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Uncategorized

Untitled

  • May 14, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“The Things We Fear, and the Things We Want” based on Deuteronomy 28:58-68 and John 11:17-27

I’m not particularly great at monitoring the secular calendar, so before I preach this sermon, I need to admit that I completely forgot today was Mothers’ day.  This is only relevant because I’m talking about parenting, which is something I’d have sought to avoid if I remembered.  But I didn’t.  So here we are.

I’m intimidated by Mommy-blogs, online parent groups, and even parenting book.  So I don’t read them.  I guess in part I think of them as being like the Book of Discipline – the second you open it to figure something out you find you are out of compliance and then you have to decide if you want to A. Exert an exceptional amount of energy coming into compliance or B. Maintain the status quo while feeling guilty for knowingly doing it wrong.  That said, I don’t think parenting quite has rules like the Book of Discipline so may it is more than I’m well aware of how judgmental people are of parents, and I’m just terrified of entering a space where I’ll be judged like that.

(It occurs to me this is a powerful motivator for why people stay away from church too.  Scary parallels.)

All of that is to say, I want to talk a little bit about parenting, but I don’t know any of the official words and I’m far to scared to go down the rabbit hole of the internet to find them.  So, here are words that no one has agreed upon, but I think are right.  I aim to be a “feelings and needs parent.”  By which I mean I seek to provide a lot of names for feelings, because I think talking about feelings helps everything, and having good names helps in talking about feelings.  Things like, for example, “I have dread when I think about online parent groups.”  The other part of this is needs, and for me that means that I believe that all human actions are motivated by attempting to meet basic human needs.  To go back to that example, “I have dread when I think about online parenting groups because I have needs for compassion and to experience myself as competent and I’m afraid that both will be threatened.”

I’m pretty well bought in to the value of thinking about human behavior as an expression of human need, and I’m also committed to the value of using feelings as sources of wisdom.  These are whole life commitments, and also parenting ones.  They aren’t particularly easy parenting commitments though.  It means working together to figure out what is going on, and how that has impacted behavior, and what that means about what needs are seeking to be met, and how we might meet those needs together safely and without stepping on other people’s needs.  And basically there aren’t any shortcuts to doing that work.

The good part is that the skills I develop in parenting around feelings and needs are also ones that are useful in dealing with myself, and also in working with others in the church.  The bad part is that one can get kinda drained doing things the hard way all the time.

Alas.

Because the another option is basically what we have in Deuteronomy, where God is presented as an authoritative, punitive parent who says “do it my way, or suffer the consequences.”  And there the consequences are particularly awful. 

Whenever I read Deuteronomy I remind myself to hear it in context.  Deuteronomy was written down in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the despair of the Exile, in an attempt to answer the questions, “Why did this happen to us and what could we have done to prevent it?”  Those writing have just experienced a huge communal trauma that threatened every part of their identity and theology, and they want to believe that it happened for a REASON.  Because that’s just human.  We want to make sense of the things that happen.

As people who largely believed that everything that happened, happened because God wanted it to happen, they then believed that the destruction had been God’s punishment, and to keep God in the right it thus it followed that their own misbehavior was the culprit.  So, I can hear in our passage today an underlying assumption “oh how we wish we’d been more motivated to do things God’s way so this didn’t’ happen to us!  I wonder what would have convinced us.  Maybe these threats would have helped.”

Even so, I still cringe.  That isn’t the way I parent, it isn’t the way I was parented, this isn’t the way I want to see power used in the church or the world, and to get to the point, it doesn’t fit the way I understand God.       

And yet, the idea of God as one who punishes and rewards is quite a prevalent concept in the Bible and to take a stand against it requires acknowledging that.  I am so grateful for John Dominic Crossan for the way he named the two “streams of thought” in the Hebrew Bible.  One is the one we heard today – the stream of covenant, reward, punishment, and threat.  It is there, it is plentiful, it can be found in the New Testament too if you are looking for it.  BUT the other one is just as plentiful, and he called that the stream of “Sabbath and distributive justice.”  That one says God created Sabbath as a gift to be equally distributed to all, and after Sabbath is distributed so too should be the land, the food, the education, … the power, etc.  It is a vision of community, of sharing, of collaboration, and of motivation to love because God loves.

Both of the streams exist, and both are substantial.  And probably both of them exist in us all to some extent, but most of us end up choosing one or the other, and I stand firmly on the side of Sabbath and distributive justice.  I’m not arrogant enough to claim the other one is WRONG, or lacks value, or those who follow it are un-faithful.  I just am here admitting that I know where I stand.

The punishments I hear in Deuteronomy are scare tactics, they are what people fear.  But fear isn’t a great motivator, even if plenty of us use it on ourselves all the time. OK, fine, it is a REALLY powerful short term motivator, but it doesn’t change or form hearts or minds and it runs out of steam relatively quickly. The punishments from this passage flow pretty neatly into the conceptions of heaven and hell and a God who judges who goes where – used to motivate people toward goodness and compliance but also quite poorly.  I’ve been asked by people why I am motivated to do good in the world if not simply to avoid hell. 

OYE!

In truth, I tend to think of the two streams of thought in the Bible as being highly reflective of two steams of thought I see in our society.  The Covenant one with rewards and punishments sounds a whole lot like authoritative leadership and a parental style often described as “daddy knows best.”  (Which doesn’t mean that every family system in which this is the model has a father or has the father as the one who knows best.)  In this system everyone else’s wisdom as well as their needs are dismissed so that the authoritative figure gets what they want and others are simply expected to comply. 

The Sabbath, distributive justice one sounds like an egalitarian family, one where the feelings and needs of everyone are taken seriously, and win-win solutions are sought together. 

Dear ones, I work with God toward the kindom of God because I believe it is possible to be a part of a better world.  I believe we can take care of each other.  I believe we can distribute goods and resources fairly.  I believe people are lovely and it is worth working for everyone to be better off together.   I believe in ABUNDANCE and that means there is enough for everyone if we just STOP being scared. 

Which means I would rather not scare people, since fear itself is part of the resistance to just distribution.

Now, I think some of the same energy that we find in Deuteronomy is also in John this week.  Martha believes her brother wouldn’t have died if only Jesus was there, and a conversation ensues about the correctness of her belief.  For the Gospel of John, Jesus IS God, and whatever we may think about that notion, it is useful to remember when listening to John.  So Martha believed the presence of God would have prevented her brother’s untimely death, and is rather irked Jesus didn’t show up.  This becomes a opening to talk about Jesus/God’s power of life and resurrection, and in fact the story goes on past what we read today to the resurrection of Lazarus. 

However, as Wilda Gafney says, Lazarus “is raised to life in the same old world.  Life in Jesus happens here among the brokenness, failings, and limitations of the present world.”[1]  While it could be easy to hear Jesus as talking about AFTERLIFE, the context of Lazarus pulls us back to THIS world.

Which means it pulls us back to making THIS world better, together, for all of God’s beloveds, all of us.  I don’t know better motivations than gratitude and hope.  Gratitude for the goodness of life and love, hope that with God all things are possible.  Including win-win solutions.  Including everyone’s needs being met and everyone’s feelings being taken seriously.  To get there, we get to practice – with each other, with our families, every where we go.  And thank goodness, there is a whole lot of grace for when we slip up. 

If you want to take a first, tentative step towards all this, here is a link to a “Feelings and Needs” sheet with a lot of feeling words and a list of universal human needs, and it is best to start with yourself.  What do YOU feel?  What do you need?  And how is it you feel God nudging you along to get those needs met? 

