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Sermons

“Favoritism in the Family” based on  Genesis 27:1-29

  • June 18, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

If I have a favorite matriarch, its Rebekah. This is not because of this story. This story is Rebekah at her worst. However, her worst isn’t as bad as Sarah, whose treatment of Hagar is atrocious. Nor does Rebekah’s worst even relate to being married to the same man as her sister, a reality that make Leah and Rachel appear rather petty and immature.

Rebekah has a chance to shine her own light through the texts, and they show her as a woman who chooses. Not only does she choose, but her choices change history, repeatedly. The first time we meet her she’s at a well. Abraham’s servant has been sent to find a wife for Issac from Abraham’s home country. The story is told well in scripture, from Genesis 24:

“Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, ‘Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac.’ The servant said to him, ‘Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land; must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?’ Abraham said to him, ‘See to it that you do not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me and swore to me, “To your offspring I will give this land”, he will send his angel before you; you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine; only you must not take my son back there.’So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter.”(Genesis 24:2-9)

The servant, still rather overwhelmed with his task, comes up with a plan. He’ll head to the well, which would be both practical for accessing water after a desert journey AND practical for finding a woman as the women tended to gather at the well. Then he prays asking for God’s help in identifying the woman. He asks for God’s guidance so that that whichever woman he asks for water from who ALSO offers to water his camels will be the woman he’s seeking.

Then the beautiful young Rebekah attracts his eye and he asks her for a drink. She immediate responds with water and then offers to water to water his camels too. Since there were 10 camels, this seems like a rather vigorous task, indicating rather significant hospitality and a commitment to the care of a stranger. The servant’s plan worked out to identify a hard working and caring young woman. Even better, she was kindred to Abraham, granddaughter to his brother, which was the goal. (The matriarchs and patriarchs are incredibly inbred, sort of like the European royal families in the 19th century, please don’t get too distracted by it.)

Then Rebekah invites Abraham’s servant to stay with her family and heads home to prepare the welcome. When the servant comes to her family home and tells his story, her father and brother IMMEDIATELY offer to send her off to marry Abraham’s son. As she was still unmarried and available, it is likely that she was also pretty young, prepubescent. Perhaps the journey home took long enough for her to grow up a bit more. (Let’s hope!) In any case, they did forget to ask her if she wanted to go initially, but when the servant wanted to leave immediately the next morning, they asked Rebekah if she wanted to go, and she agreed to it, including the immediately part.

Now, in these first few choices, we already see that Rebekah’s open heart and hard working nature are changing the course of history! She choose to give him a drink, to water his camels, to invite him into her family’s home, and agreed to go and marry a man she’d never met (nor heard of previously), and to do so immediately.

If she had not, the story suggests, Issac would not have married and the lineage would have stopped there. But it doesn’t. In fact, Issac and Rebekah’s meeting continues to indicate Rebekah’s openness to this marriage and her willingness to engage in it. (Here you see why I hope the journey was long enough for her to mature a bit.)

“Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, and said to the servant, ‘Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?’ The servant said, ‘It is my master.’ So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.: (Genesis 24:62-67)

The next time we hear of Rebekah is said to be 20 years later when she hasn’t get gotten pregnant. #AllTheMatriarchsStruggledWithInfertility Issac prays for her and she gets pregnant, with twins. I know that the Bible predates the modern concept of romance, but it is SO easy to project it onto these two. Until this point, that is. Once pregnant,and for the first time, we hear of Rebekah praying to God. This is significant because the monotheism of the Bible starts with Abraham and Sarah on their journey away from their home-country. It is not assumed to extend to the family they left back home, and it is clearly a choice on Rebekah’s part to accept the faith of Issac’s family.

The story goes on to say that Rebekah had a terrible pregnancy:

The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her,
‘Two nations are in your womb,
  and two peoples born of you shall be divided;
one shall be stronger than the other,
  the elder shall serve the younger.’  (Genesis 25:22-23.)

Sarah never had direct contact with YHWH, although Hagar did. In fact, I think Rebekah is the only one of the matriarchs who is said to have an experience of the Divine. None of us are shocked that the result of the Divine experience is an inverting of the normal ordering of human society. God is like that. The order of human life mean that the elder son would be the one in charge, the inheritor of a double portion, the patriarch. Yet, Rebekah hears otherwise while they are still in her womb.

The story continues to indicate that the parents had different favorites in the family, “When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.” (Genesis 25:27-28) This little snippet reminds us that the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs are meant to function in two ways simultaneously: both to tell a good story that makes sense about an individual, and to explain relationships between groups claiming to be the descendants of those individuals. Thus the story is about relations between nations AND about individuals at the same time. This little bit reminds us that the ancient Israelites, by the time they wrote this story down, were domesticated people who had distanced themselves from the nomadic hunter-gatherers of their recent past.

And now, we are caught up and ready to deal with the story read today! Rebekah is committed to the fulfillment of the prediction she’d heard during her pregnancy. She acts as if it is very important. The story believes that blessing is … an act of God of some sort. Issac needs to strengthen himself so that he can function as God’s emissary in the giving of the blessing, and the story clearly believes that the future itself is changed by the speaking of the words. The blessing can’t be taken back, but it can be tricked onto landing on the wrong person. This is an OLD story. The blessing seems to reflect back on the words of God that Rebekah heard during her pregnancy, ones that guided her to make them true.

Rebekah has a plan on hand. (I’ve been told that this subversive women sermon series could also be called “women who plan.”) She is willing to take any curses onto herself. She pushes her favorite son to trick her husband into giving him the blessing he’d reserve for HIS favorite and eldest. She is remarkably committed to fulfilling the words of God, even at cost to her own existence. She pays a high cost for it too. By the end of the story her favorite son is sent away, and we don’t think they ever meet again. I say we don’t think because her death is never mentioned in scripture. Her participation in this deception and her final work to have her son sent back to her family for safety (and the marrying of a woman from Abraham’s home country and family) are her last notated actions. These are the final choices she makes. She fulfills the words of her husband’s God, even at the risk of his fury and curses.

Rebekah starts out leaving her home and her family to marry a man she’s never met who is following a God she doesn’t know. (Seriously.  The radical openness and adventurous spirit of these ancient women is astounding.) Then she has an experience of this God, more of one than her husband is ever said to have. Issac is said to have prayers answered but not to hear God’s responses. Furthermore, given the narrative about child sacrifice, Issac also has some serious reasons to distrust God. But Rebekah is given comfort and knowledge to use.  Her actions, ones that seem like they break apart the family she created, are done to fulfill the promises God made to her. Her husband’s God at that. She leaves her own family, and then willingly participates in breaking her family out of her faith in this God! By the end of the story she loses her favorite son, her husband is near death, and her other son is (appropriately) mightily angry with her. And she’s not mentioned again. She burns all of her power and influence in this one story that disrupts her entire life.

So, there she is, this adventurous, courageous, pushy, manipulative, faithful matriarch. However, I’m not sure I want anyone to mimic her choices, and there aren’t a lot of moral compass points in this story if you take it directly.

Many scholars have suggested that the Northern Tribes (Israel) identified Jacob as their primary ancestor while the Southern Tribes (Judah – Jew) identified Abraham. In the process of forming a united identity the two were linked. In order to make it less hierarchical, neither was made the son of the other, instead they were separated by Issac. Issac, indeed, is more visible as the son of his father and the father of his sons than he is a stand alone figure. He’s the link. These stories exist to create shared identity! They are successful in doing so, in part, by having a very relatable matriarch, and in part by naming an enemy as the “other” that the group can differentiate from.

Those the Bible identifies as Edomites (descendants of Esau) were the nation to the south of Judah, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies of the Israelites. They became a vassal of Judah for a while, but also contributed to their destruction and exile. This relationship is all being explained with the characters of Esau and Jacob, and in this story the behavior of their parents.

Which is to say, that this is a formative story about the nation, and its relationship with other nations. Similarly, we have narratives that explain our different relationships to Canada and Mexico, ones that aren’t entirely honest about the reasons we worry more about one border than another. We have stories about our relationships with Great Britain as our (I recently heard this) “longest standing ally,” which conveniently forgets that they were our first opponent in wary; we have stories that pervade our subconscious about the relationships between European Americans and Native Americans, ones that include the idea that Columbus “discovered” a continent with millions of people living on it; we have stories about relationships between people of different races that dismiss the history of slavery, segregation, and choices to limit US citizenship to people who were “white enough.” We have stories, as a nation, who tell us who we are, who we are supposed to be, and who we need to exclude and dis-empower to get there.

Those stories today are more overt and readable than they’ve been in my lifetime. More than ever the stories that are being told to our nation sound like telling the so-called descendants of Jacob that Esau (and thus his descendants) was freakishly hairy, smelly, and uncouth. In fact, many of the stories I hear today are intended to create fear of the people who claim to descend from Ishmael (the Muslims). It turns out that the patriarchs, the matriarchs, and their stories still impact global relations today.

