“A Defiant Aunt” based on 2 Kings 11:1-3 or…

January 22, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

To explain this soap opera to all of you required a lot of remedial scholarship on my part. I think I have it now. The monarchy period lasted for just under 300 years in Israel and just over 400 in Judea, and I found a handy-dandy chart on Wikipedia that helps.

Let’s start with the so-called great King named David (you may have heard of him). His son Solomon became king after him. After the death of Solomon the kingdom divided into two parts: a Northern Part called Israel and a Southern Part called Judea. That is, there was a civil war and the North, which wanted to become a separate nation did so. The Southern succession was SUPER linear, passing directly from father to son with only two exceptions: the one we read about today and the very end of the dynasty. The Northern one is much less linear and way more confusing, and we’re going to ignore most of it today.

The story we read about today is SOUTHERN, it is about Judea, but to understand it we have to start in the North. There was a Northern/Israelite King named Omri, who had been a general of another King and ended up the victor after a coup. The Bible says he was the worst king yet. His son Ahab married Jezebel. You may have heard of her. She is in the running for being the worst woman in the Bible. Jezebel was a princess of the Phoenician Empire, from which you should take that she was not a follower of YHWH.

King Ahab was a selfish, petty, and mean man who tended to follow his wife’s lead. She went on an offensive against the prophets of YHWH and tried to kill them all off so the prophets of rival god Baal could be in power.

If you take nothing else from this introduction, take this: Ahab and Jezebel were rulers who cared only about themselves and power. The Bible calls them unfaithful to YHWH, but I want us to hear that with nuance. The Bible calls leaders unfaithful when they don’t follow the laws of the Torah, and the laws of the Torah were designed to protect the poor and the powerless from the unquenchable thirst for more power and more money of the rich and powerful. Thus, any ruler who cared more for their own power than for the well-being of the people was called unfaithful to YHWH, because being faithful to God MEANT following the rules that cared for the people. Ahab and Jezebel deviated further from God’s vision for a just society than any other rulers before them. Thus they are the standard bearers of evil rulers in Kings and Chronicles. It isn’t just about believing in YHWH or not, it is about being self-serving or caring for the people AS the standard of faith.

Ahab and Jezebel, the power couple of epic evilness, had at least a daughter and two sons. Those sons also became Kings of Israel after their father, and the second of them to take the Kingship was Jehoram (of Israel). Their daughter was named Athaliah. She was married to King Jeroham of Judea. Two men, same name; Athaliah had a brother King Jeroham AND a husband King Jeroham. Eventually Queen Athaliah also the mother of the successor King, Ahaziah.

Just before we get to this little story, King Ahaziah, like several Judean kings before him, was leading military campaigns alongside the Northern Israelite King. The two separate countries were pretty well tied in together at this time (including by marriages), and the Bible seems to think that the evil influence of Jezebel was spreading widely. While King Ahaziah of Judea and his uncle King Jehoram of Israel were off fighting to keep control over vassal states, King Jehoram of Israel was injured.

The great northern prophet Elisha stepped in and anointed the general Jehu as king, to take over for the injured king!! Meanwhile, King Jehoram (of Israel) has gone off to heal in another city and his nephew King Ahaziah (of Judea) comes to visit him. Then the newly minted King Jehu (of Israel) comes and kills them both, and proceeds to go on a killing rampage to ensure that none of Ahab’s 70 other male descendants can take over for him. He also has Jezebel killed, and all the Baal worshippers. I’m telling you, they don’t make soap operas as violent as Biblical history for a reason.

Now, the deceased Jezebel and Ahab have one remaining child in power, their daughter Athaliah who has been Queen Mother to her son Ahaziah. Their male decedents in the north and all of their allies have been murdered. In the grand tradition of seeking power at any cost, the Queen Mother Athaliah has all of the other male royal descendants killed off and claims the throne for herself. This action would have completely eliminated the rest of Ahab and Jezebel’s line as well as the Southern succession. It is unclear if this mass murder involved any of her other sons (there may not have been any), but it certainly includes HER OWN GRANDCHILDREN, the princes of the kingdom.

Now, originally my goal was to discuss the subversiveness of Jehosheba, a daughter of King Jehoham and sister of King Ahaziah, but at this point I’m having trouble with clarity over which woman is more subversive: is it the woman who claims the throne for herself for seven years and is the ONLY break in the Davidic dynasty in 438 years OR the woman who subversively hid her nephew away so he could restore the dynasty?? This leads me to wonder how much are we supposed to care about the dynasty, which I really think is propaganda more than it was God’s will? In their own ways, both of these women were exceptionally subversive, although one seems significantly more evil than the other. While I admit that subversiveness can come in good or evil forms, we are going to keep our attention on the defiant aunt.

Before I started the research for this sermon series, this little story was not one I’d noticed before. It does show up twice, 3 verses each in the standard history of Kings and nearly the same verses in the alternative history of Chronicles. They tell us that there was a ruling queen of Judea, and she was the only one to sit on the throne who was not a descendant of David! She was taken down by the subversive action of another woman, one who was either her daughter or her step-daughter. The historian Josephus claims that Jehosheba was a HALF sister to King Ahaziah which means she wasn’t Athaliah’s daughter, but the text seems to imply the opposite. Generally in these stories a woman is only called a sister that clearly if she is a full blooded sister. It doesn’t really matter, but it is curious.

The Bible struggles with Queen Athaliah’s rule MOSTLY because she was not a descendant of David, and it seems to call her reign illegitimate. The New Interpreter’s Bible puts it this way, “Although Athaliah rules for seven years, the typical regal summaries are omitted in the report, for the narrator does not consider her to have been a legitimate ruler.”¹Apparently, questions of the legitimacy of rulers is not new in human history. Similarly, we can tell from this entire narrative that people in power using their power to do harm to the vulnerable is a long standing tradition and that the prophetic voice exists for the sake of calling power to accountability.

Anyway, to get back to the story, this sister Jehosheba of the newly dead King Ahaziah is ALSO married to the High Priest (which is sketchy in its own right, the power is clearly shared very tightly in that society). She hides her baby nephew and his wet-nurse away in a unused room in the palace to keep him from being murdered. Later she sneaks them both out of the palace and hides them in the Temple for SIX YEARS. For all of those years, his grandmother ruled the southern kingdom of Judea under the assumption that there was no one left with a more legitimate claim to power than the one she had.

Now, its hard to tell from story itself who the mastermind was: Jehosheba or her husband the high priest (we’re going to skip over his name so that no one gets more confused and just call him the high priest). They seem DEEPLY in cahoots. Jehosheba is the one who is said to have stolen away the prince and hidden him for years, but at the end of that time it is her husband who enacts a plan to overthrow Queen Athaliah’s rule by convincing the military that the rightful son of King Ahaziah still lived and should be king instead. Perhaps it was the high priest that asked his wife to protect the baby to begin with. Perhaps it was the Jehosheba who convinced her husband to overthrow the Queen for the sake of her nephew. Perhaps they had a really great relationship and shared in both the planning and the execution of the plan. The text doesn’t tell us. But within the royal family, a princess who was married to the high priest risked her own life and that of her husband and family as well for the sake of overthrowing the Queen.

The Biblical narrative claims that the baby nephew who became King, Joash, was a good king. It seems that his high priest uncle kept in line for as long as the high priest lived, and he even oversaw a restoration of the Temple. He had a 40 year reign of following the ways of YHWH, although in the end he decided to use the Temple’s treasury to pay off a foreign king who wanted to sack Jerusalem and his servants killed him off in response. You can’t make this stuff up. I do not find it clear to what degree Joash really was in charge and to what degree his uncle (and aunt?) pulled the strings after having saved his life, but the gist seems to be that Jehosheba did a good thing for the people of Judea and for the worship of YHWH by saving that baby. Of course, she maintained the royal lineage, but she also helped provide a ruler who cared for the people.

The real question, of course, is what we can draw from these ancient stories of long dead battles for seats of power that matters to us today? Of course there is the timely reminder that the Biblical standard for good leadership is the care given to the people, with particular attention to the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized. I think there is also in Jehosheba’s story the reality that standing up to power can require great personal risk.

The book “Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed” by Phillip Hallie tells the story of a little village in France, Le Chambon, full of Huguenots who truly believed in the Biblical call to take care of all of God’s children. Those French Protestants were responsible for saving the lives of thousand of Jewish children (and adults) during the German occupation of France. They did so while taking their own lives at risk, and indeed pastor’s son was killed for being part of the resistance. The faith of the people propelled them to take care of all God’s people.

The acts of Jehosheba, like the acts of the people of Le Chambon, were extraordinarily courageous because the power structures above them were willing to kill people in order to maintain their power. To be in the resistance sometimes requires acts of great courage and personal risk. Loving God, if and when it becomes necessary for us to take risks to take care of your people, may we prove worthy like Jehosheba and the people of Le Chambon. Amen

1Choon-Leong Seow “The First and Second Book of Kings” in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible Volume III edited by Leander Kirk et al (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1999), 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

January 22, 2017

Sermons

“Claiming Her Life” based on Genesis 38:1-26

January 15, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

My favorite Genesis commentator, Gerhard Von Rad, was a German professor at the University of Heidelberg. Von Rad says it well when he says, “To understand Tamar’s act, the reader must resist comparing it with modern conditions and judging it accordingly, for the modern world has nothing that can be compared to it.”¹ There is so much necessary context required to understand the story that it may seem like isn’t worth it, but I promise you that understanding what she was up against is necessary to show how hardcore Tamar was.

The first thing to understand about this story is levirate marriage. This was a custom practiced in many ancient societies with strong clan structure and significant inheritance laws. It worked like this: if a married man died before producing an heir, his brother was responsible for producing an heir on his behalf. In the ancient Near East it was normal for the eldest son to inherit a double portion of his father’s estate. Thus, if an eldest brother died, his younger brother would be producing the heir who would get the double portion INSTEAD of him. You may remember that Jesus was questioned about a widow who had been married to a series of brothers, in an attempt to stump Jesus.

The second thing to understand is widowhood culture. The practice would have been that a widow would return to her father’s house, and thereby be eligible for remarriage. Only a widow would return to her father’s house. A woman who has a levirate marriage or who was waiting to have a levirate marriage was not ENTIRELY a widow and remained a part of the family of her deceased husband. The question is: to whom does the widow belong? To her father’s family or to her in-laws? As long as there was someone available to produce that heir she belonged to her in-laws. To send her home to her father’s house was to imply otherwise.

