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Sermons

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

  • April 15, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you feel the tension rising?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2Crossan,
42.

3Crossan,
44.

4Crossan,
44.

5Crossan,
47.

6Crossan,
47.

7Crossan
48.

8Crossan,
48.

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

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

April 14, 2019

Sermons

“Words to a Warring Church’

  • February 4, 2019February 4, 2019
  • by Sara Baron

based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:16-30

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”1 Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

Earlier in the letter, Paul worked with a common Corinthian saying, “All things are lawful”. He reflects, “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (10:23-24) Over and over again, Paul seeks to encourage the Corinthians to take care of each other, and use their power for the communal well-being.

Luke 4 contains another example of a faith community misbehaving. In this case it is said to be the synagogue in Nazareth, although historically speaking there are some reasons to be doubtful of the factuality of this story. Some of them are: we aren’t sure there was a synagogue in Nazareth; if there was, we don’t know that they would have been prosperous enough to have a scroll of Isaiah; and perhaps just as importantly, Nazareth isn’t built on a cliff.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke, based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Believable or not for those who heard it, the Isaiah passage emphasizes God being on the side of the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed, and working towards their good, and Luke believes this work is embodied in Jesus.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

Having done adequate work understanding the texts on their own merit, I believe we are now free to excavate them for meaning for us today. I believe most of you have heard that The United Methodist Church is a bit, shall we say, Corinthian? For the uninitiated into the infighting in The United Methodist Church, let me offer a few disclaimers: 1. The fights in the church at large are NOT reflected in this congregation. After two years of careful study and conversation, in 1996, this congregation voted to be affirming and celebration of God’s LGBTQIA+ children, and we hold FIRM in that position today. 2. The General Church has pretty much always been a big fight for power, money, and influence. This is a discouraging fact (I’d love it if the General Church were a spiritually centered experience in collaboration and sharing agape around the world). However, it is a fact. In part this is true because we have a democratic process – we neither have a leader at the top telling us what to do NOR have complete freedom for our own churches. Furthermore, we are super diverse, and that means we often have very different values, and ideas of where power, money, and influence should be used. It isn’t ALL bad.

Now that I’ve offered the disclaimers, this month the Global United Methodist Church is getting together in Saint Louis to have a big old fight. (February 23-26). Officially, the church will be discussing, “human sexuality.” Really, the church will be fighting over whether or not people who are LGBTQIA+ are beloved by God. (Yes.) More deeply, I believe the church is still fighting over who has control of money, power, and influence, and the fight has been put on the backs of LGBTQIA+ people when really it is about whether or not the old-school power brokers (most commonly older, whiter, richer, Southern US, conservative, men) can make other people do their bidding anymore. (Thanks be to God, no.)

In First Corinthians, Paul is VERY concerned about the WAYS the church treated each other in their disagreements. He seems more concerned about this than about the answers that they come to. They were told to build each other up. This is a super duper hard thing to remember coming into General Conference. I believe we are all called to see each other’s humanity, and to see each other as beloved by God, even our disagreement. I do NOT believe it is acceptable to see another member of the church as the ENEMY. I believe that the way we disagree is important, and Paul’s teaching is very important.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

However, I’m going to play fair right now. I’m going to start by telling you what our side (the side for inclusion of all of God’s people) does that infuriates the other side (the side that likely thinks of itself as for “purity”). First of all, we disobey. The conservatives have had the majority power in the church since 1972, and have used it to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and thus “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained or appointed and UM clergy can’t preside at same sex weddings. Because we don’t believe that these rules have authority in the eyes of God, we’ve disobeyed them.

Furthermore, we’ve protested them. We’ve gone to General Conferences, and other meetings, and protested, and people have been uncomfortable with that. In 2000, we (I wasn’t there, this is the “we” of the inclusivity movement) even shut down General Conference. Our Bishop at the time – yours and mine – chose to be arrested with the protesters in solidarity, which was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

Our refusal to obey oppressive authority, and our refusal to be quiet about it has been a problem for the other side, and is taken as unfair tactics. Now, clearly, I disagree, but I thought it would be nice to share their viewpoint first for once.

On our side, the complaints are a bit different. First of all, our primary issue, is with the church claiming that some of God’s beloveds aren’t God’s beloveds. That said, James Baldwin once said (and Jan Huston was nice enough to post on my FB this week to remind me) “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Thus, I do not believe that both sides are equally valid when it comes to discussing the humanity and right to exist of LGBTQIA+ people in the church.

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals2, minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals3, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church4

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

However, I’m willing to settle for a bit less. I’d like to be blessed with the ability to keep on loving, and keep on seeing God’s light in those with whom I disagree NO MATTER HOW BADLY THEY BEHAVE. I keep on praying, and practicing love, in hopes that I will be able to do so.

This feels like a lesson far larger than General Conference or The United Methodist Church. But it also takes a second step. I want to know people are beloved by God, no matter how badly they behave, but I do NOT think that means I have to let them walk all over me, nor over God’s other beloveds. Walter Wink teaches that when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” he means “use subversive methods to require your opponent to respect you.”

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

 

1 The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2 See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3 http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html 
4https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html
Image is of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition logo.
Sermons

“Words to a Warring Church’ based on 1 Corinthians…

  • February 3, 2019February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”1 Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

Earlier in the letter, Paul worked with a common Corinthian saying, “All things are lawful”. He reflects, “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (10:23-24) Over and over again, Paul seeks to encourage the Corinthians to take care of each other, and use their power for the communal well-being.

Luke 4 contains another example of a faith community misbehaving. In this case it is said to be the synagogue in Nazareth, although historically speaking there are some reasons to be doubtful of the factuality of this story. Some of them are: we aren’t sure there was a synagogue in Nazareth; if there was, we don’t know that they would have been prosperous enough to have a scroll of Isaiah; and perhaps just as importantly, Nazareth isn’t built on a cliff.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke (who was not from Galilee), based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Believable or not for those who heard it, the Isaiah passage emphasizes God being on the side of the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed, and working towards their good, and Luke believes this work is embodied in Jesus.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

Having done adequate work understanding the texts on their own merit, I believe we are now free to excavate them for meaning for us today. I believe most of you have heard that The United Methodist Church is a bit, shall we say, Corinthian? For the uninitiated into the infighting in The United Methodist Church, let me offer a few disclaimers: 1. The fights in the church at large are NOT reflected in this congregation. After two years of careful study and conversation, in 1996, this congregation voted to be affirming and celebration of God’s LGBTQIA+ children, and we hold FIRM in that position today. 2. The General Church has pretty much always been a big fight for power, money, and influence. This is a discouraging fact (I’d love it if the General Church were a spiritually centered experience in collaboration and sharing agape around the world). However, it is a fact. In part this is true because we have a democratic process – we neither have a leader at the top telling us what to do NOR have complete freedom for our own churches. Furthermore, we are super diverse, and that means we often have very different values, and ideas of where power, money, and influence should be used. It isn’t ALL bad.

Now that I’ve offered the disclaimers, this month the Global United Methodist Church is getting together in Saint Louis to have a big old fight. (February 23-26). Officially, the church will be discussing, “human sexuality.” Really, the church will be fighting over whether or not people who are LGBTQIA+ are beloved by God. (Yes.) More deeply, I believe the church is still fighting over who has control of money, power, and influence, and the fight has been put on the backs of LGBTQIA+ people when really it is about whether or not the old-school power brokers (most commonly older, whiter, richer, Southern US, conservative, men) can make other people do their bidding anymore. (Thanks be to God, no.)

