“Hope” based on Genesis 16:7-13 and Luke 1:26-38

November 27, 2022
by Sara Baron

This Advent
starts with annunciations – announcements to two women of what life
they are bringing forth into the world. These are told as God’s
mighty acts, the ways God impacts the world through these women and
their sons. They set up the anticipation of Advent – a knowing of
what is coming, an awareness that it is not here yet, and some rather
significant worries about the journey from here to there.

The
two stories today are united not only by the announcements they
contain, nor the scared young women, nor the extraordinary sons they
will have. In a way we might not have noticed before, the stories
are united by slavery.

Hagar
IS enslaved. Mary’s response to God, once it is translated without
attempting to soften it, is “Here am I, the woman-slave of God;
let it be with me according to your word.”
This response reminds me that Mary was a vulnerable girl, one who was
responding to the STATEMENT (not question or request) from a Powerful
God of what would happen to her.

Does Mary respond, “I have no
power here, so do what you wish”? Or “I am willing?” Would it
matter? The messenger had told her what would be, not asked her if
she was willing. The response that says, “I am a woman-slave of
God” could be humility and respect, or a desire not to be killed
for disagreeing. Mary is written into a no win situation. To say no
to God, when a direct messenger is sent, is known to be a bad idea.
(Yet, many of us do it regularly with only continued nagging to pay
for it… so, there is that.) To agree to a pregnancy while engaged
and not sleeping with one’s fiance is to become eligible for stoning.
It would be proof of adultery.

Mary’s response says she is
God’s slave. Hagar’s life is one of a slave. These are not the same
thing, but the connection between should be unsettling.

Hagar
is enslaved. She is enslaved and endures both physical and sexual
violence. Before our story begins, she runs away into the
wilderness, which means she was deciding to die rather than endure
more. Yet, in the wilderness, by spring of water which meant life
could continue, Hagar had an encounter with the Divine. (She is the
first woman to do so, also the first woman to be told directly she
will bear a child…. one of only three.) She is addressed, by name,
by the Holy Messenger. She is told what will happen.

And,
she is told to return to the violence she had run from. Further,
she is told that the
violence she experiences will become the legacy of the child she
bears, who will struggle against those he will call kin, as well
those who come after him. (This is an ancestor story, where the
ancestors serve as symbols for the people who claim their names.)
Then Hagar NAMES God, which is a HUGE deal, and calls God, “The God
who sees me.” Ishmael’s name mean’s God hears.

These indicate a powerful
blessing experience. These indicate she took hope from this
encounter. She feels seen, and heard. Now, of course, an experience
of the Divine IS a blessing, and would be one that she couldn’t have
expected. EVEN THOUGH she gets sent back to slavery, back to
violence, back to abuse, Hagar calls God, “God who sees me” and
calls her son, “God hears.”

Phew.

I find myself wishing God had
changed things for her, not just sent her back to the same situation
as a slave, experiencing violence. Yet, I cannot dismiss the power
of her experience. It wasn’t perfect, it didn’t end with happily
ever after. Oppression, even, continued. And, for Hagar, there was
hope.

But, hope is sturdier than
perfection. Hope is grounded. Hope is real and faces the world as
it is. Hope doesn’t require fairy tale endings, it means us where we
are.

This is good, because if only
people who know no oppression can have hope, few people could.

Hagar’s story isn’t particularly
unique. Many people have been enslaved in human history, including
to this day. Many people have experienced sexual violence. Many
people have been forced into marriages where sex is expected, but not
truly consented to. I fear that most women in history can identify
with Hagar.

And yet, there has been hope.

Hagar’s pregnancy was
complicated. I think maybe Mary’s was too. And, the Bible says,
their pregnancies changed the world for the better. We needed
Ishmael. We needed Jesus. We needed them raised by their mothers,
who had particular wisdom, particular faith, particular experiences
of the Divine, particular gifts.

This idea of a complicated
pregnancies, ones that threatened the life and well-being of the
mother, ones that changed the course of history, THESE are stories of
Advent.