The third important thing to know is that there is a significant debate about what sort of prostitution is being referenced in this text. Some commentators suggest that Tamar was acting as a sacred prostitute, within expected behavioral boundaries of her people. (She was a Canaanite.) This is because there are two words for prostitute used in the text, one used in reference to Tamar’s actual story and another – the more common word – used in the accusation against her. Von Rad explains it this way:

In the ancient Orient, it was customary in many places for married women to give themselves to strangers because of some oath. Such sacrifices of chastity in the service of the goddess of love, Astarte, were, of course, different form ordinary prostitution even though they were were repulsive to Israel. They were strictly forbidden by law, and the teachers of wisdom warned urgently against this immoral custom, which was apparently at times fashionable even in Israel. At the borders between Israel and Canaan, where our whole story takes place, the appearance on the road of a ‘devoted one’ was obviously nothing surprising. Tamar does not pretend to be a harlot as we think of it but rather a married woman who indulges in this practice, and Judah too thought of her in this way. It is characteristic that our narrative in vs. 21 and 22 also uses the expression ‘devoted one’ which recalls the sacred meaning of this practice.”²

In contrast, J. Maxwell Miler in the New Interpreter’s Bible, says, “Although her dress and action could imply prostitution (the veil both invites and conceals), the narrator does not mention it. Judah so interprets the veil and propositions her (vv. 15-16). In v. 21, his friend speaks of her as a ‘temple prostitute,’ probably only more discreet language for a prostitute (with no official cultic reference.)”³ In either case, Judah was very comfortable paying a woman to have sex with him and very uncomfortable with a woman he controlled having sex for money! Or as Miller puts it, “When Judah saw her as a prostitute, he used her; when he sees her in this capacity as his daughter-in-law, he condemns her. Clearly Judah applies a double standard.”⁴ Furthermore, the death he condemns her to is particularly harsh. As Von Rad says, “The punishment itself is certainly, in the narrator’s opinion, the severest possible. The later law recognized burning only in an extreme case of prostitution (Lev. 21.9). The custom was death by stoning for such offenses (Deut 22.23 ff; Lev. 20.16).”⁵ This likely relates to honor culture, and to have a woman in his family prostituting herself decreased his honor, while using a prostitute did not.

The issue is that by sending her back to her father’s house, he had functionally disowned her. Yet, the people brought her pregnancy to him as if he was still the person who owned her, and he had no issue judging her, as if he still owned her. Von Rad explains, “If one examines the legal aspect of the case, its difficulty becomes apparent. On the basis of what fact was the complaint made? Because of a widow’s prostitution or that of an engaged girl? Those who turn to Judah in this matter seem to assume the latter. Judah assumes competence as judge; he thus reckons Tamar as part of his family, though Tamar’s act proceeded from the assumption that Judah had released her permanently from the family and gave no further considerations to a marriage with his third son.”⁶

Finally, we need to remember that women had no legal standing in that time and place. As Walter Brueggemann pus it, “a striking contrast is established between this man who has standing and status in the community and this woman who stands outside the law and is without legal recourse.”⁷Tamar was being treated as if she was a widow by being sent back to her father, but also as if she was engaged to Shelah. She was in legal limbo and had no way to get out of it. Judah, by telling her it was a temporary solution was both dishonest with her and kept her from having any sort of life in the future. Von Rad says, “Judah’s wrong lay in considering this solution as really final for himself but in presenting to Tamar as an interim solution.”⁸

So, now that we have all the context down, I’m guessing we’ve all forgotten the actual story, right? Judah has gone off away from his brothers to live among the Canaanites. He marries a Canaanite woman, has three sons, and he finds a wife, Tamar, for the eldest son whose name is Er. Er dies, and Judah seems generally afraid of women and is a bit afraid Er died because Tamar was… scary or something. The story seems to believe God killed Er for being bad. Then Er’s younger brother Onan WAS bad. As Miller puts it, “Onan sabotages the intent of the relationship in order to gain Er’s inheritance for himself upon Judah’s death – the firstborn would receive a doubleshare. He regularly uses Tamar for sex, but makes sure she does not become pregnant by not letting his semen enter her (coitus interruptus, not masturbation). He therefore formally fulfills his duty, lest the role be passed on to his other brother and he lose Er’s inheritance in this way. This willful deception would be observable to Tamar, but God’s observation leads to Onan’s death (again, by unspecified means).”⁹ Tamar knew what was happening the whole time but no one cared, and she had no legal standing. As is true in Genesis, when a man sexually mistreats a woman, God does harm to the man. So Onan dies.

Judah is now completely freaked out that Tamar is powerful and killing off his sons. So he tells her that he wants her to go home to her father’s house to wait for his youngest son, Shelah, to grow up but he is lying! He intends for her to die in limbo as a widow/engaged woman who no one else can touch, while not taking care of her and not letting anyone else be responsible for her either. Years later, after Judah’s wife has died, Tamar becomes certain that Judah never intended to do right by her.

So she dresses herself in a way that suggests she’s available, which includes a veil so he doesn’t know who she is, and her father-in-law propositions her. She says yes, sleeps with him, gains two identifying possessions, and then he leaves. She takes her veil back off and reclaim the role of widow, so that when Judah sends her the agreed upon goat, she can’t be found. Thus she keeps the identifiers. She is eventually found to be pregnant and Judah is told. He judges her harshly and decrees she should be burned to death – for adultery, that is for being unfaithful to his son Shelah who he never intended to let marry her anyway. AS SHE WAS BEING BROUGHT OUT she sent word to Judah saying “the guy who owns these is the father” and with them sends his identifying possessions.

Then, suddenly, Judah sees the light, admits all his wrong doings, takes back the condemnation, takes care of her again, AND doesn’t sleep with her again. Actually, I don’t entirely believe that last part. Since the text doesn’t say whose wife she becomes, and since she had children by him, I suspect he did keep sleeping with her and the text itself protests too much – but who knows?

More to the point, Tamar existed in a time when she was seen as possession more than as person. She existed in between cultures, neither of which respected her, and she had no legal voice with which to articulate her concerns. We know nothing about her relationship to Er, but we know that both Onan and Judah used her to fulfill their own ends. She was left in limbo, unable to find a life that would support her over the long run, and she was lied to about it. She came up with a plan to inverse her circumstances, and it was radical, revolutionary, risky, and difficult. I doubt she particularly wanted to sleep with Judah, but she used her sexuality and his openness to fulfilling his sexual needs to get what she needed. Tamar is one of the most hardcore human beings I’ve heard about. Ever.

Tamar refused to be ignored, denied, pretended away. She refused a life that would be most likely to end with her homeless and starving. She refused a life without the opportunity to mother (which she would have been told was her her reason for existing). She outsmarted the man who had all the power over her, and he acknowledged her righteousness in the end – EVEN though many would still prefer to condemn her.

The thing is, I suspect Tamar was not the only woman around who was stuck in legal limbo. She is, however, the only woman whose story is being told because she found her way out. She was the extraordinary one who overcame overwhelming circumstances. She was the exception. Her courage and intelligence worked for her when she existed in a system that was designed to see her as property rather than as a human. Tamar blew up the rules in order to get a chance at her life. And she gets acknowledged for it throughout history.

The children that Tamar would bear would be ancestors of King David and as such ancestors of Jesus. She is one of three women listed in Matthews genealogy of Jesus. Interestingly Judah (and not Er) is listed as the father in that genealogy.

We have a story of an exceptional human here, one who beat a multitude of odds. Yet I think the value of the story is that it points out to us just how broken that system was. It didn’t take care of all the people and it took an exceptional person breaking all the rules to navigate it. I think if we are to learn anything from the courage of Tamar and from her choice to claim her life it is this: may we fight with people who are as stuck as Tamar was so that no one is required to be the exceptional hero in order to claim a life worth living. That is, may there be fewer people who need to go to such extremes, because people in desperation have allies like us. Amen

Sermon Talkback

What other stories can you think of: exceptional humans overcoming overwhelming odds that no one should ever have to face?
Why do you think Tamar is included in the genealogical list for Jesus?

And why with Judah as father, not Er?

This story doesn’t fit in at all. It is essentially stand alone. Why do you think it kept getting told?
Was Tamar more in the right? Why?
Where are we successful in being allies to those in extenuating circumstances?
Where are not successful?
What do you think motivated Tamar?
God isn’t spoken of much in this story, moreso God is implied. This is an OLD story. Within its constructs, God who is quite active in killing off the immoral lets Tamar’s actions stand. What does that mean???

—-

1Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis: a commentary in The Old Testament Library series (The Westminster Press: Philadelphia, 1972) 359.

2Von Rad, 359-360.

3J. Maxwell Miller “Genesis” in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible Volume 1edited by Leander Kirk et al (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994), 605

4Miller, 606.

5Von Rad, 360-1.

6Von Rad, 360.

7Walter Brueggemann, Genesis in Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching series (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 1982) 310.

8Von Rad, 358.

9Miller, 605.

–

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 15, 2017

Sermons

“What Do the Wise Men Mean?” based on Isaiah 60:1-6…

January 8, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In April of 2002 I was studying abroad at Oxford University in England when my dearly beloved grandfather died. He passed away late on a Saturday morning, which meant I heard about it around nightfall. With the help of friends and housemates I figured out what to eat for dinner (seriously, this involved asking a friend what I liked to eat, I was beyond knowing), found a chapel to pray in (a housemate walked with me, seemingly I wasn’t trustworthy to walk a few blocks by myself), and got a plane ticket home (a friend found it for me). By the end of the night things were set: I was scheduled to leave early the next morning a bus to Heathrow airport and would get to Newark by that evening.

In those frugal college days I didn’t keep much cash on hand, and even by those standards I happened to be running low on pounds. I had dollars, but I didn’t have have pounds. For reasons that now escape me, I exchanged currency was in the back of a department store, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about the need for cash the night my grandfather died. I didn’t realize I needed money that night, and even if I had, by the time I could have pulled myself together enough to notice – the store would have been closed.

By morning I realized my error, but it was Sunday, and EARLY morning, and there was no way to solve it. (In retrospect I could easily have asked my housemates, but my deeply independent nature didn’t come up with that idea!) I got to the bus on time, with a plan. I had enough money in American dollars to pay TWICE the bus fare. I figured that would work.

It didn’t.

The bus driver was sympathetic, but unable to let me on the bus without paying the fare – in pounds. I had no pounds. I had no way to get pounds. And I had to get on THAT bus to make my flight home. Getting home to my family felt like a need. The grief for my grandfather was deep seated, and raw.

I don’t remember how it happened exactly, someone must have overheard my offer of paying twice the fare and why I had to get home, but the people on that bus paid my fare for me. Many people offered one pound each and then it was paid and I was on my way home. My independent nature was so embarrassed by that at the time that I blocked the story for years and it has only recently re-emerged.

Now, with a bit more perspective, I’m less ashamed that I wasn’t able to do everything perfectly without notice and in the midst of grief. Now, with the wisdom of another decade and a half I’m not embarrassed to have needed help anymore. Instead I am grateful for the gifts of strangers when I needed it most

I am so grateful for the chance to read Shirley Readdean’s excellent sermon from last week, and she motivated me to be playful with the text as well. The story of the magi was told to make sense of the world and of Jesus, it is intentionally metaphorical and rich in meaning, making easy space for us to explore our own lives within it.

It struck me this week that accepting gifts from strangers isn’t particularly easy – at least it hasn’t been for me. I’m told Simone Weil once said, “It is only by the grace of God that the poor can forgive the rich for the bread they give them,” which has to do with both the challenge or receiving gifts AND the issues of income inequality. This story of Matthew’s gets into all of that!

