work. Taken
to its logical end, our form of capitalism says some people “win”
a right to a longer life, and others… don’t.

I hate this narrative. And I’m not at
this point very fond of this parable. Why is Jesus always sticking
his nose in stuff?

But, anyway. I’m most struck in this
story by the ways it reflects our own existential angst, and I want
to talk about that today not just in the personal but also in the
communal.

In my 9 years with this church I’ve
heard a lot about awareness of decline, and questions of
sustainability. Looking back on old records and minutes, these
are conversations that date back a few decades as well. Because
this church is attentive to numerical trends, there has long been
awareness that the trend is one of decline.

But I don’t know how much of that
awareness has happened along side the emotional and spiritual work
that would make sense of it. My fear is that for many in this
community, it feels like if the church dies – OR CHANGES – it
means that the effort and energy they’ve given to the church didn’t
matter. And inside one’s emotional system that could easily
translate to, “my life didn’t matter because I gave my resources to
a church and it didn’t matter.” (Internal emotional systems aren’t
known for logic, nor for refusals to take flying leaps.)

And I want to say again, I think this
applies to EITHER the church DYING OR the church CHANGING. For those
who have given of time, energy, passion, prayers, presence, or money
in the past to see the parts of the church life they gave themselves
to CHANCE is HARD. I believe it is often experienced as rejection.
I believe it is often experienced as a rejection of the person
themselves. 🙁

Which is awful.

And, just to be clear, untrue.
Churches are a lot like living organisms. We need different things
at different times, and a ministry or group that is IMPERATIVE to the
well-being of the church in one season will not necessarily be in
another season. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was
imperative in its own season. And it doesn’t mean that the gifts a
person gave to that ministry or group didn’t matter.

Let me try to say this a different way.
If you would, think about a person who helped you along your way –
someone who made a difference for you. A teacher or mentor who
believed in you, or someone who helped you get a resource or
connection you couldn’t have gotten, or someone who had the time to
listen when you had something that needed to be heard. Got it?
Great.

Now, does it negate that action if it
didn’t continue forever? Of course not!

Our church isn’t going to live forever,
because nothing ever does.

But while it is here, and alive, I hope
we will spend our energy enjoying ministry together and being a gift
to our communities. I hope we won’t spend all of our energy trying
not to die, at the expense of actually living while we can.

And I hope we can remember, each of us
when it applies to us, that the gifts we’ve given to make this church
what it is are of great value. And, it is OK that seasons change.

Friends, we are in a new season, one
we’ve never been in before. As we let go of the past, I invite you
into some reflection. We aren’t going to build bigger barns (heavens
we do not need a BIGGER barn), but we do have a choice of what to put
in the one we have. When you think about the past, and what was
wonderful and life giving about it, what qualities should we keep?
What might they look like now, which is likely quite different from
how they looked then? What matters most from the past to find a new
way to have it in the present?

And, then we get to do some wondering
about how we make sure those gifts we value immensely get to the
“workers in the field” and not just the rich land owner.

Oh these parables. They don’t ever
just let things be, do they? Thanks be to God! Amen

1“Rich,
Poor, and Limited Good.” p. 400.

2Luke
12: 13-34 commentary, 278

3ibid

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 31, 2022

Uncategorized

“Desperate Places” based on Amos 7:7-17 and Luke 10:25-37

July 10, 2022
by Sara Baron

The
Good Samaritan parable is one of the best known in our tradition. I
believe most people have heard about it, and there is a shared common
understanding: be like the Good Samaritan who showed compassion.

“Go
and do likewise.” Amen

Or…maybe…
there are some other things to consider. Even with this story we
know so well, even with the simplistic moral that we struggle to
live.

This
week I found myself wondering about the robbers. I’ve never paid
attention to them before. After all, they’re more in the set up to
the parable than the parable itself. But I’ve always taken for
granted the “facts” that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was
dangerous, and roaming groups of robbers attacked people there,
especially people traveling alone, and it was sort of a gamble to
take that road.

Which
makes me sort of wonder about myself, and why I took that for
granted.

Upon
examination, I am well aware of places like the Jerusalem to Jericho
road. I’ve spent my life getting messages about where not to go –
especially alone at night, about what not to drink, about making sure
I have my carkeys in hand before I leave a building, about holding
purses in particular ways in particular areas… etc. So, perhaps, I
took for granted that there are dangerous places because it so easily
mirrors the world as I know it.

