“Meditation of My Heart” Page based on Leviticus 19:9-18 Psalm…

September 30, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

What sort of world do we want to live in? What world are we trying to create? This is a central question of faith, and the answer has sacred names. It is often called the kindom of God, it is also known as the beloved community. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”¹ I believe that this vision goes back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and is the the vision of the Torah itself. (The Torah is a name for the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.)

Today I want to look at that vision for the world, and build on it into the vision we see God seeking to build from the world as we know it today into what it could be. The vision we’ll see was one that detailed how society should be set up, specifically outlining how to to create a just system where even the vulnerable can thrive.

Not everyone sees this vision in the Hebrew Bible. Many Christians have been taught to distrust the vision of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah is often interpreted into English as “the law” and that has gained disfavor in many Christian circles. Paul wrote in Romans 7, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Romans 7:6 NRSV) Those following his ideas have seen the law as old, as dated, as dead – and thus definitely not as life giving.

I think we miss a lot when we simplify that much. “The law” is a series of rules, regulations, and expectations about what it would take to develop a stable community that values human life. They’re profound, intentional, and life-giving.

The Torah vision emerges out of the core conception of the Divine in the ancient Jewish faith – that God was a God who cared about how people treated each other. God wanted the people of God to create a community where all of God’s people could survive, and thrive! This was notable in a time when most communities conceived of gods and goddesses who cared only for how humans treated the gods and goddesses – related to worship and sacrifices. Instead of a concept of God that is self-serving, the Torah vision sets out a series of rules and regulations about how humans are to treat each other, under the impression that this is what God wants from them. God is pleased when people care for each other. This is the foundation of our faith tradition, and of the Torah vision for good living.

As we see in several of the 10 commandments – don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet what your neighbor has – how neighbors get treated is central to how a stable and supportive society is formed. Of course, we also see in the 10 commandments that how God is understood matters – don’t have other gods, don’t make idols, don’t take the name of the God in vain, and even I would argue, remember the Sabbath day. These two facets coincide with the great commandments as found in the Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 19:18b, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” and the Shema, found in Deutoronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” On these two foundations – care for each other and love of God, ancient Israel was built.

According to John Dominic Crossan, the vision was one of distributive justice, and we see that as staring with the Sabbath. Sabbath is a distribution of rest, that applied to both Israelites, and foreigners. It applied EVERYONE, and came every week. That prevented people from being dehumanized by constant work. One day off out of seven means that there is an identity other than work. The Sabbath laws were also about distribution – distribution of rest and thus humanity! The Sabbath rules also, in a way, applied to the land. Fields were mean to lie fallow every 7 years. The Jubilee year was also an extension of Sabbath. Leviticus explains this in chapter 25:

“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. (Leviticus 25:8-13, NRSV)

This brings us to the the distribution of land, that land that each family returned to! Every tribe got a portion of the land and then every family got a portion of the tribe’s land. That is, every family got land on which they could live and farm. There was a careful distribution of land to enable all of the Israelites to have subsistence.

Then, there were rules and regulations to make sure that the land wouldn’t be appropriated out of the hands of the family!! One of those was the rule that loans had to be forgiven every 7 years so that debt did not accumulate. The other piece was that land could only be LEASED, as we heard in the Jubilee passage a moment ago. If a family got into financial trouble and had to sell their land, it could only be leased for up to 49 years but it could not be sold outside of the family. This meant a family could not permanently lose their basis of subsistence.

There is one exception to the land distribution though. One tribe did not get ANY land. That was the tribe of Levi, the Levites. The Levites, instead, lived off of the tithes of the other nations. The Levites were the “holy people”, from that tribe the priests were chosen. The Levites were set aside to deal with matters of the Divine. They were the moral compass of the community. The Levites were dependent on the other tribes for their survival when they otherwise had so much power, it kept them motivated to seek the well-being of the tribes because they were interdependent. It also meant that while most of society was at work farming and tending to herds, there were people pondering, considering, and attending to the big picture. It wasn’t that they were closer to God, simply that they got to spend more of their time attending to the things of God on behalf of everyone else.

The Torah vision had other safeguards in place to try to keep things just. Loans could not be given with interest. That means that there was no penalty for needing a loan. One did not go further into poverty because one was in poverty. It also means that those who were doing well enough to offer loans did not glean further wealth from it.

The was also a provision for gleaning. Those who owned land were banned from picking the edges of their fields as well as from going back to pick a second time, making sure to get it all. That way, those who didn’t have land – the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners, had a way to feed themselves by picking the leftovers. I am also under the impression that some of the work of the tithe was to feed the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners. That is, that even though the Torah tried to make sure everyone got land, there were also careful provisions for the exceptions! This is summarized in Leviticus 19, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Finally, the Bible absolutely obsesses over having a fair justice system that shows no partiality. To go back to Leviticus 19 for a concise version of this, “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:15) The very concept of justice in the Torah vision is tied into the lack of partiality, neighborliness, and to God’s own nature. Almost all of those Leviticus 10 provisions end with “I am YHWH.” God’s own being requires this care of people, and this care of people is what builds a society that reflects God’s own being!!

Of course, ancient Israel often failed to live into the Torah vision. That’s why we have so many prophetic books filled with prophets calling kings and the powerful into compliance with the care of the vulnerable and justice for all!

Now, I do not wish to live in a theocracy, I think they tend to go poorly. But, I think there is a whole lot in the Torah vision that is worth considering and pondering. I don’t see a whole lot of justice in our society, and I do see a LOT of partiality. Starting with where we are today, what do we see God at work trying to create? How is God seeing to make sure all people have sustenance? How is God at work to make justice systems just and fair? How is God trying to ensure the vulnerable are cared for and that those who have experienced oppression or harm are heard? I believe we can hear this work of God, if we listen for it; and see this work of God, if our eyes are open.

Psalm 19 celebrates the vision of the Torah, it celebrates the Torah itself! It is beautiful, isn’t it? It calls the Torah a source of reviving the soul, and wisdom, and clarity. It says the Torah is sweeter than honey and better that gold! It thinks this communal living that attempts to reflect God’s love of God’s people is THAT good! What delight is there in envisioning a society, a WORLD, where all are cared for?

The Torah-vision, the kindom of God, the beloved community, they are different ways of saying the same thing. So too, I believe, is the often repeated quote from Rev. Dr. J. Edward Carothers, teaching of the church existing to “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in ever widening circles of concern.” Just so, the Psalmist says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” As people of faith, we are called into these visions – to see them, to dream them, to move towards them, to celebrate them as they come into being, and work towards them. Sometimes the biggest work of all is to dream big enough for God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Martin Luther King Jr. 1957, found at http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html. Accessed on 9/27/28.

–

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

“Blessings… We Hope” based on Isaiah 50:4-9a and James…

September 20, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the Isaiah passage, the suffering servant describes being attacked – hit from behind, beard hairs pulled out, and spit on. Yet, as he describes the attack, it becomes clear that the words said have done more harm than the physical attack. He speaks of being insulted. He claims it is only because of God that he is not disgraced, that he is not shamed, that he can stand strong. He will not be “found guilty” because God helps him. There are people who are attacking the suffering servant, and it is clear that their words hurt.

Most likely, the disagreement between the servant and his adversaries was a big one. This passage comes from the exile, when the leaders of the community of faith were residing in Babylon, trying to survive as slaves. Walter Brueggemann says, “It seems more likely to me that the abuse comes from other members of the exilic community who have worked out a sustainable compromise between Yahweh and the empire, who do not what to have the compromise exposed or questioned, and who do not want to be pressed to decide for Yahweh and for the disruptive venture of homecoming in a distinctive identity.”¹ It is easy to imagine that both sides of that argument – to conspire with oppressors or not – would have strong opinions and good motivation to attack the other side.

It is also easy, from 2500 years and half the world away, to see valid arguments on both sides. But it seems that in the midst of the disagreement, the ways it was approached did great harm. The suffering servant is known as just that – the one who suffers – and in this passage at least, he suffers because people disagree with him and make it personal!

The Isaiah passage is a case-in-point example of the argument that James is making. James uses a whole lot of examples to validate the two key verses 9 and 10, “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” James says that if we praise and bless God, it is INCONGROUS to curse seek harm to God’s beloved people. And just in case you had missed the memo, God’s beloved people and all human beings overlap are exactly the same groups.

James says that words have a whole lot of power, including power to do great harm, so we should be careful with them. Then he says that blessing God and cursing God’s people is utterly incongruous. It is like a grapefruit tree growing figs, or a fig tree growing olives. It can’t be. Or, at least, it ought not to be.

Understanding what James meant is not the difficulty. Figuring out how to live it is the hard part. Let’s get clear on what we’re trying to do first. To start with, I’m not certain what the text means by “blessing” nor by “cursing”. Don’t get worried about me, I looked it up in 5 books, they were just concerned with other questions so they didn’t answer mine. 😉 I THINK I know what each of those things means, but it always seems worth double-checking assumptions. Particularly on days when the scripture tells teachers to be extra-cautious.

The dictionary says that to bless is “to confer or invoke divine favor on.” The dictionary footnotes say that it got used to translate the words meaning “to praise” and “to worship” from Latin, which influences its nuance in English – and that helps us avoid a circular definition when it comes to understanding what it means to bless God.² Conversely, the dictionary says that a curse is “a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.”³

Not to be oppositional or anything, but it seems that the dictionary definition doesn’t exactly fit with what I’d expect. It seems to me that blessing has something to do with consecrating, that is, naming and acknowledging something for holy work. Cursing, as I think of it, has to do with wishing harm for another. This is why I wish the Bible commentaries told me exactly what it means, although I doubt they really know either. In any case, I think we have some shared sense – if broad – of what blessing and cursing are. You can go with the dictionary, with me, or with your own assumptions, I think they’ll all work.

So, what does it mean to bless God? Perhaps it just means to praise God or to worship God, perhaps it could be thought of as expressing gratitude to God for God’s goodness, mercy, and presence among us. What, then, would it mean to equivalently bless God’s people? Does it just mean seeing and remembering that each person is made in God’s image? Does it mean attending to the goodness within each one? Does it mean using our speak to build up one another? Does it require incessant praise, even if it is meaningless? Or is it more to see another, to listen to another, and to assume that the other’s being in the world is a sacred expression of the Divine – the each other person is made in the image of God and is thus infinitely beautiful??

