“Utterly Ridiculous Actions” based on Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m
going to start by answering Jesus’ presumptive questions, because I
know the answers. It is really exciting to know the answers to
questions Jesus asks, because they are usually trick questions, but I
have these. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one
of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after
the lost sheep until he finds it?”

NO.
– What are you crazy? Have you met sheep? They are seriously the
dumbest creatures God ever created (ok, fine, they are tied with
deer). If you leave 99 sheep behind while you go look for one that
got lost, when you come back, you’ll have 70, if you are lucky. I
mean, I was a camp counselor, and we went over the “lost camper
plan” and step one as a counselor is that you STAY WITH THE CAMPERS
YOU STILL HAVE. (The support staff looks for the lost camper, you
work on not losing another.)

NO,
you don’t go after that sheep. Not unless you have a really good
team backing you up, and it doesn’t sound like you do.

Next
question? “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses
one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search
carefully until she finds it? When she has found it she calls
together her (female) friends and neighbors …” Um. No one.
Because a silver coin is a days wage for a laborer and it is
basically enough to buy half a loaf of bread, and no one can afford
to throw a party for their neighborhood because they just found a
coin that would cover 1/20^th of that cost. I’ll agree
that she’d search for the coin, it is after all 1/10^th of
her life savings, but NO she wouldn’t throw a party. Are you nuts?

These
two parables feel like Jesus is doing a really bad Childrens’ Time
with all of us, waiting for us to object with the most basic of
reasoning, and then laughing at his presumed stupidity.

The
problem is that I’ve been preaching regularly for 10 years now, and I
know not to trust it when Jesus appears to be an idiot. I’ve learned
that he only plays dumb to get our attention. So, what is really
going on here? It seems that the key to understanding Luke 15 is in
paying attention to the opening paragraph. “Now
all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This
fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’“ (Luke 15:1-2,
NRSV)

Curious.
The New Testament seems to assume that some people are sinners and
others aren’t. Modern Christianity seems to assume that all people
are sinners (although if we look at actions and not just words, there
is an assumption that some people are WORSE sinners than others, but
no one cops to that). What did it mean to call some people sinners
in those days? R. Alan Culpepper, who wrote the commentary on Luke
for the New Interpreter’s Bible says “Those designated as ‘sinners’
by the Pharisees would have included not only persons who broke moral
laws but also those who did not maintain ritual purity practiced by
the Pharisees.”¹
I’m mesmerized by the idea of sin being finite enough that many
people wouldn’t qualify as sinners. It might take some of the guilt
off of life if, at least once in a while, we “weren’t sinners.”

The
so -called sinners are set up in contrast to the Pharisees and
scribes, people who were religious insiders. (To be precise,
Pharisees weren’t religious insiders at the time of Jesus, but they
were when Luke was writing his gospel, so we’re going to live with it
for today.) The religious insiders were concerned about the access
the religious OUTSIDERS were getting.

I
chose to use this text this week because I didn’t understand it at
all, and I took a leap of faith that some commentators would be able
to help me with it. Sometimes life works out exactly as planned, and
I discovered AMAZING work in the commentary series Feasting on the
Word by Charles Cousar (Professor Emeritus of New Testament at
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.) and Penny Nixon
(Senior Minister at Congregational Church of San Mateo, United Church
of Christ). The rest of this sermon is indebted to their genius, and
largely to their words 😉

“Often
this parable unfolds in a way that emphasizes the redemption of the
‘lost,’ but it is the ‘already found’ that the parable is meant to
bring to repentance.”²
Issues arise because in verse one the tax collectors and sinners are
coming near, and the ones who think they have an exclusive right to
be there are getting antsy. Jesus seems to respond that the ones who
are “lost” are already a part of the flock. They are lost out of
the flock, or in the house. They already count.

