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Uncategorized

“Towers of Babel” based on Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts…

  • June 5, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

If you hear the story of the
Tower of Babel and scratch your head in confusion, I believe that is
a sign you are hearing it right.  “Why build a tower?”  “Why
was God upset about a tower?”  “Huh?”

The context clue that I believe
we need to understand the story is that some of ancient Israel’s
neighbors were really into building HIGH “towers”  You may think,
perhaps, of the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, or the Babylonian ziggurat
which was a huge temple, sort of like a pyramid, built as a worship
complex for their deity.  

So, in the midst of an old, old
myth trying to explain why different peoples spoke different
languages, the Ancient Israelite’s also managed to sneak in some
propaganda against their neighbors.  So, that’s why a tower, and
since those towers were parts of other faith traditions, that’s why
God was said to be jealous.

I rather like this confusing
ancient myth.  I appreciate the question, “why can’t we communicate
with each other” and I even like the premise that if we could just
communicate well, we could do anything.  I find this to be a story I
go back to, as I think of various things that confuse language or
communication, and I associate them with the Tower of Babel.

To some degree, I think the
story claims that the Tower was a sign of arrogance, and arrogance
needed to be tapped down.  More directly, it claims the people were
getting too powerful, and God was jealous of their power, but that
doesn’t sound like good theology to me.

The Tower of Babel story tries
to explain what separates us from each other, why we can’t work
together, perhaps even why we so easily perceive ourselves as groups
of “us” and “them.”  These are some big, important questions!
I’d like answers too!  (I’d rather not blame God.)

What keeps us from working
towards the common good?  Why do we perceive others as “others,”
and sometimes as enemies?  What keeps us from seeing that justice for
any moves us towards justice for all?  Why DO we throw each other
under the bus?

When we are clearly hardwired
for connection, made by God for connection, why does it so often
fail?

Why are there wars? Why is there
hunger?  Why is there abuse?  Why is there violence?

Why can’t we just care for each
other, and use the abundant resources of the earth for good?

It is hard to consume the news
without landing on these questions.  Why is Russian invading Ukraine?
Is it about power?  Money?  Prestige?  Why are there so many mass
shootings?  What has happened in the lives of the shooters to lead
them to their actions?  

We don’t even need the news.  We
can just look around.  Why is there a need for a free community
breakfast in one of the wealthiest countries in the world – why do
we have a society that allows people to go hungry when it doesn’t
have to?  Why are beloved children of God homeless, when it would be
LESS expensive to house people than it is not to?  

Relatedly, why is mental health
care hard to access when so many people need it?  Why are so many
people self-medicating with drugs that lead to addiction – what is
aching in them, and how could things be different so it wouldn’t
ache?

As a note, I believe that the
answer to a lot of the questions I’ve asked is actually “trauma”
and the extent to which we can become informed about trauma and
responsive to people in their midst of their trauma MAY WELL be the
extent to which we are useful at changing the world towards the
kindom.

There are smaller, and still
important, pieces of separation too. The ones we all experience.
Friendships that fall apart.  Distance from family members.
Disagreements in groups we’re part of, sometimes ones that create too
much conflict to keep the group together.  Violations of core values,
that can’t be overcome.  Experiences of God as distant.  And those
hurt too.  And those matter too.

The Tower of Babel story invites
us into these questions, it invites us into the heartbreak under
these questions.  Because it isn’t an intellectual exercise to say
“why is there war?”  Even from afar, it is heartbreaking to know
what is happening to human beings because there is a war.  It isn’t
an intellectual exercise to say, “why do families fall apart?”
It is heartbreaking to see families fall apart, and the stories I
hear tell me the pain can last for generations.

There are so many ways to
distract ourselves from these questions, and from the pain under
them, but I don’t think we do ourselves any good with avoidance.  I
think we have to face the heartbreak, and sit with it, to hear it out
and letting God move us to healing.

And, being me, that’s what I
hear in Pentecost.  It is, I hope, easy to see that the story of
Pentecost is an undoing of the story of the Tower of Babel.  People
from many different places can suddenly understand each other.
Communication is restored.  The preaching of Peter suggests God is
active with the people, all the people, erasing divisions between
them.  Peter says even nature will take note of the difference!  

And where does it end?  With
healing.  “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.”  For some of us (me) the word “saved” has been laden
with layers of problematic meaning.  I have to be intentional in not
running away from the word, and in reminding myself what it means to
the Bible.  

Peter wasn’t talking about
heaven and hell.  Peter was talking about a wonderful combination of
important things:  healing the sort of healing that goes right down
the core of a person’s soul as well as their body, and also to their
RELATIONSHIPS and connections to community; along side something we
might call freedom, but is so much more – freedom from fear,
freedom from oppression and freedom from oppressing, freedom from
continued cycles of abuse and violence and brokenness.  Peter was
talking about life with God, at the very best it can be.

Peter is talking about life in
the kindom of God, and how it changes everything.  The “saving”
he is talking about is the undoing of all the things we’ve been
taking about with the Tower of Babel and SEPARATION.

Saving, here, is connection,
relationship, full and abundant LIFE.  

These stories, held together,
offer us space to reflection on disconnection and connection,
miscommunication and good communication, brokenness and healing.
And, I hope, they invite us, again, into the kindom.  To live with
connection, communication, and healing.  To pay attention to what
brings full and abundant life, including the need to sometimes sit
with our heartbreak until it releases us, and then to seek, once
again, full hearts, by the grace of God.  May God help us.  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

June 5, 2022

Uncategorized

Untitled

  • May 29, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

“Resurrection People” based on Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 & John 17:20-26

There have been so many mass shootings. There have been so many that I suspect all of us have been touched by them not just on the news but also more directly, whether they be from afar, or from close up. My mother spent a year at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A friend went to the “other” high school – not to Columbine. Another friend grew up in the Conklin United Methodist Church, and to Susquehanna Valley Central schools. (The location of the young man who committed mass murder in Buffalo). These little connections make these deaths and the violence very, very real.

For years it seemed like the primary work of Schenectady Clergy Against Hate was to be gathering together with marginalized communities to speak to the pain of attacks against them. We got good at it. I’m still upset about that.

There isn’t much point in standing in this pulpit and decrying a lack of reasonable gun control laws – it is preaching to the choir. But also, how can one stand in this pulpit and do anything other than name the abomination that is a society that puts weapons of mass murder in the hands of those who engage in hate crimes, and those who wish to kill children. Buffalo and Uvalde. Back to back. But we all know what happened after Sandy Hook.

(Nothing.)

We live in a country that says it values the right to bear arms, but does so without providing a right to safety. We live in a country that won’t change its laws because the gun manufacturers have too strong of a lobby. We live in a country that is more invested in profits from murder than in preventing murder.

How can we do anything but grieve?

We live in a violent society, and it impacts us in so very many ways. We live in a violent society.

It breaks my heart. Sometimes it threatens to break my spirit.

But, I’m a person of faith, and so I choose to dream with you and with God about the nonviolent society that God wants for us, the beloved community that Dr. King spoke of, the kindom of God Jesus named, the true “Promised Land” of the people of God. I don’t want to give more time to violence.

Sure, I’m still going to contact my representatives and ask for changes to our gun laws. Sure, I’m still going to object to private prisons and solitary confinement and police brutality, and the like. That isn’t going to end. We can’t get from here to there without actual change.

But first and foremost, I want to follow Jesus on the path of nonviolence. I want to give my energy to how things should be. I don’t want to engage violence with violence. I want to engage the world with love.

Also, we aren’t going to get from here to there without knowing what we’re aiming at.

The text we have from John this week is as convoluted as John tends to be. But his point is that the loving community of faith is meant to be a living expression of the love of God. Jesus prays, asking that we might learn how to love. Jesus tries to place in the hearts of his followers, one more seed in hopes that it will grow: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.“ (17:26) We’re told, time and time again, that it is by loving each other in faith community that the world is changed. We start with each other.

The text from Revelation includes the very last words of the Bible, and I’m told that they’re best interpreted, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” There is a universality, a hope in both passages that the love that starts with Jesus and extends to the community of faith may become the norm in the world at large, and eventually the way the world works. We end with everyone.

For a very long time, Christianity was so profoundly peaceful that it was assumed a Christian could not fight in a war. (This changed around the time there was a desire for Crusades. Sigh.) This is still true enough that our Social Principals state, “We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ.” (165.c) United Methodists are able to use our faith as the bases of being a conscientious objector in the face of a draft.

Yet, there are so many ways that violence seeps in. It seeps into our language. It seeps in to our values. It seems into our lives. At times, it seems right into our faith.

We often talk these days about “echo chambers” and the distances between people of different political parties. We bemoan the increasing partisanship of our society. Which is good, because it is dangerous.

When I need to be reminded of the power of nonviolence, and how deeply rooted it is in my faith, I go back to the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Their fundamental tenet, #3: Nonviolence Seeks to Defeat Injustice, or Evil, Not People.

  • Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people.
  • The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil not persons victimized by evil.

Just saying those words reminds me that nonviolence requires great strength, and a community commitment to it. Reminding each other that those who do evil are victims and are not evil takes a faith community. I’ve often been struck by those in this community who have the patience to pray for those who do great harm, and how they guide and remind the rest of us of that need.

I have been for many years a student of “Nonviolent Communication” but if I’m honest, within that community there is a desire to change the name to “Compassionate Communication.” People do not want to define themselves AGAINST something, not even AGAINST violence, but rather FOR sometime, FOR compassion. I think they’re onto something. I think turning towards what we want the world to look like matters, even in little ways.

