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  • August 1, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Every. Single. Time.” based on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

As far as I can tell, the stories of the wandering in the desert are stories of the people learning dependence on God. Many of the stories of Exodus repeat the narrative “(1) Something was wrong, the people were worried. (2) The people complained. (3) God provided.” Since deserts aren’t super hospitable to life, they make sense as places people can learn their dependence. The writer of Deuteronomy ends up worrying that once the people enter the “land of milk and honey” they’ll forget that they are dependent on God. In the early centuries of Christianity the “Desert Fathers and Mothers” returned to the desert to seek connection with the Divine, and learn again the lessons of dependence.

Historically, there are some reasons to question the overarching narrative of the 40 year wandering in the desert. It may be MORE true that some of the proto-Israelites were desert nomads for a prolonged time in their history, and some of the proto-Israelites were slaves who had escaped from Egypt, and some of the proto-Israelites were Canaanites who decide to follow YHWH when the nomads and former slaves told their stories about YHWH. I rather like this idea, because it is pretty easy to see how nomadic hunter-gatherers in a harsh desert climate would definitely experience the gift of life as a gift from God. And, that their descendants who lived a more settled and fertile existence could relatively quickly change their minds about how lucky they are to be simply alive.

I rather like how these stories begin. The people are frightened for their lives. There is a lack of FOOD or WATER, and those are seriously dangerous lacks. The stories present frightened people as appropriately and realistically negative. They grumble. They mumble. They complain. They romanticize their former lives. In this case, they say, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.“ And, I’ll admit, I feel for Moses and Aaron. That ISN’T FAIR. It isn’t even TRUE. But, I also feel for the people, because when humans are frightened for their lives, they really can’t be held accountable for being “unfair” much less have reasonable perspective.

In these Exodus stories, every single time, God intervenes and provides. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Sometimes Moses and Aaron get annoyed, sometimes God gets annoyed, sometimes as a reader it gets annoying that they don’t learn how to trust faster, but God provides EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And I have some feelings about that, because in our world today there is both an abundance of food and an abundance of hunger. Based on both the stories of our faith and the miraculous food producing capacity of the earth, I’m pretty sure that the story is STILL that God provides. But… human beings get in the way. We hoard (the US government is one of the worst), we promote “competition” for who gets to eat, we blame the hungry for being hungry, and we permit wealth to rise to the top no matter the cost to the bottom.

God provides.

Humans intercept.

The challenge is not scarcity – there is enough. There is MORE than enough. The problem is distribution . That is, the problem is acting out the belief that all people are worthy of surviving and thriving, as beloveds of God.

Around here, we try to do our part to change that story. We promote the humanity and belovedness of all people. We have a free breakfast, and we give people extra food to help them make it through the week. We advocate for policies to alleviate hunger everywhere in the world. We donate to SICM and help with summer lunches. We educate ourselves about food distribution, and work with “Bread for the World.” Our tithes and offerings promote justice and compassion programs around the world, and our extra gifts to UMCOR just add on to it.

But, it is a big problem and there is lot of work to be done to BOTH feed all of God’s people AND change policies so we don’t allow anyone to be hungry.

Some of the reason I said all that is because it is true. Another reason is because I’m about to take this story metaphorically, and I could not do so in good faith until I also took the literal meaning of hungry people seriously as well. Especially now when A LOT more people are hungry world wide then were before the pandemic.

When I first considered this passage, my attention was drawn to that complaining and yearning for Egypt. It seemed worth talking about our yearning for what used to be, and how the yearning can erase the realities of the past – things like slavery for example. Much of what I hear, and a good portion of what I experience these days is a yearning for pre-pandemic times. Recently, after I’d shared a bit about how odd it was to give birth during a pandemic and how unexpected parenting a baby during a pandemic has been, a perspective person said, “Well, and you got pregnant before the pandemic, you didn’t sign up for any of this.”

I sighed with relief, like you do when someone really understands. Also, I think that applies to all of us a little bit. The things we were thinking about, planning, and even worrying about 2 years ago all changed on us in early 2020. And we didn’t sign up for this! The stressors and conflicts we live now we wouldn’t have been able to dream 2 years ago. And we didn’t sign up for this.

2 years ago wasn’t great. It really wasn’t. There were serious injustices happening, and the things we were worried about were real. Comparatively though, I see why we want to go back. I can even see why the people grumbling in the desert would have wanted to go back. With death looming, anything else looks better. But Egypt wasn’t their future, it was their past. And we aren’t going back to pre-pandemic times either.

The wandering in the desert, as the story says, was important for forming the people, forming their faith, teaching them their dependence on God. It got them ready for the Promised Land, but it was so hard and so terrifying, there were a lot of times they thought going back was worth it. Without knowing what the Promised Land would be like, or when they would get there, the only things they knew were the terrifying lack of resources of the desert and the utter oppression of slavery.

For most of us, our pre-pandemic times weren’t THAT bad, but I hear people saying now, “Having had a break from it all, I don’t want to live like that anymore.” We’re different. We’ve been formed by this time in the desert. We’re still being formed by this time in the desert. I’m not sure when the Promised Land is coming.

As much as the desire to go back to Egypt caught my initial attention, I couldn’t help but notice that it is only the beginning of this story. This isn’t the story of landing in the Promised Land. This is a story of having God provide. This is a story of there being BREAD on the ground in the desert that would sustain the people AND quails flying overhead for protein, and both of them being gifts of life from the God of life. (In the desert, where other people didn’t interfere with God’s gifts.)

This is the story where God says, “’At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’” And then when it happened, and the bread showed up, the people said, “What is it??????”

And this is where I think God is leading me today.

We’re in the desert, dear ones. Whatever our roles and circumstances were in Egypt, it is far behind. Whatever our roles and circumstances will be in the Promised Land, we aren’t there yet. We are DEEP in the desert, learning our dependence on God. And that means that God is giving us gifts that we desperately need to survive.

And most likely we’re responding along the lines of “Huh?” or “What is THAT?” Or “I’m not sure I want that.” Maybe more than anything we’re thinking, “I’d rather have bread from Pereccas, or Gershons, or Friehofers.” These gift that God is giving, we might not even recognize them. We might not want them. We might be a little horrified.

Today’s story ends with Moses telling the confused and hungry people, “It is the bread that YHWH has given to you to eat.”

What is the bread that God is giving to you to eat right now? How are you feeling about it?

Holy One, help us see what you are giving us, and help us receive nourishment from what you offer. We are tired, weary, weak, and frightened people. Your nourishment is what we need to go on, and we know that this desert wandering is not your final plan for us. Amen

August 1, 2021

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

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  • July 4, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

If I’m honest, I’m not a fan of my own weaknesses. (I pause now to await the ones who know me well to stop laughing at my understatement.) I would really like to be strong, capable, and impressive in all ways.

I’m not.

I’m a normal human mix of capable and incapable, strong and weak, impressive and profoundly not impressive. It is truly annoying.

From conversation, I’m under the impression that some of you are more at peace with this than I am, and that is such good news. You are all living proof that wisdom, maturity, and the grace of God are profoundly powerful. I’m also aware that some of you are with me, in being frustrated in your own imperfection, and always pushing yourself for more. May God’s grace transform us too.

Anyway, my own sense of self, and my own impatience, are quite a lens to bring to our Epistle reading today. Paul talks about a “thorn in his side,” one that he has asked God to remove repeatedly, and one that he has come to believe is USEFUL in his ministry. The use of the thorn in the side? Keeping him humble, and reminding him that “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul, who in this whole passage is modeling a different kind of leadership is refusing to play the games asked of him. Others have come to the church in Corinth bragging about who they are, what visions they’ve seen, and what authority it gives them. Paul has been asked to justify himself and his authority.

