“Wisdom, She Calls”based on Psalm 8 and Proverbs 8:1-4,…

June 23, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’ve recently gotten
feedback that many people around here like it when I preach from the
heart, from authenticity, from … myself, and not JUST from context.
This is a bit of a challenge because the authentic me is sort of a
mystic, and I’ve never been entirely clear how comfortable that is
for all of you. However, I’m really grateful for feedback, so I’m
going to give it a try, and trust that you’ll continue giving
feedback if this is not what you were looking for at all.

Today is Trinity Sunday.
Thus, our lectionary readings have given us space to consider the
Spirit, who in Proverbs is the Spirit of God’s Wisdom, the firstborn
of creation. In its purest, most orthodox
forms, Trinity says that God IS Three Persons that are also One, and
the love between the 3 Persons is the foundational energy and
motivation of the universe, from which creation arose, and from which
God’s love for all humanity begins. I’ve never been able to commit
to an orthodox understanding of Trinity, although I did give it a
good faith effort for a decade or so. I adore this idea of love as
the foundation of the universe, but I’ve had to come to that
conclusion in other ways. I don’t hold a traditional view of
Trinity, although I think those views can be strikingly beautiful.

Instead, I’ve been most
formed by the thinking of Marjorie Suchocki, professor emerita of
theology at Claremont School of Theology, and the author of the book
“God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology.” In
it, she talks about the idea of Trinity as a symbol for the
complexity and unity of God. She says, “God
as trinity becomes a symbol to indicate the sense in which the unity
of God embraces a complexity of a magnitude grater than which none
other can exist.”¹
In more simple words, she says that God is one and God is infinite.
She doesn’t actually think the specific 3 of Trinity is the point,
but rather acknowledges that there is inherent value in thinking of
God as being transcendent, immanent, and relational. That is God is
beyond all that is, God is IN all that is, and God is in relationship
to all that is – and those are three things, so we think of God in
three ways.

Suchocki’s
idea that Trinity means many and yet one has resonated for me. God
is, of course, one. We’re monotheists!! And there is force of love
undergirding and infiltrating all parts of Creation, unifying us all.
At the same time, of course there are many facets to the Divine.
God is beyond our words, our metaphors, our understanding. God is
complicated. Any aspect of God we attempt to speak about or connect
to is both a part of God AND not the entirety of God. God is love,
unconditional all encompassing love!!! And, God is also one who
wants justice – so that good lives and good relationships can be
present for all people and not just for some. And that doesn’t
ALWAYS feel only like love. God is eternal, and yet God is also
present. God is for us, and for each of us, and for all of us, all
at once. In these ways, it makes sense to think of God as many, even
though God is also one.

In
some very similar ways, I think it makes sense to think of ourselves
as many and as one! I mean each of us, each person, is both many
and one. (Although, come to think of it, we are also one body of
Christ – one and many.) We’re now at the mystical point of this
sermon 😉 If mystical isn’t going to fly for you, you may want to
think of all of this as development of compassion, although I’ll
admit to you that those are not well differentiated for me.

Years
ago, my spirituality professor told me about a prayer form called
with an acroynm FLAG. In it you notice a strong emotion and
anthropomorphize that strong emotion as a young child.
Then you ask it:
Fear – what are you afraid of?
Longing –
what do you long for?
Ache – what is your ache/wound?
Gift –
what gift are you trying to offer that I’m not receiving?

This
prayer has been a great gift to me over the years, but in recent
years I’ve noticed that it relates to a whole bunch of other areas of
thought who are also looking at “self” in different ways.
Because this now comes from a lot of disciplines, to explain it I’m
going to glob them all together like we do when we work with all 4
gospel narratives at once. We’re going to call it “parts theory.”
Because of how useful it has been in my own prayer life, as well as
in conversations with people, it is one of the theories that I now
use to make sense of human beings- myself and others.

Parts
theory says that we are a conglomeration of parts. When this emerges
out of “non-violent communication” work, the parts are associated
with human needs. In “Focusing”, the parts are associated with
physical sensations in various parts of our body. In sensorimotor
psychology, parts relate to coping mechanisms necessary for survival,
particularly in childhood. Going back to the prayer form I first met
this idea in, the young children we imagine are often expressions of
our self and our past. I think it may even be true that in the Center
for Courage and Renewal Teaching, where we talk about the maps of our
souls and the various terrain within, that we are actually
approaching parts from another angle. Most places I’m looking for
understanding of how humans work seem to be moving to parts theory.

Now,
once we acknowledge that in our internal landscape there are various
parts doing their own things, then we think about how they relate to
each other and to our self as a whole. Parts theory suggests that
dealing with ourselves is a lot like presiding over an unruly Church
Council meeting (who, us?) or perhaps an Annual Conference committed
to nonconformity (who, us?). Parts tend to have their own points of
view, they remember the things that fit their narratives, they push
the things that fit their narratives, they ignore things that don’t
fit their narratives, and when they want things they ask. And when
they ask, and we ignore them, they get louder (and sometimes meaner)
and this cycle can continue until we have a LOT OF INTERNAL
screaming. Also, parts build connections with other parts, and parts
are antagonistic to other parts.

If
you think of parts as trying to meet needs, this can become clearer.
So a part that is seeking out peace
is likely to be well partnered with the parts that seek rest
and beauty
and maybe even acceptance.
However, the part seeking out peace
is
likely in some conflict with the parts seeking out spontaneity,
stimulation, or
even growth. And
when we’re talking about parts that have been harmed in the past,
this can be pretty strong. For example, when a person lived through
abuse as a child, and the abuser was the caregiver, then the natural
human instinct to draw close to caregiver for safety and the natural
human instinct to run away from harm are in constant conflict…. and
those parts are trained to be on constant alert.

There
is also a Part in Charge. I have tended towards calling this the
adult self. While
the adult self is the moderator/chair of the council, the truth is
that sometimes the adult self loses control of the body. In parts
language, that means that sometimes other parts hijack the adult
self, and the other parts are the ones running the show – by which
I mean the body, the facial expressions, the words, the tone, etc.
So if you think of a recent time when you said or did something that
you later regretted, and wondered “Why didn’t I have better
control?” the answer is likely that a part hijacked the adult
self
and “you” weren’t in control at that point.

Prayer
can be a time when we make space for our parts, listen to our parts,
create the capacity for empathy for our parts, and stop fighting them
in general. The FLAG method works for this, as do many others. It
can also be a time when we teach the parts meditative practice so we
can all have some much needed peace within. Building the capacity to
listen to ourselves also builds our capacity to listen to each other.
That’s one of the goals – if we are going to be part of building a
more peaceful and just world, we’re going to have to learn how to
find peace within, and that will likely require learning how to
listen to (rather than silence) parts.