Or, maybe get to a deeper question:  what is underneath what you want?  What needs are really seeking to be met and what ways are you willing to try to get them met?  As we learn more to trust in God to care, we become better and better at sharing that love with others. We learn to make space for feelings, and needs. May God help us all!  Amen

[1]   Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (Church Publishing Incorporated: New York, NY, 2021) p. 185

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 14, 2023

Uncategorized

Untitled

  • April 30, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Perplexed, but Not in Despair” based on 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 Luke 7:18-23

I have had an unexpected number of conversations about gun violence recently. I guess unexpected because the regularity of gun violence in our society means many of the conversations that can be had, have been had, and often there doesn’t feel like there is much more to say. I have tended to agree with the sentiment that if nothing happened after Sandy Hook, chances are pretty low for change. That doesn’t mean I’m not still engaged in trying, just… I’ve been feeling pretty resigned.

Yet, conversations bubbled up this week. In one, a friend reflected on the skin tones of members of her family and wondered if they were dark enough to be seen as threats. (She would prefer that I also say, she doesn’t want ANYONE killed by guns.) As you might expect, the answers to her questions are not the ones we’d like them to be.

Another person shared about being in a school lock down, this week, while actively caring for students with special needs, who were simply terrified. So was she. She wondered about if she should let her children leave her house ever again.

Yet another conversation was with a young mother in Nashville, a woman whose office for a decade looked out over the Covenant school. Beloveds of God, she was the one with hope. She spent the last month at protests and sit ins in the Tennessee Capitol, working with others to advocate for red flag laws and other reasonable protections, which was at least successful enough that the legislature shut down their session rather than deal with the daily protests. She talked about gerrymandering, and lack of democracy, and a sense that the national medial presented Tennessee as a broken wasteland.

And then she said, “There is hope.” She pointed out that Tennessee is where change has happened, historically, which I frankly didn’t know. Women and their allies mobilized a massive campaign in TN, with incredibly intentional internationality around race and gender, and got the 19th Amendment to the US constitution passed through the TN General Assembly which ratified it as an amendment. She pointed out that because of the FOUR Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Nashville, change has started there. Nashville was so important to the Civil Rights Movement that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “’I came to Nashville not to bring inspiration, but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.’

The late civil rights leader recognized the vast activism and steadfastness that rang throughout the city as students protested at lunch counters and intellectuals traveled to Fisk University to band together and fight for justice. As Martin Luther King Day approaches, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy of motivation and valor in the historic city of Nashville.”1

My friend and colleague said that change needs to start in the South, and Nashville is uniquely poised, and those who have been organizing are ready to keep going, and they are not going to let up.

I didn’t expect to find hope with the one I know closest to the pain, but maybe that’s an error on my part. It certainly fits what we heard in 2Corinthians, “In every way we are oppressed, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; knocked down but not destroyed; always bearing forth in the body the death of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might also be revealed in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10) Those closest to the destruction, the death, the horror, the brokenness are also the ones who have been able to feel the Spirit moving within them to bring change. They are NOT crushed, they’re motivated. They are NOT in despair, they’re channeling their anger. They have seen death, seen the death of members of the body of Christ, and they are letting God use them to move the state and the country towards life.

And the actions taken by activists, faith leaders, and every day people in Nashville and in TN has ended up kicking me in the pants too. They’ve reminded me of the power of hope. They’ve reminded me of the power of God.

Then, I heard a phrase worth sharing from the Rev. Dionne Boissiere, Chaplain of the Church Center for the United Nations. She said, ‘The faithfulness of God has nothing to do with the recklessness of humanity.” So, when we’re just frustrated beyond anything with the recklessness of humanity, we can rest assured that EVEN THAT can’t stop God over the long run.

Now, this doesn’t change the horrors of gun violence or violence in our society. There is still work to be done, and it still needs to be done. But work done with HOPE and with GOD is really different than drudgery.

The hope we’re talking about is the resurrection narrative itself. That death doesn’t have the final word, that LOVE does. That even when the worst things happen, they aren’t the end of hope. That good can grow, even out of bad. That life has a power and a force of its own, and while it may have to change course to avoid dead-ends, it keeps going. That injustice may have a stronghold, but it is not impenetrable. That … well, we may be oppressed but we are not crushed. That HOPE may be knocked down, but it cannot be destroyed. That love cannot be stopped.

Luke takes this on with slightly different metaphors, ones based in Isaiah, ones that I am a little less comfortable with because I have learned a lot from people who live with disabilities. One of the things I’ve learned is that for some the metaphors of “healing” are painful because they wish for “healing” that doesn’t ever come to them. To others the metaphors of “healing” are painful because it implies they are broken or less than, and they experiences themselves as whole and full – blessed in a different way. This awareness itself is a blessing, one that comes from being in an era with technological and medical capacities to support people with many different needs and many different capabilities.

In any case, I hear even better news from 2 Corinthians today, than Luke, which is a fun change of pace for me.

This week is an interesting one, if things go according to plan this is the last sermon I am pre-recording in my attic (before we moved, in the spare bedroom). I’ve preached 4 Easter sermons this way, and pre-recorded for 38 months. I don’t care to calculate how many sermons that is. Next week we expect Livesteaming to be up and running, and I’ll just preach one sermon and it will be recorded from worship which sounds …. weird at this point.

Also, this is one of the signs that the world which turned upside down in March of 2020 is in a different place now. I’m not claiming all is well, and I’m well aware that what used to be normal will never be again. But we are worshipping in person, we are about to have the technology to include people at home in real time (YAY inclusion), and we are entering what I expect may be a long term new normal.

Friends, that’s hopeful.

Next Sunday, as well, I won’t be preaching because Bishop Karen Oliveto will be in Schenectady, sharing the Good News of God. We invited her to join us in 2020 as the start of our 25 year reconciling celebration, and here it is 2023 and we’re delighted to celebrate our 27th year of being reconciling. In fact, we’re so excited that we’re going to spend May AND June talking about God’s work of love and inclusion, the incredible ways God’s love has been experienced, and the commitments we have to keep on working with God until all God’s people can be welcomed and CELEBRATED in God’s churches.

Friends, that’s hopeful. Especially for all the people out there who need that good news and haven’t heard that people of God who call themselves Jesus followers know about the expansive nature of God’s love.

I hope that the inner parts of your being are perking up a little bit at these mentions of God’s hope and love. That they too hear that oppression can’t crush us, nor break us. That even death can’t stop the work God is up to in the world. That nothing, nothing, NOTHING can stop the love of God.

That “death is at work in us, but life in you all.” Life is at work in us. Life is at work in the world. We can have hope, because of God.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

1https://urbaanite.com/mlk-nashville-nashville-speeches/

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

April 30, 2023

Uncategorized

Untitled

  • April 23, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Love Your Neighbor” based on Deuteronomy 5:11-22 and Romans 13:8-10

This Romans 13 passage is hard for me to preach on because it is so core to how I understand faith that I struggle with adequate distance from it. I spent college with a construction paper sign on my door that said “Love is the Answer” and happily chirped to those who said “what is the question?” “it doesn’t matter.”

Jesus wasn’t the first one to notice that “love your neighbor” undergirded the other laws. Rabbi Hillel was in leadership from about 30BCE to 10CE – so he was someone a little older than Jesus. A famous story is told of Rabbi Hillel.

A stranger came to Hillel and made the request, “Teach me the Torah as I stand on one foot.” So Hillel taught him: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary. Now, go and learn it.”

It is reasonable to think that Hillel was pretty famous, and Jesus agreed with his conclusion.

I would even go another step and say that there are two great commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself and love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Loving God is reflected in the first 3 commandments, loving your neighbor in the final 6, and they’re both in the 4th about the Sabbath. Furthermore, I’m going to claim the TWO are even the same commandment in two forms. How do we love God? We love God by loving our neighbors. Why do we love our neighbors? Because we love God who loves them. They’re not differentiable.

So, that 4th commandment, the one about Sabbath. Have you ever noticed that it is a whole lot wordier than the others? “You shall not steal” is concise. “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the HOLY ONE your God commands you” is the opening sentence in the paragraph on Sabbath.

When John Dominic Crossan was here, he proposed that Sabbath is at the core of the theological stream that understands God to be aimed at distributive justice. I should say that differently. “Dom says the Sabbath is the key to faith as he knows it.” Phew, that’s better.