The
two parables are the same idea, they repeat for the sake of getting a
point across, or maybe because it is fun to have God as both a
shepherd (hated by Luke’s time) and a woman – and make most people
anxious at once. The Pharisees and scribes are said to be mad
because Jesus ate with sinners, which according to Luke he’s done all
of once by this point. They’re annoyed, “especially because the
sinners are ‘hearing’ Jesus. ‘Hearing’ for Luke is a sign of
repentance and conversion. Like the prophet Jonah in the Hebrew
Scriptures, the Pharisees and scribes do not take kindly to
the possible repentance of those who lie outside their definition of
the redeemable.”³

I
fear they’re not the only ones who feel that way. Have you
heard about the Wesleyan Covenant Association? They’re an emerging
group within the United Methodist Church who are trying to take
Luke’s “Pharisees and scribes” as their models for behavior.
Emerging as in their initial meeting is in October in Chicago. Their
stated goals start with “Connect
evangelical, orthodox United Methodists with one another in a common
ministry of the gospel,” and culminate with “To uphold and
promote biblical teaching on marriage and human sexuality.” (You
might be shocked to learn that they don’t actually mean “biblical
teaching on marriage and human sexuality” as I understand it.
They mean excluding the LGBTQ community from the Body of Christ.) The
Wesleyan Covenant Association is designated to be an alternative
structure that can become a new denomination, based on the litmus
test of believing that excluding God’s children from the church is
the best way forward. That is, they
do not take kindly to the welcome of people who lie outside of their
definition of worthy of God’s love, and they are willing to break a
denomination over it and define themselves by it.

⁴

Unfortunately,
the Wesleyan Covenant Association is NOT the only group of people who
immediately come to mind as trying to mold themselves after the
scribes and Pharisees rather than after Jesus. On this 15^th
anniversary of the attacks of September 11^th,
2001, we live in a country where many people are calling for the
exclusion of Muslims, the registration of Muslims, and closed doors
to the refugees of the world. We have a repeat of the ideology that
existed before World War II and kept many Jewish families from
receiving the welcome they needed to stay alive, except this time
with Muslims. Instead of learning the lesson that violence begets
violence and the world needs food, peace, and hope from the attacks
of September 11^th,
we have people calling for greater violence, less humanity, and
thereby the creation of more and more desperate people willing to
join extremist groups. Our sisters and brothers in faith who know
God through the teachings of Mohammad are particularly vulnerable
today, as they grieve with the rest of America.

Getting
back to the deceptively complicated parables, both the sheep and the
coin are passive. As one commentator explains, “A
lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do
so, out of fear. Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild
brush, hiding from predators. It is so fearful in its seclusion that
it cannot help its own rescue. The sheep is immobilized, so the
shepherd must bear its full weight to bring it home.”⁵
Furthermore according to Cousar, “Neither a sheep nor a coin can
repent. The issue of the
two parables, therefore, is not to call sinners to repentance, but to
invite the righteous to join the celebration.”

Let
me say that again. “The issue of the two parables, therefore, is
not to call sinners to repentance, but to invite the righteous to
join the celebration.” He goes on to quote Alan Culpper who said,
“’Whether one will join the celebration is all-important, because
it reveals whether one’s relationships are based on merit or mercy.
Those who find God’s mercy offensive cannot celebrate with the
angels when a sinner repents. They exclude themselves from God’s
grace.’ The Pharisees and the scribes put themselves outside of the
circle of divine grace by the way in which they grumble at Jesus’
fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. There is no joy or
celebration, no partying or delight, among Pharisees and scribes.
Even though invited to the reception given in behalf of the joyous
shepherd/woman, they cannot bring themselves to come; thereby, like
the elder brother (15:25-32), they are exposed.”⁶
Indeed, when Amy Jill Levine was in Schenectady speaking on the
Parable of the Prodigal (which immediately follows these parables),
she said that the point of the parable is the question of if the
older brother will accept grace or reject it after all. It therefore
raises the question about ourselves as well.

*Cough*
Wesleyan Covenant Association *Cough* (Seriously, this is so easy I
feel guilty about it.)