It also turns out that at the end of this narrative Esau marries a daughter of Ishmael, symbolically restoring relationships between the two “unblessed” parts of Abraham’s family. While I don’t actually encourage marriages as means of restoration (symbolic or otherwise), I hear God calling us to expand our definition of family, including by telling new stories about who we are and who we can be. May we hear, and tell such stories. 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 18, 2017

Sermons

“An Audacious Gift” based on Deuteronomy 15:1-18 and Mark…

  • April 2, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Before
we can examine this story of a woman anointing Jesus’s head, we have
to separate out what the story is from what it isn’t.  Much like the
Christmas stories of Luke and Matthew being subconsciously melded
(FYI: Luke has shepherds, Matthew has magi, no one has both!), the
multiple versions of this story have been conflated into a rather
confusing whole.  Each gospel tells of Jesus, at a meal, interrupted
by a woman giving him an extravagant gift.  Each gospel indicates
that someone(s) is horrified by it, and leads to Jesus responding,
“The poor you will always have with you” and informing us that
her story has now become an intricate part of his story.

Matthew
and Mark tell the same story, so there are three stories get
conflated.  Here are the relevant pieces:  in LUKE, and only in Luke,
the woman is named as a sinner; in JOHN, and only in John, the woman
is Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus); in Luke and John Jesus’ feet
are anointed whereas in Matthew and Mark his head is anointed; the
whole wiping his feet with hair and tears thing is unique to Luke;
the objector is Judas in John while it is the pharisees in Luke, some
people in Mark, and the disciples in Matthew; and in Luke an extra
parable is thrown in as part of Jesus’ counter objection.

As
the Jesus Seminar puts it, “In all probability, the story of a
woman intruder anointing Jesus during a symposium (dinner or males)
took various forms as it was related in the oral tradition,”1
and “The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar were of the opinion that the
original form of the story is beyond recovery.”2

Which
is to say, there are three stories based on something that might have
happened, which are each told to make their own points.  Today we’re
looking at Mark’s story, and we’re going to derive meaning from
Mark’s story.  One of the great benefits of having various versions
of a story is that we can assume they’ve each developed to offer us
different – and necessary – points of view and lessons.

In
Mark, Jesus’ head is anointed.  According to The Jewish Annotated New
Testament, “Jesus is anointed; the
action could be either that of anointing a king or of preparing a
body for burial.  Mark’s principle of irony would suggest both.”3
The story comes 2 days before Passover in Mark, giving an easy
connection to the need to anoint his body before his burial
(especially since it wouldn’t be anointed after his burial).
However, that also means that it comes after the Palm Sunday parade
in which Jesus’ actions claim the kingship of Israel.  Thus it fits
well as an affirmation of his role as Messiah, a symbolism very
important to the early Christians who would have passed this story
along.  I agree with the Jewish Annotated New Testament, I think the
implication is very intentionally both and: kingship and burial.

Now,
this unnamed subversive woman broke into an all male dinner party,
one to which she was inherently not welcome.  She broke in to offer
an extravagant and intimate gift to Jesus.  The alabaster jar of a
very costly ointment of nard was likely imported from the Himalayas,4
and was more commonly used a few drops at a time.  I’m guessing, sort
of like a new car, that once the jar was opened the value decreased
significantly.  This unnamed woman opened the jar and poured it ALL
onto Jesus’ head.  Mark says that this is a gesture made with
fragrant ointment worth about $15,000.

As
Pheme Perkins puts it in the New Interpreter’s Bible,
“The
expansive gesture, breaking and pouring out the entire vial of
expensive ointment rather than using a few drops, forms a foil to the
cheapness of Jesus’ life in the eyes of those who seek to destroy
him.”5
SNAP. Wow. This unnamed woman is presented as understanding Jesus’
ministry, passion, purpose, and value.  In particular, she’s
presented as understanding what the disciples do not.  Perkins says,
“The
nameless woman’s gestures shows that Jesus’ followers still do not
grasp the necessity of his passion.”6
(The passion in this case being the more formal definition of his
suffering and death.) She stands in contrast to the men.  Her action
indicates a profound understanding of what is happening, while they
remain in denial.  Their RESPONSES to her action indicate exactly how
deep that denial runs.

They
respond with objections, suggesting that her action was an
inappropriate use of resources.  I don’t believe them.  I think they
were jealous of her wisdom, or infuriated at  her audacity in
breaking into their dinner, or ashamed they hadn’t thought to respond
with such vulnerability, or just annoyed with the drama, or maybe all
of it.  I think they were displeased with this woman, and her
presence at their dinner, and her grand gesture and they found some
justification from their displeasure and projected it.  I think this
because I’ve been human for a while now, and I know that’s how I
work, and my reading suggests I’m not alone!  We feel things, and
then we justify them.  The disciples with Jesus that night did it.
They felt annoyed, jealous, ashamed, or something uncomfortable and
they justified it by condemning this woman’s profound and generous
gesture and proclaiming that she was acting unrighteously.

They suggest that the vial
should have been sold and the money given to the poor.  This is how
we know they really didn’t get it.  Jesus has been teaching them
about kin-dom values for quite a while, but they still stand in the
normal values of the world.  They see the expensive ointment and
assign to it a monetary value.  The woman looked at resource she had,
and used it for the best possible use.  Here’s the thing, at some
point, if it is not to be wasted, an expensive container of perfumed
ointment will be used, right?  I mean, it is possible that it could
be bought and sold for years or decades on end, and I suspect it
would eventually even lose value in aging (who knows, I could be
wrong), but in the end the purpose of it is to be USED. So, if it was
going to be used someday, what better day and what better person than
Jesus?

The
unnamed woman uses what she has to acknowledge his importance
(anointing of kings), to respond to his faithfulness (which would get
him killed), and to prepare him for burial (a gift he received only
from her).  By using it on Jesus, she implies that there is no higher
purpose for this gift than to anoint Jesus.  By using on Jesus, she
implies that she understands that the time of his death was
impending, and she wanted to ease his terrible journey.

It is a profound gift.  Selling
the ointment so that someone else had it and could use it some other
day for some other person, even to give the proceeds to the poor,
would have valued Jesus less.

The
disciples were still in denial about the imminent death of Jesus, I
think that’s the core of why they responded so poorly to her action.
They didn’t want it to be true.  However, this woman – whoever she
was – was willing to face reality.  When Jesus speaks of her, and
says her action will be told, there is another irony.  Her action is
told, but her name is not.  As The
Jewish Annotated Bible
puts it, “The
anointing will be told in remembrance of her,
but her name is not given.  Perhaps the omission of her name is
ironic: the unnamed ‘everywoman’ understands him, while the named
disciples, the authority figures of old (from the author’s point of
view), do not.”7

Now,
the named objection
to her action is in the care of the poor, and commentators believe
that Jesus’ answer was a reference to Deuteronomy 15:118,
a portion of the text we read this morning about the Sabbatical year
which was aimed to prevent generational cycles of poverty.  It says,
“Since
there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore
command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your
land.’”  Perkins takes this a bit further, saying, “Jesus
points out that the Law (Deut 15:11) makes everyone responsible for
helping the poor. If the poor are in desperate need, then this
woman’s failure to donate the cost of the ointment is neither the
cause nor the cure.”9
I would agree.  The whole of society was aimed at enriching the
already wealthy and powerful on the backs of the poor and powerless.
One charitable action would not have transformed that system.  On the
other hand, she guided Jesus on his way to death, and his death and
resurrection have been significant in transforming society (even if
the process is still ongoing).

I’ve
always struggled with that one line in this story, about the poor
always being with us.  It has felt like a contrast to the vision of
the kindom, and the values of the Sermon on the Mount.  It has felt
like giving up on the world as it should be.  However, the referenced
verse, in context, sounds much different.  Instead of passively
accepting poverty as a part of the economy of the world, the
Deuteronomy passage aims to minimize extreme poverty, AND AT THE SAME
TIME admits that no system will be perfect.  Thus it calls for
compassion and generosity as well.  The whole of the Torah seeks to
create a just society, in particular by giving each family access to
land the freedom to benefit from its wealth.  However, it knows that
widows, orphans, and foreigners will not benefit like everyone else,
and so it finds ways to care for them too.  In this context, it
sounds more like Jesus saying, “life will never be totally fair,
and some people will always be on the bottom, but create a fair
system anyway and take care of those who struggle in that system
too.”  Its a bit different than the verse I’ve tried to make sense
of for all these years.

To
return to this profound, subversive, audacious, and compassionate
woman, I wonder what it would be like to follow in her footsteps.
She listened well, and maybe not even to Jesus.  We don’t know that
they’d met.  It may simply be that she knew the ways of the world and
could read the signs of the days and could tell what was coming.  But
she listened, even to the unpleasantness, and she found a way to
respond.

I
think some of us are more like this woman than we are like other
Biblical characters.  The most likely explanation for her having a
very expensive container of perfumed ointment is that she was
wealthy.  Like many generous donors around here, she choose to use
some of what she had because it was exactly what was needed at that
moment.  Unlike in his response to the “wealthy young man,” Jesus
doesn’t ask for all that she had, he simply accepts the gift that she
gives.  

She
uses what she has for the kindom of God, and the vision of Jesus.
Its value in her eyes is its usefulness to Jesus, not the resale
value!  What a wonderful way to think of our resources – both the
physical ones and time, energy, passion, and labor we have to give.
Whatever the market value of them may be, the most important
usefulness of them is in loving God and loving our neighbors.
Figuring that out may not be simple, linear, or obvious, but will
always be wonderful.  May we figure it out! Amen

1Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), 115.

2Funk
et al,  116.

3The
Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible
Translation,
edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 88.

4The
Jewish Annotated New Testament, 88.

5Pheme
Perkins “Mark” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 8
(Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1995), 698.

6Perkins,
698.

7The
Jewish Annotated New Testament, 88-89.