The passage we read today is part of him refusing to play along.

It opens with a weird piece about “someone” having a vision, which ends up being Paul, but he refuses to give any details or use it to gain any power over anyone else. Furthermore, he refuses to engage in even arguing about what form the vision took. Paul is NOT PLAYING by the rules.

He is facing people who boast, but he refuses to boast, OTHER than about God, so instead of bragging about himself, he talks about his WEAKNESSES. He talks about the thorn in his side. (No, no one knows what it is. Options in likeliness order include physical ailment, mental illness, outside persecution, or spiritual torment.) And then he talks about God.

I found a wonderful passage from a commentary I was tempted to share, but it was so dense I didn’t think it would help anything. So, instead, I’m going to summarize it for you, and put it in the footnotes.1 2

Paul is being told that the thorn in his side, that weakness in him, is a place that God’s grace can work. For Paul, this connects to Jesus being “crucified in weakness” but raised to life by the power of God. If Jesus’ life was defined by his weakness and God’s strength, then sharing the Good News of Jesus is also about letting God shine through our weaknesses. So Paul doesn’t try to overcome his weaknesses, nor dismiss them (like the Cynics and Stoics of his day). He also doesn’t try to be self-sufficient, which would involve limiting his own needs to limit his dependence on others. Instead, he accepts his “thorn in the side” and other weaknesses, and lets them guide him to dependence – on God.

So, to those bragging about what they’ve experienced of God, Paul refuses to boast, except about his WEAKNESS. To those seeking self-sufficiency, Paul responds with his dependence. This is definitely one of those cases where I can see why Paul was such an effective messenger of the story and love of Jesus.

This humble Paul, who only brags about his weakness, who acknowledges his dependence, who speaks highly of others but not himself, and who names the work of God in anything others might praise in his own life – THIS is the faith I grew up with. This is what I saw in my own church, and at church camp, and in the Annual Conference leaders when I started attending as a young teenager. I watched this being modeled, and I internalized it. The faith of bragging about the accomplishments of others, but not of ones self. The faith of seeing remarkable transformation happening, and thanking God. The faith of humility. This all feels like first language faith to me, the way that things are without even having to think about them.

From where I stand today, I don’t know if that’s good. Or, at least, I don’t know if it is equally good for everyone, or for every time. And I wonder if another person had been with me in those faith-forming experiences if they would have heard it and internalized it in the same ways.

This is funny, because there is a HUGE part of me that says “OF COURSE THIS IS GOOD, this is WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE, this is what being GODLY looks like.” But I’ve learned, over the years, to question everything, especially things that refuse to be questioned.

I wonder if “be humble, only speak of the accomplishments of others, praise God for anything praise worthy in yourself” ends up taking especially strong hold in women, in people of color, and in others who are marginalized, which ends up supporting the status quo in ignoring the wonders and accomplishments of many of God’s beloveds. And, I think about the quiet ways women and people of color are shamed for appearing to be insufficiently humble. I wonder if there are ways that those who are not marginalized are immune to the message of humility, and end up being the only ones comfortable with touting their accomplishments. And then, since others are also touting theirs, they seem the most capable.

I wonder if my first language, faith of my childhood ends up doing more harm than good by reinforcing exactly the ways that society wants to ignore the giftedness of many of God’s children.

Rev. Dr. Eric Law in The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb says, “Our vision of the Peaceable Realm is not based on fear. Instead it is based on lack of fear….This lack of fear is created by the even distribution of power.”3 When humility is used by some, but not others, we end up protecting those in power, instead of moving towards power sharing. Law’s book discusses a cycle of Christian living between death and resurrection: 1. Giving up power, choosing the cross 2. Cross, death, powerless 3. empowerment, endurance, faithfulness 4. Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Powerful. He emphasizes that we need to hold things in balance, not staying in one part of the story, but living the cycle over and over again. In fact, he talks about those with power giving power away, and that is if this is a way of life, power gets shared.

I think that maybe the faith I grew up with is one with GREAT value, especially in any situation where I have power. It is good to brag on others, lift others up, focus on inter-dependence, be aware of one’s weaknesses, and take it as an invitation to invite another’s strengths.

However, I think it is, maybe, only part of a fuller story. It is also important to see how God has gifted us, and think about how we want to use those gifts for the kindom. It is important to hear how what we have to offer blesses others. It is important to receive power, particularly when we are in a situation where we don’t have much. I think the full cycle is bigger than the one I’d internalized.

So, I don’t know what message you need today. (I don’t know what one I need today.) Maybe the reminder to look for God at work in our weaknesses, maybe to brag on each other, maybe to give up on self-sufficiency – and maybe to get REALLY REALLY clear on your own strengths and gifts and not let anyone take that away from you.

But I do know that Paul in 2 Corinthians and Jesus in his own hometown know a thing or two about being human, being limited, and finding God in the midst of it. And whatever else the message is in these passages today, I appreciate the reminder that God can bring good out of my weaknesses, and that makes them rather wonderful just as they are. Finally, I appreciate the struggle, to reach for a fuller faith, and acknowledge the complicatedness of trying to live as a follower of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“The apostle is directed to understand his affliction as part of that weakness in and through which God’s powerful grace is operated. It is clear that, from Paul’s point of view, the decisive demonstration of this oracular pronouncement is Christ himself, ‘crucified in weakness,’ but alive ‘by the power of God.’ This is why weakness is the hallmark of his apostleship, because he has been commissioned to the service of the gospel through the grace of this Christ – a grace whose power is made present in the cross. Paul therefore does not, like the Cynic and Stoic philosophers of his day, strive to transcend his weaknesses by dismissing them as trifling. Nor does he, like them, hold to the ideal of self-sufficiency, striving to limit his own needs and therefore his dependency on others. Rather, precisely by accepting his tribulations as real weaknesses he is led by them to acknowledge his ultimate dependence on God.” Victor Paul Furnish II Corinthians in The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company Inc, 1984), 550.

2 Funish, 550.

3 Eric H. F. Law The Worf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 1993) 14.

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

http://fumcschenectady.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 4, 2021

Photo Credit to Barb Armstrong.

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  • June 20, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“God’s Peace – In the Midst of the Storm” based on Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 and Mark 4:35-41

Two years ago at the Upper New York Annual Conference, Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball guest preached for the ordination and commissioning service. She preached on this text, and what she said was memorable enough that I can no longer hear this passage without her interpretation of it.

You may remember that two years ago the United Methodist world was in turmoil over the passage of “The Traditional Plan” at the 2019 Special Session of General Conference. That is, our denomination has been explicitly homophobic since 1972. Thanks to the decades of work by organizers, activists, and people of conscience there was sufficient pressure to create change. A special session of our denomination’s global legislative was called to respond to the church’s continued exclusion of God’s LGBTQIA+ people. There were several proposals on the table that brought positive change, and one that multiplied the harm already being done.

I still remember standing in shock after the final vote was taken, and watching my phone explode with the global news outlet alerts that – as the NYTimes put it “United Methodists Tighten Ban on Same-Sex Marriage and Gay Clergy.” The homophobia of this denomination had already been an abomination, yet people stayed knowing that the best way to bring change was from the inside. It was long, hard work, but we had felt confidence that God’s Spirit of Love would win in the long run. The decision to pass the Traditional Plan changed all that, and made it clear that over the long run people of conscience CANNOT stay in a homophobic denomination.