Many
forms of contemplative prayer teach us how to be in the present, in
our bodies, and how to be connected to our breath. These are
wonderful practices on their own. They’re also the skills needed to
bring the adult self back from being hijacked. In the neuroscience
part of these theories, the parts are mostly in the amygdala part of
the brain and the adult self is in the prefrontal cortex. So
whatever we can do to THINK, and be PRESENT, helps move us back to
the prefrontal cortex.

Parts
theory both feels TRUE, and feels exciting to me. I appreciate how
inherently spiritual it is, to listen. Now, many parts that we are
familiar with speak in … less than constructive ways. Because of
that, we’re often a bit scared of them. However, there is some good
news. The horrid things that parts say are ALWAYS meant to be
helpful. If you actually listen to the things they say, then you can
sometimes figure out how to flip it around to the positive thing the
part wants for you. They’re shockingly transparent. “You aren’t
enough” can mean, “You were really hurt one time when someone
said you weren’t enough, and I don’t want to you be hurt again, so
I’m going to keep your ego small so you don’t experience a drop in
self-confidence again.” You know, stuff like that.

We’ve
talked about some of this before. Some of our parts communicate
through criticism, and they manage to tell us we’re wrong A LOT. My
parts have a lot they want to get done. No matter what I’m doing,
they have about 50 other things I should be doing, and they tell me
I’d get them done if I were a “good person” / “good pastor.”
None of the parts is able to notice that I can’t do 51 things at
once, so my adult self is always having to work at setting
priorities, at listening, and at soothing, so all the parts aren’t
screaming at once that their thing isn’t getting done. That said,
knowing about parts, thinking in terms of parts, and listening to
parts has quieted things within me significantly, and I experience a
lot less internal angst, and thus more peace. (On good days.)

Did
you hear the end of the Proverbs passage? In it, Wisdom talks about
delight – the delight in being with God, and the delight Wisdom and
God had in humanity. Delight is part of what we’re going for, and
there are many paths to it. Finding peace within is a form of making
space for delight. When we can see what’s happening, and remain
present and loving, there is a LOT of delight available to us. It
really is a bit like traditional Trinitarian doctrine: love spills
out. Thanks be for that. Amen

1Marjorie
Suchocki, 229.

–

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 16, 2019

Sermons

“Ascension??” based on Luke 24:44-53 and Acts 1:1-11

June 3, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Often,
we breeze past Ascension Day, because it never falls on a Sunday, we
don’t have a special service for it, and it is just as easy to use
the texts for the Seventh Sunday of Easter. To be perfectly honest,
I was expecting to do this again this year, except for the truly
fantastic Children’s Time Story about the Ascension, and the
opportunity to tie worship together tightly.

Furthermore,
that final line in the Ascension story, “Men of Galilee, why
do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken
up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go
into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)
pretty much preaches itself! There are few lines more perfect.
“Come on people! Stop staring at what has been, and see what is!”
Or, we could go with “Stop waiting for what God is going to do
next, God has already done enough!” It fits something I often want
to say.

However,
I got thinking about the Ascension, and suddenly things got really
fuzzy for me. What does it mean, for us today? Does it mean
anything? (I mean, normally, we skip over it.) What has it meant to
others? How does that impact what it means for us today?

To
add to my confusion over the meaning of Ascension came the normal
weekly task of hymn selection. There are websites with hymn
suggestions to fit scriptures, a useful thing, and I discovered that
the hymns for ascension were themed on Jesus’ power and kingship.
Frankly, I had no idea why.

Luckily,
our house is basically a theology library. The 6 volume dictionary
of the Bible put out by InterVarsity Press includes a volume
“Dictionary of the Later new Testament and its Developments” and
an entry on ascension. Before I quote their opening lines, it may be
useful to know that this comes from a significantly more traditional
Christian worldview than one I occupy. In fact, I barely know about
this one, despite the best efforts of my seminary theology
professors. (I was bored to tears by “traditional” German
theology, I didn’t even know why people were still writing it, as it
was just a rehashing.) Clearly I barely know this stuff, I had to
look it up. Anyway, they say,

“The
ascension is the second stage of Jesus Christ’s three-stage
exaltation, in which after his bodily resurrection (the first stage)
he visibly departed earth and entered the presence of God in heaven
to be crowned at his right hand with glory, honor, and authority.
The third stage, his enthronement, or session at God’s right hand,
commences his perpetual reign and intercession for his people.

… Acts
gives the most detail about the ascension. It brings out its
decisive role for christology, the coming of salvation blessings, the
church’s mission, and eschatology. The book of Hebrews teaches that
the ascension was essential to the completion of Christ’s
high-priestly work and to his continuing intercessory work. 1 Peter
and Revelation pursue the theme of ascension as victory over hostile
spiritual powers. In the apostolic fathers the ascension undergirds
the Christian calendar and, since it culminates in Christ’s universal
reign, provides a rationale for virtue.”¹

And
now I know why the hymn suggestions were about power and kingship,
which is helpful. However, that description also served as a
reminder of just how many layers of scholarship and tradition have
built on each other, often in ways that are no longer useful (if ever
they were.)

As
a counter to that, Luke Timothy Johnson, professor of New Testament
at Candler School of Theology, explains what he gets of the ascension
narrative. He says,

“Luke’s
two ascension accounts (Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9-11) serve to remove
Jesus’ body from the sight of humans as a preparation for another
mode of his presence. This is a deeper level of absence than the
empty tomb, for it means that even as the Living One, Jesus will no
longer be present in the sort of bodily shape that his disciples
knew. That earlier mode of bodily presence was still limited. If
Jesus ascends to the right hand of God and receives from [God] the
promise of the Holy Spirit, then then ‘life’ that is at work in him
can be poured out over all humans, so that his presence can be
mediated in all the ways in which those led by his Spirit body [go]
forth.”²

Seen
in this way, the ascension is almost a prelude to Pentecost. Until
the experienced presence of Jesus has departed, the new experience of
being bathed in the power of the Holy Spirit cannot come. This,
then, is one of the transition points of the Christian narrative, and
in that way I think it does make sense as an extension of the
Resurrection narratives. In this case, I think Marcus Borg does the
best job explaining how:

“the
experiences that lie at the heart of Easter… carried with them the
conviction that God had vindicated Jesus. Easter is not simply about
people experiencing a person who has died. The Easter stories aren’t
‘ghost stories’ (see Luke 24:37-43). Rather, they are stories of
vindication, of God’s ‘yes’ to Jesus. God has exalted Jesus, raised
him to God’s right hand, made him Lord. And lest we forget how Jesus
died, the Easter stories in both John and Luke remind us that the
risen Jesus still carried the wounds inflicted by the empire that
killed him.