These are stories of things NOT
being as they should be.

These are stories of waiting for
God to act to make things better.

Hagar felt blessed by her
encounter. A miracle here is that the people who wrote the book
understood themselves to be Issac’s descendants, but they wrote the
story of Ishmael’s mother. And they admitted the wrong done to her.
And they thought of her as blessed. And they perceived in her
experiences of God, EVEN THOUGH they thought of her descendants as
their enemies. That has a sense of the hand of God in the telling of
the stories to me. That’s not generally how we tell the stories, the
way the victor’s narrative reigns.

Whatever Mary’s experience of
her pregnancy was, I still believe that the life and faith of Jesus
were formed by his family, and his mother. And somewhere along the
line I do believe she had profound experiences of God, and was able
to teach them to her son.

Hagar and Mary were people with
limited choices. These women were on the margins, their sons were on
the margins, but their sons ALSO cared for others on the margins and
in doing so changed human history. Even encounters with God didn’t
make everything better. But being HEARD, being SEEN, being CHOSEN,
mattered. It gave them hope. It gave them meaning. It gave them
strength.

And, I believe, it gave their
sons compassion. And I note, as well, the power of being heard,
seen, and loved.

That’s another of those weird
things about real hope. It can take the hard, the horrible, the
ugly, the painful, even the traumatic, and work with it. Real hope
doesn’t require a pristine, hygienic, sterile environment. It meets
us where we are, just like God. And it works from here.

Hagar being enslaved was not OK.
It has never been OK for any human who was enslaved. And, those who
have lived as enslaved people still had hope. They had hope for the
end of slavery. They had hope things wouldn’t always be that way.

Some had hope of escape. Some
had hope of little moments of connection or compassion with others.
Many had hope in God, the one who never stops caring no matter how
hard things get.

And, changes are pretty high the
mother of Jesus didn’t get pregnant after choosing her marital
partner, experiencing desire, and consenting to intercourse. This,
too, is not OK. And, this too happened to many, many, many women.
It continues to happen. It is not OK. But it isn’t the end of hope.

I
am now preaching after the most recent attack on the LGBTQIA+
community in the form of a gunman attacking Club Q in Colorado
Springs. The attack was less deadly than it might have been because
of the actions of a vet and a drag queen, who took down the gunman.
Thank God they stopped him. And yet 5 people are dead, 19 are
injured, and once again the safety and sanctity of the club has been
violated. Trauma abounds. Grief abounds. The sickening reality of
the danger of being queer or trans is affirmed. The still present
horrors from the similar attack on Pulse Nightclub are resurgent.

And I wonder about this sticky,
sturdy, real hope I’m talking about. What does it even look like?
Is this a hope that someday our children will be able to dance in
peace? Is this a hope that maybe one person who might commit
violence like that could receive love in ways that prevent it? Is it
a hope that reasonable gun laws might make these shootings harder
accomplish?

Cause I still want hope to look
perfect. I want it to be that there is NO more violence against
queer and trans people ever again. I want an end to gun violence,
and an end to violence. I want clubs to thump and throb with music,
never again interrupted by gun fire. I want veterans to come home
without PTSD, and not need to position themselves to see exits, and
not be needed to stop shooters. Ok, I want there to be no need for
veterans.

And, I’m struck by both God and
hope being more willing to be in this reality than I am. To know the
brokenness we live in, and not give up. To see how hard things are,
to see how interconnected the struggles are, and not be overcome. To
know the grief, the heartache, the violation, the trauma, and not let
it be the only or the final word.

Our God is a God who sees.

A God who hears.

And a God of hope.