What would this experience have been like for Mary and Joseph? They were relatively young, or at least she was and he might have been! Mary certainly hadn’t known much of the world, and there is no reason to think Joseph had either. They were likely quiet provincial. By the best guesses of scholars they were poor. If Joseph made his living as a carpenter that would mean that there was no longer access to the family lands – they’d been lost to debt. Peasants living without land were worse off than those still living on it. Likely they worked very, very hard and had little time to travel. If they were from Nazareth (which seems more likely than anything else), then they knew about the Roman destruction of Sepphoris 4 miles away and about 8 years earlier. They knew oppression, poverty, and hard living. They also knew a deep faith in a God who cared about the people, and who did not want them dying of complications of poverty. I suspect it was their Jewish faith that helped them get through the day, every day. I suspect it was much easier to trust fellow Jewish residents of Nazareth than it was to trust outsiders or non-Jews, the world had taught them to be wary.

Or, if we want to take Matthew’s story at face value and put the Holy Family in residence in Bethlehem, then they were in a small village 6 miles from Jerusalem. There, too, they would learn to be cautious of outsiders, particularly the Roman Empire and their regional authorities: the religious leaders of the day. Mary and Joseph would have found it much easier to trust the Jews in their own village than outsiders, the Temple priests, or non Jews.

Wherever they originated from, as Jewish peasants Mary and Joseph would have had good reason to be hesitant about outsiders and non-Jews. Furthermore, the primarily stories of the faith included the stories of exile and return – that is, of domination from Eastern empires and their strange gods. The gospel of Matthew tells us that the the magi were from the East, and that they stopped in Jerusalem on their way to Bethlehem. That would be reminiscent of the eastern empires that had previously dominated the Jews AND a connection to the empire that currently dominated them. These magi had the power to gain an audience with King Herod, who was known to be crazy and cruel. Can you see what I’m getting at? It is possible that the magi would have been terrifying to Mary and Joseph, and for good reason. Then, to add to all the complications of their existence, these strange and powerful strangers came into their home bearing VERY expensive gifts.

How would Mary and Joseph felt? Would they have been afraid? Were they overwhelmed? If so, what bothered them the most? The non-Jewishness? The connection with their history of exile? The connection the Magi had to the power-players of the Roman Empire? The power they themselves had? The foreign language? The expensive gifts? The expectations placed on their baby son? Or was it simply the danger the strangers brought with them by declaring Jesus to be a threat to Herod’s power? Whichever of these bothered them MOST, I’m thinking that if I was in their sandals, I might not want those magi around very much.

The magi are VERY different, VERY powerful, and thus VERY dangerous. They don’t know Jewish traditions or laws, and they are connected to the power structure of oppression. Furthermore, in basic human nature, it is especially uncomfortable to receive gifts that can never be repaid. Jewish peasants would never EVER be able to repay the gifts of the kind that the magi bought, Jewish peasants were living just BELOW subsistence level and gold, and frankincense and myrrh are EXPENSIVE. In fact, those are the kinds of gifts that aren’t given in normal human exchange – they are the kind of gifts only given to people in power (like kings) in hope of recognizing the king and winning favor. The gifts of the magi communicate that Jesus was perceived as a king, of a standard order human kingdom. Likely that’s one of the reasons the story is told, to prefigure Jesus’ kingship. However in real life, that would be AWKWARD.

The presence of the magi in the story Matthew tells helps develop the story in other ways too: it gives a reason for King Herod to know of the threat of Jesus, thereby making the journey to Egypt seem more plausible (really it exists in order to present Jesus as the new Moses); it indicates that the life of Jesus would be significant beyond the realm of Judaism; and it foreshadows the ways that the adult Jesus would threaten the power of Rome and the authority of its appointed leaders. The magi themselves, coming from East to Jerusalem, fulfill dreams dating back to the exile, as we can see in Isaiah. That dream is not just of a restoration, but of restored power to the Jewish people and international recognition. The coming of the magi in Matthew is meant to indicate that Jesus is bringing the fulfillment of the desires of centuries. Even so I still think the men themselves would be terrifying to actual Jewish peasants.

On top of it all, I still wonder what it would have been like to such receive gifts from strange and powerful men. It can be hard to receive gifts anyway, they require a certain openness and vulnerability. It is harder when the gift is one-sided and cannot be reciprocated. I think, at least for me, it is also difficult to receive gifts from strangers. I take this from the fact it has taken me nearly 15 years to tell the story I started with! Furthermore, the acts of giving and receiving a gift is a connection between people, and would be hard to build a connection with people who are frightening, strange, and powerful. Finally, and this I’ve been worried about since childhood, if these expensive gifts were given to the Holy Family before a significant journey HOW ON EARTH would they keep them safe without a caravan to protect them?

The story doesn’t go into these details at all. It just says the magi offered Jesus the gifts and then left by another road, thereby short-changing Herod. Metaphorically this suggests that being present to Jesus would change how people used their power in the world and who they trusted. That suggests that the giving of the magi’s gifts to Jesus was helpful to the magi! That’s easy enough to believe – it is a wonderful and transformational thing to be able to give a generous gift. (This may be why they’re hard to receive!)

It is with humble gratitude that I think of the people who paid for my bus fare, people whose names I didn’t know and who I have thus been unable to pay back. They have left me with gratitude for the opportunities I have to help others along the way, and gave me a more clear sense that we as humans are all in this together. That moment in time was one when I truly didn’t have what I needed, and others provided it. I am thankful to have known that need, and even more thankful to have had it cared for.

The graciousness of Mary and Joseph who let strange and powerful foreigners into their home to greet their baby and give expensive gifts is mesmerizing, even after hearing it every year. Those strange men whose very lives seem designed to frighten were actually intending to extend grace. They were the ones most changed by the experience. Part of the grace of receiving gifts is allowing the gift-giver to be transformed. Thus, may we find the grace to be open to the gifts that strangers have to offer, and receive them with openness and gratitude! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 8, 2017

Sermons

“Justice-Seeking Mothers”based on 1 Samuel 2:1-10 and Luke 1:46b-55

December 11, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It
has been said about Mary, “No woman in scripture is more honored,
blessed as she was ‘above all women’ (Luke 1:42), and she holds an
iconic status shared by no other woman in Christianity. Through the
accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, Mary is one of the
first biblical characters many children encounter. Along with Eve,
Mary is integral to shaping how Christians understand the nature of
womanhood and motherhood.”¹
What is said is true. Mary, along with Eve, has both shaped how
women are understood in Christianity AND the inverse: perceptions of
Mary (and Eve) are indicators of how Christianity is understanding
women. How Mary is seen is a bell-weather for how women are seen.
Cary Gibson, the author of the opening quote, also says, “Mary is a
container into which we pour ideas of what it means to be a woman. In
turn we then draw from her image ideas about our own womanhood.”²

Most
commonly, Mary is said to be meek and mild. Usually, it is her
subservience that sets her up as the ideal woman. The pedestal of
womanhood that Mary most frequently occupies as the ideal woman is
the pedestal of the selfless mother, the one who exists simply so her
son can exist. She’s faithful, sweet, and biddable. There is,
however, one issue with this common perception Mary: it completely
ignores the words of Mary found in the Gospel of Luke.

Now,
I’m not saying that I really think some literate scribe was following
Mary around during her pregnancy to record her insights for
posterity. However, I am saying we have a rather long monologue
attributed to Mary that defies the way she is most commonly defined.
The meek and mild ideal does not match the actual Gospel. The myths
around her are more about what Christian women have been told to be
than they are about the actual stories about and words of Mary.

Therefore,
it seems worth exploring the words attributed to Mary. Whether the
words are what Mary said, or something Mary could have said, or
simply what it made sense to someone that the Mother of Jesus WOULD
have said, they are attributed to her. Since the general perception
of Mary is based on 20 centenaries of trying to put women in their
place, and I’d prefer to get to know Mary as presented in the Gospel.
It may be that we can take a look at Mary-the-ideal-woman and get a
different answer about what it means to be an ideal woman.

For
starters, these words are not meek, nor mild. In fact, Cary Gibson
says Mary, “voiced a defiant and righteous hope in the face of
violence and injustice.”³
It is true. These words express a HARDCORE faith and a great ideal
for women to seek to live up to. 🙂 Men too. This is the sort of
faith we can all aspire to!

First
of all, Mary’s song is deeply rooted in her faith tradition. It
echoes Hannah’s song of celebration after Hannah fulfilled her
promise and brought her son Samuel to Eli to serve him as a priest.
It also echoes with phrases from the Psalms. The version of this
song that we have is a work of theological and scriptural brilliance
and sophistication. Hannah’s song is powerful, but reflects a less
mature faith. Hannah yearns for God to smash the powerful, deride
her enemies, and break the mighty. In her mind the powerless are
lifted up BY making the powerful small. There is violence in her
imagery, even as there is celebration of the goodness of God and of
her sense of becoming more significant in the world.

Mary’s
song, though, is not vengeful. She also speaks of lifting up the
poor and lonely. Like Hannah she speaks about God’s power, but she
also adds God’s mercy. Mary speaks of lowering the mighty, but the
lowering isn’t violent or dangerous for them: the proud are
“scattered in the thoughts of their hearts” which sounds like a
way to be more humble; the powerful step down from their thrones (but
she doesn’t suggest they’re harmed afterward); the rich are sent away
empty – as if they don’t need any more. Hannah had the the
formerly “full” “hire themselves out for bread.” Mary is
interested in lifting up the lowly and removing their oppression, not
in oppressing the oppressors. She is a actually meeker and milder
than Hannah, Hannah’s is pretty rough. Mary is simply less violent!

Hannah
speaks of her victory, Mary speaks of being treated with God’s favor.
While both are grateful for the child they are able to nurture, and
while both express incredible gratitude to God and deep theological
reflections, they have different energies. The insertion of material
from the Psalms into Hannah’s original poem changes it into a more
gracious piece. One scholar found that in addition to the source
material of Hannah’s poem, the song of Mary includes 7 pieces of
different Psalms, as well as a quote each from Deuteronomy, Job,
Micah, and Isaiah. By that scholar’s reckoning all of the words of
Mary’s song are attributable to Hebrew Bible quotations.⁴

Mary’s
song starts in the specific. She is grateful to be useful to God,
humbly aware of her status as a poor woman in her society, and
attentive to the change of her status because of God’s favor. She
attributes her life change to God’s greatness, and she praises God.
She expresses who God is: merciful,
consistent, strong, and powerful. She talks about a God who cares
about the lowly,
and feeds the hungry with GOOD food.
Her song makes another journey outward, celebrating God’s care for
all of the Jews and then attributing God’s care to God’s merciful
nature and God’s promises. She moves from celebrating God’s work for
her, to celebrating God’s work for the vulnerable, to celebrating
God’s work for all her people. It is as if she is expanding her
gratitude in increasingly wide circles.

While
it is unlikely to be factual, this text suggests that Mary knew her
scriptures well enough to combine them creatively into a truly
beautiful and majestic song celebrating God WITHOUT demeaning anyone
else. It suggests that her humility was real, but it wasn’t a form
of self-deprecation. It says she was genuinely honored to be able to
serve God and be useful in forming the world in God’s kindom of
shalom. She was delighted and amazed to be chosen. She recognized
the depth of the blessing she received, seemingly without thinking
that it made her more important than others. She said she was
blessed, and was amazed that people would remember her as blessed.
That indicates she didn’t think she’d done anything right or worthy,
it was God’s choice not her worthiness that mattered. Her gratitude
was expansive and celebratory and still focused on lifting up the
lowly and attentive to the hungry. She kept her head!

