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  • September 10, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Shorts!?” based on James 2:8-13 and Mark 7:14-23

It was really hot, sort of like this past week, when I went to visit some parishioners in my first church. I was in my mid-20s, and very aware of my pastoral role, so I’d carefully purchased only knee length shorts. I wore them, because they were modest and it was hot out.

The couple I visited was in their 80s, kind and thoughtful, passionate gardeners with great stories to tell. Without malice or judgement one of them remarked on my shorts to the other, something along the lines of “I never thought I’d see the day that a pastor would wear shorts.”

It had not occurred to me until that exact moment that I was violating an expectation. It was HOT OUT, and they were LONG, and someone had told me not to be too frilly or people wouldn’t trust me and…. most of all, I just didn’t know that pastors were expected not to wear shorts.

As an FYI this also applied to sandals and sleeveless tops, where there were expectations of some that I didn’t know about. Oddly enough, I’m willing to violate your expectations if you think I shouldn’t show my toes or my upper arms, but I haven’t gone visiting in shorts since that day!

Our passages today land us smack dab in the middle of purity conversations, and my experience of wearing shorts on a hot day seem like a decent example of how purity expectations change with time. There was a 60 year difference in ages between the faithful members of the church and the new pastor in that story, and we didn’t have the same understanding of what “appropriate” attire was for a pastor in the summer. That’s not exactly shocking. I have not experienced a time when women wore hats, gloves, and dresses to church while men wore suits, ties, and had handkerchiefs but I’ve heard about those times. I’ve heard about the transitions to making space for women to wear pants. For that couple, those transitions had happened during their live-times, and I was unfathomably casual. For me, finding shorts that were long enough to be “appropriate” was seriously challenging work – I was going against the grain of what I wanted to wear and what my friends wore for the sake of adapting to expectations, and I was embarrassed to learn it wasn’t enough.

As I read the Gospel this week, and listened to a story about Jesus condemning kosher dietary laws, I thought to myself, “well, that’s not likely to go back to Jesus. The decision to forego Jewish purity laws happened much later in Christian history. Jesus was Jewish, and he wouldn’t have condemned a faithful expression of his own tradition.” So, I went to the Jesus Seminar so they could tell me how brilliant I am.

They didn’t.

Instead, they said, “The aphorism – it’s not what goes in but what comes out that defiles – is a categorical challenge to the laws governing pollution and purity. … As a simple aphorism, it may well go back to Jesus: it challenges the everyday, the inherited, the established, and erases social boundaries taken to be sacrosanct. If Jesus taught that there is nothing taken into the mouth that can defile, he was undermining a whole way of life. That, in the judgement of the Fellows, sounds like Jesus.”1 They did think the later explanation of all the sins was likely a creation of Mark, for what it is worth, which is pretty much nothing.

I am not exactly sure what to do with this now, because it has a problematic anti-Semitic feel to it, but also Jesus was Jewish and I think people within a group get to see its reform. I just think that we, as Christians, better be very careful about how we speak about such things.

So I’m going to move away from the kosher conversation, and further into the purity conversation. The Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels makes this really interesting. They say, “Purity practices are a form of group boundary markers. They define who is in and who is out. They draw lines between those who are loyal to a group and those who are not…. Redefinition of purity rules such as Mark describes here and in the preceding passage can thus be construed as a redefinition of group and its boundaries.”2

I hadn’t even thought of that. I’ve been too busy being upset about the way that purity movements in my life-time are anti-sex, anti-female, homophobic, transphobic, and small-minded. I missed that they had a purpose.

If purity laws about defining the boundaries of who is in and who is out, well, first of all, a lot of things suddenly make more sense. Because that indicates that by drawing a line somewhere and thus excluding someone you can feel good about yourself and your self-righteousness, and well, I’ve seen that trick.

But also, if purity laws are about who is in and who is out then a whole lot of the Bible makes more sense. Because it turns out the word “neighbor” is also about who is in and who is out. Back to the Commentary, “Persons interacting positively with each other in in-group ways, even when not actual kin, become “neighbors.” The term refers to a social role with rights and obligations that derive simply from living socially close to others and interacting with them – the same village or neighborhood or party or faction. Neighbors of this sort are an extension of one’s kin group.”3

OK, so the ancient world was obsessed with in group and out group thinking – not so different from how we are now. And the first level of in group was family, everything else balanced on family. So as the in-group expanded outward, it became about thinking about who counted as being “family like,” and neighbors were family-like, in no small part because their well-being was tied up with one’s own.

But this is weird I fall in love with the Jesus movement all over again. Because we’ve got this purity thing going on, this drawing lines in the sand and excluding people from it, right? But then it turns out we include our families. And we include our neighbors. And then we have this Jesus who teaches centering on the question “Who is my neighbor?” and the answer ends up being the expected enemy, and that means everyone is your neighbor and there isn’t an out group after all, just one big in-group and everyone’s well being is interconnected.

This concept is why I use the language “kin-dom of God” where many others have used “kingdom of God.” Part of my decision there is to reject the idea that God is like an overbearing earthly king, interested in power and obedience. That part of my decision is ironic because the whole idea of “kingdom of God” is meant to be a counter to the idea of earthly power, but it seems to me we’ve gotten confused along the way, and it hasn’t worked. The positive piece though, is that we are moving towards the kin-dom of God when all people are treated as kin, as family, as members of the in-group, as people whose well-being is interconnected.

Now, there is a challenge in this. One of the best ways to bind a group of people together in an identity is to define an us by defining a “them.” It is engaging to be “in” and we create an “in” by creating an out. It is harder to be without those purity boundaries. But it is worth it.

When I think about being a person of faith, the way I think about it is to be about moving with God towards the kindom, and hopefully inviting others with me along the way. Or, in similar language, I’m told one of my predecessors in this pulpit, J. Edward Carothers, talked about the purpose of church being “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in an ever widening circle of concern.”

Ever widening circle of concern. Which might, even, be a circle of mercy. Our James reading ends with “mercy shouts victory over judgment.” I always have to remember that mercy is compassion shown to someone who it would be in one’s power to punish or harm. In this phrasing it seems like the opposite of judgment. Judgment would be using one’s power to punish or harm. But “Mercy shouts victory over judgment.” James is making a point common to the Bible – the ways we act and judge are the ways we will be treated and the ways we will be judged. Be merciful, he says, so you will receive mercy. Be merciful so mercy shouts victory over judgment.

May mercy be the way forward.

Compassion, when one holds the power over another.

Compassion.

Mercy.

Mercy shouts victory over judgment.

Ever widening circles of mercy.

Until the kindom comes.

Yes, God, yes, let’s do it! Amen

1Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? (USA: HarperOne, 1993) 69.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 176.

3Malina and Rohrbaugh, 373.

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

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

September 10, 2023

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  • September 3, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Math for the Win" based on Galatians 5:13-21 and Luke 19:1-10

The math of the Zacchaeus story has always bothered me. Because if he gives half of what he has away, and then he gives back what he took inappropriately TIMES 4, he has negative income really fast. Right? Which would mean he can’t fulfill his promise. But he is a tax collector so he can probably do math, so why did he say it?

For the first time in my life, this week, I let myself finish that thought. Because, despite the fact that math isn’t usually a great source of Biblical insight, the decades of annoyance about the math just couldn’t be silenced.

If the math is impossible, I started to wonder, does that mean that Zacchaeus is actually saying that he doesn’t defraud anyone? Because if that is the case, then it would follow that he isn’t actually a bad guy, despite being a tax collector! Which would mess up a whole lot of what I thought I new about this passage.

So, like you do, I did some digging in my favorite commentaries, and (shock of shock for those who listen to me regularly) the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels had something to say about this that I found important. Namely that the Greek verbs that Zacchaeus speaks “I give” and “I pay back” are in the present tense, which indicates that even before meeting Jesus, “Zacchaeus is already practicing this kind of compensatory behavior. The trouble is that the crowd does not believe him. He therefore bristles a bit at the stereotyping behavior of the crowd and responds to Jesus with a description of his customary behavior.”1

As someone who heard this lesson in Sunday School and learned a very annoying little song about it that never quite leaves my head, this is kinda crazy to learn. Zacchaeus was a good guy all along! He didn’t have some conversion experience upon meeting Jesus, what he actually had was a chance to be SEEN and KNOWN for the faithful human he already was- and the actions of Jesus in going to his house and in giving him a platform to speak were actions of HEALING between Zacchaeus and the community, because afterwards they could see him as he was and accept him as part of their communal life.