The thing that really strikes me about the Sabbath as explained in Deuteronomy is that is IS “distributed” fairly. When I want to encourage people to take Sabbath, and to take seriously their need to rest, to play, to connect with loved ones, and to remember that life is more than work – when I want to do all that I end up worrying that I’m just guilting the already overwhelmed. When people are working multiple jobs to have enough to eat, or working obscene hours to fulfill impossible job requirements – how does it help them for me to encourage them to “take a break?”

This may be why I hear “you shall not do any work – you, or your daughter, or your son, or the migrant in your towns, so that your female slave and your male slave may rest as you do” and I’m blown away by it. Imagine! Imagine if EVERYONE got equal access to FULL rest, EVERY week! Imagine if you didn’t have to a certain level of wealthy to afford rest!! Imagine if it weren’t a privilege, if it didn’t have to be earned, if it couldn’t be taken away.

I find this hard to imagine.

“Remember that a slave were you in the land of Egypt, and the FAITHFUL ONE your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the HOLY ONE your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” That is, because you were once aching and in need of help, give rest and help to those aching today. Don’t work, to try to get ahead and therefore demand others work. Rest so others can rest. Work doesn’t define life. Don’t be like those who oppressed you. Be people of God.

Because the people of God rest.

Because the people of God make space for others to rest.

Because love your neighbor as yourself means let them get a Sabbath rest too, let even those you have power over. It means letting them remember why life is worth living, and why work isn’t the centerpiece of life.

You may have heard me speak before about Walter Brueggemann’s book “Sabbath as Resistance” because it is a favorite of mine. I’m not going to start quoting it at you because if I start I won’t be able to start. But I’ve been deeply formed by Brueggemann’s thinking on Sabbath.

John Dominic Crossan says Sabbath is the starting point for justice, for the ways of God in the world.

Brueggemann says Sabbath is the central commandment, the most important one.

They both think practicing Sabbath is central to loving your neighbor. The connection, I think, is that NOT WORKING is imperative to BEING HUMAN. And we generally aren’t any better at letting other people be human than we are at letting ourselves be human. So we need regular time to stop and practice being humans – not people worth what we can do or make – but just beloved people of God SO THAT we can do the same for others.

We have to have regular time to NOT WORK in order to LOVE people, and loving people is loving God, and this turns out to be really important.

Last week I talked about nurturing the space for God to grow seeds of hope in us. This week I’m getting around to suggesting that Sabbath is a well known best practice for that.

Now, Sabbath may not be what you think it is, so let me go deep down into its roots. Sabbath is a time to stop being productive so you can be whole. Sabbath is a weekly day off to focus on the things that matter instead of the things demanded of you. Sabbath is for family, friendship, relationship, time with God, laughter, play, poetry, art, music, song, and naps. Sabbath is the practice of leaving behind Pharoah’s demand that the decedents of Abraham make bricks, and relearning the rhythms of grace instead.

Sabbath is trusting in God’s abundance, instead of fighting for your part of a scarcity pie.

Sabbath is focused on love, not productivity.

Sabbath isn’t generative. It doesn’t create value. Instead, Sabbath makes time to savor what is and what is good.

Sabbath is time for loving neighbor, and self, God and earth. Sabbath is TIME set ASIDE from LABOR for LOVE.

Those of us who have practiced yoga are familiar with the practice of shavasana, the intentional rest after movement, to allow the practice to settle in. For many it is a dreary, drowsy, sweet, restful time that is more restorative than sleep. Sabbath is meant to be delicious like that. Sabbath IS delicious like that.

At one low point in my spiritual life, I met with a guide to get things back on track and I found myself repeating “I’m so tired, I’m just so tired.” She recommended sleep. I laughed as I realized my communication failure. “Oh, I get sleep. Physically I’m fine. It is all the other ways I’m tired.” Luckily she understood, and recommended more time alone with God where I don’t try to produce anything, but simply savor the love God has for me.

Don’t try to produce anything, just savor the love God has for you.

Do you do that? Would you want to try? Could you give it 5 minutes? An hour? A day? A day a week? What would happen if you did? What wonderful things would happen? (Savoring God’s love, it turns out, as mentioned previously, often looks a lot like savoring the love of God’s other beloveds.)

Will you?

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

April 23, 2023

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Untitled

  • April 16, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Doubt, Peace, and Blessing” based on Acts 1:3-5, 12-14 and John 20:19-30

I care about a lot of things, and I care a lot about people and that can be challenging. I know at least some of you know what I mean. Loving people is a great and wonderful thing, but there is a lot of pain out there and it can be overwhelming.

Julian of Norwich said, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of thing shall be well.” And I want to argue back.

I can make good arguments!

But I’m not going to share them with you.

Today I want to talk about how she is right. First, I have to note that she speaks in the future tense. She did not claim that all was well. She didn’t dismiss the suffering of her day. Instead, she speaks of hope in the power of Divine Love, she speaks resurrection, she speaks of the kindom that will come.

“And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.”

Now, I think Thomas is the disciple for the rest of us. I adore the guy. I love how brave he is to be the one who went out when the rest of the disciples locked themselves in. I figure he was the one gathering up supplies for everyone. I love how honest he is about his disbelief. I love how is is the stand in for the rest of us who would also NOT see Jesus appear in the upper room. And I love how when he comes across new information, he changes his mind. He said he wouldn’t believe until he saw. He saw, and he believed. I love his devotion to Jesus and to Jesus’ followers. I love his resilience in being dismissed over and over again in the history of Christianity and still having such power to help us. And, of course, I love that he – like the others – was blessed with peace. Because I always love that blessing. I love that Jesus appeared showering his grieving followers with “blessed wholeness for each and all of you” and I love that we greet each other with those words in worship to this day.

So, right, I love Thomas.

And, as it turns out, I love doubts because they’re real. I love when Thomas just says, “I will not believe.” I love it when people say that to me too. I particularly love it when people name for me something they think they’re supposed to believe and don’t, and I’m able to say to them that I don’t think they have to believe that afterall.

Most of the time I’m also able to say I don’t believe it either. I learned the power of hearing that from a pastor when I was a teenager. I had come to have serious doubts about hell. It just didn’t make any sense to me that a God who loves people would send anyone to hell. I didn’t think God’s love was that small or powerless. I made an attempt to talk to my own pastor about it and he informed me that believing in hell was a requirement of Chrsitianty. Or something. I don’t really remember anything other than being told I couldn’t believe what I believed. I kept my mouth shut for quite some time afterwards, but maybe a year and a half later (I think I was 13), I was at camp and we were doing Bible Study in the woods and the topic seemed to come up and I brought it up softly. Something like, “I’m not sure that I believe in hell.” The pastor with us heard me, and told me that I should trust myself and believe what I believed.

He opened the door for me.

(Clearly I went ahead and walked all the way through.)

I think my favorite part of this story is that the pastor, who is still a mentor, doesn’t remember it. It was just a normal part of his ministry to empower people, and to affirm God’s love, and it wasn’t notable for him at the time. But I’m not sure I would have stayed in Christianity without him.

Right. So I love doubts. And I love your doubts.

In preparing for this second Sunday of Easter I found myself wondering, “What do we REALLY doubt?” I mean we as a community, which may be different from any of us individually. And I may not know. But my best guess is that we doubt, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.”

For good reasons, and those are OK.

But for some bad reasons too. I think we may doubt it because the 24 hour news cycle fills up our hearts and minds with stories chosen by the principal “if it bleeds, it leads.” I think we may doubt it because social media has no conscience. I think we may doubt it because human nature tends to spend more attention on the bad then the good, requiring 5 times as much good as bad for it to get the same amount of attention. I think we may doubt it because we’ve been trained in or bought into the scarcity mentality. I think we may doubt because someones, somewheres, think it is good for sales if we are hopeless and uncomfortable and they’re good at marketing.

That’s a lot of pressure on us NOT to have hope.