In First Corinthians, Paul is VERY concerned about the WAYS the church treated each other in their disagreements. He seems more concerned about this than about the answers that they come to. They were told to build each other up. This is a super duper hard thing to remember coming into General Conference. I believe we are all called to see each other’s humanity, and to see each other as beloved by God, even our disagreement. I do NOT believe it is acceptable to see another member of the church as the ENEMY. I believe that the way we disagree is important, and Paul’s teaching is very important.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

However, I’m going to play fair right now. I’m going to start by telling you what our side (the side for inclusion of all of God’s people) does that infuriates the other side (the side that likely thinks of itself as for “purity”). First of all, we disobey. The conservatives have had the majority power in the church since 1972, and have used it to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and thus “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained or appointed and UM clergy can’t preside at same sex weddings. Because we don’t believe that these rules have authority in the eyes of God, we’ve disobeyed them.

Furthermore, we’ve protested them. We’ve gone to General Conferences, and other meetings, and protested, and people have been uncomfortable with that. In 2000, we (I wasn’t there, this is the “we” of the inclusivity movement) even shut down General Conference. Our Bishop at the time – yours and mine – chose to be arrested with the protesters in solidarity, which was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

Our refusal to obey oppressive authority, and our refusal to be quiet about it has been a problem for the other side, and is taken as unfair tactics. Now, clearly, I disagree, but I thought it would be nice to share their viewpoint first for once.

On our side, the complaints are a bit different. First of all, our primary issue, is with the church claiming that some of God’s beloveds aren’t God’s beloveds. That said, James Baldwin once said (and Jan Huston was nice enough to post on my FB this week to remind me) “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Thus, I do not believe that both sides are equally valid when it comes to discussing the humanity and right to exist of LGBTQIA+ people in the church.

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals2, minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals3, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church4.

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

However, I’m willing to settle for a bit less. I’d like to be blessed with the ability to keep on loving, and keep on seeing God’s light in those with whom I disagree NO MATTER HOW BADLY THEY BEHAVE. I keep on praying, and practicing love, in hopes that I will be able to do so.

This feels like a lesson far larger than General Conference or The United Methodist Church. But it also takes a second step. I want to know people are beloved by God, no matter how badly they behave, but I do NOT think that means I have to let them walk all over me, nor over God’s other beloveds. Walter Wink teaches that when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” he means “use subversive methods to require your opponent to respect you.”

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

1The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html

4https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html

–

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

February 3, 2019

Sermons

“Not a King Like THAT” based on Psalm 93 and…

  • November 25, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectadyIt is best, when reading from the Gospel of John, to do with awareness of metaphor and symbolism. Because the Gospel of John was written much later than the other Gospels (a generation or two), it has a tendency to make its points more poetically. Part of what I mean by this is that the Gospel of John lacks historical accuracy, but that is because historical accuracy wasn’t all that valuable to John. John thinks there are important points to make, and John makes them, presumably assuming that those listening know that the stories are being told to make points, and not to tell facts.

Which is to say, this is contrived encounter between Pilate and Jesus that deviates from how the other Gospels tell and and how it actually could have been. AND, that’s OK. John is expressing essential elements of Jesus-following, and he does it beautifully.

John contrasts the domination systems of the world with the nonviolence of Jesus and contrasts the power-hungry methods of leadership in the world, with the power-giving leadership of Jesus. There is significant debate over whether or not Jesus ever thought of himself or spoke of himself as a king, most of the Jesus Seminar thinks he didn’t. There are two reasons, however, why the early Christian community would have wanted to present him that way:

  1. The expectation of the Jewish Messiah was of a Jewish King in the model of King David: one who would restore political, economic, and military might to the nation of Israel, one who would preside over an empire, one who would prove the power and might of God by overcome adversaries. While Jesus was CERTAINLY not THAT kind of king, speaking of Jesus in king language connected him to the tradition and claimed him in a role that people could make sense of. Granted, even in this passage, the sense being made has to acknowledge that Jesus is not a king in the normal ways of the world, but it was an imperative claim to early Christians that Jesus was the fulfillment of what their ancestors had been waiting for.
  2. The Roman Empire which held the Jewish homelands as part and parcel of its Empire claimed many titles for itself. The Roman Emperor was the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the World, the Lord of Lords. Much of the language we now think of as Christian is really reflective of the early church claiming that Jesus was the real deal and the Roman Empire was not. Which to say, most of what sounds pious speech NOW was heresy when it came into Christianity. Within that context, for the Roman Empire the “King of the Jews” was the person that Rome appointed to be the leader of the lands occupied by the Jews. King Herod had been “King of the Jews” but his kingdom had been split upon his death. To even enter into this conversation about “King of the Jews” is to threaten the power of Rome to appoint leaders over God’s people. Pilate was NOT “King of the Jews”, he led ¼th of the former kingdom and was the “tetrarch” of Judea. For him to be in conversation with Jesus about whether or not Jesus was the king of the Jews was for him to be asking if Jesus OUTRANKED him. The conversation itself, as presented here in John, makes Pilate a comedic figure and therefore dismisses his authority. The entire narrative supports the importance of Jesus, and contrasts him with the power-seeking ways of the world.

Now that we know why this conversation is presented to begin with, we can play with it a little more. Jesus is not presented as giving any straight answers, which I find amusing. He keeps asking questions to answer questions and responding in ways that Pilate can’t follow. To be fair, these do seem to be consistent with other stories of how Jesus plays cat and mouse with anyone trying to trap him.

My favorite line comes in verse 36. Pilate is trying to get Jesus to confess to what he’s accused of. Historically speaking, Jesus was accused of leading a revolt against the Empire, but he isn’t going to say that.  Instead of answering the question at all, he says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” The answer he gives has often been “spiritualized,” which I mean in a negative way even though I think spirituality is awesome. Christians have differentiated between the kingdoms on earth and the kingdom of heaven, and in doing so have indicated that it doesn’t matter what happens on earth as long as they manage to enter the kingdom of heaven.

This perspective has done GREAT harm, including by permitting abuses to human beings like slavery and functioning as an argument for not worrying about global climate change, to only take note of the worst offenses. Unfortunately, it also trickles down to other ways of not caring about God’s creation and creatures.  I believe this is an inaccurate as well as problematic reading of the text.

John is talking about the ways of the world that are VIOLENT, he is talking about the domination systems of the world and contrasting them with the Jesus movement, which is NONVIOLENT and equitable. Both systems that are being contrasted here are systems of THIS world, and in fact both systems are ones that claim for themselves Divine blessing.

This year I’ve shared a few times the definition of domination system, but it has been a while, so I’m going to offer it again. “Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid. Domination systems of various types have existed since the beginning of recorded history,”1 although not all human systems have been domination systems.

Jesus and his followers lived in a domination system, but they lived in ways that transformed it rather than complied with it. The definition factor of a domination system is violence, but Jesus was emphatically nonviolent. This is what is presented in this Gospel lesson. If Jesus was building his own domination system to threaten the domination system of the Roman Empire, than Jesus’ followers would have come to rescue him with their own violent powers. They would have lead a revolution. They would come ready to fight.

They didn’t. Jesus faced violence without returning violence. He also faced it without yielding to its power, and by neither returning violence nor accepting the power of violence over him, he decreased its power in the world. Jesus’ kingdom was one of nonviolence, one without domination, one that has been about changing the world into the kindom of God which is a nonviolent and equitable kindom – rather than being like the normal ones of this world. But, the kindom or kingdom is one that is of THIS world.

Which leads us to some very practical questions. How well are we following in the nonviolent way of Christ? How well are we transforming the world, at least the world around us, from domination into equity? Where are we complicit in allowing violence and/or domination to take hold in our lives and our community? When do we struggle the most to live like Jesus did?

And, once we’ve squirmed with those questions: how can we more fully live into nonviolence and radical equity? At the core, I think all of the offerings of this faith community are meant to support the intersecting goals of nonviolence and radical equity. We study the Bible so we can learn how to do it, we learn about the injustices of the world so we can be part of changing them, we redistribute food and necessities to God’s beloved people to make our community more equitable, we worship to fill our souls with goodness so we can receive God’s gifts of peace and joy (which enable us to treat others with peace and compassion), we gather together for meetings and studies to learn from each other’s wisdom about what is needed and to try to offer it into the world.