There
is a continuity between the post-Easter conviction that God has
vindicated Jesus and the message of the pre-Easter Jesus. ‘Jesus is
Lord’ is the post-Easter equivalent of Jesus’ proclamation of the
kingdom of God. God is king, and the kings of this world are not,
Jesus is lord, and the lords of this world are not. And just as
Jesus’s passion for the kingdom led him to oppose the imperial
domination system, so his followers’ passion for the lordship of
Christ led them to defy the lordship of Caesar.”³

Another
scholar mentioned that the ascension story is CLEARLY not meant to be
taken literally, since it happens in Luke on Easter and in Acts 40
days later, and the same author wrote both volumes. That means that,
much like the creation narratives, we’re supposed to be looking the
deeper meaning instead of getting obsessed with the literal one.
(Phew.) However, the thing that no scholar I read made mention of,
which didn’t particularly make sense to me, was how this compares to
the story of Elijah’s ascension. I mean, there are plenty of books I
didn’t look at, but I did glance through 15 of them, and you’d think
they’d mention the ONE OTHER ascension narrative in the Bible,
wouldn’t you? Let’s hear the crux of that narrative:

Then
Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the
water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of
them crossed on dry ground.

When
they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me what I may do for
you, before I am taken from you.’ Elisha said, ‘Please let me
inherit a double share of your spirit.’ He responded, ‘You have
asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you,
it will be granted you; if not, it will not.’ As they continued
walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated
the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.
Elisha kept watching and crying out, ‘Father, father! The chariots
of Israel and its horsemen!’ But when he could no longer see him,
he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

He
picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went
back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of
Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where
is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ When he had struck the water, the
water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went
over. When the company of prophets who were at Jericho saw him at a
distance, they declared, ‘The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.’
They came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. (NRSV, 2
Kings 2:8-15)

Now,
Elisha was the disciple of Elijah, and this is a story of the Spirit
and Power of Elijah being given to Elisha as Elijah ascends into
heaven. It is a bit more spectacular of a story, what with the
chariot and horse of fire and whirlwind, but the gist is really
similar. Not only is someone who has been speaking God’s truths
“elevated” at the end of their life, and therefore affirmed as
God’s special messenger, the disciple(s) of the God-speaker, are
empowered by the same action. In fact, as far as I know it, Moses
(whose body is said to be buried by God so no humans could find it),
Elijah, and Jesus are the only characters in the Bible whose lives
are so important that in their deaths they are cared for directly by
God.

So
I think it is relevant! I think that these stories, which come from
a time when the three tiered universe was presumed true (which is the
idea that heaven is above us and if it is exists hell is below us,
ideas that don’t work once we get to the concept of a spherical
earth), actually imply that by being taken into heaven, Elijah and
Jesus were “entering the realm of the divine.”⁴
That’s related to the radical claim that early Christians made
about Jesus. You may know that LOTS of people were said to be
resurrected in ancient times. Only two things about that claim for
Jesus were weird: first that he was resurrected after being killed
by the Roman Empire, which was an embarrassing sort of thing to claim
for your religious leader in most cases, and secondly that he was the
“firstborn of the resurrection.” Christian theology pretty
quickly developed the idea that because God raised Jesus from the
dead, that those who followed as “little Christs” along “the
way” would ALSO be raised (somehow, someday). Jesus didn’t just
express God and return to God, Jesus opened the way for others to
also express God and eventually return to God.

The
ascension also, inherently, has elements of overcoming hierarchy. In
a three-tiered universe AND a top down patriarchal system, the amount
of power and glory a person had was expressed as how “high up”
they were. (This still makes sense to us today, which should maybe
concern us.) To have Jesus elevated beyond the boundaries of earth
itself then, is an INCREDIBLE metaphor for Jesus blowing up the whole
hierarchy, which is even better after the so called embarrassment of
his crucifixion. And then, of course, it still all ends with the
messengers of God telling the disciples of Jesus to bring their minds
and energy back to earth and get back to work in building the kindom.
I still don’t know exactly what ascension means, but I’m thinking it
was worth this exploration and maybe some more down the road. May
we’ll figure it out – eventually. Amen

1“Dictionary
of the later New Testament and its developments” editors Ralph P.
Martin and Peter H Davids (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity
Press, 1997, page 95-96.

2Luke
Timothy Johnson “Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel”
(HarperSanFransciso, 1999) 21-22.

3Marcus
Borg, “Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of
a Religious Revolutionary” (USA:
HarperOne, 2006) page 289.

4Footnote
in The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised
Standard Version Bible Translation,
edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 199.

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

Sermons

“Refusing to be Silent” based on Acts 5:27-32, John…

April 30, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’ll admit I have a strong
bias in this story. It feels like my
personal job to protect Thomas from the accusations made about him over the
years. I feel for him. He said something reasonable and rational and
has gained the title “Doubting Thomas” for 2 millennia. (My desire to protect Thomas would make a bit
more sense if the Jesus Seminar thought this story reflected historical memory,
which it does not, but that hasn’t had quite the impact you’d expect on my need
to protect Thomas.)

The problem, I think, is that
this story does what it supposed to do.
It was designed to include those Christians who did not experience the
resurrection first hand, and to affirm their faith. The line, “Have you believed because you
have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to
believe.”(20:29) The story seems to
say, because Thomas needed proof, but YOU managed to believe without it, you
are even better than one of the first disciples!

“Have faith, even in what you
can’t see” has been a perennial preaching favorite, and Thomas has been the
straw man set up to make it work. There
are a few issues with this though. Most
importantly, “believe what I tell you because I told you so, even if it doesn’t
make sense” is a terrible way to lead people.
Also, bodily resurrection is … a great metaphor, but not something to
get obsessed about as historical fact.

This year, I came across a new
great way to defend Thomas, namely that none of the disciples believed the
Easter story to begin with. Gail O’Day
in the New Interpreter’s Bible says, “John 20:19-23 is linked with the
preceding story in the garden by use the emphatic expression ‘that day’ (v.
19), although the disciples fearful conduct indicates that they have not
credited Mary’s report (cf. Luke 24:11).
The locked doors may be mentioned to heighten the drama and supernatural
effect of Jesus’ entrance into the room (v. 19b, fc. 25; Luke 24:37),
but their primary importance for the Fourth Evangelist is found in the phrase
‘for the fear of the Jews.’”[1]
Aka, all the disciples were scared, and hiding in that room, even though they’d
heard the Easter narrative from the women already. They hadn’t seen and they didn’t
believe. It wasn’t just Thomas.