8Funk
et al, 116.

9Perkins,
699.

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

“Woman at the Well, With a Twist”based on1 Kings…

  • March 26, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

When I was in seminary, I had the great privilege of interning at the Hollywood United Methodist Church. That church had a deep commitment to the people in its community, a thirst for a deeper faith and ways of following Jesus, incredible diversity, and joy that in being community to each other AND whoever showed up. They were wonderful teachers and in two years of being in ministry with them, my heart and mind grew.

I often took public transportation to Hollywood, which meant that I emerged from the subway onto the Walk of Fame next to Mann’s Chinese Theater. It was one long block south of the church. If you haven’t been there, then you might not know that the Hollywood Walk of Fame is an intriguing combination of tourists, people dressed up as cartoon characters, people paid minimum wage to hand out leaflet advertisements for clubs and tours, and…. most annoyingly of all… evangelists.

It was my practice to ignore the evangelists. They were usually new Christians who were part of mega-churches from some state far away, expressing their new-found devotion by trying to terrify others into believing in Jesus. While I found them to be the most annoying part of my commute, I kept my head down, and kept moving.

My last semester of seminary, however, we had an exchange student.  He was a college junior who had been raised in a conservative evangelical tradition, and he mentioned that he didn’t know how deconstruct the argument that the street-evangelists made. So a bunch of us went to Hollywood: 3 last semester seminarians, 1 very interested college exchange student, and the seminary dean; to be evangelized.

We were accosted as soon as we emerged from the subway. It was so easy to deconstruct their arguments that I felt a little bit guilty doing it, like we were teasing a hungry child by putting food out of their reach. However, the young man needed to know, so we played. Their argument was developed in this way: they sought to establish that we had “sinned” in some simplistic way (lying, stealing, etc), they meant to inform us that our sin condemned us to hell, and then they intended to establish that the only way to avoid hell was by professing specific words about Jesus. If there was a plan after that I don’t know it, we started messing with them on step one 😉 Eventually I admitted to being a pastor at the church which was visible from the corner, and they got even more confused. (After all, I’m female.) I fear we may have even messed up their new-found, overly simplistic, faith.

Most of the time, when reading a dialogue between Jesus and religious authorities, it feels like Jesus is playing with them in the way that we (the overly theologically educated) played with the street evangelists. Jesus terrifies and stumps the Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, and scribes whenever he talks to them. The religious authorities of the day were presumably brilliant men who had spent their lifetimes studying the Torah and seeking to know God. Jesus doesn’t even appear to exert any effort in beating them at their own game. He’s GOOD. He’s the master. He wins every round with the religious authorities and doesn’t even break a sweat – well, at least according the Gospels, books written to make him look good 😉

I don’t think we can fully appreciate this story without remembering how effective Jesus is at deconstructing the arguments of the wisest scholars of his day. Jesus treated her as a partner, and equal, and enjoyable conversation partner. He didn’t aim to stump her, terrify her, or silence her. He spoke to her without an audience. It wasn’t a competition. It was a conversation.

The Samaritan woman was the opposite of a religious authority. She had no formal religious education, she was female, she wasn’t considered “Jewish,” she was part of a hated group of “others,” she was an unmarried adult woman, she may well have been socially ostracized from the other women in her village, and compared to just about everyone she was powerless. We don’t know for sure if she was socially ostracized, scholars and preachers have been deriving it for centuries from the fact that she was at the well at noon, when the women gathered to get water at dawn and dusk when it would be coolest to do so. Being at the well at noon MAY suggest that she was trying to avoid the other women, who may have been pretty mean to her.

We also don’t really know her marital status or its significance. Jesus says she’s been married 5 times and “the one you have now is not your husband.” The way I see it, there are two possibilities for this: one is that she is having an affair with someone else’s husband and the other is that she is living with a man who she is not having sex with. However, as Jesus doesn’t seem particularly INTERESTED in this fact, he just names it and moves on, we are going to as well. If she’s “been married” 5 times than either she’s been a widow many times, she’s had men divorce her and leave her without financial recourse many times, or some combination of the two. The few facts we know suggest her life was very difficult.

She is a person on the margins in many intersecting ways. If you defined where power and privilege lived in that society and then you took its opposite, she’d be sitting in the position of its opposite. In Judah, in Jerusalem, in Jewish society, the chief priests and scribes sat in the middle of power. When Jesus interacts with those who have power and privilege he decreases their power. When Jesus interacts with those who have no power and privilege he increases their power.  He lives the verse from Isaiah (40:4) that says, “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.”

There are two other super important pieces of context that we need to review before we can look more deeply at this text. However, they’re both much shorter than my first point 😉 One is location. The text says that Jesus “had to go through Samaria,” but that’s simply not true. Jews who were traveling from Judah to Galilee did not go through Samaria. They went around, even though it would be as convenient as driving from here to Ohio without driving in Pennsylvania. However, that’s how people did it. So no one who heard the story in early times would have believed the “he had to” go through Samaria. He CHOOSE to go through Samaria. That’s the sort of crazy, out of the norm, guy Jesus was. This conversation is said to happen at the well at Sychar, which means that it was near a historical location of Samaritan worship AND at a historic well dating back to Jacob (as mentioned in the story). The conversation about appropriate places to worship God is placed in a particularly apt location.

Finally, we need to remember what happens when a woman and a man meet at a well. Throughout Genesis there is a less than subtle theme whereby a meeting at the well means a marriage is about to take place. Issac’s wife Rebecca is found at a well. Jacob meets Rachel at a well. By the time you’ve read Genesis (as the Young Adult Bible Study did last year), every time you hear “well”, you hear wedding bells. Setting up Jesus and the disempowered Samaritan woman to meet alone at a well seems to open the door for flirtation, or a romantic interlude, or the possibility of an impending marriage that would horrify everyone who heard of it. (So, it sounds like Jesus.)  

Jesus is sitting by this well, and an unnamed woman from the village comes out to draw water. Jesus initiates conversation with her by saying, “Give me a drink.” Now, this is how all the other well stories begin, so it is consistent, except for ALL the social barriers that exist between them. So she calls him out on it – she asks him, essentially, if this is really want he wants to do. By speaking to her, he is acknowledging her humanity, and breaking rules that kept unrelated men and women as well as Jews and Samaritans apart. She responses with grace, making sure is willing to take the risk involved in being seen speaking to her. This woman responds to Jesus by trying to take care of HIM, and his reputation.

Now, it is very clear throughout this interaction that the writer of the Gospel of John is interesting in making his points about who Jesus is, ad he does so by having Jesus say the things he wants said. However, we’re going to take them as they’re written, because we have no other source for this story. They pontificate about water, and then Jesus has his famous line about her husbands. The really interesting part starts after that. The woman doesn’t argue with him, nor is she silenced by him. She doesn’t apologize, actually, she doesn’t even respond directly! She uses what he’s said as an opening for the question that represents the BIG HUGE ELEPHANT near the well. She uses it as a transition. She says, “Ah! From what you know of me, you must be a prophet. So, then, prophet, help me understand.  My people have worshipped God on this mountain, but YOUR people say that God can only be worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem. Are you really going to stand at the base of the mountain where we have worshipped for generations and tell me that our worship is invalid? You came here, when others don’t come here. What do you mean by it?”

This, my friends, is why so many members of Congress are afraid to have Town Hall meetings, because of constituents like this woman! But Jesus is the one who helps to empower the disempowered, and he answers her as if this is the question he came hoping to hear! His answer is radical, and transformational for the faith of the Samaritans, the Jews, AND the Gentiles. He responds that God is everywhere, and can be worshipped everywhere, and that in order to connect with God one most only worship in “spirit and truth.” He throws away the power of the Temple and the chief priests, and gives it back to the people. (Almost as if this is a theme of his 😉 )

Once she hears THIS answer, she starts to get seriously curious about this man who is breaking all the boundaries, and she opens the door for him to reveal his true nature. (She is the first to hear it from him.) She believes him and runs off to tell all the people who had judged and excluded her about the good news. It even leads one to wonder if the reason Jesus went to Samaria, and the reason Jesus sat alone by the well, was to find a person who could help him connect with the Samaritans. Seems reasonable, right?

She goes out and tells all of her neighbors about what Jesus said and did, and they believed her and came to him. He taught them for days! She opened up the door for Jesus to engage with people he couldn’t access on his own. She’s often been called the first evangelist, which means the first one to share the good news on Jesus’ behalf, and I think that’s fair. I also think is worth noting that she shared GOOD NEWS, and unlike those street evangelists on the streets of Hollywood, she did not attempt to frighten anyone into loving God and listening to Jesus.

It seems, as the story ends, that Jesus wasn’t seeking a wife. He was seeking a partner in ministry, someone to open a door to which he didn’t have a key. He was open to the one willing to do it for him, and she was willing to take great risks for him. She is presented as kind, considerate, wise, deep, and honest. What a woman!

While there are many take-aways that could be drawn from this unnamed woman, I think the way to follow Jesus in this story comes directly from Jesus. We too live in a world where the powerful keep gaining power and the powerless keep losing power. The system sustains itself without anyone even trying, and there are a lot of people trying to keep the status quo in place anyway.