The
Mary of this song is wise, strong, compassionate, creative, humble,
and grateful. She knows and celebrates a God who is a fierce
advocate of justice. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, in their
book “The First Christmas” point out that each of the Gospels
start with a “Gospel in miniature” (with the possible exception
of Mark which starts at a gallop and just keeps going!). Luke 1 and
2, which likely do NOT represent authentic memories of things that
really happened, DO represent themes of the Gospel, understanding of
Jesus, foreshadowing of things to come, and ways to see how God is
known in the Gospel. Luke pays particular attention to women – as
we can see here where Mary gets a prolonged monologue – as well as
to the poor and vulnerable. We can also see that here in the words
Mary speaks. The writer of Luke, and/or the Christian tradition,
and/or the editors who came later attribute these words to Mary
largely to help those of us who came later to understand her son.

Now,
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m disparaging Hannah’s song. Her
song is FIERCE and profound, and reflects an era one whole millennia
before Mary’s. Hannah, as well, sought justice. She sought it for
herself and she sought it for all of God’s people. She understood God
to be one who cares about the poor, the hungry, the feeble, the
barren, the low, and the needy. That is a reflection of the unique
tradition of Judaism, from a pretty early time. Other ancient
peoples believed in god and goddesses. The Israelites were unique,
however, in believing in a God who cared about how they treated each
other, and in a God who cared about the people who had the least
power and influence. There is a constant tension in the Bible
between this belief – in a God who cares for the poor and lowly –
and the human tendency to prefer the rich and powerful. Hannah
reflects the God who cares for the poor and lowly without being
pulled toward the rich and powerful at all. Then Mary manages to
take it a step further and acknowledge a God who cares for everyone.
They sought justice, and believed in a God who wanted justice. This
is our radical tradition. This is the wonder of worshiping a God of
compassion.

Those
sons of those women took their justice-seeking natures and their
understandings of the God of Compassion, and changed the world. We
mostly know about the mothers because of the sons. Samuel anointed
kings. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, ate with sinners, and
told parables that still confound us today. Both sons changed the
world. Both mothers are presented as sources of wisdom for their
sons. Their stories are preludes to their sons stories, and yet I am
so grateful that the Bible gives them voices and songs and stories!
They are not ONLY vessels through which their sons come to be, they
are interesting in their own right.

I
do wish for all of us to be able to be a bit like these justice
seeking mothers. And if we are going to hold up Mary as the ideal,
then I hope it takes the form of being moved to sing our gratitude
to God and celebrating the wonder of God’s good work in the world. I
hope we can become so steeped in our faith tradition that we can use
it in creative ways that bring more caring, compassion, and justice
to our tradition. I hope that we can see and name the goodness of
our lives without taking ourselves too seriously. And I do hope that
when push comes to shove we are more like Mary than like Hannah, and
that we can hope for the transformation of oppressors – not the
oppression of them. I hope we too can always remember the people of
God who are struggling the most, and find ways to help lift them up.
I hope we can be part of our tradition that remembers God as a God of
compassion for the least, the last, the lost and the lonely.

If
Mary is the ideal, and she seems to be well set up to be the ideal,
then let’s seek to be like her: fierce, grateful, and brilliant.
Amen

1
Cary Gibson, “Mary, Jesus’ Mother” in an email from The Common
English Bible send by Abingdon Press on December 2^nd,
2016.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Joseph
A. Fitzmeyer “The Gospel According to Luke I-IX” in the The
Anchor Bible Series (Doubleday and Co.: Garden City, NY, 1981) p
356-357.

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

December 11, 2016

Sermons

“SILENT Prayer!?!”based on 1 Samuel 1:1-20

December 4, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Hannah may be the most well-behaved woman in this Subversive Women sermon series. In this story she expresses exemplary faith and devotion for God. She a common example used for the idea of “taking it to the Lord in prayer.” All in all, she feels like enough of a goody-two shoes to be the mother of the king-maker. As we see time and time again, when you hear a birth stories, you know that you are getting the story of someone important. When you hear about a barren woman in the Bible (much less a virgin 😉 ) you know you are hearing the beginning of the story of someone VERY important. The baby born to THIS barren woman will be the last of the judges, one of the great prophets, and the one to anoint kings Saul and David. This story seems designed to prove that he came from good stock.

To be honest, the Young Adult Bible study found her a little bit boring. Hannah is presented as a weeping mess, having internalizing the cultural narrative that her value was based on her ability to produce sons. She is one of two wives of reasonably wealthy man. (No poor man could afford two wives.) Their family goes to the holy place to worship once a year – not three like the really faithful families – but also not less than once. They’re moderately faithful Jews. She has a loving husband, which in and of itself makes her unusual in the Bible. She believes that God is in control of the world, and she seems to believe that a blessing by God’s priest will help her get what she wants. She makes a vow with very serious consequences: she wants a child so badly that she offers the child to God. (This is, of course, a promise she makes good on. She brings Samuel to Eli as soon as he is weaned and then sees him only once a year when she brings him new clothing.) She is a bit of a naive heroine: good, sweet, doing what she’s supposed to do, and sad because her society says she is worthless.

Despite the Young Adult Bible Study, there are a lot of interesting things going on in this story. They’re just hiding rather well! Are there any people in this room who immediately zone out when you hear genealogies – you know, like the one in the very first verse of this story? Me too. However, this one has a point! Hannah’s husband was of the clan Ephraim (one of Joseph’s sons). That is a Northern Tribe, which fits as this is a northern story set in the north. He was of that clan, as were the 5 generations before him. Which means he was NOT AT ALL a Levite. And the Levites were supposed to be the priests and holy men. The baby who will be born will be raised as if he is a priest, but he isn’t one. He is an insert into the holy man tradition. This is particularly relevant because Eli (a Levite) has sons who are corrupt priests, but the clan of Ephraim raises up a good priest. Things aren’t going as they should be. The system is broken.

Like the genealogy, the location has some hidden interest. The story is set in the Temple in Shiloh. Which would be a pretty boring detail except for one piece of historical knowledge: there is no Temple in Shiloh. Shiloh was a worship center, and there would have been official priests working there, but there was no Temple. The Temple would be build by David, who Samuel would make King – and it would be in the Southern Kingdom. This story has the fingerprints of later Southern editors on it, ones who couldn’t quite comprehend a worship space other than the Temple.

Now I mentioned that Hannah was a beloved spouse, which was a bit unique. The expressions of adoration from her husband are totally unique. He asks her why he isn’t worth 10 sons to her – which seems to imply that she’s worth 10 sons to him! Furthermore, he gives her the “double portion” to use in sacrifice. That’s odd. The double portion is the portion the eldest son inherits, where the younger sons each get only one. Hannah’s husband treats her as if she is as valuable to him as his eldest son and heir. He values her as she’d value her eldest son. He sees values in HER. This is particularly interesting because Hannah lacks value in her society. Women were meant to bear male children. That was what they were FOR, and from which their worth was derived. And Hannah didn’t. But her husband didn’t care. He appears to love her for HER, as she is. That may be a reason for some to be jealous of Hannah, but it surely doesn’t make boring. Because being loved can be so transformative in human life, I wonder how much of Hannah strength comes from her husband’s love. She may struggle with what she’s supposed to be (and isn’t) but she also has an internalized sense of self worth. Her husband might have been part of that.

This question of Hannah’s value comes up in her interaction with Eli. But first, we need to mention a few truly subversive things that happened before and during that interaction. First of all, she entered the holy space. I don’t know for sure how the worship space was used in Shiloh, but I do know that women weren’t let very far into the Jerusalem temple. For Hannah, even entering the holy space pushed the boundaries of what women were supposed to be doing. I’m also not sure how appropriate it would have been for Hannah to wander off on her own in public space. I suspect she broke the bounds of normalcy on that too. Then there is the fact that she prays SILENTLY and without a sound passing by her lips. We can tell by Eli’s response that her silence wasn’t standard for prayer.

Now, if Hannah was trying to elicit a response from God, and her deal making surely suggests she was, then why wasn’t she participating in prayer the way it was known to be practiced? Was she simply too focused and authentic in her prayer? I don’t think so! I think humans of any faith tradition are deeply enculturated on how to pray, and one wouldn’t be likely to break out of that in a moment of deep prayer. Instead, I wonder if she wanted to have a PRIVATE conversation with God. She went off by herself, she went into a sacred space that was mostly abandoned, and she spoke to God only in her heart. It seems possible that what she was saying was entirely too personal for anyone to know it. I suspect there was even some shame in it, as would be expected for a barren woman begging God to help her.

Hannah also makes a deal with God, which is not generally recommended, and she makes one of the more radical ones. Her family is moderately faithful. She offers her son as a livelong nazirite, which is UNHEARD OF. The holiest of holy men were nazirites for a year or two. But she offers. (And she does it! – Hannah is faithful to her promises.)

OK. So now we are on her conversation with Eli. Eli comes up and shames her for her despicable behavior – one that he projects onto her rather than one she has participated in. Hannah ANSWERED. She answered the high priest of that place, and she defended herself. She didn’t walk away in shame. She didn’t hang her head. She defended herself and her VALUE. She WAS a worthless woman by the standards she lived in. But she demands respect from the priest anyway. “‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time”

“I am not a worthless woman.” Am I the only one who wants to cheer for her??? Even better it works. Eli may have failed to identify authentic prayer, yet, he is willing to be corrected!! He’s really an OK guy and a good priest, even though me misses some major memos. Eli believes her. That is huge in and of itself, but he also responds to her with a blessing. The blessing clearly matters to her, it cheers her up, and the story seems to think it has to do with her later success in getting pregnant.

Hannah names her son, “God has heard” and says she does so because “I asked him of the LORD”. She sounds a bit like Hagar, naming God, “the God who sees” (even me.) Hannah, whose society has told her that she is worthless, has a partner who believes in her worth, and even with her internal struggles finds that she believes in her worth too. Then it is affirmed. It seems to me that by the time Hannah gets pregnant, she is already sure that she is of value in the world and in the eyes of God whether or not she has a child. In the end, I think that’s what is so subversive about Hannah – that she finds the way to claim her own worth, despite society! May we follow in her footsteps because we are much more useful to God when we realize that we are valuable – and of use in building the kindom. 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

December 4, 2016

Sermons

“Wanting Knowledge”based on Genesis 2:15-3:7

November 30, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Here
we are. Again. It is the beginning of the church year. Again. We
start anew with the stories. Again. For those among us who have not
attended to the church’s liturgical calendar before, I apologize. It
is a wonderful rhythm of life, and I hope you will be enriched by
living into it. Personally, I’ve been attending to the church’s
liturgical calendar for decades, and been leading worship in the
liturgical seasons for more than a decade and this is a year where
starting over again takes some energy.

The
last year hasn’t been easy AND there is fear of what will come in
this coming year. Often I’m frustrated with the rather depressing
texts that accompany Advent, I don’t want to start in the darkness.
This year I’m ready and willing to admit that there is much darkness
in the world and that I, too, yearn for the light of God to break in.
Ironic, isn’t it? This is the year I’m forgoing those depressing
Advent texts to continue the Subversive Women sermon series?