Furthermore, as another
scholar says, ““The women’s report should have been credible because (1) they were
relating events of which they had firsthand experience (2) there were several
witnesses (3) their character has been established by the reports of their
selfless service to Jesus and his disciples.”[2]

Now, before I can go on in my
defense of Thomas, I need to take a break and talk about antisemitism in the
New Testament. It is morally
reprehensible not to, especially with texts like what we have today, and
shootings like we had yesterday – not to mention the past two millennia of
Western history. Now, I’m actually not
convinced about whether or not the New Testament is inherently antisemitic for
two historical reasons. The first is
that at the time the New Testament was written, Christians understood
themselves to be Jews who were following “the way” of Jesus…. not unlike the
various denominations in Christianity today where all of us would say we are
following the way of Jesus, but we might add that we’re doing so through some
of the teachings of John and Susanna Wesley.
Given that the earlier followers of “the way” were Jewish, the things
they’re saying against the Jews are INTERNAL squabbling, reflecting something
like the things I say about the WCA.

The problem is that while the
followers of “the way” were an oppressed group in the time of the writing in
the New Testament, they became the powerful group and the history of the
Western hemisphere since Constantine has involved Christians having power over
Jews and using the language of the New Testament to justify mistreatment of
others of God’s beloved people.

The second piece takes a
little bit more nuance. “The Jews” is
not really a reference to all Jews, or Jews in general. More often, it is being used to refer to the
people in roles of authority within Judaism.
This applies to the Gospel and to the story from Acts. The people who were in roles of Jewish authority
were the ones who had been placed there by the Roman Empire, with the intention
of controlling the Jewish colonies by controlling their leaders. Because the Empire appointed, and removed,
leaders at will; the Jewish leaders served the Empire rather than the people,
or God, or the faith tradition. So,
sometimes, “the Jew” doesn’t even mean people who are Jewish, it means Roman
Empire leadership appointed to Jewish roles.
In our Sunday Night Bible Study, where people are great at asking
questions and pondering, we have been wondering if “the Jews” was really coded
language for “the oppression of the Empire” while being a FAR safer way to say
it. Further, the Roman appointed leaders
REALLY wanted to keep the peace, and keep their jobs.

But, again, even though I’m
not sure the original language of John or Acts was anti-Jewish, because 1. it was written by people who were themselves
Jewish, about an internal fight within Judaism and 2. the references to “the
Jews” seems to refer to Roman appointed leaders, I KNOW that these texts
have been used SINCE Christianity became a dominate religion to do harm, and I
want us to be very very careful in how we hear, speak about, and reflect these
texts in our lives. NOTHING about
Jesus or the Jesus movement gives us permission to do harm (or allow harm to be
done) to God’s beloved people, and God’s beloved people come in ALL faith
traditions or lack there of. Some of our
job in refusing to be silent is refusing to be silent about the mistreatment of
our Jewish siblings in faith by Christians.

Now, all that said, in Acts,
we hear Peter telling the Jewish authorities that they have murdered
Jesus. (Do you see now why I spent all
that time fussing?) The authorities are
presented as being concerned about disrupting the peace, which probably
reflects the fact that Luke-Acts was written AFTER the Roman Empire came in and
destroyed the 2^nd Temple ALONG with killing a lot of people (the
Jewish historical Josephus says 1.1 million people died, that is likely an
exaggeration, but it reflects an enormous scale). I think the Jewish leaders probably WERE
trying to prevent something like that from happening.

Both Christianity and Judaism
were transformed, perhaps even formed by the experience of death and
destruction in 70 CE. Nothing is the
same as it was before then, and some of the separation of the traditions
happened as the Temple was destroyed. I
believe that the New Testament, which other than the authentic letters of Paul
was written in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple, seeks to make
sense of that destruction in many of the same ways that the Hebrew Bible tries
to make sense of the destruction of the first temple and Jerusalem in 586 BCE.

One of the ways we see God at
work in the world is that what should be an end point, a death, a destruction,
ends up being over the long run a source of great wisdom, creativity,
compassion, and growth. The faith
traditions we have today were developed in the midst of horror and destruction,
but they speak to growth, hope, faith, and love.

In Acts, we hear Peter say, “We
must obey God rather than human authority.”
How and when do we make that determination? When are we clear that God’s will is distinct
from the will of those in authority? Is
it simply the question of violence – that God is not for violence, passive or
active? Or is it about oppression – that
God is not on the side of oppression? Or
is it more positive? That God is on the
side of life! And love! And expansive possibility! This determination matters.

Now, the story in John is
happening on Easter evening. That’s why
it is so notable that none of those gathered seemed to have figured out that
hope and courage are the Resurrection narrative, not being afraid and locking
yourselves into a room by yourself. We
do know, because of the radical growth of Christianity in the early years, that
the disciples did leave the room, and did so with great courage. They continued sharing Jesus message of love,
of God, of hope and possibility, and were killed for it too – and they too died
with great courage and integrity. The
Resurrection narrative is the story of facing fears with courage and letting
God’s yes take precedence over the world’s no.

In the midst of this
narrative, in the midst of the fear of the disciples sitting in the locked
room, we hear a repetition of a blessing, “Peace be with you.” Peace is shalom here, it is a holistic desire
for well-being, not just the absence of violence. Shalom implies physical, mental, spiritual, emotional,
AND relational well-being. That’s the
best part of it – shalom can’t exist in just one person because it is
inherently relational. It also can’t
exist without each person finding it, so all gain from it. “Shalom, well-being, connection, love,
wholeness be with all of you!” And this gets repeated.

Then there is the weird thing
about sins. Did you hear it? “When he had said this,” (the peace bit) “he breathed on them and said
to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they
are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” What does that mean? Gail O’Day says, “Any discussion of this
verse, therefore, must be grounded in an understanding of the forgiveness of
sins as the work of the entire community. … The forgiveness of sins must be
understood as the Spirit-empowered mission of continuing Jesus’ work in the
world. … Because the community’s work
is an extension of Jesus’ work, v. 23 must be interpreted in terms of Jesus’s
teaching and actions about sin. … In
John, sin is a theological failing, not a moral or behavioral transgression (in
contrast to Matt 18:18). To have sin is
to be blind to the revelation of God in Jesus.”[3]

Does that mean, then, that
what Jesus is quoted as saying can be understood as “If you teach people of the
possibilities of life as I taught you, they will be free from fear; but if you
allow them to continue to live in fear, nothing will change?” It is amazing, but this all fits with the
Maundy Thursday narrative about “love each other as I have loved you.” O’Day says, “By loving one
another as Jesus loves, the faith community reveals God to the world.”[4] And THAT, amazingly enough, releases “sin”
in John’s perspective. 😉

Now all of this brings us back
around to my friend Thomas, the one who is as direct and honest as Peter when
he says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger
in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not
believe.” I really love this
line. I love it especially because when
the story then provides him with proof he does a 180 and DOES affirm the truth,
more strongly than anyone has before him.
“My Lord and My God” was a very strong statement. I wonder how often, when we are presented
with proof we’ve asked for, we are able to notice that it is there and it is
time to change our minds?