To follow Jesus is to refuse that system! It is to allow those in power to lose power and those without power to gain it. It is to see those who are least like us as being most important to us. It is to argue convincingly against the authorities who would do harm, and allow ourselves to be bested by those who rarely get heard at all. To follow Jesus is to turn inside out and upside down the values of the world, and believe deeply in that each and every person is a beloved child of God. May we learn his lessons and follow his twisty example! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Taking Her Seat” based on  Isaiah 58:1-12 and Luke…

  • March 5, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

In
all the times I’ve studied – and preached on – this little story
from Luke, I’ve never paid attention to where it falls in the Gospel.
I suspect I’ve  been too busy trying to justify Martha or emulate
Mary to attend to such a basic factor.  It turns out that the story
of Mary and Martha comes RIGHT AFTER the Parable of the Good
Samaritan.  That’s a pretty significant location.  The Parable of the
Good Samaritan is especially potent and it seems very likely that the
brilliant writer Luke would use the story that follows it to
strengthen and emphasize it, right?

Right.
They are meant to work together!

As
the Jesus Seminar puts it, “Both the Samaritan and Mary step out of
conventional roles in Luke’s examples.  This is Luke’s reason for
placing the story of Mary and Martha in tandem with the parable of
the Samaritan.  The Samaritan for Luke illustrates the second
commandment (“Love your neighbor as yourself”), Mary exemplifies
the fulfillment of the first commandment (“You are to love the Lord
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
energy, and with all your mind”).”1
Other commentators point out that where the Samaritan “sees” in
the way Jesus wants his followers to see, Mary “hears” as a model
for how his followers should listen for God and hear Jesus.  The two
characters complement and complete each other.  

Alan
Culpepper in the New Interpreter’s Bible explains the two stories
together in this way:

“In
it’s own way, the conjunction of the stories about the good Samaritan
and the female disciple voice Jesus’ protest against the rules and
boundaries set by the culture in which he lived.  As they develop
seeing and hearing as metaphors for the activity of the kingdom, the
twin stories also expose the injustice of social barriers that
categorize, restrict, and oppress various groups in any society
(Samaritan, victims, woman).  To love God with all one’s heart and
one’s neighbor as oneself meant then and now that one must often
reject society’s rules in favor of the codes of the kingdom – a
society without distinctions and boundaries between its members.  The
rules of this society are just two – to love God and one’s neighbor
– but these rules are so radically different from those of the
society in which we live that living by them invariably calls us to
disregard all else, break the rules, and follow Jesus’ example.”2
(NIB, 232)

It
seems this story may pack quite a punch!  So, while remembering to
keep the Good Samaritan story close, let’s look at this text again.
Both stories are set in the beginning of Luke’s story of Jesus
traveling to Jerusalem, a journey that will be concluded on Palm
Sunday.  This is part of a journey narrative.

For
some here today this is a new story, and for others it is very
familiar.  Often, I hear people talk about which sister they identify
with, this is one of the stories people use to make sense of their
own lives!  It is sometimes tempting to make the story overly
symbolic, but there are reasons to refrain from that temptation.
John Fitzmyer in the Anchor Bible Series says, “To
read this episode as a commendation of contemplative life over
against active life is to allegorize it beyond recognition and to
introduce a distinction that was born only of later preoccupation.
The episode is addressed to the Christian who is expected to be
contemplativus(a)
in actione.”3

The challenge of keeping this
story in perspective is that we are easily drawn into
particularities.  Jesus likely traveled WITH a large group of
followers and Martha was thus expected to prepare a large meal for
all of them, in this case without help.  We want to wonder if she was
trying to be too elaborate, or if Jesus was simply taking the side of
Mary because Martha triangulated, or if Mary was usually “lazy.”
It is easy to find ourselves in this story, but that makes it harder
to hear this story.  This is a story that KNOWS that faithfulness to
God requires learning AND action.  This is a story about Jesus, who
called people to change their whole lives.  It isn’t about who is
stuck doing the dishes, even though we know that story well.  And for
today at least (we’ll get to Martha in the future), it isn’t about
Martha at all!  Today is all about Mary 😉

Mary appears deceptively passive
in this story.  She doesn’t speak, she’s simply spoken about.  In
fact, all we really know is that she sat and listened.  Well, that
and her sister didn’t appreciate it.  Is sitting and listening really
so radical?

Yes.

It is radical because sitting at the feet of a teacher, a rabbi, was
the position of a disciple.
And in that time, women were not usually allowed to be disciples.
As the IVP Women’s Bible explains, “In
the first century women usually had no part in organized education.
Few were literate.  Their education was confined to domestic and
family matters.  Thus the considerable evidence that women were
followers of Jesus and played a significant part in the disciple band
is in contrast to the accepted practices of the day.”4

Mary’s
action isn’t just reflective of her radical choice because it wasn’t
one that she could take on her own.  Her action reflects the radical
inclusion of Jesus.  Back to the IVP Women’s Bible, “Jesus welcomed
many different women as learners (Mary of Bethany, Luke 10:39, 42)
and encouraged them to engage with him in his theological
conversations (Martha, Jn 11:21-27; Canaanite woman, Mt 15:24-28;
Samaritan woman, Jn 4:7-26).  This was in contrast to the rabbinic
practice of excluding women.”5
Throughout Luke, Jesus offered instruction in synagogues, homes, and
in personal conversations to WOMEN.6
Jesus was a radical teacher willing to accept many kinds of
students, and a radical student willing to claim her spot no matter
what others thought of her!  

I’m
told that Jesus taking on abnormal disciples extended well beyond
Mary and the teaching of women.  Most rabbi’s took on only the
brightest and best pupils and nurtured them from their childhoods to
be excellent scholars.  Jesus took on adult men who had been making
livings as fisherman, thus clearly not the perfect pupils another
rabbi had snapped up.  Jesus refused hierarchies – EVEN the ones
that might have been seen as reasonable and helpful!!  

The
writers in the Women’s Bible also pointed out that Luke’s account of
Mary and Martha seems to reflect a slightly later Christian
tradition.  By the time of Acts, it was common for evangelists to
travel around preaching and teaching in the name of Jesus.  They were
often hosted by women, who were then responsible for two tasks:
hospitality AND discernment.  Clearly if a wealthy woman was going to
use her resources to support a traveling preacher, she needed to be
able to tell if the preacher was worth learning from!  The radical
inclusion of women extended into the early church.  The Women’s Bible
explains it this way,

“In
accounts of the early church we are made especially aware of the
women who revived traveling evangelists into their homes (Acts 16:15;
40; 18:2-3).  More often than those of men, we are told the names
women in those houses the early churches met (Acts 12:12; 16:13-15;
40; Rom 16:3-5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15).  Theirs was the
responsibility not only to provide food and housing of the itinerate
missionary but also to assess the message that was brought (see2
John; 3 John).  This required that the women must be carefully taught
and possess a strong understanding of the fundamentals of the gospel.
… The story before us presents a paradigm of the attitude and
activities of women who opened their homes for gospel ministry.”7

Thus,
in this story, Mary IS doing half of the work – she is learning and
listening so that she will be able to discern who is worth listening
to in the future!!

I
really appreciate this idea that the women who offered hospitality
also had to be careful about whose perspective they empowered.  I
like the reminder that hospitality, and extending one’s home, is a
powerful and important action that these women played a curating
role in who got to talk!!!  I also think it is helpful to think
of Mary as listening, learning, and sitting AT THIS MOMENT in time so
that she would be of GREATER USE later.  This is often how I think of
YOU.  FUMC Schenectady’s identity statement is, “We
are a church that loves to learn and yearns to be a gift from God to
our communities.”  These are two connected statements.  This church
loves to learn because this church loves being useful in building the
kin-dom and in being a gift from God to our communities.  This is a
church who cares enough to do things WELL, and that often means
slowing down and listening before acting.

For
Mary, like for us, listening precedes service so that service can be
done well.  And that’s imperative.  Simply following our instincts
often means doing more harm than good.  Those who created “Indian
Missionary Schools” and those who taught in them meant to do GOOD,
but they did harm that has been passed down through generations!!
They didn’t listen to those they were trying to help.  In the past
few years I’ve been part of a group trying to rethink the global
structure of the United Methodist Church to eliminate colonialism and
become true partners around the world.  A few weeks ago I got to talk
to members of the UMC from Africa and in one succinct sentence they
proved to me that the plan was fundamentally flawed.  We didn’t
listen to the people we were trying to include!

Listening
and learning is an imperative first step to any acts of service.
Transforming the world, or loving our neighbors with the love they
really need, or responding to the needs of people around us, or even
finding the ways to be whole and peace-filled people whose presence
is a gift of grace requires listening and learning first – to God,
to ourselves, AND to others.  The Hebrew Bible lesson today suggests
that the people of God were not listening to what God needed nor to
what people living in poverty in their midst needed.  Listening
and learning are of equal value and importance to action and service.
Together Mary and her sister show us what it can look like, just as
together Mary and the Good Samaritian show us what it is like to see
and hear.

Mary
listened.  Mary learned.  It was radical and subversive of her to sit
at Jesus’ feet as a disciple, and it was radical and subversive of
Jesus to teach women alongside men.  Yet Jesus defends Mary’s right
to listen and learn, claiming that it is a good way to be in the
world.  As important as action and service are, rushed action that
comes before listening and learning is often more harm than good.
May we leave this place open to the experiences of listening, and may
we sit down to learn from those are good and worthy teachers.  May we
listen, like Mary.  Because she sat, let us learn to sit and listen.
Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover,
and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the
Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), 325.

2 R.
Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. IX
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 232.