It is coming at us from all directions all the time.

Dear ones, I would like us to build some resilience around ourselves, so we can let hope be nurtured and grow in us. So I want to remind you of some things that are just truly good news. Every day people leave domestic violence. And some of they stay away and never experience it again. Every day people get sober after a long experience with addiction, and some of them stay sober for the rest of their lives. Every day people who have lived through trauma find ways to keep going, to share love, to heal, to make it through. And that means that trauma doesn’t have the last word. Every day science and medicine advance and make a fuller life possible for people who didn’t have hope yesterday.

Friends, the coal industry just had a TERRIBLE first quarter.

And, you know, those African American legislators in Tennessee got their seats back. And the white woman who protested with them named racism as the reason she wasn’t kicked out, re-centering them in the conversation.

Loving relationships exist.

And, dear ones, spring comes every year and the sun rises every morning and sets every night. There is plenty of hope to ground ourselves in.

I don’t think God needs any of us to feel more guilty, to be more overwhelmed, or to have superficial knowledge of more problems.

I think God needs more people grounded in hope. So I want to ask you to pay attention to your lives. What drains your energy? What builds your energy up? Thank goodness, we’re all different and that means the answers will be different. Otherwise everyone would want to be an bus driver and no one an accountant.

Friends, please, for the love of God, take your need to rebuild your energy seriously. Do things you love. It is a form of resilience. It is a form of nurturing hope. It is a

form of faith.

So, let’s get practical. What do I mean? I mean, talk with people you laugh with. Try new things that make you a little nervous. Notice flowers when you are out and about. If you are like me, take as much time as you can to savor the silence and let it heal you from the inside out. If you are nothing like me, go to a really loud concert and let it heal you from the inside out. Look for beauty. Pay attention to goodness. Give yourself a break.

I think our doubts are likely related to doubting that we deserve good things, like the stuff that restores us. But Jesus blessed with all with comfort, hope, and peace – the peace that is blessed wholeness for us and for all. We have doubts, all of us, right? And that’s OK. But may we nurture hope by letting God help us nurture our God-given energies. For good. For peace. For hope.

“And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.” Amen

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

April 16, 2023

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  • April 9, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Yes to Hope” Isaiah 49:1-13, John 20:1-18 Easter, April 9, 2023

I have heard it said that no one under 40 expects anything good to happen ever again. The traumas of the pandemic, the realities of climate change, the exploitative nature of how we practice capitalism, and the big money interests preventing our government from functioning have led people to conclude we’re just doomed.

You might have gotten lost in my depressing list, so I’m going to remind you of the start of that idea. “No one under 40 expects anything good to happen ever again.” Here is the thing. I’m 41. So, I’m not under 40!! But I’m also not in a particularly distinct group from those under 40.

It is a little bit too easy for me to get pulled into “everything is broken and also impossible to fix.” Here is the really yucky part – being a preacher who focuses on the life and teaching of Jesus often makes this worse. I know it isn’t supposed to work that way, and I really appreciate the chance to spend my life wrestling meaning out of parables and getting challenged out of complacency with the teachings by and of Jesus.

And yet, as you may have noticed if you’ve heard me preach before, I think it is important to understand Jesus and his teaching in the context of first century Galilee and Judah, in the realities of empire and exploitation, in the disenfranchisement of the masses, and the ways that power was used and abused. The problem is that there are differences in specifics between then and now, but not so many in overall structure. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg refer to the economic and political system of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus as a pre-industrial, agricultural domination system. They contrast that with the post-industrial, non-agricultural domination system of today and I find that they’re horrifying similar.

Now, I love the Bible, I love the visions of God for a good society, and I am in love with the ways that Jesus cast God’s vision in terms of non-violence, distributive justice, collaboration, and shared care for each other. I love it enough to devote my life to it.

But there is a little problem with the fact that there have been nearly 2000 years since Jesus, and there have been “followers of Jesus” in an extraordinary number of positions in of power and influence, and for a long time it was even fair to say a few continents were “Christian” and yet the only thing that changed was the DESCRIPTIONS of the domination systems.

This being Easter, I could feed you sweet stories of moments I see the kindom of God at hand, metaphors about flower bulbs that bring life, or even experiences of utter awe that might communicate how very good God is. But if it is true that no one under 40 expects anything good to ever happen again, and if it is true that people have been following Jesus for 2000 years and the overriding economic and political systems are largely the same, it seems to me that this moment calls for a larger response to what is actually a very large scale problem.

By the grace of God, I have one.

You see, I sat with God in prayer this week and raised up the concerns already mentioned, and laid out my angst about preaching Easter into those realities. As I sat in my own discomfort, I also slowed down enough to become attentive to the Divine Presence. And then I started to think about the book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Because of my massive respect for David Graeber, I’d read “The Dawn of Everything” as soon as it came out, but it is now nearly 18 months later and I’m still processing it.

The book starts with sharing critiques of the European way of life from the perspective of Native Americans who’d were first exposed to it. There is universal horror at the idea of a society that allows anyone to be hungry, cold, or unhoused. A member of the Wendat Confederacy, Kandiaronick, offers a critique that could almost fit into the mouth of Jesus:

I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine.” I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behavior. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as look at silver?1

The authors preserve those critiques as a way of clarifying that the way of life that seems “normal” isn’t the only option. Indeed, that is the point of the book! That there have been many, many ways that people have organized themselves into societies. The authors aimed to disrupt the common historical myth about the origins of agriculture and social inequality. Many of their examples feel downright weird, the decisions on what people valued as society and how they made decisions. Humans are quite quirky. They establish, that having an abundance of grain doesn’t necessarily lead to being at peace with some people having warehouses of it and others having none.

For me, the overarching narrative of the book was: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I suppose that’s supposed to be obvious. There are examples of it! There were hundreds of years before King Saul when the Ancient Proto-Israelites lived an equalitarian communal existence. The very people quoted critiquing Europeans for letting people struggle lived in societies that took care of everyone!

However, being born and raised in the United States starting in the 1980s, I’ve only ever seen exploitative capitalism as the way society functions. Additionally, I’ve been taught to look at socialism and see the pragmatic ways it is also exploitative. And then I look at the life of Jesus and his critiques of the exploitative domination systems of his day, and at the prophets pointing the exploitative domination systems of their day, and the last 3000 years or so just seems pretty bad and maybe we’re stuck.

But we aren’t.

The exploitative domination system of Jesus’ day wanted to silence him and his movement so they wouldn’t be threatened. And so they killed him. And whatever happened on that first Easter, the impact was that the movement of Jesus simply continued without him. Jesus could be killed. God’s work in Jesus could not.

And, fine, here we are 2000 years later and it hasn’t all worked out yet. That IS depressing, no kidding. But, it DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY, and God is at work in the world to bring change, and I tend to think God has laid a whole lot of invisible groundwork to bring change that will one day break free.

It is POSSIBLE to be people who take care of each other. It is possible to have great healthcare available to all people without burning out the care-givers or sacrificing the care receivers. It is possible to have healthy, delicious food available to all the people of the earth, without poisoning the food with chemicals, copyrighting the seeds, impoverishing the local farmers, or pricing the poor out of food. It is possible to house all people, in safe housing without mold or other dangers, without making people choose between housing and medicine. It is possible.

It is POSSIBLE to take care of each other. It is possible to allow parents to care for and savor their babies, and to have well-educated and loving caregivers take over when it is time, and to care for the ill and aging with humanity without undercutting the needs of caregivers OR care receivers.

Isn’t it funny? What simple things I’m saying are POSSIBLE? And how far away they seem? And how it takes faith in a God who can bring life out of death to even consider these possibilities?

Now, dear ones, you may want me to lay out the road map from here to there. I can’t. I don’t see it. But I am reminded that I am a PART of the Body of Christ, and I am called to do my work and no one else’s. My job, today, is to remind you that things don’t have to be like this. Because until we remember that God dreams of justice, and joy, and abundant live for EVERYONE, we can’t even start to move towards it. Because the story of Easter is the story that life can emerge even when it seems it can’t. And today is Easter. Things look pretty rough out there. But God isn’t done with us yet.