Our gospels tell us Jesus prayed for those who were crucified with him, and for those who crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34). In the midst of dying by state-sponsored violence, Jesus offered compassion, grace, mercy, forgiveness.

That’s the one we follow.

But also, we follow the one who told us to “turn the other cheek” and this is, of course, were our faith gets really interesting. Because to “turn the other cheek” is not simply to accept violence from another passively. To turn the other cheek – because of lack of toilet paper that created a societal norm that only allowed right hands to be used in public and because of a societal norm that indicated one backhanded a subordinate and slapped an equal – was to demand equality without returning violence with violence. Similarly, Jesus’ words on the cross take back the upper hand. They take the power of forgiveness. They take the power of knowledge. In the face of violence, they offer compassion and prove it to be a potent force.

This is the 7th, and last, Sunday of Easter. This is the final time this year that our primary focus is on the Easter Story (well, kinda, every Sunday is a “little Easter” but go with me).

There are many ways to understand Jesus’s resurrection, but for today, let’s focus on this one: The greatest threat the Empire had was violence, in particular violence in the form of a horrid public death. But resurrection says violence doesn’t get the final answer, not even death gets the final answer. Resurrection says that compassion gets the final answer. Mercy gets the final answer. Peace gets the final answer. LOVE gets the final answer.

Nothing, nothing, NOTHING could stop the love of God in Jesus. Romans 8:35-39.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
   we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 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.

Violence has a lot of power. A gut wrenching, sickening, disgusting amount of power.

And yet even in the midst of mass murders, we are Easter people. Easter, exists as a response to the violence of the world. We are Resurrection People. We are people of peace, and compassion, and nonviolence. We are people who know that love wins in the end. We are people who believe our lives can be useful in bringing peace, compassion, justice, and hope to the world. We are followers of a creative, loving, compassionate Savior, who could not even be stopped by death.

We are a Resurrection People.

Lord, hear our prayers. 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

May 29, 2022

Uncategorized

“Radical…Peace?” Psalm 67 and John 14:23-29

  • May 22, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

I
grew up in the country, where a fairly reasonable estimate for how
long it took to get somewhere was how many miles away it was.  5
miles, 5 minutes.  2 miles, 2 minutes.  A few years after moving to
Schenectady I discovered that I was inherently annoyed at stoplights.
At every stop light.  Because, in my internal narrative, they kept
me from getting to where I was going in the time frame I thought
reasonable.

(It
is OK to laugh.)

Once
I realized that, I was able to change my narrative. While they are
not the only way to do this, stoplights exist to 1. keep us safe and
2. take care of conflicting needs.  They’re just a part of communal
use of shared space.

They
aren’t  to slow me down (how arrogant!), but rather to keep things
going.

And
just like that, I stopped being annoyed at every stoplight.  I
stopped taking them personally.  I started accounting for them.
Mostly, I just let them be without existing in tension with them.

This
is not a story I’m particularly proud of.  I sound self-centered and
impatient.  But I hope it is a story that has some resonance.  The
narratives we tell ourselves have a big impact on our perceptions of
reality, not to mention on our emotional responses to that reality.

I
also mention this story because I think it has to do with living
“life abundant” or “life with God” or “a spiritual life”
or “life eternal” or participating in “shalom.”  Those are
all the same thing as far as I’m concerned.  

Much
of life is outside of our control, and the way we respond to it is
going to impact us and those around us.  Often it is easier to focus
on what we can control, right?  To talk about what we can do
together, to focus on what we can do with God, to dream about change,
and to work towards justice.  

I
like those topics a lot.  But the truth is that there are a lot of
things we can’t control, and that’s really hard.  REALLY hard.  We
cannot control how long we live or when we die, nor how long those we
love live or when they die.  REALLY hard.  We cannot control other
people or their choices.  REALLY hard.  We cannot control or change
our past nor its traumas.  We cannot control how other people treat
us.  Most of us cannot control our income streams, and whether or not
they are sufficient.  

There
are a lot of things we can’t control, and that’s really hard.

And
when we are facing things we can’t control, the only control have is
how we respond.  This can feel too small.  But, actually, it is a big
huge deal.  Because, truly, I can spend my days annoyed at stoplights
or not.  And the only thing that changes is my level of annoyance.

When
I read wise spiritual teachers, I am rather shocked at how often they
talk about doing the dishes.  For such a mundane task, spiritual
teachers seem to love talking about it.  I think this is because
spiritual teachers tend to think that life abundant is in the actual,
mundane lives we live.

I
recently came across this story, attributed to a John Perricone who I
know nothing about1:

Several years ago I invited a
Buddhist monk to speak to my Senior elective class, and quite
interestingly as he entered the room he didn’t say a word (that
caught everyone’s attention).  He just walked to the board and wrote
this: “EVERYONE WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD, BUT NO ONE WANTS TO HELP
MOM DO THE THE DISHES.”  We all laughed, but then he went on to say
this to my students:

“Statistically, it’s highly
unlikely that any of you will ever have the opportunity to run into a
burning orphanage and rescue an infant.  But,
it is the smallest gesture of kindness – – a warm
smile, holding the door for the person behind you, shoveling the
driveway of the elderly person next door – – you have committed an
act of immeasurable profundity, because to each of us, our life is
our universe.”

Brother
Lawrence was a monk in the 17th century who was assigned
to doing dishes in the monastery.  He wrote:

The time of business, does not
with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter
of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for
different things, I possess GOD in as great tranquillity as if I were
upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.

Many
others are on this dishes bandwagon too.   The gist seems to be that
you can do dishes and be annoyed by them (easy!), you can do dishes
and distract yourself from them (TV!  Podcasts!), AND you can also do
dishes mindfully.  You can let yourself be in the present.  You can
notice the warmth of the water, the shine of the bubbles, the drip
drying, the ground under your feet, the way the light dances around
the room.  You can do dishes and be alive!  You can do dishes and
notice that this is the one life you have to live and whether or not
dishes are what you’d most like  to be doing right now, dishes are
what you ARE doing right now and you can be attentive to life itself
while you are doing them if you want.  You can notice how your body
is feeling, attend to emotions, see what stories are going through
your head, see if peace is at hand.  Dishes can be a conduit to a
full life because a full life can be lived while doing dishes.  Or
because life is life, and it involves a lot of dishes.

Minor
confession, I am actually not the dish-washer in my own home.  Good
news is that dishes are just one of many mundane domestic tasks.
This all seems like it can apply to cooking, cleaning, grass cutting,
grocery shopping, etc.

A
writer named Matt Haig (who I believe is an atheist) says, “To be
calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act.  To be happy with your own
non-upgraded existence.  To be comfortable with our messy, human
selves, would not be good for business.”  Peace.  Peace isn’t good
for business.  Peace, calm, being present IS abundant life though.
And it is part of how we steel ourselves to continue doing the work
towards justice instead of just being crushed by the brokenness of
the world.

Our
texts today take on big topics.  God’s grace, God’s blessing’s.
Peace, which is shalom, which is communal well-being and shared
abundant life.  Living as God asks us to.  Learning.

But
in the end, our faith lives are a part of our “real” lives, the
normal every day lives that for most of us involve plenty of mundane
tasks.  Most of us, most of the time, aren’t pursuing shalom in big
and glorious ways.  We’re trying to find it in the midst of what
already is.

Most
of us, most of the time, aren’t experiencing blessing in big loud
ways either.  They’re sort of quiet, most blessings.

But
peace, shalom, abundant life.  “Peace I leave with you; my
peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not
let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  The
peace Jesus gives, that’s what we’re allowing to take up residence in
us.  

And
while there are a lot of ways of getting there, they seem to me to
sum up to two imperative and interconnected pieces:  be present in
your own life – often, and be present in relationships.  

Because
that’s where it all is!  Presence, and relationships.  That’s
abundant life.  Relationships with others, relationships with God,
and while we’re at it, relationships even with ourselves.  Which is
another way of saying being present to our own lives.

Jesus
was all about relationships, his ministry was spending time with
people and helping people connect with each other. The Bible is about
how to build societies full of good relationships.  Good lives are
ones with good relationships.  Good relationships with God ARE
spirituality.  

Now,
I’m saying this to a congregation where people are struggling because
1. being together with those we love  STILL isn’t safe and that hurts
our hearts and 2. many people are just so overwhelmed by life and its
demands that they aren’t able to find the time for the relationships
they value.  And it is not my intention to place additional burdens
on those already struggling.

But
I do wish to remind you to use the control you have to move your life
towards connection and relationship.  And, I will go back to the
beginning.  The things you can’t control, you can at least change
some of the narrative on.  There isn’t much value in spending life
being annoyed at stoplights.  

In
fact, you could take stoplights as an invitation to pray, or to
listen to emotions, or to stretch, or to just breathe.  

That’s
probably one easy way forward towards abundant life.  May we together
find lots of others!  Amen

1I
did google the name, and a viable candidate for these words emerged,
but I have no way of knowing if it is indeed the right person.