God calls us from this world of
violence into the kindom of peace. God gives us gifts of peace, love, joy, and hope.
God calls us to be peace-makers, love-sharers, joy-spreaders,
hope-increasers. May we receive and act on God’s call. May this
Advent be a time of quiet transformation so that what God is growing
us may soon break forth. Amen

November 27, 2022

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

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“Forgetting” based on Psalm 126 and Isaiah 43:16-21

April 3, 2022
by Sara Baron

The Isaiah passage seems so
cheerful, but it is actually a tough one. It asks people to let go
of the faith of the past to pay attention to what God is doing in the
present. And while that sounds great and all, for most of us, our
faith is pretty deeply rooted in the past, for good reasons, and
we’re not that interested in letting go of it.

That’s the always reason. The
2022 reason builds on it. A lot of us are rather sick and tired of
new things, and would rather be able to settle into some of the old
things we miss a lot.

Please count me among those who
are struggling with this. This week a small group of us met with a
team to talk about the technology we’ll need to move towards
livestreaming our service. They asked great questions, and I found
that I kept answering with, “well, before the pandemic…., right
now…., but I don’t know what the answer is in 2 years.” I miss
being able to answer simple questions with simple answers!

When I think about what our
church life looked like in February of 2020, I’m astounded at the
changes. I can barely remember the simplicity of ONE worship
service, and I didn’t adequately appreciate the wonder that was
people being able to be together in a room, safely. I sort of
remember church night, a time with 4 or 5 meetings, and having to
figure out who met in what room – instead of which zoom account to
use for which meeting. I remember children’s times on the steps of
the sanctuary when I got to talk to kids, and we could see each
other’s faces, a time I miss deeply. I remember seeing people’s
faces when I was preaching, and getting a sense of what made worked
and what didn’t, and being able to adapt. I miss that. I miss
parking lot conversations (am I allowed to admit that), and the
church office being loud when people ran into each other, and I
really really miss SUSTAIN ministry. I miss choir anthems, and the
sound I heard behind me during worship when I erred in following the
bulletin and choir members were trying to figure out if it was
important enough to tell me. I miss greeting our breakfast guests at
the door, and watching people chit chat with each other. Oh my, do I
miss communion after church, and also rushing to finish it so we
could get to a 2^nd hour!

When I hear, “do not remember
the former things, or consider the things of old,” that’s a hard
line to take in. Those things were sacred. They helped me know my
place in the world. They were important, and meaningful, and lovely,
and I struggle to let them go.

I invite you to think about, and
even name those things you miss. (in comments / outloud)

There is a power in naming those
things, in acknowledging what we’ve lost, and how hard it is to have
lost it.

There is something of a
scholarly debate over which “things of old” the Exiles were being
invited to forget. The way I hear it, they’re all a bit
controversial, because ours is a faith that REMEMBERS. Yet, “for
everything there is a season,” so… this is a different sort of
call. #newthing.

Some say that what the Exiles
are being invited to forget – so that they can see what God is up
to in the present – is the Exodus itself. God who made a way
through the sea, God who saved them from chariot and horse, God who
got them free from slavery – they’re being told FORGET THAT, and
watch what God is up to NOW. That’s a pretty big ask, huh?

Others say it is BIGGER.

Others say it is creation itself
the Exiles are being asked to forget, so they can see what God is up
to in the present. That the references to water reflect the acts of
creation of separating the waters, and the land from the water, and
instead of remembering CREATION, the Exiles are asked to forget that,
and pay attention to the present to see what God is up to NOW.
That’s a pretty big ask, huh?

Still others say it isn’t the
two biggest foundations of their faith that people are being asked to
forget, but instead it is the destruction and fear of the Exile
itself – which was what most of Isaiah 1-39 was predicting. The
Exiles are being asked to forget the circumstances by which they came
to be exiles in Babylon, and focus instead of what God is up to in
the NOW. So – that may well be the biggest ask of all.

These are some rather enormous
things to be asked to forget, in order to pay attention to the
present, and that rather suggests that we are not exempted from this
because of a world-changing pandemic either. So, the past being let
go of, even at rather exceptional cost, lets us continue in this
passage.