And, for the record, NOW it makes sense why he climbed that tree – if he was already a man who lived his faith, of course he’d want to see the guy whose live shined with God’s light.

Thanks math.

All of a sudden, this story resonates with some universal truths. Because, who among us hasn’t been misinterpreted, misunderstood, perceived in the worst light and desperately wished to be heard well, understood, and appreciated for who we are? I fear the answer is that no one has been excluded from that horrible human experience. The one where the good things you do go unnoticed or sometimes even are intentionally brushed away, and the mistakes you made are used to define you, and no space is given for you to talk about what your actual intentions were nor that you are sorry for the harm you caused. Everything you do or don’t do gets interpreted as bad, usually without anyone even talking to you about it directly.

It is awful stuff, right?

And it is common.

And it feels terrible.

Oh how I wish this were one of those things that didn’t happen in the church. However, this is a thing that happens in the church. (If you didn’t know that yet, YAY!!!!!!!! And sorry to burst your bubble.) I guess, for me, it helps a little bit that Paul speak to this as well, because this being a universal human and church failing at least means it isn’t just my own personal failure of leadership that this happens here sometimes too. I take what I can get.

Galatians, being one of the authentic letters of Paul, is a source of great wisdom and insight that still manages to annoy me immensely. In this case, I really hate that he engages in “body soul dualism” and attributes all the evil stuff to bodies. I pretty emphatically disagree. In my opinion, my worldview, body soul INTEGRATION is where it is at. Our bodies are full of useful information about who we are, how we are, what feelings we have, and what we need. Our bodies guide us to the fullness of our humanity, and as we make space for the fullness of our humanity we move toward the Divine as well. Which I think is really important.

Now that I’ve argued with Paul, I can move on and say that I agree with his opening point that being free in God should not be taken as a reason to bite and devour each other. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves – the ones near and far, the ones in the church and out of it. If you are being distracted by his long list of “bodily desires” and those have been used against you in the past, let me offer the words of Dr. Wil Gafney on this, “In this case the author is focusing on excessive desires and self-gratifying desires rather than condemning the care and ending of one’s body and health. Mutual sexual gratification would seem to be beyond rebuke.”2

Now that we’ve de-escalated our responses to Paul, what we can do with his wisdom that people who seek to be loving to each other sometimes chew each other up and spit each other out – like people did to Zacchaeus? He recommends “walking in the Spirit.” I recommend staying in your body. Really. I recommend letting yourself be mad, or sad, or disappointing in another, and then checking to see if there are any other emotions around it, and then finding out what thing(s) you value are violated and then thinking about what might make those better – and then if you can thinking about what the other person may be feeling, needing, valuing – and then TALKING ABOUT IT WITH THE PERSON.

Yes.

WITH the other person.

Because the Bible is really clear that the best way to deal with each other is directly. Even though it is really hard. Can you imagine if someone had said to Zaccheaus, “Hey, you are in a really awful profession, but you claim to be a decent guy. That doesn’t add up to me, can you help me understand?” Or even, “I think you took too much money from me.” Or, “You claim to love God, but you seem to love money. Does that seem true to you?”

Those wouldn’t be easy conversations, but they might have changed everything. I have been so grateful in my ministry for the people who say, “I see you doing this thing, and I think you should be doing that thing,” and say it to me directly so we can chat! I’ve also been grateful for those who say, “I was really offended by this thing you did.” Because we can figure out together what matters to us together and how to find an answer for the future that works for us both. And no one else is stuck in the middle, or pulled into drama, and no one is being maligned. It is a hard, beautiful thing.

I think that’s the miracle of what Jesus did with Zaccheaus – he reconnected him to people so the people could talk to him again, ask him questions again, call him out even. He opened up the lines of communication. Because that’s what it means to be in community – it means to be in communication with people, including in difficult communication.

Thank God Jesus called Zaccheaus out of that tree, and thank God his math SO CLEARLY didn’t add up so he could become multi-dimensional to us, and THANK GOD other people have been misunderstood so we don’t feel alone, and most of all thank God for the times when people are brave enough for the hard conversations. Those are the most holy ones.

Amen

1Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 303.

2 Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 278.

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 3, 2023

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  • August 13, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Glimmers” based on Psalm 10:1-14 and John 10:11-16

You may already know this, but sheep are the vulnerable adults of the animal kingdom. They are epically poor at making good decisions. Left to their own devices they will eat themselves to death, because they just don’t know when to stop. Because of their woolly coats, which weigh them down when wet, they’re picky about where they drink. They’re vulnerable to predators, and can get lost easily.

It is because they are so vulnerable that the role of shepherd is so important. It is probably because they are so vulnerable and in need of help and support that they come to know and rely on their shepherd.

It is probably because we’re all sometimes vulnerable, and can make bad decisions, and have particular needs we can’t easily meet that the metaphor of God as a Shepherd makes sense. Well, that and the Bible was written when agricultural metaphors were the most easily available and understood ones 😉

This passage from John fits easily into the explanations we have of the 23rd Psalm, where God is a shepherd. Here, Jesus is the shepherd, right? And here it is explicit that the care the shepherd gives is being willing to run INTO danger to protect the sheep while others would choose to run away. And the shepherd is the one the sheep know and trust, and no one else is. Lovely.

Perhaps my favorite part of this passage is the end where Jesus claims there are other flocks who also listen to his voice, and it is his intention to bring them together. That sounds right- that there are others who also know love and also are loved and that Jesus is able to offer care for more individuals than we might have thought possible.

I adore, too, the intimacy of the passage, the reminder that a shepherd and their sheep KNOW EACH OTHER well, and know each other’s voices, and respond to each other. That fits, because humans and sheep are all mammals and mammals are all about connecting to each other.

It leads me to wondering about how it is we experience that kind of intimacy with the Divine. God, we say, is everywhere in everything and always around us and always available. Yet, not every moment of our lives feels saturated with the Divine, and quite often we’re too busy doing other things to connect. Or maybe God feels farther away and the connection is harder to come by.

This week I’ve been thinking about the reminders of God and God’s goodness that glimmer in the world and help us remember to connect. I’ve been thinking about it because I spent a week at camp and the whole week was just one big glimmer of wonderfulness and love, of being wrapped in creation and there being spaciousness to connect with wonderful people, and time to savor it all. But, it turns out, I came home from camp and reality as I usually experience it hit me … well, pretty fast and pretty hard and I was disoriented.

Because usually my life involves bearing witness to a lot of pain, and a lot of our society’s brokenness and when I came back to that with my guard down it HURT. (Which is also good, I think, but that’s for another day.)

And yet, my guard needs to come down sometimes. And sometimes I need to take a walk with dear ones and marvel over the many colors of mushrooms growing in the woods, or watch a beaver swim with a big branch, or just sit and watch a rainstorm come by from a dry porch, or talk about scripture with people who just love it. (Camp. WOW.)

So I’ve been thinking about joy, and where to access it. And I’ve been thinking about hope and where to access it. Because I don’t think that the injustices of the world or the pain that humans experience are about to stop, but I don’t want those to be the ONLY things that get my attention.

And that’s where “glimmers” come in. I shared this on the church’s Facebook page:

Did you know about glimmers?

Glimmer is the opposite of a trigger. Like a micro moment that makes you happier, a little moment of awe, something that makes you feel hope. Once you start looking for them and embracing them, your life feels so much sweeter.

I’m actually going to take that a bit further though. I think a glimmer is a glimpse of God, or God’s love, or God’s goodness, or God’s desire for us to live full and abundant lives. And they’re reminders that we can trust in God and God is with us – like John says.