I could ask the same questions about cursing God and cursing people, but I trust you to draw those conclusions without me knocking you on the head with them.

If, as James assumes, the response of the faithful to God and to God’s people should BOTH be words of blessing, how could we move towards that in our daily lives? How can we use our words for good? How can our tongues be blessings? When do we tend to mess this up??

One major issue to consider is how we respond to people who we think are wrong, as seen in the Isaiah passage!! I watched a TED talk about this recently, in which Karen Shultz outlines some common issues humans have when we disagree. Her talk was called “On Being Wrong” and she says:

“Think for a moment about what it means to feel right. It means that you think that your beliefs just perfectly reflect reality. And when you feel that way, you’ve got a problem to solve, which is, how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you? It turns out, most of us explain those people the same way, by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions. The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they’re ignorant. They don’t have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they’re going to see the light and come on over to our team. When that doesn’t work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they’re idiots. They have all the right pieces of the puzzle, and they are too moronic to put them together correctly. And when that doesn’t work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes. So this is a catastrophe.”⁴ (emphasis mine)

That sort of thinking is how we get to cases like the suffering servant. People simply disagree and then it grows into something MUCH larger. As a reminder, there are at least two more options for what might be happening when we disagree with someone: first that we might actually be mistaken (gasp!), and second that our worldviews lead us to different conclusions. Most of the time, I think disagreements come from different worldviews, and that’s a source of strength, when we let it be.

John Wesley, in his book “On Christian Perfection” says that all of us are wrong sometimes, and none of use know when we are wrong (or we’d have fixed it already!), therefore we should be humble when we disagree with another because it may well be one of the times we’re wrong. Between the two of them, Shultz and Wesley urge caution at the very least with speaking to someone you think is wrong. James, then, just adds a bit more – wish them well, and speak to them in ways that will lead to their well-being. It is a HIGH bar, but one worth seeking. So, when we start thinking someone is wrong is a VERY good time to consider how we might use our words as blessings, and not as curses!!

It is also very common to be in a position when we are feeling attacked and wanting to defend ourselves. I think most of the worst speaking I’ve ever done has been when I’ve been in that position. Both my words and my tone seem to leap out of my control! In those situations, we may identify with the servant in Isaiah, who was struck, had beard-hairs pulled out, was spit on, and insulted. That could raise most people’s defensive heckles, right??? Let’s be clear, it SHOULD. We are not people who advocate being passive in the face of harm. We are people who advocate being PEACEFUL in the in face of violence, but not PASSIVE in the face of harm. So, the servant says that with God’s help, he made it through and kept his dignity in tact through it all. He trusts that a reversal of fortunes is coming, and that the harm will end. He even suggests that those who have done harm might stand WITH him on that day.

The most practical wisdom teachers I know say that when we feel attacked we need to slow down and get curious. First ask: am I in harm’s way? If so, do whatever is possible to get away from it. Then ask: do I have the resources to hear and respond to this right now? If not, do all in your power to exit the conversation/experience safely. If, however, you are not in danger and you do feel like your internal resources are up to the task, then we get back to James’ teaching. Then we need to think about what it means to bless the person who got our heckles up, and how we can use our words – and tone – to seek their well-being and our own at the same time! That DEFINTELY requires keeping things slow, and staying with curiosity, and it tends to be a skill easiest to develop with those you already trust to like you, love you, and seek your well-being. Remember CURIOUSITY as a means of moving us to blessing, if you can!

Finally, the more I think about James affirming the importance of BLESSING and not cursing God’s beloved people, the more I suspect he was advising each of us on how we speak to OURSELVES. I don’t think I know anyone who speaks more harshly to other people than they do to themselves. In fact, most of the time when I hear people speaking harshly to others (myself included for sure), I suspect that the way they’re speaking is simply a toned-down reflection of how they speak to themselves. (By the way, this assumption helps me have a lot more compassion when people speak harshly.)

The ways most people speak to themselves sounds a lot more like cursing than it does like blessing. But James says we aren’t supposed to curse those made in the image of God, and that includes ourselves. It includes everyone else too.

So, dear ones, may we find ways to slow down our tongues, may we remember to be curious, and may our tongues be sources of blessings for God’s people, including ourselves. This world of ours is definitely in need of some blessings, and I hope we can be sources of it. Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah Vo. 2: 40-66 in Westminster Bible Companion Series, edited by Patrick D. Miller and David A. Bartlett (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 122.

2Apple Dictionary “bless” accessed 9/13/18.

3Apple Dictionary, “curse” accessed 9/13/18.

4 https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong/transcript?language=en, accessed 9/13/18

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 16, 2018

Sermons

“Partiality” based on Psalm 125 and James 2:1-17

September 10, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The Psalm sounds … nice. It sounds… basic. Yes, yes, trusting God is good, it makes you stronger. Yes, sure, God is with us. Bleh, bleh, bleh. God is for good people and God should protect good people from bad people.

It doesn’t seem particularly unique. That is, until one reads it in context. Psalm 125 is believed to be written AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem, which involved the utter destruction of the Temple, and the forced march of the Jewish leaders to slavery in Babylon. That fact alone makes it SUPER interesting, and eliminates the seeming niceness.

Verse 1 says, “Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.” As one scholar, Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll of Ohio Wesleyan, puts it:

“The notion of ‘Zion’ in ancient Israelite literature signifies more than a particular location (i.e. Jerusalem). It always relates to the temple in Jerusalem, which was built at the highest point in the city and was sometimes referred to as the ‘mountain’ or ‘mount’ of YHWH. In the ancient world, temples were not utilized like places of worship today; temples primarily housed the presence of particular deities. Rituals were preformed in temple complexes, but they usually did not incorporate a congregation. Priests would administer these rituals to maintain the sacredness of the space so that the presence of the Divine would remain and the advantages associated with that Deity would be sustained. One of these advantages was the perceived protection of the region by the god or goddess who was worshipped.”¹

The people understood Zion to be the temple complex, and the understood it to be unbreakable. Zion was protected by God. Zion’s power and God’s power were, essentially, the same. As Dr. Ahearne-Kroll puts it, “The concept of Zion, therefore, conveys the inviolability of Jerusalem; because God’s presence resided in the temple, Jerusalem would never fail.”²Thus, it is a big deal to make such a statement about Zion AFTER Zion has fallen.

If your faith said that God would never let the Temple that held God’s presence falter; and then the Temple was destroyed; it would now mean very different things to speak of that Temple at Zion. And the Psalmist says that those who trust in God are like the impenetrable Mount Zion which abides forever, except that it mostly DIDN’T when the Psalmist wrote it.

Right before we formed the Upper New York Annual Conference, we had the final sessions of our former Annual Conferences. After the final blessing was given in Scranton, PA, a voice shouted out “The Wyoming Annual Conference is dead! Long live the Wyoming Annual Conference!” Those words have been playing in my ears in the years since. At first I thought it was silly, those words make sense when one king has died and another has been crowned, but the Wyoming Conference was gone for good. Yet, the hope and faith I learned in the Wyoming Conference still live on in me, and I believe in the world. In my years here, I have learned that the Troy Annual Conference also lives on in her people, and in their faith and hope.

It is weak, I admit that, but the feeling I had when my Annual Conference died (which, for me as a pastor, was my church), is the closest thing I can find for understanding what the Psalmist was saying about Mount Zion abiding forever. Even though what they had known was gone, even though the gone-ness of their Holy Space was a violation of how they knew God, they held firm to their faith in God. They even, intentionally, used the metaphor of the holy space that had been destroyed before their eyes as proof of God’s goodness and permanence!

The Psalmist is so bold as to say, “those who trust in God are like the unbreakable Mount Zion” because the promise and faith of Zion lived on, even when the Temple stood in ruins. Even though the physical could be destroyed, the faith it build and the faith that was practiced there could not. So, even in its own destruction, the Temple Mount served as a metaphor for the eternal. Maybe for those whose lives and livelihoods had been destroyed, only a symbol that had known destruction could be the right symbol of faith.

Nevertheless, I hold that it is radical and profound to stake the claim, “Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore.” The rest of the Psalm is a bit more honest. That’s good too. The Psalmist wishes for God to act, to kick out the oppressing force and all those who collaborated with it. The Psalmist, it seems, wishes for God to act to reestablish the impenetrability of Zion. The Psalmist wants things to be as they should be, and not as they are, and asks God to make things right again.

That’s where our two scriptures collide. James ALSO wants things to be made right again, and not to be as they are, but he thinks it is the job of the followers of Christ to make it so. James sees a problem in the community of Christ-followers, that they treat people with different means with different levels of respect. There does seem to be a little bit more going on in his narrative than what we, as moderns, initially hear in it.

The one presented as a rich man is said to be wearing a gold ring and fine clothes. That likely indicates that he was either a noble or a senator in the Roman Empire, AND that he was running for office. Thus, as one scholar says, “it would be apparent to the readers that the rich man under discussion was a representative of the aristocracy and that his connection with the Christians was supposed to be beneficial to both groups.”³

Dr. Elza Tamez, professor of theology at Latin American Biblical University in Costa Rica, says that there are two words used for “the poor” in Biblical Greek, “The poor were the ptōchoi, a Greek term designating those who totally lacked the means of subsistence and lived from alms; they were the beggars.”⁴ The other word was for poor people who had no land but did have a job. The word used in James for the poor person who enters the worshiping assembly is ptōchoi.

Thus, James’s objection is stronger than it initially appears. It isn’t just, “don’t treat rich people nicer than poor ones” although it is that. It goes a step further, “Don’t treat important people who can help your community better than you treat those who can’t afford to eat today.”

This is not the easiest teaching in the Bible, although it is fairly core. The Hebrew Bible obsesses over the treatment of the poor, particularly the most vulnerable poor. Jesus continues that tradition by engaging with and empowering people living in poverty and hopelessness. James says that God has a preference for the poor, and wants the people who follow Jesus to have that same preference. Some scholars point out that James does not condemn the rich one, or at least he does not do so inherently. Rather he condemns preferential treatment for the wealthy and powerful. He doesn’t say that the wealthy man is unwelcome, simply that he shouldn’t be treated better because he is wealthy.