Most of all though, do we have
the courage of Peter and of Thomas, to speak the truth? Are we willing to say what we don’t believe
when we don’t believe it AND what we do when we do? Are we willing to speak up and witness to the
power of love to transform lives? That
is, to release the power of sin in the world?
(Giggle, it is so weird to say that.)
May it be so. Amen

[1]Gail
O’Day, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX: John, Leander E. Keck
editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,1995) 846.

[2] R.
Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 9
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) 470.

[3]O’Day,
847.

[4]O’Day,
848.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Change and Letting Go” based on Psalm 32 and…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

As human beings, we come into the world with needs. New
babies need milk, diaper changes, human touch, soothing, temperature
control, shelter, communication, emotional mirroring, safe spaces,
tummy time, and lots and lots of sleep. As far as I can tell, our
needs as humans grow from there.

Our needs remain complicated as well. We have physical
needs for food, drink, clothing, shelter, and equally important
social and emotional needs to be heard, to be understood, to play, to
find peace, to connect. Nonviolent Communication teachers share
lists of universal human needs, the one I use most often lists more
than 90 of them.

Because there are so many, and because life is so
complicated, it is rare for us to have our needs met at the same
time. Nonviolent Communication theory suggests that everything we
say and do is really about trying to get those needs met, and I
haven’t seen any reason to disbelieve it. It may help to know that
needs for peace, contribution, learning, purpose, and celebration
exist – so some of the needs make space for us to want to do things
that impact others.

The Isaiah passage opens up for me the dream of having
needs being met, perhaps even to have all of them met all at once.
Without Isaiah dreaming it, I’m not sure I could conceive of this.
Furthermore, the dream isn’t of some weak, minimalistic set of needs
being met. It is all of them being met well. Using the direct,
physical needs of thirst and hunger, Isaiah speaks of being offered
water, wine, milk, and rich food – without having to even pay for
them!

These were not foods that average people were eating –
these were the foods of the rich, and Isaiah proposes that God wants
all the people to access those good foods. This is an opening to
thinking about life with God, life in relationship to God, life that
is shared under God’s vision of how things are supposed to be.

How things are supposed to be is incredibly disconnected
from how the world actually was, and how it actually is. This
passage comes from the end of Second Isaiah, which dreams of a
different life for the exiles who God is going to lead home. The
people have been in captivity in Babylon, and their captivity is
about to be transformed. The hope of the passage is that in coming
home to Ancient Israel, the people will also come home to God’s ways.
Walter Brueggemann writes,

“The initial verse, perhaps in the summoning mode of a
street vendor, offers to passersby 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.
Israel is invited to choose the free, alternative nourishment offered
by Yahweh. Thus, although we may ponder the metaphor of free food,
the underlying urging is the sharp contrast between the way of life
given in Babylon that leads to death and the way of Yahweh that leads
to joyous homecoming.”¹

The vision of Yahweh for Ancient Israel, which I believe
is still the vision of God for all people, is for the people to have
enough to survive AND thrive. The world itself produces plenty, but
our societies distribution patterns prevent the “enough” from
getting to the people. According to the Poor People’s campaign, in
the US today, 43.5% of US population are in poverty or are
low-income.²
Those old systems of the empires – the ones that bring the wealth
created by the many to the top – those are still happening.

It is funny to think of our needs being met, not only
because there are so many of them, but because even the idea of
universally satisfying the basic physical human needs is so far from
reality. What would it look like if all people had enough to eat –
of nutritious and delicious food? Can we quite imagine it? What
would it look like here and elsewhere if the housing stock was mold
free, well insulated, repairs were up to date, water was safe to
drink, AND homelessness was eliminated? It is a thing to ponder.
Can we imagine universal health care in this country, and one that
works? Where people can afford both preventative care and
necessarily life-giving measures? What about this – can we imagine
a world where there are enough mental health care providers for all
who need them, and all are offering top notch, compassionate care
(and the mental health care providers aren’t over worked, are
adequately paid, and have time and energy to do necessary self care)?
Oh what a world this would be!! Ready for one more? Can we imagine
a society with expansive parental leave policies for people at every
income level, with excellent nursery and day care for babies AND
nursing and adult care for adults in need, provided by people who are
adequately compensated for their imperative work, and trained to
offer it at the highest levels?

Can we even dream it? Those are the BASICS, and Isaiah
invites us to dream them. Those aren’t quite milk, wine, and rich
foods. Those are merely clean water and enough bread for everyone.
Even with these pieces met, a lot of problems would remain. But if
the BASICS were met, it would matter a lot. And it is POSSIBLE.
This is not an unattainable dream – the capacity to make it happen
already exists.

I think it is a dream that Isaiah pushes us to
contemplate. If we don’t dream a little bit, we can’t know what we
are working towards, and we have no chance of getting there.

Of course, if we had a system where basic needs were
met, it would radically upend the economy, and society. It is a very
BIG dream. To have people’s needs met would mean that some of the
value of their labor would have to return to them, and that more the
value of all of our labor would be needed to care for those who
cannot labor. We can’t have a system that cares adequately for all
people AND one that allows the work of most to enrich the few.

In addition to dreaming a dream of human needs being
met, Isaiah’s passage also condemns the system as it was for how it
worked. It indicts the labor system for enriching the empire at the
expense of the labors. It also called out the thinking that allowed
it, called people out of the idea that working harder within the
system would find them a way to get to satisfaction. This is one of
the hardest lessons for us today. Working harder in rigged systems
only exhausts us, it does not get us what we need. We still have a
system where people “spend your money for that which is not bread
and your labor for that which does not satisfy,” because the labor
is not permitted to bring satisfaction!

God’s dream is NOT a system of competition, of forced
labor, or even of economic gain over another. God’s dream is NOT one
where people have to work harder than their neighbors into to fight
for the scraps they need to survive. This is true BOTH with regards
to food and health care AND with regard to love and beauty. God
wants us to have what we need, and the earth is capable of providing
it, but not when people are exploited for other’s excess.