So I’ve been watching for glimmers. Baptism is ALWAYS one. This baptism all the more so for me, after having had the chance to confirm Chris in the early years of my ministry here. I have been reminded that we have rainstorms AND porches here in Schenectady, as well as sunrises and sunsets and even sometimes stars and all of that glimmers. Good food glimmers. Shared excitement glimmers. Great ideas glimmer. Quiet moments of understanding glimmer. Debbie’s fingers on a keyboard glimmer. Maybe it is too obvious, but the stained glass in here glimmers – and it is awfully good to remember to look!!

Once I started looking again, the glimmers were everywhere. Oh, Andrew, I hope you grow up seeing glimmers everywhere every day. I hope your family does too and they teach you to appreciate it. I hope your churches – here and at home – do too and they teach you to appreciate it. And, by the way – all of the rest of you too.

I wish you the capacity to see the glimmers all around you, and the ability to remember they are signs of God’s love, and the development of trust in God that can come from it all – so that we all learn even better how to hear and trust God’s voice.

Amen

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

August 13, 2023

(Thanks to Joan E. Carey for photo.)

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  • August 6, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Destruction and Peace” 1 Samuel 15:1-3, 8, 10-17, 24-25 and Psalm 146

This church is blessed with a deep commitment to learning and growing. We all come with our own background and experiences. Some of which involve degrees in religion, theology, or divinity. Some of which involves running for dear life from church and everything like it for most of a life, and not being as well read. Which is to say, wherever you might be, that’s fine! Nerds are welcome here, and … non-nerds? Is that what they’re called?

So, anyway, this church that loves to learn has been lucky enough to have the Carl Lecture fund which allow the church bring in speakers to help us learn more. The most recent Carl Lecturer was Bishop Karen Oliveto in May, and that was a delight. In 2017 ago John Dominic Crossan lectured here, and like Bishop Karen I’m still fan-girl-ing over it.

A few things “Dom” said that weekend have reframed the Bible for me, and quite often when I read a text I’m struck again by the truth of it all. The biggest reframing was in thinking of the Bible as containing two streams of thought.

They are often intertwined, they are both holistic, and they are both prevalent throughout the Bible. One of them he called the covenant stream and characterized as being a punishment/reward system. In that stream the people were told what to do, rewarded if they did it, punished if they did not, and judged by their obedience.

The other he called the stream of distributive justice and it begins in the Bible with the distribution of rest called Sabbath and continues to be concerned with the fair distribution of the things people need so they can live full and abundant lives.

Both streams are found throughout the Hebrew Bible, both are found throughout the Christian Testament, and most people of faith focus on one of them and find the other to be of less value. John Dominic Crossan himself prefers the sabbath and distributive justice stream and finds within it the description of the God he knows. Turns out me too.

Today we got a text from each stream, and one of them is pretty distressing, at least to me. In 1 Samuel God tells the people to destroy one of their enemies in a “holy war” which means the complete and utter destruction of every living thing in their village. Our translator makes this horrifically clear by saying “do not spare them and put them to death from woman to man, and from infant to nursing baby, and from ox to sheep, from camel to donkey.”

This. Is. Horrific.

I want to puke.

Then, it turns out, they only killed MOST of the living things, but kept the leader alive and some of the livestock claiming they wanted to sacrifice the livestock to God. And this story, in our Bible, says that God was REALLY REALLY mad about this because when God says “kill them all” you are supposed to “kill them ALL” and not most, and this is used as a reason that Saul is replaced as the king of Israel.

ARGH. I’m going to give us just another moment to be horrified by this, and then I’m going to soften these blows a little bit. Ready?

There are a few things to bring into reading this text. The first, which may well help, is that it is probably not historically true. This is a story that would have been told for a long time and written down well after the fact and in other cases where we read about destruction like this and are able to verify it – the destruction never happened. The second piece is that 1 and 2 Samuel are super pro-David propaganda and this story seems created to establish David’s authority by diminishing Saul’s, which is another reason to inherently distrust it. The third, and final, softening on reading this text is the reminder that the Hebrew Bible as we know it was written down in the aftermath of the Exile when people had experienced unprecedented death, destruction, trauma, and horror. The primary question of the people as they were writing down these stories was “why did this happen to us?” And this story seems designed to answer “this happened to us because we were unfaithful and God punished us.”

A whole lot of people believe that bad things happen because God punishes them. I would say most of those people were raised in the “covenant stream” of reward and punishment – and may not even be aware there are other options. And, indeed, this story fits fully into that stream. God expects obedience, punishes disobedience, there is nothing anyone can do about it – not even the prophet Samuel.

So, if you haven’t noticed yet, I pretty much hate this text. But, if this text reflects about half of the Biblical tradition, I am probably better off acknowledging it exists and dealing with it than just wishing it away, right? I appreciated Dr. Gafney’s reflection on this text that it “illustrates the difficulty in teasing out the human and the divine in scriptures.” TRUE THAT. I also appreciated her reminder that the ways we see power and authority function in the world impact how we think about the power and authority of God. In places where there is a monarchy, it is particularly easy to think of God as a monarch, and to think of hierarchy as normal and appropriate. The Bible was written during a whole lot of monarchies and hierarchical systems, and it makes sense that that humanness would invade the perspective of the text.

We also have today a text from the other stream – the one about distributive justice. And it is a breath of fresh air. I also appreciate that within it I can hear regular and repeated themes of the Bible, because this too is Biblical and deeply rooted. Those who would claim that God is all about punishment and rewards may have a hard time making sense of texts like this one.

The Psalm starts out seeming a bit simple. Someone is praising God. If you’ve read the Psalms you might be tempted to say “what else is new?” It then moves on to establishing that God is worthy of trust in a way that people are not. And then it talks about WHY God is trust worthy and worthy of praise and the source of hope and joy. The reasons are pretty standard order too: because God created all that is, because God is a God of justice who brings justice to the oppressed, because God is the one who feeds the hungry, because God is compassionate and sets prisoners free, because God helps people see, and lifts up those who are bowed down, and loves when good things are being done, and cares for the stranger, and takes care of the vulnerable orphans and widows, and confuses and confounds those who would do harm.

Nothing new there, those are repeated themes in the Bible. But note that they are universal. God isn’t just caring about those in covenant relationship with God, God is caring about everyone. God is inverting the social order and taking care of those with the least capacity to take care of themselves. Which means that the normal social order isn’t as God would have it be, and THAT would mean that those doing well aren’t being rewarded and those doing poorly aren’t being punished. Instead both of those reflect a need for more JUST distribution and God is working on making that happen.

Now, as I mentioned, I have a STRONG preference for one of these streams of thoughts and ways of understanding God. I’d go so far as to say I think one is “right” and the other is “wrong” or as close as I’m willing to get to using words like that about God.

But, dear ones, I think the best news is the reminder that these two streams of thought, these two fundamentally different worldviews, are hanging out together in the Bible. Neither dominates the other. Sometimes, they intertwine so well we can’t tease them apart. They are in there together, coexisting for about 3000 years now.

(Here is the twist, it feels like it may come out of no where, but I’ve been building this whole time.)

And, beloveds of God, if these two different streams of thought have coexisted in the Bible for this long, and fed various people of faith, and been experienced as holy, and sometimes even supported each other – then I’m pretty sure we can survive the next US election.

I adore that the Bible feels free to contradict itself with different versions of the same story and even different basic conceptions of who God is and how God is. I love that there is space for the fullness of humanity and the fullness of the divine, and I actually love that teasing out which is which is so hard. Because it deserves to be hard. And we learn while we try. And our disagreements usually teach us a lot we need to know.

John Wesley famously said, if your heart is with my heart, give me your hand. May we be people whose hearts are with others’ hearts, even if we disagree. May we be people of peace.

Amen

August 6, 2023

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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  • July 16, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“The Gift of Peace" based on Romans 5:1-5 and John 14:25-31

When you think of peace, what comes up for you? This became interesting for me as I sought a good pictures to go with the sermon title for our electronic sign. Apparently, according to the internet, peace looks like sunrise or sunset over a body of water, or a pile of rounded rocks stacked on each other, maybe with a person in a yoga pose.

Those are decent. I think they generically connote peace pretty well.

Is it different, for you, though, to consider when you are most at peace? It is for me.