That was February. We were still reeling, grieving, and furious when Annual Conference came. Thanks be to God, we’d also organized, and Upper New York will be sending a very different delegation to the next General Conference (whenever the pandemic allows that to happen). Nevertheless, the conviction remained for progressives and even many moderates: one way or another, we will NOT STAY in a homophobic denomination. One way or another, we will be part of a church that welcomes all of God’s people, and soon.

It was into that reality that Bishop Steiner Ball preached. And she did so as a guest preacher in an Annual Conference whose Bishop had been a leader in writing and passing The Traditional plan. She took this passage and asked us to stay in the boat with Jesus. She acknowledged the storm raging around us, she named the reasons we would have to simply bail on the entire endeavor, she made space for hurt, anger, and fear. At the same time, she claimed that Jesus was in the boat with us, in the midst of the storm, and powerful enough to respond to the storm. She believed that Jesus could bring resolution, IF we just stayed in the boat. She offered that while the storm was raging so strongly it could be tempting to just jump into the sea, that the sea itself was not without its own issues. She urged us to stay long enough for Jesus to act, to bring resolution, to find a way forward for the people called Methodists.12

Here we are, two years later, still in that storm, and still with Jesus. The biggest change is that with the global pandemic, we are dealing with multiple storms at once. The storm that is the pandemic keeps United Methodists from gathering to split into different denominations that will be able to live their own faith with integrity. The storm that is the church’s homophobia prevents the denomination from being able to speak with moral authority, even of issues of death and dying brought on by the pandemic.

So here we are, in a boat, in the midst of raging storms. But, Bishop Steiner Ball says that Jesus is in the boat with us. Further, she reminds us that Jesus is able to calm the storms.

I am aware that the global pandemic storms, and the global church storms are themselves far from the only storms attacking our boats.

In truth, I suspect that for many of us the storms raging most strongly are inside us. Narratives and traumas from our childhoods continue to attack within. Existential anxiety has its way with us, often in ways we don’t even see. Assumptions about others, fear of the the unknown, and a tendency to see enemies were there are only people who are different also keep us on the defensive. The whole world turning upside down on us, not yet being righted, and likely to find a balance somewhere other than where it used to be obviously doesn’t help either. People are comforted by the familiar, which means that the past 15 months have been particularly discomforting at exactly the time we’ve most needed comfort.

Which is all to say that I think there are storms raging within us, probably all of us to a greater or lesser extent.

To support this theory, mental health professionals have never been so busy. Now, I’d say that in an ideal world, we’d all get regular mental health care as a means of simply being healthy. But most of the time, most people don’t seek mental health care until they’re well into a crisis/storm and can’t find their way out alone. So very busy mental health care professionals is a signal that many people are really struggling.

There isn’t anything wrong with struggling. It is a human reality. The “Disciple Bible Study” curriculums call such things “the human condition.” There isn’t actually anything wrong with being in a storm. It is also a human condition, and quite often it is well out of our control.

That said, being in the midst of a storm, particularly one like our scriptures talk about today are NOT comfortable. These are the sorts of storms that make it seem more likely that death is on the horizon than life.

And Jesus sleeps through it.

Either he was beyond exhaustion, or he was living non-anxious presence or both. Impressive, Jesus.

The story says Jesus awoke, rebuked the storm, and rebuked the disciples. I feel like it forgets to tell us that he then curled back up and went back to sleep. The storm was silenced. The disciples were awed.

I wonder if any of the storms that rage within us are ones that God would be happy to silence and bring to peace, if we were willing to let God do it. I suspect so. Some storms we are aren’t ready to let go of. Some storms just aren’t done yet. But some of them are only causing us harm, and are ready to be silenced.

Can you tell? Can you feel any of them that have run their course and would be response to “peace, be still!”? Can you even imagine what life would be like without that storm?

To go back to the storm we started with, I learned about the church’s homophobia when I was 13, and started working against it then. I have worked for and dreamed of being a part of a big-C Church that welcomes, affirms, and loves all of God’s people. You have too. This church has been explicitly committed to changing the UMC’s life-denying policies for 25 years now, and was already committed to it before then too!

Yet, it boggles my mind to try to imagine life without this fight – or at least changing this fight from one fighting explicit policy to fighting implicit bias. My identity will need a reboot.

And I think that’s often true of our internal storms too. We’re used to them. They’re familiar. They’re a part of who we are, and we aren’t entirely sure who we’d be without them.

But, friends, that’s exactly what God is there for. God doesn’t want to leave us in the pain of the past, or even the anxiety of the present. God is a source of healing, and energy of revival, a vision for wholeness, a hope for the future. Some of the things we’re afraid to give up, God is ready to take away.

God’s peace is stronger than the storms. God’s peace can hold its own EVEN in the midst of the BIGGEST storms. It has a different kind of strength. It has a deeper kind of being.

So I invite you, to hear the words of Jesus resound in your soul. “Peace, be still.” And I invite you to listen to see what storms God has silenced. Because God is up to good in you, in us, in the world, and when we make space for it, God can transform even the most hurting parts of us. Thanks be to God!

Amen

1Please note that these are my memories of a sermon I heard 2 years ago. As memories are faulty, and tend to have holes filled in with one’s own assumptions, this is likely a high bred of what she said and what I wanted to hear and remember.

2 I take no authority to tell anyone they need to stay in the UMC boat. There are good reasons to leave, all the more for people who are LGBTQIA+. I’m sharing that it was meaningful to me, knowing that I’m not the center.

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  • June 6, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Only Love Can Do That” based on Psalm 130 and Mark 3:20-35

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nurturing love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,ngdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand,” were rephrased by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King into, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.“

In the Gospel, Jesus is experiencing attack. He was a healer, and a successful one. This disconcerted some people. Isn’t that the way things go sometimes? Someone is doing their thing, their uniquely gifted by God to take care of each other thing, and somehow or another people get upset about it. Maybe Jesus was undermining the revenue streams for other healers. Maybe he was getting a little too famous a little too fast. Maybe the way he went about it decreased dependence on the official religious mechanisms. Maybe he was supposed to be “nobody” and it upset things far too much for him to turn out to be “somebody.”

But somehow or another, this attack on Jesus feels… normal. He was doing a good thing that helped people and others took offense. Welcome to life itself, right?

In this case, the ones who went on the offensive against Jesus didn’t have much to work with. After all, how offensive is it really to heal people and not ask for payment? So they SAID that the reason he had the power to heal was because he was evil. Or, in their language, he was given the power over demons by the head demon.

Now, Jesus tends to be pretty patient with people who are struggling, or downtrodden, or under attack. But, according to the gospels he usually wasn’t above defending himself with quick wit. Mark says that Jesus replied, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” AKA, if evil were being used to drive out evil, it would work against the power of evil.

Or, again, in the way that speaks far better to me, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”1

While I was pondering all of this, in the midst our Wednesday night study “Caring for Inactive Members” Rev. Bob Long shared his understanding of the difference between anger and hate. (Note that is what I remembered him saying, so please assume any faults are mine, not his.) Anger is a sign of caring, a sign that something one values is being violated, and that the person experiencing anger cares enough to want to change what’s wrong and maintain the relationship. On the other hand, hate is a desire to no longer be in relationship with the other, and does not involve caring.

PLEASE NOTE: While I really appreciate this, and all ways of humanizing the experience of having emotions, and any reminder that anger can be fruitful in bringing justice and resolutions, I am also sorely aware that anger can also be used as an excuse for harm, punishment, and abuse. ANGER is a part of life, one that can useful as a way of noticing what we value and guiding us towards actions that fit out values. Anger is not, however, excuse for violence in words or actions. There is a fundamental difference between being angry and taking anger out on others. The former is normal and good. The latter is not.