However,
I’m at this point in my life well aware that “dangerous places”
are actually “desperate places.” Most people who have
non-violent, viable ways to care for themselves and their loved ones
choose those options. It is when those options are closed off that
people are forced into other choices. And, let’s note that addiction
is a huge factor in increasing desperation and urgency, and addiction
itself is incredibly responsive to social factors as well. Desperate
people make desperate choices. If we want to decrease the prevalence
of those choices, the most effective way is to decrease the
desperation.

Which
leads me back to wondering about those robbers. WHY were there bands
of robbers along that road? The answer I’ve been taught to give is
because it was rocky and it was easy to hide behind the rocks, which
perhaps answers the question of “why there” but doesn’t actually
get to the core question of “why at all?”

Because
being a part of a roaming band of robbers isn’t an ideal way to live.

I
don’t think people decided to do it for fun, or adventure, or even
profit. It was an act of desperation.

We
have some knowledge of what that desperation looked like in those
days. You may remember that Ancient Israel brought great
intentionality to making sure that each family had land access, and
that it couldn’t be taken away from them. For many generations, the
agrarian society had been largely sustainable, even if there were
imperfections in the system, and greed from the top. But, people
farmed the land, fed their families, and took care of each other.
They even had enough to give away, to care for both the religious
leaders and those who by circumstance, were landless (widows,
orphans, foreigners).

At
its best, the system outlined in the Torah and lived in Ancient
Israel created a system of radical equality. This lasted until
kingship, of course, but between the people and the prophets there
seems to have been maintained an idea that all are equal before God,
and all people have a right to a livelihood.

By
the time of Jesus, the system was buckling under the pressure from
the Roman Empire to enrich the upper class at the expense of everyone
else. The tax burden was so high that landowners regularly fell into
debt, indebted landowners often lost their land and their livelihood,
those without land struggled to get hired as day laborers, and those
who couldn’t get hired had no way to eat except to steal. The
ECONOMIC SYSTEM created the conditions by which people were so
desperate that bands of robbers stole what they could to eat while
they could.

Which
is to say, that the backdrop of the Good Samaritan story is the
dehumanization of the people, the ways people were seen as
expendable, and the desperation such policies create.

Jesus
thus started a story saying, “A man was going down from Jerusalem
to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him,
beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead,” but only because
the people he was talking to were already aware of the circumstances
of their lives, and that the story really started with, “The Empire
is stealing our land, our labor, our livelihood, and our hope. Those
fighting to live are desperate, and that desperation is visible in
the bands of robbers who hide behind rocks on the road from Jerusalem
to Jericho.”

For
me, remembering the robbers are people too, actually changes the way
I hear the story. Now, after I had this insight about the robbers I
went to my handy “Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels” (one of the books I sighed in relief over when I unpacked)
and read what Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh had to say about
this story. And, as per usual, their analysis suggest mine hasn’t
yet gone far enough. Here is a part of their textual notes on Luke
10:25-37:

The priest and the Levite would
avoid contact with a naked and therefore presumably dead body. A
priest could touch a corpse only to bury immediate family (cf. Ezek
44:25). The fact that the injured man had no clothes would make
ascertaining his social status difficult.

A Samaritan traveling back and
forth in Judean territory may have been a trader, a despised
occupation. This is suggested by the fact that he possesses oil,
wine, and considerable funds. Many traders were wealthy, having
grown rich at the expense of others. They were therefore considered
thieves. They frequented inns that were notoriously dirty and
dangerous and run by persons whose public status was below even that
of traders. Only people without family or social connections would
ever risk staying at a public inn.

Both the victim and the
Samaritan were thus despised persons who would not have elicited
initial sympathy from Jesus’ peasant hearers. That sympathy would
have gone to the bandits. They were frequently peasants who had lost
their land to the elite lenders whom all peasants feared. The
surprising twist in the story is thus the compassionate action of one
stereotyped as a scurrilous thief.¹

Now,
here is where I’m shocked by this perspective: I don’t think in our
society that there is generalized agreement that desperate people
just trying to get by are the heroes while wealthy individuals or
corporations underpaying their employees to enrich themselves are the
real thieves. I think, somehow, we’ve societally bought into the
idea that someone shoplifting food for their family is MORE at fault
than the employer who pockets what could otherwise be a living wage.

And
that worries me.