Others are working with us in these tasks – other faith communities, other nonprofits, other teachers and students of wisdom and spirituality. It isn’t all on us, but our contributions matter.

Yet, I still wonder what we need – individually and communally – to do this better? Do we need opportunities for shared spiritual practice, to center ourselves on God’s peace? Do we need stories of hope and redemption, to remind ourselves of what God is capable of? Do we need times and spaces for rest from the work that has become wearying? Do we need clearer goals so we don’t feel like everything is on our shoulders, and we can remember that we work with God who has a lot to offer along with us!?

This is the last Sunday of the Christian year, and we start anew next week with the beginning of a new Advent and the return to the beginning of our faith story. So, as we come to the end of this year’s cycle of liturgy and remembrance, I offer it as a time for reflection: how well are we following the nonviolence and radically equitable ways of Jesus, and what do we need in order to keep following and keep deepening our faith?

I hope, perhaps, you’ll tell me what you you think about this, because I’m certain that God works among us in shared wisdom and together we have the answers we need to guide us in this next iteration of our shared journey. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Jim Jordal, “What is a Domination System” found on 2/10/2017 athttp://www.windsofjustice.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=356 written on March 14, 2013.

–

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

November 25, 2018

Sermons

“Lillies of the Field” based on Joel 2:21-27 and Matthew…

  • November 18, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

A few years ago, at a retreat entitled “Courage to Lead,” we did an exercise called “soft eyes.” We learned it in a very physical way. We were put in groups of threes, one person was to stand tall, and the other two knelt on the ground, holding onto the standing person’s hands. We tried it three ways. The first way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person fought it as hard as they could. The second way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down, and the standing person let them. The third way, however, was neither fighting nor giving in. In the third way, the people kneeling pulled as hard as they could to pull the person down and the person standing allowed the pulling – without fighting it nor giving in to. In that case, it felt like those pulling on my arms were helping me stretch. While I’d fallen both of the first two times, the third time it was pretty easy to stay on my feet. It felt like mountain pose in yoga – strong and steady.

The exercise, were told afterward, was really meant to be a metaphor about our choices in how we respond to others. We can look and listen with judgement and fight other as they tell their stories; we can receive other people’s stories without reflection or connection; OR we can allow another person’s story to be their truth and something that reflects truths in us. We can learn from and grow with another person, simply by listening to them, in the same way that other people pulling on me could feel like a stretch instead of like an attack. Soft eyes see, but see without to judging.

If I were to take a guess at what meaning is really at the core of the Gospel Lesson today, it would be the message of soft eyes. But to explain WHY, we need to start with Joel. That passage contains words of comfort and hope, of ease and restoration. But, if you listened carefully there is only one theme: a promise of enough food. The soil will rejoice, the animals will be able to eat green grass, the trees will bear fruit, the vines will yield grapes, the rain will come and let the crops grow – and it will come at the right times. The central promise is, verbatim, “”The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” Or, in other words, “there will be enough food.” While there is plenty of metaphorical value in these words, I suspect their first meaning is quite literal.

Food, and food in abundance, in the ancient world, meant life. For the people trying to live after the exile, when what they had known was destroyed, the idea of a return to good life almost meant a vision of the land being able to be productive again. It meant a restoration of a stable, sustainable life. In some ways I find this passage shocking, when I realize that the whole dream of comfort and goodness is simply “you’ll be able to eat!” In fact, it says that the capacity to eat, and eat enough, is the reason that the people will trust in and praise God. “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”

The idea here is that if you have food, God is with you, and if you don’t have food God isn’t. I don’t agree with this premise, but I CERTAINLY see how people could come to that conclusion. And, it helps us understand the oddities of our Gospel passage.

We need to look at the Gospel Lesson on its own first. I’m struck by the difference presented within the Gospel lesson between the natural world and human society. The examples of creatures whose well-being is cared for by God are from the natural world: birds, lilies, grasses. They’re complimented, they’re functional, they’re cared for. The birds don’t have to hoard food because they keep on finding enough. There is a subtle contrast with human societies that have the capacity grow and store food. There should be an abundance of food, yet the people are hungry.

The second natural example, it also ends up being a bit of a critique of human society. The lilies of the field don’t work for their lives, they don’t make cloth, “they neither toil nor spin.” Yet the epitome of wealth and wisdom in Jewish history – Solomon himself, wasn’t able to use all the wealth and all the knowledge he had to make himself as beautiful as those flowers who don’t work at it all, nor seek to acquire wealth. The lily is a regular symbol of beauty in the Bible. In Song of Songs the beloved is compared to a lily among brambles. When the Bible tells us of Solomon building the temple, (1 Kings 7), lilies were used to decorate the space. Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like a lily, and he seemed to know it! He valued their beauty!

The final natural example in Matthew is that of the “grasses of the field.” I can hear in them the refrain from Ecclesiastes, that “all is vanity and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes has a lot to say about work, toil, food, and drink, including a fairly well known passage , “What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. [God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” (3:9-13) It to me seems like Jesus may be continuing that conversation here!

What does it mean when workers toil, and yet do not have enough to eat and drink, to be clothed, or to take pleasure in life? What does it mean when people are stuck in the needs of the present and therefore can’t give any attention to the future? And what does it mean, in the midst of those challenges, to hear Jesus say, “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink , or about your body, what you will wear?”

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in “The Social-Science Comment on the Synoptic Gospels” point out that “For members of any culture (such as the United States), to have a future orientation requires that all one’s present needs be consistently taken care of. Such was never the experience of the preindustrial peasant.”1 The people Jesus was in ministry with were people who usually did NOT have enough – they were people whose circumstances were dire. Most people did not have enough to eat, many people died earlier than they would have otherwise because of malnutrition.

It is a really weird thing to say “don’t worry about food” to people for whom staying alive means figuring out how to acquire enough bread “not to worry about food.” It seems like the equivalent of saying to a person who is homeless “not to worry about money.” But, I don’t think that Jesus is callous or unfeeling. So, while he is SAYING that, I don’t think it is likely to be his final point.

Thus, I wonder, WHY is Jesus telling people not to worry? Is the purpose of “don’t worry” really that you can’t change it anyway, so it isn’t worth the effort to worry? Or, is the purpose of “don’t worry” that anxiety is simply counter-productive? And/or is the purpose of “don’t worry” that moving out of the status quo and into creative solutions requires the letting go of fear and anxiety? Is Jesus telling people not to worry because worry keeps them from getting what they need???

I think so. ( I might hope so.) I think Jesus wanted the people to have enough to eat, but he thought the best way to make that happen was for them to work collaboratively, and being collaborative requires some letting go. Jesus is saying that worrying isn’t helping, “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” He also says that worrying is the way of the world. He asks his followers to do something else entirely, to work for the kindom instead of working for the necessities of life.

This is where the soft eyes come back in. I think the people were working WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT to survive.  The common misconception of this passage would be the opposite of that – that people are to be entirely passive and wait for God to act on their behalf. But I think Jesus is really talking about a middle way. Jesus is telling the people not to worry, and not to be passive, but to work together for everyone’s good – with God.

As a reminder, he kindom is the goal of Christian faith. It is what we are working towards, and what we believe God is working towards in the world. It is a time and a place of abundance. Perhaps today it would make sense to think of it as staring with Joel’s vision of soil, water, trees, vines, and grains that produce enough for everyone to be satiated. But the vision actually goes further. It is not just food that is abundant and distributed so that all have enough, but also clothing and shelter, healthcare and human connection, meaning and purposeful work, comfort and hope. The kindom comes when we treat each other as beloved children of God, and work towards a world when all have enough to be satiated in all of our needs.