I suspect is is this system of thinking that is
reflected in the later words of the “righteous” and the “wicked”
– the ones who are willing to let go of the systems of exploitation
of the empire to move into God’s vision are the righteous, and those
who continue to participate in it and be co-opted by it are the
“wicked.” This isn’t just me. Brueggemann came to the same
conclusions 😉 (and that makes me feel SUPER smart.) “’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 of homecoming.”³

Between all of this, and the echoes from the Psalm, I’m
wondering us and about how well we are doing “making a positive
response to Yahweh’s invitation of homecoming.” How well are we
able to leave behind the systems and thought patterns of oppression
and competition to move into a brave new world? How interested are
we in the possibilities of the present and the future?

For me, some of the process of freeing myself from the
systems of oppression come in the practices of Sabbath-keeping and
meditative prayer. It is EASY to get pulled in to never-ending
productivity, but when I STOP trying to be productive, I’m more able
to figure out what the goal of the production is anyway! It is easy
to get pulled into a roller-coaster of emotions with the 24 hour news
cycle, but when I stop and get quiet, I can hear which parts of what
is happening I’m most able to respond to in a useful way. The times
of quiet in my life are when I can hear my own soul, and the Divine
prodding, when I can let go of how I’m supposed to present myself,
and simply be. And unless I’m doing those things, I’m VERY easily
swayed by the systems of oppression.

This is where spirituality intersects with both justice
work and my own well-being. It isn’t healthy for us to live in the
levels of anxiety that modern life produces, but it isn’t easy to let
go of i either! (In a different sort of church, that might merit an
“amen.”) It is hard to focus on what needs to be done to build a
better society and world, particularly when dumpster fires are
happening all around us – but the capacity to build focus is part
of the gift of spiritual practice, as is the process of being able to
prioritize.

Beloveds of God, are we finding the ways to listen to
the Holy One? God’s guidance is worthwhile – the Psalmist even
finds it worth clinging to. Are we taking the time for rest, for
Sabbath, for prayer, so that we can have those needs met and be able
to envision a world where many needs are met for all people? The
invitation is given to us – to be fed, to rest, to be filled, to be
satiated. May we receive it, and pass it on. Amen

1Walter
Bruggemann, Isaiah
40-66
(Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998),159.

2Institute
for Policy Studies, “The Souls of Poor Folk: A Preliminary Report”
(December 2017)
https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/PPC-Report-Draft-1.pdf,
page 8.

3Brueggemann,
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 24, 2019

Sermons

“Figuring Out Priorities, Discernment as Prayer Practice” based on…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This
Mary washing Jesus’s feet with her hair story is a variation on
stories found in the Synoptic Gospels. Just to clarify a few things
that you might have heard: this is the Mary of Mary and Martha, not
Mary of Magdala; there is no reason to believe that the woman in the
story was a prostitute; that said there were a few indiscretions
inherent in the story! To name them succinctly: women weren’t
supposed to be a part of formal dinner parties (then again Mary
wasn’t supposed to sit at Jesus’s feet as a disciple either), a
woman taking her hair down in public was scandalous, and feet aren’t
always really FEET in the Bible, even though I think they are here.

Other
than Jesus, all the characters in this story are unique to John’s
version. Given that, it is quite interesting that Judas is put in
the role he is. It works well as foreshadowing. It also works well
to explain a few things. When Judas is called a “thief” in the
story, the particular verb is the same one used in chapter 10 to
describe a thief who steals sheep. Thus, “The expression ‘not
because he cared about the poor’ echoes the description of the hired
hand’s lack of care for the sheep (10:13). The use of these words
suggests that the description of Judas is intended to point the
reader toward the proper context in which to place Judas’s actions.
When he betrays Jesus, he betrays the sheep.”¹
Thus when Mary takes care of Jesus, she takes care of the sheep too.
The shepherd and the sheep are interdependent.

John’s
version of this story sets up an interesting question: is it better
to use the super expensive (5 figure) perfume on Jesus or to sell it
and give the proceeds to the poor? The answer most theologians have
given is that it is good to be devoted to Jesus. The text sets us up
to think this way by saying that not even Judas meant the money for
the poor. However, I think it is a valid question!

I
think it is a REALLY valid question. After all, how do we decide
what to do with our resources? Most of us, most of the time, aren’t
in possession of perfume worth’s a year salary that was hand carried
from India to Bethany, but we do have our own resources to care
about. How do we decide what to give away, and what to use? How do
we decide what portions of our time to give away? When are are ready
to give something away – time, or money, resources or energy- how
do we know where to best put it?

I’m
not a great decider when it comes to such questions (or most others.)
I tend to think like a Tupper, “I need more data!” The answer
between “show devotion” and “care for the vulnerable” is
fuzzy for me plenty of the time.

And
I worry that when I don’t decide, when I just go about my day to day
life without thinking too hard, I’m even more likely to err than if I
consider a decision carefully and then choose “wrong.” Yet the
fear of being wrong often leads me to the status quo, and the status
quo isn’t particularly intentional.

Luckily
there is something called discernment. Apple dictionary does a great
job with the word “discernment.” The first definition is “the
ability to judge well” the second is “(in Christian contexts)
perception in the absence of judgement with a view to obtaining
spiritual direction and understanding.”²
So, in a very practical way discernment is deciding, but it has more
nuance: it is about making decisions spiritually. I suspect that
sounds fine and good to most of you – but also a bit meaningless.

I
have two practical offerings for you – two means of getting into
discernment. The first is a spiritual practice called “Daily
Examen.” I’ve mentioned it before, because I really like it.
Daily Examen is a simple practice, it is flexible, it is meaningful,
and it is HANDS DOWN the best way I know of for discernment of BIG
LIFE THINGS.

It
can be done individually, with a friend or partner, or in a group.
It goes like this. You do what you need to do to center yourself, be
that lighting a candle, turning on music, sitting comfortably, taking
deep breathes, or all of the above. Then, in language that works for
you, you ask the Divine to work with you in reviewing the past 24
hours. As you review the day, you seek out what the best part was
and what the worst part was. You may want to ask this differently:
when was I most connected to Love, when I was I least connected to
Love, when did I feel most whole, when did I feel least whole, etc.
The goal is to find a “high” and a “low” and THEN to thank
God for both, and for everything in-between.

Then,
if you are working with others, you share that information. In any
case, you write them down: the date, the best, and the worst. After
a while…. weeks, or months… you review what you’ve written and
you pay attention to patterns. Was the worst part of you day more
often than not related to your job? Then it is definitely time to
consider if that aspect of your job can change, OR if your job can
change, or if your attitude about your job needs to change. Was the
best part fo your day often the time you spent with your pet? Then
likely it would be great to find ways to maximize that. Or, perhaps,
was the best part of your day some ministry or group you only get to
do very once in a while – but every time it happens it was the
best? Then, perhaps that is something you want to give more
attention to.