I tend to think of moments of peace in two broad categories: first the ones that are like glimpses of grace when I just notice that there is wonder and peace around me, the second are the ones that I seek out – when I create the space to remember that God is with me and am able to let my guard down well enough that God’s peace seeps in.

The first kind, the just moments of grace when peace is there, are pretty wide ranging. I have often often found peace if I’m outside at dusk (other than black fly season), after a good workout, while in the woods, walking into the sanctuary, during nighttime snowfalls, when I hear achingly beautiful music, and when I’m surrounded by people I love and just savoring the goodness of their presence. Your list is probably unique to you.

Those moments are a gift. They come freely, I savor them when I notice them, and they slowly drift away. Finding inner peace, even if for a moment, is profound.

The second kind is the spiritual practice kind – or maybe the “means of grace” kind. Because people of faith through the ages have taught us that God’s peace is close at hand, and there are ways of connecting to it if we want to. So there is intention, and seeking in these moments of peace. I mostly call it prayer, but it may not look like what prayer expects to look like. Sometimes my prayer is sitting on the porch watching the wind blow through the trees, sometimes it is writing in a journal and sorting out what is happening inside me, sometimes it is taking a walk in nature because (for me) that is so potent as a means of connecting to God.

Sometimes it is sitting still, with my eyes closed, breathing, and intentionally letting go of thoughts as they appear. (That one might “look like” prayer.)

And, sometimes those prayer practices “work” and I let my guard down and I have INCREDIBLE moments of deep peace as a gift from the Divine. And, let’s be honest here, sometimes they “don’t.” Sometimes I can’t get my guard down. Sometimes other things distract me. Sometimes it seems like I get my guard down but the peace doesn’t come. It can’t really be forced.

Now, I’m conflating the grace of the experience of the presence of God with peace, because they conflate for me. They might not for you, that’s a thing to consider for yourself. In any case though, I think that peace is supposed to be one of the gifts of God, something that we receive from the Divine from God’s goodness. And, because we are able to talk about how we receive it and what helps us be open to it, and from that learn how to access peace even when the world is roiling around us, I think it is supposed to be one of the markers of faith.

The capacity to be at peace is meant to be something that differentiates us.

That’s a pretty high bar, huh? Because everyone has different personalities and some are more attuned to peace than others.

And yet, there is something there.

Because this may get at a really core question. What is it that we are seeking in life? Because the world around us tells us what success looks like – and it is things to do with appearances, power, violence, and money. And it is REALLY easy to buy into that narrative because it is EVERYWHERE. Part of the wonder of being within a community of faith is the chance to create a different narrative of success, and encourage each other to hear other options.

What if “success” is connecting deeply enough to God’s peace that it changes the world through us?

What if “success” is trusting enough in God’s love that it flows through us?

What if “success” is letting our hearts be opened wide enough for all of God’s people and all of God’s creation?

What if “success” is becoming loving listeners?

What if “success” is a life filled with joy?

What if “success” is in deep and whole relationships?

What if “success” is in how often we laugh?

What if “success” is in how much we savor wonder and beauty?

What if “success” is in becoming better and better at sharing?

What if “success” is in being able to give power away?

What if “success” is just in being alive and sometimes at peace, and that’s enough?

What if “success” doesn’t matter at all, and it is plenty to simply be?

What if it isn’t hard?

That’s a different narrative than the one I hear in commercials, read in the news, or see on social media.

We have recently brought into our worship the ancient tradition of “passing the peace of Christ” to one another. It has gotten pretty rave reviews around here.

It is also a profound thing that we do. It is acknowledging that God’s peace is with us, that it is worthy of our attention, and that it increases among us as we share it with each other. We are offering blessings to each other, I might argue the best ones. (Because I really really like the peace of Christ.) It gives us space to connect with each other, and it calls us back to the priority of living out the peace of Christ.

And peace, in Hebrew and in God-talk, is this really interesting holistic communal thing that refers to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being of each individual and the whole. It inherently acknowledges that the peace each of us holds is interconnected with the peace each other is holding. But it is a complicated concept in that it is possible to hold onto God’s peace even when not all is well. God’s peace can show up in the worst of times, and hold us together through it. God’s peace can be nurtured within us and within the community and build up resilience within us.

Peace.

Where the world focuses on violence and power, God calls us to nurture, savor, and make space for peace.

Thank God we are called to something different. Thank God we have each other to work with in the effort to nurture, savor, and make space for peace. Thank God for the moments when peace arrives and we are whole. 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

July 16, 2023

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  • July 9, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Exhaustion” based on 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25

Content Warning: in this sermon I’m going to talk about abuse of power, including abuse of power by clergy, including clergy sexual misconduct. This is a tender topic, particularly here, and you may wish to disengage from it, which is fine.

When I read this passage from 1 Samuel, my first response is to be exhausted. I was recently reminded that exhaustion is often a trauma response. Under the exhaustion are anger and sadness, I can’t differentiate them. Under that is more exhaustion.

I’ve now completed 17 years of full-time ministry and within them approximately 10 rounds of required clergy sexual misconduct training. In my 17 years these have been the only required trainings that clergy have been told to take, other than New York State who mandates sexual harassment training for every boss and employee. I’ve long been aware that the actions of clergy people before me, and the lawsuits that resulted from their actions, were creating the environment I minister in. I’m all for clergy sexual misconduct training, my only concern is the idea that it is the ONLY thing that matters. Particularly because I don’t believe the trainings themselves are necessarily the most effective way to bring the change they attempt to make.

So, that’s tiring, and makes me question a lot of things.

Also, I’m in leadership in the Annual Conference while we are trying to figure out how to pay for legal fees and settlements for a multitude of lawsuits related to the Child Victim’s Act, which opened a window for people who had been abused as children to bring lawsuits about it as adults. Everything about this is terrible, starting with the harm done to God’s children and including with the means by which we figure out how to find the money we need in order to respond.

Which is draining, and I hate it.

And finally I am serving this beloved church which has itself experienced clergy sexual misconduct, by a beloved clergy person, who is now deceased, whose life after his death still intersected with lives within this community. This fact is tender.

So are the impacts within the community of his actions, even though they are more than 40 years old and many of you don’t know anything about them. But it is now within this community’s DNA and I firmly believe that if this church had not been as strong, loving, loyal, and faithful as it is -it would not have survived it.

That’s actually a thing I want to make sure you hear: I believe this church is EXTRAORDINARY to have survived what happened to it. I fear some of you may think you are weak because it happened or because you couldn’t stop it, or because there were long-ranging impacts from it. Instead, I think it is pretty much a miracle you survived. Most churches don’t.

Here is what I know: an already beloved pastor was appointed here as senior pastor in the 1970s. He was charming and charismatic, brilliant and well-regarded. It was not known to this church that he had abused his power as pastor in his prior appointments. He abused it again, with married adult women who came to him for pastoral counseling, with whom he had affairs. At the same time that it became known he also was found to have a debilitating medical condition.

It had been thought he’d become a Bishop. Instead he was reappointed to Vermont. The church members split into two camps: one of those who were horrified by what had been done and one of those who defended their pastor at all costs and shifted the blame either to the women he’d harmed or to those who named the actions. Those two camps were stuck in a power battle, enmeshed in conflict, and not talking to each other.

When the next pastor came, he declared it “over” and said it wasn’t going to be talked about anymore. I believe that held for about 30 years until I arrived. Once, maybe 8 years ago, I named in a sermon that this church had survived clergy sexual misconduct. I was told afterwards that I’d made the FIRST public acknowledgement of that fact. Ever.

Over the course of the next decade or so, this church experienced significant decline. Now, I want to put that in context for you. It was the 1980s. The 1980s were a time when church attendance declined all across the USA. Also the 1980s were a horrible time for Schenectady, when many people left. Also the 1980s were the time when those who didn’t leave immediately after the clergy sexual misconduct slowly drifted off the next time they got hurt by the church.