I
have one more gem to share with you from these wise commentators.
Nixon asks about the sheep and the coin, “Is it a search to save or
to welcome? It is one thing to ‘save’ and another to ‘welcome.’
Religious insiders are more comfortable with saving the lost than
welcoming those whom they perceive to be lost. Saving is
about power, whereas welcoming is about intimacy.
Saving is primarily focused on the individual, whereas welcoming is
focused on the community.”⁷
*SNAP*

These
texts present God as the hound-dog of heaven, searching out anyone
who would for any reason believe they are not welcome or not worthy
and proving that person wrong! All we are asked to do is
celebrate with God when goodness transforms the lives of those
who desperately need it! All we have to do is rejoice with God! And
apparently, sometimes, that’s too hard. It is easier to think of
people as needing to be saved (and assimilated into our way of doing
things), and harder to make space to truly welcome all of God’s
children and allow them to impact our lives in deep ways.

But
that’s the call: to be welcoming and open to intimate friendship and
relationship with all God’s children, and to rejoice when the welcome
is received. May God’s grace guide us to be the ones who are able to
rejoice! Amen

1R.
Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New
Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon Press: 1995), 9: 295.

2G.
Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

3Charles
B. Cousar, “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in Feasting
on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 69.

4 http://www.wesleyancovenant.org/purposebeliefs
accessed on 9/10/16. The access date is especially important as the
wording has already been known to change without notice 😉

5Helen
Montgomery Debevoise “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 15:1-10” in
Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 4,
edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010) p. 70

6Cousar
(quoting Alan Culpepper in “Luke” in the New Interpreter’s
Bible, 1995).

7Nixon,
71.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 11, 2016

Sermons

“All Messed Up” based on Acts 16:16-39

May 8, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

This story is all messed up. To begin with, Paul is a very questionable hero. He doesn’t seem to act in order to benefit the slave girl. In fact, the text says explicitly that he was “very much ANNOYED” by her and that’s why he healed her. Annoyance – not compassion, love, or concern for her well-being, annoyance.

Truth be told, the story doesn’t really seem to care about the slave girl either. The slave girl is not named, the text does not indicate that Paul ever spoke to HER directly, and it does not tell us what happens to her after she was “healed.” She’s a narrative means to an end.

The spirit in her is used to tell us that the followers of Jesus’s way were in fact slaves of the Most High God. Her status as a slave may exist primarily as a narrative device, whereby the enslaved is able to name the slave-to-God status of others. While it is suggested that her owner’s were angered by losing the money she had been making them, the accusations they made against Paul and Silas don’t even have anything to do with that.

Of the girl herself we know very little. She was a slave. She had a spirit of divination. It made her owners a lot of money. She followed around Paul and his company, and her truth-telling about them got annoying after a few days, so Paul ordered the spirt of out of and it came out. Then she wasn’t worth as much money.

Those aren’t terribly human facts to know about someone. We know nothing of her motivation, although her motivation could reasonably be assumed within the confines of the story, to be the spirit and not her! We don’t know what happens next for her. Is she beaten because she is now worthless? What back-breaking labor does she land in? How old is she anyway? What other work may she be used for now? What she grateful? Was the spirit something that benefitted her life or harmed it (go with the story on this one, we can’t change the story, so we might as well accept its premises for a moment).

Not only do we know nothing about her, we also don’t know why Paul failed to SEE her or have any mercy on her. If he had the power to take away the spirit, then maybe he could have done so earlier. On the other hand, having the spirit made her more valuable, which may have improved her life. But he doesn’t seem to CARE and neither does the story.

At best, this part of the passage might just be a retelling of the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge.

[Jesus said,] ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (Luke 18:2-5)

Paul gets worn down by a spirit, and orders the spirit out of slave girl. Like the judge, he doesn’t act out of justice or obligation, he uses his power because he is ANNOYED.

Later, when he gets out of jail because of his inborn status as a Roman Citizen, he demands HIS rights as a Roman Citizen, and is upset that he was mistreated because HE deserves better because of his power in the world. Paul demands a public apology, but only for how he was treated. He doesn’t ask about her status, or indicate that she mattered.

In Acts, Peter is presented as “the new Jesus.” Paul isn’t. Thanks be to God. I don’t know what Peter would have done in this case, nor can I really speak to what Jesus would have done. Yet, I’d like to believe they would have SEEN the girl, and not just been annoyed by the spirit. I want to think they’d worry about her life too. Stories of Jesus seem to imply that lives matter, even the lives of people who have been beaten down by life.