3
Joesph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV,
(Doubleday and Co.: NY, NY,  1985) p. 892-3.

4 Catherine
Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans, editors, The IVP Women’s Bible
Commentary (InverVarsity
Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 2002), p 571.

5 Ibid

6 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),124.

7 IVP
Women’s Bible Commentary, 574.

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

“Subversive Grace” based on  Job 2:7-10

  • February 5, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

This
week a clergy friend reached out with a concern about our United
Methodist Bookstore and recourse center, Cokesbury.  In the most
recent Cokesbury catalog, on page 21, listed under “Women’s
Studies” was a book entitled “Zip It” with a cover image of
women’s lips zipped closed.  He asked us to join him in expressing
displeasure.  I did.  I got a response from Cokesbury that attempted
to reassure me by informing me that I was ignorant of their intent.
The email informed me that the author, “offers
practical how-to’s meant to inspire her readers to use their words
‘to build, not to break; to bless, not to badger; to encourage, not
to embitter; to praise, not to pounce’.  Her work is very
specific to women’s group Bible study and personal devotion and
reflection.”1
Clearly the author of the book along with the author of the email
perceive this to be EMPOWERMENT of women.  You might stake a guess
that I disagree.  You’d be right.

Now,
this particular exchange was fairly trivial this week.  It was almost
nothing, except that it served as a reminder of the inherent sexism
in The Church and the resiliency of the patriarchy in the
institution.  It was just another
piece of frustration and sadness.  In the language of Parker Palmer,
it was another expression of the “tragic gap.”  He explains it
this way, “Of
all the tensions we must hold in personal and political life, perhaps
the most fundamental and most challenging is standing and acting with
hope in the “tragic gap.” On one side of that gap, we see the
hard realities of the world, realities that can crush our spirits and
defeat our hopes. On the other side of that gap, we see real-world
possibilities, life as we know it could be because we have seen it
that way.”2

Palmer teaches that much of what we struggle with in life is the
reality of the tragic gap and how to be authentic in response to it.

The
tragic gap ALWAYS exists.  For the past few weeks though it has felt
like every piece of news, as well as every time I’ve accessed social
media, I’ve been bombarded with reminders of the tragic gap.  At
times it has felt like I’ve been drowning in them.  My natural
emotional disposition tends toward happiness and playfulness (along
with overthinking 😉 ), but recently I’ve been feeling tired,
overwhelmed, and bogged down.  

Now,
it feels imperative to mention that I do not think that a publishing
foible by Cokesbury is a tragedy, it did not send me into a
depression, and it is not even OVERLY significant.  In the face of
the scope of issues today, it barely registers.   I have to say this
because the last time I acknowledged being personally harmed by the
existence sexism in the church at large I was told by Annual
Conference Leadership that I was a hysterical woman and sent to
Emotional Intelligence training.  So, now that’s cleared up.

Truth
be told though, there are so very many reminders of the tragic gap
right now that they are piled on top of each other.  There are all
the normal ones and all the exceptionally new ones.  I think it is
creating a phenomenon similar to grief: when a new grief occurs it
also serves to reawaken all the grief we have experienced before it.
No one attack on the world as it should be is the problem: they all
add on to each other and start to snow ball.  For many in my life,
I’m hearing that they are now avalanching.  Dear friends (please
note: friends, none of you, I wouldn’t share your struggles from this
pulpit) have told me this week that they are experiencing physical
symptoms of the anxiety they experience given the current depth of
the tragic gap.  I’m also hearing people are having trouble sleeping,
as well as turning to junk food and alcohol to make it through the
days.

image

As
for myself, this week I noticed that EVERYTHING I try to do is an
uphill battle.  It all just feels harder, sort of like how it does
when I haven’t taken vacation in entirely too many months.  My
yearning has been to sit on the couch, drink tea, pet my cat, and
watch West Wing and anything more than that requires steeling myself
to do what needs to be done.

I
don’t know how all of you are doing.  I hope some of you are fine and
dandy, with either sufficient coping mechanisms, sufficient hope, or
sufficient joy to counterbalance the world’s problems.  I know some
of you are really struggling, and that those struggles are often a
combination of the world around us and the personal issues that keep
coming.  Perhaps some are also in the middle: aware of the struggles
and making it.  After last week’s sermon, and the Biblical book from
which we read, many of you may be feeling anxious that I’m about to
make it worse.

I
don’t think I am.  Ironically enough, Job feels like a friendly
figure right now, and his story seems to give us reason for hope.
For those of you who aren’t inherently familiar with the story, let
me summarize quickly:  Job is presented as a truly good human.
Everyone agrees that he is “blameless and upright,” faithful to
God, and even overly observant.  He made sacrifices to God JUST IN
CASE one of his sons accidentally sinned.  He was also wealthy in the
form of enormous flocks.  He and his wife and had 10 children, 7 sons
and 3 daughters.  God is said to be proud of Job’s good heart and
faithfulness.

Suddenly
things changed: all of his wealth was either killed or stolen.  At
the same time, all of his children, who had been feasting together,
were killed when a wind knocked down the tent.  Job turned to grief
and turned his heart to God in prayer.  Then, in our text,  his
health deteriorated, with painful sores opening all over his entire
body.  He is already sitting on an ash heap and appears to simply,
calmly, pick up a piece of a broken pot to use to scratch himself.
It seems that he is already so heartbroken that the physical symptoms
barely register.  

That
seems right.  The deepest grief I have seen in my life has been the
grief of parents mourning for their children.  In the face of losing
10 children, I don’t think anything else would even register.  Job’s
wife is convinced that his death is imminent, and even in the midst
of her shared grief, she manages to register the degree of his pain.

The
meaning of her words is not entirely clear.  She says, “Do you
still persist in your integrity?  Curse God, and die.” The big
question is: does she assume he is dying already and wish to ease his
death by helping him speak words of truth on the way out; OR does she
believe his suffering is too great for anyone to handle and believe
that if he curses God, God will finally let him die?  That is, it
isn’t clear if she thinks he is dying anyway which then also makes it
unclear if she thinks cursing God will kill him.  Since this is a
book especially designed to argue against the idea that a difficult
life indicates that God is punishing you, I’m going to suggest that
the more likely meaning is the first:  she wishes for him speak out
loud of his pain to ease the suffering on his way to death.

Truly,
Job’s wife speaks with outstanding grace, especially for a woman who
is also grieving the loss of all of her children.  The capacity to
attend to anyone else’s pain in the midst of that grief is unusual –
humans are built that way.  She wants his pain to be eased, both
physically and emotionally.  She thinks he is being too stoic, and
should let go of his pride in order to find some relief.  In Bible
Study we found ourselves telling stories of the end of people’s
lives, and the grace-filled ways we had known loved ones to ease the
end of the dying person’s life.  This woman’s words reminded us of
how difficult it can be to let go of a loved one, and at the same
time how much of a relief it is when someone we love is no longer
suffering.  

Job’s
wife encouraged him to do what he could do to be at peace at the end
of his life.  He refused her, responding that his faith required him
to deal with the pain as it came.  In case you haven’t read Job, it
is interesting to note that for chapters upon chapters after this he
expresses his pain with great intensity.  However, the prelude seems
to forget those speeches.

Now,
the grace-filled response of Job’s wife has not been heard as such
throughout history.  “Chrysostom asked why the Devil left Job his
wife and answered with the suggestion that he considered her a
scourge by which to plague him more acutely than by any other
means.”3
Yep.  And he wasn’t alone, “The ancient tradition, reflected in
Augustine, Chrysostom, Calvin, and many others, that she is an aide
to the satan
underestimates the complexity of her role.”4
Most male commentators throughout history have condemned Job’s wife
for her words, seeing her as a part of the problem.  I wonder how
much of culture’s assumptions about females fed into that
perspective.  It was difficult for those of us who studies this
together to hear anything but gentleness, love, and grace in Job’s
wife’s words.  They’re subversive grace, for sure, not at all
reflecting the most common ways of showing love, but they’re grace
nonetheless.

The
book of Job explores human suffering, and asks the big questions
about how human suffering and God’s will are related.  God’s answers
to Job’s questions are in chapters 38-40 if you want to read them
yourselves.  The book of Job gives us a space to reflect on suffering
itself, and it gives us words to name the suffering.  We don’t have
to be in Job’s particularly awful position to be suffering, there are
many kinds of suffering in the world.

This
week we had a Gathering of (The) Connection where we talked about
finding peace.  We were gifted with wonderful questions: what is
peace?  What helps you find peace?  What keeps you from peace?  We
discussed the balance of righteousness anger and peace, and we
wondered about it.  As we discussed a thought started to form in me:
I think I’ve been doing it wrong.  (Or if not “wrong” than in a
less than optimal way.)

In
recent weeks, I have allowed my fears and angers to motivate and lead
me, and I am not at my best when I do that.  Certainly there is
plenty worth protesting, there are great organizations to donate to,
and imperative conversations to have.  However, if I want to be as
useful as I can be in building the kin-dom of God, then I need to
start those actions from the best motivation.  Now I’m wondering if I
can attend to centering myself in the unconditional love of God and
wonder of life and Creation – even now, ESPECIALLY now?  Can I
allow myself to slow down enough to consider where my energy belongs
and where my gifts are most useful?  Can I show up, wherever I show
up, grace-filled and at peace so that the love I have to share can be
part of what I offer in changing the world?  Can I learn how to hold
peace in such a deep way that it allows me to hold anger differently?