Yet, I believe, for those of you who were here, the decline in attendance and membership in the 1980s felt like failure. Which breaks my heart. I wish someone had made space for you all to talk about your experiences, to name what it had been like to have your spiritual leader do harm, or maybe what it had been like to think that people accused your spiritual leader of doing something he’d “never do.” I wish you were afforded the opportunity to talk about the ways that trust was destroyed as two camps maneuvered around each other. I wish you could have talked about the ways that led to mistrust in clergy, and in clergy authority, and the quiet ways you tried to create some safeguards. I wish someone had named that the women who trusted their pastor to give them pastoral care were vulnerable women were not to be blamed for being vulnerable nor for being seduced by someone with power – not even if they were pretty.

That is, I wish this church had received after care. I wish the Annual Conference had known to give it.

I wish the story that was taken from the time was something other than “we’re too brittle to deal with conflict, so we better not talk about it.” I wish fewer people lost faith in God because the pastor did harm – particularly the teenagers who talked about it all with each other but no adult knew to make space to help them make sense of it.

The church itself lost respect, authority, and credibility. I think rightfully so. I think the church and its clergy should never have had such power as to make abuse like that possible. I think there always should have been checks and balances and clergy people should always have been seen as fallible people and safeguards should have been in place.

Far too many faith communities have had faith leaders abuse their power. This isn’t as uncommon as I wish it was. I guess this comes back to that old wisdom that where there is power there can be abuse of power. 🙁

Today, I still see the echoes of the harm done to this community. It isn’t a linear thing where I can tell that “because x happened, y followed.” Humans and human organizations are more complicated than that. Here is what I see that I think is reflective of that era of harm: 1. This church is more afraid of conflict that most. 2. This church is more afraid of pastoral authority than most. 3. While I know you all to be profoundly thoughtful, careful, intentional people of faith whose lives reflect your values – there is significant fear of talking directly about God and the impact of God on your lives – which I think goes back to things about authority and power and abuse of power. 4. While there is discomfort about pastoral authority, there are also many places where the pastor is rather oddly deferred to. I think this is also about pastoral authority and ways it is not understood and not wanting to be touched. 5. Power itself is concerning around here, and there is fear and distrust around using power and figuring out who is supposed to have power.

And finally, 6. I think there is still an undercurrent of fear, guilt, and shame that this happened here… which knocks out some of the self-confidence you might otherwise have as a church.

So, when I read about Eli’s sons abusing their power by taking too much food, and taking the wrong food, and using their power to force women to sleep with them – it actually sounds like the age old story of my ministry. The realities of the harms done in the past, the ways they impact the present, the horror I have at what was done and how God’s love was abused in the world, and the challenges I face in attempting to share God’s love in the world while occupying the status, role and even pulpit of one(s) who did such harm.

Which I think has now sufficiently explained to you why the scripture exhausts me.

Now I want to tell you why I’m glad it is there, despite it all. I am so incredibly grateful that the Bible itself tells stories of abuse by those entrusted to do God’s work, and gives it to us as honest story that helps us make sense of our lives. If this story and ones like it weren’t in the Bible, we wouldn’t have anything to work with. We wouldn’t have precedent for knowing that those entrusted with God’s work often fail. We wouldn’t have evidence that God hates it. We wouldn’t be able to compare and contrast the experience of the people 3000 years ago to the ones of our own lifetimes.

I mean, I’d prefer if those entrusted with holy work simply didn’t abuse people. 100% my preference. But since that isn’t how it has been, how it is, nor how it is going to be, I’d rather have that truth in the Bible for us to work with and reflect upon. I’d rather have a lectionary text that pushes me to tell you – the church – your own story as I’ve had it told to me than continue the cone of silence.

I’d rather break the power of shame by bringing the past into full view than let it keep on beating us up.

I’d rather deal with this now, in the ways we can, than let it harm more generations in the future.

I’d rather be able to tell you that I think you are amazing for surviving than have you continue to feel guilt for abuse happening in your midst.

I’d rather deal with the past until it lets go of its grip on the present than try to force it away and have it come back to bite us.

I’d rather make space for truth and reconciliation. I’d rather have hope and rebuild trust and assure you that you can survive being in conflict than have you live in fear.

I’d rather talk about it. I think it is time. And I believe, with God, we can handle it. 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

July 9, 2023

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  • July 2, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“A Story of Hope” based on Psalm 144:3-4, 12-15

When I was 13 I broke my leg, my femur to be specific. It hurt a lot. I was in a straight leg cast from my hip to my toes, which got in the way. During the weeks I was in the cast, I YEARNED to be able to walk up stairs and it felt like an ETERNITY passed while I had to sit on the stairs and push up or down them one at a time.

It was less than 6 weeks, but I was 13.

Sometimes though, even today, in the midst of walking stairs, I notice the absolute joy and wonder of being able to do so. I remember that yearning, and I’m grateful again that I can do the thing I wanted so desperately to be able to do.

I say this with an awareness that not everyone can walk stairs. Some have never been able to, some will never be able to again, some just can’t yet, and some cannot just for right now. The capacity to walk up and down stairs is something easy to take for granted – when and if you can do it. The lack of capacity to walk up and down stairs can profoundly impact a life, despite the best efforts of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Psalm today reminds me of stairs. It speaks of abundance with such profound excitement. Scholars are not clear about it: does it reflect an expression of a present joy or a future hope? In either case, I think it is worth paying attention to. What is the nature of this exuberant utopia worthy of great praise?

There is plenty of food, the children are able to grow strong and whole, no one is attacking them, and they are safe at home. Based on this they say, “Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall; happy are the people whose God is the WOMB OF LIFE.”

For people who have such things, it is possible to stop noticing how amazing it is when there is plenty of food, the children are able to grow strong and whole, no one is attacking them, and they are safe at home. It is possible to pay attention instead to what one doesn’t have, or what isn’t right, or even the stressors around them – and entirely miss the wonder of basic safety and enough food.

Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t have basic safety and enough food. We have a Community Breakfast Program to try to respond to the needs within our community for sufficient, nutritious food. We know that one meal a week helps without solving that problem. Violence in our society is plentiful, safe housing is insufficient, and good food is not as accessible as it needs to be. And, of course, those who are migrants, or immigrants, and those who are displaced as well as people in less wealthy countries ALSO lack basic safety and sufficient food.

It can be easy to take it for granted, unless you don’t have it. And It can be hard to focus on anything else when you are hungry or unsafe.

Which is why it is a beautiful and profound dream, the idea of plenty of food, children are able to grow strong and whole, peace and safety at home. For many, many people now and throughout history, enough food and a sense of safety would be a blessing beyond measure.

So, if you have that, THANK GOD!

And if you don’t, know this: God wants it for you too.

Because that is a part of the good news of God: that God’s aim is for everyone to have enough food and for everyone to be safe. That’s the dream. Enough for everyone. No one is excluded. No one goes hungry. No one gets hurt. No one is at war. No one has to fight tooth and nail to get enough to survive because there IS enough for everyone (already) and if it is distributed fairly everyone can thrive.

That’s God’s dream. That’s the kindom of God. That’s the beloved community. That’s what we’re about.

There are, of course, disagreements about how to get there. Do we create the kindom of abundance by attending to the disparities of our society and counterbalancing them? Or do we just kinda hope the injustice goes away? Do we create the kindom of God by offering debt relief to the overburdened? Or by prioritizing lenders at all costs? And while I’m at it, do we get to the kindom by trusting women to made the best decisions for their bodies and families or by asserting authority over other people’s bodies and lives?

There are, I’m sure, good faith arguments on both sides. But as people of faith seeking the kindom, seeking to ensure that ALL people access safety and sufficient resources for their needs, that guides our thinking on issues. Which side of the argument leads to life abundant for the most people? Which creates more justice? Which brings safety? Which leads to better distribution of resources?

And not everything moves in the direction of the kindom, right? But, still we seek, still we work, still we know God is with us in moving the world towards shared safety and shared abundance.

When we came home from Annual Conference, I shared with some of you that in the Episcopal address Bishop Héctor Burgos Núñez named some cultural shifts in how we will function together as United Methodists of Upper New York. My cynicism won out until his final point when he said that we would stop focusing on “church growth” and instead focus on “missional impact.” Now, I think “missional impact” is kinda useless language, but I am trained in speaking church and the actual meaning behind it is great. Missional impact is church-speak for tangibly sharing God’s love in the world. Which itself might be church speak (oops), for “helping.”