And now we hear, “I am about
to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you do you not perceive
it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I
give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to
my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they
might declare my praise” (43:19-21)

The premise of this passage,
that holding on to the past can distract us from the ways God is at
work in the present – that’s true. I don’t want us to go overboard
and throw out the past, which probably isn’t possible anyway. But, I
do want to enter into this idea.

Where is God present NOW, among
us, in new ways? Are we looking? Are we paying attention? Have we
freed our spirits and our focus to see what God is up to NOW, by
letting go of what we perceived God to be up to in the past??

God, as we know, is ALWAYS
pushing past the status quo. God isn’t going to let up seeking
justice for all of God’s beloveds, until there is JUSTICE and PEACE
and COMPASSION and WHOLENESS for ALLLLLLLLLL of God’s beloveds.

Which can mean that when the
world changes directions, the way God’s moves among us changes too.

The Exiles in Isaiah 43 were in
a new place. God’s advocacy for quite a while had been for them to
attend to their own teachings, to create a society with equity, to
care for the impoverished and vulnerable, to dismantle the power
structures, to provide justice within the justice system, and to
disentangle themselves from external empires who would do them harm.

But then the Exile happened,
and the external empire did them harm, and they no longer had the
power to enact God’s vision in the land – as the Exiles weren’t
even IN the land.

So God’s movement among them was
going to be different. God was now planting seeds of hope, God was
replanting dreams of a just society, God was helping them in the
midst of despair, and maybe most of all, God was inviting them into
their present – to BE WHERE THEY WERE instead of JUST grieving
where they were no longer.

It is, of course, notable, that
God dreams a future for them, in order to help them move from the
past to the present, but perhaps that’s part of what is needed. We
need to know where we’re going.

And that, dear ones, is a part
of what is hard right now. So much remains in flux, and it is far
from easy to see where we are going to land.

In fact, I think this has been a
struggle in this community for a rather long time. Going back for
decades, there have been various ways of trying to vision the future,
all of which petered out with some form of “but there are too many
variables,” only to have the process repeated a few years later.

Ok. So. There are too many
variables to know the future. That’s TRUE. That’s always been true,
but my goodness things change fast these days, and faster now than
ever. I’m aware of this, I’ve been the one updating the post on the
church’s facebook page telling people what worship looks like in our
community, and I’ve LOST COUNT of how many updates I’ve had to make
over the past 2 years.

Perhaps it might be of use to
think about what we do know, about the present as well as the future:

God is with us.

God is faithful.

God’s steadfast love endures
forever.

God dreams of goodness, joy,
peace, healing, wholeness, justice, and equity for all of creation.

We are on God’s team to make
that dream a reality.

I don’t know much more than
that. I don’t know what worship will look like in a year or two, or
what ministry may emerge out of the communities need and the energy
we once placed in Sustain. I don’t know how many “access points”
we will have for people to be part of this community, or when we’ll
get to livestreaming, when we can finally hear from Bishop Karen
Oliveto. Right now I don’t know when we might get an applicant for
our Sexton position, or put together the job description for a new
permanent musician, just have church council in person. (Come on
Moderna application for young kids to be vaccinated, I’m rooting for
you SO HARD.)

There is so much we don’t know,
and that’s hard. I think that’s part of why it is so easy to focus
on the past, which at least we knew and understood. But the past can
hold us hostage, particularly in moments like this when we run to it
out of discomfort in the present.

God IS up to new things today.
God isn’t happy with letting the unjust practices and lack of
compassion stand. And I know that we want to be attentive to God in
this time. So, I’m going back that list of what we know.

God is with us.

God is faithful.

God’s steadfast love endures
forever.

God dreams of goodness, joy,
peace, healing, wholeness, justice, and equity for all of creation.
(Shorter version: God is working for the kindom.)

We are on God’s team to make
that dream a reality.

I invite us all to center
ourselves on those truths.

Perhaps you will find that there
are a few more we can add, and I’d be delighted to hear them.
Perhaps you are one of the ones you can see what God is up to right
now, and I invite to share right now (comments/ out loud.)

This I know: God is up to new
things.

This I wonder: Are we on board?

Amen