Please
be aware that I think grace-filled and at peace can be a reasonable
way to protest, chant, and resist!!  I’m talking about the inner
motivation and way of responding to the rest of God’s people.  When
it comes down to it, I think that the energy we bring into the world
changes it more than the words we use.  The world is desperately in
need of love and peace – and listening as well as many many forms
of resistance.  Furthermore, in the past few weeks people’s hearts
haven’t stopped breaking in the normal and awful ways human hearts
break.  There is still a lot of need around us for patience and
compassion.

So,
I’m hoping that in the face of great suffering I might be able (on
good days) to share subversive grace: to share God’s love from a
place of peace and gratitude WHILE calling the world out of the
tragic gap and into the kin-dom.  This will take times of quiet,
intentional reflection, deep conversation, and attending to hope,
gratitude and goodness.  This will take paying attention to what
brings me energy – and doing those things.  This will take a
regular practice of Sabbath, in particular Sabbath from the news
cycle.  I got one of those this week and it made all the difference.

Finally,
I hope that my journey is of use to you as well.  In the midst of her
own suffering, Job’s wife found the way to hear her husband’s pain
and respond to it with love, grace, and compassion.  That’s
especially hard work right now.  But, may God help us to treat
ourselves,  and those we love, with similar love, grace, and
compassion.  May we find our energy sources, good spiritual
practices, and  the freedom to breath outside of the news cycle.
And, with God’s help, may it lower our anxiety and fill us with some
much needed peace.  Amen

1Personal
Email, February 1, 2016.  

2Parker
Palmer, Healing
the Heart of Democracy,
p. 191.  Accessed at
http://www.couragerenewal.org/democracyguide/v36/
on February 2, 2017.

3Marvin
H. Pope, Job.  
In
the Anchor Bible Series, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co, 1965)
page 22.

4Carol
A. Newsom “The Book of Job” in The New Interpreter’s Study
Bible Vol IV (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1996), page 355.

image

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

“Speaking the Truth No One Wants to Hear” based…

  • January 29, 2017February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I can think of no way to begin this sermon other than by apologizing: to any who have survived a sexual assault, for whom discussion of sexual assault escalates the remaining pain, I am sorry. Also, for those who have been yearning for a clergy person to acknowledge the harm done by sexual violence who have been harmed by the conversation not happening, I am sorry.

In the United States, 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men will experience an attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes. (Most attempts are completed.) To save you the math, 90% of rapes happen to women and 10% happen to men.1 In terms of gender that means we need to remember that women are more likely to be living with the internal scars of sexual assault than men are AND that a substantial number of men are also living with internal scars of sexual assault. We also want to remember that members of the transgender community experience sexual assault at MUCH higher rates than cisgender people. More important than the statistics however, is to remember that one rape is one rape too many.

This should never happen.

And it happens a lot. Many people sexually assault others.

The story of King David’s daughter, the Princess Tamar, is a story of sexual assault. Unlike most such stories, Tamar’s story is told. Her story reflects and shines light on many stories that never got told, as well as on the experiences of those who told their stories but were not believed. Instead of having been insulated and protected by her royalty, the story of the princess reflects the experiences of many unnamed men and women throughout history.

Phyllis Trible, a matriarch of feminist biblical criticism, has a chapter on Tamar in her book Texts of Terror. She opens the chapter with these words, “From the book of Samuel comes the story of a family enmeshed in royal rape. Brother violates sister. He is a prince to whom belong power, prestige, and unrestrained lust. She is a princess to whom belong wisdom, courage, and unrelieved suffering. Children of one father, they have not the same care of each other. Indeed, the brother cares not at all.”2

This story comes soon after the one about King David’s adultery, his use of Bathsheba without her consent, and the prophet Nathan calling him on it. David’s shame is very present in the story, including in how he responds to it. Amnon, the lust-filled rapist, is his oldest son and heir. Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, is David’s third son.

The story SAYS that Amnon “fell in love with” Tamar but I think we can easily conclude that Amnon fell in lust with Tamar. This is not what love looks like. As a virgin daughter of the king, Tamar was highly valuable property, useful to be given away to other countries and brokering deals. That meant that she was “protected property, inaccessible to males, including her brother.”3 Amnon, the princely heir, doesn’t seem to like having anything stand in his way. He finds the person who gives him the advice he wants – that he should manipulate his father into giving him access to Tamar to fulfill his lust.

I must say, Trible points out that when Amnon feigns illness and worries his father, in his request that she be sent to him, Amnon refers to Tamar as his sister. She says, “To claim kinship with Tamar at this time averts suspicion.”4 I say, UGH.

Tamar does as she’s told. She doesn’t have many degrees of freedom, and the king had ordered her to go. The servants leave, she prepares the food, she brings it to Amnon, and then he grabs her. He demands that she sleep with him, again calling her his sister. Trible goes on, “Through a series of orders, all of them obeyed, Amnon has manipulated the occasion to feed his lust. This time, however, the royal command meets objection. In the presence of a rapist, Tamar panics not. In fact, she claims her voice. Unlike Amnon’s brisk commands, her deliberations slow the movement of the plot, though they are unable to divert it. If Amnon uses the vocative to seduce her, she returns it to summon him to sense.”5

Tamar has an unusually cool head. She didn’t panic nor beg. She spoke in reasonable terms and tried to talk him out of it. She pointed out that their country is above such things, which is a great argument to make in a royal family where the country would be valued especially highly. She points out that it would shame her, seemingly thinking he was capable of empathy. He does not seem to be. She names that it would ruin him, making him appear as a fool and a scoundrel. Finally, seeming to become clear that he wanted what he wanted and wouldn’t stop until he got it, she suggests an alternative. She points out that if he asked to marry her, he’d be allowed to, thus avoiding all the other disastrous consequences. Trible says, “Her words are honest and poignant; they acknowledge female servitude. Tamar knows Amnon can have her but pleads that he do it properly.”6

That she needs to make such an offer is heart-breaking. However, even the offer to wed the man bent on raping her is ignored. He doesn’t want to hear her speak– he wants to have her subservient and as he fantasized. The text simply says, “but he would not listen to her” and then goes on to say, “and being stronger than she was, he forced her and lay with her.”(13:14) Trible says the text is worse than it first appears in English, “the Hebrew omits the preposition to stress his brutality. ‘He laid her.’”7

And then it got worse.

The violence of the rape transformed the lust into hatred, and he ordered her to “Get out.” However, even in this moment of utter vulnerability and violation, Tamar held her own. Trible says, “This abused woman will no more heed Amnon’s order of dismissal than she consented to his demand for rape.”8 She responds with “NO.” And she stops calling him her brother. Trible continues, “’No,’ she said to him, ‘because sending me away is a greater evil than the other which you have done to me.’ (13:16a) If the narrator interprets that the hatred is greater than the desire, Tamar understands that the expulsion is greater than the rape. In sending her away, Amnon increases the violence he has inflicted on her. He condemns her to a lifelong sentence of desolation. Tamar knows that rape dismissed is crime exacerbated.”9 Again he doesn’t listen. She stops speaking.

Now, this seems to be worth taking a moment to acknowledge that Tamar’s story is not entirely universal and timeless. In her day, if an unmarried woman was raped, it was expected that the man would marry her. That was the least bad option for the woman, since otherwise she was seen as damaged goods which would prevent the possibility of a future marriage and thus the possibility of a financially stable future. Tamar, like other biblical women, was taught that her value was in her capacity to wed and bear male children. This rape AND expulsion violated her body and any hope she had of a future. It was a different time. Today we hope women don’t get stuck marrying their rapists. In any case, she kept her head, her reason, and her voice. But he doesn’t listen.

After she is kicked out and the door is barred to keep her from re-entering, she tears her robe. The robe proclaims her a virgin daughter of the King, and she isn’t anymore. Trible says, “tearing her robe symbolizes the violence done to a virgin princess. Rape has torn her.”10 She also puts ashes on her head and weeps publicly. She VISIBLY proclaims that wrong has been done to her. She doesn’t hide it. She doesn’t protect her “brother.” She lets her entire body scream for her, and she makes sure it gets listened to this time.

Her brother, her full brother Absalom, speaks to her. When the words are examined deeply, they are quite powerful. He is his sister’s advocate and he offers her a safe place. In this story Absalom is the one we can look to as a moral compass and seek to emulate. (I actually think Tamar is too high of a standard, being that strong, clear-minded and articulate in the face of that violence is not something to compare ourselves to.) Trible explains, “Absalom explicitly introduces this speech with the adverb ‘attāh, ‘now’ or ‘for the time being.’ As Amnon’s pretense deceived David, so Tamar’s pretense will deceive Amnon. Further, rather than minimizing the crime, euphemisms such as ‘with you’ or ‘this deed’ underscore its horror.”11

Absalom starts by asking her if Amnon had raped her. He knows it is possible, and he acknowledges it. He also speaks the words, which means she doesn’t have to, in this case another means of grace. He is tender to her, he reminds her that they are still connected, and he comes up with a plan. He takes the harm done to his sister as real, significant, and relevant to him. She is his sister, that hasn’t changed. The text tells us he brought her into his house, since she was no longer a virgin princess living in the palace. He listened, he cared, and he made a space for her.