In this moment in time, we live in the midst of deep and deepening divisions. We’re told that some of the divisions in society are intentionally created by outside nations, seeking to lessen the power of the United States in the world. Others are flames intentionally fanned for the sake of political power. Still others have been used to break apart the mainline denominations, so that our voice in calling for justice and the building of the kindom would be lessened.

And NOW we’ve added to all of this various ways of responding to a global pandemic, questions about masking, vaccinating, social distancing, opening and closing of various businesses, and schools, and places of worship.

There are deep and deepening divisions. Many of them move people to anger. Anger fits, positions on issues of life and death are deeply held. I fear, however, that some are moving people from anger to hate.

Further, I fear that with each and every deepening division, we get better at division and less skilled at connection. I fear we’re getting better at hate, when we’re called to get better at love. To quote MLK again, “Psychologists and psychiatrists are telling us today that the more we hate, the more we develop guilt feelings and we begin to subconsciously repress or consciously suppress certain emotions, and they all stack up in our subconscious selves and make for tragic, neurotic responses.”2

I also fear we’re letting the energy of division come home to roost. The way the outside world works in soundbites, and us vs. them, and gossip, and triangulation, and fear mongering and a refusal to engage in direct communication… all these pieces of division are getting NORMALIZED. So are attacks, like the ones against Jesus that started this whole story in the Gospel.

So, let’s take a few moments to remember again what being a part of the Jesus-movement, kindom building, God-centered, beloved community is all about. It is far easier to focus on what we’re meant to be when we remember what that is.

In the end of the Gospel passage, Jesus says “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

He expands his family. He refuses the boundaries that tell him who he is to love, protect, and care for, and he simply embraces more people in that role. He expands the kindom, his own kindom, to include those working with him in expanding God’s love in the world.

To expand kinship is to expand who is “us” …eventually until there is no “them.” To expand kinship is to have enough trust and respect for other kin to discuss disagreement, disappointments, hurts, and fears directly. To expand kinship is to listen, even to long-winded, indirect stories that may or may not eventually come around to the topic at hand (but … I mean… maybe not DURING a meeting?? ) To expand kinship is to disagree and not let that disrupt relationship. I hope that you’ve seen this in your life, family members who like each other immensely and have enough space in that liking and loving for real differences.

It is my hope that some of what we do in worship is expand kinship. Worship is seeking to connect to the Divine together. Over the past 1 ¼ years, the “together” has taken on new meaning, and has proven to us that there are a lot of different ways to be together. Worship itself is quitea wide range of things. Silence, and word, and music – sometimes a particular worship has only of those forms! Prayer, scripture, and reflection – again, sometimes one is dominant over others. The forms of prayers vary. The types of music vary. The length of service varies!!! The structure and form of the service, and even of the reflections can also vary greatly. I’m reminded that there are a significant number of people in our midst for whom the more profound form of worship is service, and others for whom the Divine is most reachable in nature.

Yet, with this enormous range of worship is and can be, I maintain my hope that it is useful in expanding kinship, in nuruting love, and in expanding the kindom of God. Hopefully, also meets our deeply felt need to connect with the Divine. As the Psalm says,

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in [God’s] word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm130:5-6)

Worship make space for that connection. It is time set apart to connect. May worship bring us closer to love, to God, and to each other. May worship even help us gain the strength and courage to keep on connecting with each other across differences. Or to put it another way, maybe worship can function a way to prevent anger from becoming hate. Or maybe it is even more powerful than that. Maybe worship is able to nurture love in us, and love is the thing most powerfully able to drive out hate. May it be so. Amen

1Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010 – originally 1963), 47

2 Martin Luther King “Loving Your Enemies” sermon Nov. 17,1957, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Found at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church (He’d edited by the time it was published in Strength to Love.)

June 6, 2021

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  • May 30, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Come, Holy Spirit”

In Easter evening the disciples were locked up together in a house, afraid of what would happen to them. It was into that enclave that stories of resurrection started to be told. And, it was in that enclave that some experiences of resurrection happened. According to Acts, the disciples were mostly together in that room for a rather extended period of time, praying, and …. just a little bit… starting to organize. As time went on, there were more people gathering together, functioning together as an extended family, but still they were gathered together in a tight circle, in Jerusalem.

And then came Pentecost.

Pentecost was and is a Jewish festival celebrating the first fruits of the wheat harvest. Faithful Jews had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, just as faithful Jews had gathered for Passover, 50 days earlier. It was another of the 3 festivals that was a traditional pilgrimage feast.

A colleague of mine suggested that the first Christian Pentecost story, the one we read in Acts, required those days apart from the world.

Of course, at this point, we may scoff at 50 days. 😉 To the scoffers, I’ll offer a reminder of the 40 years of wandering in the desert, which the Bible also said was necessary to “get the people ready.”

As you may know, I do not believe in a God who punishes. I do, however, believe in a God who is willing to use any situation as a jumping off point for good. ANY situation. Those ideas can get confusing sometimes for people, because talking about what God does with a situation can SOUND like “God created this situation for good” but I don’t mean that! I just really believe that God is willing and able to enter any situation and seek the best possible outcome from that point, and often God is far more creative than we’d be able to imagine!

In Acts, 50 days after Easter, The Holy Spirit showed up, with gusto. God’s Spirit is a part of the understanding of the Divine in the Hebrew Bible as well, but the way the Spirit shows up is new. To be fair, the symbol of fire as representing God’s presence isn’t new, the burning bush helps us out there. And “tongues of fire” is a phrase that comes from Isaiah 5. The wind a symbol of the Spirit isn’t new either. But added up, it IS new.

God’s Spirit shows up, sounding like a rushing wind, looking like divided tongues of fire, and imparting the gift of being understandable to people of many nations, languages, and cultures. Robert Wall in the New Interpreter’s Bible says, “God’s spirit is poured out upon a community of believers. The Holy Spirit is not a ‘personal’ gift from God that each believer privatizes – ‘you can have your Spirit if I can have mine.’ This same Spirit of one God ‘appeared among them – on each of them’ as the distinguishing mark of a people belonging to God. The restoration of Israel is the work of this Spirit sent by God as promised (see 1:6) which is why the first auditors of the miracle of tongues were ‘devout Jews from every nation’ (2:5).”1

I must admit that this year I was particularly astonished by the list of the places the devout Jews were from. It served as a profound reminder of the history of the diaspora, of the people of Jewish faith being displaced, which is especially notable when Judaism has an especially strong theology as being people of the (promised) land.

This fits the history of the Jewish people, of course. They settled on land that was a crossroads between civilizations, and as Empires expanded they expanded to include the crossroads. As Empires contracted, other Empires expanded, and a long, difficult history of independence, tributes, colonization, and external control ALREADY characterized their history by the time of Jesus. Wars had come and gone. Empires had come and gone. And each time, people had come and gone, dispersing the “people of the land” to many lands.

It fits, as well, that dispersed people of the land would have a tradition of pilgrimage to come back home to the land.

These themes of place feel so strong in this story this year. The followers of Jesus being so afraid that their world contracted to a single room, or perhaps a home. The devout Jews being so broadly scattered and making such profound efforts to come “home” to worship. The ways that distance separated them even when they were in Jerusalem, by dress, and culture, and LANGUAGE.

The idea of a miracle of understanding. Of course, it makes sense to think about Christian Pentecost as being the antithesis of the Story of the Tower of Babel. In the Tower of Babel story, God was afraid the people had too much power together and seprated them with language. In the Pentecost Story, God’s Spirit blesses the people with connection and the capacity to speak and be understood. It could be said that God has gained trust in the people (and then it becomes a question of if we’ve earned it or God just gave it because God’s like that.)