In this story, Paul fails to do so.

And yet, he doesn’t. The second half of the story is different from the first half. The interaction with the jailer is amazing, beautiful, miraculous, and shows an INCREDIBLE amount of empathy for the very person who was oppressing them. Paul and Silas cared about the jailer, and the ways that they responded to the jailer saved his life and showed him a new way of being. The way that Paul responds to the jailer is exemplary. He SEES him and cares about him, without even knowing him. That feels like how Jesus would have handled it.

The story of the earthquake in jail, and the prisoners staying put is pretty darn weird. I suppose Paul knew that the authorities would figure things out sooner rather than later, so he wasn’t particularly concerned. Yet in most cases in human history, the cycle of oppression wins out. One person or group oppresses another, and if the oppressed ever get a chance to lead, they respond with oppression as well. Prisoners taking gentle care of their jailers breaks the cycle of oppression. That being said, as a GENERAL rule, I don’t think this is a model we have to follow. It is a good thing to keep in mind when you already know you are SAFE, but not necessarily a good choice every time.

Paul’s actions in prison were very effective in proclaiming that the way of Jesus was different than the ways of the world. The jailer converted. Paul didn’t, however, call out the economic injustice, the inherent human dignity of the slave girl, or even the position of jailer in a system of oppression. Paul’s actions mostly left things the same, and didn’t lead people to fuss over them, other than worrying about if they’d get in trouble for misidentifying a Roman Citizen.

I think he could have done better. I think these stories are all messed up. That’s a relief! It indicates that sometimes the people of God mess up, and although we are doing our best, we fail to see the most loving way forward. Sometimes we don’t notice the calls for justice around us. Sometimes we’re just plain wrong! Often we don’t SEE.

Yet, God continues to work through Paul through the rest of Paul’s life. The writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles has told some pretty important stories for the history of human kind. That is, the failure of Paul and the story to get it right isn’t the final answer. (Not that this helps the slave girl one little bit. Nothing does.)

Yet, it doesn’t stop here. Paul kept developing, and learning more deeply how to love. He would eventually write the famous words to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29) Paul would come to know that slaves have value and that women have value. Perhaps if he looked back on his life, he would have regretted how he acted on that one day, but it didn’t define his life.

We can make mistakes, and learn to do better later. It’s normal. It’s human. In fact, we can’t do otherwise! God is certainly capable of forgiving us, and that should lead us to believe that we can be capable of forgiving ourselves.

want to share God’s love and God’s light at General Conference, even with those with whom I disagree. I don’t want to compromise, and I WILL NOT compromise on the inherent dignity and worthiness of all of God’s people regardless of sexual preference or gender identity. (Obviously.) And yet, the people who stand in opposition to inclusion are not the enemy. They simply don’t know better – yet. Many of us in this room have struggled along the journey to get to inclusion. (Some of us who are younger, had open-minded parents, and attended great churches in our youth didn’t have to struggle, but that makes us much more lucky than wise.) If those of us in this room, who now so consistently act out of regard for the wholeness of your sisters and brothers who are LGBTQI, were once not so sure, then it is clear that God’s grace can win in the hearts of others as well.

No one’s mind will be changed by yelling though, nor by nastiness. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Love is the only way forward, especially in the face of hatred and fear. As I get ready to leave, I’m pondering how to make space for God’s love to flow through me to drive out hate. I wonder how I can serve as a light.

Now, as previously discussed, I am convinced that the time has come for acts of disobedience and non-violent direct action that will disrupt the normal system. I believe that The United Methodist Church acts as an oppressor doing harm to beloved children of God, and I believe (as I have believed throughout my life) that I am to be part of changing that. The question is how to keep my heart and mind peaceful, steady, and focused on love while I do so. People are going to say terrible things, and things are at times going to go terribly wrong.