I’ve
mentioned before that the most common theft in the USA is WAGE THEFT²
which is almost never prosecuted, while petty theft lands people in
jail. But, I don’t hear much outrage about this. I fear we’ve given
up on even the ideals of justice, and bought into the narratives of
capitalism – including the ones that say that companies and the
PEOPLE who own them should maximize profits at all times no matter
who they harm, AND that people who are poor are either not trying
hard enough, or failures, and if they wanted to, they could “win”
too. But, the truth is that OUR economic system is terrifyingly
similar to that of Jesus’ time. It is similar to gambling: the house
always wins. Money flows up, people at the bottom are considered
expendable, and the fear of landing at the bottom keeps everyone else
quiet in the face of injustice.

The
difference, it seems, is that at that time the people still saw it as
unfair (and not just “the way things are”) and that JESUS was
willing to talk about it.

It
seems shocking, then, that the fact that the wealthy trader was the
hero is the TWIST in this story, because it isn’t really the twist
for us. I think the twist for us is realizing that the impoverished
bands of bandits were ASSUMED to be the heroes. (Think Robin Hood.)
Along with the fact that it was the Samaritan’s wealth and occupation
that were ALSO hated, and not just his background. Well, and the
idea that being wealthy was seen as being a thief.

OK,
so, basically, the original context of this story is so radical for
us, that we can’t really get past it into the story, because we’re
still trying to process the concepts of justice contained in the
context. Or at least I am.

And,
actually, I think that’s enough for today.

About
a decade ago I learned that The
United Methodist Church is getting wealthier. That is, the wealth of
individual members is increasing. Specifically, as members die off
in small rural churches (or when those churches close), new members
are mostly found in church plants in wealthy suburbs.

When
this was shared with me, it was shared as a neutral fact. I’ve spent
a decade being horrified by it. Jesus, and John Wesley for the
record, focused their ministries on people in poverty. If we are a
church that is good news to the wealthy, but NOT to the poor, we need
to take stock of what our message is and whose our message is.

For
quite some time, this congregation was predominated by white upper
middle class people, the engineers and middle management of GE in
most cases. In the most recent decades, it has diversified, thanks
be to God. However, the models and assumptions of being a white
upper middle class church still linger among us, and I believe our
work to walk into the PRESENT as well as the future includes noticing
where we are still holding on to those models and assumptions.

Because,
friends, the followers of Jesus who heard him tell the parable the
first time assumed the WEALTHY were thieves, and the petty robbers
were heroes. They saw what was happening economically and what
impact it had on people, and they found it morally reprehensible. To
follow Jesus, to follow John Wesley, to build the kindom, to see the
world clearly, I think that we need to too. May God help us. Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes on Luke 10:25-37” pages 270-1.

2“This
report assesses the prevalence and magnitude of one form of wage
theft—minimum wage violations (workers being paid at an effective
hourly rate below the binding minimum wage)—in the 10 most
populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million
workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for
year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of
their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of
low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being
cheated out of pay.” –
https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/

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 10, 2022

Uncategorized

Untitled

June 19, 2022
by Sara Baron

“Tears for Food” based on Psalm 42 and Luke 8:26-39

One of the core tenets of our faith is that we are made in the image of God. Humanity reflects the Divine. Creation is an expression of the Holy.

This may seem simple, but it has proven challenging for humans for quite some time now.

Because it isn’t that we – First UMC of Schenectady – are made in the image of God, nor even we – United Methodists – are made in the image of God, nor even we – Christians – are made in the image of God, nor even that we – people of faith – are made in the image of God. It is that we, HUMANITY, are made in the image of God.

Which has implications.

If everyone is made in the image of God, than how we treat EVERY ONE matters. Each and every person is a beloved person of God, made in God’s image, and a unique reflection of the Holy One.

Which is to say, it seems to follow, that we probably shouldn’t oppress people.

Which is the part that I’ve noticed humans haven’t done terribly well.

Today is June 19th, so today is 157 years since slaves were freed in west Texas, believed to be the last enslaved people in the United States to hear that they’d been freed 2.5 years earlier. Today is a celebration of the end of slavery in the United States, and thanks be to God for that!

The institution of slavery was an abomination, and the end of the practice was a step towards God’s kindom.

I find myself a little bit obsessed with those 2.5 years. The 900 days in between the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and Juneteenth – June 19, 1865 blow me away. 900 days during which people who were free didn’t know it. 900 days in which people who were ACTUALLY free lived and died as enslaved people. 900 days in which people who were ACTUALLY free were born into slavery. 900 days for enslavers to reap profit, 900 days for people who’d been enslaved to suffer, languish, be beaten, and have their families ripped apart. 900 days when freedom had been declared, but hadn’t come yet. (I wonder, a bit, how often we’re in those in-betweens, when God’s good actions have happened but we haven’t heard yet.)