James says this violates both the values of Christ and practicalities. Wealthy people were regularly oppressing the impoverished people who were the majority in the early Christian communities. The values of God and of Christ are not at all reflective of the values of material possession. The world tends to give more power to those who already have power and wealth, but that’s not how God would have it be. God who loves all of the people wants to lift up the lowly so that all have what they need to survive and thrive! Christians who are trying to build the kindom need to let go of the materialistic values of society and see people with God’s love and values!

That being said, it is much easier to say than do. The assumption that the wealthy man was likely very powerful and a possible protector of vulnerable people fits well into the challenges of living as Jesus lived. It is difficult to forego protections, particularly when you need them. It is ill-advised to anger a powerful person when their power means they can do you harm. It is much easier to fold, to give deference, to offer your chair.

It is easy to forget that when we offer deference to one who has more power, money, or influence we are inherently devaluing the one who lacks power, money, or influence. In those early house churches there wasn’t all that much room – they were in houses after all! Making space for someone meant crowding everyone else. And, as James said, it meant saying to the one who was already most vulnerable, “you can sit on the floor at my feet.”

I can’t read this passage without feeling convicted for all of the ways I fail to follow in the way of Jesus. I truly believe that God calls us to love each other – ALL of each other – with the love God has for each person. Yet, I notice ways that my treatments of people are different. I am not yet able to ignore all the ways that culture trains me to see, hear, and respond to people. (Here is hoping John Wesley is right and I’m moving on to perfection.)

Yet, I think James may know that he is asking something of people that is good to yearn for and VERY difficult to live. I think that because he goes on to talk about mercy. He encourages people to show mercy, so that they might receive mercy; assuming that they need mercy in cases like inappropriately showing partiality. It is, in fact, all tied up together. As one scholar says, “Favoritism emulated, not the law, but the oppressive measures of the rich who do not show mercy. The polar opposite of favoritism is mercy.”⁵

Mercy is “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”⁶ It is power over another that is not used, and instead grace abounds. The opposite of favoritism is mercy. Failing to show mercy is oppression. Mercy is the opposite of partiality. Isn’t that an interesting thought? Mercy, compassion towards someone you have power over – like a poor person entering a space where you belong.

May we move onto perfection. May we find the ways to eliminate partiality from our words and actions. And, in the meantime, may we show mercy. It will help make things right, and we yearn for things to be right. Amen

1Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll, “Exegetical Perspective on Psalm 125” inFeasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 33.

2Ahearne-Kroll, 35.

3Bo Reicke, The Epistles of James Peter and Jude in the Anchor Bible Series, ed. William Foxwell Abright and David Noel Freedman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1964), 27.

4Elza Tamez, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), 19.

5Aaron L. Uitti, “Exegetical Perspective on James 2:1-10 (11-13), 14-17” n Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 43.

6Apple Dictionary, “mercy” accessed 9/7/2018.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 9, 2018

Sermons

“For Love is as Strong as Death” based on Matthew…

September 2, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Most people agree with Jesus’ parable in Matthew 7: it is wiser to build a house on a solid foundation. I’m less certain that there is general agreement about what constitutes a solid foundation. Before you offer me the obvious, “like Jesus said, build on rock, not on sand,” I am going to remind some of you and inform the rest of you that you are currently sitting in a sanctuary of a “floating church.” When foundation work was being done for this building, it became clear that the bedrock was simply too deep to be reached. An underground stream flows here, and it is deep and wide. Our ancestors in faith decided to build this church on the foundation of oak beams in the stream. As long as the oak beams stay wet, which is as long as the underground stream continues to run, we are sitting on a firm foundation.

I love this little piece of our shared history, because it complicates matters. Not all things are rocks or sand. Sometimes what you have is mud, and even that can make a firm foundation if you do it right!

I’ve been reviewing some of my books about love, romance, and marriage in preparation for preaching today. In the book “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage,” author Stephanie Coontz says, “only rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married. When someone did advocate such a strange belief, it was no laughing matter. Instead, it was considered a serious threat to social order.”¹ In fact, other than in the West for the past 200 years, love has NOT been seen as a reason to get married, and most of the time it has often been seen as a good reason not to. For almost all of history, people have thought that love is shifting sand, and not a solid foundation.

We are here today to disagree. As people of faith, especially, we think that love is THE foundation.

Song of Songs helps us disagree. Many scholars believe that the passage we read from Song of Songs today is the culmination of that book. Song of Songs is a celebration of romantic and sexual love. The book delights in physical bodies and articulates the joy that each of the lovers have in being together. The Song is remarkably nonjudgmental about eroticism and sex. (It is the only book in the Bible where a women’s voices dominate, and she uses her voice to speak of her desire and love.)²

The text is often shocking to the modern reader, but while ancient Israel expected fidelity in marriage, it had a positive attitude toward sexual love, in part because it led to propagation of family and society. “Ancient Israel perceived the wonders of human sexuality, fulfilled in marital love, to be a divine blessing.”³

It is always worth wondering about why this text made it into the Bible, and how people have thought about it over time. Scholars have pointed out that today’s text sounds a lot like Isaiah 43:2. Hear again what we read a moment ago:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.

– Song of Songs 8:6-7

Isaiah 43:2 says:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.

The words in Isaiah are attributed to God, and aim to assure the exiles that their exile will come to an end. “The peace and security of the eschatological era is thus evoked … in this verse which affirms that nothing can again disturb the tranquil and profound attachment of the Bride to the Bridegroom.”⁴ The comparison between the texts makes the claim that love is similarly relentless, and thus solid foundation.

The seal that is placed on the heart and on the arm reminds me of the commandment in Exodus 13:9, “It shall serve for you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the teaching of the Lord may be on your lips; for with a strong hand the Lord brought you out of Egypt.” Throughout the Song of Songs there is an assumption that “human and divine love mirror each other.”⁵

As one scholar puts it, Pope, “Love is the only power that can cope with Death.”⁶ Throughout the entire book, the Song focuses on transforming death to life. A scholar writes, “Love, through metaphor and simile, is the sum of all pleasures; the lovers represent all the creatures and life-forces in the world; now they and that which animates them are set against death, in the context of birth.”⁷ The same scholar concludes, “If Death overcomes all opposition, it must inevitably engage love, dissever all ties of affection; if Love is of infinite value, it must encounter the ultimate fear, the threat to existence.”⁸

The Song celebrates human love, I believe, because human love is the closest expression we get to Divine love. (Please note that I’m talking about love broadly, not only about romantic love.) Romans 12 gives instructions how human beings can express God’s love for each other. It says that relationships matter, and God is in the midst of those relationships. To be in relationship with God IS to be in good relationship with those around us. To harm those in our lives IS to harm God.

Eugene Peterson translates verse 10b, which in the NRSV says, “outdo one another in showing honour” as “practice playing second fiddle.” As far as I know, second fiddle is usually a harmony part that supports the melodies. It is a role that is needed, but it isn’t the most prestigious one. Most instrumentalists practice to become the FIRST, the top, of their sections. Romans suggests the goal of reflecting God’s love in the world requires us to practice for the supporting roles sometimes. It is about relationships, not performance. It is about supporting each other along the way.

Romans, too, helps us consider how to build solid foundations. The foundation of two people supporting each other is just a lot stronger than if only one supports the other.

Thomas Moore in his book Soulmates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship says, “The word intimacy means ‘profoundly interior.’ It comes from the superlative form of the Latin word inter, meaning ‘within.’ It could be translated, ‘within-est,’ or ‘most within.” In our intimate relationships, the ‘most within’ dimensions of ourselves and the other are engaged.”⁹ This is how human love and Divine love are reflections of each other. Both relationships Divine and loving relationships between humans are profoundly intimate. They inform each other, build on each other, express each other.

Moore says, “The intimacy we pledge at the wedding is an invitation to open Pandora’s box of soul’s graces and perversities. Marriage digs deep into the stuff of the soul. Lifelong, intense, socially potent relationships don’t exist without touching the deepest, rawest reservoirs of the soul. Few experiences in life reach such remote and uncultivated regions of the heart, unearthing material that is both incredibly fertile and frighteningly primordial.”¹⁰ Perhaps this is why for so long, humans lived in fear of romantic love as a foundation. It reaches into the depths of people, and finds the squishy stuff inside.

I keep going back to those those oak beams though. They’re going to hold up this church as long as they stay wet, but they’ll lose their strength if ever they dry out. The foundation is strong as long as the invisible, underground stream keeps flowing. The squishy stuff inside of us, the soul stuff, the primordial stuff, the stuff that intimacy touches – it is wet too. It, too, can look like an unstable foundation, and it too, can keep something like those oak beams strong and steady!

There is enough within us to keep “oak beams” wet and strong too – as long as we keep living into the vulnerable, the primordial, the intimate, the loving. Maybe it sounds weird to build a church on an underground stream – likely because it is. I guess in the course of history it sounds weird to base something so important as marriage on love! But those oak beams have been holding us up for 147 years, and I think there is enough squishiness in love to make a very strong foundation for marriage too. I think Jane and Jim are wise, in building their lives on the foundation of love, and thus on on the reflection of the Divine that is human love. I think their love is as strong as death, and that’s plenty of foundation.

Finally, I remain grateful for the hope that seeing love like theirs offers for all of us. Love, whether romantic, familial, or friendship, gives us glimpses of how the Divine relates to us. And that Divine love is the strongest foundation that I know of, bar none. That love, I’d even go so far as to say, is STONGER than death. That love is the foundation of the universe. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (USA: Penquin books, 2005) 15.

2It occurs to me that someone could argue about Ruth, but I don’t think Ruth reflects actual women’s voices so much as a voices ascribed to women by male authors.

3 Roland Murphy The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or the Song of Songs in S. Dean McBride Jr, editor Hermeneia: A Critical & Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 99.

4 Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary(Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1977), 674.

5 Murphy, 104.

6 Pope, 210.

7 Francis Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs(Sheffield, England: The Almond Press, 1983), 114.

8 Landy, 123.

9Thomas Moore Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationships (HarperPerennial, 1994), 23

10Moore, 59.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 2, 2018

Sermons

“Discerning” based on 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

August 19, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This story is often used to lift up the virtues of Solomon and encourage others to be like him. That is, it is read to say we should all be seeking God’s wisdom, and the capacity to discern what is right. Of all the ways that Bible stories get treated like fables, this is one I don’t particularly object to. After all, I like wisdom, I think it is important, and it seems worthwhile to seek it.