But the people who say terrible things are misguided, not evil. The things that will go terribly wrong are not permanent. God is love, God is creator, God is powerful beyond measure. God’s will win out in the end – either through The United Methodist Church or The United Methodist Church will die so that God’s love can live. Nothing else is the final answer. Nothing else can be. God’s love always wins. That is, the Love of God will win out in the end, no matter how much human beings at the church at large mess it up right now.

Two of my favorite prayer practices interrelate. I’ve mentioned them before, but it is worth a reminder today. One prayer practice is to breath in love and breath out stress, fear, and anything that holds you back from love/God. That one is wonderfully de-stressing. The other is to breath in the pain of the world, and allow God to transform it within you, so that you can breath out love.

It is my intention to pray that prayer over and over again. It is my intention to try to live that prayer through the next two weeks. When you are able, I invite you to join me. When the pain becomes too much to bear it may help. (If it doesn’t, return immediately to the other one and soak up love until you can go forward again!) We are, all of us, called to be God’s love and God’s light in the world. We are to participate in co-creating the world with God. We are to use our power to bring in the kin-dom. We are able to participate in changing hate into love.

Let us breathe. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 8, 2016

Sermons

“Shouting Stones” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-19; Luke 19:28-40

March 20, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I heard a story once of a United Methodist Church invited to be a part of a local Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It was a small church, they didn’t feel like they make much of a difference, but they were invited and they went! A few weeks ahead of time they’d left fliers along the parade route letting residents know that they’d be collecting underwear and socks for kids as they paraded. When the day came it was a bit cold and definitely cloudy. They were near the end of the parade, and not all of them wanted to go after all. But they did it anyway.

The parade route wound through a residential area and when the church group passed by (complete with a BIG sign), residents would yell after them “hey! Wait! I’ve got something for you!” and they’d watch as people ran into their houses and ran back out with the gifts for children. It was amazing, as not all of the residents seemed to have much to share.

Near the end of the route, standing in front of a gas station, came a young boy carrying as many cans of soup as he could hold. He stuck them in the arms of the ones closest to him and said, “These are for the hungry children!” The church didn’t correct him, they took the gift and added it to their pile.

Afterward, they reflected on their experience and realized that most of the people on that route weren’t church goers, didn’t have much to spare, and they might have though wouldn’t care about kids needing new socks … and yet they RAN to give their gifts! They didn’t want to be left behind. They -and that one young boy with the soup especially – CARED and they had gifts they wanted to offer. The church had made it possible for the people to give gifts they wanted to give!

In so many ways, that Saint Patrick’s Day parade embodies the spirit of Palm Sunday!

Now, Jesus wasn’t the only one going into Jerusalem around that time. The Passover was a holy celebration, and many pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate it. The city got 5 times bigger at Passover with so many people coming in. In fact, that’s the reason that Pilate, as the Roman appointed governor came into the city at Passover. They were worried that with all those people together celebrating the Passover things might get unruly.

As a reminder, the Jewish holiday of Passover remembers God’s saving actions in freeing the Israelites from their oppressors in Egypt. So, a whole bunch of Israelites oppressed by the Roman Empire were gathering together in their former capital to celebrate God’s actions to free them from oppression, and it made their current oppressors nervous.

That’s why Pilate came in every year. It was a good time to have some extra Roman military power, to remind the people that they would not stand for a revolt or any sort of rebellion. Pilate came in with all the flash and glory of the Empire – showing of the Empire’s power and threatening anyone who would deny the Empire the right to rule Israel. He came in from the coast – from the west, riding a horse, with drums and golden eagle flags and flash and power.

Jesus came in from the East. He came riding on the donkey – fulfilling a Jewish prophesy about God’s appointed King who would free them from oppression. That is, Zechariah 9:9b, “Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Riding a donkey was also the way that King Solomon entered when he became king. In fact, I’ve heard it suggested in that in the ancient Middle East Kings rode horses to war, but rode donkeys when they came in peace.¹ Some of the people were at the Western Gate greeting the power of the Empire. Some of the people were parading with Jesus toward the Eastern gate. Most of them were people without any hope of access to power or money through the economic system that existed within the Roman Empire. Yet, they had hope that God’s actions through Jesus might make a difference for them.