I believe in the LIVING Body of Christ. If I can name it, and you can dream it, and God is with us, we’re gonna get from oppressive domination systems into life abundant for everyone. I fear it may yet take some time. The powers that are, are pretty significant. But, it is worth working towards anyway. Especially with God.

We work with a God who brings life out of death. God isn’t done with us yet, and God isn’t about to make peace with domination, or exploitation. God is a God of life abundant!

There is plenty of death around us, Holy One. We are willing to work with you on life. Guide the way! Amen

1David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Picador | Farrar, Straus, and Girouz, 2021), p. 55.

April 9, 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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  • April 2, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

Protest or Revolt? based on Galatians 3:23-4:7 and Matthew 21:1-11

For many years, I have had the chance to work with a camper I’m going to call Penny today. (So, not her real name.) Penny is a woman who has Down’s Syndrome, a huge personality, and a stubborn streak that can rival my own. She is also world class at engaging in passive protest.

In practice, at camp, this most often looks like a group getting ready to go somewhere, and Penny will sit down, and simply refuse to come along. Unless, that is, someone sings her favorite song and then slowly walks away from her, requiring her to follow in order to keep hearing the song.

The song, if you were wondering, is “This Little Light of Mine,” and it gets sung A LOT when Penny is at camp. Like, 50 times a day? Maybe more. Penny is very good at bending people to her will, and she really, really, REALLY likes that song.

A thing I respect about Penny is that she isn’t going to do what she doesn’t want to do. You can threaten her, bribe her, argue with her, or beg her. But she will simply hold up one finger, and dance it around a little, to let you know what she expects of you.

The thing is, that the camp I run is highly dependent on people being willing to function as a group and move as a group. We’re stuck when one camper doesn’t stay with the group, and it can force us out of adequate supervision! Refusing to get up is the PERFECT protest for our camp, because it puts the counselors and staff into a crisis. Truthfully, Penny gets what she wants because singing “This Little Light of Mine” all day every day is a lower price to pay than not being able to function or keep our campers safe. So she gets what she wants, we get what we want, and if there is a particular song stuck in one’s head for years after, at least you eventually learn to smile about it.

Also, by most ways of looking at it, Penny doesn’t have a lot of power in the world. So, God love her for using what she has well.

Penny at camp functions a lot like Jesus outside of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Jesus used what power to bring the change he wanted. He was up against the Roman Empire, but he similarly managed to put pressure on a sensitive point and get his message across clearly. The Roman Empire, however, did not concede as gracefully as the camp staff does.

Passover in Jerusalem was a conundrum for the Roman Empire. On the one hand, they wanted to show respect to an ancient faith tradition, and maintain the narrative of the Emperor’s power, might and goodness. On the other hand, Passover was a celebration of God’s actions in freeing the people from the oppressive power of a mighty empire, and a whole lot of people gathered very close to each other to do so, and that… felt dangerous. Because while I’m sure the Roman Empire didn’t think of itself as an oppressive overlord, they maybe had a bit of an awareness that some others did. So how do you respect this important religious festival while also keeping it under control?

The Empire came up with a good answer. The local leader Pilate, the “king of the Jews,” marched into the city with a full imperial processional. There were soldiers on gleaming horses, drumlines in union, glittering silver and gold on crests, golden eagles (the symbol of Rome) mounted on poles. It was a BIG time show of power and reminder of the Empire and its hold on Jerusalem. The people who came to watch would have shouted the things they were taught to shout: Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.

The Empire’s plan was to remind the people of the POWER and MIGHT and THREAT of the empire’s military while also being “present” for the rituals – and keeping an eye on the messages from their carefully selected high priests.

It seems Jesus saw through it.

And his processional, the one that came through the East gate, brought a lot of clarity to what was happening at the West gate. Instead of a tall shiny horse, Jesus rode in on an unbroken colt (or donkey. Or both ;)). Jesus came in his ordinary cloths, without the sparkle of gold or silver. Instead of being accompanied by soldiers with weapons, Jesus came with his disciples – ordinary men known for drinking a bit too much and the inability to keep their mouths shut when they should. Instead of banners declaring the power of Rome and displaying the golden eagle, the people shimmied up palm trees and cut off the branches to wave. Palm Branches were the national symbol of Ancient Israel, their flag. The people laid their cloaks on the road for Jesus’ colt to walk on. That is, they used the very little power they had as a carpet for Jesus’ feet.

Zechariah 9:9 reads “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Did you hear it? Your KING comes riding on a colt. Jesus wasn’t just borrowing a colt – and he wasn’t just being humble. He was connecting himself to the expectations of what the Jewish Messiah would look like. In fact, he was more or less claiming the crown. And the people supported him. So Jesus comes on a colt – which declares kingship – and the people wave the national flag – celebrating a new king!

To bring this into focus, Jesus riding a donkey into the East gate raised some questions:

  • Who is King of the Jews?
  • From where do they derive their power?
  • Does power come from the capacity to inflict violence?
  • Does their power come from sharing power?
  • Is Pilate there to celebrate God or to stop God’s work?
  • Which parade is God in?

Jesus found the weaknesses of the Empire – in the need they had to maintain power and control with violence and with the overarching narratives of their goodness. He gave people ways to question it all, just by riding on a donkey.

While I think the Palm Sunday processional was one of the greatest nonviolent direct actions in history, it came with a very steep price. Leading people to those questions undermined the Empire itself. The Empire read it as a revolt, in fact they decided to read it as a VIOLENT revolt, which probably means it shook them to their core. Which is both VERY IMPRESSIVE as protests go, and VERY DANGEROUS as protests go. The Empire killed Jesus for leading a violent revolt agains the Empire.

And the only thing they got wrong was that it was nonviolent.

Actually, scratch that. They got two things wildly wrong. First it was nonviolent to its core. Secondly, they thought killing Jesus would kill his movement. You, listening to this sermon, right now are part of the proof of how wrong they got that one!

But to go back to the nonviolence for a moment… this is absolutely key to everything about Jesus, and it shouldn’t be glossed over. The world tells us that the only power that matters is power over, and power over is enforced with violence. David Graeber in the book “Debt: A History of the First 5,000 Years” points out that only societies with inequality have police forces. And, only countries that are taking unfair shares of the world’s resources spend extravagantly on their militaries. It turns out there is a direct correlation between inequality and violence, specifically state sponsored violence.

The Roman Empire was the military superpower of its day, and was also exemplary a taking wealth from the land and from the poor and syphoning it to the very, very wealthy. Who is exemplary at that today?

Anyway, Jesus didn’t play by those rules. He didn’t enact violence, or permit it, nor did he let the threat of it stop him. He engaged in power with, not power over. He lived nonviolence and by his very life taught its power. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, says this as well as it has ever been said. “There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, there is no male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

Well, that takes care of power over!! That simple sentence teaches us that as followers of Jesus, none of the coercive power of the world applies anymore. And once that power-over is gone, along with it goes the need for violence to enforce it. What is left is space for people to work together, collaborate, help meet each other’s needs, and build connections and community. Which, to be honest, is a darn good reason to join that Jesus parade and choose his values instead of supporting the representative of the Empire on the other side.

But today, I’ll admit, even this story that astounds me every time I approach it, and even this Galatians passage which has one of my two favorite verses in the New Testament, still fall flatter than usual.

Because here we are, 2000 years later, in a society that sanctifies violence rather than nonviolence. In a society with about the same income distribution as the Roman Empire. In a society that STILL functions as if some people matter and some don’t. It is enough to make me wonder how well this Jesus movement is really doing after all. Furthermore, there is the “Christian Nationalist” thing that claims the name of Jesus while doing all the things of the Empire… power, violence, hierarchy, in groups and out groups, all of it.