I like the point people draw from this story, but I think it is important to acknowledge that the original story as it was told functioned as pro-Solomon propaganda. It establishes his right to the kingship, it indicates Divine favor in support of his leadership, and it proclaims him as wise. On top of that, most ancient wisdom traditions hold that wisdom is the most important virtue. It means that in naming Solomon wise it names him a “good” man AND it functions to validate everything else he does. After all, “in the ancient wisdom traditions, longevity, honor, and material possessions are all seen as benefits that derive from wisdom.”¹ The Bible likes to present Solomon as wise, it is probably the first thing you think about when you think of Solomon (if you ever do). He may well have been wise, that story may come from some factuality. However, I think the story is mostly USED as a way to claim and keep power.

Solomon’s “wisdom” is the given reason for why he gets to build the Temple. Solomon’s Temple was build by conscripted labor of Jews. Solomon’s wisdom used to explain why he oversaw the largest nation in ancient Israel’s history. Of course, what that actually means is that he had very high tax rates, a successful military, and the capacity to build an empire through violent attacks on Israel’s neighbors.

Solomon’s wisdom is somehow also tied up with his “wives,” although I can’t really figure out the connection. I think the idea may be something about political power, and indeed he is said to have had many (MANY!) wives and concubines. Those wives and concubines were political pawns, used to attempt to negotiate with Solomon and keep his military power from doing further harm.

So, I get why the Bible needs to present Solomon as wise, but what I really see when I look through it is that Solomon functioned to acquire power, money, and might, and this story implies that those actions were GOOD. It seems shockingly unreflective, since the Bible emphasizes the care of the poor, the orphan, and the widow, but Solomon’s actions as king created more poverty, not to mention more orphans and widows. Solomon enriched himself at the expense of his people. That is actually NOT what I think wisdom looks like.

Now that we are done with that, I can get back to the primary point. What Solomon is presented as saying IS pretty good, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” (1 Kings 3:9, NRSV) Taking the story as written, that’s great! The named goal is a worthy one. A respect for the people sounds good! So does a wish to understand the best way to govern, and a wish to be able to figure out good from evil. I do worry about leaders who believe prayers like this to be answered, who then believe that whatever they decide must be divinely blessed. However, if it simply came with humility and openness, this could be a solid request.

One of the great challenges of leadership, and even just life, IS discerning a good way forward. Decisions have so many consequences that aren’t anticipated at the outset, making it very difficult to figure out what should be done. Recently I’ve been in a long series of conversations that have emphasized for me just how difficult discernment can be. Just so you are ready for it, I’m only going to give you the problem, not the answer. I don’t have the answer. That’s the struggle with discernment 😉 This is a story of wishing for Solomon’s fabled wisdom and God’s wise guidance, in this case for the church.

In February of 2019 the United Methodist Church is having a Special Session of General Conference to act on the recommendations of The Way Forward Commission. So, let’s unpack that a bit, and look at the history. In 1968 the Uniting Conference of the United Methodist Church merged the “Methodist Church” and the “Evangelical United Brethern Church.” At that time it adopted the former Methodist Church’s Social Creed temporarily (because the EUB didn’t have one) and Social Principles Study Commission to bring forward recommendations to the 1972 General Conference.

The recommendation the Social Principles Study Commission came up with included a statement on “Human Sexuality” that ended with:

“Although men and women are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sex between a man and a woman is to be clearly affirmed only in the marriage bond. Sex may become exploitive within as well as outside marriage. We reject all sexual expressions which damage or destroy the humanity God has given us as birthright, and we affirm only that sexual expression which enhances that same humanity, in the midst of diverse opinion as to what constitutes that enhancement. Homosexuals no less than heterosexuals are persons of sacred worth, who need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship which enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. Further we insist that all persons are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured.”

At that General Conference, it was amended to instead end with “Further we insist that all persons are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured, although we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.“ (1972 Book of Discipline) Thus, since 1972, progressives have been working to undo that amendment and its subsequent impact on our denomination.

Every 4 years, which means every time General Conference meets, debate over this language comes to a head. For many years, slow progress was being made towards removing it, as the votes seemed to get a little bit better each time General Conference met. Then, in 2012 the progress stopped. In fact, it actually got a little bit worse. At that moment, we realized that we were not going to get the change made through traditional channels. Time alone was not going to bring victory. The United Methodist church mirrors the governmental structure of the United States. None of the avenues of change were available to us to in order to bring justice. The Judicial Council – our judicial branch – keeps ruling in favor of the discrimination in the Book of Discipline. The executive branch Bishops, for the most part, take it as their duty to enforce the rules in the Book of Discipline. And the legislative branch, the General Conference itself, was not going to change the Book of Discipline, at least not in this generation. (The details as to why are likely more than most people want, but I’d be happy to discuss them if you’d like.)

In 2012, it became clear that another strategy was going to have to take precedence. At the end of that Conference, Bishop Melvin Talbert instructed us to engage in “Biblical Obedience”, which happened to be church law disobedience, and to perform marriages in the regular course of our pastoral duties, for people of all genders and expressions of mutual love. The courageous and strategic leaders of MIND – Methodist in New Directions from the New York Annual Conference – had already started this with a campaign called “We Do!”, but in that moment it expanded dramatically.² The strategy of Biblical Obedience encouraged clergy and churches to lead with God’s love at the forefront, love rather than fear. It also raised tensions with those who wanted to control the ways God’s love is shared.

Which is to say, it REALLY ticked off the conservatives. 😉 In 2016 at General Conference, the tensions that had been intentionally raised created space for a different way of moving forward, called “The Commission on the Way Forward.” The Commission was charged “to do a complete examination and possible revision of every paragraph of the Book of Discipline concerning human sexuality and explore options that help to maintain and strengthen the unity of the church.”³ Their preferred recommendation, and 2 alternative options, will be on the table for the 2019 Special Session of General Conference, that will be convened to deal with those recommendations. Other solutions from other bodies have also been submitted. The preferences of both the Commission and the Council of Bishops is “The One Church” plan, in which official statements condemning homosexuality will be removed from the Book of Discipline, while careful protections will be put in place give homophobia deciding power and influence in locations where it is dominant. Thus, in this plan, the church has a whole stops being institutionally discriminatory, but localized discrimination is not only permitted but empowered.

This is how I get to “discernment is hard!” There is another plan, a better one, created by the Queer Clergy Caucus that simply removes the statements condemning homosexuality and does not protect homophobia. It is called the Simple Church Plan. (There is not actually a plan on the table that removes the statements condemning homosexuality and replaces them with the affirmations that God’s love is not bound by sexual orientation nor gender identity, which is unfortunate.) The problem is that the “One Church Plan” which is ugly enough to make my stomach hurt, is very far from being guaranteed to pass, and nothing better evenhas a shot. I believe that the Queer Clergy Caucus plan is not politically viable in our current church. Clearly this is my opinion, others believe that the Holy Spirit can move even the stubborn delegates to General Conference. I haven’t struggled with this discernment alone. Many conversations have been had. There is not any clarity within the LGBTQIA+ community either about the best way forward. There is agreement that the other two plans are much worse.

In the words of the scripture, where is the line “between good and evil”? What is the appropriate role of compromise? Whose lives are being compromised? Are small steps forward enough? Will we as a church get stuck in the first place we move, and would it be better to do NOTHING than to get stuck there? Since the alternative plans are much worse, is it better to seek what we can get? What if we are able to pass the One Church Plan, and it then means that the far right will exit and leave the church in peace, able to move things forward – does that make this worth it to make such a compromise?

I may not believe Solomon’s story happened as it is written, but I resonate with the desire for God’s help in knowing the best way forward – or maybe just the least evil way forward. Even knowing that God’s love extends fully to people of many sexualities and gender expressions, and that God wants a church that includes all of God’s people FULLY and celebrates people AS THEY ARE, (duh), how does God want us to act in this moment? Where should our energy go?

And what if we’re wrong?

In words like Solomon’s, Loving God, give us understanding minds to know how to support your people, and the ability to discern between good and evil, that your love might be known, that fear might be cast out, and that together we might work towards your kindom. Amen

1Choong -Leong Seow “Commentary on 1 Kings 3:4-15” in 1 Kings in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commenatary Vol III Leander E. Keck, general editor (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1999), 39.

2 http://www.mindny.org/mind-initiatives/marriage-initiative/

3 http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/commission-on-a-way-forward

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org

Sermons

“Hungry for the Kindom” based on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and…

August 5, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The central question of faith is: What is the nature of your God? The Bible’s most repeated answer to the question is “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

The narrative from Exodus seems to be slightly expansive essay on the theme “God’s steadfast love endures forever” that helps people understand what that means and how it functions. In the book of Exodus, we encounter God who liberates the oppressed. In particular, we encounter the Divine hearing the cries of the people, and feeling compassion for them. The Holy One then works through some of the least likely individuals possible to bring the people to freedom, and then guides them along their way.

Here, in chapter 16, the people are in the midst of the wilderness. By some estimates it has been about 6 weeks since they became free, and that appears to be long enough for the excitement to have worn off and new anxieties to have settled in. One commentator puts it, “The narrative of Exodus 16 can be read as representative of the type of crisis that faith faces whenever God’s people move from bondage to well-being. … The wandering in the wilderness is for Israel the place to knock down the mental frame of being oppressed and to pick up the life of liberty.”¹ Part of the framework of oppression is constant anxiety.

The newly freed former slaves are getting nervous about their situation. Now, when the Bible says “desert” or “wilderness” what it is trying to say is “a place so forsaken that human life cannot be maintained without Divine intervention.” The desert near Sinai was such a place, and I think most pictures of Egyptian desert do a good job of communicating just how scary it could be to suddenly find yourself in that place without sufficient provisions. I think the anxiety was founded, but I also think it was rooted in their oppression.

While other parts of Exodus indicate that the people were supposed to “have faith” and “trust in God to provide,” in this Priestly version of the manna in the desert narrative, the people grumble and God simply has compassion on them. After all, God’s steadfast love endures forever, and steadfast love looks A LOT like compassion. Another commentator said, “What is important here is that God – once again – heard the people’s cries and responded to their need, whether it was real or whether it was a misperception caused by panic.”² They are hungry and scared, so God offers them consolation and food.