This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving in the US, we remember a historical example of the sort of generosity that can build the kindom. The early European settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony had not learned enough to about this land to have food in abundance, but the Native Americans shared what they had to feed those who didn’t have enough. Because of the food they shared, that day and that winter, the colonists survived, and because they survived we remember their generosity on Thanksgiving.

There are other ways to respond. We are not stuck with only the choices of fighting for survival, or passively giving up. We are not stuck with the choices of listening to the 24 hour news cycle or simply staying in bed and ignoring the world. There are middle ways! One of the most powerful is gratitude. When we feel stuck, (and a lot of us feel stuck a lot of the time) we can notice what there is to be grateful for – and there is almost always a lot! It pulls us out of false binaries and into the complicated possibilities of life – gratitude works to soften our eyes and let God and humanity in. Thanks be.  Amen!

1 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Matthew 6:19-7:6” p. 50.

–

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

November 18, 2018

Sermons

“Unbound for Living” based on Psalm 24 and John…

  • November 11, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I took a course on Children’s Literature in college. It was one of those courses where the professor was so worried about people thinking it wasn’t a valid topic of study that it was 3 times harder than everything else. Despite its difficultly, the course was amazing. During one of his lectures, causally, as if we’d all already known it, the professor mentioned that all fairy tales deal with two fundamental desires of all humans: to be special and to be normal.1

To be special and to be normal. He used examples to show it off, but the point itself stuck with me. We all want to be normal – to fit in, to be accepted, to be assured that we’re OK. We also want to be special – to be great at something, to be recognized for our talents, to be seen as extraordinary. The balance and struggle between the two changes in various groups and between individuals. In some communities, the normal is more highly valued (studies have shown this happens particularly communities with people living in poverty). In others, the special is more highly valued (studies have shown this happens particularly communities with people who are upper middle class and upper class.)2

To be special and to be normal. Sometimes those two universal yearnings come into conflict with each other, because they are. Yet, sometimes they play together as well. Sometimes we subdivide ourselves into various groups – based on something that makes us “special” – and then have expectations in that group of what looks like “normal.” The internet has been very useful for this, since it makes connecting with others who might share traits so much easier. Take, for example, the myriad of pseudo-physicological “personality tests” and the ways that people subgroup themselves into types and then explain their behaivors as normal within those types. (Admittedly, this can be fun.)

In the beginning of the Gospel reading today, Jesus is as normal as normal can be. His friend has died, and he weeps. He grieves. Jesus values the life and love of one he has known and feels the emptiness when the life has passed. This is a story of Jesus acting like a normal person. He was holding it together until Mary wept, but his emotions were impacted y hers. In the midst of the grief he wants to go, and see, to process, to be as close as possible to the one he has lost. And even in the story an accusation of blame. In this case it is external – Mary blames Jesus for Lazarus’s death, but often it is internal. One of the great struggles of grief is the struggle with blame. Because we wish we had the power to hold onto our loved ones, because death hurts like nothing else, because we want to think we could have stopped it, intermingled with grief is a lot of blame; and often much of it is internalized.

It is all normal.

Until it isn’t.

The story shifts to one about Jesus as special – REALLY special – to the best of my knowledge there are no internet chat groups for those who can resuscitate the dead with a word. Jesus commands that the stone be rolled way, and he calls the dead man back out among the living. As the man struggles to move because of the binding clothes of death he’d been wrapped in, Jesus gives a final command “Unbind him and let him go.”

If there is anything “normal” in this story, it is that Jesus is able to do what the rest of us yearn for. The yearning to call back our loved ones from the dead, to return them to the space of the living, to unbind the bands of death that hold them – that’s one of the MOST normal experiences of humanity.

So, this might be a story of human grief, what it looks like and what it yearns for. Jesus is the epitome of human grief, and the expression of what we’d do if we could, under the assumption that he could do what we can’t. Therein lies the special and the normal!

Theologians differentiate between the story of the rising of Lazarus from the rising of Jesus by calling Lazarus’s resuscitation and Jesus’ resurrection. The difference, they say, is that Lazarus was going to die again someday, but Jesus was not. Some say this story exists merely to foreshadow Jesus’ resurrection, or to indicate his power over death. Yet, in this story this power over death is impermanent. Lazarus will die again. The power over death in this story then, is transient.

And yet, that doesn’t matter! For Mary and Martha, as well as for Jesus, another moment with Lazarus was worth it. Whatever moments they’d gained – no matter how many moments they gained – were infinite worth. In reflecting on the yearning for more time with those we love, we are given reminders of where to set our current priorities. Mary, Martha, and even Jesus would take what time they could get and savor it, without complaining that Lazarus’s life would still someday end.  Because the saints we celebrate today are ones who no longer walk among the living, we are reminded of the power of time with our loved ones. We cannot regain time with those we’ve lost; but we can prioritize time with those who are still with us. We cannot go back and learn the stories we never heard from those we’ve lost; but we can ask new questions and listen to the stories of those who are still with us.

There is another lesson given to us by the saints who have gone on ahead – they’ve taught us how to live! In every human life we see a unique glimpse of the divine, and we see a reflection of God’s love. Within the lives we celebrate today there are lessons about how to live a good life.

The story says there were cloth bindings covering Lazarus’s hands, feet, and head. He emerged from the grave still laden with them. Maybe he couldn’t take them off himself because his hands were covered. Perhaps he was still stiff and struggling to regain feeling in his extremities? Maybe he needed help taking them off, or maybe those who loved him needed to experience helping him remove the bindings as a means of unbinding him from death.

“Unbind him from the death cloths” is a powerful image.  In this story it is about freeing a living man who was thought to be dead, to free him to be alive and mobile again. Those who were living removed the cloths of death, to allow the one assumed to be dead to be fully among the living again. Those binding cloths of death have resonance in our lives too. They lead us to questions.

What binds us to death, and prevents us from a full entry into to life? Can we become bound to death while we are grieving the death of those we love? Does fear, or even existential anxiety, ironically bind us to death? Can some levels of exhaustion bind us to death? Can the harms we’ve know, and the healing we have yet to find, be a binding to death?

What is it like to be among those who unbind the living from the cloths of death? How does it feel to unravel hands so they can move again, feet so one can walk without tripping, a face to allow clean air to be breathed, eyes to see, ears to hear, a mouth to speak? When have we offered such miraculous gifts? Does it happen when we offer food to people who are hungry? Is it a gift that occurs when we have time to listen to another’s heart? Are these the gifts of medicine and engineering, of teaching caregiving? Are we able to unbind each other? Can we give each other rest? Hope? Healing?

How?

How do we identify when we need help becoming unbound from the things of death? What does it feel like to be in need of help to have the cloths be unraveled? Jesus calls us both to unbind the clothes of death – and to let the cloths of death be unbound form us.

We get to grieve – Jesus modeled grief for us. But we also get to live – and take the lessons we learned from those we loved about how to live, and live well. We remember, on this day, the saints who have gone before us. We remember their lives with gratitude. Because of them we remember to live our lives well, and to savor the time we have with those we love. Today, we thank God for the lives of the saints. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Randy-Michael Testa, lecture, Winter Term 2001.

2Based on research by Nicole Stephens, Kellogg School of Management.

–

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

November 1, 2018

Sermons

“What Had He Heard?”based on Job 38:1-7 and Mark 10:46-52

  • October 29, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I’m told that there are preachers in the world who can speak without putting the readings in context. I am not that preacher. This is my third sermon in a row on texts from Mark 10, and I’m aware of how profoundly this gospel reading exists within its context in Mark.