And, this being the start of Holy Week, I’m going leave this here, in the discomfort. In the reminder that things are not OK, that people misuse the name of Jesus, that God is against violence but our country specializes in it, in the incredible power of the Palm Sunday parade that was a large part of why Jesus was killed. I’m going to leave us here in the brokenness. Spoiler alert: next week I have some good news to share. But for now, here we are.

May God hear our prayers. Amen

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

April 2, 2023

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  • March 26, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“Contagious” based on Isaiah 51:1-8, Luke 13:18-21 March 26, 2023

In 2001, in a grand adventure, I ended up in Fairbanks Alaska so I I could drive home with my brother home who’d had a summer internship with the National Wildlife Refuge. While in Fairbanks I was gifted with sourdough starter that I still use today.

Three years ago, a whole lot of other people got into sourdough starter, and I happily shared mine, but I didn’t go with the craze because I’ve already been on it for quite a while. Except last week I came across an article about “high hydration” bread and I suddenly realized that the 2020 sourdough craze where all of my friends suddenly made prettier bread than I ever managed to wasn’t because of my lack of artistic skills after all! Instead, the “no knead” breads are actually high-hydration breads which get mixed differently and a particular style of bread I’d always wanted and failed to make was suddenly in my grasp.

So.

On my day off last week I decided to try high-hydration sourdough bread, except I couldn’t find the right recipe. The ones I found either required yeast (I think that’s cheating) or bread flour (and I believe in a limited number of flour types in a home at any time). So, I just sort of made the same bread I always make, but with a different proportion of water. And then I waited.

The recipe with yeast said it would double in 90 minutes.

I started at 8AM.

At noon, I thought maybe it had fluffed, a little.

At 2 it looked the same.

At 4 I decided maybe I should refrigerate it for the night, and try again the next day – as recommended by another recipe I’d found. But I was doing something else so I didn’t get up.

At 6, when I went to put it the fridge, voila, it had doubled!

Now, I love making bread, and it ALWAYS feels like magic when the bread rises, even with yeast, but more with sourdough. This time felt almost like the first time I’d ever made bread when I stared in wonder at what had happened. (My grandmother often used to look at me with affection and say that simple toys amused good children.)

Now, when Luke 13 says “it is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened,” I need you to know the “yeast” is actually sourdough starter. And sourdough starter in practicality is some partially made bread from last time, set aside for this time, from which a bit will be kept for next time. It really is just flour and water with wild yeast alive in it, that becomes concentrated by being fed with flour and water.

What I’m trying to say here is: IT IS SO COOL.

The flour and water that has invisibly hidden within it the wild yeast from the air all around us, is able to mix in with other flour and water, and the yeast grows and changes the whole batch – which can both make delicious bread and replicates itself for batches of the future too.

The yeast is, in one way of looking at it, contagious. Now, at this point of life most of us have some pretty negative connotations of the word “contagious,” right? In no small part because it is a word that reflects a POWERFUL reality, a way of changing things that can easily get out of control. Or, in the positive, it indicates the power of one small thing to bring enormous change.

The amount of sourdough starter within bread dough is almost negligible, but it changes everything. Mustard seeds are so small they can be hard to pick up… but the seeds grow huge and enable more life to come! (Also, the seeds when ground up have a potent, almost contagious flavor impact… just saying.)

I am so used to thinking about faith as active. We live out our faith. We nurture our faith. We nurture faith in each other. We work with God to build the kindom, and so on and so on and so on.

But in Luke, it doesn’t sound like that. In Luke, the power of the kindom of God is potent, and contagious and unstoppable. Sure, the seed needs to find the right place to grow, but when it does … WOW, a bush so big its almost a tree! Sure, the bread needs to be fed and mixed and kneaded (or not?) and baked, but WOW, the bread does the rising on its own!

One of the weaknesses of living within the post-industrial revolution, scientific method, de-mystified, de-mythified world that we now occupy is losing track of those WOWs. It can feel like the work of building the kindom is on our shoulders, instead of being on God’s shoulders where we have a chance to make our little contributions along the way. It can feel like we have control, when really we don’t, and then it can feel like it is all meaningless when that isn’t true either.

We can get lost figuring out how to understand God from the worldviews we occupy today. It is easy to do. (It happens to me rather a lot.)

For me, these kindom parables lighten the load a little bit. I can a plant a seed, but I can’t make it grow. I can mix up bread dough, but I can’t make that grow either. I can plant seeds of compassion, but I’m ALSO not responsible for making those grow. The contagion, the growth, the power of life within the world –that’s not my work, it is God’s!

And it is GOOD to have limits on my work!

On another grand adventure (you are hearing about more of those today that you should, proportionate to my life), I stood on the rim of of Bryce Canyon National Park and looked. At Bryce large columns of rock called hoodoos stand isolated, softer rock having been eroded away. On the top of those immense columns of rock, soaking up the sunlight, I found to my surprise – TREES.

How? How did the seeds get there? How did they get enough soil to grow? How did they withstand the wind?

HOW?

But also, thank God.

For me, those trees speak to the power and persistence of LIFE in this world. Life itself is contagious. How did those trees grow? Probably because other ones grew before them! And made soil, and the soil deepened, etc.

Because life brings life. Like yeast, and mustard seeds.

Because in the end, the power of life isn’t ours, it is God’s.

In Isaiah, we are reminded that God’s power is bigger and longer lasting that even the earth itself. It is forever. God’s love, and the power of life that God brings are eternal. God’s work for justice and goodness (righteousness) will not end. It can’t be stopped. It is contagious.

Friends, I have been in churches for my entire life (thanks Mom and Dad!) and for that entire time I’ve heard expressions of dismay at church decline. I’ve never known the church any other way, and I’ve never known the church not to be worried about it. It is, however, kind of a tiring story. One that doesn’t seem to bring along a lot of life with it.

What if we put a little bit more trust in God? What if we trusted that God is at work bringing life into the world and partnering with individuals and groups who are working with God, and along with life comes love and compassion, justice and goodness, righteousness and hope? What if we let ourselves be bread dough, and let God work within us, and stopped worrying about how fast or how well we rise? What if we trust God is doing good work, and we don’t have to control it? What if God’s contagious power of life can’t be stopped, and we couldn’t even do it if we tried? What if all we have to do is hang tight and wait and see, and maybe have some joy along the way?

By the way, the bread was the best I’ve ever made.

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

March 26, 2023

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  • March 19, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“God is Love” based on Psalm 136:1-16 and 1 John 4:7-12

There is an old story, one that may have been created by some preacher along the way, that is well worth telling anyway.

A young man left home against his parents’ wishes, feeling a need to fulfill his own dreams far from everything familiar. The disagreement over him leaving created a breech in the relationship and for many years there was no contact between them at all.

Some decades later the man’s journey was going to take him through his hometown, and he wrote a letter to his parents on their farm:

On March 26th I will be on the 3PM train, and I would like to stop and visit you, but I do not know if I am welcome. If you would welcome me home, please tie a red ribbon on the old oak the train passes by. If I see it, I will depart. If not, I will continue on my way. – Your Son

When the day came, he situated himself on the side of the train that would see the old oak, but closed his eyes as the train curved around the track bringing it into view. He was terrified to find it empty, aware that his parents might not even still be living, and if alive might not have forgiven him.

When he finally opened his eyes, the tree was covered in red ribbons, from the trunk to the tippy top, a beacon of red welcoming him home.

At the risk of abusing my privileges as preacher, I want to tell you that I think there are two equally important morals of this story. I think it is really obnoxious to tell people what to take from a story or another piece of art, but alas, here we are anyway. I also wonder which of these you took as the obvious point of the story! (Or if it was another entirely)

One, lovely, take is the reminder that God is like that man’s parents, always enthusiastically welcoming us home, even when we doubt our own welcome. This is an important point, and if you needed to hear it today, then thank God you did!