There is one way in which I often struggle with Bible stories that speak of God feeding hungry people. I love the stories, but I also know that in real life people starve to death, and there are even more who are malnourished to the point that their health is compromised. It can almost sound like God picks favorites and feeds those while ignoring others, when we hear the stories of God feeding the people, and I don’t think God works that way.

It is helpful to think about who wrote the story. This story is told up by the Judean priests, it is designed to teach of God’s trustworthiness. The Judean priests, in their regular work, oversaw food redistribution programs, and called on the leaders of the people to make sure that systems were in place to make sure that food was accessible to those who need it. The story didn’t come out of vacuum. It is in the midst of the Torah, which as a whole, OBSESSES over taking care of the poor and vulnerable. We have a story that suggests that God took care of the poor and vulnerable in the desert AND SO the people should take care of the poor and vulnerable in the Promised Land.

Thanks be to God, on this planet we have enough! We have more than enough food to feed all the people. We have enough clean water (for the time being). We are even getting to the point where we have enough renewable energy sources to feed our energy needs! (How cool is that?) The reason people struggle with malnourishment and starvation is a HUMAN DISTRUBTION problem, not a lack of Divine gifts of abundance. Creation is sufficient to our needs. However, people have decided to use the resources in ways that prevent others from accessing them.

In the Bible, food is not just food. The people are told, “’At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’“ (12b, NRSV) A scholar explains, “In the Old Testament context, knowledge is not essentially or even primarily rooted in the intellectual activities of a human being. Rather, it is more experiential and embedded in the emotions. It therefore encompasses qualities such as intimacy, concern, communication, mutuality, and contact.”³ So the gift of the food was a way of “knowing” that God’s steadfast love endures forever. The food in the desert guided the people to trust in God, and God’s compassion for them. The food was food, and that was good. But the food was also a means of knowing that God is good.

James Fowler’s book “Stages of Faith Development” discusses faith development through the human life span. He says that if babies have human caregivers who notice and attend to their needs, they will later find it credible that God is benevolent. However, for babies whose needs are not met, it will be far harder in life to believe that there is any being with power who seeks goodness for them (or anyone.) We “know” God in part by having our needs met.

This has gotten me thinking about what our needs are. Maslov famously created a hierarchy of human needs, but further studies have indicated that they aren’t as hierarchial as he thought, nor as universal. Nonviolent Communication Theory has a list of universal human needs without any hierarchy. They fall into categories like: connection, honesty, play, peace, physical well-being, meaning, and autonomy. Nonviolent Communication teaches that all of us have all of the needs, and that most of what we do and say comes out of an attempt to meet those needs. Even more so, most of what we FEEL is a reflection of how our needs are met or unmet. Nonviolent Communication encourages us to notice what we feel, as a means of figuring out what we are needing. The needs are the key to it all.

The priests taught that God gave the people food so that they would KNOW (experience, live) God’s steadfast love. Having needs met makes so much else possible! When a need is flaring to be fulfilled, it is very hard to focus on anything else!!

In the end of our Gospel reading today, Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (35, NRSV) Based on the context, it is clear we’re not just talking about food here either. Earlier in the chapter, in the part we read last week, Jesus fed the masses. The verbs in that passage speak of not only being full, but being satiated. The people seemed to KNOW God and God’s love once again, through the bread. In today’s passage, they seem to be seeking those things again.

So bread IS bread, sometimes, because humans NEED food. But bread is also a metaphor for our other needs. So too with thirst. What hungers and thirsts is Jesus talking about? Knowing Jesus and his context, I suspect he was talking about bread and wine in physical senses AND at the same time in spiritual senses. Jesus never seems to focus apart from people’s physical needs, nor does he think satiating only the physical is enough. He fed people bread and hope. He offered people living water and compassion.

I suspect the bread of life and living water Jesus offers in John are intentionally vague, so that those of us who hear of them can attend to the needs flaring up in us. Then we can hear as we need to hear. Jesus offers food to the hungry, healing to the sick, liberation to the oppressed, release to the captives, good news to the hopeless, a welcome to the homeless, rest to the weary, comfort to the grieving, movement to the stuck, purpose to the lost, intimacy to the lonely, inspiration to the resigned, joy to the downtrodden, and inclusion to those who have been left out. 😉 To name a few.

The Gospel of John says the people had been satiated by Jesus, and they wanted to be again. The book of Exodus says the people’s needs were met so they would know their God to be the one whose steadfast love endures forever.

The Bible thinks about the needs of “the people” more often than it thinks about the needs of any individual person. It feeds the masses, because the conditions that make one hungry often make others hungry as well.

That leads me to wonder what the Body of Christ is hungry for today, the people together. I suspect we might hunger for justice and thirst for compassion, and I think that is what God hungers and thirsts for as well. God is the God of all the people, so whoever is hurting the most is creating aches within God. When the world becomes more just, God aches less. When the people receive compassion, God finds relief. When fewer people are hungry, there are fewer hunger pains within the Divine. Hunger for justice and thirst for compassion is a way of saying that those of us who have enough bread, hunger for a world where all people do too. It is also to say that we hunger for the kindom when all have enough to survive AND thrive.

May our needs be met – the ones we each came with today, and the ones we share as the Body of Christ. May we trust in God who seeks for us to know Holiness by meeting our needs. When human beings get in the way of God’s people getting what they need, may we be courageous enough to get in the way of those systems. And may we notice, when our needs are met, that the Holy One whose steadfast love endures forever is with us, ready to be KNOWN once again. May our hunger for the kindom help kindom come. Amen

1 Rein Bos, “Exegetical Perspective on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15” in Feasting on the World Year B, Volume 3; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)293.

2 Dean McDonald, “Homiletical Perspective on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15” in Feasting on the World Year B, Volume 3; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) 291.

3Bos, 295.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

August 5, 2018

Sermons

“Hungry People, Frightened Disciples” based on 2 Kings 4:42-44 and…

July 29, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I have a tendency to get caught up in miracles stories and miss their points. Were there really 5000 people there? Does that include or exclude women and children? Did this happen in the country, in a city, or in the Transjordan (as various gospels purport)? Are we to understand this as the loaves and fishes literally being expansive? Are we to assume that one person’s generosity enabled others to share as well? Or, is this really another way of explaining communion, and we are to attend to the ways that small piece of the bread of life can feed our souls?

(I think for John, this is the communion story. He doesn’t have communion on Jesus’ last night because he has footwashing. And the verbs fit. John has Jesus take the bread, give thanks, distribute them … and also the fish, which seems a solid variation on the cup.)

My questions are ones I’m interested in, BUT they’re distractions. However, as much as I want to make sense of the story by assessing the veracity of the details, the Bible doesn’t work that way! The Bible simply isn’t obsessed with factuality the way that moderns are. The Bible thinks that it is OK have 4 or 5 totally different versions of the same stories (like this one), and doesn’t mind the differences between them. That would seem to indicate that the details aren’t the point!! The Bible speaks in METAPHOR, because it speaks of things that are bigger than facts.

That being said, I think one of the easiest ways to figure out what metaphors and truths the Bible is trying to get to is to pay attention to the ways that stories are adapted as they are retold. One of the most common ways that the Gospels make sense of Jesus is by using references to Hebrew Bible leaders. For instance, the Gospel of Matthew spends a lot of energy constructing Jesus as the “new Moses” including having him come back in to the Promised Land from Egypt. Matthew and Luke each find a way to speak of Jesus as the “new David” by making sure to place his birth in Bethlehem. All of the Gospels also compare Jesus to the greatest prophets of the Hebrew Tradition, Elijah and Elisha, and this story is one of those examples.

Elijah came first. His story of miraculous feeding found in 1 Kings 17:8-16. That story tells of the prophet, who was on the run, being instructed to go to a poor widow’s house so that the widow would feed him. He was hungry and in need of food because of a drought, a drought that he had predicted would come, a drought that the Bible presents as an expression of God’s displeasure at royal behavior. Elijah wasn’t the only one who was hungry because of the drought. The widow he was sent to was also a mother, and she had only a small bit of meal and a tiny bit of oil left to her name. When the prophet asked for some bread, she responded, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” (NRSV, v. 12) The prophet asked for some of the tiny bit she had left, and she gave it to him. Somehow, the widow, her child, and the prophet had enough to eat for many days, and survived.

The Bible is affirming in this story that God is with Elijah. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be quite useful and abundant when given to God.

When Elijah died, his mentee Elisha was given his mantle and sent to continue his work as a prophet. At that point, the Bible spends some time showing that the miracles God worked for Elijah, God also worked for Elisha, proving that the mantle had been passed metaphorically and not just physically. A mantle is a long, sleeveless cloak. In this case it represented the power of the prophet to function as God’s witness in the world.

So, in our Hebrew Bible reading today, Elisha is able to provide food for hungry people when there clearly isn’t enough. It is a very different story, yet the miraculous part where too little food is somehow still enough, is still there. This one starts with a man bringing his tithe to the prophet. The Torah has very specific instructions about how to live well in community, and one piece of that is that the first fruits of a harvest be given away. Sometimes they’re given to the priests so that the priests who are landless in service to God have food. Sometimes they’re blessed to be used for a feast or festival where all the members of the community get to eat together. That method also ensures that those who are food insecure have access to food.

Probably most people were not bringing their first fruits to to Elisha, because his role was as a prophet and not as a priest. But this man sees holiness in Elisha, and brings his offering out of faithfulness to God, to Elisha to be used. Now, Elisha has surrounded himself with a large number of followers. That was very different from how his mentor Elijah worked. Mentor Elijah was a loner, who on good days allowed mentee Elisha to follow him. Elisha was better at working in community. However, both were really unpopular with the leadership of the day, and had trouble accessing sufficient resources on their own, without Divine help.

Elisha uses the gift from the man’s first fruits to feed those who surrounded him in HIS community. It shouldn’t have been enough to feed the people, and yet it was more than enough. The Bible is indicating that God is with Elisha. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be useful and abundant when given to God.