Sometimes I yearn for the miracles of Pentecost, most often when I am speaking with someone whose language I share, but with whom I’m clearly not managing to communicate. The barriers of assumptions, connotations, life experience, expectations, values, and fears can make “shared language” distinctly insufficient for shared communication.

Yet, we are the inheritors of the Pentecost story. As one person put it, in Christmas we get the story of “God with us.” At Easter we learn that “God is for us.” At Pentecost we tell the story that God is IN us. The Spirit residing in and among us makes it possible for us to do God’s work in the world, to share love, to build the kindom – and sometimes even to understand and be understood.

While the pandemic continues around the world, and right here at home, in the United States many people are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are making it possible to for life to change again. It may make sense to think of us as emerging from an overly small room. (Acknowledging, of course, the many who cared for us so well that they never were able to protect themselves. I hope for front line workers there is an emerging from fear.)

I believe that God is up to good among us, now, as God was up to good among the disciples then. I’m not arrogant enough to claim I know what God is up to, but I can sense…. something. This sermon is the last one I’ll preach exclusively online, at least for a while and perhaps for always. While we will keep online worship, we will also offer an informal outdoor worship service starting next week. Like the disciples, we’ll be in the city, able to be heard by those walking by. Maybe, God’s Spirit will make us audible in a new way as we emerge. But whatever God is up to, I know it is good. Amen

1Robert W. Wall “Refections on Acts 2:1-13” in New Interpreter’s Bible Vol X, ed. Leader E. Keck et al (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), p. 57.

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  • May 16, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Like Trees Planted by Streams of Water” based on Psalm 1 and John 17:6-19

According to the Psalm, we are supposed to be like trees planted by streams of water.

We are supposed to drink in the goodness of God, be fed by God’s living water, rest in God’s goodness, and maintain the life of faith at all times.

I’m….I’m not sure how you hear that right now. Here in May of 2021, I fear that some eyes have rolled so far into the back of their heads that they may not make it back, and others are laughing so hard at this premise that they can’t hear me yet. Those responses seem fair. Truthfully though, I worry that the majority of those listening/reading simply tuned out because it felt so absolutely irrelevant.

For me, at least, it isn’t though. It is absolutely relevant. I actually needed the reminder, because I’ve let the busy demands of life take precedence over making sure I’m soaking in God’s goodness. I’ve let the fears, anxieties, and pressures all around me IN, and forgot that the best way I have to deal with them is make sure that I’m “planted by streams of water” that let me have the strength to respond with love, compassion, and clarity.

I need these reminders rather a lot, because the pressures of the world to “preform” and “produce” and “matter” weigh rather heavily on me. I far too easily forget my own needs to be grounded and supported so I can offer grounding and support when it is needed most.

In the Gospel, Jesus is praying with awareness that he is about to leave his disciples, and he worries over them when he isn’t there to guide them. The prayer seems meant to be overheard, meant to serve as a reminder to them that they are still cared for by God.

The best way I know to remember I am cared for by God, like the best way I know to “be like trees planted by streams of water” is to engage in “Spiritual Disciplines.” Most people of profound faith have Spiritual Discipline – whether they call it that or not. Many people struggle to find their own form of Spiritual Discipline. Those people who have a Spiritual Discipline that they practice regularly believe it to be life changing and transformational. The only issue is, if you are a person who doesn’t have a practice of your own listening to those people who do – you start to feel like all your time should be spent in all their forms of Discipline.

The truth is that Spiritual Disciplines are as personal as our gifts and graces. We can’t just take on someone else’s way of connecting to God. Our tradition may give us forms to use, but even the forms need to be adapted to OUR relationships with God.

Sometimes in clergy circles, Spiritual Disciplines come up in an unhelpful way. This happens when every person is fully convinced that their life was better because of the way they reached to God (good), and that everyone else should try their way (not so good.)

The closest practice I know to one that “should” be universal is: bliss. That is, finding those things that bring us pure joy and spending as much time with them as we can.

Another helpful perspective on Spiritual Disciplines comes from the book “Dark Nights of the Soul” by Thomas Moore. Moore was a Roman Catholic Monk for the beginning of his life, but left the monastery when he was near 40 and now lives in NH with his wife and children. He has a whole bunch of degrees and functions as a psychologist. In this book he proposes that the darkness of life is an important part of life -even when it looks like depression. He has a model for respecting meaninglessness and accepting that God may be transforming people as if in a cocoon when they are drawn away from normal life. I’m finding it to be most helpful in preparing me for conversations with people (including myself) in struggle.

At one point in the book, Moore talks about catharsis, as a letting go of the crowdedness within so that the soul can sort through to what is important. I was startled as I read, because I finally understood that the Goal is NOT to take on all spiritual disciplines and become the perfectly disciplined spiritual person. Rather, the point is to use the tradition and our own creative energy to connect with God in exactly those ways that are life-giving.

This is a terribly obvious point. Hopefully you already knew it. But I probably would have claimed that I did too, at least until I felt freed by reading this. Here is an extended quote from his conversation on catharsis:

“My favorite kinds of contemplation include playing the piano, walking in a forest, sitting quietly in a church or house of worship, and even window shopping. I understand that the highest forms of mediation are pure and still and aim at an awareness free of distraction. But I also value the spirituality to be found in the concrete, every day world. Walking through a store, my attention is caught by beautiful things, and I can easily fall into deep reverie just looking at them. I find this a good way to be spiritual without criticizing ordinary life or the physical world. …

The general aim of catharsis is creative tranquility, an condition in which you are free from the pressing practical concerns to consider the bigger questions. The actual practice of contemplation may vary from one person to another, but some physical quieting helps start the process. Nature can help by providing an environment that stills a hyperactive mind. ….

Other spiritual practices may also clear out a crowded life. Religions teach fasting, retreat, vegetarianism, a spirit of poverty, neatness, cleanliness, moderation, and solitude – these familiar practices can be part of the busiest person’s life and give that life a spiritual dimension. In this sense, making your bed every morning can be a spiritual practice. This natural spirituality I am describing deepens the place from which you live and allows you to open your heart both to receive more from life and to give to others.” (Thomas Moore, “Dark Nights of the Soul” pages 52-54)

I want all of you to have ways of connecting to the Divine – which is also to say ways of making good decisions for your well-being and the well-being of those around you. I want you to know how to sort through to what is truly important and what is just superficial. I want your lives to be meaningful and your prayers to bring you inner strength.

I don’t care how you do that. But I care that you do.

Hopefully some of the ideas that Moore talked about may work for you, or some of the prayer practiced we’ve talked about in the past, or just things you’ve found along the way – by yourself or from someone who knew the Divine well. If not, I’m happy to talk it over more one on one.

This is a difficult time, in the world, in the church, and even in our own church. Stressors, anxieties, and fears abound. It can be difficult to hold on to our core self as the struggles press in on us. With God, though, we can increase our capacities. We can be like trees planted by streams of water – strong yet flexible, healthy, responsive, and able to withstand what comes at us.

We can’t control the world, other people, or even our own bodies. We can, however, connect with the Divine and regain the capacity to respond well to whatever comes at us. May we make the time for God, to receive hope, rest, and renewal.

Amen

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  • May 9, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“Humans: Needing Love and Comfort”

(a sermon dialogue with Rev. Lynn Gardner of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Schenectady and Rev. Sara Baron of the First United Methodist Church of Schenectady)

Part 1: Our awareness of our need for mothering (which is our need to be loved, and comforted)

Lynn: It started when I was on my yoga mat. It was early one morning last spring. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I was up as the sun was rising, moving through familiar yoga asanas, gently stretching, moving, breathing. I was in child’s pose… curled over bent knees, forehead resting on the mat, when the crying began. Everything that my body had been holding in was let loose in a torrent of tears, growing into deep sobs. Worry, grief, fear, sadness, loneliness and anger, pouring out. My heart ached thinking of all those who were suffering alone or separated from anyone who was familiar.