When I shared that with a few of you before worship, one of you responded with something like, “Well, yes. The entire point of church is to get people together so we can help other people. If we aren’t doing that, there is no point.” To which I may or may not have said “YES!” a little bit too loudly.

Some of how we do that is by worshiping. Now, if you are listening to this, you probably already find some value in worship, but I think it is helpful sometimes to consider WHY something is useful. Particularly because worship isn’t as directly a way of helping people as serving breakfast is.

Worship gives us a time that is apart from the rest of our week. A time to attend to beauty, and meaning, and to rest. That’s important on it’s own, and it is important to be able to keep going. Worship makes space for shared prayer, which matters in ways we can’t often even name. Worship gives us time to consider scripture and reflect on it, to try to work together to figure out what God is up to, to celebrate what God is up to, and (maybe most importantly?) to notice how God WANTS the world to be and how that is different from how it is. Because if we can’t dream with God towards how things should be, we can’t get there. Worship also gives us a chance to be together, which inherently matters. Because when people are together they can get to know each other, check in on each other, laugh together, and connect.

And because we NEED each other, so whenever we connect it benefits us and it benefits God. I think we may, as humans, need to express thanks for good things, and we need space to mourn the things that break out hearts and worship is designed to make space for the wholeness of human emotion.

We need time that is “unproductive” just set aside to BE humans, to BE with God, to simply BE and worship gets to be that for us too. All together this indicates that worship may be something we do mostly because we need it, and we need to be fed in order to feed. But at the same time we need each other at worship to make worship worship and that’s kinda cool too.

Finally, around here, we have the joy of sharing God’s incredible hospitality to all people and in our shared worship we can break down the barriers that have historically communicated to people that they were unwelcome or unworthy. And that dear ones, is a POWERFUL way of “helping.”

Our shared sense of God’s welcome, of God’s un-ending love, and of the energy and power we have to do things that matter TOGETHER then become the basis for everything ELSE we do as a church: the things we gather to give away, the places we go to share God’s love, the ministries we offer to ease the burdens of God’s beloveds, the ways we show up to be with God’s people and to advocate for God’s dreams.

We get to do all that because we share in God’s dreams for plenty of good and safety for everyone and we get to spend our lives working towards it with God.

And soon we get to gather at the table together to be fed. That is a reason to give thanks! And it is yet another reminder that the fullness of the table of God – the abundance of good food and spacious safety – are meant to be extended until everyone can be at the table together. With God and each other, there is plenty of reason to hope we can get there together.

May God keep on working with us, in us, and through us. Amen

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

July 2, 2023

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  • June 18, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Responding to Pleas” based on 1 Samuel 1:1-6, 9-18 and Matthew 15:21-28

What do you want most in life? Or perhaps, what have you wanted most? For many, I know the answer is that of the Canaanite woman in the Gospel lesson: healing for a loved one. For some the answer is that of Hannah: fulfillment of a lifetime desire. There are more answers of course, but those two cover a lot of ground.

They cover a lot of humanity too – the utter horror that we can feel when we face the pending death of a loved one, the discontent that can come when we are unfulfilled, and even the ways that society tells us who we should be and the pressures that puts on us to want particular things.

There are some challenges in these texts. The first one, I think, is primarily for people who believe that Jesus was perfect. Because in the Gospel story, he definitely isn’t. He’s human and quite fallible. Now, if this is an impediment to you being able to hear the story, it is always possible to tell yourself that Jesus was “acting like a human to make a point.” Because a point gets made here. Jesus, honestly, dismisses the human value of another person because her ethnicity is different from his.

Worse, it is rather consistent in the book of Matthew with how Jesus talks about Gentiles. They are OTHER. Gentiles are non-Jews, and they’re not people of faith, and they’re less important. They are THEY, the “not us.”

Which definitely seems like the energy Jesus brings into the conversation. Now, he’s tired. Let’s admit it. He had left the Galilee to get a break from all the demands being made on him. He is on retreat, or something like it, taking a break. He is trying to fill himself up so he can go back to giving away what he has.

And while he’s on retreat, yet another person has heard of him, and yet another person asks things of him, and he is DONE and he draws a boundary and says “she is not my problem. I was sent to the Jews, she isn’t a Jew, I’m on a retreat, let’s ignore it.” (I kinda get it. This far at least. You can’t fix the whole world – and maybe not even if you are Jesus, or at least the Jesus who lived in a human body which is inherently finite.)

But still she approaches him, and asks him directly, “Help me!” And then Jesus says the awful thing. The thing inconsistent with what we teach about Jesus in Sunday School, and even most of the time at church. He says, “ “It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And from what I’ve read, calling a woman a dog back then was about as unkind as you might think it would be today.

But, I’ve got to give it to this unnamed Canaanite woman. Because she wants her daughter healed, and she won’t back down. She is willing, even to take the insult, if that’s what it takes. She is already kneeling before him, pleading, and having her humanity attacked isn’t going to stop her now.

She sticks with his metaphor and says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

She blows him away. I don’t know what it was like for him in that moment. Did he finally see her? Was he convinced by her argument? Was she like the persistent widow and he realized he better just give her what she asked? Was he impressed with her rhetorical brilliance?

The Gospels don’t tell stories of Jesus getting bested by the priests or the scholars or the empire. But they do tell stories of Jesus getting bested by women. This is one of them.

And not only does the story say that he healed her daughter, from that point forward Jesus started talking differently about Gentiles. At the end of Matthew we hear, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” The ministry of Jesus expanded in this story, and suddenly he wasn’t called only to the Jews, but to all of the people.

One might call this Jesus’ conversion story, if one wanted to.

Or, one might take this as a VERY GOOD example of what to do when one is called out for an unconscious bias – and how to let the wisdom of another person transform you into a better person.

And, one might see in this story the utter desperation of a parent with a sick child. That woman would have done ANYTHING for her daughter.

So would many of you. So have many of you. And so many of you, also, would have done anything that could have been done IF ONLY something could have been done.

For me, the part of this story that feels most universal is the desperation of the mother, of the person whose loved one needed healing. The one who couldn’t heal their loved one themselves, but would do anything to get someone else who could heal to heal.

That is one of the hardest parts of life, for those who experience it. Which over time is most of us. That desperation is part of being human. It is part of loving.

(I’m going to just mention this and move on, but the needs for universal access to great health care AND adequate support and care for medical providers are implicated in this passage too.)

I struggle a little more with Hannah’s request. Now, as a whole, I love Hannah. She speaks amazing words about God. But I worry that Hannah wanted to be the mother of a son because the culture around her told her that her entire value in the world was being a mother of a son, and she was trying to gain status with this request. That is, of course, unfair. Right? Because when society tells you that your value is based on something, humans tend to want that thing. I know that. But I want Hannah to just know she’s OK without the thing. I want her to know she’s enough as she is. I want her to throw away the expectations and just be awesome as she.

I’m tough.

(I’m tough on myself too, not just on Biblical characters.)

And maybe Hannah wants to parent because she wants to parent, but she kinda makes a deal with God here that if she gets to parent a son she will give him to be raised in the Temple and not actually get to be with him all that much. Which gets me back to thinking she wants status. But, OF COURSE SHE DOES. What other recourse does she have??

OK, so now I’m back to being compassionate for a woman who thought she had one job and wanted to do it and be recognized for being capable of doing her ONE job.

Great.

But once I start bringing in compassion, then I start seeing Penninah too. Because Penninah has the things she’s supposed to have. She is a mother, including being a mother of sons. Yet she knows herself to be unloved. She is said to “provoke” Hannah, and yet it seems perhaps she felt provoked as well. She had what society said mattered, but she she didn’t have fulfillment in it.

Well, she’s not the first or last one, huh?

A final complication exists for us in these stories of women pleading for what they want most. They have their pleas answered, in the positive. Hannah becomes a mother, the Canaanite woman’s daughter is healed. These stories tell of infertility being erased, and healing happening. Which means these stories can be painful for those for whom infertility remains or healing isn’t found.