God was with Elijah, God was with Elisha, and God was with Jesus. This story, this miraculous feeding a large crowd that sounds a lot like Elisha feeding, is the ONLY miracle found in all 4 Gospels. Clearly the early Christian community thought this story was central to understanding Jesus.

In the second story, Elisha’s servant names that what was given to Elisha wasn’t enough to feed the large crowd. In John, the disciples who are expected to understand what God and Jesus are up to, articulate similar concerns. The crowd is BIG, and they’re all hungry, and they don’t have the resources to feed them.

But one person, in this case one small boy, offers his meager resources. 5 barley loaves and 2 dried fish, the traveling food of the poor in that day, were likely all he had with them. He offered them to God and to God’s holy one, a lot like the man who had offered his first fruits to God’s prophet Elisha. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough.

But the Bible is indicating that God is with Jesus. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be quite useful and abundant when given to God.

There is another unique detail in John. The story opens telling us that Jesus “went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee which is also called the Sea of Tiberias.” (NRSV, v. 1). It isn’t called that. The Sea of Galilee just isn’t called the Sea of Tiberias. BUT, it is super meaningful to mention it that way. In 20 CE, the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, created a new capital for himself in Galilee, on the Sea of Galilee, and named it for the Roman Empiror Tiberius. The goals seemed to be twofold: one to flatter the Roman Emperor Tiberius directly; another to commercialize the fishing on the sea, then building up the economy, and proving his powers as an good leader. Both of the goals were really aimed at trying to get access to lead more of the Roman Empire, as his father had.

Tiberias was a noticeably Roman city, one that offended the Jews as it was built on burial grounds, and represented the ways that the Empire sought to exploit the people for economic gain. To call the Sea of Galilee the Sea of Tiberias is to remind those experiencing the story of the social and political location of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, his miracle itself undermined the empire because it fed the hungry masses whose hunger the empire sought to exploit. The Sea of Galilee had been the primary food source for the people, but had become a source of income for the Empire, at the expense of the people’s primary food source.

On the shores of the Sea, Jesus fed the hungry and hurting people, both with food and with hope.

The initiating act of the miracle was the child who offered his meager bread and two small dried fish.

Those three characters shared what they had, despite it not being enough: that child, that man bringing his first fruits to a politically unpopular prophet, and that widow who shared her last meal. None of them did anything all that unusual. People share sometimes. People offer tithes. Desperate people make do and share what isn’t even enough for them over and over and over again. Many people have told me stories of their own parents limiting their food intake so they could eat enough as children. This happens.

But the Bible says that even little gifts can create significant good. That narrative is feeling really big right now, because the problems of the world feel really big right now, they feel like a hungry and frightened mass of 5000 people looking expectantly for food! Sometimes, for me, what I have to offer feels really small sometimes – a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, a voice to raise in prayer, a presence in the midst of the struggle that stays calm and peaceful. They’re SMALL when the problems are BIG. But the Bible says that God can do a LOT with what we give to God, even when it appears that what we have to offer is a lot less than what is needed to solve the problem.

God isn’t asking us to give out of resources we lack! God asks for what we can give, no matter how small, and then God works with it.

In the midst of the really hard times of life, the things that pick us up aren’t usually big miracles. They’re still the small stuff! They’re the little indications that someone cares and we aren’t alone in the struggle. I encourage you to think about the hard times in your life and what picked you up. Was it big things? Or was it things so small that the person who offered it might not even remember?

The small stuff matters. A little tiny loaf of bread. A regular tithe offering. The simple supper of a poor child. Each became a means of grace in the world. God can work with what we have to give.

So, let us go from this place, offer what we have, and watch to see how God multiplies our gifts into signs of hope and grace. God is able, and so are we. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“A Kiss and a Dance” based on Psalm 85:8-13 and…

July 15, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

What we do know about John the Baptist and Herod? Well, the Herod in this story is NOT the Herod in Matthew’s story of Jesus’s birth and immigration to Egypt. That one was Herod the Great, who was actually “King of the Jews.” This Herod is his son, Herod Antipas, and he ruled only ¼^th of what had been his father’s kingdom. He was a “tetrarch”, which literally means he ruled ¼^th of what would have been a kingdom if it was whole. He had other brothers who also had the first name Herod. Thus he was not a king, and it isn’t clear if Mark is unaware of that fact, or if he is rubbing it in with this story.

Herodias was a granddaughter of Herod the Great, who had been married off to Herod the II, son of Herod the Great, brother to Herod Antipas, and her half-uncle. Mark mis-states that her first husband had been Phillip, but got correct that it has been one of Herod Antipas’s brothers. Her second husband, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee was also her half uncle. Also her parents were cousins, but we’re now off topic. Both Herod Antipas and Herodias were each other’s second spouses, both of their first spouses were still alive and they’d each divorced them. The practicing Jews of the day would not have been chill about that. Herodias had a daughter from her first marriage, Salome. Mark also misnames her. To Salome, Herod Antipas would have been half-uncle, half-great uncle, cousin of some sort and stepfather. Observant Jews at the time would have found Salome and Herod Antipas’s familial ties too close for him to “appreciate her dance” quite so much. Of course, all of the marriages we have spoken about were intended for political gain.

Scholars are quite certain that Herod Antipas, the tetrarch whose area included Galilee had John the Baptist killed. John the Baptist had a ministry in Galilee, where he preached repentance of sins, and thus called people back to observant Judaism. Ched Myer’s in Binding Up the Strong Man points out that the story Mark tells about how John was killed was intended to teach important lessons about how the world works. Given the distance from the events, and how little Mark seems to know about the people involved, he took poetic license in telling a story that was true in essence, but not necessarily factual. The inaccurate names and roles seems to uphold this theory, Mark may not have known the right names, but it also seems like he doesn’t care that much. He’s telling a different kind of story than direct history.

Myers thinks that John the Baptist “here represents the view that to claim to rule over the Jewish people is legitimate only if Jewish law is recognized.”¹ This is relevant not only because of divorce or incest, but also because “Herod Antipas, however, was a staunch Hellenist and was notorious among religious Jews for his contempt of their religious practices. Indeed, he built his capital city, Tiberias, on an ancient burial ground, rendering the city religiously unclean to observant Jews”.²So Herod Antipas was ruling over the Jews, but didn’t live according to Jewish laws, and John the Baptist was a reformer calling on the Jews to reclaim the depth of their faithfulness and laws.

The story says that Herod was having a party with his “courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee” (v. 21) for his birthday. Meyers says:

“Mark accurately describes the inner circle of power as an incestuous relationship involving governmental, military, and commercial interests.”

Yet among all these powerful men it is a dancing girl who determines the fate of the Baptist! At the center of the story is Herod’s ‘oath’ to Herodias’s daughter, stated twice for comic emphasis (6:22f.). This fiction is no more an attempt to excuse Herod from culpability in the death of John than is the fiction of Barabbas or the crowd’s demand an attempt to excuse Pilate from the death of Jesus. The dilemma created by the oath is a parody on the shameless methods of decision making among the elite, a world in which human life is bartered to save royal face: Herod trades the ‘head’ (symbolizing his honor) of the prophet to rescue the integrity of his own drunken oath (6:24-28).

Mark’s account of the death of John is scarcely apolitical! A more sarcastic social caricature could not have been spun by the bitterest Galilean peasants.”³

So, Mark tells a story that clarifies how little the elite value the lives of the peasants, a story that the peasants already know based on every other part of their lives. Jesus told a lot of stories like that too, to clarify how things really worked and to make sure that the propaganda that said otherwise looked ridiculous. John the Baptist was killed by an order from Herod Antipas, likely because Herod thought he was either too popular or his message was too threatening. This story just takes it a little bit further, and makes parody, or maybe a parable, out of it.

Of course, this isn’t just a story of the Roman Empire in the first century though. John the Baptist was preaching repentance in the wilderness, he was calling on the people to recommit themselves to God, which meant recommitting themselves to God’s covenant. As was true of the prophets before him who has called for people to follow the covenant, he met resistance. The people in power don’t like God’s vision for how the world should be, because it involves shared power and equitable distribution of resources. God’s covenant doesn’t make space for consolidated power and wealth. Prophets get silenced or killed. This is a universal story.. Those who threaten the power structures take risks with their lives.

Mark’s version, which makes parody out of the choice to kill John, emphasizes the power differential and the lack of respect for human life that can happen at the top of the power pyramid. This isn’t a pleasant story. It isn’t uplifting. It doesn’t have a moral, or at least not one that you can feel good about. It serves to foreshadow Jesus’s death by reminding the audience of what happens when God’s dreams meet humans in power who have reason to maintain the status quo.

Sometimes these days I wish the Bible was an easier book, by which I mean a less honest one. I want the Bible I was taught about in Sunday School. From what I could figure then, that Bible was full of understandable stories of good people doing good things connected to the Holy One. I’m stuck with this really honest one that articulates the brokenness of humans, of families, of communities, and most especially of domination systems. The Bible we have doesn’t let me stick my head in the sand, sing Disney songs, and pretend everything is OK anymore than watching the news or talking with our breakfast guests does.

I have a long list of things I’m worried about in the country and the world (as well as the church) right now. I suspect you do too. I’m not going to name any part of that list today. Sometimes we need a rest, a respite, a chance to recover from the worries instead of just watching the piles grow larger. Recently, I’ve been feeling more and more moved to give us all that respite in worship. I hear the exhaustion among us, I hear the fears, I hear the sense of moral outrage, I hear sadness and anger, disbelief and grief.

I hear a yearning for good news, and within that a yearning for better news than that John the Baptist was killed because domination systems don’t like God’s prophets 😉

So, let’s look at the Psalm for a moment 😉 The lectionary had us skip the beginning of the Psalm, which could lead us to miss how relevant it is. The beginning of the Psalm reminds God of what God has previously done for the people, and then begins to BEG of God that the Divine step in again. Things are all going wrong, and the Psalmist requests forgiveness, restoration, salvation, revival, and love. Everything is wrong and the Psalmist wants God to intervene. I think I can resonate with that.

Then we get to the part we read out-loud today. The Psalmist asks for God’s words, particularly for words of blessing and hope: that “shalom” might be spoken to the people. “Shalom is the comprehensive concept of well-being, peace, and welfare which includes love, faithfulness, righteousness, prosperity, and glory.”⁴ – and it’s corporate. “’If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for isolated, insulated individuals; it is rather security and prosperity granted to a whole community – young and old, rich and poor, powerful and dependent. Always we are all in it together.’”⁵ The Psalmist asks God to speak shalom to the people.