I recognize the risk of boring people to death, and yet I find that we need to look both backwards and forwards in Mark form this text in order to make any sense of it. #sorrynotsorry Two weeks ago we dealt with the story of the rich man who asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. He was invited by Jesus to sell all he had and follow Jesus, but he went away sorrowful because “he had many possessions.” Jesus then taught his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

Last week, we heard about the disciples James and John who asked a favor of Jesus. Jesus responded, “What would you have me do?” The disciples were looking for security and power, Jesus corrected them by teaching that he wasn’t offering security, nor power. Instead, he was offering a radical way off life where the first become last, the last become first, and those who are leaders are servants first.

As soon as today’s reading is over, the Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem begins.

Crowded in the midst of these teachings and misunderstandings, we have this obscure little healing narrative. It is all happening on the way to Jerusalem, which in Mark is the way to death on the cross. It would be easy to overlook this healing narrative, especially since Jesus just healed another blind man in Mark 8, and that was a far more interesting story. It is the one where Jesus’ healing takes two tries. But here it is, our text for the week, and the more I looked at it context, the more brilliant it started to appear.

The rich man couldn’t bear to sell all he had, yet in this story an impoverished beggar throws off his cloak in order to get up faster to get to Jesus. The cloak was not only his only possession, it was likely his home. His cloak was what kept him warm enough to stay alive at night, and it was also a tool. Beggars spread out their cloaks to receive alms.1 Yet, in his haste to get to Jesus, he discards it. The rich man couldn’t let go when he was asked to, but the poor man throws away everything he has in one single motion simply to meet Jesus.

The disciples James and John had approached Jesus to gain a favor, and tried to trick him by opening with “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus had responded, “What is it you want me to do for you?” Here, Jesus begins the interaction with the blind man who had been begging with almost the same words. “What do you want me to do for you?” While the established disciples had been seeking status, despite Jesus’ teaching; Bartimaeus requests healing. He says he wants to see again. Jesus isn’t about status, but he is about wholeness.

We sometimes miss the nuances in the healing stories in the Bible because our worldview and the worldview of the ancients are so different, including the fact that they didn’t have germ theory yet. Bruce Malina in the Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels says, “Anthropologists carefully distinguish between disease (a biomedical malfunction afflicting and organism) and illness (a disvalued state of being in which social networks have been disrupted and meaning lost). Illness is not so much a biomedical matter as it is a social one.”2 Ancient healers, including Jesus, were working on ILLNESS. Malina says, “the healing process is considered directly related to a person’s solidarity with and loyalty to the overall belief system of the culture in general.”3

So ancient healing was, in effect, a healing of both the individual and the community. The individual who was ill was separated from the community by the illness, and thus the illness impacted the community as well, since they were separated as well. A community is only whole when all of its members are present and connected.

Bartimaeus’s blindness would not be a considered a disease today, nor a reason for him to be outside of community, but I think it was then. This is where the gospel gets a bit confusing. The gospel says that Bartimaeus regained his sight when Jesus spoke.  In the act of healing him, Jesus says, “Go, your faith has made you well.” This indicates that the healing of sight was seen as the healing of illness. It also fits with the other healing stories in Mark. The people are to “go,” to leave the live of illness behind and re-enter society. Sometimes they’re even told to go to the priests to be assured of their healing. However, Bartimaeus does not “go.” He does not return to his community. This healing is, sort of, cut off then. It isn’t complete. Instead of returning to the community, Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way.

In essence, this healing story is ALSO the LAST story of Jesus calling his disciples. After this, the story starts to move towards his death. This is a transition point, in function it is the end of his active ministry. Everything changes with the entrance into Jerusalem, and that begins with the verse that follows this story.

The first disciples were called away from their fishing boats. Even at this late point, they’re still very confused about what’s going on. This final disciple though, isn’t told to follow at all. He’s told to “go” not to “come” and he follows anyway. We give the first disciples a lot of credit for following Jesus when he said “come” – do we give enough for the one who followed when he was told “go”?

As a whole, this story is a fantastic example of Mark’s earlier point about “the first being last and the last being first.” The first disciples are still struggling to understand, the last disciple is the one yelling “Jesus, son of David” – and he is the FIRST person in Mark to make that claim about Jesus. To call Jesus son of David was to claim him as Messiah.

I struggle though, to make sense of the healing that didn’t restore community. Maybe I’m not supposed to worry about it because it restored the kindom community around Jesus instead of the community of Jericho? I’m not sure.

I’m also worried about the rest of the beggars in Jericho. You see, as Ched Myers says in Binding the Strong Man, “Jericho was the last stop en route to the city of David; the road out of town, representing the final, fifteen-mile leg of the pilgrim’s journey, would have been the standard beat for much of that city’s beggar population. The odds were good that the pilgrims would have the mood and means to give alms.”4 Which is to say that Bartimaeus was likely not was the only beggar on the route – nor even in the vicinity when this healing was happening. The setting means there were a lot of beggars, and Bartimaeus was just one of them.

Why was he chosen? Why did Jesus call for him? Was Bartimaeus the only one crying out? Was he the only one crying out “Jesus, son of David”? If so, was this the first time he’d used a line like that, or did he try some variation of it every day? If it was the first time, what had he heard about Jesus leading him to believe he was the “son of David?” Or, was he the one who needed it the most? Was he the one the crowd spent the most energy silencing (and if so, why)? Was he the squeaking wheel – and that got Jesus’ attention? Or was everyone crying out too?

It is hard for me to hear a story of Jesus picking one suffering person out of a crowd and healing only that one. While it is an unexpected grace for that one person, if Jesus could heal, why did he stop with one?

My struggles with the Bartimaeus story also extend to the Job narrative. Our reading today is well into the book of Job, so I’m going to do a quick plot summary to catch us all up. Job was a wealthy man with a great life, and then it all came crashing down – his herd died, his tents collapsed, his children died, and he got sick all at once. He felt like this was a punishment from God, and an unjust one, because he hadn’t done anything wrong. His friends tried to tell him to repent, and he refused because he hadn’t done anything wrong. He asked God to explain God’s self. 38 chapters into this drama, in the passage we read this morning, God finally does.

It isn’t the answer Job was looking for – Job wanted to ask questions of God and make God answer them! Instead Job got questioned by God. Experientially, that sounds like God. The answer responds to the person’s need, but not their wants! God’s response could be heard as “who are you, and what do you think you know?” It could be heard in other ways too, “there is a whole creation here, it isn’t all about you”, or “things are more complicated than you can see” or “there is a lot of wonder, even in the midst of the horrors.” God’s answer is complicated, and I think our own moods impact what we hear it in.

But, I think the key piece of the story is that God ANSWERS. Job isn’t left to his suffering alone, and God cares. Yet, I have known people whose life experiences feel like Job. They’re at rock bottom and they’ve lost everything, and most of them don’t have an experience of noticing that God is listening or responding when they are at the bottom. Thanks be, some do! But most don’t.

Sure, Job is a story expressing a lot of theological questions. But it is also a narrative telling us that God cares, and God responds. Yet, people don’t always sense that in their own lives. It can feel like the problem of Bartimaeus, YAY for his healing, what about everyone else. YAY for Job’s answer, where is mine?

Or maybe I’m unfair. When, bad things happen to people and I don’t think those are punishments from God. I think they are things that happened, and God is with us to help us through it. So, then, why am I worried about GOOD things happening to people? Yes, some people get healed, and others don’t! There are reasons to be grateful for healings, and for spiritual insights, and for experiences of the Divine.

Maybe, it needs to be said that things aren’t always fair, including the distribution of blessings. I would like them to be fair! But I can hear God suggesting I gird up my loins and get over it. Sometimes blessings come and the last become first. But only sometimes. In any case, in this story, Jesus is still heading to Jerusalem, Bartimaeus follows Jesus to Jerusalem, Job’s life goes on. Our faith doesn’t let us be dependent on miracles, they may or may not come. But they are not indications of God’s love. God’s love is there all the time, equally distributed, fair, accessible, transformational. We can depend on God’s love, and let God’s blessings be bonuses. I think that’s all we can do. May God help us. Amen

1Myers, 282.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) p. 368.