In the midst of celebrating the end of 246 years of institutionalized slavery in the United States, I’m struck by the injustice of the last 2.5 years. It is possible I’m focusing wrong. Because all of those things I’m angry about having been done to people in the last 900 days were ALSO done for the TWO HUNDRED FORTY SIX years before that.

While, during those years, the institution of slavery was LEGAL, it was just as much of an abomination. During those 246 years from 1619 to 1865, beloved people of God were treated as anything but beloved people of God.

And, while I’m muddying waters, we also have to talk about the end of slavery not being the end of abominations in the treatment of God’s beloveds who ancestors were from Africa. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US constitution ended slavery, but they have caveats.

The 13th, section one, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The 14th, a portion of section one, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”

As Michele Alexander explains in “The New Jim Crow,” those who were used to gaining profit from enslaving people found ways to keep oppressing them. The formerly enslaved were free, and remained free UNLESS they were convicted of a crime. So, the system convicted people of “crimes,” and forced people to keep working as enslaved people that way. And, WE STILL DO. And we still convict people of color at vastly disproportionate numbers, and then steal their labor. (Cough cough NYS hand sanitizer.)

But, in the midst of this complication is the STILL present reality that June 19th, 1865 mattered. It didn’t change everything, it wasn’t a moment we’d call “one and done,” but it was momentous. An institution of evil ended. God’s people were freed.

Beloved people of God were given space to be who they were made and called to be: gifts to all creation.

It fits, for me, to hear Psalm 42 today. The “tears for food” line fits. The lament of the Psalm, but the underlying hope of it too, makes sense. A longing for God, and for God’s presence – which brings with it justice. An acknowledgement of wrongness, and a desire for rightness. And, even in the midst of the wrongness, a sense of hope that God can and will fix it. 246 years wasn’t a short period of time for God’s people to be enslaved, but it did end. God did not forget God’s people.

(Although it may have seemed like forgetting for a very long time there.)

God is always working for justice, working towards freedom, working to end oppression, working to make space for all of us to be blessings to each other and all creation. May we not get in God’s way.

Today, when we read the story of the Gerasene demonic, I wonder what traumas he lived. Were they all his, or was he the one who held them for the community, or maybe even for the generations. Was he the sensitive soul who expressed the brokenness others pretended away? Or was he simply one who’d been hurt until he couldn’t pretend it away anymore himself?

I don’t know, but I do know that community trauma and generational trauma play out in individual lives as well as communities and families, and the trauma of 246 years of God’s beloved people being enslaved didn’t go away on June 19, 1865.

(Nor, of course, did the trauma end.)

People are still living out the trauma, it is still hurting people. It isn’t OVER.

I wonder, though, if what we are to take from the story of Legion is the power of God to heal what seems un-healable. The man who had been separated from his community, living alone with his pain and without “creature comforts,” was healed. And sent back to his people, to show the power of God to heal.

In some ways this healing feels less realistic to me than even the physical ones. I have watched people struggle with mental illness, and I have seen how tirelessly people work for their mental health, and how slow healing is even with the best possible support. This instantaneous healing of what looks like out of control schizophrenia shakes me, because I so desperately wish others could have it, and I know how hard it is for people who don’t find healing like this.

But I also know that mental health, like physical health, is related to how we construct societies. Are we looking for equity, justice, and a chance for people to thrive, or are we looking to let some people get super rich while others pay for it with their health? How much pressure are we willing to put on people, on families, on vulnerable communities SO THAT others can gain from it?

I don’t know what to make of Jesus’ healing, but I’m always struck by the idea that interacting with Jesus was like meeting someone who could express just how much God loves you. And I believe in the healing power of love. So, I take from this story that if people know how much they are loved, how worthy they are of love, how nothing that has happened to them and nothing that they have done changes that, … miraculous healing is possible. When people are heard, and loved, healing happens. When people are seen, and loved, healing happens.

We have to both stop oppressing God’s people AND work towards healing the traumas of oppression.

On this day when we celebrate the end of one particularly vicious and evil oppression, the end of the institution of slavery (outside of prison), may we learn the lessons once again: God loves all people, ending oppression is Godly work, and healing people is too. May God help each of us do our part. Amen

June 19, 2022

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