The last stanza of the Psalm is presented as that speaking of shalom. “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.” (v. 10-11) I’m going to give you a two tiny parts of the nuance of “righteousness” because like “shalom” it has a community emphasis that I don’t think we’re used to hearing. Righteousness “denotes not so much the abstract idea of justice or virtue, as right standing and consequent right behaviour, within a community.”⁶ Put another way, “Righteousness is about our accepting and living into the mutual, vulnerable, and interdependent reality of all relationships. It is about accepting the fact that from this reality, this righteous relationship, the life of God is experienced.”⁷

So, steadfast love and being in right standing with each other will meet; and treating each other mutuality will kiss with communal holistic well being. Faithfulness will spring up out of the earth itself without effort, and interdependence will fall from the sky like a gentle rain. It is a beautiful vision!

The Psalm puts together four of the most common qualities of the Divine: steadfast love, faithfulness (which is related to truth), righteousness, and shalom. Interestingly, they are also qualities of people who are working together to build the kindom of God. It doesn’t work without steadfast love, without honesty with each other, without being in good relationship, without an awareness that none of us can be truly well unless all of us are well!

Said a whole lot less poetically, the kindom of God is build on loving relationships. Good loving relationships are good in and of themselves and are the building blocks of the kindom. I’m not talking only about romantic relationships nor familial ones, although those count! I mean that loving each other – including loving our enemies (even the WCA) – is the way we reflect God’s nature in the world and build the kindom of God.

The work of advocacy, protest, and resistance is mean to be built on love and built through loving relationships, too. That’s actually where the hope is! When we can love each other, and when we are able to allow God to help us expand our hearts to love and be in relationship with a wider circle of people, the kindom of God is build.

Right now, it feels like a lot of things are going backward, and we can’t control all of them. It is scary and sad and frustrating and terrible at times! BUT, the key to it all is love: love God, love ourselves, love each other, and let the love expand. The kindom is build on loving relationships, and those are life giving in every way. May we go, and love. Amen

1Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1988, 2008), 216.

2Robert A. Bryant, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 6:14-29” in Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett editors of Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 3 (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009), 239.

3Myers, 216.

4Marvin E Tate, Psalms 51-100 Volume 20; David A. Hubbard and Gleen W Barker, editors, World Bible Commentary series, (Zonderan, 1991), 372.

5Tate quoting Walter Bruggemann from Living Towards a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom, 1982.

6N.T. Wright “Righteousness” from NTWrightPagehttp://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/righteousness/ accessed on July 12, 2018.

7Todd M. Donatelli “Homiletical Perspective on Psalm 85:8-13” in Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett editors of Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 3 (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009), 227

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 15, 2018

Sermons

“Speaking the Vision Anyway” based on Ezekiel 2:1-5 and Mark…

July 8, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I grew up and went to school in a rural area that was pretty stable and unchanging. Teachers in my school district often taught multiple generations of the same family. It was normal for any of us to be referred to by our older siblings names, as our teachers had all taught our siblings before us. I attended the same school district k-12, and most of my kindergarten class graduated with me. Many of us, even, had gone to preschool together.

In a conversation one time about places like that, I heard a very wise reflection, “It is really great to have people you’ve known since 2^nd grade, but it isn’t always great that those people remember when you puked on the art teacher’s shoes IN 2^nd grade.” It is with this background, and with that wisdom, that I consider this story of Jesus trying to “go home again.”

The problem is that, as humans, we develop theories of who people are. The longer we’ve known them, the more certain we are about our theories. In stable and unchanging communities, people get locked into particular roles, ones that don’t necessarily even fit them anymore. In those places, there isn’t a lot of space for people to take on new roles or identities.

This can also be true in families. Family Systems Theory even says that when one person in a system tries to function in a different way, the entire system around them works to re-stabilize the system, BY pushing that person back into their former role. This is why we often revert to ways of being that we’ve otherwise abandoned when we are with our nascent families.

Nazareth thought they knew who Jesus was. They knew his mother. They knew his brothers and sisters. They knew his training. It wasn’t a big village. Likely they ALL knew how many times he’d puked at age 7, and where.

In their list of knowing who he is, and thus why he can’t be the same guy who is shaking up the world around them with his teaching and healing, they call him “Mary’s son.” As one scholar puts it, “even if his father Joseph had died by this time, to identify Jesus as his mother’s son rather than his father’s might have been intended as an insult, shaming Jesus by insinuating that he did not have a father.”¹ In fact, in the book of Mark, Jesus’ father is never mentioned. Mark is the first Gospel to have been written, which suggests that in the earliest stories told about Jesus, his father was not a part of the stories. It isn’t clear what this means. It may mean that the best memory of the community was that Jesus’ paternal parentage wasn’t known, it might just mean that an insult was launched at Jesus and was remembered. However, since Matthew and Luke attempts to “fix” the problem of Jesus not having a father, I think that may mean they were doing clean up work to try to gloss over this question.

Now, I don’t say this just to mess up our stories. I say it because I think it may be important. There has been so much emphasis on Jesus as the Son of God, which has distanced him from his humanity, and from the rest of us. There were rumors in early centuries that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier, which would certainly be possible. What impact would that have had on Mary? On Jesus? It seems to me that a questionable parentage reminds us of Jesus’ humanity, and perhaps even reminds us why he cared so much about vulnerable people who appeared to be at the bottom of society.

In any case, it seems that in his village of Nazareth, the people don’t think Jesus was meant to break out of his roles as his mother’s son and as a day-laboring builder. He was NOT supposed to be a wisdom teacher, a healer, a leader. He was supposed to be a little bit ashamed, and humble. These people knew him, and his secrets. He wasn’t a big deal to them. In fact, to them he wasn’t supposed to be a big deal to anybody else.

I love the little detail that says, “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” (verse 5) That indicates that the expectations of the people, the ways they saw him, impacted his abilities. It may mean no one asked anything of him. It may mean he tried, but couldn’t, not when faced with such disbelief from the people in front of him. In either case, it feels to me like that Family Systems Theory again. The roles people expect of us impact who we are when we’re around them! The energy in the room impacts all of us. I think he couldn’t, not there, not with how they saw him.

This matters for us too. How we perceive each other, and what space we make for each other to grow and change, impacts how we can able to grow and change! Perhaps, even more broadly, how we understand ourselves as a church likely impacts what we can be as a church!!

It seems that Jesus took the momentary setback of his hometown well. He takes the moment and uses it to give advice to his disciples as he sends them out. He seems to easily remember what it is like not to be heard, and tells them what to do if they aren’t heard. They are to shake the dust off their feet. Thus, they leave that place there, and don’t take any part of it with them as they go on.

Ezekiel, too, is about what is to be said whether or not the people hear. It is particularly direct about this, ending with the line, “Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.” (verse 5) As one scholar puts it, ““The role of ‘hearing’ in a traditional society indicates more than an auditory event alone; it is a holistic response to the message. In Ezekiel’s case, the ‘hearing’ of the listeners does not affect the role of the prophet, nor does it require the acknowledgment of the audience. Even if they do not ‘hear,’ they will nonetheless know that there was a prophet in their midst.”²

In 597 BCE the king of Judah had miscalculated the outcome of the power struggle between Babylon and Egypt, resulting in a Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. That siege resulted in his removal, along with many of the leaders of Judah, “nobles, craftsmen, and smiths as well as ‘the men of valor’”³ to Babylon. The king of Babylon put a successor on the throne, one who also read the political winds poorly, which resulted in the nearly complete destruction of Jerusalem in 587/586 BCE and a larger wave of exiles being taken to Babylon. Ezekiel was sent to be the prophet to the first group of exiled leaders. That group likely included his father, a priest. It included Ezekiel too.

As one scholar puts it, “There, in a foreign land, among a displaced people, God appears!”⁴ I don’t know that Ezekiel, or the exiled community expected that. At least in part, they thought of YHWH as the God of the Promised Land. And they thought of being exiles as being punished by God, or out of favor with God, or maybe proof that God wasn’t as powerful as they’d dreamed. Thus, they didn’t expect God to appear. At the start of this passage, after Ezekiel has experienced an initial vision of the Divine, Ezekiel is told to “get up.” He doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t seem able to. He seems like he is in shock, or awe, or something. God has appeared when God wasn’t supposed to. So the Spirit has to get him up on his feet so that he can be sent off on God’s mission!!

This vision of God in the exiled land “assures us that we are never so far away that God cannot find us. Even in moments of exile, God remembers us and comes to us.”⁵That was good news for the exiles, and it is good news for us when we feel like exiles in our own land. God sent Ezekiel to speak to the leaders in exile. Neither their status as the upper crust nor their status as exiles prevented God from wanting to speak to them. Furthermore, their status as “unlikely to listen” doesn’t to matter either.

God sends Ezekiel to speak, and says Ezekiel is to speak WHETHER OR NOT they listen. His job is not to convince them of something, is not to make himself heard, nor is it to change their ways of doing things. His job is to speak. In speaking to them as a prophet, inherently, he is communicating that God is with them, God still cares, and nothing they do can shake God off. God sends prophets to those God loves.

I have to admit, I’m a bit preoccupied with this idea of being asked to do work WHETHER OR NOT it changes anything. (I nearly said whether or not it matters, which is likely what I really think.) What things are worth doing, even if they don’t change out comes? What things need to be said, even if they aren’t heard? What are we called to do and to be, EVEN if the world around us stays exactly the same?

I guess that’s another way of saying, “What is God wanting us to do or say?” because it seems that the things that could matter so much that they need to be done regardless of outcome would be things that are that important because God asks us to do them. What injustices need to be named, what alarm bells need to be rung, what cries need to be wailed, what joy needs to be exclaimed, what love needs to be exclaimed… whether or not anyone hears it, just because it has to be done?

Jesus went and preached in his hometown, which wasn’t likely to matter. They already knew what they thought of him. Ezekiel got sent to preach to the leaders in exile, and they weren’t going to listen. But they both went anyway. Jesus sent his disciples off giving them a way not to carry with the the failure of any group to listen to them. In doing so, he made it possible to remember that what needs to be said needs to be said regardless of who listens. Some will listen, some won’t, the message needs to be shared.