Because we know in life that sometimes the thing we want most, sometimes the thing we need most, sometimes the thing we are willing to get onto our knees and beg and plead for …

we still don’t get.

Sometimes we plea and pray incessantly for something, and it doesn’t happen.

Sometimes our worst fears come pass.

And if not for us, then definitely for others, and we see suffering of God’s beloveds far too often for our souls to be at rest.

This is a known problem in theology – we have a God we say is good, and terrible things happen. And likely you have heard various “answers” to the problem from well meaning people of faith. Things like, “God always answers prayer, sometimes the answer is no.” or “Who are we to know what is good, only God knows” or (getting worse here) “maybe you didn’t pray hard enough” or (OYE) “maybe God is punishing you.”

I don’t have an “answer.” I don’t believe in God as a punisher, or in having to prove oneself in prayer, or that we are unable to identify bad things in the world. Indeed, I know that bad, sometimes horrible things happen. And they break my heart over and over again. And I believe they break God’s heart too.

And yet I believe that God is with us, all of us, and God is working toward good, all the time, and even the worst things in the world can be healed by God’s love. I believe bad things happen, but I don’t believe they’re the whole story. I guess I’m back to the whole Easter thing, once again. I believe God, who is Love, has the last word. I believe love wins in the end, even if it may take a while. Even if I will never see it. Even if I can’t see the way from here to there. I believe God is with us, and somehow, someway, that’s enough. Thanks be to God. Amen

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

June 18, 2023

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  • June 4, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“All Are Welcome” based on Hosea 11:1-4 and Matthew 28:16-20

Sometimes I get distracted. Not just the normal distracted of turning to my phone when it buzzes or letting the internet take me down rabbit holes (although those happen too.) Sometimes I get so distracted talking about what kind of Christian I am NOT that I forget to talk about what kind of Christian I am.

In fact, that’s so true that I’m squirmy already, as the word Christian is overly affiliated in my head with things I struggle with. One of you once said that “Jesus follower” worked better for you than Christian for just that reason. And I love that. But also, “Christian” means “little Christ” and I do think the whole point is to continue the work of Christ in the world and it is probably worth the discomfort involved in claiming it anyway.

A friend and colleague, the Rev. Andrew Nelson, recently dropped a book off for me. Which is a great way to share love, particularly when this was a book I’d been looking for and not finding for years! I didn’t know EXACTLY which book on Celtic Christianity I wanted, but I knew I needed to find one. This one, turns out to be it: Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul by John Phillip Newell.

As I started to read I felt my whole being relax. Here, encased in centuries of tradition, is the faith that I know to the core of my being. When so much of my life in the church-at-large has been defined by being an outlier, a prophet, a person crying for justice for God’s beloveds, it is awfully nice to hear that my faith has deep roots too. I think, perhaps, it is nice to hear that I belong too. That the faith that says “God created all, and it is good” is VALID, and REAL, and DEEPLY faithful – and not… some radical new idea.

I want to share with you some of what I heard in Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, in hopes that it will also help drop down your shoulders, and let in a big deep breath. That we all can celebrate the God who is. The one who we know to be loving, ALONG WITH our great tradition. That we can acknowledge that we are faithful people with a faithful God.

(See, isn’t it nice?)

The first chapter of the book tells the story of Pelagius (Puh·la·jee·uhs) , a Welsh monk who lived around 360-430 CE. But, it starts by sharing the beliefs of the first known Christian teacher in the Celtic territory – the one whose teachings would have formed what Pelagius knew. That teacher was Ireneaus (Ee·ruh·nay·uhs ) of Lyons and his teachings were that: sacredness was not opposed to naturalness, that there is holy in naturalness, that heaven found in things of earth, that the divine is to be cherished within earthliness of human life and RELATIONSHIPS, that Jesus was ROBUSTLY human, and that the universe is born out of the substance of God – NOT out of nothing.1 Taken to its natural conclusions, those beliefs say “the stuff of the body of earth is sacred stuff. Therefore, how the body of another is handled in relationship, how the physical needs of those who are hungry and homeless is responded to, how the body of the earth and its resources are treated- these are all holy matters.”2

Well, YEAH! And if bodies are holy, then they shouldn’t be exploited, but rather honored and cared for. (CORRECT.)

In fact, this ended up being opposition to the way that the majority of Christianity under the leadership of the pope in Rome understood things. Because there is a doctrine called creation ex nihilo which says that creation was “out of nothing” and if that’s true than STUFF doesn’t matter and people can exploit it all they want. The implications of this in the world around us are abundant, but it is VERY nice to know this has NEVER been fully accepted in our tradition, I think.

The teacher Iraneaus taught that Jesus was the one who was “respeaking the sacred essences of the universe, re-sounding the divine that is in the heart of all things. This was to see Christ as reawakening in humanity what it has forgotten.”3 So not Jesus saving the world, nor Jesus standing against the world, but Jesus reminding the world of its sacredness and the things it already knows. I love it!

Now into the wisdom tradition that Iraneaus formed, came the monk Pelagius, who taught that “grace was given to reconnect us with our nature, which was sacred and made of God.” I believe that, and I like knowing how long that has been known! Pelagius ended up in Rome, which seems to have become a problem for his life, because rather than being with people who knew the sacredness of all, he was with people who knew the Church as a power-player in politics. (Ew.) And they took issue with him because he thought women were wise and worth both learning from and teaching. He also emphasized human sacredness instead of human sinfulness. He believed that “what is deepest in us is of of God and not opposed to God.”4 I just love it when people put WORDS to the things my very being knows to be true, but I hadn’t ever quite known I needed to say.

Now Augustine, who I did have to read in college and seminary, was all out of sorts about this and spent a lot of energy discrediting Pelagius, because he wanted to focus on original sin. (Facepalm.) That original sin doctrine was useful for the empire, and has been useful for the church, but I would say has not be useful for God’s people.

So, Augustine got Pelagius banned from the Empire, him and his teachings. Because apparently it is really upsetting to an empire if everyone is sacred, and then everyone maters. Then they’re not there to be controlled and used, but rather to be revered and related to.5 (Actually, I knew that. Jesus taught me.) Worse than the other stuff, Pelagius also taught that people who had more than enough should… wait for it… SHARE with those who don’t have enough. Once again, that’s easy to see as following Jesus, but it got him excommunicated. (Shoot, I already facepalmed.)

Anyway, Pelagius went home to Wales and kept teaching, and wrote under pseudonyms so people could read it and – I love this – often used “Augustine” as one of them. That teaching also included “that it is not so much what you believe about Jesus that matters. The important thing is becoming like Jesus, becoming compassionate. A Christ-one, he said, is one ‘who shows compassion to all… who feels another’s pain as if it were his one, and how is moved to tears by the tears of another.” That sounds like us, doesn’t it!?!6

Well, funny enough, the teachings of Pelagius weren’t stopped by being banned by the Roman Empire, or excommunicated by the Western church, or even sent back home. I knew that, because I was taught them as a child, and have experienced them as an adult. I just didn’t know their history.

When we get invited by Jesus to “go and make of all disciples” I don’t think we’re told to go into the world and tell people they are WRONG if they don’t follow Jesus. Instead, I think we’re invited to be in relationship with people and learn from their wisdom and share ours – including the stuff that Jesus respeaking and re-sounding – the wisdom we know in our souls and simply need to be reminded of. The stuff like “all of creation is sacred” and “all people are to be honored” and “the way of God isn’t the way of control over.”

When I think about what beliefs I center my life on, I usually use the word “inclusion.” But I think I get to inclusion BY believing that all people are sacred, and beloved by God, and THEREFORE all people welcome in the church. I get all sorts of upset about exclusion, BECAUSE it implies a limit to the sacredness of God. And that’s both wrong, and silly.

God is like the one who picks an infant up and smooshes them to their cheek. God is like that with all of us. ALL of us. Thanks be to God! Amen

1John Phillip Newell Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul (HarperOne, 2021), p. 24-26.

2Newell, 26.

3Newell, 26.

4Newell, 32.

5Newell, 40.