They were excited and hopeful, and they were yelling. The Gospel says they were yelling, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!“ To our ears that may sound pretty standard. It certainly excesses exuberance, but it also just sounds like…. the Bible. So, if you aren’t paying attention to it, you might not notice that what they were saying was sedition!²

Israel was a part of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Caesar was the King – God was not, and Jesus was not. Rome ruled Israel, God did not.

Jesus was riding a donkey, which was the way that kings entered Jerusalem. He had a crowd around him supporting him. They were waving Palm branches, which were essentially the national flag of Israel, and they were proclaiming LOUDLY that Jesus was the king – and the one appointed by God. These were words and actions of a rebellion against the Empire – at exactly the same time that the army was coming into the city to stop rebellions.

There were some who tried to silence the crowds – to warn them of what would happen if the Roman Empire found out that people were yelling such things. But Jesus responds that they can’t be silenced. He suggests that the movement has begun and it is unstoppable. He uses the metaphor that if the people were silenced the stones would start shouting. As a child I took that literally, but these days I tend to think it means that the energy and hope of the movement couldn’t be silenced.

Jesus would end up dead by the end of the week, killed for leading a VIOLENT revolt against the Empire. Of course, it wasn’t violent, but it was a revolt. They thought that if they killed him, the movement would stop. We today are the proof that the stones would shout out – the movement can’t be silenced.

It is like the St. Patty’s day parade and the people running from their homes with their hands full of underwear. You’d think they didn’t have anything to give, but it didn’t stop them from giving it! You’d think the Israelite peasants would be too scared to rebel, but they were unstoppable. You’d think the movement started by a backwater Jew in an an Empire from 2000 years ago would have stopped by now, but it hasn’t. The stones still cry out.

For more than a year now I’ve been working with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition in preparation for General Conference in May. As a person who has studied math, and a person paying attention to demographics in The United Methodist Church I have a lot of clarity about what to expect from General Conference: a whole lot of pain and a hard shift towards a more conservative church. The question is how conservative it will become. There have been a lot of times when I’ve wondered why I’m doing progressive organizing in a church where putting our stamp of approval on a piece of legislation almost guarantees that it won’t pass. There have been plenty of times since my first trip to General Conference in 2004 where I have wondered why I stay in this denomination that does such great harm to my sisters and brothers in faith who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual.

I don’t think the people who waved palm branches and shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were stupid. They knew for sure that it was an act of rebellion, they knew it was seriously dangerous for them and for Jesus, and I suspect they knew that it was REALLY REALLY unlikely that Jesus would live to be king. I can’t be sure what any of them thought, but the Gospels themselves make it clear that Jesus knew the actions of Palm Sunday would get him killed, and I suspect most of the participants did too.

So why did they do it? They were desperate and there was very little reason to have hope outside of the Jesus movement. Peasants were dying young after living lives of hard labor and undernourishment. There wasn’t any reason to believe that would change on its own. Jesus brought hope. He brought a message that was different: showing people ways to work together to have enough, suggesting that the values of the world were all messed up, seeing and caring about women, children, people who were ill or injured, and people living in poverty. Jesus was the living reminder that God still cared, that steadfast love endures forever. They voted for that with their lives and their livelihoods. The cloaks they spread were often the only thing keeping them alive at night, protecting them from the desert night’s chill, and they choose to lay their cloaks before Jesus just like they choose to shout the words that could get them all killed.

They knew they might all die, and it was worth it anyway to have a reason to hope in God.

That sure makes General Conference seem less important! But truth be told, as much as I know that General Conference will be a disaster from a progressive perspective, I have a tiny bit of hope. There are some good things that might happen: legislation written by UM clergy with disabilities to expand the denomination’s care for people with disabilities will likely pass! The work done by Fossil Free UMC to get the denomination’s resources out of fossil fuels might pass and similar work done to get resources out of companies that support the occupation of Palestine might too. (And since our pension plan is worth ~$21 billion, what we do with our investments MATTERS.) And maybe, just maybe, even though it is a long shot, we might pass the legislation that creates global equity in The United Methodist Church and makes us true sisters and brothers with United Methodists outside of the United States.