3 Malina, 369.

4Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008) page 281.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Twisting Expectations” based on Isaiah 40:3-5 and Mark 10:32-45

  • October 21, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

James
and John don’t get it – they’ve managed to miss the whole point.
Further, in the remaining 10 disciples’ responses to James and John,
we learn that they don’t get it either.  They’ve ALL missed the
point.  In the Gospel of Mark, the closest followers of Jesus, the 12
disciples, are absolutely clueless about … well, everything.  Jesus
and the disciples are talking past each other.  I think it is meant
to be amusing.  It might be a little bit more successful in aiming
for amusing, however, if it didn’t feel so very close to home.

James
and John are scared, and as scared people do, they are seeking
security.  They were on their way to Jerusalem, they had some sense
of what might be coming, and it was terrifying.  Scared people often
behave in suboptimal ways.  This fact feels relevant TODAY.  Michael
Moore’s 2002 film “Bowling for Columbine” discussed our nation’s
“climate of fear.”  He claims we’re taught to be afraid, and to
seek solutions to our fear, even when the reasons we’re to be scared
aren’t articulated.  His movie was the first time I’d noticed that
phenomenon, and it was very helpful in insulating me from its effects
– for a while.

Then
it gotten harder.  The recent news on climate change is terrifying,
and I think even validly so.  In recent years I have been forced to
reckon with the fact that the values I hold most dear, the ways I
think the common good is achieved, and the society I wish to be a
part of building are NOT as widely shared as I thought, and that has
been scary too.  Maybe it is only scary to know it – since it was
already there before, but it has been scary nonetheless.   While this
has been normal in my life time, it also scares me  that the United
Methodist Church at large and each individual UM church I have loved
will someday cease to exist and that day will likely be sooner than I
would choose.

These
large scale things exist on top of the normal day to day fears of
human existence: that one day I will die, that one day all those I
love will die, that illness or injury could come at any moment to
myself or those I love, that among those I care most deeply about
there are ones struggling because they don’t have enough, that a day
could come when I don’t have enough, that maybe nothing I do matters,
and universal fear that no one really likes me after all.

I
don’t think those fears are unique to me, but they also exist in me.
The normal day to day fears also existed back in Jesus day, and James
and John were likely quite familiar with those.  They were also
facing some large scale concerns – they might lose Jesus, and the
Roman Empire might be interested in eliminating their whole
community.  

At
the same time, they clearly believed that Jesus was going to “win.”
I say that because of how they respond to their fear.  They’re
afraid everything is going to get destroyed, so they try to seek
power within the system as they understand it – and by doing so
they display just how much they believe that Jesus is the source of
power.  They ask to sit at his right and and his left.  We, the
reader, are supposed to be thinking of the insurrectionists who will
be crucified on Jesus right and left.  However, the brothers are not.
They lived in an honor-shame society, the ultimate hierarchical
system.  Honor was a zero sum game.  They thought Jesus had it, and
they were trying to gain more honor by getting closer to him and
acknowledged by him.  

However,
because it was a zero sum game, IF two members of the inner circle of
12 gained honor, then it meant the other 10 got moved further away
and lost honor.  The other disciples seemed to believe as James and
John did: that things were scary, that this was a time to try to gain
security, that Jesus was the best bet they had, and that Jesus was so
honor-filled that the closer they got to him the better they’d do.

It
seems to me that they DID have the faith of a mustard seed, they just
didn’t have it in the right thing.  While the disciples, led by James
and John, are vying for honor in a zero sum game that permeated their
society, Jesus is talking about an entirely different system.  They
ask for a favor, and Jesus says, “You don’t get it.  I’m not the
honor-source you think I am.  I’m here to upend the system, not to
best it.  Are you able to pay the price for upending the system with
me?”  

This
is one of those places where people are talking past each other.  I
appreciated the scholar who pointed out, “In the Old Testament ‘the
cup’ is an ambiguous image, which can connote joy and salvation (Pss.
23:5; 116:13) or woe and suffering (Ps. 11:6; Isa. 51:17, 22).”1
 The same scholar points out that there are reasons to think of
baptism as suffering or as blessing, as well.  Jesus seems to be
talking suffering, but the disciples, still hearing things in the
ways of the world around them, hear their honored leader as talking
about blessing.

After
the remaining 10 disciples proof they’re missing the point too, Jesus
makes another attempt to do general teaching.  What he speaks seems
to me to be central to Christian faith itself.  “You
know that among those-who-don’t-know-our-God, those whom they
recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are
tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to
become great among you must be your servant,
and
whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”  In the
honor-shame system, servants and slaves were at the bottom.  But
Jesus is twisting up all expectations, and putting servants and
slaves at the top.  

He
finishes this teaching saying, “For the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  This
gets interesting.  Charles Campbell, professor of Homiletics at Duke
Divinity School says:

“The
Way of the Cross, Jesus affirms, is the way of resistance of the
Domination System, which is characterized by power exercised over
others, by control by
others, by ranking as the primary principle of social organization,
by hierarchies of domination and subordination, winners and losers,
insiders and outsiders, honored and shamed. … Jesus calls the
community of faith, in its life together, to offer an alternative to
the ways of the Domination System – and to bear the suffering that
inevitably comes as a result.  Jesus resists the domination system
throughout his ministry – even unto death on a cross – so he sets
us free (ransoms us, v. 45) from that system, so we might become
faithful disciples and take up his way of resistance.”2

Ched
Myers, author of Binding
the Strong Man
expands on the final point.  He explains, “The term referred to the
price required to redeem captives or purchase freedom for indentured
servants.  Jesus promises then that the way of ‘servanthood’ has been
transformed by the Human One into the way of transformation.”3
 In this model, instead of leadership being about gaining power
over, leaders are being trained in the ways of nonviolence, to serve,
to resist, and if necessary, to suffer as well.  Leaders aren’t
people who have, gain, or seek status, at least not as Jesus saw it.
That’s how the world works – how it worked then and how it works
now.  Jesus presents an entirely different system: servant ministry,
taking care of each other.

By
lifting up the role of servant, Jesus inverted the entire hierarchy.
Furthermore, he established an expectation that his community of
followers would teach each other as extended kin, and as people
caring for the needs of each other.  In the old system servant did
the care giving work, but in Jesus’ system, everyone did.  The
followers of Jesus weren’t to be in competition with each other, they
weren’t in a zero sum game.  They were to live by entirely
different rules.

They
were to LIVE the imagery of Isaiah.  They were to become the
preparation for God’s way.  They were the ones lifting up the lowly,
AND pulling down the mighty, to be in equal relationships with each
other!  The followers of Jesus were to BE the glory of God revealed
in the world, visible for all.

Just
like the disciples though, we don’t do our best work when we’re
scared.  I was reminded recently that the limbic system, which is
where our emotions live in our brains, is soothed relationally and
interpersonally.  It is MUCH easier to feel good when we’ve connected
with those we love and trust then it is to talk or work our way out
of our fears by ourselves.  

This
idea of radical equality with each other, of deep relationship, of
kinship without competition – this is really key.  It isn’t just
for the long term well being of the sake of the kindom.  It is ALSO
how we make it through the day to day, and how God helps us overcome
our fears and enact our roles as part of the glory of God.  We
baptized Anna today, and we welcomed her as our sibling in Christ.
Now we teach her what it is to be loved in a radical community of
faith committed to twisting the world’s expectations into something
far better – the glory of God.  May we do it well!  Amen

1C.
Clifton Black, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
191

2Charles
L. Campbell “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” iin
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009),
193.

3Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008), 279.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

October 21, 2018

Sermons

“Jesus Looked and Loved” based on Leviticus 19:9-18 and…

  • October 15, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

This is a tough gospel lesson. It is tough to understand, and it is tough to follow. Commentators I’ve read this week have varied wildly in their interpretations of the text, and in their suggestions about how to preach it. Since the text claims it is difficult to get into the kindom of God, it could seem like an odd passage for a baptism Sunday, when we celebrate inclusion in the Body of Christ and the shared work of building the kindom of God. I think it is going to work out for us in the end though.

I want to review a few points about the text before looking at it more broadly. The Christian tradition has often referred to the questioner in this passage as the “rich, young ruler” which is a conflation of the three versions from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark doesn’t tell us the man was young, nor a ruler, and he doesn’t INTRODUCE him as rich. We do find out that he is along the way though. As Ched Myers points out in Binding the Strong Man, “A possession is used to describe a piece of landed property of any kind… a farm or a field, and in the plural lands or estates.”1 This puts him in the top 3% of wealth in the ancient world, and likely actually the top 1%.

The big interpretative question of this text is: is it good or bad to be wealthy? Or, more specifically – did the people to whom Jesus was speaking think it was good or bad to be wealthy? As John Dominic Crossan pointed out when he was here last fall, there are two streams of thought in the Bible. One is the “covenant” stream, in which God and the people make a deal and IF the people follow what they’re supposed to do THEN God will bless them with peace and prosperity. If not, God will punish them. The second stream, and it may be good to know that John Dominic Crossan thinks these streams are about the same size, is the stream of Sabbath and distributive justice. In this stream, God does not engage in reward nor punishment, although there remain natural consequences for actions. In this stream, human beings are responsible for their actions – and for taking care of each other. God is, at all times, encouraging resource distribution that maximizes abundant life.

John Dominic Crossan says that the stream of thought you follow in the Hebrew Bible impacts how you hear the New Testament. This seems especially true of how this passage gets interpreted. One school of thought thinks that the people Jesus were speaking to would have thought that wealthy people were wealthy because they were blessed by God, thus the disciples would have worried, “if the rich man can’t get in, the rest of us have no hope!” In this perspective, the end of the passage makes sense. If someone is asked to leave wealth, they’ll be given more of it later to make up for it.

Sakari Häkkinen, Department of New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa, helps us with context, “In the ancient world, generosity was directed rather to community, not to the needy, who were rather despised more than pitied.”2 and “Those who had no problems with sustenance were altogether at most 10%, whereas in continuous problems of sustenance were living some 90% of the population, more than two thirds of them in severe or extreme poverty.”3

The other school of thought assumes the opposite. It assumes that because wealth was concentrated in the hands of very few, the poor resented them for it. Those who explain this mindset point out that there were a lot of zero sum assumptions at that time. Ancient Palestine and Galilee were part of an honor society, in which it was assumed that honor belonged to families, and if it was lowered – then someone else gained; and if it was raised, then someone else lost it. Thus, they say that people thought that way about wealth too. Ched Myers says,

As we have seen in the discussion of the class structure of Mark’s Palestine, landowners represented the most politically powerful social stratum. With this revelation, the story of the man abruptly finishes, as if the point is obvious. As far as Mark is concerned, the man’s wealth has been gained by ‘defrauding’ the poor – he was not ‘blameless’ at all – for which he might make restitution. For Mark, the law is kept only through concrete acts of justice, not the facade of piety.4

Bruce Malina in the Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels says, “In a limited-good society, compliments indicate aggression; they implicitly accuse a person of rising about the rest of one’s fellows at their expense.”5 And, compliments came with expectation of reciprocity. That’s why, he says, Jesus got snarky about not being good, he didn’t want the compliment, nor did he want to return one. Malina says , “To follow the discussion here, one must realize that ‘rich’ people were automatically considered thieves or heirs of thieves since all good things in life are limited. The only way one could get ahead was to take advantage of others.”6 Yet, it is important to note that a loss of wealth would be a loss of social status, and that would be a loss of HONOR, which would be the ultimate loss in that society.

Those in this view have a good way to make sense of the commandment that Jesus ADDED to his list that otherwise only included ones from the 10 commandments. Did you notice it? He says, “You shall not defraud.” Malina explains, “In the Greek Bible, the verb is appropriated to the act of keeping back the wages of a hireling, whereas in Classical Greek it is used of refusing to return goods or money deposited with another for safekeeping.7

I have to admit, I’m not sure which school of thought makes more sense to me. Sure, wealth was unevenly distributed, and those paying attention would have been furious about it. Further, I think Jesus was paying attention, and I think he followed the distributive justice stream. But I don’t know how the peasants in Galilee thought about wealth. It seems plausible to me that they thought the wealthy were blessed by God. It also seems plausible to me that their faith in God helped them see otherwise – if they followed the distributive justice stream. In fact, if I’m really honest, I think the people who listened to Jesus fell into both camps! Likely, not everyone heard it the same way. Likely not everyone who wrote about Jesus’ teaching thought about it in the same way.

Yet, the passage draws us into some really good questions. Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” I believe that he is talking about God’s realm on earth, and not about afterlife. And, I think maybe he is right. While I think the whole point of Christianity is to build the kindom of God, I also think there are a lot of thing that make it hard to make a 100% commitment to it, to live it, to ENTER it. One of those things has always been wealth. The kindom is a cooperative realm- where there is a distribution of justice AND of resources. Thus, anyone who has wealth and hasn’t shared it isn’t entirely living the kindom.

But monetary wealth isn’t the only facet of kindom living. The kindom is a place, a time, of abundance, which means it also requires giving of our energies, our talents, our passions. Further, I believe the kindom is built on healing and wholeness, not to mention authenticity! So, the things that hold us back from fully sharing ourselves, and our passions, and our talents – those hold back the kindom too. And that gives us all challenges to work on. Ultimately, as Methodists following John Wesley, we claim sanctification. That is, we claim that God is working within us to perfect our capacity to love others as God does. What direction is God working with you on right now? How is sanctification happening within you? Sanctification is the building of the kindom. And without releasing the things that hold us back from loving God, ourselves, AND others as God loves us all – we’re holding things that are too big to allow us FULLY enter the kindom. May God help us let go. Amen

1Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008, 274. He is quoting Taylor, 1963: 430.

2Sakari Häkkinen, “Poverty in the first-century Galilee” in SciElo South Africa On-line version ISSN 2072-8050http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000400046 Accessed 10/13/18

3Ibid.

4Myers, 274.

5Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 191.

6Malina, 191.

7Myers quoting Taylor, page 272 of Myers, 428 of Taylor.

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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

October 14, 2018

Sermons

“Come, Weary People, and Rest” based on 1 Corinthians 11:23-26…

  • October 7, 2018February 15, 2020
  • by Sara Baron

I adore World Communion Sunday. It fills my head with images of tables, laden with the communion elements, the tables change shape, size, structure, and composition as they are set around the world. I love the idea that people in so many varied parts of the Body of Christ share together today – Roman Catholics and many different Orthodox traditions, along with the mainline Protestant denominations and many who are unaffiliated. I love the diversity people with varieties of of ages, races, ethnicities, languages, sexual orientations, gender identities, and abilities that will fill the tables. I just love that God’s table is found in so many forms, feeding so many people.

I love that we get to be a part of it, and that it extends our table into places we’ve never even been. Honestly, I get misty-eyed as well as mystical about this. The communion table has an inherent timelessness about it, when we remember one meal from 2000 years ago, but it also connects us to the many remembrances of that meal from the intervening 2000 years, and are reminded that our meals at God’s table become a part of this long history that will be in the shared tradition long after our lives have passed.