The
Subversive Women chosen for Advent are intentional though. I’ve
always loved the idea that we start the Christian year in unity with
our shared history with Jewish people, reliving the period in our
shared history when we waited for God’s messiah to change the course
of human history. I also love that we do this in a season of
darkness (for the Northern Hemisphere – I’m quite sad about how
poorly all the metaphors of the liturgical year work in the Southern
Hemisphere and struck that this is yet another experience we have of
privilege). Anyway, I love that we start the year in darkness, and
in the waiting, and in our shared history. I love that the quietness
of Advent contrasts with the frenetic pace of consumer culture around
us; creating a pause, a pregnant pause. Along with waiting with the
Jews, we also wait with Mary in the last month of her pregnancy.

That
is, I really love Advent. And it is with delight that I offer you
this text for us to play with today. What better way to start the
Christian year and re-start the telling of our faith story than to go
back to one of the stories of creation? And, what better place to
start than the woman called “life” itself, Eve? (Yes. Eve means
“life.” Subtle, huh?) After all, she has been accused of
ruining human life on this planet in multiple ways, so she MUST be at
least a little subversive.

This
is an old, old story. It is in the voice of the Yahwehist, the
oldest of the four voices found in the Torah. It is a story trying
to make sense of the world as it is, and there are a lot of
explanations going on. It is trying to make sense of the human need
for interpersonal relationships. It is trying to make sense of human
capabilities exceeding that of other creatures. It is trying to make
sense of the labor necessary to stay alive. It is trying to make
sense of the experience of separation from God. It is trying to make
sense of the power of love. It is trying to make sense of the human
desire for knowledge.

I’m
not sure it succeeds at any of these tasks, but I appreciate noticing
that these huge questions of why things are the way they are was
already bugging people thousands of years ago, and they were
struggling to find answers just as we are today. The existence of
the questions they were trying to answer makes me feel more united
with the tellers of this story than the story itself does. Which
isn’t the story’s fault. It could be a perfectly adorable myth if it
hadn’t been used to support the subjugation of women and the
Christian obsession with “sin.” However, it has been, which
makes me squirm all over again when I read it.

Two
and a half years ago I preached on this text and explained in detail
a theory of it that had changed everything for me. To my delight,
when we got to this text in our Bible Study, people remembered that
theory – it changed everything for them too! Some of you were here
then to hear it, and some weren’t, so I’m going to split the
difference and briefly share the theory again.¹

In
the Ancient Near Eastern people believed that you could either be
immortal or reproductive. Furthermore, sexuality was linked to
reproduction, THUS it was linked to mortality. If you are going to
live forever, you don’t need to have children as your legacy, and you
don’t need to be a sexual being. If you are mortal, and you are
going to die, you get to have children. This was a common motif in
Ancient Near East stories (this is the area that the ancient Jews
were from). None of the garden narratives in the Ancient Near East
have any children in them. Gardens are places for IMMORTAL, ASEXUAL
beings. Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
transformed Adam and Eve from being immortal, asexual beings into
mortal, sexual beings.

You
might notice that the text says directly, they were naked but “not
ashamed,” which indicates they didn’t have sexual awareness of
their own bodies to begin with. As the wise Catholic priest who
pointed this out said, before eating, Eve and Adam seem to be “zero
on the passion meter.” Sexuality is activated ONLY when they ate
of the tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is really
the center of it all. What do we know of it?

Forbidden
for some reason
It
makes one like God (3:5) “like one of us” (3:22)
Eyes
are opened and see nakedness (sexual awareness)
makes
one wise (3:6)
connects
with punishment
It
produces a concern that the one possessing it not live forever.

What
else do we know about the phrase “knowledge of good and evil”
from the Bible? Deuteronomy 1:39 teaches us it is something that
children lack, Isaiah 7 calls it a sign of maturity. From 1 Q
Samuel 1:9-11 (Dead Sea Scrolls) “He will not approach a woman to
have intercourse with her until he has attained the age of twenty
when he knows good and evil.” Hmm, this is clearly about sex. In
2 Samuel 19:36 An old man is being invited in for wine, women, and
song. He responds “I’m 80…. and no longer potent, deaf, and not
experiencing the joy of food.” …. also “knowledge of good and
evil” as something an old man loses.

So,
sexual potency, sexual maturity, sexual appetite seem to be implied
here! Then, the tree is an aphrodisiac. The premier aphrodisiac in
fact, as it brought the humans from zero sexual appetite to “normal”
rather than from weak appetite to stronger appetite. This is a story
of awakening to normal sexuality. In that case, the serpent is a
fertility symbol offering this knowledge. After this story, Eve
called mother of all things! It is because of the eating of the
fruit of the tree that all other humans exist, within the framework
of this story. And all hearers of the story in all times should be
grateful to her for eating it! So, then, why was the tree forbidden?
Because immortals do not beget.

Given
this new understanding of the tree, the
punishments about pain in childbirth, and man lording over woman,
FIT. There is no fall, as much as Paul and others have made of it,
and there is no original sin. The couple is making a journey UPWARD:
they become aware, wise, and mature in full adult human stature.

They
started off like children and come into full adult status.
Isn’t
that an interesting creation story? It is a story that tells how we
became reproductively capable, sexually aware, adult humans. This
creation story includes the creation of future generations of humans.
It is a much more interesting story than it initially appears,
right? Personally, I’m rather grateful that they ate of the fruit
and gained sexual maturity because within the constructs of the
story, NO OTHER HUMANS would otherwise exist, and I rather like
existing.

A
few other notes on this story, particularly for those who have heard
it used in other ways. Adam (whose name means both “human” and
“dirt”) and Eve (whose name means “life” and “life-bearer”)
were in the garden together and the serpent speaks to Eve while
Adam is also present.
Only Adam is told NOT to eat of the tree, and yet when Eve responds
to the serpent she assumes that it applies to her as well AND she
strengthens the command. The first version was “of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in
the day that you eat of it you shall die”. Eve tells it like this,
“God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in
the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’”
She adds the touch. Isn’t that how humans work? When we really
want to keep a rule, we make rules around the rule in order to make
keeping the rule easier.

Eve
is aware of the risk, but the serpent tells her, “You will not die;
for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and
you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” AND she looks with
her own eyes. She sees that “the tree was good for food, and that
it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to
make one wise.” She listens to the serpent AND she takes in
awareness from her surroundings, and she decides that risking death
is worth having knowledge (and sexual maturity, let’s be clear). It
is almost as if she is a prepubescent girl choosing to become a
woman: there are big trade offs in that choice, but there is goodness
in being an adult.

In
this week that we celebrated Thanksgiving, taking days apart to be
grateful, and remembering a shared meal between generous native
people and overwhelmed frightened immigrants, it is worth remembering
this ancient story being grateful to Eve who is said to have chosen
knowing, and growing up, so we all can exist. We can also be
grateful to Eve and her choice throughout Advent as we wait for
Mary’s baby to come. All of the babies who have been born, within
the constructs of this story, exist because Eve chose knowledge and
maturity over staying in the dark. We take her light into these dark
days. Amen

Sermon
Talkback Questions

How
else do you think about Advent?

Where
else do you notice the contrasts of light and darkness, and what
meaning do you make out of them?

What
do you do to avoid being pulled into the frenetic pace of consumer
Christmas, and back into the quiet reflection of Advent?

Whether
you heard this theory before or not, how does it change your
relationship to this story – and to Adam and Eve?

Personally
I like the idea of Eve considering the serpents ideas, taking in
awareness of her surroundings, and deciding for herself that
knowledge was worth it. How does her thoughtful consideration
change the story?

What
does it mean to be grateful for sexual maturity, and to consider our
creation myth to be about that?

How
does God’s love get reflected in this story?

—

1 What
follows is reworked from “The Garden: We Have it ALL Wrong”
preached on 3/9/2014. That knowledge came from Father Addison
Wright during a lecture series at “Ecumenical Scripture Institute”
at Sky Lake in 2011 on the first 11 Chapters of Genesis.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hers

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

November 27, 2016

Sermons

“Pure Courage” based on Esther 4

November 21, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the beginning of the book of Esther we get the story of Vashti, Queen of Persia, who simply refused. She’d been told to show up in the midst of a drunken party wearing only her crown, and she didn’t. The king and his advisors recoiled in horror that a woman could use her power to say no, thus she was banished and a decree went out to the entire empire letting them know that men were in charge. She scared them, a lot.

The story continues, and at some point after that, the king got lonely and regretted over-reacting. His advisors then suggested that he’d be less sad if he rounded up all of the beautiful women in his empire, put them into a harem, and enjoyed them while deciding who the next queen should be. Wow. Aren’t those great advisors? It really is terrifying what ideas advisors can come up with that weak-minded kings decided to implement.

So, within the story of the book of Esther, they did. This serves as your reminder that the book of Esther was written as historical fiction for the sake of building up the Jews living in exile, and it was never meant to be taken as real history. We can mine this story for metaphor and hope, but not for historical facts.

In this story, Esther is one of the beautiful maidens chosen for the king’s harem. She is a Jewish woman, an orphan, who has been raised by her cousin Mordecai. At Mordecai’s suggestion, she does not reveal her Jewishness within the harem. After a year of beauty treatments, she gets her night with the king and he happens to like her best. She becomes the new queen! It is a precarious position: she is queen to a king who disposed her predecessor on a whim, who also has a back-up harem for both sexual pleasure and a queen “bull pen.” (<–Intentional decision not to gender-neutralize made here.)

Meanwhile, her cousin Mordecai has been spending most of his time standing outside the palace gates, trying to glean information about Esther and determine if she is being treated well. In his station there, he overhears a plot to murder the king. He lets the authorities know, they investigate, it is founded, and the king is pleased (to be alive). During this time, the king also appoints a man named Haman to be his right-hand guy, and Haman is given so much authority that others are expected to bow down to him whenever they see him.

Mordecai does not bow down. For a story that doesn’t mention God, the book of Esther has a lot of implied Jewish theology. Jews through the ages have refused to bow down to foreign rulers, claiming God alone is their king. Haman, the king’s favored advisor, is just as much of a narcissistic, ill-tempered, short-sighted xenophobe as his king. He FREAKS OUT when Mordecai refuses to bow down, and he decides to execute all the Jews in the empire because of it.

Haman brings up his plan to the king, nuancing it just so – pointing out that there are a bunch of people in their country who aren’t fully assimilated. They have different customs, values, and rituals. They did not follow (only) the laws of the empire. Therefore, he said, let’s kill them. He even offers the king money for the honor of killing all the Jews. The king, being presented as a weak leader, immediately agrees, but declines the money. A decree goes out that on one particular day all the people of the empire are to kill any Jews in their midst.

That’s what it took to get us to this chapter. Mordecai knows about this plan, as do the Jews around the empire, but Esther does not. Mordecai has moved into mourning, perhaps in the tradition of the Ninevahites trying to change God’s mind, perhaps in mourning for a country where they believed themselves to be safe, perhaps in mourning for himself and his people at their imminent death with fear that no one would be left to mourn them. His mourning is sort of a problem though, because it means he can’t enter the palace and that means he can’t easily get word to Esther.