Another, lovely, take is the reminder to look around the world for love and notice when you see love that you are seeing God at work in the world. Imagine that son sharing his angst with a seatmate, and what the seat mate would have seen. The welcome wasn’t for them, but to be witness to such an outpouring of love is a powerful thing.

Furthermore, I think there are expressions of love like that around us all the time. Maybe not as visible as a oak tree covered in red ribbons, but no less potent. Our new house is rather close to Oneida Middle School, and that means I get to see a lot beautiful interactions between youngsters, and sometimes even have some with them. I see kids throwing snowballs, and clearly everyone is having a blast. I see kids clumped up talking and laughing, and I’ve also see them quickly make space when they see me pushing a stroller. I hear shouts of greeting, and just as enthusiastic goodbyes, and last week for no reason I could discern I was handed a snowball and encouraged to throw it at an inanimate object, at which point I was cheered on. Universally, the youngsters are kind to our toddler, and quite often coo at him in the sweetest of ways.

Now, I’m not sure what the middle school years were like for you, but they were a low point in my life. I didn’t fit in, I hadn’t found my grove, my friendships were particularity life giving, and the experience of being an outcast hurt to the very core of my being. These youngsters seem so much more poised and put together than I was, but I suspect plenty of them are experiencing similar angst anyway. I’m sure many are struggling in many ways, and I just can’t see it from my window or the sidewalk.

Yet, their poise, their presence, their companioning of each other, their kindness, and their quirkiness – I think – are actually healing some of those parts of me that are still aching from being their ages. And I’m inspired by them. I catch in them little glimpses of love and hope that remind me that God is good and that love is a potent force in the world.

I think we can find love if we are aiming to find it. I think we are more likely to notice it if we want to find it. And I think that when we seek it and when we notice it, the impact within us is HUGE. Paying attention to the impact of God’s love in the world magnifies its impact in us and in the world!

1 John 4 makes some really important points, it is a chapter of the Bible that I often think about, and guide people towards. “God no one has ever seen. Yet if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is made complete in us.” That’s a BIG DEAL. Sometimes I get rather annoyed with those who want to debate God’s existence. This isn’t because I think the answer is obvious, indeed I think LOGIC gives us exactly as many reasons to think God exists as to think God doesn’t. Instead, it is because I think the question doesn’t matter. If God exists, but just created us and now lets us be – then how is that different from God not existing? If God exists, but God’s primary function is to judge us after we die, then what difference does that make in our lives (other than frightening us?)

I think the important question is: how do you understand God? And I LOVE 1 John’s answer. God is unknowable, invisible, maybe even largely abstract. Which is hard, BUT God is also love and we can know, see, and experience God in love. Love is from God. God guides us to love. We should be known by our love. It is in our loving that God is known. We can make God more knowable, more visible, more concrete by ACTING in love.

And, even, I appreciate the line, “whoever does not know love does not know God” because I think it is true and I also think it is a great litmus test for people, for preachers, and for teaching in general. Don’t trust what isn’t based in love.

It may be that love has too many bad connotations or too little clarity for you, I am reminded that Rev. Dr. Andrew Driecter says that the word “compassion” works better for him than love, and feel free to substitute that in if it is better for you too.

There are, of course, a multitude of ways to nurture love and compassion within us! John Wesley encouraged us to think about them along two axes – individual to communal, and connecting to others to connecting with the Divine. We now have committees in each quadrant of that model 🙂 since it makes sense that a church would be aiming at giving people experiences of love and the opportunities to share it.

Today, my request of you is pretty simple: pay attention to where you notice love this week! AND, if you want “bonus credit” on this assignment, share the answers with someone else.

May God help us notice what is already all around 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

March 19, 2023

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  • March 12, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“What Can Separate Us from the Love of God?“ based on Romans 8:31-28

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers-that-be, nor things that are, nor things that will be, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Redeemer.” -Romans 8:38-39 1

“There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”-Galatians 3:28 2

If I were picking the most central Bible verses from the Christian Testament, these two would be it. To be fair, I think the Gospels have the best stories, and stories are more important than verses, but nevertheless. With all the issues I have with Paul, I’ll give him these. They’re everything. I’m not preaching on Galatians today, but I figured if I told you I had 2 favorite Christian Testament passages and didn’t share them both, I’d lose you to wondering what the other was. And, anyway, they’re especially beautiful and whole together.

Today we’re on Romans, on nothing can separate us from the love of of God.

Nothing.

This is so core to faith that I don’t feel like it can ever be emphasized enough, and also I fear that most of you already know this and aren’t that interested in it. Except…

One of my dear ones, a mentor and friend, suggested that the reason we have to keep telling people that God loves them is that it is really hard to believe, and a lot of messages are out there which tell people they aren’t lovable. So we keep coming back to God’s love in hopes of convincing people it applies to them, and to everyone else too.

Paul does a good job talking about what doesn’t get in the way of God’s love. It goes without saying that God’s love is also not impacted by wealth or poverty, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, history of trauma, mental or physical health status, abilities or disabilities, guilt nor shame. God’s love isn’t dependent on us being good, or useful, or even kind. God’s love applies to all, even the ones we think are awful, even the ones we think are evil, even the ones who have done great harm.

Which is to say that God’s love isn’t the same as God’s approval, clearly. Rather we lack the power to stop God’s love, even when we are at our worst, even when we do great harm to others of God’s beloveds.

That is: God’s love is the foundation of the universe, the essence of life itself, and the ground of our being.

Love is at the center of it all.

Now, I can be honest. That’s a faith statement for me. I believe that love, God’s love in specific, is at the center of it all. Others… don’t. Even some of you may not, perhaps because the use of the word God may confuse things enough for some of you that you’d rather withhold judgement. (For the record, I love that this is a church with enough spaciousness for people to wonder about the meaning of the word God and how we should and shouldn’t be using the word.)

So, knowing that I am speaking as myself, with some hope it might be useful for others, let me share a little a bit about what that means for me. If love is at the center of all that is, then judgement is not. That’s pretty important to me, even though I think accountability, apology, and growth matter a lot. But I see in many theologies a premise that God is first and foremost out to judge us, and that punishment and reward are at the center of the all that is. I don’t agree.

Alongside this, I fear that a lot of what we are doing as human being is trying to prove ourselves worthy. Maybe that sounds like “worthy of the space we take up on the planet,” maybe like “worthy of the resources we consume,” often I fear it is simply “worthy of love.” It may be that this is prevalent right now because of the internalization of exploitative capitalism and its obsession with worth itself. It may be that this is simply a basic human fear. It may be that our society’s structure explicitly devalues and dehumanizes some, and that keeps the rest of us afraid of falling into that category… I don’t know WHY. But I know a whole lot of our energy is about trying to be worthy. And I know that if God’s love for each of us and all of us is at the center of all that is, then we are already worthy and can stop trying so hard to prove it. Which can be a relief for as long as we remember it.

Now this is a place that progressive Christianity can get a little bit confusing. Because I talk a lot about “building the kindom of God” and others about “being the beloved community” and quite often we analyze what isn’t working in hopes of motivating people to work towards a better system that does a better job of valuing all of God’s people.

But there is a nuance here that I want you to know about: the goal is not to be good enough of a person, or good enough of a Christian, or enough of a do-gooder to be worthy of God’s love. WE DO NOT HAVE TO EARN IT. Rather, if we are able to soak in any amount of God’s love for us, to soak up the abundance of goodwill God has for us and for all, (and if we are able to do that with any life energy still with us, which is questionable for many right now, so please take that seriously too)… then quite often we wish to respond to love with gratitude and hope, and when we wonder what that should look like, THEN we hear the suggestion that God would like us to love one another as a form of loving God back.

Do you hear the difference? IT ISN’T AN OBLIGATION!!!! You don’t have to work for the church’s committees (I say with trepidation), or volunteer with worthy causes, or give generous donations, or even smile when you are cranky. God loves you as you are, and you don’t have to earn it.