World Communion takes us around the world, and backwards and forwards in time, connecting us as the Body of Christ, feeding us so we can be healed and whole for the work of building the kindom of God.

With all that being said, my brain isn’t super good at generic. I can’t manage to feel connected to all the peoples of the world all at once, much less all the people who ever have or ever will live. So, I have encourage us to pick one part of the world, to truly hear and connect to the people of that place, as a way of expanding outward from our table into the world. Therefore, please indulge me in a history lesson. I promise it does connect, but it isn’t short.

This year, we’re intentionally expanding our table to Puerto Rico, a part of the United States, with a Methodist Church that became autonomous from the United Methodist Church in 1992. Until that point, the then United Methodists in Puerto Rico were considered part of the Northeastern Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church.  Our sibling in Christ relationship with Christians in Puerto Rico is a tighter bond than with much of the rest of the world, and yet, it feels entirely deserving of our attention.

To get my head and heart aligned with Puerto Rico, I did some basic research on Puerto Rico’s history, and I’d like to share it with you. Because, until we know a person or a people’s story, we can’t really be in solidarity with them.

It is believed that Puerto Rico was first settled about 1000 years ago by people who called themselves Taíno and called the island Borikén.1 There were about 30,000 people living on the island when Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1493. He claimed it for Spain, named it San Juan Bautista, and left 2 days later, 2 thus making it one of the world’s oldest colonies. The colonization was passive for 15 years, but in 1508 the Spanish started building a military base and began forced labor of the indigenous people. By the 1530 census, only 1148 Taíno people still lived.3

In order to maintain the island as a military and economic force, the Spaniards intentionally brought Africans to the Island as slaves starting in 1513, and slavery continued for 360 years until 1873.4 The population was rebuilt by immigration from Spain and forced migration of people from other West Indies islands.

In 1898 the United States annexed the colony from Spain. The island’s economy was dominated by a considerable wealth-generating plantation system, cultivating sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee.”5 The US mainland mostly wanted it for a military base, but it took the economic benefits as well. Because of pressure exerted by Puerto Ricans on the island, they became US citizens in 1917, and Puerto Rico became a U.S. commonwealth in 1952, although many argue it is still functionally a colony.6 Debates are still prominent over whether Puerto Ricans want to maintain its status quo, become a state, or become independent.

There was a large increase in manufacturing in the late 1970s and 1980s because of a intention, effective, tax loophole. Then, in 1996 Congress, without representation from Puerto Rico and against their desire, acted to close the loophole. Rolling Stone Magazine summarizes,

“The pharmaceutical companies fled. The economy tanked. Tax revenues collapsed. In May 2006, much of the government, including all the public schools, was temporarily shut down. But rather than cut spending to make up for lost tax revenue, the Puerto Rican government went the other way. It started borrowing money. Two years later, when the global financial crisis hit, it borrowed even more. Broke and desperate, it turned to high-risk capital appreciation bonds and other financial instruments with astronomical interest rates. A 2016 report on Puerto Rico’s debt describes these loans as “the municipal version of a payday loan…. Instead of jump-starting the economy, it pushed the island deeper into joblessness, recession and bankruptcy. In 2015, then-Gov. Alejandro García Padilla warned that the debt was not payable.’… A consequence of this decade-long financial decline was little investment in infrastructure — the roads, highways, bridges, water and sewage systems, and electric grid were all more or less abandoned.”7

The attempt to pull Puerto Rico out of debt felt to many like a return to deeper colonization. The U.S. Congress created the economic collapse, and Congress rejected repeated requests for economic help, choosing the economic interests of Puerto Rico’s creditors over the human interests of the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico themselves. As a result, last year before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had 3.3 million citizens, the poverty rate was 43.5% and more than 10 percent of the workforce was unemployed.8Then came Hurricane Maria. National Geographic describes the status of the island after the 155 mile per hour winds had come:

“The result was the longest major power outage in U.S. history, and many communities on the island were left without running water for months. Toilets couldn’t flush; there was no water for showers, baths, or washing clothes. People had to rely on bottled water, but supplies were limited. Useless electric stoves had to be replaced with propane ones. Without refrigeration, food rotted and vital medicines spoiled. Only those with gas-powered generators could ward off darkness after dusk—for a few brief hours. Forget about air conditioners to relieve the sweltering heat. All the modern conveniences we take for granted were left behind.”9

Rolling Stone summarizes the impact in a different vein:

“Hurricane Maria was the third-costliest storm in U.S. history. It damaged or destroyed more than 300,000 homes, left 3 million people without power and caused about $100 billion in damage. … It’s also powerful and tragic evidence that climate change will hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest. … Three months after the storm, 1.5 million people were still without power. It took nearly a year for electricity to be restored on the island, making it the second-largest blackout in history. It contributed to thousands of deaths because of everything from failed air-conditioning systems to hospitals that couldn’t power dialysis machines.“10

The Puerto Rican government has now adopted the figure of 2,975 dead based on recent studies that have calculated not only the number that died during the immediate devastation of the hurricane but also those who died in the 6 months that followed, the “excess” deaths above those over the same period during the previous year. This method of calculation accounts for the people who died as a result of the hurricane’s devastation of the island and its services over and above those who died of natural causes.11

The devastation isn’t over yet. The failing infrastructure from before the storm didn’t just make it hard to fix it. FEMA rules says you can’t use its funds to build better than what you had before! Thus most of the rebuilding that can be done with relief funds will not improve matters and will not be able to create infrastructure that will be sustainable against the next storms. In the midst of this, all those small-scale coffee farmers in rural areas have been forced to abandon their land entirely, knowing that no help is going to come.

I believe it is to Puerto Rico, and others in the world whose circumstances are similar, that Jesus’ words in the gospel are aimed.  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The burden has been SO heavy for SO long, and the end is not in sight. People continue to walk by faith, not by sight. People rebuild by faith, and not by sight. The people of God in Puerto Rico need a lightened load, and a good, long rest.

It may be that some of us might be able to lighten that load. Some of us may still have energy to call or write to our representatives to ask them to do all that they can to help the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico. Some of us may be able to donate to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, better known as UMCOR, which continues to be present in Puerto Rico assisting in the long-term rebuilding efforts.  UMCOR doesn’t have restrictions on rebuilding better! We can pray for the people of Puerto Rico. We can reach out to the Puerto Ricans we know – those who live on the Island and those who live on the mainland – and check to see how they and their loved ones are doing. Some are feeling lost or forgotten. There may also be creative ways that we can help lighten the burden of our siblings in Christ in Puerto Rico.

Today, our table extends from Schenectady, NY to Puerto Rico – to San Juan and to the rural farmlands. Our table is one of feeding the hungry, of uplifting souls, of giving thanks even in brokenness, of unity in the Body of Christ. May this holy day be a day of connection, a day of rest, a day of laying down heavy burdens, and a day of shared yokes. Amen

1Russell Schimmer, Yale University Genocide Studies Program, “Puerto Rico”https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/colonial-genocides-project/puerto-rico, accessed 10/4/18

2Schimmer.

3Schimmer

4Schimmer

5Schimmer

6Smithsonian “Puerto Rico – History and Heritage”https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/puerto-rico-history-and-heritage-13990189/written November 6, 2007, accessed 10/6/18.

7Jeff Goodell “The Perfect Storm: How Climate Change and Wall Street Almost Killed Puerto Rico” in Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-damage-722570/ published on 9/12/18 at 12:17PM ET, accessed on 10/6/18,

8Goodell.

9David Brindly, “Months After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Still Struggling” in National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/03/puerto-rico-after-hurricane-maria-dispatches/ published in the July 2018 issue, updated 8/30/18 with new death toll. Accessed 10/6/18.

10Goodell.

11 BBC News “Puerto Rico increases Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975”https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45338080 published August 29, 2018. Accessed 10/6/18.

–

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

October 7, 2018

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