Her servants know that he is her family though, even if the palace doesn’t know the connection nor her heritage. They see him in mourning and tell her. She sends him clothes, presumably so that he’d wear them and come tell her what’s wrong. He refuses them, which means they have to have their whole conversation via messenger, and with Mordecai at the gate for lots of people to overhear!

Mordecai has a plan, and he sends it to Esther through her eunuch: she should go before the king and beg him for mercy for her people. Esther’s first response is… less than enthusiastic. She is queen, but she is in a precarious position as queen, there is a harem waiting to take her position, her predecessor got deposed, and the king hasn’t called for her for a month, meaning she’s not particularly in favor. She doesn’t think she’s likely to be able to change his mind, and anyway, even showing up before him without being called held an automatic death sentence – unless he absolved it. That is, Esther appears to like being alive, and suggests they work on another plan. She isn’t suicidal.

Many a preacher and scholar have condemned her for this response. They’ve called her weak and self-serving. They’ve called her privileged and prissy. I think she’s wise. If there had been another way, it would have been wiser to go with it. The likelihood of success in this plan was LOW. Mordecai thinks Esther is their best chance, and he pushes her – HARD- to go forward with it. He points out that if this law is followed they’ll both die. He says the now-famous words, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Those words have haunted anyone with any power or privilege since this story was written. They refuse any excuse we throw at them, and make real the importance of using power for good.

With that, Esther decides. She wasn’t suicidal, but she was courageous and willing to act. She wasn’t impetuous either though! She asked for prayer support, for the community to fast and pray on her behalf for 3 days and she offers that she and her servants will too. She wants to be prepared, to have a plan, to do it right, to give it her best shot. And she says words as famous as Mordecai’s in response to him. Her final words to him are, “If I perish, I perish.” I’m not clear how anyone could accuse Esther of lacking courage.

Now, I particularly love something about Esther’s courage. Esther got to the position she was in because she was PRETTY and PLEASING, which likely means that she was compliant. Her access to power came through traditionally feminine means. However, her use of her power came through her pure courage – which hasn’t always been attributed to the feminine. I love this because often women are told that either they can pretty or they can be smart and courageous. Esther is all of the above, and no one can take any of it away from her.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, after this chapter Esther goes before the king, and he does ofter her the pardon of the golden scepter. She uses his good will to invite him to a banquet in his honor, along with Haman. He comes. He has a great time. She uses his good will to invite him to ANOTHER banquet, just the three of them again. In the meantime the king OUT OF THE BLUE remembers that Mordecai had saved his life and decides to honor him, and does so. This manages to infuriate Haman all the more, which is fun. The second night the king asks Esther what she wants again, and she finally tells him. She says that someone has been trying to kill her people, and she’s terribly sad. The king is horrified, she accuses Haman, and the tide turns. The people are saved, Haman and their oppressors are not, and the Jews survive.

In The Interpreter’s Bible, White Crawford says, “Lacking public power, women have historically been able to gain individual or private strength only by successfully exploiting the male power structure around them, as Esther does so well, ”¹ and “Esther is a human heroine for a human situation and, as such, speaks powerfully to all oppressed people through the centuries.”² Esther’s power, and her subversiveness are profoundly different from Vashti’s. Esther shows up to gain power, Vashti refuses to show up for the same reason. Vashti’s powerful “no, I won’t” stands in contrast to Esther’s powerful “yes, I will.” Esther is, perhaps, not a traditional feminist heroine in that her beauty gains her access to power. Yet, she is a perfect subversive heroine in that she uses WHATEVER SHE HAS for the sake of what is necessary. What she needs is justice for her people.

Esther’s story exists to motivate people: to stand up for what is right, no matter the cost; to have courage; to use what we have for the sake of good; and to call each other to account. It reminds us that the work of building God’s kin-dom requires courage, and sometimes risk – and I appreciate that it doesn’t celebrate risk for risk’s own sake nor call on us to be suicidal. Esther doesn’t JUMP at the chance to risk her life for the sake of her people, she only does it when she is convinced it is strictly necessary. Sacrifice isn’t celebrated for its own sake, only for its strategic usefulness in achieving worthwhile ends.

It is not terribly common to face a situation like Esther’s, where the needs of the world require putting our own lives directly on the line. It is much more common to face little tiny decisions where our instincts for peace and being well-liked compete with our desires to speak truths and protect people in vulnerable situations. Courage isn’t just about facing external oppressors and those who can do us bodily harm, first and foremost it is about facing our innermost fears of who we “should” be and how we “should” act. It is often as much about being who we are as anything else! “For such a time as this” indicates using all that we are, all that we have become, and the fullness of our experiences to face the present. It speaks to becoming our fullest selfs, as an exercise in developing our “courage muscles.”

Or, as the author Marianne Williams puts it,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”³

Esther walked into that throne room beautiful, courageous, centered, and as a beloved child of God. She knew who she was, what she was about, and what she cared about enough to risk herself. She became liberated from fear, and in doing so has liberated others from fear into courage as long as the story has been told. May we follow in her footsteps. Amen

1Sidnie White Crawford “The Book of Esther,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999): p. 872

2Ibid, 872.

3Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles.”

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 20, 2016

Sermons

“The Hard Work of Departing” based on Genesis 16:7-15 and…

November 6, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

We are told that in order for life to exist three things are necessary: a source of energy, liquid water, and essential chemicals. To expand on the last of these, “Life as we know it contains specific combinations of elements including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that combine to form proteins and nucleic acids which can replicate genetic code.”¹ It could be that life could exist with a different combination of chemicals, but the theory remains: a source of energy, liquid water, and essential chemicals are necessary to life.

Those three things exist on this planet, and given that reality, life seems irrepressible. Tiny cracks in pavement or cement sidewalks sprout grass and weeds. Puddles that stand too long grow algae, wet wood grows mold and moss. I’ve been considering this unstoppable quality of life ever since I visited Bryce Cannon National Park and was motivated to take this picture. At one and the same time there is a huge evergreen growing at the base of “hoodoos” easily 5 times its size AND there are tiny little evergreens popping up at the top of hoodoos with remarkably little soil available to them. Yet, life won’t stop. The trees grow.

The Bible is a remarkably interesting document, and within its complexity and contradictions it sometimes feels like there are unquenchable truths gleaming through it. These truths are like the force of life on our planet – no matter what is done to try to stop them and no matter the strength of the circumstances that would prevent them – they prevail. Our two stories today tell profoundly of a God who cares about ALL people, while existing within a narrative about God choosing to focus on just one people.

The story going on here is supposed to be about God choosing Abraham. There is supposed to be a special bond with Abraham, and less so with Sarah, and yet the story keeps diverging to include and bless others. It is as if the universal love of God cannot be contained, even in the stories trying to tell the back-story of the people who long claimed God’s love was particularly for them.

Our two readings today are most likely two versions of the same story that were adapted differently with time. The one in Genesis 16, which we read first, is the version from the Southern Kingdom and much older. The one in Genesis 21 is the version from the Northern Kingdom. The Bible got edited A LOT. Most of the stories in the Torah (first 5 books) were passed on in oral tradition for centuries before they first got written down, and oral tradition naturally changes stories as it goes. Likely each version had changed over time in different ways to suit different time-relevant needs. Then, after being written down, the stories continued to get adapted, including by editors so that they would make a more coherent story. The people responsible for translating the Bible into English also made difficult decisions that functioned as further editing. The stories we have now are the complicated compilations of milenia, with many fingerprints on them.

That is, the two stories we read today are likely the same story with different fingerprints on them. Yet, they are edited into the current version of Genesis whereby they fill two different roles. They are, at one and the same time ONE story and TWO stories that happen sequentially. The editors aren’t perfect, in the second version Ishmael is a 17 year old that his mother carried away into the wilderness in her arms like a baby. (Oops.) But the work of the editors to make a coherent story makes both stories important, and not just the older one.

Throughout both stories, extraordinary things happen to Hagar. Explains of this are coming from the work of the amazing Biblical Scholar Phyllis Trible. In Genesis 16 Hagar has run away from Sarai/Sarah because of Sarai/Sarah’s harsh treatment of her. Hagar is a subversive woman choosing to run away, likely to die, and taking with her the heir that her slave-master husband wants most desperately. She reaches a point where she claims her life as her own, and she acts on it. In Genesis 16, Hagar is pregnant, and when she runs away she is near the border with Egypt, and finds a spring to sustain herself.

“The Hebrew word ‘spring’ (’ayn) also means ‘eye.’ The association resonates with Hagar’s having acquired a new vision of Sarai, and it anticipates the new vision of God that she will soon acquire. She, an Egyptian and a slave, is the first person in the Bible to whom such a messenger visits. Moreover, for the first time in the narrative a character speaks to Hagar (rather than about her) and uses her name. … The messenger promise Hagar innumerable descendants, thereby according her the special status of being the only woman in the Bible to receive such a promise. … The messenger affirms Hagar’s conceiving. She will bear a son and will name him Ishmael. Hagar becomes the first woman in the Bible to receive such an annunciation. … The messenger specifies the meaning of the name Ishamel (God hears): ‘For God heard your affliction.’”²

Now, unfortunately, in the form of this story that we have now, the messenger of God tells Hagar that God hears and knows her affliction, AND sends Hagar back to it anyway. The first act of subversiveness doesn’t get her free, although she is different afterward. Perhaps the only reason it doesn’t work is so that we can get to the second story though. After the words of the messenger, Hagar speaks for the second time, and from the way the story explains it, what happens is astounding. Trible puts it this way:

“Hagar’s next words bypass the messenger’s words. She does not comment on her continued affliction, the promise of descendants, the naming of her son, the meaning of his name, or his future. Nor does she comment on the God who hears. Instead she names the Lord who sees. The narrator introduces her words with a striking expression that accords her a power attributed to no one else in the Bible. Hagar ‘calls the name of the Lord who spoke to her’ (Gen 16:13*). She does not invoke the Lord; she names the Lord. She calls the name; she does not call up on the name. ‘You are El-roi [God of seeing],’ she says.”³

And then, after all of that astounding-ness, the text seems to revert to the mundane. “Hagar bore Abram a son.” (Genesis 15a). It isn’t as mundane as it seems. Trible says, “Hagar becomes the first woman in the ancestor stories to bear a child.”⁴ Mostly sons are attributed as coming to their fathers (as if that’s how it works.) But, that isn’t all. Hagar gets a lot of “firsts” in the Bible. Moving onto the Genesis 21 version, according to Trible “She is the first slave in Scripture to be freed. At the same time, she becomes the first divorced wife – banished by her husband at the command of his first wife and God.”⁵

In the Genesis 21 version of the story, Hagar prepares a deathbed for her son, and sits to wait for his death. The story is clearly about a very young child. Within this story, Hagar “becomes the first character in the Bible to weep.”⁶ According to Trible, “The God who she saw (r’h) long ago in Shur opens her eyes enabling her to see (r’h) a well of water at the site of the ‘well of seven’ (Beersheba).”⁷

Whether the stories are taken sequentially or as two versions of the same narrative, some themes emerge. First and foremost, God takes care of Hagar and cares about Hagar. She is given extraordinary access to the Divine, paralleling Abraham’s. Unlike any other person in the Bible, she gets to NAME God. Her survival, which is inherently threatened by being sent out alone into the barren wilderness of the desert, is assured by God who SHE renames “The God who sees.” It feels like she names God, “The God who sees ME” because that seems to more completely articulate the wonder spoken by Hagar. She knows she’s a woman, a foreigner, a slave, and in both stories she is profoundly alone and utterly powerless.