Most of the injustices of the church will stand, I suspect there will be MORE injustice when we’re done with General Conference then there are now, and yet I’m going to go and work on organizing the progressive voice because I believe that calling for justice in the church and the world is the work of God. And maybe, just maybe, the Spirit will find a way to bring more good than bad out of it all. God has done weirder things already, even if it seems statistically unlikely to me!

Those Palm Sunday crowds took risks for the sake of hope.

They paid attention to what God was up to, even when chances were very slim that God’s loving-kindness and justice would end up in charge. They celebrated God, and they celebrated hope, and they came together cheering for possibility – even though it was dangerous to their LIVES.

They took risks for the sake of hope.

May we do the same.

Amen

___

1 http://www.gotquestions.org/king-ride-donkey.html

2The gist of this whole sermon comes from Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan’s book “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem” (Harper Collins: 2006). This is one of the most important books I’ve read in terms of reframing my understanding of Palm Sunday, and a whole lot of other things.

–

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

March 20, 2016

Sermons

“Strange Prophetic Voices” based on Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9

February 29, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I once asked a confirmation class about joy. They said that the shortest spurts of happiness come from material gifts, while the longest living joy comes from relationships. They understood, as well, that happiness is fleeting, but joy comes from within.

When I prepare funerals, I ask families to tell me what the person loved. Almost always the first answer is relational – spouse, children, family, friends, church family, all of the above…. and then come the answers that are active: gardening, sports, some club, travel, cooking, work etc. (Sometimes sports affiliation arise as well. Loving or hating the Yankees is, apparently, identity forming.) Almost always, the list of what a person loves fits into “relationships” and “activities.”

At times, I wonder how that question would be answered for me. I’m sure just about anyone could say people and skiing and Sky Lake, but beyond that its not fully clear. Our concept of what we love may be different than what others see of us. What we love is visible by what we DO, not just what we think about doing. I wonder how what I do is different from what I think.

Hopefully what we DO, what we spend our time on and show our love for, are the rich food and bread that truly feed us. That is, we seek to live so that the places we put our love may be the ones that feed our inner spring of joy. The book of Isaiah almost outdoes itself with the questions of 55:2: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” Why DO we spend our time on activities that don’t feed our souls? Why DO we spend money on things that won’t feed any part of us?

This is a passage that scholars believe was written during the exile. That is, the first hearers were in captivity in a foreign land. I don’t know how Babylonians treated their war captives for sure, but it seems reasonable to assume that they were similar to most other nations throughout time. I doubt there was rich food to be had, nor milk. There may have been bread, and lousy wine, but maybe not a lot of it. I don’t know if they were getting wages, but if they were, they were likely not very high. I doubt as well that they had much choice about what they did with their labor.

On that basis, this strange prophecy seems pie in the sky high. The suggestion is that God will provide abundant wine and milk, bread and rich food – for free. These weren’t things they were getting at all. God is said to reaffirm God’s love for David and the Davidic covenant, but the king’s line had been killed off. It is said that the nations will run to Israel, but Israel can’t even go home. Why would Isaiah say such words to people who knew better?

They’d gone without enough food for a long time. They knew that God hadn’t provided. They’d labored for other people’s wealth for a long time. They knew that God hadn’t intervened.

This is a passage that indicates that God is going to change God’s mind and choose to take care of the people again, after God has intentionally chosen not to for a while. After all, it ends with a call to repentance, suggesting that God wants to give these good gifts, but that they are contingent on the people’s choice to return to God. This is the point where I get squirmy. It sounds a lot like preaching to the Syrian refugees that if they return to “right worship” and “regular prayer” that God will take care of them again.

Yet, it speaks a deep truth. In the book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” David Graeber suggests that all the world’s major religions emerged as counters to the world’s markets. As market economies came into being, and dehumanized in profound ways (paid armies, unraveling of community ties, interest, debt slavery, etc) there was a need for a voice to call into question the standards of the market. Each of the world’s religions argues against usury (high interest), affirms the value of human life, calls on people to treat each other as precious, rebukes the acquisition of excessive material goods, and claims that the deeper meaning of life cannot be bought nor sold. That is, each of the major world religions argues against the underlying principles of the world’s markets. Graeber goes further to indicate how the various ways that markets developed around the world impacted the ways that each of the religions took on different stances and flavors.