So, what is it that God needs us to say, regardless of who listens? (Answers welcome at any time.) Amen

1 Feasting on the Word, Exegetical Commentary on Mark 6:10-13, p. 215.

2Feasting on the Word, Exegetical Commentary on Ezekiel 2:1-5, page 199.

3Katheryn Pfisterer Darr “The Book of Ezekiel: Introduction, Commentary and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VI, Leander E. Keck Covener of the Editorial Board (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2001), 1078.

4Festing on the Word, Homiletical Commentary on Ezekiel 2:1-5, page 197.

5Homiletical, 197.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 8, 2018

Sermons

“Is the Body of Christ Intersex?” based on Genesis…

July 1, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

There are a lot of metaphors for the Holy One. Some Biblical metaphors are: rock, fortress, shepherd, light, Alpha and Omega, vine, bread of life, fire, breath, father, laboring woman, king, nursing mother, warrior, mother hen – to name a few. As evidenced, some of the metaphors are genderless, some are masculine, and some are feminine.

Most theists I know believe that the Divine is Spirit, and Spirit is beyond gender. At the same time, most of them use masculine pronouns for the Holy One, often unconsciously. As Rev. Dr. Michelle Bogue-Trost stated in a petition to this year’s Annual Conference entitled “Expansive Language,” “imagery conveyed by language becomes a teaching methodology as we articulate our understandings of humanity and of God, and influences our understanding of the nature of the Divine and of all creation, including all of God’s people.”¹ Thus, she said, “limiting our use of language and imagery to male-only naming for God or for humanity; … is hurtful to faithful persons of all varieties.”² The United Methodist Church already has a Resolution “encouraging United Methodist clergy and laity ‘to use diverse Biblical images and titles for God, including masculine/feminine metaphors; use language for humans that reflects both male and female; use metaphors of color, darkness, ability, and age in positive ways,’ and further, that we affirm the use of Biblical language and images in all their forms as appropriate for use in hymns, liturgy, teaching, and in all areas of our common life together.’”³

Her petition asked that “the Upper New York Annual Conference commits itself to use language and imagery about God and humanity in ways that are faithfully inclusive of the variety of humanity and myriad of understandings of God.”⁴ (It was more extensive, and even better, but that’s the succinct version.) To the horror of our church representatives, the resolution did NOT pass. There was anxiety in the Annual Conference about speaking of the Divine in expansive and inclusive ways. (Yes, it is OK to face palm at this point.)

That was a shame. When we limit our metaphors of Holiness, especially by associating the Holy One with the ones who hold disproportionate power in society, we do great harm. It was at the moment that the Expansive Language Resolution failed that Alice Nash suggested we take the time to celebrate in worship The Holy One who is gender non-binary. This church is blessed with wise lay leaders!

The another piece fell into place. Our delegation to the United Methodist Women’s Assembly had also returned and brought back with them a book entitled ‘Beyond a Binary God: A Theology for Trans* Allies” by Tara K. Soughers. Rev. Dr. Soughers offers some very helpful definitions, ones that I think we all need.

HOWEVER, before I can offer her definitions, I need to be clear that definitions of words around gender identity are not universally agreed upon. This is one set, even I can find issue with some of the words, and some people will find them inaccurate in meaningful ways. That said, I believe this would be true of any definitions, and we need to start somewhere. She says:

“Gender identity is the gender that the person knows oneself to be interiorly. Those whose self-understanding of gender is inconsistent with their biological sex or gender assigned at birth are known as transgender, the ’T’ in our list of letters. Trans– means “across” so transgender individuals are those whose gender is across from, or on another side of, the gender they were assigned at birth. Alternatively, those whose self-understanding of gender is consistent with their biological sex are known as cis-gender – in other words ‘on the same side.’ Some people do not identify with either masculine or feminine gender. Those people often identify as agender. Others identify with both masculine and feminine genders, and often consider themselves gender fluid. Collectively, those who do not have a singular gender identity are often called ‘gender queer’, a variation of ‘Q’⁵ … Non-binary trans* people are those who do not fit into the binary understanding of gender. They can present as masculine, feminine, or androgynous; sometimes they can present differently depending on the context. Often they prefer to use “they/them/theirs” as pronouns, or other non-gendered personal pronouns that are becoming more widely used.”⁶

If that was too much, let me repeat the most succinct line, “Non-binary trans* people are those who do not fit into the binary understanding of gender.” The binary refers to the binary of masculine and feminine, particularly when they are understood as opposites.

Our first Scripture gives us one of the best examples in Scripture of the Divine as gender non-binary. It is from the first creation story in Genesis, the priestly version, and our text comes from day 6 of creation. The core part of that story for our purposes are the words, “Then G-d said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, to be like us. … Humankind was created as G-d’s reflection: in the divine image G-d created them; female and male, G-d made them.” (Inclusive Bible, Genesis 1:26a, 27) Do you hear it? Female AND male are created in the image of the Creator, that the Holy One contains both what is reflected in the masculine and what is reflected in the feminine!! That would mean that the Divine fits the definition of gender non-binary. The Holy One presents as female at times, as male at times, as androgynous at times, and as non-personified at times too! The Divine doesn’t fit our human categories, but it is more than that. The Creator is fundamentally non-binary, and in specific, gender non-binary.

You may remember that in Genesis 1, creation happens by creating light, then separating light from darkness; then creating sky, and separating sky from water; then creating land which separating land from sea; then creating vegetation and so on, culminating in the creation of humans then the Sabbath. Rev. Dr. Soughers makes a further wonderful point about this passage, in the context of the first creation story:

“only day and night were created, but not twilight or dawn. Dry land and water were supposedly separated, but we also have marshes and swamps where dry land and water mix. Just because marshes or twilight are not mentioned in creation does not mean that either is impossible or excluded. The binaries were meant to suggest not only the extremes that are named, but everything in between. If that is the case with dawn and with swamps, why exclude the possibility of that also being true in the case of gender?”⁷

Thus, there is even more in this story than the Creator containing both masculine and feminine, there is space for both the Creator and the created to be both/and and to be neither/nor. The range of gender is in the image of the Creator, and the Creator is reflected in all varieties of gender identities. This also includes “agender”, which for many of us might be the easiest gender to associate the the Creator, who we think of as a Spirit beyond gender. In any case, we are blessed by the opportunity to expand our metaphors and see expressions we’ve previously missed about the Holy One.

Now, onto the question of this sermon, “Is the Body of Christ Intersex?” First, let’s get a definition, in this case from the Intersex Society of North America, “’Intersex’ is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male.⁸ Depending on the breadth one uses with that definition, one can conclude that between 0.07% and 1.7% of babies born are born intersex. To be very clear, to speak of people who are intersex is to talk about biological sex, and not gender identity. In the past, intersex babies were often assigned a biological sex and surgery was preformed to conform their anatomy to the assigned sex. Luckily, this is much less common now. Today, intersex people are most often raised with a presumptive gender, one that the individual may or may not affirm later in life.⁹ By not preforming surgery at birth, the intersex individual can later decide if surgeries are appropriate to express their gender identity.

Our second reading today introduces the concept of the Body of Christ, of which we are all members. Each of us contribute our gifts, given by the Spirit, to the work of the whole. The continued living Body of Christ, doing the work that Jesus began in his life time, is the most profound explanation of resurrection I know. “And that Body is not one part, it is many.” (Inclusive Bible, 1 Corinthians 12:14). The passage goes on to pontificate about how the ear has a differentiated role from the foot; and that our suffering and joys are shared. Maybe I am extending the metaphor too far, but I tend to think that the Body of Christ is a real, full, and human like body. I think there is Holiness to bodies themselves, and they serve as a great metaphor for the Body of Christ.

When Jesus was alive, to the best of my knowledge, his body was male. However, I don’t think that gives us information about the gender (nor sex) of the current living Body of Christ. The answer to my question about the Body being intersex is “I don’t think so” because to be intersex never refers to being fully female and fully male at the same time, because that doesn’t physiologically occur in bodies. Yet, to imagine the Body of Christ in its fullness, for me at least, requires imagining the physiologically impossible. The Body cannot be the Body of Christ, a composite of all the humans who are a part of it, and lack the fullness of femininity, nor the fullness of masculinity. I can’t tell you with the gender identity of the Body of Christ (although I’d imagine gender non-binary and perhaps oscillating between a both and to masculine and feminine and neither/nor to the same), but I do think the full range of biological sex options have to simultaneously co-exist. I guess, then, that I have to revise my answer. I think the Body of Christ IS intersex, and female, and male, all at once.

And I think the Body of Christ reflects the Creator’s own self, which is broad enough to also contain all gender identities and biological sexes. And I think this is very, very good news for humanity, which has been created in the image of Holiness itself, which a wide range of diversity and variety. Not only does the full range of gender identity reflect the Holy One, all people in all gender identities are reflections of the Creator’s own self!!

May our images and metaphors for the Divine continue to grow and expand, along with our love for the Creator’s children and creation. Amen

1Michelle Bogue-Trost, 2018 Upper New York Annual Conference Journal Volume 1, for the May 2-June 2, 2018 session, page 96.

2Bogue-Trost, 96.

3Bogue-Trost, quoting the 2016 Book of Resolution, #8011, page 96.

4Bogue-Trost, 96-97.

5Footnote in the book says, “The Q in our alphabet of letters stands for queer or questioning. Queer, originally a derogatory term for the LBGT community, has been reclaimed by the community as a source of pride. It is often used as an umbrella term for those whose gender identity, gender expression/presentation, or sexual orientation deviates from cultural norms. Gender queer individuals are those whose gender identity is ‘queered,’ i.e. they do not identify with the gender binary.” Others would say that Q is an umbrella term for sexual orientations other than straight and that trans is a gender term for gender identities other than cis.

6Tara K. Soughers, Beyond a Binary God: A Theology for Trans* Allies (New York: Church Publishing, 2018) p. 16-17.

7Soughers, 71-72.

8Intersex Society of North America, What is Intersex found at http ://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex on June 28, 2018.

9Intersex Society of North America, How can you assign a gender (boy or girl) without surgery? found at http://www.isna.org/faq/gender_assignment on June 28, 2018.

–

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