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

Image: Tree of LIfe
Notes:Four
artists created this work: Adelino Serafim Maté, Fiel dos Santos,
Hilario Nhatugueja et Christavao Canhavato (Kester), in Maputo,
Mozambique, 2004.It is a product of the Transforming Arms into Tools
(TAE) project and is made from decommissioned weapons. TAE was set up by
Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane in 1995 and is supported by Christian Aid.
During Mozambique’s civil war, which lasted from 1976 to 1992, millions
of guns and other weapons poured into the country and most of them
remain hidden or buried in the bush. The project is an attempt to
eliminate the threat presented by the hidden weapons. Mozambicans are
encouraged to hand them over in exchange for items like ploughs,
bicycles and sewing machines. In one case a whole village gave up its
weapons in exchange for a tractor. [African Department, British Museum}

May 22, 2022

Uncategorized

“Love.  One.  Another.” based Revelation 21:1-6 and John 13:31-35

  • May 15, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

I chose the Revelation 21
passage for the same reason I usually choose an “end of Revelation”
passage: they’re visions of hope for the future.  And I think we NEED
hope.

This is a good one.  God makes
God’s home on earth, so the people’s lives are no longer (in any way)
separate from the Holy One, and that means that death and pain,
mourning and crying are all over.

I like it.

I’m not sure what it says about
me that it feels like a cop-out.

(Please don’t answer that.)

This whole “the earth goes
away and gets replaced by a better one” thing – that’s what feels
like a cop-out.  I’m pretty committed to working with God on building
the kindom of God on earth, and having the whole thing go away and
get replaced seems like it defeats the whole purpose.

Of course, I don’t think that
all of us working together, even with the Divine, are going to
eliminate pain and death from the human experience, so if that’s
where we are wanting to land, I can see why we’d need intervention to
get there.

And, of course, I can understand
the deep human yearning for connection with the Holy One, and for a
future without a separation from God.

But, while I remain grateful for
visions of hope with enough power to help us through the hard times,
I’m finding myself less inspired by Revelation’s vision of perfect
future than by John’s dream of a loving faith community.

“By this everyone will know
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  That one
sends shivers up my spine.  That one feels like the call on my life.
That one feels like the best I’ve ever seen of people of faith and
faith communities.  That’s the one.

Important note: the commandment
“love one another” was NOT new.  It was central to the faith
tradition of Jesus and his disciples, Judaism.  There are two ways to
think of it as new.  One is “as I (Jesus) have loved you, you also
should love one another,” so it is new in being reflective of
Jesus.  The other is probably more accurate, the commandment is not
“new” but living that sort of love is part of the “new life”
that people of God are called to – a distinct form of life from one
of competition and fear.  But please remember that loving one another
was already a part of the Jewish tradition, and had been for a LONG
TIME.  We do not want to participate in anti-semitism, much less
pretend it is part of our faith.

Now, back to “By this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.“  This is both one of the most inspiring phrases I know
of, and one of the most worrisome.  Because, let’s be honest for a
moment, it invites us to ask “is this true?”

It must be true in part.  It
must be or I wouldn’t be here.  I have been inspired by the
here-on-earth expressions of God’s love I’ve experienced in churches,
at church camp, in the Love Your Neighbor Collation, and with Upper
New York for Full Inclusion.  I’ve known people whose very presence
exudes love.  I’ve been in communities that have taught me that I’m
worthy of love, just as I am, no matter how awkward.  I’ve seen the
transformational power of love being offered to people who have
received other stories about their lives: to teenagers with abusive
home lives, to people who are transgender and have been told horrible
things by other churches, to queer clergy people afraid for their
livelihoods, to veterans who fear their traumas makes them
unloveable, and to every day people who just wonder if they’re
“enough” who experience the community of God and learn they’re
loved and lovable.

It is the every day miracle of
the church, and it is why I am a part of the church, and it is
probably the thing I’m most committed to continuing with my life.

And.

And it isn’t the full story of
church.

I wish it was.  I heard an idea
once that it is easier to be a spiritual person outside of faith
community, to commune with God in nature and solitude.  Not just
because God is easy to access in nature and solitude (true for me!)
but because faith communities are full of struggle:  conflict and
personalities and differences of opinion and people behaving in ways
we don’t like.  But this idea suggested that this is GOOD not bad,
because communing with God in nature may help us feel and be
centered, but it is in practicing being loving when it is ACTUALLY
HARD that we GROW.  We need the challenges of community to learn how
to be loving in the midst of real life.

That’s one of the most lovely
takes on faith community I’ve ever heard, and I hold it dear.

Because as much as I’ve seen the
church transform lives with its generous love and welcome, I’ve seen
profound pain too.  There is the glaringly obvious pain of being part
of a homophobic and transphobic denomination.  But there are also the
pains that result when we as a local faith community aren’t as loving
as we want to be.  When someone is forgotten, or unseen in their
pain.  When cultural differences are too big to be overcome.  When it
seems some people are more valued than others.  When values
themselves are violated (or seem to be).  And when it feels like no
one cares about a person when they stop showing up.

There are days when I wonder
about the balance of if all, when I wonder if the love we are sharing
is more than the pain we are causing.  I wonder if “They’ll Know We
are Christians By Our Love” is … well… true.

In the church at large
(annual conference and denomination) I have come to peace with
knowing that much of what happens is about power, and money, and that
fear is used as a means to an end to increase the power of a few over
the needs of the many.  I hold hope that isn’t true on the local
church level, but when there IS conflict, it IS often about power
and/or over the authority over money, and I think based in fear of
what happens if one’s power is lost and one’s vision doesn’t prevail.

But, I also know that’s overly
simplistic.  When it comes down to it, at least on the local level, I
trust that everyone is doing their best and trying to enable the best
sort of loving faith community, and doing that by the means they
believe most effective.  Which means we disagree about HOW, and maybe
WHY, but not WHAT we’re trying to do.  

And I often hope that’s enough
to hold on to to build on love, instead of letting fear drown us.
And I’m willing to keep on spending my life empowering faith
communities as long as I can believe that we are showing love, and
GROWING in love.

So, I want to spend the rest of
this sermon on this central question of faith:  what helps us be more
loving, to share God’s love?  Because I believe we WANT to be know by
our love.  I think we’d be delighted if every time someone
encountered any one of us or a group of us they were astounded at our
love.  But I think that requires us to be attentive to growing
in love.

The basis of love, as far as I
know is… (wait for it)… love.  God’s love is the starting point
for our lives, our faith, our actions.  And, I HOPE, the love of the
people of God has been transformative in our lives too, so we start
our journey to deepen love balanced on the love of God and God’s
people.  

It also helps, a lot, to see
people acting in loving ways.  Having models of what radical love
looks like, and broad and different models at that: to see the love
shared between our breakfast guests, and to see the love shared
between members of Church Council, and to hear stories of support
offered to those who are struggling.  Knowing what love looks like, a
huge range of what it looks like, helps us see how we can live it.
Love lives differently in each of us, and it can take seeing it in a
lot of forms before any of us know how to let it live most easily in
us!!

It also helps, as far as I’m
concerned, to hear people talk about living love. To talk about what
they do with intention, and when they’ve struggled, and how they’ve
overcome barriers to love.  The real, sometimes small, tangibles.
This sort of learning has often happened in Bible Study or small
groups for me, and it is a big deal to talk about the small stuff.

A huge gift in growing in love
is growing in the capacity to know I am loved EVEN when I’m wrong.
John Wesley actually helps me with this.  He said that we’re all
wrong sometimes, but we don’t know when we’re wrong (or we wouldn’t
be), so when we come to a disagreement with another person, we should
enter into it with humility because it may well be one of the times
when we are wrong.  That simple idea has made it easier for me to
forgive myself for being wrong, which helps lower my defenses, which
helps let others in.

For me, one of the greatest
gifts in growing in love is spiritual practice.  That is, when I take
time away from “productivity” to “just be” and that helps me
remember that God loves me for who I am rather than what I can
accomplish.  Also, God lovingly holds up a mirror to me, to help me
see what I’m doing and why, and let me decide as I’m ready to change.

There are also straight up
SKILLS that can help with being loving, particularly in a community,
which means in a group with conflict.  Non-violent communication.
Active listening.  Careful use of “I statements.”  Or, just,
intentional empathy.  All of which are actual skills that can be
taught and learned and developed.  I sometimes think we undercut
ourselves by thinking that if we are simply taught of God’s love,
we’ll become the humans we want to be.  When, in fact, we need other
skills and models and learning as well.  

I  dream that the church we
become might be able to be a source of healing people’s

trauma, that we might become
particularly skilled at sharing judgement-free love, and listening
with empathy so that those who spend time in this faith community
might experience HEALING from being here, and that the healing might
become a part of our story and what we offer our community.

That would require a pretty
serious investment in those skills, and in developing the resilience
to respond to conflict in new and different ways.  SPPRC is working
on some of that, with a hope of bringing opportunities to our church
as a whole as well.  It has become clear in the past 5 years that we
need more skills than we have.  Which doesn’t make us bad, but does
make us responsible for developing together.   For finding the ways
to face our conflicts with love.  For becoming more loving.   For
stepping up so people might see us and be astounded by our love for
one another.  It could even be that these years of conflict could
become a saving grace for us, an opening to a new way of being that
could meet people and the world just where they need us to be.