Yet, God sees her.

Isn’t it weird? Throughout the rest of the Bible, God is referred to as the “God of Abraham”, but “The God of Abraham” goes with Hagar to care for her. God refuses to be contained by the stories boundaries. God’s love and grace are too expansive to be held within the walls of the narrative. Hagar is meant to be placeholder for Sarah, simply the womb to the woman who matters – and THAT woman only matters enough to be the one to provide descendants. That’s how this is supposed to go, according to the story itself! Instead we get Hagar naming God in the desert.

God disrespects human separations, especially about who matters in the world, even within a story trying to articulate how the ancestors of Israel came to be in the world! Even in that story, the sparkle of God’s love for outsiders shines through. Hagar is one of the least empowered characters in the Bible, by any set of human standards, and she is one of the people given the most access to God in the Bible. Her experiences of God are more expressive and profound than Abraham’s.

That is, Hagar matters. Those like Hagar matter. The Native Americans whose tribal lands were taken by the United States matter, even when the USA disregards its treaties, even with energy companies want protests squelched, even when protesters get arrested. Those seeking to protect the land from the Dakotas Access Pipeline matter like Hagar matters. Women and girls who are used in sexual trafficking matter, even when they are being used to make profits for others, even when they are using drugs to try to escape, even when they are being raped for other people’s pleasures. Women and girls living in modern sexual slavery matter like Hagar matters. Refugees around the world fleeing violence and horrors matter, even when no country wants to welcome them in, even when they use all that they have to get onto ships that may sink, even when getting to a new country means they’ll be labeled ‘illegal.” Refugees and immigrants matter like Hagar matters.

If a refugee, a slave girl of an ancient nomadic herder was important enough to name God, then the world’s standards are COMPLETELY irrelevant. Everyone matters because Hagar matters. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“Life Needs” found at http://phillips.seti.org/kids/what-life-needs.html on 11/3/2016

2Phyllis Trible, “Ominous Beginnings for a Promise of Blessing” in Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, editors, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian PerspectivesTrible, (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2006) p. 40-41.

3Trible, 41.

4Trible, 41.

5Trible, 46.

6Trible, 49

7Trible, 49.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 6, 2016

Sermons

“Allowing the Boys to Live” based on Exodus 1:8-22

October 9, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the people are reminded that they were once slaves in Egypt. It is used to explain the Sabbath, or maybe just to explain why servants get to have Sabbath too in Ancient Israelite society. It is used in the commandments to take care of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner as well. Basically, the people are reminded time and time again to have compassion for the vulnerable because they were once a vulnerable population.

However, there aren’t many stories about the people being enslaved in Egypt, this is one of the few. The ones that exist all revolve around Moses, and this story is the prelude to the story of Moses’ birth. It is very difficult to tell if there is any authentic memory underneath this story, because it is an old enough story that there really shouldn’t be and yet there are such epically profound truths in it about what it means to be an oppressed people and what subversiveness looks like from within oppression that it feels more true than most stories in the Bible. This story may not be a factual accounting of a particular incident in history, but because it contains so many larger truths, I’m going to treat it as if it is, and let it speak for itself.

According to the end of Genesis, the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob had all moved down to Egypt during a famine after Joseph had become the right hand person to the Pharaoh. Joseph had urged them to come down, where he could ensure that they would have sufficient food and land to be safe. The story explained that Joseph had interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream and predicted 7 years of excellent harvests followed by 7 years of famine. Pharaoh was so pleased that he elevated Joseph to the 2^nd highest office in the land, and while there Joseph reigned over an agricultural policy that completely impoverished the entire nation and brought their wealth into the Pharaoh’s hands. The people ended up selling their livestock, their land, and then themselves for access to Joseph’s grain stores.

So the same guy who “saved” his family did so while utterly destroying the people of the nation he was – supposedly – serving. The new Pharaoh “didn’t know Joseph” (the Bible suggests this story happened 400 years later, so that would be reasonable). However, it is a bit ironic that the Hebrews were enslaved by the people who one of their forefathers had masterminded enslaving.

Perhaps that suggests that oppression breeds oppression, and oppressors should be careful. In any case, by the premises of this story, by this time the Egyptians were in full fledge oppressor roles and the Hebrews were enslaved by them and oppressed by them.

In our Bible Study we were struck by the similarities between the story in Exodus and the experiences of slaves here in the United States. There is something universal about this story, and it strikes cords through the eons.

Puah and Shiphrah are midwives who are given an immoral order. They are to kill all the baby boys of their people. The names Puah and Shiphrah are classically Hebrew names, and the text reminds us that they’re Hebrew as well as mentioning twice that they are in awe of God. (The “awe” is often translated “fear” but “awe” is a much better translation.) We are not supposed to miss that they’re Hebrew, or that they’re being ordered to kill the boys of their own ethnic group.

It took me entirely too long to figure out why the boys were to be killed. I was thinking of males as especially strong laborers in the fields, and wondered why you’d want to have fewer of them. If you wanted fewer descendants, I thought, why not kill the girls who have the babies and leave the workers? Our Bible Study participants responded that the death of the male babies meant that the females would be sexually available to the Egyptians, and they’d presume that as half-Egyptian – the next generation would be more pliable and “better.” The participants in the Bible Study figured this out by considering American slave history.

We also noticed the language of fear created around the oppressed group, and the dehumanization of them. The Hebrews are called “powerful” and “numerous” and the myth is that they would do harm for the Egyptians, a myth used to justify enslaving them. It is suggested that they could be spies, or fight against Egypt in a war, or abandon their posts of much needed labor. Therefore, the myth of the oppressors says, we must enslave them and double down on the harm we do to them to keep them below us.

Oppression is very powerful, and human oppressors are capable of extensive harm, but there is a resiliency to life itself, and it fights back when life is oppressed. This story says that the more the Hebrews were oppressed the more they multiplied. I think we’re supposed to believe this was God’s hand at work; I think it is more the myth of the Egyptians continuing to justify evil. In any case, both the Hebrews of this story and the African American slaves oppressed in the United States suffered great losses as a community – losses of life and identity, language and culture, dignity and hope. Yet, the communities found ways to fight back, reform, and try again and again. This story suggests that the power to do so came from God, as do many of the songs and stories that remain from the American slave era. God supports the experience of the oppressed in overcoming oppression.

The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, were unusual women. It doesn’t seem reasonable that only two midwives could have been sufficient for all the births of the Hebrew women, so more likely they were the LEADERS of the midwives. It may even be that they were also midwives to the Egyptian women, as they imply they know the difference between each set of women giving birth. They are BRILLIANT, DEFIANT, and seemingly FEARLESS (although I’d stake a bet that they were terrified even while they kept their cool.)

They are given a direct order by the most powerful man in their country to kill the baby boys of their community and they don’t! If it is true that they were the leaders of the midwives, they give counter instructions. In any case, the voices of all the midwives are united in the shared voices of Puah and Shiphrah, and their voices respond to this immoral command with “no.” They just don’t! It makes me wonder how they had been formed as humans, and what empowered them to know better. The text says it was that they knew God, and I hope it is true for all who know God that our relationship with God empowers us to refuse to follow unjust orders, but I’ve seen it go other ways. How is it that knowing the Holy One can form us into people who more deeply believe in the sacredness of life? How is that being present to God helps us overcome our fears of the powers of the world? How were the midwives able to be so brave? I wish I knew, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God can help us overcome our fears and resist the power of oppression.

Did the midwives refuse the Pharaoh because he was Egyptian? Because the order was so atrocious? Because someone had already been training them on resisting oppression? Was it about who gave it, how terrible it was, or about who they were? How were they strong enough to simply refuse? And how were they wise enough NOT to say “no” to the Pharaoh (who would have killed them and replaced them with someone who would do what he said) but instead to simply not to it? I’d love to know, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God helped them overcome the power of the oppressor.

When they get called back to account for the live baby Israelite boys, they have a crafty answer in hand. They give a compliment to the femininity of the Egyptian women while using the fear of the Hebrews and assumptions about them to their benefit. They respond along the lines of “your women are more feminine and fragile while ours are more like animals.” To be precise, they say, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” You see? The answer they give manipulates the Pharaoh by complimenting his ethnic group and denigrating theirs, and it is believable to him. They save their boys. To do it they have to imply terrible things about the lack of humanity of the women they were related to, and they did because it was totally worth it.

Puah and Shiphrah aren’t the only ones in history who have played the assumptions of oppressors against the oppressors to gain freedom for the oppressed, but they did it as well as anyone.

Now, the incredible actions of these subversive women to save the lives of Israelite boys ended with things worse off than they started – sort of. The midwives had been told to kill the babies, the tactics then were supposed to be somewhat hidden and covert. Their actions forced his hand to make the death sentence to baby boys OVERT and visible. He continues to order the death of the baby boys, and he makes everyone responsible for it, since he hadn’t been able to control the midwives. In the short term, that meant more babies died.

But in the long term, it meant that the Hebrews lived. The overt action of the Pharaoh led to more subversive actions – by Moses’ mother and sister – and by Pharaoh’s own daughter. The fear of Pharaoh that led to his orders for murder resulted in Moses being raised in his own house – an Israelite boy who he had ordered killed. When Pharaoh raised the stakes it ended up backfiring on him and he eventually lost all his slaves.

It seems important to take note of how it must have felt to be Puah and Shiphrah in the moment when Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew babies to be thrown into the Nile. It would have felt like failure, right? They took risks with their own lives and likely the lives of those who worked with them to save the babies. They took morality and the love of God more seriously than the power of the Pharaoh/King. They fought with their wits about them for the well-being of their people and they won…

Until the Pharaoh made it worse and raised the stakes. They tried to save those baby boys and allow them to live, and then Pharaoh orders everyone to kill the baby boys and the organizational methods of the midwives can’t protect the babies anymore. Puah and Shiphrah must have been dismayed. Yet, the tactics they used ended up in one generation with the freedom of their people – instead of the death of the males of a generation and the rape of that generation’s women. Yes, things got worse. That’s what happens when you fight back against oppression. The oppressors make things worse first. Which means that when women – and men – are forced to use subversive tactics they have to be prepared for things to get much worse before they get better.

In The United Methodist Church right now, things are getting worse. The many brave people who have refused to follow unjust rules in the church have upset the status quo. Those who are committed to excluding LGBTQ people from full participation in the Body of Christ are furious that they can’t make people follow the rules. As they double-down on exclusion and tightening rules and punishments, they push the UMC toward schism. This weekend in Chicago a group of 1700 people deeply committed to exclusion gathered, and formally launched a para-Church structure they are calling the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Their first demand is that the Church end the resistance to exclusion once and for all. Since we all know that the progressives fighting for inclusion will not be silenced that is not possible. They suggest, that if resistance can’t be silenced that a plan needs to be developed to divide the denomination. Things are getting worse.