See?
Pay attention to patterns, and USE them to discern ways to live a
life with even more good, more love, more wholeness. I want to note
that the staff I and I do this at staff meeting, although then we
review the whole week. I’m often SHOCKED that the answers I find
aren’t the ones I expect, and I think we all know each other a whole
lot more because we’ve heard where both joy and frustration live in
each other’s lives.

If
you want a resource to help you with this process, the book “Sleeping
with Bread” is particularly excellent.

The
second practical offering I have for you is from Nonviolent
Communication (insert gasps of shock here). As a whole, nonviolent
communication teaches us to listen and to speak in four parts:

With
clear objective observation

In
naming and claiming emotions. (ie. “I feel …”and never “You
make me feel…”

In
identifying and noticing the needs that are connected to the
feelings

In
making requests.

The
absolute key, as I see it, of Nonviolent Communication is in the link
between steps 2 and 3. That’s the part where we take feelings we are
feeling and examine them to figure out what needs are under them.
This process has proven to me that it can unravel even the most
complex experiences and responses for me. For example, I can think
of a time when I have felt annoyed. This is definitely something
worth considering, because it is MUCH more likely to give me
information about myself and what I’m needing than it is about what
I’d otherwise call the “source of my annoyance.” If I am
annoyed, it is because some need or needs of MINE aren’t being met.
Sometimes this is because my need for rest isn’t being met. Other
times it is my need for harmony, other times for order! In fact,
feeling annoyed has sometimes reflected a need for some
consideration. In this way of looking at things, feelings are gifts
given to us to help us navigate and understand the needs that
motivate them. They’re like flags marking something that needs our
attention. (Note: anger is super extra this, it marks a violation of
something we really value!)

Once
we are able to notice a feeling, it gives us a chance to consider
what needs are underneath it. Then, once we know the need, we have a
LOT of information about what is going on with us. Further, since
needs can be met in infinite ways, we have a lot of choices about how
to proceed. If what I’m needing is rest, I can go home and take a
nap… or I can go to the bathroom and take an extra long time
washing my hands…. or maybe just take a moment and say a few breath
prayers. If what I’m needing is consideration, then I have the
chance to consider what that can look like and if I’m willing to make
a request related to it.

All
of this means that feelings, which we have all the time, can be great
sources of wisdom about who we are, what we need, and that opens up
the door for some great discernment.

It
seems like a good moment to point out that in Nonviolent
Communication, needs are considered universal, and they’re not a bad
thing. They just ARE. The goal is to become aware of them when
they’re flaring up and then become aware of the MANY ways they can be
fulfilled, so that we start getting creative rather than trying to
force the same solutions over and over that don’t work.

Discernment
is very different from decision making. It is deeper. It is about
the why even more than the what. It can be reached through Daily
Examen, or Nonviolent communication considerations, or even just
through the quiet of contemplative prayer. I appreciate a difference
between petitionary prayer – asking God for stuff- and
contemplative prayer – being present with God. Personally, I enjoy
and find much more value in the latter. It also helps with
discernment.

I’ve
been told that when Quakers have an extra long agenda for a meeting,
they spend twice as long in silent prayer before it begins. There is
wisdom in that. Rushing to decisions can be as bad as avoiding them
all together. But discernment, deep consideration, gives us all a
way to make good, spiritual decisions.

It
turns out, of course, that pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’s feet
was a perfectly acceptable option. I maintain that selling it and
giving the money away would have been too. The key is probably in
the reasons underneath and around each decision, and figuring those
out takes discernment.

May
we practice it – regularly and well. Amen

1Gail
R. O’Day, “John” New Interpreter’s Bible page 702.

2Apple
Dictionary, “discernment” accessed 4/4/2019.

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

April 7, 2019

Sermons

“Crying Out” based on Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29 &…

April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I
long thought that Palm Sunday was a big Yay-Jesus parade, where
people shouted Hosanna to say “YAY God!” and it was clear that
everyone got how great God really is and how God was working through
Jesus. I thought that the enthusiasm for God and Jesus was just so
big that the stones themselves were on the brink of crying out. Then
I read John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg’s book “The
Last Week”
and learned that wasn’t it.

The story of Palm Sunday is so
much bigger, so much deeper, and so much BETTER than what I
originally understood. It was, indeed, a Yay-Jesus parade, and it
did, indeed, reflect people celebrating their excitement over God’s
acts in the world. But a WHOLE lot was happening underneath and
around it, and to understand that, we need to look at the Jesus
movement itself, the thing that was being celebrated.

I’m
working today largely from John Dominic Crossan’s book “Who
Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel
Stories of The Death of Jesus.” When
he was here last fall for a Carl lecture we learned that he goes by
“Dom.” As he often does, Dom manages to get into the heart of
things by explaining the context. Context is what makes his
scholarship so awesome.

Jesus was a Galilean, whose
ministry was centered in Galilee, right? What was Galilee? Galilee
was a colony of the Roman Empire, and it was a part of what had been
the Northern Kingdom of Israel. We talk about the Northern Kingdom
of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judea because under King David
and his son King Solomon there had been a single united Jewish
country, Ancient Israel, for about 80 years after 1000 BCE. It then
had a civil war and split into two – north and south. The Northern
Kingdom of Israel lost a war to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and its
leadership was taken into exile. The Assyrian empire took over the
land and imposed their customs. The Southern Kingdom did better, it
didn’t lose and go into exile for another 150 years, AND the Southern
Kingdom also got the chance to return from exile and rebuild.
Afterward, it became extra judgmental of its secessionist northern
neighbors, both for the differences that had been present in the
civil war AND for the fact that they were no longer a pure Jewish
state, in faith or custom.

We know some of this history
because of the stories of the Samaritan woman at the well and the
Good Samaritan. Samaria is, after all, directly north of Judea, the
Southern kingdom. What we sometimes forget is that Galilee is the
region NORTH of Samaria. It was ALSO a part of the old Northern
Kingdom. The difference is that in the time of the Maccabees, about
150 years before the birth of Jesus, faithful Jews from Judea moved
up to Galilee to try to resettle faithful Judaism up north. The
Galilee of Jesus day was multicultural and multilingual, rural, and
full of faithful Jews as well as lots of people who weren’t Jewish at
all. It was also a colony of the Roman Empire.

Now,
as Dom says, “The Jewish peasantry was prone … to refuse quiet
compliance with heavy taxation, subsistence farming, debt
impoverishment, and land expropriation. Their traditional ideology
of land
was enshrined in the ancient scriptural laws.”^¹
Galilee itself was a fruitful place, and the land was useful to the
empire. Dom explains, “Lower Galilee’s 470 square miles are
divided by four alternating hills and valleys running in a generally
west-east direction. It is rich in cereals on the valley floors and
olives on the hillside slopes.”^²
It was also pretty rich in radicalism, perhaps BECAUSE of the
percentage of very faithful Jewish people who believed land to be a
gift from God for the people of God.