In any case, growing in love is
what we’re about.  God is with us, encouraging and enabling our
growth.  May we commit to it as well!    Amen

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

May 15, 2022

The sculpture Reconciliation by Vasconcellos showing two former enemies
embracing each other. It was erected in 1995 in the north aisle of the
ruins of St Michael’s Cathedral, Coventry. (Destroyed during fire bombs
during the Coventry Blitz on 14 November 1940). (Image by
commons.wikimedia.org)

Uncategorized

“Voices” Acts 9:36-43 and John 10:22-30

  • May 8, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

An explanation:

The Hebrew word for widow
connotes one who is silent, one unable to speak.  In a society in
which males played the public role and in which women did not speak
on their own behalf, the position of widow, particularly if an eldest
son was not yet married, was one of extreme vulnerability.  If there
were no sons, a widow might return to her paternal family if that
recourse were available.  Younger widows were often considered a
potential danger to the community and urged to remarry.

Left out of the prospect of
inheritance by Hebrew law, widows became the stereotypical symbol of
the exploited and oppressed.  Old Testament criticism of the harsh
treatment of these women is prevalent.  So are the texts in which
they are under the special protection of God.1

In our reading from Acts this
week, we hear “All the townswomen who had been widowed stood beside
[Peter] weeping, and showed him the various garments Dorcas had made
when she was still with them.” (Acts 9:39b, Inclusive Bible)  

I have to admit something.  I’ve
read this passage many times, and every time I saw the widows as
showing off Tabitha/Doras’s impressive needlework, and thought it was
sort of a strange details, but otherwise ignored it.

Maybe my heart is in a different
place this week, because when I read it THIS week I thought, “Oh.
My.  Gosh.  She literally clothed the widows.”  The women were
showing Peter her GOOD WORKS that had blessed their lives as proof to
him that she was worthy of his healing.

(Which, of course, makes far
more sense and most of you probably noticed ages ago, but I’m slow
and I try to admit it because the Bible is dense and none of us can
make sense of it all at once.)

There is another detail to know
about this story, an important one.  Not only is Tabitha named in
this story, which is pretty unusual for Biblical women, and named
TWICE which is even less usual.  She is called a disciple.  Now, if
you were wondering if that was unusual, let me answer with a
scholarly quote, “Luke uses the feminine form for ‘disciple’ –
the only time it is used in the NT.”2

This is the ONLY woman in the
Bible called a disciple of Jesus, who is described as someone who
“never tired of doing kind things or giving to charity,” at whose
death the people who are most exploited and oppressed gather,
grieving, and trying to prove her worth by showing the gifts she had
made them.

I am incredibly moved by the
example of this first woman disciple.  

Because, here is the thing about
Tabitha.  Her story suggests that as a follower of Jesus, she spent
her life making things easier for the most vulnerable people around
her, but not just by giving them things, but also by loving them.
I don’t think the level of grief we hear from the women who’d been
widowed in this story reflects a fear that new clothes are going to
be harder to come by.  I think their FRIEND, who saw them, and eased
their burdens, had died.

Tabitha heard their voices, and
used her life to respond to their needs.  Where the Bible talks about
God’s special protection for the widows, it seems that Tabitha was
part of God’s work.

A disciple of Jesus, a little
Christ, indeed.  In John, the voice of Jesus says, “My sheep hear
my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”  It is clear in this
story in Acts that Tabitha knew the voice of Jesus, and followed.
And set an example for those of us who come after her.

Now, widowhood is not today what
it was then. Today’s widows may well be struggling with economic
hardship, but the first connotation of widow is “someone who has
lost her love” instead of “someone who has lost her livelihood
and protection.”

Which means that when we are
trying to consider who the “stereotypical symbol of the exploited
and oppressed” is in our society, I don’t think it defaults to
widows anymore.  Nor do I think there is one simple answer.  I fear
that who is seen as the “stereotypical symbol of the exploited and
oppressed” is as impacted by context, perception, and political
party as all of our other opinions.  Meaning, I’d likely start the
list with trans women of color (#mostlikelytobemurdered) and could
continue on from there to an expansive list.  

After this week I am concerned
that an addition to the highest levels of the list of “stereotypical
symbol of the exploited and oppressed” is going to need to be
“anyone capable of becoming pregnant who doesn’t want to be
pregnant.”  Because, it seems, our society is about to declare that
people who become pregnant stop having authority over their own
bodies.  (Happy Mothers’ Day.)

You want to know what else is
really interesting about Tabitha? We get two names for her, she is
called a disciple, she is known for her good works.  And, in addition
to all that, neither her marital nor social status is mentioned.
She’s known for HER works, and they eclipse the question of who she
belongs to.  Which, to be fair was the sort of kindom building equity
the early church was going for, but it is still pretty notable when
it happens!  It also seems notable that those widows were named as
believers.  They weren’t just recipients of charity, nor even simply
friends of a disciple.  They too were the church.  The church was of
everyone, even those whose NAME implied “the silenced.”  It seems
like Tabitha’s church had stayed very close to the roots of Jesus’s
movement.

The question of who is
particularly vulnerable, exploited, oppressed is really a question of
who Jesus would be hanging out with.  To his credit, Jesus took a
really expansive view of that as well, including fishermen and tax
collectors, widows and single women, children and senators,
adulterers and the mentally ill, hemorrhaging women and those with
physical disabilities.  

Several years ago, when I was
nearing time to go to camp, I had to let someone know I wouldn’t be
available for some meeting during camp.  (This was not a person in
this church or community.)  The person responded, “Oh, that’s
right, you go to camp and work with people with special needs.
That’s so good of you!”

I.  Am.  Still.  Mad.  

Furious.

Because, going to camp is the
most selfish thing I do all year.  I got camp because I love the
campers.  I go to camp because I love camp.  I go to camp because my
humanity and faith are restored by camp and by the campers.  

I’m not a GOOD person for that,
and to imply that I am implies that there is something wrong with the
campers and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE CAMPERS.  Everything is
right with the campers.

Which makes me wonder a bit.  I
think likely Tabitha and the widows of her community were friends,
real friends, people who loved each other and mutually gained from
their connections.  I wonder if a question we should be asking in
response to Tabitha’s story is, “who do I find it easy to love and
grow with, and how can I let that love expand my heart to let even
more people in?”  

I worry that this question COULD
keep us too closed off, too limited to those we already know, too
small.  But then I remember what LOVE is like, and how everyone has
stories that matter, and everyone has experiences of oppression, and
how LOVE likes to expand itself all over the place.  And I find I’m
ready to trust love to be our guide.

I believe our faith calls us to
see the humanity in ALL people, including those who are oppressed,
and to share our love and our lives with mutuality and respect.  And,
to be open to letting that love expand to those we don’t yet know who
have struggles we don’t yet understand.  Let love be our guide, and
let it expand in us.  I believe that’s what it means to follow Jesus’
voice, and Tabitha’s example.  May God help us do it!  Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Widow,”
423.

2Robert
Wall, “Book of Acts” in New Interpreter’s Bible Vol 10I ed.
Leander E. Keck et al
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002) footnote p. 161.

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 8, 2022

Uncategorized

“The Other Side of the Boat” based on Psalm…

  • May 1, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

A colleague recently shared that
the brokenness of the world had overwhelmed him, and he’d spent a
morning just crying about all of it.  Rather to my shock, I found I
was … jealous.

But earlier this week I sat down
to just be, which means to be with God and be aware of being with
God, and I found that tears slowly and consistently flowed down my
cheeks.

It wasn’t just one thing.  It
was the cumulative weight of all the things.  Those in our community
who have died in recent years, those who are struggling and/or dying,
those who are grieving their loved ones, the ways the kids have grown
up without being around us all, the war in Ukraine, the deadly
impacts of poverty in the US and around the world, the trauma people
experience on a day to day basis, the dehumanization of refugees- and
people who are homeless, and people with special needs, and climate
change, and… well, the pandemic too.

(That wasn’t an exhaustive list,
but it is already an exhausting list, so I’ll stop there.)

The tears just flowed.  At how
disheartened I am at injustice, and how small I feel in the face of
tragedy, and how afraid I am that I’m not making a difference on any
of it.  As the tears flowed, I found more and more under them,
personal grief I hadn’t given myself time to notice and fears I
usually don’t allow near enough to the light to be named.  

And then, after a while, the
tears slowed.  Nothing had changed, but I wasn’t holding it all so
tightly anymore, and I’d felt the feelings that had been contained,
and they weren’t so overwhelming anymore.

Sometimes I’m concerned that
when I talk about prayer and spiritual practice, people hear
something very different from what I do.  What I’ve just described is
within the normal realm of what happens when I slow down to listen –
to myself and to God and to God in me and to silence itself.  There
is a pretty significant connection for me between bodily sensations,
emotions, human needs, and God’s wisdom.  My prayer life seems to me
to be a lot less pious than the religious greats of history, mine is
more “apophatic” than wordy.  It is more listening than speaking.
It is more chaotic and irregular than most prayer forms I read
about.

This seems important to share,
because I fear that: a lot of faithful people haven’t found prayer
practice that work for them, that people are afraid their prayer
practices “don’t count or aren’t good enough,” and that people
still think emotions are BAD things that keep us from God instead of
being access points to the Holy itself.

Quite often, when I am busy
beating myself up for not being “more,” for not being infinitely
kind or patient or activist or world-changing, I get stopped in my
tracks by something I associate with the Divine.  It is a reminder
that it isn’t all on my shoulders, and God is able to make a lot out
of a little, and I’m only asked to do my part and not everything.  I
still worry, if I’m honest, but it helps a lot.

In the end of our Gospel reading
today, Peter receives absolution.  The Gospels make quite a point of
Peter denying Jesus 3 times, and John makes space for Peter to affirm
his love for Jesus three times as well.  Each of the affirmations
comes with a command: feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.  