That means we are on the road to ending oppression. Thanks be to God for the midwives and all those willing and able to follow their lead. What a joy it is, in God’s holy name, to be part of ending oppression in any form. 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

October 9, 2016

Sermons

“Shewdly” based on Luke 16:1-13

September 18, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Most Biblical scholars are utterly perplexed by our Gospel parable of the week, they tie themselves in knots trying to make sense of a story they perceive to be a moral out-lier. The ones who are able to make sense of it do so by making it sound a bit like this little story. The story MIGHT be true, and it goes like this:

Henry Ford made a trip to Ireland to visit the place of his ancestry. While he was there, two trustees from the hospital in the town he was visiting came to him asking for a donation. He agreed to give them five thousand dollars, which at the time was no small gift. In the paper the next morning, Ford saw the headline proclaiming that the generous American philanthropist Henry Ford had given fifty thousand dollars to the local hospital. As you can imagine, Ford was shocked and called the hospital to track down the two trustees he had met with. When they got to his hotel, he confronted the men about the massive mistake printed in the paper. The trustees apologized, and said they would be calling the paper immediately to correct the mistake and print a retraction, letting everyone know that Henry Ford had not given not fifty thousand, but only five thousand. Instead, Ford promised to give them another forty-five thousand. But, he gave them a stipulation: that a marble arch be erected at the hospital entrance with a plaque that read, “I was a stranger and you took me in.”¹

To be fair to most of the scholars, today’s text is complicated: it is a confusing story, it is a convoluted passage, and it has many layers of meaning. The author of the gospel of Luke – who for the sake of ease from this point forward we’ll call Luke- creates some issues for us. According to the Jesus Seminar, Luke merged together a combination of source material: 1) a parable Jesus is highly likely to have stated (vs. 1-8a); 2) a saying that probably comes substantially from Jesus’ lips (vs. 13)–neither of which is repeated in any of the other gospels; and 3) explanatory material provided by the Luke, which includes further statements placed on Jesus’ lips (vs. 8b-12, and 14).

That is, the parable likely ends with “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly”. The Jesus seminar puts the parable in RED, indicating that they think it was likely authentic to Jesus. They put the final saying, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.“ in pink, thinking it likely reflects something Jesus would have said. They distrust it a bit because of the way that Luke is using it. The stuff about trusting people to be honest in small and large matters, and using ill-gotten gains are all LUKE. It is OK to hear things from Luke, I love Luke, but it is important to separate out what Jesus was likely doing with this parable from what Luke was.

In order to understand what Jesus was likely talking about, it would be helpful to understand more about the laws and economic systems in Roman Palestine. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh in Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels help us out with this and win the prize as our favorite commentators of the week! They say, “Rich landowners frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and liquidate debts in the name of the master …”²The manager in the parable was such an estate manager. We’re figuring he wasn’t a slave, since he has to worry about where he’d live after he loses this job. It also seems worth pointing out that the landowner is TOLD that the manager has been mismanaging, but we don’t get any evidence of the truth of the statement, nor is the manager given the chance to defend himself. It could be hearsay, but the manager is vulnerable to the accusation and now has to fend for himself.

Back to Malina and Rohrbaugh, “Traditional Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss incurred by his employer for which he was responsible. He could also be put in prison to extort the funds from his family. If the dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been seen as damaging the reputation of the master. Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply dismissed.”³ That is, the landowner is being unusually generous with the manager. Remember this because we’re going to come back to it. The commentators make it clear that the timing was IMMEDIATE, “In the case of the dismissal of an agent, this dismissal was effective as soon as the agent was informed of it, and from that time forward nothing the agent did was binding on the person who employed him. The plan worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his dismissal got back to the village.”⁴ The manager had to act with the element of surprise as well as with haste.

And act he does! He gives away A LOT of money!! Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest one amount saying, “The size of the debts involved is extraordinary. Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of wheat.”⁵ The Jesus seminar translated this as 500 gallons of oil and a thousand bushels of wheat.⁶ In any event, it was a tremendous amount. Malina and Rohrbaugh continue, “Storytelling hyperbole may be involved or, as recent investigations have suggested, the debts are large enough that they may be the tax debts of an entire village. The amount of debt forgiven, though different in percentage terms, is in both cases approximately 500 denarii.”⁷We know from other parables and stories of Jesus that a denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer, so we’re talking about each of these amounts being 1.5 years worth of a laborer’s wages, or about $28,000 based on today’s minimum wage in New York.

The manager IS shrewd. He doesn’t panic at the idea of being homeless and without resources, whether or not he was guilty of the dishonest management he was accused of. He uses the landowner’s softness against him, and for the common good! Back to our commentators, “Having discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or demanding repayment, the manager depends upon a similar reaction in the scheme he cooks up. It is a scheme that places the landowner in a particular bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks serious alienation in the village, where villagers would have already been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the manager for having made the ‘arrangement’) as a noble and generous man.”⁸Now do you see how it is like the Ford story? The rich man ends up being far more generous than he intends to be, in large part because he couldn’t easily take back claims others made of his generosity.

In vs. 8a, Jesus reflects the landowner praising the manager, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly.” By extension, Jesus was praising the actions of the manager as well–actions that brought debt relief to an entire village. The first listeners would have had an easy time identifying the themes of mercy and debt jubilee in the story, and knowing what Jesus was praising. Still, the praise given to the manager for his shrewd (and likely illegal) actions would have made the parable challenging. Jesus praises someone for tricking someone else out of a large some of money. The common good was met, but standard economic thinking suggests the landowner was cheated. Perhaps it is worth noting the the softness of the landowner, his preference for his employee, made space for his unintentional generosity. It might suggest that God is able to work with whatever softness we do have to create greater good!

Given the social-science context for the story, it sounds a lot like others of Jesus’ parables! In fact, it sounds a lot like the instruction to turn the other cheek (which happens to be the saying of Jesus that the Jesus seminar MOST believes to be authentic.

Luke records that saying this way, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also”. Scholars have taught us that this was a fantastically subversive action. Superiors hit inferiors with a backhand, while a front hand slap was indicative of hitting an equal. Because the left hand was used to wipe in ancient times, only the right hand was used for everything else. To turn the other cheek was not to become a doormat – it was to requires that if another hit happened, it was one that acknowledged you as an equal! It rejected the system of oppression.

It seems that the “parable of the shrewd manager” is another expression of this philosophy of rejecting systems of oppression (here including undue tax burdens and interest) and creatively turning them on their heads!! The shrewd manager found a way to care for himself, take care of his village, and make his former boss look good. Talk about a win/win! However, it took disregarding some rules/laws to make it happen, and the greater good was worth it. That’s what we think Jesus was trying to communicate with this passage. We are still left with the question of what Luke was trying to communicate with this passage–not just with the parable but with the passage as a whole.

According to Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, commentator in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, an important contextual piece to be aware of is that Luke was likely writing to a wealthy Greco-Roman Christian audience. Likely Luke-Acts was written to and for his patron, Theophilus, named at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. In this part of the narrative of Luke-Acts, Jesus was attempting to teach his disciples and followers all that was most important for them to know before his “date with destiny"in Jerusalem.⁹

Vs. 8b-14 speak to Luke’s interpretation of this parable. A key theme in this interpretation is money/wealth and the wise use of it, which is so central to Luke’s understanding of Jesus that it shows up no fewer than 8 times in the Gospel.¹⁰ This was raised by Alan Culpepper who wrote the brilliant commentary on Luke in the New Interpreter’s Bible.¹¹

This was an audacious message for Luke to deliver to his benefactor and his benefactor’s rich friends. To the end of making a fateful choice about whether or not to follow Jesus, Luke pushed them hard on the use of their wealth. Luke challenged them in a way that we don’t often get today. The line about not being able to serve two masters tends to either get ignored by modern day audiences when they have wealth or misinterpreted by others to mean that accumulation of money is inherently sinful. On the contrary, Luke’s audience was challenged into decisive, bold, creative actions–not a theological position on whether money is good or bad.

Unlike perhaps most of us, they were more likely to identify with the landowner and his experience of being manipulated into generosity. Luke pushed them to consider the steward, who in our parable faced not only the loss of his position but of his livelihood! He acted decisively, boldly, and creatively! He acted in a way that would have brought mercy and jubilee to an entire village and love to his master, while costing his master a LOT of money. Luke’s audience faced a situation that required bold, decisive, creative actions: whether or not they would follow the way of Jesus. This choice was encumbered with life-altering implications for how they used their wealth. Hanging onto it meant rejecting Jesus, rejecting God, and rejecting eternal life. Following Jesus meant something more and other than just giving their money away. It meant using wealth as a tool for mercy and jubilee, for bringing about God’s kin-dom on earth. It meant upending an economic system of usery and exploitation. It meant upending the fabric of the existing social contract.

Today, we face the same choice. Today we are relentlessly bombarded with messages about being consumers and needing to shop now and later today and tomorrow and every day so we can consume and needing to work in the highest paying jobs possible so we can support that consumption. Our society and economic system compel us into lives built on the exploitation of the poor, the marginalized and of this planet until they have nothing left to give us. The myths of our society are designed to silence objections: the cries for relief of the poor are said to be class warfare, global climate change is called a “theory”, the well-being of the economy is used as a proxy for the common good, and – of course – we’re told that any real change to our economy or the abuse of our planet would cost jobs, bankrupt businesses, and waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. That is, we’re told in many ways (large and small) that we can’t afford to be a just society because it would upend our society as we know it. This misses the point that not only can’t we afford to continue life as we know it, and upending society is going to have to happen to create an actually just society, but we are called to a higher way of being and a higher way of living in relation to each other.

Are we bold enough to follow Jesus? Are we willing to rock the boats of stability that keep the oppressed down? Are we decisive enough to follow Jesus? Are we willing and able to differentiate between the desires of consumerism and the needs of the kin-dom? Are we creative enough to follow Jesus? Can we see through the claims the economic system makes clearly enough to see how the system steals from the poor to give to the rich?

Finally, are we shrewd enough to follow Jesus? Given the broken systems that oppress, are we shrewd enough to mess them up? Jesus praises the shrewd and rewards bold, decisive, creative action. Let’s go and do! Amen

—

1Story told by Nichole Torbitzky in “September 18, 2016-Proper 20 (Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost)” on the website “Process and Faith”http://processandfaith.org/lectionary-commentary/september-18-2016-proper-20-eighteenth-sunday-after-pentecost/” accessed on 9/17/16.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292.

3^{Malina and Rohrbaugh, 292.}

4Malina and Rohrbaugh, 292.

5Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

6Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Autthentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), pp. 557-9.

7Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

8Malina and Rohrbaugh, 293.

9Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, “Luke-Acts, Propaganda for World Mission: The Church’s Internal and External Relations” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Howard Clark Kee, et. al. (Cambridge University Press: USA, 1997) pp. 519-523.

10Jesus denounces the greed of Pharisees in Luke 11:39-41. A rich fool forfeits his soul in 12:13-21. Jesus speaks of a prudent steward in 12:42-48. Jesus tells a parable in which the outcasts are called to a great banquet in 14:15-24. Jesus speaks of the cost of discipleship and giving up all possessions in 14:33. And finally, the parable of the prodigal son in 15:11-32 immediately precedes today’s reading.

11^{R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1995).}

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron and Kevin M. Nelson

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 18, 2016