On the day we were born and received the gift of our first breath we depended on our mothers, our parents, or other caring adults in order to survive. As we grew, those needs changed, but our need to be loved and cared for is still part of us. That morning on my yoga mat, I rocked, and cried, feeling the vulnerability of being human… that we need one another. This may be our vulnerability AND our strength.

Sara: The past year has been one of developing my identity as a mother. My child was born 51 weeks ago today. It has been a very long time since I’ve needed mothering as much as I have since I became a mother. It turns out that the capacity to give my child what he needs is dependent on having enough of my own needs met and, quite often, I can’t fulfill both sets of needs on my own, and am dependent on others to hold me up so I can hold him up.

I was raised upper middle class, and I’m white, and I have internalized the message that self-sufficiency is “good.” Which means I’m REALLY BAD at asking for help, and that hasn’t made me need it less. The pandemic has complicated EVERYTHING. When I needed help the most it felt least safe to receive it. When I hit the end of my capacity and could go no further, when tears filled my eyes and I simply could not do what I needed to do, when without love and comfort and support I could no longer offer love and comfort and support… I have spent this year learning that I need to be mothered well in order to mother well. For me, at least, this applies both to parenting AND to pastoring. To offer love and comfort to my congregation ALSO requires that I have something to give, and that means I have to reach out when I need love and comfort too.

Part 2: Stories of times we have received loving, comforting care when we needed it

Support can come in a wider range of formats than I ever knew. There was, for me, one day when everything I needed to do most profoundly exceeded my capacity to do it. Before that day was easier, after that day was easier, but on that day I could simply go no further. I remember texting 3 friends. It was August, and nothing felt safe, especially not in person. One friend got in the car to come help. Another stayed on the phone with me until she arrived and let me cry while being heard. The third texted back and forth all day assuring me that I was allowed to make things easier on myself, and it didn’t mean I was failing as a mother to do so.

Those three friends comforted me that day, they let their love for me become support when I needed it. I think it is fair to say that they mothered me, and BECAUSE they took care of me, I was able to take care of my child.

In some ways this story seems too small, and in other ways it seems … archetypal. Looking back at my life there are innumerable times when my pain or burden was too much to bear. In every one of them, I reached out for support. Sometimes I reached out directly to the Divine, which for me means I disappeared into nature and silence for the hours I needed before I could form words again. Other times I have reached out to family or friends (or my own pastor), and let them hold me up. It is in being held – in any medium- that I can regain my own self-regulation and find my way again.

Lynn: Isn’t it amazing when someone shows up in simple yet deeply caring ways? 21 years ago I went to stay at my parent’s home when my Mom was nearing the end of her life. She had been diagnosed with cancer just five weeks earlier. She was at home with hospice care, laying in a bed where she could look out and see her garden, and my father and sisters and I were caring for her and for one another. A long time friend called and asked if she could come by. She arrived with three hot-fudge brownie sundaes, one for me, one for her, and one for my Dad. Let’s go for a walk, she suggested. We walked and ate. She listened, and we cried and laughed together, and also held space for the comfort of shared silence. That was the most delicious sundae I have ever eaten.

Each of these moments in our lives have served to remind us that we are not self-sufficient, we do not walk or work alone. It is because of our connections that we are.. It is because we have been nurtured that we are functional and able to offer nurture.

Part 3: Growing us into capacity to give mothering

Sara: Our sweet baby is teething. It is miserable for everyone involved. We are very thankful in our house for pain medication. But sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes he hurts, and nothing we can do makes the hurt go away, and it is awful. In those moments, all we can do is be with him and assure him he isn’t alone. It doesn’t feel like enough in the moment, but I also wouldn’t dream of letting him suffer alone.

There are many sources of pain in life, physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional. In some cases we are able to do things that change them, like feeding people who are hungry. In many cases we cannot change reality, or the pain people experience, when they are grieving. In those cases all we can do is be with one another, and assure each other we aren’t alone. It doesn’t feel like enough, but the difference between being alone and being supported is significant. Our congregations can be communities of practice… where we continue to learn about giving and receiving care.

This has been one of the worst parts of the pandemic, that the means of support and comfort we are used to offering grieving people have been taken away. I invite those who are safely ready and able to loosen their COVID restrictions to think about how to offer love and support now that wasn’t possible before.

Learning the limits of what comfort I can give has never felt enjoyable, but it seems like the capacity to be a mother grows along with my awareness of my own limitations.

Part 4: The Divine as Nurturer, and Faith as Subversive when it comes to nurture.

The Gospel lesson we read today in the United Methodist church instructs us to “abide in love,” and expounds eloquently on the subject. I believe that this is what faith is all about. In Christian and United Methodist lingo we talk about “sanctification” which is the process of letting go of whatever is not love and being filled up with love so that you can respond to every person in every moment with pure love. In our models, continued faith development is all aimed at sanctification. (John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement believed that people could reach perfection in love during their life times. 😉 I share that as an interesting historical fact.)

In real life though, things are complicated. In many circumstances it is not clear what the most loving response actually is. What looks from one angle like loving nurture looks from another angle like enabling. These days I find myself reminding myself several times a day about the process of emerging from cocoons. That is, when transformed creatures emerge from cocoons it is a slow and seemingly painful process. Over the years many well meaning humans have tried to ease creatures ways out of the cocoon, only to learn that the moths and butterflies are permanently damaged by having the process eased. There is a fine line to walk in care for others, and I find I am never clear which side of it I’m on.

Lynn: Receiving care can also be complicated. Sometimes we just need someone to help us, or for someone to comfort us, but we don’t ask, and feel resentful. Or we don’t know who to ask… or we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, or that someone else needs it more. And sometimes, it is so hard to just allow ourselves to be cared for… to really receive the love that is being offered.

Prior to seminary, I worked in child care for 20 years. Over those years, and while raising our daughter, I have held and rocked many a tired cranky little one. Whether you have done so yourself or not, I invite to imagine holding an overly-tired toddler, who is crying and pushing away, resisting their need for sleep with every ounce of energy they have. They are so tired… and so upset… not wanting to give up, to let go, and to sink into the arms that are holding them.

Unitarian Universalism affirms that each of us is worthy of love…. That we are each more than our worst mistake. That we are each worthy of care and comfort. We are all held by a larger Love that will not let us go… even when we struggle… even when we push away… I can imagine the Holy whispering, “shhh…. Shhhh….. I’m right here.”

Sara: I’m also deeply aware that while the Divine, faith, and Biblical teaching all call us to love, in our society the expectations around that love vary according to the bodies we occupy. Lynn and I have been reflecting on the human need to receive mothering – the human need to receive love and comfort – and suggesting that faith communities may be sources of giving good care so those in them can then give good care to the world. Yet, I keep thinking about the realities of “emotional labor” and the ways that female embodied people, and people of color, along with others thought in society to occupy subordinate positions are subliminally taught to offer care and nurture to those who are male embodied, white, and empowered. Kate Manne in “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny” talks about the ways emotional labor is thought to be the work of some and the privilege to receive of others, and how this is encouraged with “carrots” and enforced with “sticks.”