Before meeting Jesus, Peter was
a fisherman.  After Jesus died, Peter decided to go fishing, right?
Except it didn’t WORK.  They fished all night and caught nothing
until Jesus showed up (more on that later) and then Jesus reminded
him he wasn’t a fisherman anymore, he’d been changed by the time with
Jesus.  Now he was to care for the people of God.

And as we understand it, those
commandments are passed down to us, we are all to care for the people
of God – and we all ARE a part of the people of God, and compassion
and care and mutuality are the work we are called to.  Which can
sound easy until you actually try it, and it turns out to be plenty
to challenge us for our lifetimes, especially when we live in a
society that isn’t built on compassion or care for all.

Maybe, at the core, that was
what I was crying about.  I am sad about my personal losses and
griefs, and the ones I know you all are holding, but I’m deeply sad
that so much of the suffering in the world is UNNECESSARY and yet
collectively we keep deciding to allow people to suffer and struggle
rather than just reallocate resources justly.

And, boy oh boy, the work of
trying to move toward justice and compassion feels like being up
against Goliath, right?

This year, the core of this
Gospel passage for me is the ridiculous suggestion by Jesus to cast
the nets on the other side of the boat.  Because, really, they fished
ALL NIGHT and caught NOTHING, what is going to happen when they move
their nets a few feet and throw them on the other side?  Based on
logic it will be more nothing.

John presents it as a miracle.
When you listen to Jesus, where there was nothing there is now
abundance.  Which is a wonderful take.  But this feels like a bigger
truth than a one time miracle for me.  Quite often tiny little
changes can make all the difference, and we can’t always anticipate
which ones will do it.

Throw the nets on the other side
of the boat can be, “read a physical book instead of your kindle
before bed,” or “re-write an agenda with more quiet time,” or
“stretch before meals,” or “take that stroll, but take it
during sunset,” or a lot of other tiny little sources of life.

Throw the nets on the other side
of the boat seems to me about being open to the “third ways” of
life, the answers that are not choosing between two opposing options
but rather finding a way to get the best parts of two answers in a
third.  Instead of doing the same thing over and over OR quitting, it
is a little change that makes it possible to keep going.

Throw the nets on the other side
of the boat seems like a reminder to take advice when you are
struggling, even if the advice doesn’t make sense.

And, most of all, “throw the
net on the other side of the boat” seems like a reminder to listen
to God.  I’ve been reading Susan Beaumot’s book “How to Lead When
You Don’t Know Where You are Going.”  It is an outstanding book,
written before the pandemic that doesn’t have any trouble speaking
right now.  She talks a lot about discernment, particularly group
discernment, and how it differs from just making decisions.  

The book has reminded me of how
often we as a church just make the best decisions we can -and often
we are completely stymied by decisions – because we aren’t actually
doing discernment.  We are listening to our own hopes, and fears, and
preferences, but we aren’t often listening for God’s dreams in us.

Or, maybe some of us are, but we
aren’t overt about doing it together.  Likely, around here, that has
something to do with humility and not wanting to claim the authority
of speaking definitively about God’s will, right?  But Rev.
Beaumont’s writing about discernment reminded me that there are
concrete processes for discernment that really do make it possible to
“discern” and not just “decide” even when we’re being humble.

She breaks it into 8 parts,
which I’m sharing just so you can see the difference.  She says
discernment includes: intentionally framing the question being asked,
naming guiding principals that are relevant to the issue at hand and
create the boundaries for the possible answers, shedding biases and
ego investments, listening to those impacted by the decision ( and
summarizing and interpreting what is said), exploring a wide variety
of answers and evaluating which ones meet the guiding principals
until only 2-3 remain, weighing the value of the final options and
where energy draws people, choosing, and testing the answer with
stillness and prayer before sharing it broadly.

So, that’s a lot of work, right?
But some decisions are worth doing things with great intentionality,
so you can figure out which side of the boat to casts the nets on 😉

One of the great questions of
life is: What is mine to do?  It applies personally and collectively:
what is MINE (Sara’s) to do and what is OURS (this church’s) to do?
Prayer, and group discernment, quietness, openness to advice, and a
willingness to sit with emotions help us find the answers.  May God
help us have the patience with ourselves and each other to hear
answers.  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

May 1, 2022

Uncategorized

“The Richness of the Unknown” based on Isaiah 65:17-25…

  • April 17, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

I am so thankful it is
Easter Sunday.  I’m ready to celebrate the goodness of God, the power
of life, the unstoppable force of love in the world.  I’m thankful
for music that resonates in my SOUL, and functions as a ritual to let
my body know this is a time to let go, to be, to savor.

It has been a long, hard
trudge to get to Easter.  If I’m really honest, we’re still in a
long, hard trudge, but Easter feels like a great excuse to step away
from the trudge and just be joyous for a bit.

It does seem worth
discussion what sort of joy we’re talking about though.  By my count,
there are 10 Easter stories in the Gospels (Mark has 4, Luke 3, John
2, and Matthew for some reason only 1), 10 different stories trying
to make sense of …. something.  The simple fact that there are so
many stories suggests to me that what happened on Easter (and
throughout the 50 days after it), is hard to put into words and thus
a variety of metaphors was the best way people could explain it.  

The stories all point to
the idea that the death Jesus suffered on the cross didn’t have the
final word.  But they struggle to make sense of it.  They did not
understand.  In the two Easter stories we heard from John this
morning the phrase (did) “not know” came up three times.  There
was unknowing in Easter itself and it its early stories!  That
makes it OK for us when we come to Easter with some “unknowing”
of our own.

Somehow, Jesus’ disciples
and followers continued to experience his wisdom, his teaching,
and the power of his vitality even after he died.

And whatever it was that
constituted their experience, it was POWERFUL in their lives.  It
changed them.  The students became the teachers.  Those frightened
and hidden away came out of hiding and took risks for the sake of
sharing Jesus’s good news.  The women kept on keeping on.

The ways we explain
Easter today continue in the grand tradition of trying to make sense
of it all.  Our metaphors abound.  Some stick with the early metaphor
of “Easter is the day Jesus was raised from the dead.”  Others
will say, “Easter is about the unstoppable power of life,
especially life with God.”  Charles Wesley says, “Death in vain
forbids him rise,” and asks, “Where’s thy victory, boasting
grave?”  Marcus Borg gives us the language that Easter is God’s YES
to the world’s NO.

There are a lot of
wonderful and powerful meanings to be made from Easter, and I
encourage you to savor the ones that bring YOU to life.

In the midst of all I’ve
already offered, for me the greatest power of Easter is in its
“always present” quality.  One way or another, when Jesus died,
the goal of the Empire was to kill him, to stop his life and his
ministry.  It worked, as the story says, Mary was weeping
when she showed up that Easter morning.  The power of death worked
UNTIL his disciples experienced SOMETHING on Easter, and after that
they took up his ministry and in doing so claimed his life energy,
and kept it going.  Before Easter, Jesus was the Body of Christ, but
on Easter the disciples became the Body of Christ – and this is
what really matters to me – and the power of his life-energy, and
the importance of his ministry, and the sharing of his God-vision is
STILL the work of the Body of Christ.  In important and meaningful
ways, when I say, “Christ is alive,” I know that is true because
I’m looking at you, the church, doing Christ’s work.

In the Gospel of John,
the words are in Mary Magdalene’s mouth, “I have seen
the Lord.”  In the Body of Christ, I too have seen
God at work.

And I think that’s PLENTY
miraculous.

So, then, if this is our
work, we want to be as clear as possible about what it means to
continued the life, ministry, and God-vision of Jesus.  Because,
well, not everyone agrees about this.  #Shock.

This is where I think the
Isaiah passage is an incredible EASTER gift to us, even if it was
written for a people of a different time who used different metaphors
for God’s power over life and death.

The most striking thing
about the Isaiah passage for me, initially, was its humility.  Isaiah
65 seeks to answer the question, “What SHOULD life look like?”
and it starts like I think we’d expect.  It says life should be LONG
and ABUNDANT.  There SHOULD NOT BE young tragic deaths.  

Amen.

But then it takes what
initially seemed to me to be a sort of weak turn.  In this utopic
dream of a “new heaven and a new  earth” that God is creating
full of justice and wholeness and goodness, what are the defining
factors other than longevity?  “They shall build houses and inhabit
them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit” (65:21) and
also they will be aware of the presence of God.

I get it.  This would
sound miraculous to a people who have build houses but not lived in
them, planted vineyards and not gotten to eat the fruit, that it is
fitting for them that this ends with, “The wolf and the lamb shall
feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the
serpent–its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on
all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”

But all of that together
suggests that … universal vegetarianism and an end to all violence
seems CONSISTENT with … not having your labor stolen or your home
displaced.

Which suggests that not
having your home stolen or the fruit of your labor appropriated is a
REALLY BIG DEAL.  But, is it?  I mean, why stop with just having
people not displaced and able to glean the value of their work.  Why
not have everyone live at Disneyland, or apparition, or … I don’t
know, world peace.

But the longer I thought
about it, the more I realize this dream is EVERYTHING.  It actually
IS world peace – because world peace looks EXACTLY like people
being safe to build homes and live in them without being displaced,
and having the consistency to be able to labor and glean the fruits
of one’s labor without anyone else coming in with violence to take
it.