Instead, when you are able to be upheld by that love, and you have extra to share, you are invited – welcome – to use that energy, passion, power, and resources toward loving God’s others beloveds. But first, breath it in, soak it in, and let it change you from within. First, it penetrate the guilt, and the shame, let it have it’s time with your exhaustion.

FIRST, remember that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then, maybe, then when you are ready, then when you WANT TO, then when it feels right, THEN you can see how you want to love in return. Amen

1 A Women’s Lectionary Translation

2Ibid

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

March 12, 2023

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  • March 5, 2023
  • by Sara Baron

“What is Good?“ based on Psalm 92:1-5, 12-15 and Matthew 7:15-20

Two weeks ago I preached a sermon entitled “There is No Single Way to Follow Jesus” where I talked about diverse understandings of God and Jesus, multitudes of prayer practices, and not writing people out of the Body of Christ because we disagree with them. It seemed pretty important to me, especially as we baptized a teenager who might have been told along the way that there is one right way to follow Jesus. Others told me that, and I was grateful my church gave me space to disagree.

Afterwards, one of the wise ones around here recommended that I preach a follow up sermon that continued to make space for the multitude of ways to follow Jesus, but helped us all see that is different from saying “everything goes.” I have taken that to be an invitation to talk about “discernment” which is the fancy word for “figuring out what God would have us do.” Or, as apple dictionary puts it (exceptionally well, wow!) “perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding.”1

So today we’re talking about discernment, following the warnings of Matthew 7 to beware of false prophets and pay attention to whether or not love is the outcome of teachings, decisions, and leadership. That means we are also talking about how we live our faith values, and how we making decisions while listening to God. But, as an entrance into this conversation I need to tell you about what I am now thinking about as “The Great Toilet Brush Dilemma of 2023.”

Several articles I’ve come across recently have stated that toilet brushes should be replaced every few months, which is faster than I had thought, and I decided perhaps it should be taken seriously (as it didn’t appear to be put out by the toilet brush industry.) However, the toilet brushes I have are made of plastic, and I try to minimize my use of plastic (with limited success), so I searched the internet for “eco toilet brush” and found there were a number of options. However, most of them seemed excessively expensive, which violated that old Wesleyan principle of “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can” so I ignored those. One seemed reasonably priced and came with decent reviews, but a further look found that the brush didn’t work with chemicals (maybe OK), was hard to get dry (hmmm), and tended to mold (no!). So then I went back and looked at the suggested brushes from my preferred guide to such things and they offered two ideas, both made of plastic, but with REUSABLE brush heads. Which is better than non-reusable brush heads, right? But THEN I looked to make sure I could get the brush heads and I discovered one could, but then one had to decide between getting one brush at a time at nearly the price of the whole thing or getting 4 at a time for a much better rate, that even claimed to be “eco” and CLAIMED to be biodegradable but the number of asterisks around that led to that claim being less than believable, at which point I was needed to do something else and I made absolutely no decision. It is now nearly a week later and every time I think about finishing this decision I throw my hands up in the air and move on to something else while muttering to myself that this is a really trivial thing not worthy of so much of my attention.

Which is to say that in an attempt to balance some values I hold: care for creation (limit plastics!), financial responsibility (spend wisely!), and basic cleanliness (limit bathroom bacteria growth) – I got stumped. And I needed to tell you that so I could enter into this conversation about discernment with the appropriate levels of humility and no one would think I was offering expert opinions.

It really is true that not everything goes. There are better and worse decisions that can be made, sometimes even good versus evil. But those are the EASY choices. Choose good! The harder ones are where it is more difficult to see which is which, and while we are always going to struggle with those, God is here to help us, and to forgive us when we get it wrong. We’re talking about how to make those harder decisions today.

In this church we were given the gift of the phrase “optimize prime values” by a now departed member, Lee Tupper. Lee wrote, “there is a set of higher values (henceforth referred to as prime values in this discussion) that serve as the ultimate standard by which the relative ‘goodness’ of the consequences of human activities is to be judged. This relative ‘goodness’ is a measure of the degree to which the evolving human system tends towards a consistency with the relational type of God assumed. It is reasonably obvious that none of these concepts can be expected to be known or understood with real precision. It is also likely that we will not ever know whether the prime values are absolute and our knowledge of them is evolving, or the values themselves are evolving.”

However, other than suggesting “love” and “justice” as likely candidates, Lee didn’t tell us what the prime values ARE. As a church we’ve spent some time discussing it, and at the moment we lean towards naming that we think love, justice, compassion, inclusion and humility are prime values (although we have made no claim that this is a complete list).

So, if you are looking to figure out where God may be leading you in a decision, and you are needing some structure to use in thinking about things, considering love, justice, compassion, inclusion and humility might be of use. They at least put boundaries around what is important. That said, it doesn’t answer the Great Toilet Brush Dilemma of 2023, other than maybe affirming that the concerns I have are valid, which actually is a great help.

Within Methodist circles, one of the better known means of making decisions is to look at John Wesley’s three simple rules: 1. Do no harm, 2. Do all the good you can, 3. Stay in love with God.2 I have taught courses on Bishop Reuben Job’s short book on these rules, they’re quite lovely. However, my strongest memory of teaching it was the wise lay person who said, “These rules are great, but when I attempt to apply them to anything, I get no more clarity than when I started.” I had no counter. The rules are good, and sometimes they help, but sometimes they don’t.

The truth is that discernment is HARD WORK, and more of an art than a science. Most decisions are really complicated, and if they were simple they wouldn’t be the ones we were struggling with. There is very, very little in the world that is pure good or pure evil, and all decisions involve balancing various values while working with limited data. (Perhaps why the Tupper family motto is “We need more data!”)

I have two means of discernment that tend to work well for me, ones that help me get past the clutter of data and competing values. One I’ve mentioned a few times: the spiritual practice of daily examen. Truthfully, this is the BEST method I know for making big life decisions, and often small ones too. It combines spiritually and data in a way that brings me deep joy. The process is this: every day, take some time to ask for God’s help in reviewing the day and then ask two questions. One question should be along the lines of “what was the best part of my day?” or “where was I most connected to love today?” (I think those are two versions of the same question, you may not.) The second question should be along the lines of “what was the worst part of my day?” or “where was I most disconnected from love today?” After reviewing it all, thank God for the day as a whole – the good the bad and the stuff in the middle. Then, write down the answers. If you have a spiritual partner, it can be great to also share these answers every day. Over time, patterns will emerge in your answers. You will be able to see what is bringing life and what is draining life from you, and hopefully to adapt your life towards what brings life, and away from what drains life. When it comes to decisions about jobs, relationships, housing, or even faith communities, this sort of careful attention to where God’s life-giving energy emerges in you is amazing for guiding decision making.

The second method is one I learned from another church member. I would NOT recommend it for major life decisions, but it may in fact work for me when it comes to the Great Toilet Brush Dilemma of 2023. This one, like the last, involves trusting that God is with me, and that I thus have the wisdom I need to make the best possible decisions. In this case it involves trusting bodily wisdom. It goes like this: Sit on the edge of a stool or a hard chair. Set up two options in different places in front of you (say, to the right and to the left), close your eyes, and then notice if your body sways towards one or the other. That is, your subconscious will guide you to the decision you likely already made but hadn’t noticed yet, and the decision you already made is one that God helped you with.

Ok, there you have it: four methods to help with discernment, which is far fewer than I know, but maybe more than you needed. There is one last thing to say about this: we’re going to get things wrong, a lot. And that’s OK. God works with us where we are, and I think God works to multiply the good in the world, so whatever goodness we end up helping with ends up being far bigger than we might imagine. However, despite it all, I still have no clarity on toilet brushes. Alas. Amen

1Definition 2, accessed March 2, 2023.

2Particular phrasing adapted from Reuben Job. (He says 1 and 3 that way, but makes 2. “do good”).

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

March 5, 2023

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  • Schenectady, NY 12305
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