This awareness brings some of the deeper challenges of celebrating love and comfort into view. Humans need love and comfort. Humans can give love and comfort. But often the giving becomes the role of some and the receiving the roles of others. I believe that one of the subversive narratives of faith is inverting those roles, and making the giving of love, comfort, and nurture the role of all people – especially the ones in power.

So, dear ones, may we receive the wonderful mothering of the Divine and of the people of faith, and may we soak in love and comfort so that we are able to share it with abundance.

Amen

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  • May 2, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

“On Being Pruned” based on 1 John 4:7-21 and John 15:1-8

While I was in college I lead a group of new freshman on an outdoor adventure trip. We were assigned to trail maintenance in a very remote part of Northern New Hampshire. It was a beautiful place and a wonderful trip, but it turns out that a lot of trail maintance is actually killing small trees so that they don’t grown on the trail and I really deeply hated that. No matter how many times I reminded myself that by maintaining the trail and giving people a chance to experience that pristine wilderness I was PROTECTING most of the trees, I still felt uncomfortable with each one I killed.

Similarly, I’m not particularly good at pruning. I’m so afraid of going too far that I don’t go far enough. It would be enjoyable to claim that this is related to the value, “don’t hurt living things unless you have to” but that fails to notice that things you prune are things that NEED pruning. Pruning is a source of abundant life.

According to Gospel commentaries, grapevines are things that need pruning. The Five Gospels says, “Vines do not have branches, contrary to popular usage, but ‘canes.’ Each year canes are snipped from the vines and piled in the vineyard to be burned. … The vines will not bear good fruit, or fruit in abundance, if they are not pruned annually.”1 The metaphor loving writer of the Gospel of John suggests this is true of the followers of the way of Jesus as well. We too need regular pruning to “bear fruit.”

I suspect many of us feel similarly about pruning ourselves as I do about pruning any other living thing. It is uncomfortable, it is done with caution, we don’t want to go to far. And that means that often we don’t prune quite far enough.

This may feel like an unfortunate time to come across this Gospel, because the impact of the pandemic has been a desire to return to “normal” and profound objections to the ways our lives have been “pruned” from the outside beyond our control. But here is the Gospel anyway, and when we’re honest we note that even this awful pruning has had SOME silver linings.

Now, in John’s metaphor, God is the gardener, and God is the one doing the pruning. We are fairly passive to the pruning. We are definitely NOT in charge of self-pruning. 🙂 Phew. Likewise, we are not in charge of fruit production. Fruit comes from being connected to Jesus, and well pruned by God, and we are mostly PASSIVE fruit bearers. Fruit or lack there of isn’t really our fault. We are tended, rooted, and pruned to be the best fruit bearers we can be, and we can simply BE and God’s goodness will work through us.

Nice.

While I think that idea is incomplete, I also think it is one worthy of consideration.

Many of us TRY REALLY HARD ALL THE TIME, and this suggests that we can let go and God’s goodness will keep flowing. That is an important truth, if incomplete.

So if God is the gardener and the pruner, then who are we when we resist pruning? I suspect that we are vine “canes” that are holding on for dear life to canes that have already been snipped and berating ourselves that we can’t bring them back to life. There are these dead, decaying branches and we’re holding them in place willing them to grow again, and in doing so, missing the new life springing up within us.

Several years ago I watched a TED talk by Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard entitled “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” Gilbert’s ideas have stayed with me ever since. He opens his talk by saying:

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

I’m hoping you already see how this relates to letting God’s pruning without fighting it! He states his thesis directly (don’t you love that?), “What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. “ As you might hope, Gilbert proves this point along the way, and then goes on to conclude:

Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen. …when people say “I can’t imagine that,” they’re usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The bottom line is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It’s as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It’s a watershed on the timeline. It’s the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. 2

That is, pruning happens whether we want it to or not, and either we can make peace with it and let it be, or we can fight with it, but it won’t change the fact that things change.

While I prefer it when I can read it with some verses missing, 1 John 4 is a very important chapter in the Bible for most people I know because it says the thing they believe most, “God is love.” It says it strongly too, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. …Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their siblings, are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen,

cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (11, 20). Perhaps this fits the idea that loving God and loving other people are two sides of the same coin, inseparable though they can appear to be different. These claims about God, that God is love, and that loving people is a way of loving God, are the lens through which I see the entirety of the Bible. I remain grateful that it is there, and available to be used.

John chapter 15 goes on to sound a whole lot like 1 John 4. The Vine and Branches metaphor morphs quickly to point out that the fruit that God is looking for is the practice of abiding in love. So both of them point the question: what impairs love and what encourages it? If we are being continually pruned by God, what helps us let go of what we’re done with, and what helps us connect with what God is up to next? Or, in the metaphor, how do we let go of the pruned and dead branches so there is space for new growth?

Perhaps the best thing we can do for now is notice. We can notice what has been pruned, so we can let it go and we can notice what is growing so we can watch it growing. Perhaps this passage is exactly right for right now. We aren’t the gardener, we aren’t in charge, but we can – at least – stop impeding the Gardener’s work and instead notice what it is.May it be so. Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), page 453.

2 Dan Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self” Ted Talk, found at https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self/transcript?utm_campaign=social&utm_content=talk&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=soci al-science#t-308201 given on March 2014 accessed on April 29, 2021.

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“Three Days?  Can You Count?” based on Hosea 5:15-6:6…

  • April 18, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

According
to the Gospels, Jesus was killed on Friday night.  Easter was on
Sunday, and the first experiences of resurrection happened before
sunrise.  That is a difference of about 36 hours.  Which, if I’m
honest, is a VERY WEAK definition of “three days.” It is a
stretch to say, well, there was part of Friday, and all of Saturday,
part of Sunday, which is three different days.  

Normally,
three days is 24 hours times 3= 72 hours.  So Friday night to Monday
night.  Or, you might say, Friday – then the next day is Saturday,
the second day is Sunday, the third day is Monday.

Am
I the only one who has been quietly annoyed by this for years?  Yeah,
I am?  I can live with that.

This
has made me curious though, as to why Friday night to Sunday morning
was defined as 3 days, because doing so was DEFINITELY an intentional
choice meant to fit Jesus’s story into an existent framework.  
Otherwise it wouldn’t feel so forced.

(If
you are already bored, I invite you to stick with me anyway, it isn’t
going to take that long and it is more worth it than you might
expect.)   It seems Luke was basing the 3 days off of the Hosea
passage

‘Come, let us return to the
Lord;
   for it is he who has torn, and he will
heal us;
   he has struck down, and he will bind us
up.
After two days he will revive us;
   on
the third day he will raise us up,
   that we
may live before him.  (6:1-2)

This
clearly lists 3 days, but the meaning of the passage seems a little
bit ambiguous.  However, if you either read all of Hosea to figure
out what this means, or trust the work of scholars who have done so
(I’ve done both), then it starts to make sense that what they’re
talking about is the renewal of God’s covenant with ancient
Israel.  This is the theme of the whole book of Hosea.  The
questions of Hosea center around what God is going to do since the
people have been unfaithful to the covenant.  The passage we read
today is about God choosing to renew the covenant, despite the
people’s unfaithfulness.

And,
a reasonable person might ask, what does THAT have to do with 2 days
and 3 days?  And really, what does it have to do with Jesus, or say,
us?  

I’m
so glad you asked.1

The
reference to 2 days and 3 days is based on the story of Moses sharing
the covenant in Exodus 19.  Three months after the people had left
Eygpt, they got to Sinai, and Moses went up the mountain to be with
God.  God told Moses to say, “You have seen what I did to the
Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to
myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you
shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the
whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a
holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the
Israelites.’” (Exodus 19:4-6)  Aka – you are going to be a
sign of my love to the world.   That WAS the covenant, and as it
got expanded and explained more it becomes clear that living out the
covenant is about how they treated each other, and the vulnerable in
their midst, and eventually even their neighboring nations.