AND this is a dream of an
end to world hunger too – because people have access to enough land
and resources and the capacity to GLEAN THE FRUIT OF THEIR LABOR.

And the more I think
about people being able to glean the fruit of their labor, the more I
realize that covers A WHOLE LOT of injustices.  If people can glean
the fruit of their labor – then the rich aren’t getting wealthier
off of the labor of the poor.  So, it is like universal basic income
and a living minimum wage rolled into one.  It is also an end to
predatory lending.  This is a dream of equity and equality and
fairness and justice all at once – with the “simple” means of
stable safe housing and people being able to keep the fruits of their
labors.

When we hear of
atrocities in the world, most of them equate to violations of this
dream.  People are killed too young, or displaced from their homes
and communities, or the fruits of their labor is stolen from them.
Please note that the Bible and I agree that part of being a
community with fair labor practices is sharing so that those unable
to labor are still cared for.  There have always been those unable to
work, and a functional society finds ways to care for them as BELOVED
and VALUED members of that society.

It is a good life,
indeed, with stable safe housing and the capacity to glean the fruits
of our labor, and to have enough at the end of it to share with
others.  It
may sound simple, but it is AMAZING when it happens.  Far too few
people have lived this dream, and the dream is for EVERYONE.

The more I think about
this vision, the more I see its power, and the more I see how much it
isn’t one that is yet here.

How many people are dying
too young?  And how many of those deaths would be preventable?

How many members of our
city lack stable and safe housing?  How many New Yorkers?  How many
US citizens?  And then how many people are migrants and refugees in
the world right now?  

Then, how many people see
the just fruits of their labor??  In the interest of some brevity,
I’ll leave that as a thought question for you to ponder.

Isaiah 65 was a vision
for newly returned Exiles and the people who had been left behind
during the Exile.  It was a reminder of God’s wishes for a stable,
compassionate, equalitarian society.  It was a dream to aim for, a
reminder of how God wants the world ordered, a clarity on what
communal holy living looks like.

When we talk about the
beloved community, the kindom of God, the Jesus teaching of a
God-vision, I don’t believe Jesus was breaking with his own Jewish
tradition.  This vision of what God wanted for people is another
version of what Jesus taught.  This vision of what God wanted for
people is a way of talking about what it means to be the Body of
Christ building the kindom of God, or what it means to be an Easter
people.

Long, good, lives.
Stable safe housing.  People able to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
People having enough to share.  

Such a simple vision.  

Such a world away from
our reality right now.

May God help us to build
that future.  Because as Easter people, we believe that love wins in
the end and God isn’t finished with us yet.  This vision is a vision
for us, and for everyone, and God is willing to work with us on it.  
Thanks be to God!  Amen

Uncategorized

“Nonviolent Protests” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and Luke…

  • April 10, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

Palm Sunday, quick and dirty:

  • Passover is a Jewish holiday
    celebrating God’s acts in freeing oppressed people from their
    oppressors, and leading them to freedom even when a superior
    military force wanted to prevent it.
  • The Celebration of Passover
    brought crowds of faithful Jews into Jerusalem to celebrate God’s
    power to free them from their oppressors.
  • Judea, and Galilee were
    functionally Roman Colonies, overburdened with taxes that took the
    wealth of the land and transferred it to the wealthy artistocrats at
    the top of the Roman hierarchy.
  • The Roman Empire was fairly
    nervous and jerky about large crowds of religiously faithful people
    who believed in the power of God to overcome oppressors.
  • Thus, before Passover, the
    Roman Empire had a HUGE military parade into Jerusalem emphasizing
    the power of their military and bringing the Governor into town to –
    as they would say – keep the peace.
  • The military parade and the
    presence of the Governor functioned as THREATS OF VIOLENCE against
    anyone who might think God was up to freeing people from oppression
    once again.
  • (It may be worth remembering as
    well that a few decades later there WAS a big protest and the Empire
    responded with a massacre as well as the destruction of the temple.
    They weren’t kidding about the threat of violence.
  • The military parade happened
    EVERY YEAR.
  • Knowing this, Jesus engaged in
    NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION to parody their parade and clarify the
    differences between Rome’s violent power and God’s nonviolent realm.

As the Jesus Seminar puts it,
“For his part, Jesus made it clear that he was entering Jerusalem
to face death.  In that case, the ‘triumphal entry’ as Mark depicts
it is a satire of revolutionary processions and of the kind of
triumphal entry the Romans enjoyed making into cities they had
conquered.”1
That is, “Jesus was not making a statement about his own
messiahship, but contrasting God’s imperial rule (‘Congratulations,
you poor!  God’s domain belongs to you”) with Roman Imperial
Rule.”2

When I think about nonviolent
direct action, this Palm Sunday protest parade is an outstanding
example.  It is up there with the best.  I believe most of you are
aware of the lunch counter protests whereby people of color (gasp)
sat down at lunch counters where they would not be served to draw
attention to that injustice (and take the space of someone who might
be served AND PAY).

I believe most of you are aware
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when for over a year African Americans
refused to ride buses in Montgomery, Alabama until the buses stoped
having segregated seating.  They refused to ride AS second class
citizens, and without their participation, the buses weren’t
sustainable.

Nonviolent direction action is
really, really hard work.  In both of those cases people faced
violence and hardship in response to seeking justice.  I’m always
astounded at the commitment people made FOR MORE THAN A YEAR in the
bus boycott, and in the face of VIOLENCE at lunch counters.

Those actions changed our
society for the better.  They didn’t counter violence with violence,
but rather with nonviolence.  They showed up or didn’t as needed, and
allowed their nonviolent actions to create change.

Our society isn’t particularly
fond of protest, or at least that what I hear when Black Lives
Matters gets brought up in most places.  I hear that people should
seek justice in other ways, which makes it clear to me that a lot of
people don’t actually understand the point of protests.

Protests or nonviolent direct
actions are what you do when other avenues of justice are closed OR
you need to increase public awareness of injustice in order to work
through other avenues of justice.  If a problem can be solved
directly, most people chose that route.  Nonviolent direction action
is the HARDER way forward – one that comes at personal cost, often
with a threat of violence against those who are involved with the
action, and when other avenues are closed.

I’m quite confident that if a
nicely worded letter to a Diner or a local paper managed to
desegregate restaurants, people would have done that.  I’m assured
that if a phone call to a city councilman or a postcard campaign to
the transit authority would have desegregated buses, people would
have been thrilled to take the easier route.  

Several years ago now, the Poor
People’s Campaign NY did a series of nonviolent direct actions in the
New York State capital to draw attention to the ways that the needs
of people in poverty are being ignored.  The one I thought was most
creative was the Fort Orange Club action.  Kevin Nelson was present
and he explains it this way:

“We were protesting the
influence of lobbying interests (and their related campaign
donations) on policies that subvert the interest of average New
Yorkers. We had a human chain thing from the Legislative Office
Building (LOB) to the Fort Orange Club, with “bags of money”
along the chain to indicate the money flow. We blocked exits and
entrances to the parking lots at the Club for several hours.”

This one particularly reminds me
of the Jesus Palm Sunday protest, in that it seems equally BRILLIANT,
and infuriating to those in power.

The injustice I have spent the
most time working to change is the structural institutional
homophobia of The United Methodist Church.  Because of my work there,
I’ve seen the ways that all other avenues have been blocked.  Since
1972, petitions to change the homophobic stances have come to the
floor at General Conference, with no positive action.  The judicial
branch of the UMC has upheld the discrimination, and most Bishops
will enforce it.  LGBTQIA+ people and their allies lack the votes,
the power, and the access to justice.

Thus, there has been a need to
increase the pressure to create change, to increase anxiety, to bring
attention to injustice, and to be clear that the only way to stop the
demands for justice was to BRING JUSTICE to God’s people.

There have been a lot of
protests, and I want to talk about two of them.

For the first, I’m going to
share it in the words of Rev. Dr. Julie Todd who spent many DECADES
as an activist for Queer and Trans rights in the UMC.  This is from
the “Love Prevails Blog”

There was a regularly scheduled
communion at every lunch break in the plenary hall at General
Conference 2004 in Pittsburgh. On the day the votes went badly yet
again for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ)
people, we decided as a movement to go to that communion service,
where we could stand in the presence of the broken and resurrected
Body of Christ. We did this as a means of re-asserting our presence
in that Body. We did this as a means of resistance against the false
institutional proclamation of one cup, one Body, and one baptism,
when clearly the actions of the General Conference actively sought to
harm and exclude members of that Body. All forms of our resistance
and disruption are embodied statements that the unity of the church
cannot continue to come at the cost of LGBTQ lives. These same acts
of resistance are theological affirmations that the resurrected Jesus
lives on in our whole and beloved queer bodies.

There was weeping and there was
anger at communion. There was a need for a deep and spiritual release
of the violence that had just been done to the queer body of Christ.
Because when votes are cast against the very existence of LGBTQ
lives, that is what is happens: violence. Christ’s body crucified
again. To not act in the face of such violence does further violence.

When the sacrament was over,
Rev. James Preston grabbed a chalice from the communion altar and
smashed it on the floor. The smashing of the chalice was not a
planned disruption. While there were many interpretations of that
moment of breaking the chalice, in fact there was no chaos, no
storming the altar, no desecration of the sacrament. There was a holy
anger that took shape in a prophetic act. A movement of the Spirit
interceded to express anguished sighs too deep for words. In the
breaking of the cup, Christ spoke to the real brokenness of the
moment.3

The
destruction of that chalice REALLY upset a lot of people.  To this
day I remain horrified that they were upset at the breaking of a
sacred symbol, but not at the ways the church has broken God’s
beloved PEOPLE.