6Newell, 39.

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 4, 2023

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  • May 21, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“The Tower” based on Deuteronomy 29:10-15 John 11:28-44

Last Summer Diana Butler Bass gave a sermon at the Wild Goose Festival that was shared and forwarded to me approximately 100 times, which was good because that’s how many times it took for me to read it. And once I read it, I participated in the sharing and forwarding too. Her sermon was entitled “All the Marys”1 and it shared one of the biggest breakthroughs in Biblical Scholarship in generations.

Which, I know, is THE SINGLE MOST EXCITING THING I COULD EVER SAY! Or, perhaps, maybe, it might not be?

Stick with me.

It’s worth it. This is a case where a huge break through in Biblical scholarship has pretty big implications for those of us who follow Jesus. I’m well aware they aren’t all like that.

What I find interesting is that I’ve now read her sermon several times over the course of 10 months, and I can’t seem to retain it. The implications are actually so big and require such an enormous re-framing of how I understand the early Christian story, that my brain keeps erasing it in favor of the familiar.

If you have spent less time in Gospel commentaries and/or seminary than I have, I suspect you are going to find it easier to accept these very simple truths than I do. Which is great! This is really awesome stuff, and I’d love for people to hear it, know it, and even retain it.

Diana Butler Bass tells the story of Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader who felt moved to study Mary Magdalene, landed at General Theological Seminary in New York to work on a Masters of New Testament, and wrote her final paper on John 11. Her professor encouraged her to look at the newly digitized version of the oldest known text of John, Papyrus 66, from around 200 CE, and find something new in it.

I’m going to quote Diana Butler Bass here:

And so Libbie is in the library looking at the text and she sees this first sentence. And it’s in Greek, of course. “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Mary.” And Libbie said, “What? That’s not what my English Bible says. My English Bible says, ‘Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha.’” But the Greek text, the oldest Greek text in the world doesn’t say that. The oldest Greek text in the world says, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary.” There are two Marys in this verse. And Libbie went, “What the heck? What is going on here?” And she started digging into the text, zooming in on it to try to see what she could see over the digitized version in the internet. And lo and behold, Libbie noticed something that no New Testament scholar had ever noticed.

And that is, in the text where it had those two Marys, the village of Mary and his sister, Mary, and her sister, Mary, the text had actually been changed. In Greek, the word Mary, the name Mary, is basically spelled like Maria in English, M-A-R-I-A. And the I, the Greek letter I, is the letter Iota. And it looks basically like an English I. Libbie could see by doing this textual analysis that the Iota had been changed to the letter TH in Greek, Theta. That somebody at some point in time had gone in over the original handwriting and actually changed the second Mary to Martha. And not only had that person changed the second Mary to Martha, but that person had also changed the way it comes out in English. It says, “The village of Mary,” that would’ve stayed the same, “and her sister, Martha.” Someone had also changed that “his” to “her”; that “her” was originally a “his,” but they had changed it to a “her.”

Admittedly, the original text is a confused and not very good sentence. “Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary,” it’s almost like they’re heightening the fact that Lazarus has this sister, Mary. They lived in this village together, and Mary is Lazarus’ sister. Someone had changed it to read, “Mary and her sister, Martha.”

Libbie sat in the library with all of this, and it came thundering at her, the realization that sometime in the fourth century, someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha.

She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, “Mary.” The editor changed it all.

Now, that’s a pretty big deal, but I imagine that maybe you don’t… umm… I think the words might be “Care that much.” But let me say, “yet.” I haven’t gotten to the part where this MATTERS yet, that was a really important BACKGROUND. It also makes John 11 as we know it really hard to read and make sense of. But that’s OK too.

So the underlying question in this is “why?” Why would someone go through so much trouble to create the character Martha out of what was once Mary? The key may be in the part of John 11 we read last week,

25Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: the one that believes in me, though they may die, yet shall they live; 26and the one who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord: I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one that comes into the world.

In the Bibles I have that “she” appears to be Martha but if she doesn’t exist, then the she is Mary. And now we’re getting to it. Christianity has long claimed that the first declaration that Jesus was the Messiah comes from Peter, the Rock, who is presented as having done so in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (the “Synoptics”) and that answer kinda worked because Martha was a pretty minor character and even though she says so in John, it is easy enough to ignore because Peter is THE ROCK, and Martha is… well, kinda a nobody.

Back to Diana Bulter Bass:

But if it is Mary, the Mary who shows up in John 11 is not an unremembered Mary… This Mary has long been suspected of being the other Mary, Mary Magdalene. Is it really true that the other Christological confession of the New Testament comes from of the voice of Mary Magdalene? That the Gospel of John gives the most important statement in the entirety of the New Testament, not to a man, but to a woman, and to a really important woman who will show up later as the first witness to the resurrection.

You see how these two stories work together. In John 11, Lazarus is raised from the dead, and who is there but Mary Magdalene? And at that resurrection, she confesses that Jesus is indeed the son of God. And then you go just 10 chapters later and who is the person at the grave? She mistakes him, at first, thinks he’s the gardener. She turns around and he says, “Mary,” and she goes, “Lord.” It’s Mary Magdalene. It is Mary Magdalene.

Oh, and now I get to place for you the final piece. Do you remember learning that Christ wasn’t Jesus’ last name? I do. Christ is the English version of Christos which was the Greek translation of Messiah, which literally meant “smeared” as in “smeared with oil” as in “annointed as king” because the Greek didn’t have a Messiah concept like Hebrew did. So when we say Jesus Christ, we are actually saying “Jesus the Messiah.”

Well, a lot of people think Mary Magdalene was called that cause she was Mary, from Magdala. Except there was no village called Magdala. Diana Butler Bass summariezes it this way:

When we call her Magdalene, Mary Magdalene, is not Mary from Magdala. Instead, it’s a title.

The word magdala in Aramaic means tower. And so now you get the full picture. In the Synoptics, Jesus and Peter have a discussion. In that discussion, Peter utters the Christological confession. As a result of the Christological confession, Jesus says, “You are Peter the Rock.” In the gospel of John, Mary and Jesus have a conversation, and Mary utters the Christological confession. And she comes to be known as Mary the Tower.

Between these two confessions, are we looking at an argument in the early church? Peter the Rock or Mary the Tower?

But the John account was changed. The John story has been hidden from our view. All those years ago, Mary uttered those words, “Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” …

Mary is indeed the tower of faith. That our faith is the faith of that woman who would become the first person to announce the resurrection. Mary the Witness, Mary the Tower, Mary the Great, and she has been obscured from us. She has been hidden from us and she been taken away from us for nearly 2,000 years. …

Or, or perhaps and, you can leave here with a question: What if the other story of Mary hadn’t been hidden? What if Mary in John 11 hadn’t been split into two women? What if we’d known about Mary the Tower all along? What kind of Christianity would we have if the faith hadn’t only been based upon, “Peter, you are the Rock and upon this Rock I will build my church”? But what if we’d always known, “Mary, you are the Tower, and by this Tower we shall all stand?”

OK, that’s it. That’s my big Biblical Studies breakthrough story. Perhaps you might want to laugh with me that the big breakthrough is simply another affirmation that God loves and cares about all people, JUST LIKE THE TEXT FROM DEUTERONOMY said in a lot fewer words.

But, dear ones, what if we’d gotten both stories? And maybe the even more important question: how can we live now that we have both stories? How can we be followers of Jesus who was seen clearly by Peter and by Mary? How can we be people of faith who both follow a leader who is a rock on which we are steadied and a tower who lifts us all up? What if masculine and feminine were allowed to stand together as holy to the deepest core of our faith? What if there is a whole lot of space for both/and in our tradition!?!?

Someone actually didn’t want that. Someone edited it out, and made Mary smaller. Dear ones, may we commit ourselves to the opposite. May we go out and make God, and each other, and all we meet BIGGER! Tower like, even. Amen

1 ALL THE MARYS Wild Goose Festival, Closing Sermon, July 17, 2022 by Diana Butler Bass https://dianabutlerbass.com/wp-content/uploads/All-the-Marys-Sermon.pdf

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

May 21, 2023

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