From the moments after the rape on Absalom takes charge. Trible suggests that it is in this moment that he supplants King David himself in the story.12 David is said to be angry – but it is not clear if he is mad at Amnon or at “what happened to Amnon”? Trible says, “David’s anger signifies complete sympathy for Amnon and total disregard for Tamar. How appropriate that the story never refers to David and Tamar as father and daughter.”13 David does nothing, which leaves Absalom alone to respond to the harm done to his sister.

In the end of the story, Tamar is “desolate.” Trible explains, “When used of people elsewhere in scripture, the verb be desolate (šmm) connotes being destroyed by an animal (Lam. 3:11) Raped, despised, and rejected by a man, Tamar is a woman of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”14 And, in response to Amnon not listening to Tamar, Absalom stops speaking to Amnon as well. (Also, eventually, Absalom kills Amnon and then after that he leads a revolt against his father. David’s failure to respond destabilizes his throne. But this is Tamar’s story and we are going to stick with her.)

Her story, such as it is, is concluded in the following chapter. Trible explains again, starting with the Biblical quote, “’There were born to Absalom three sons and one daughter; her name was Tamar.’ (14:27. RSV). Strikingly the anonymity of the sons highlights the name of the lone female child. In her Absalom has created a living memorial for his sister. A further note enhances the poignancy of his act. Tamar, the daughter of Absalom, ‘became a beautiful woman to behold.’ From aunt to niece have passed name and beauty so that rape and desolation have not the final word in the story of Tamar.”15 Tamar, who would never have a child of her own did have a namesake so that her memory lived on.

One final thought from Trible about Tamar before we end, “she was never his temptation. His evil was his own lust, and from it others needed protection.”16

Dear ones, this story tells a truth we rarely hear, and it forces us to acknowledge the all too common reality of sexual assault. The Bible holds firmly that God abhors sexual violence, and this story adds that silence from leaders in the face of sexual violence only makes it worse.  Yet, in the midst of the honest portrayal of horrific violence, the story also leaves us with hope. Absalom was an advocate for his sister and he gave her a safe-place to be. Because of those like Absalom, healing and life are possible, and violence need not have the last word.  Absalom is the brother we hope to emulate when we seek to be brothers and sisters in Christ to one another. So, as we are able, may God help us to be safe places for survivors as Absalom was for Tamar.  Amen

1RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) website, https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem, quote statistics from National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey (1998). Accessed January 26, 2017.

2Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), page 37.

3Trible, 39

4Trible, 41.

5Trible, 45.

6Trible, 45-46.

7Trible, 46.

8Trible, 47.

9Trible, 48.

10Trible, 50.

11Trible, 51.

12Trible, 52.

13Trible, 53.

14Trible, 52.

15Trible, 55.

16Trible, 56.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 29, 2017

Sermons

“Justice-Seeking Mothers”based on 1 Samuel 2:1-10 and Luke 1:46b-55

  • December 11, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

It
has been said about Mary, “No woman in scripture is more honored,
blessed as she was ‘above all women’ (Luke 1:42), and she holds an
iconic status shared by no other woman in Christianity. Through the
accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, Mary is one of the
first biblical characters many children encounter. Along with Eve,
Mary is integral to shaping how Christians understand the nature of
womanhood and motherhood.”1
What is said is true.  Mary, along with Eve, has both shaped how
women are understood in Christianity AND the inverse: perceptions of
Mary (and Eve) are indicators of how Christianity is understanding
women.  How Mary is seen is a bell-weather for how women are seen.
Cary Gibson, the author of the opening quote, also says, “Mary is a
container into which we pour ideas of what it means to be a woman. In
turn we then draw from her image ideas about our own womanhood.”2

Most
commonly, Mary is said to be meek and mild.  Usually, it is her
subservience that sets her up as the ideal woman.  The pedestal of
womanhood that Mary most frequently occupies as the ideal woman is
the pedestal of the selfless mother, the one who exists simply so her
son can exist.  She’s faithful, sweet, and biddable.  There is,
however, one issue with this common perception Mary: it completely
ignores the words of Mary found in the Gospel of Luke.  

Now,
I’m not saying that I really think some literate scribe was following
Mary around during her pregnancy to record her insights for
posterity.  However, I am saying we have a rather long monologue
attributed to Mary that defies the way she is most commonly defined.
The meek and mild ideal does not match the actual Gospel.  The myths
around her are more about what Christian women have been told to be
than they are about the actual stories about and words of Mary.

Therefore,
it seems worth exploring the words attributed to Mary.  Whether the
words are what Mary said, or something Mary could have said, or
simply what it made sense to someone that the Mother of Jesus WOULD
have said, they are attributed to her.  Since the general perception
of Mary is based on 20 centenaries of trying to put women in their
place, and I’d prefer to get to know Mary as presented in the Gospel.
It may be that we can take a look at Mary-the-ideal-woman and get a
different answer about what it means to be an ideal woman.

For
starters, these words are not meek, nor mild.  In fact, Cary Gibson
says Mary, “voiced a defiant and righteous hope in the face of
violence and injustice.”3
 It is true.  These words express a HARDCORE faith and a great ideal
for women to seek to live up to. 🙂  Men too.  This is the sort of
faith we can all aspire to!

First
of all, Mary’s song is deeply rooted in her faith tradition.  It
echoes Hannah’s song of celebration after Hannah fulfilled her
promise and brought her son Samuel to Eli to serve him as a priest.
It also echoes with phrases from the Psalms.  The version of this
song that we have is a work of theological and scriptural brilliance
and sophistication.  Hannah’s song is powerful, but reflects a less
mature faith.  Hannah yearns for God to smash the powerful, deride
her enemies, and break the mighty.  In her mind the powerless are
lifted up BY making the powerful small.  There is violence in her
imagery, even as there is celebration of the goodness of God and of
her sense of becoming more significant in the world.

Mary’s
song, though, is not vengeful.  She also speaks of lifting up the
poor and lonely.  Like Hannah she speaks about God’s power, but she
also adds God’s mercy.  Mary speaks of lowering the mighty, but the
lowering isn’t violent or dangerous for them:  the proud are
“scattered in the thoughts of their hearts” which sounds like a
way to be more humble; the powerful step down from their thrones (but
she doesn’t suggest they’re harmed afterward); the rich are sent away
empty – as if they don’t need any more.  Hannah had the the
formerly “full”  “hire themselves out for bread.”  Mary is
interested in lifting up the lowly and removing their oppression, not
in oppressing the oppressors.  She is a actually meeker and milder
than Hannah, Hannah’s is pretty rough.  Mary is simply less violent!

Hannah
speaks of her victory, Mary speaks of being treated with God’s favor.
While both are grateful for the child they are able to nurture, and
while both express incredible gratitude to God and deep theological
reflections, they have different energies.  The insertion of material
from the Psalms into Hannah’s original poem changes it into a more
gracious piece.  One scholar found that in addition to the source
material of Hannah’s poem, the song of Mary includes 7 pieces of
different Psalms, as well as a quote each from Deuteronomy, Job,
Micah, and Isaiah.  By that scholar’s reckoning all of the words of
Mary’s song are attributable to Hebrew Bible quotations.4

Mary’s
song starts in the specific.  She is grateful to be useful to God,
humbly aware of her status as a poor woman in her society, and
attentive to the change of her status because of God’s favor.  She
attributes her life change to God’s greatness, and she praises God.
She expresses who God is: merciful,
consistent, strong, and powerful.  She talks about a God who cares
about the lowly,
and feeds the hungry with GOOD food.
Her song makes another journey outward, celebrating God’s care for
all of the Jews and then attributing God’s care to God’s merciful
nature and God’s promises.  She moves from celebrating God’s work for
her, to celebrating God’s work for the vulnerable, to celebrating
God’s work for all her people.  It is as if she is expanding her
gratitude in increasingly wide circles.

While
it is unlikely to be factual, this text suggests that Mary knew her
scriptures well enough to combine them creatively into a truly
beautiful and majestic song celebrating God WITHOUT demeaning anyone
else.  It suggests that her humility was real, but it wasn’t a form
of self-deprecation.  It says she was genuinely honored to be able to
serve God and be useful in forming the world in God’s kindom of
shalom.  She was delighted and amazed to be chosen.  She recognized
the depth of the blessing she received, seemingly without thinking
that it made her more important than others.  She said she was
blessed, and was amazed that people would remember her as blessed.
That indicates she didn’t think she’d done anything right or worthy,
it was God’s choice not her worthiness that mattered.  Her gratitude
was expansive and celebratory and still focused on lifting up the
lowly and attentive to the hungry.  She kept her head!

The
Mary of this song is wise, strong, compassionate, creative, humble,
and grateful.  She knows and celebrates a God who is a fierce
advocate of justice.  John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, in their
book “The First Christmas” point out that each of the Gospels
start with a “Gospel in miniature” (with the possible exception
of Mark which starts at a gallop and just keeps going!).  Luke 1 and
2, which likely do NOT represent authentic memories of things that
really happened, DO represent themes of the Gospel, understanding of
Jesus, foreshadowing of things to come, and ways to see how God is
known in the Gospel.  Luke pays particular attention to women – as
we can see here where Mary gets a prolonged monologue – as well as
to the poor and vulnerable.  We can also see that here in the words
Mary speaks.  The writer of Luke, and/or the Christian tradition,
and/or the editors who came later attribute these words to Mary
largely to help those of us who came later to understand her son.