At
that same 2004 General Conference, people started wearing short
rainbow stoles to symbolize a commitment to full inclusion of
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person in the life and
policy of The UMC.  Rainbow stoles become particularly symbolic at
Annual Conferences and their ordination services  – when they are a
sign of protest over who gets the authority to wear a stole (a symbol
of being ordained) in The UMC.  When I was ordained, I was supposed
to have a red stole placed on my shoulders, as red is the color of
pentecost and ordination.  Instead I was ordained with a rainbow
stole (and still won’t wear a red one – not until all those called
can serve).  My mentors laid hands on me without their robes or
stoles (and one of them in a LOVELY rainbow shawl), as further
expressions of my objections (and theirs.)

In
the scheme of things, what a clergy person wears or doesn’t while
being ordained into a homophobic institution is a pretty low form of
protest.  (I joined to bring change, but I’m often still
uncomfortable with it.)  There were no consequences, and no changes
came from it.  But I remember having a colleague I was getting
ordained with asking me to refrain from those signs of protest so
that our shared ordination could be “sacred.”  And I remember
responding that I couldn’t refrain from sharing my objections about
ORDINATION AT ORDINATION.  (By the grace of God, that colleague later
changed their mind and told me so, thanking me for my witness.)

So, this Palm Sunday, this day
of remembering a nonviolent direct action that was responded to with
deadly force, I invite you into reflection on justice, protests, and

nonviolent direct actions.

When you see a protest – ask
yourself – what justice is missing, and WHY and HOW  is it blocked?

When you see an injustice, talk
with others and pray about what means of responding will bring
change.

It seems that’s the Jesus way,
thanks be to God.

Amen

1. Acts
of Jesus, 120.

2. Acts
of Jesus, 121.

3. https://loveprevailsumc.com/2016/05/12/on-the-body-being-broken/

Uncategorized

“A Lost Family” based on  Joshua 5:9-12 and Luke…

  • March 27, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

I spend a lot of my time learning about trauma, and
considering ways that the church might be part of trauma healing.  If
I had a guess as to why this catches my attention so deeply, it would
be this: as I grew up and realized how broken things are, I started
wondering “why!?”  Until I heard about the Adverse Childhood
Experiences study, and started reading about trauma, very little
seemed to adequately answer my question.

So it may not be surprising that when I read Joshua, and
hear “today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt, “
I find myself wondering about trauma healing.  The story says that
the people had been enslaved for hundreds of years, and then spent 40
years wandering in the desert, as a means of leaving behind that
trauma and preparing for the new life they were going to live.  This
passage, today, is the moment of transition.

In life,  there isn’t an end to healing as a gradual
lessening of the grasp trauma holds on a life.  But, also, 40 years
sounds like a good time frame.  It is not instantaneous, by any
stretch, and it represented multiple generational changes.  It takes
seriously the long tail of healing, and the impact on generations.

I don’t really think the story means that the trauma of
slavery is over for the ancient people of God.  But, I think this is
another step in that process.  To be told, “your disgrace is rolled
away” is a really important piece, and I rather respect it taking
40 years for the people to be ready to hear it.

I also love that there is this intersection of healing
and relationship.  So for those 40 years, the people were said to be
fed directly by God.  The manna on the floor of the desert provided
for them, along with occasional quail.  Or, perhaps we might say,
they were hunter-gatherers and aware in that process of their
dependence on God.  This passage represents a shift to being farmers,
who are still rather dependent on God, but take more of the
responsibility for active food production (especially in a desert).

While healing, the people needed to be cared for.  They
also needed to be able to move freely.  They needed space.  They
needed time.  They needed a dependable caregiver to keep on teaching
them that they could trust.  

When they had healed enough, and when they were ready to
hear “your disgrace has been rolled away” which I think means
“you are no longer defined by what others did to you,” they were
ready to bring that time of healing to an end, and begin caring for
themselves and each other.  

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate that this
timeline isn’t more aggressive?   I love, also that this happened at
Passover.  The first Passover was when the journey began, and it came
full circle, to the remembrance of that journey and to eating the
food in a new land as a new people, before the journey ended.

I don’t know where exactly the family trauma in the
parable starts, but I can see its fingerprints.  This is, sadly, not
a healthy family.  On the upside, it looks familiar enough to enough
of us that we can at least know that the Bible knows how REAL
families work.  We can see that God sees and knows families as they
are, and still works within them.  This family may or may not have
MAJOR trauma, but it is definitely struggling with at least a pile of
minor ones.

Before I delve into the parable, it seems worth taking
the time for a little reminder of what a parable is and is not,
because truthfully a lot of preachers get this wrong, and you may
have been misled along the way.  Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, New Testament
professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, has done amazing work with
her book “Short Stories by Jesus”  and my reflections are guided
by her.

Parables are stories, sometimes quite short, that resist
easy interpretation, and understandings.  Dr. Levine says, “What
makes the parables mysterious, or difficult, is that they challenge
us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own
lives.”1
Or, to be more direct: a parable is not an allegory.  Each character
doesn’t “stand in” for someone else, where it appears to be one
thing but is actually about God.  Or to be EVEN MORE DIRECT: please
don’t take the father in this story as God.  It won’t go well for
God, and it will deny us the chance to hear the story as it actually
is.

Luke is the only gospel writer to tell this story, and
it puts it after two other stories about things getting lost.  First
there are 100 sheep, and one gets lost.  The shepherd finds it and
rejoices.  Then there are 10 coins, and one gets lost.  The woman
finds it and rejoices.  So we’re well set up here.  A man has two
sons, one gets lost.

Hmmm, “There was a man who had two sons…”  That
should actually get our brains lighting up with memories.  Or, at
least, it would have for the first listeners.  “Two sons?  Oh yeah?
I’ve heard that one.  Cain and Able – older one was more than a
little bit of a problem, and God preferred the gift of younger.
Ishmael and Issac, older one had to be sent away entirely, younger
one got the blessings.  Esau and Jacob – yeah, OK, there is a
pattern here, I get it.  So, tell me about how the younger son is
better than the older and how God inverses my expectations, I’m
ready.”

Which means, of course, that Jesus inverses THAT
expectation.  This younger son isn’t a pillar of anything.  I believe
you know this part.  The younger son asks for his inheritance,
receives it, and an unexpectedly generous portion at that, sells it,
leaves, wastes it, there is a famine, and he gets hungry.  He then
realizes that he doesn’t have to live like that – he can go home.

Dr. Levine doesn’t entirely believe his contrition, and
she makes some good points about that.  While he claims to be going
home to just be a laborer, the word “father” keeps being
repeated, which actually keeps him in his position as son.  Also, the
line, “I have sinned against heaven and before you” is the exact
phrase Pharaoh mouths in order to stop the plague, which isn’t a
flattering repetition.  It has been said that his words could be
summarized as “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”2
 He has a rather good idea that this may be sufficient, this is a
father who already gave him his inheritance, already have him a
larger portion than he should have, and may well have offered him a
safe place to land if ever he needed it.  The father is a bit
indulgent.

The father is, of course, thrilled his son has come
home.  The son has been gone for quite some time, and has been
functionally dead to him, and possibly dead.  (I know you don’t need
this reminder, but they weren’t’ face-timing while he was away.)  The
father’s rejoicing mirrors the shepherd who found the sheep, and the
woman who found the coin.  YAY!  

This also fits human nature, right?  Most parents would
welcome home the wanderer, no matter where they’d been or what they’d
done.  That said, Dr. Levine concludes “I still have a picture of a
manipulative, pampered, and perhaps relieved kid at the fatted calf
buffet.”  

Which is important.  Because at this point the younger
son disappears from the story, and it becomes clear that this is the
SET UP for the real story.  The father thought he’d lost his younger
son, but in truth it looks like he’d lost them both.  The younger
came back, but the elder is still lost.  

No one told the elder brother about his brother’s return
nor the party.  

What the hey?

They didn’t notice he wasn’t there?  They didn’t think
to tell him?  This sounds – sadly- like a story I’ve heard from
lots of people.  The pain of being forgotten in their own family.
The so called “little” slights that add up over time to people
feeling like they don’t matter to the ones they love.  Furthermore,
based on all the other stories in the Bible with 2 sons, it is
reasonable to guess there were some issues between the brothers, and
the father’s rather extreme generosity to the younger one likely
didn’t help the relationship between them.

Now, the father does seem to suddenly get that there is
a larger family dynamic issue, and he does rush out to greet his
elder son.  Good!    However, as Dr. Levine says:

Years of resentment have finally boiled over and found
expression.  The son’s fidelity has been overlooked.  Once again the
problem child receives more attention, or more love, than the prudent
and faithful one.  By announcing that ‘there is more joy in heaven’
for the one who repents than for the ninety-nine who need no
repentance, Luke reinforces this preference.  We might think of the
older son as speaking for those ninety-nine who have no need of
repentance but who appear to bring less joy.3

Right, so this sounds like families I know.  It sounds
like my own family at times.  It sounds really familiar.  And I think
that’s part of the genius of the parable. This as come around to
dealing with responsibility and irresponsibility, enabling,
resentment, and the huge question: how to respond to it all?  This
sounds like life.  It is difficult and imperfect, and requires a lot
from us just to get through things – even the things that are
supposed to be good.  His brother is alive!  He came home!  And it is
COMPLICATED.