Isaiah’s call to repentance is a stronghold of this principle. Even speaking to captives in a foreign land, he calls them away from the principles of the market into the principles of God. Isaiah refuses the idea that access to food should be reserved to those who have money! Isaiah suggests that God offers the good stuff without cost, upsetting the whole system. Isaiah diminishes the value of work itself as a means of survival. (It is pretty socialist, I’ll admit. Then again, capitalism isn’t a Biblical value.) Isaiah calls the people out of the system that dehumanizes and into a relationship with God that can vaccinate them against the values of the market.

Jesus’ parable does some similar things. May we remember that nurturing a tree in the desert of Israel takes serious resources. Water is scarce, and trees need water! (Think the crisis of almond farming in CA during this epic drought.) Fertile soil takes effort and resources. Market economies would suggest that the tree was wasting preciously allocated resources.

Yet, the gardener doesn’t want to give up on the tree that has been wasting resources though. Instead, the gardner wants to GIVE MORE to that tree – to bury it in manure and give it every chance it might have to bear fruit. Rather than blame the tree, the gardener seems to take blame on himself, for not giving it all it needs. This doesn’t make sense! It makes sense to uproot the tree and put in a new one – if we are talking about trees. More likely this passage is about Israel’s spiritual condition (because that’s how the metaphor usually goes in the Bible). Like Isaiah, this passage is a call to repentance.

Isn’t it interesting though, to reconsider repentance? What if it isn’t about sins in the ways that it so often as been discussed, but rather is about turning way from the morals of the market economy and turning to the morals of God and God’s kin-dom? Remember, just in case I haven’t said it recently, that the Bible indicates that our work as Jesus followers is to transform the world we have into one where everyone has enough and the gifts of life abundant are shared among everyone – the kin-dom. Doesn’t that take the sting out of repentance and make it really awesome? (#ThingsNoOneExpectedThePreacherToSay)

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’m happy to say that the Gospel theologically debunks the issues that the Isaiah passage presents! The Isaiah passage, in case you forgot, implies that exile is the fault of the people for not being sufficiently faithful to God. This is a pretty normal perspective in the Bible, although not the only one. It is probably fair to call it the Deuteronomy perspective. It may also be worth remembering that the end of the exile came about 500 years before Jesus was born, but the meantime hadn’t been great for the Jews. First they were a vassal state of Persia (although they got to go home, which was great), and then Greece, and then Rome. So the wounds of the exile were still present among the Jews.

The two particular problems that get named are unique to Luke, unknown in other sources, and yet feasible historically. The first is the murder of a bunch of Galileans in Jerusalem while they were bringing ritual sacrifices to the temple. Historically speaking, if this happened, it was assumed that they were part of a violent revolt against the empire. That’s feasible. The second is the death of a group of people when part of the wall of Jerusalem fell on them. The existence of a tower there hasn’t been confirmed, but it is a place where it would have made sense to have a tower.

The point, however, that is made is that the people didn’t die because God was punishing them. They were no different from everyone else. Those who lived couldn’t claim to be alive because they were better. Death and destruction is not a punishment from God, nor and life abundant a sign of God’s favor. Those premises are rejected, and it has significant consequences for understanding the world and the Bible. Of course, it also gets turned into a call for repentance, because it is Lent and all scriptures call for repentance. Good thing we found a way to LIKE repentance.

The scriptures serve to remind us to concentrate on the things we love and the things that bring us life. Joy can’t be purchased. The premises of the market are wrong. We need not be distracted by them, particularly because it makes it harder to the markets to account for the ways they dehumanize God’s beloved people.

Seek joy where it can be found: in relationships with people you love and activities you deeply enjoy. That, it turns out, is part of turning the world upside down – to how God would have it be. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 28, 2016