Now,
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m disparaging Hannah’s song.  Her
song is FIERCE and profound, and reflects an era one whole millennia
before Mary’s.  Hannah, as well, sought justice.  She sought it for
herself and she sought it for all of God’s people. She understood God
to be one who cares about the poor, the hungry, the feeble, the
barren, the low, and the needy.  That is a reflection of the unique
tradition of Judaism, from a pretty early time.  Other ancient
peoples believed in god and goddesses.  The Israelites were unique,
however, in believing in a God who cared about how they treated each
other, and in a God who cared about the people who had the least
power and influence.  There is a constant tension in the Bible
between this belief – in a God who cares for the poor and lowly –
and the human tendency to prefer the rich and powerful.  Hannah
reflects the God who cares for the poor and lowly without being
pulled toward the rich and powerful at all.  Then Mary manages to
take it a step further and acknowledge a God who cares for everyone.
They sought justice, and believed in a God who wanted justice.  This
is our radical tradition.  This is the wonder of worshiping a God of
compassion.

Those
sons of those women took their justice-seeking natures and their
understandings of the God of Compassion, and changed the world.  We
mostly know about the mothers because of the sons.  Samuel anointed
kings.  Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, ate with sinners, and
told parables that still confound us today.  Both sons changed the
world.  Both mothers are presented as sources of wisdom for their
sons.  Their stories are preludes to their sons stories, and yet I am
so grateful that the Bible gives them voices and songs and stories!
They are not ONLY vessels through which their sons come to be, they
are interesting in their own right.

I
do wish for all of us to be able to be a bit like these justice
seeking mothers.  And if we are going to hold up Mary as the ideal,
then I hope it takes the form of being moved to sing our  gratitude
to God and celebrating the wonder of God’s good work in the world.  I
hope we can become so steeped in our faith tradition that we can use
it in creative ways that bring more caring, compassion, and justice
to our tradition.  I hope that we can see and name the goodness of
our lives without taking ourselves too seriously.  And I do hope that
when push comes to shove we are more like Mary than like Hannah, and
that we can hope for the transformation of oppressors – not the
oppression of them.  I hope we too can always remember the people of
God who are struggling the most, and find ways to help lift them up.
I hope we can be part of our tradition that remembers God as a God of
compassion for the least, the last, the lost and the lonely.  

If
Mary is the ideal, and she seems to be well set up to be the ideal,
then let’s seek to be like her:  fierce, grateful, and brilliant.  
Amen

1
Cary Gibson, “Mary, Jesus’ Mother” in an email from The Common
English Bible send by Abingdon Press on December 2nd,
2016.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Joseph
A. Fitzmeyer “The Gospel According to Luke I-IX” in the The
Anchor Bible Series (Doubleday and Co.: Garden City, NY, 1981) p
356-357.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

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

December 11, 2016

Sermons

“SILENT Prayer!?!”based on 1 Samuel 1:1-20

  • December 4, 2016February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Hannah may be the most well-behaved woman in this Subversive Women sermon series. In this story she expresses exemplary faith and devotion for God. She a common example used for the idea of “taking it to the Lord in prayer.” All in all, she feels like enough of a goody-two shoes to be the mother of the king-maker. As we see time and time again, when you hear a birth stories, you know that you are getting the story of someone important. When you hear about a barren woman in the Bible (much less a virgin 😉 ) you know you are hearing the beginning of the story of someone VERY important. The baby born to THIS barren woman will be the last of the judges, one of the great prophets, and the one to anoint kings Saul and David. This story seems designed to prove that he came from good stock.

To be honest, the Young Adult Bible study found her a little bit boring. Hannah is presented as a weeping mess, having internalizing the cultural narrative that her value was based on her ability to produce sons. She is one of two wives of reasonably wealthy man. (No poor man could afford two wives.) Their family goes to the holy place to worship once a year – not three like the really faithful families – but also not less than once. They’re moderately faithful Jews. She has a loving husband, which in and of itself makes her unusual in the Bible. She believes that God is in control of the world, and she seems to believe that a blessing by God’s priest will help her get what she wants. She makes a vow with very serious consequences: she wants a child so badly that she offers the child to God. (This is, of course, a promise she makes good on. She brings Samuel to Eli as soon as he is weaned and then sees him only once a year when she brings him new clothing.) She is a bit of a naive heroine: good, sweet, doing what she’s supposed to do, and sad because her society says she is worthless.

Despite the Young Adult Bible Study, there are a lot of interesting things going on in this story. They’re just hiding rather well! Are there any people in this room who immediately zone out when you hear genealogies – you know, like the one in the very first verse of this story? Me too. However, this one has a point! Hannah’s husband was of the clan Ephraim (one of Joseph’s sons). That is a Northern Tribe, which fits as this is a northern story set in the north.  He was of that clan, as were the 5 generations before him. Which means he was NOT AT ALL a Levite. And the Levites were supposed to be the priests and holy men. The baby who will be born will be raised as if he is a priest, but he isn’t one. He is an insert into the holy man tradition. This is particularly relevant because Eli (a Levite) has sons who are corrupt priests, but the clan of Ephraim raises up a good priest. Things aren’t going as they should be. The system is broken.

Like the genealogy, the location has some hidden interest. The story is set in the Temple in Shiloh. Which would be a pretty boring detail except for one piece of historical knowledge: there is no Temple in Shiloh. Shiloh was a worship center, and there would have been official priests working there, but there was no Temple. The Temple would be build by David, who Samuel would make King – and it would be in the Southern Kingdom. This story has the fingerprints of later Southern editors on it, ones who couldn’t quite comprehend a worship space other than the Temple.

Now I mentioned that Hannah was a beloved spouse, which was a bit unique. The expressions of adoration from her husband are totally unique. He asks her why he isn’t worth 10 sons to her – which seems to imply that she’s worth 10 sons to him! Furthermore, he gives her the “double portion” to use in sacrifice. That’s odd. The double portion is the portion the eldest son inherits, where the younger sons each get only one. Hannah’s husband treats her as if she is as valuable to him as his eldest son and heir. He values her as she’d value her eldest son. He sees values in HER. This is particularly interesting because Hannah lacks value in her society. Women were meant to bear male children. That was what they were FOR, and from which their worth was derived. And Hannah didn’t. But her husband didn’t care. He appears to love her for HER, as she is. That may be a reason for some to be jealous of Hannah, but it surely doesn’t make boring. Because being loved can be so transformative in human life, I wonder how much of Hannah strength comes from her husband’s love. She may struggle with what she’s supposed to be (and isn’t) but she also has an internalized sense of self worth. Her husband might have been part of that.

This question of Hannah’s value comes up in her interaction with Eli. But first, we need to mention a few truly subversive things that happened before and during that interaction. First of all, she entered the holy space. I don’t know for sure how the worship space was used in Shiloh, but I do know that women weren’t let very far into the Jerusalem temple. For Hannah, even entering the holy space pushed the boundaries of what women were supposed to be doing. I’m also not sure how appropriate it would have been for Hannah to wander off on her own in public space. I suspect she broke the bounds of normalcy on that too. Then there is the fact that she prays SILENTLY and without a sound passing by her lips. We can tell by Eli’s response that her silence wasn’t standard for prayer.

Now, if Hannah was trying to elicit a response from God, and her deal making surely suggests she was, then why wasn’t she participating in prayer the way it was known to be practiced? Was she simply too focused and authentic in her prayer? I don’t think so!  I think humans of any faith tradition are deeply enculturated on how to pray, and one wouldn’t be likely to break out of that in a moment of deep prayer. Instead, I wonder if she wanted to have a PRIVATE conversation with God. She went off by herself, she went into a sacred space that was mostly abandoned, and she spoke to God only in her heart. It seems possible that what she was saying was entirely too personal for anyone to know it. I suspect there was even some shame in it, as would be expected for a barren woman begging God to help her.

Hannah also makes a deal with God, which is not generally recommended, and she makes one of the more radical ones. Her family is moderately faithful. She offers her son as a livelong nazirite, which is UNHEARD OF. The holiest of holy men were nazirites for a year or two. But she offers. (And she does it! – Hannah is faithful to her promises.)

OK. So now we are on her conversation with Eli. Eli comes up and shames her for her despicable behavior – one that he projects onto her rather than one she has participated in. Hannah ANSWERED. She answered the high priest of that place, and she defended herself. She didn’t walk away in shame. She didn’t hang her head. She defended herself and her VALUE. She WAS a worthless woman by the standards she lived in. But she demands respect from the priest anyway. “‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time”

“I am not a worthless woman.” Am I the only one who wants to cheer for her??? Even better it works. Eli may have failed to identify authentic prayer, yet, he is willing to be corrected!! He’s really an OK guy and a good priest, even though me misses some major memos. Eli believes her. That is huge in and of itself, but he also responds to her with a blessing. The blessing clearly matters to her, it cheers her up, and the story seems to think it has to do with her later success in getting pregnant.

Hannah names her son, “God has heard” and says she does so because “I asked him of the LORD”. She sounds a bit like Hagar, naming God, “the God who sees” (even me.) Hannah, whose society has told her that she is worthless, has a partner who believes in her worth, and even with her internal struggles finds that she believes in her worth too. Then it is affirmed. It seems to me that by the time Hannah gets pregnant, she is already sure that she is of value in the world and in the eyes of God whether or not she has a child. In the end, I think that’s what is so subversive about Hannah – that she finds the way to claim her own worth, despite society! May we follow in her footsteps because we are much more useful to God when we realize that we are valuable – and of use in building the kindom. 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

December 4, 2016

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