The father does well here.  The first word of his
response is best translated as an endearment “Child.”  Perhaps we
might hear it as “child of mine.”  The father acknowledges this
older son who has also been lost.  And the father acknowledges a
literal truth:  having given his property to his sons, all that he
had is now the property of his older son.   AND,  he needs to
rejoice.  He is a father who has had his son restored.

Now, this is where I think the parable is most
brilliant.  After the father’s speech it just… ends.  Does the
elder brother go into the party?  Would you?  

This family has all been lost to each other.  What will
it take to bring it back together?  Do they have the ability?  Do
they have the commitment and desire to fix things?  Will they?  

Would you?  Amen

1Amy-Jill
Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (USA:
HarperOne, 2014), page 3.

2Ibid,
Dr. Levine however is quoting David Buttrick ,54.

3Ibid,
64.

Uncategorized

“Bread That Satisfies” based on Psalm 63:1-8 and Isaiah…

  • March 20, 2022
  • by Sara Baron

Isaiah 55 contrasts the ways of the Babylonian Empire
(read: all empires and all domination systems) with the ways of God.
One satisfies, one doesn’t.  One has built in rest, one is a constant
system of labor.  One is aimed at the fullness of humanity, one  is
aimed at pleasing a King.

According to the Bible the glory days of ancient Israel
as a nation-state started in in 1000 BCE when David was King, and his
son Solomon after him.  After that the Northern Kingdom left, and in
722 they lost a war with Assyria and were taken into Exile.  In
587/586 BCE the Southern Kingdom lost a war with Babylon and their
leaders were taken into Exile.  

The book of Isaiah centers around the second, southern
exile: first in warning that it might come unless things change
(chapters 1-39), then the exile “happens” and there are
conversations to the exiles about what return will look like
(chapters 40-55), and finally encouragement to those who have
returned and are struggling (chapters 56-66).  Isaiah 55, our passage
for today, is the end of the encouragement to the exiles, and it is
written in “anticipation of a a joyous and secure homecoming.”1

Walter Brueggemann in his commentary on Isaiah 40-66
(amazingly, one of my favorite Brueggemann commentaries) says, “The
initial verse…offers to passersbys free water, free wine, and
free milk.  This of course is in contrast to the life
resources offered by  the empire that are always expensive, grudging,
and unsatisfying. … The rhetorical questions ask,
incredulously, why Jews in exile would invest so much in forms of
life that cannot work – why work so hard and so long in ways that
give no satisfaction; why give life over to the demands and rewards
of the empire that yield nothing of value in return.” ”2

As the text refers to the “wicked”, Brueggemann has
a great explanation for who that refers to.  “’The wicked,’ I
suggest, are not disobedient people in general.  In context, they are
those who are so settled in Babylon and so accommodated to imperial
ways that they have no intention of making a positive response to
Yahweh’s invitation to homecoming.”3

There were, in fact, plenty of people who didn’t return
from exile.  After 80 years, for many, Babylon had become home.  The
scripture says that even those who have accommodated themselves to
the empire – to the systems of domination – can be freed and
pardoned, and come back to a full and abundant life within the
community.

And all of this makes me wonder about how it applies
today.  When are we settled into domination systems, and in need of
being reminded that other options exist, and welcomed home to the
community of God, and forgiven and set free to live in equality and
equity with each other?

When are we the “wicked” who are too enmeshed with
the empire, and need forgiveness?  This is a convicting question for
me.  I continue to struggle to hold onto ONLY kindom values and let
go of the domination ones.  I appreciate the reminder that it can be
changed and forgiven.

One of the tools of domination systems is fear.  Fear
works to keep us from seeing things clearly, fear moves us into
right/wrong thinking, fear moves us into blame, fear moves us into
us/them thinking, and fear kills creative problem solving.  Fear
makes people more interested in authority, which means more invested
in hierarchy, and more likely to accept the commandments of
authoritarians.  Fear leads to snap decisions, instead of careful
consideration.


Fear is a really, really useful tool, if the desire
is to keep people separate, compliant, and disempowered.

And, it can get a hold on me rather too easily,
particularly when I’m not getting enough down time with God.

Another of the useful tools of domination systems is
getting control over meaning making, which usually means
appropriating religion for its own purposes.  We can see this clearly
in looking at the Roman Empire in Jesus’ day, and the Roman appointed
High Priests running the Temple.  That domination system thought
having the Temple’s support was imperative to keeping control, and so
they appropriated it.  That is one example of a rather constant
reality.

Truth be told, when I read the Bible, I’m often struck
by the struggles back and forth between the stories of an all-loving
God encouraging the people to care for each other and the strangers
in their midst AND the stories of a God who controls, rewards,
punishes the people – including by trying to frighten them into
compliance.  I tend to think of the first as the stories of God, and
the second as the constancy of humans trying to to claim the power of
Divine meaning making for their own ends.  The fact that it is a
constant tension in the Bible itself clarifies how hard it is to
separate out the love of God from the desire of people for control.

At the recommendation of my colleague the Rev. Harold
Wheat, I recently read “One Nation Under God” by Kevin Kruse.
The book takes a long view of American religion, and the battles for
control of it.  The history takes a sharp turn after the successful
passage of Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was generally lauded by the
nation’s clergy.  In response, business and industry leaders started
multiple meaning making campaigns of their own, putting clergy on
their payrolls to deride “communal values.”  They spent decades
accessing power at the highest levels, providing resources, and
finally in engaging in nation-wide PR campaigns to encourage people
to attend worship as part of their patriotic duty.  Since these
campaigns were so successful, those pushing worship were confident
that most of those attending worship would be getting their
pro-business messages shared from the pulpit.

This church was one of the ones that did NOT comply with
the campaigns, thank God.  But, being a part of US culture during
that time meant being a part of a society with the highest worship
participation rate in the country’s history, and this church did
benefit from that.  

One of my big take aways from the book was that every
church and every church structure I know well has defined itself from
its heights in the 1950s or 1960s, and created its narratives and
identity in those “high times.”  But that came without an
awareness of the forces that created that high, or the reality that
it was an ABERRATION, not a “new normal.”  It is a bit like the
Jewish people in 506 BCE looking back to the glory days of King
David, and forgetting that in 1500 years of history, about 80 were
the time of nation-state empire.  It was an aberration, not the norm.

The fact that the worship attendance of the 1950s was a
cultural swell of worship attendance nation wide suggests that the
narratives of “failure” for not maintaining the heights are…
well… wrong.  After the nation wide ad campaigns stopped and the
nation stopped being pushed to define being a good American with
being a good worship attender, worship attendance started returning
to more historically normal levels.  

However,  I’ve been in A LOT of meetings over the years
where in direct or indirect ways people have tried to “problem
solve” church decline, and that has almost always sounded a whole
lot like blame.  This is never the story I heard – that the
huge ballooning of membership was an oddity that was unsustainable,
and that it was to be expected that it would not be maintained.

Instead, there are seemingly infinite definitions of the
problem and possible solutions.  “Better evangelism.”  “More
prayer.”  “Clear mission statements.”  “Good websites.”
“More faithful leaders.”  “More training in inviting people to
church.”  “Better missions.”  … Take this class, do this
study, engage in this survey, read this book, ….and some of it is
even useful, but the impact of the whole is the continuation of the
narrative that worship attendance in the 1950s was “right” and
that means that everything since then has been “wrong” and if
that’s true, then it implies we’re doing our FAITH wrong.  

Learning that there is a bigger narrative at play has
helped me reframe those conversations about church growth and church
decline.  It has also helped me see that even when there isn’t active
blame going on, church leaders (clergy and lay) are just
internalizing it.  I’ve done it (I still do it.)  The number of
people who choose to attend worship FEELS like a tangible expression
of how faithful I am to God.  But it isn’t.  Yet, I have to actively
remember that.

And, I worry about all the church leaders in all the
churches for the past 70 years who have asked “why are we getting
smaller” and ended up believing that it was because THEY were doing
their faith wrong, because they couldn’t see the larger dynamics at
play.  They’ve taken in the wrong story.  Our faith is not WRONG, nor
BROKEN.  

Of course, it is hard to see the church in decline and
it is extra hard right now to see the church transforming and not
know if it is strong or weak or.. what it is right now.   But, as I’m
committed to building the kindom of God, and I’m excited to have ANY
partners in that work who want to work with me.  I’m willing to tell
people why that seems worthy of my life energy, and I am delighted
when I get to teach about what kindom/God values are and how they
differ from empire/domination values.  

The thing is that strength, even strength in numbers,
looks a lot like a domination value.  And inflated numbers in the
past were aimed at no good.  God is willing and able to work with any
of us who want to work with God, and to make a big difference with
those who are committed to doing so.  I’m interested in celebrating
those committed to following in the ways of Jesus, and the power that
love has in our midst.  I’m ready to let go of an old, false, and
misleading narrative of who we are supposed to be, and let us be who
we are.

There is the labor that matters, the bread that
satisfies.  And leaving behind the old myths that were created to
control the churches and their people– that’s the empire stuff we
don’t need anymore.  May God help us sort through, and find the
kindom values in our hearts, to put them to further use in our lives.
Amen

1Brueggeman
158.

2Brueggemann,
159.

3Ibid
160

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

March 20, 2022

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