Now,
John the Baptist did NOT do his ministry in Galilee. (I JUST figured
this out.) His ministry across the river in Perea, in the DESERT. I
hadn’t realized that Galilee didn’t have deserts until Dom pointed it
out. The other side of the Jordan is the side people had waited on,
it is the side they entered the Promised Land from. Galilee, like
Samaria and Judea, had been part of the Promised Land. According to
Dom, John the Baptist “is drawing people into the desert east of
the Jordan, but instead of gathering a large crowd there and bringing
them into the Promised Land in one great march, he sends them through
the Jordan individually, baptizing away their sins in its purifying
waters and telling them to await in holiness the advent of the
avenging God.”^³
He was re-enacting the entrance into the Promised Land, that gift of
LAND for the people. Thus he was challenging the religious,
political, social, and economic bases of Roman control.^⁴
This got him killed.

Being a colony isn’t a great
thing for people. That’s obvious, right? Colonies exist to bring
wealth to the country that controls them, and that means that the
people in the colony are means of wealth production. Dom explains a
bit more:

“When
a people is exploited by colonial occupation, one obvious response is
armed revolt or military rebellion. But sometimes that situation of
oppression is experienced as so fundamentally evil and so humanly
hopeless that only transcendental intervention is deemed of any use.
God,
and God alone, must act to restore a ruined world to justice and
holiness.
This demands a vision and a program that is radical, countercultural,
utopian, world-negating, or, as scholars say eschatological.
That terms comes form the Greek word for ‘the last things’ and means
that God’s solution will be so profound as to constitute an ending of
things, a radical new world-negation.”

The best known example of this
in the Bible is when God acted to free the people from slavery in
Egypt. The people were oppressed, they cried out, God heard them,
and sent Moses and set the people free.

That particular story is
celebrated and remembered at the Passover. The Passover is holy
celebration of God’s action to set the people free when they had no
power to free themselves. The Palm Sunday parade was a formalized
entrance to the Jewish celebration of Passover in Jerusalem, at the
time when Jerusalem was ALSO under Roman Imperial control. It was,
thus, a very dynamic situation. The potential for Jewish upraising
at Passover is the reason that the Roman Governor showed up then,
with a lot of military might and show.. In fact, the Roman Governor
came into the West Gate with a LARGE military parade, at about the
same time that the Gospels say that the Jesus movement came in the
East gate with a populist God parade.

Can you feel the tension rising?

Dom
goes further into explaining how religious ideas of eschatology, of
last things, work. He says that there are two models, and John the
Baptist used one while Jesus used the other. The John the Baptist
way was passive for humans and active for God. It was the idea that
God is going to come save “us,” where us indicates a single group
defined by those who know that God is about to act. This sort of
eschatology is based on a future
promise that God will
act to save us. Dom says, “This future but imminent apocalyptic
radicalism is dependent on the overpowering action of God moving to
restore justice and peace to an earth ravished by injustice and
oppression.”^⁵
That might sound pretty good, until you hear the one Jesus used.

As
a reminder, Jesus was baptized by John. That means he was a DISCIPLE
of John (a student of John’s), but one way or another he branched off
of John’s teachings and went his own way. The second way that Jesus
ended up going is called sapiential
eschatology. Dom
says, “The word saptientia
is
Latin for ‘wisdom’ and sapiential eschatology announces that God has
given all
human beings
the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so
live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to
all observers. It involves a way of life for now rather than a hope
for life for the future. … In apocalyptical eschatology, we are
waiting for God to act. In sapiential eschatology, God is waiting
for us to act.”^⁶

As
far as I can understand it, this is the crux of it all. We follow
Jesus, who taught us about God who is already present to us, who
works with us to change things for the better. We aren’t waiting on
God. We’re working with God. Jesus’s ministry was one of
proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Dom explains this well too, “the
sayings and parables of the historical Jesus often describe a world
of radical
egalitarianism
in which discrimination and hierarchy, exploitation and oppression
should no longer exist.”^⁷
The Jesus kingdom movement, “is not a matter of Jesus’ power but
of their empowerment. He himself has no monopoly on the kingdom; it
is there for anyone with the courage to embrace it.”^⁸
All of this may explain why they could kill Jesus, but not his
movement.

It
also explains why the crowds were so excited on Palm Sunday and
throughout Jesus’ ministry. Jesus was speaking to their problems,
oppression, debt, loss of land, loss of subsistence, loss of dignity
AND he was offering them the reality that God
was already with them and they could change it themselves!
No wonder they were having a Yay-Jesus parade.

I
think the big questions this leaves US with today are about how we
best live the Kingdom. If it is already here, if God is already with
us, if we can partake in the radical egalitarianism, if God has
given all
human beings
the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so
live that God’s power, rule, and domination are evidently present to
all observers… then what is it that we need make space for so that
we can LIVE it!??? How do we access that wisdom we already have, how
do we live that life that God has made possible?

Or, to put it another way, how
do we step out of the world’s obsessions with consumption,
acquisition, fear, existential anxiety, competition, hierarchy, and
distractions SO THAT we can live the GOOD life God already made
possible? Since the goal is to live in love and allow lovingness to
expand in us, and I wonder if it is a matter of balance. There is a
need for rest, to savor the goodness; AND there is a need for
activity, to respond to the goodness. There is a need for more
learning to know how to best respond, AND there is a need to teach
others what we know. There is a need to attend to the goodness of
life AND there is a need to attend to the brokenness and see it
clearly. There is definitely a need to play – to live into joy,
laughter and delight AND a need to be courageous and loving in
seeking justice for all. Because part of the call of Jesus is to
live a good life, and the other part is to make it possible to for
others to live a good life – but not JUST a good life! The call is
to a life that is a transformed, courageous, God-soaked with love.

In
the end of our story we hear, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd
said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered,
‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”
This is the part I had entirely wrong. It isn’t that the stones are
bursting with joy. It is that the people cannot be silenced because
they’ve been empowered.
God’s empowering love is with them, and they’ve learned that they
already have what they need to change their lives and change the
world. And once people know that, they can’t be silenced. Thanks be
to God! Amen

1John
Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus: Exposing the Roots of
Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Stories of The Death of Jesus (USA:
HarperSanFrancisco: 1995) 40.

2Crossan,
42.

3Crossan,
44.

4Crossan,
44.

5Crossan,
47.

6Crossan,
47.

7Crossan
48.

8Crossan,
48.

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

April 14, 2019