Exodus
19 goes on:

Then Moses had told the words of
the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses: ‘Go to the people
and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their
clothes and prepare for the third day, because on the third
day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all
the people. You shall set limits for the people all around, saying,
“Be careful not to go up the mountain or to touch the edge of it.
Any who touch the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch
them, but they shall be stoned or shot with arrows; whether animal or
human being, they shall not live.” When the trumpet sounds a long
blast, they may go up on the mountain.’ So Moses went down from the
mountain to the people. He consecrated the people, and they washed
their clothes. And he said to the people, ‘Prepare for the third
day; do not go near a woman.’ (9-15)

And,
at the end of those 3 days the people “met” God.  The story says
the experience was like the mountain being wrapped in smoke, and
fire, and earthquake, and thunder.  It appears it was quite awe
inspiring.  Then Moses gets called back up the mountain and that is
when Moses was given the 10 commandments and the rest of the
expectations of God for how the people were to behave to each other
and in worship.

So
why did the early Christians chose to tell the story of the
resurrection of Jesus as happening on the third day?  Probably
because it was awe inspiring like that experience of the people of
“meeting” God.  Likely also because it fit into this framework of
restoration from Hosea, and Jesus’s teaching had been about restoring
the relationships between God and the people and the people and each
other.  Likely, also, this relates to the early Christian
understanding that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was a
NEW covenant between God and the people, one the people couldn’t mess
up.  As such, it made sense to tell it in the form of the most
important covenant story of the Scriptures as they knew them.  

Thus
the choice to force Friday night to Sunday morning into a 3 day
framework.

In
Luke we’re told that A LOT OF THINGS happened on that “third day”
Sunday.  The women found the empty tomb, they told the disciples,
Peter also saw the tomb, two other disciples walked to Emmaus –
experienced the risen Christ –  and walked back, and our passage
today starts with “while they were still talking about this,”
meaning the story of those who’d walked to Emmaus.  Today’s passage
is still set on that “third day.”

The
story wants to emphasize that Jesus wasn’t a ghost or an angel, but
rather than he’d been physically resurrected.  The idea is that
ghosts and angels don’t EAT, but living beings do.  Having eaten, the
story says, he explained, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is
to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to
all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24-46b-47)  As this
is a story of the early Christian community, we can use it to help
ourselves understand how they saw this new covenant.  They did a nice
job putting the “three day” thing there to help make sense of the
covenant, right?

This
new covenant, at least in this passage, seems to be centered on
“repentance” and forgiveness of sins, right?   Repentance makes
easy sense to me, it fits with the teaching that Jesus was sharing in
his lifetime of ministry, “Repent and believe, the kin(g)dom of God
is at hand.”  That is, turn from the fear-filled ways of the world,
get centered in God, and participate in the kindom of relationship,
sharing, compassion, and abundance, and as you do so, the kindom will
gain strength until it comes in completion.

However,
in the Jewish Annotated Bible it is mentioned that in Jewish thought,
God is always ready to forgive the sins of the repentant.2
So, what is this about? Why did the early Christian community think
that forgiveness of sins was so central?  This feels REALLY
important, because I still hear many Christians who think the entire
Christian story is one of forgiveness, and I’ve always struggled to
understand why, especially when God’s forgiveness was already
available before Jesus.3

In
the commentary on the Hosea passage, Dr. Gail Yee wrote, “The
period of chastisement when God rends the people is intended to
motivate their repentance/return.  This doctrine of correction is
particularly characteristic of deuteronomistic and wisdom literature,
in which the period of the Babylonian exile was regarded as a
traumatic time when the people recognized their guilt and returned to
God.”4
When I read that, a light went off.  The Jewish people in the time of
Jesus lived a life of oppression under the realm of the Roman Empire.
This likely felt like a new form of Exile, an exile at home.  So, as
their ancestors in faith had done before them, they told themselves
the story that their oppression was God’s chastisement, and that if
they returned to God’s ways they’d be freed again.  Return and
restoration in this story are dependent on both the people’s
repentance and God’s forgiveness.

And
suddenly the Christian story itself makes sense.  They’re thinking
about communal sin, and global politics, and trying to please God
into making their lives better.  Which MAKES SENSE for faithful human
meaning makers to do.  But knowing
that frees me to tell my own faith story, which is that God was with
them in oppression, and working towards freedom (including through
Jesus) but hadn’t been punishing them to begin with.  God’s
desires for repentance were about wanting to gift the people with
full and abundant lives and building the kindom, … not about proof
of worthiness.

And
that, dear ones, brings us to today.  We have been in our own “exile
at home” for more than a year now, and consciously or unconsciously
there have been a lot of questions of “why did this happen to us?”
Those are normal, healthy, human questions.  I suspect there has
been some creeping fear that the answer is “because we messed up”
and challengingly, that seems true.  But that doesn’t mean anything
about God punishing us.  We messed up by not trusting scientists, and
not taking the long view, and not caring for the vulnerable, and not
putting lives before profits.  This pandemic isn’t God’s punishment,
but it is reflective of our collective “sins” so to speak.

I
hope and pray that we, our communities, our country, and our world,
will repent (especially the “first world).  I hope we will learn.
I hope we will remember how interconnected we all are and that if
anyone is vulnerable to illness, we are ALL vulnerable to illness.  I
hope we will decide to transform the ways societies work, to care for
all and bring life abundant to all.  I hope we will remember all of
God’s covenants, and work with God in building the kindom, the
beloved community, peace on earth.  

The
good news, is that the resurrection story tells us that what seems
impossible (like global change into care and compassion) is possible!
May God help us, and may we help God!  Amen

1 Can
anyone tell the Pastor misses preaching in person?

2 Amy
Jill Levine “Footnote on Luke 24:47” in The Jewish
Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible
Translation, edited by Amy-Jill
Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 151.

3 Truthfully
I have a lot of critique of the idea, but not enough time to share
it.  I’m happy to talk it over if you’d like.

4 Gail
Yee, “Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:3” in The New Interpreter’s
Bible Volume VII ed. by Leander
E. Keck et al, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 249.

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

April 18, 2021

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“Journey with Jesus” based on Psalm 133 and John…

  • April 11, 2021
  • by Sara Baron

Have
you ever thought about what it would be like to journey with Jesus?
I’m not actually talking about spiritual metaphor here, I suspect if
I was many people could openly say, “Yes, that’s my life!”  I
mean, what it was like for the first followers of Jesus to journey
around Galilee and later Judah with the historical Jesus.

Being
a part of the 21st century, my capacity for 1st
century historical accuracy is lacking, so I’m sometimes hesitant to
to project myself into those experiences.  Nevertheless, it feels
like I can’t enter into this story of “Doubting Thomas” without
letting my questions about journeying with Jesus come front and
center.

I
wonder how often those first followers were uncomfortable, especially
in the face of Jesus’ teaching.  This is likely projection on my
part, a reflection of how challenged I am by what he taught.  “Love
your enemy,” “give to anyone who asks of you,” “everyone is
your neighbor,” and  “love your neighbor as you love yourself”
are all important, profound teachings.  They’re also ones I fail to
live up to every day.  Did the disciples squirm like I do?  Or is it
that I come from a position of relative power and wealth that leads
me to squirm, and those who followed him more often had nothing and
could more easily accept his teaching?

What
about the parables?  Even the Jesus Seminar believes that Jesus
probably taught in parables.  The thing about parables is that
they’re lessons that keep on giving.  Every time you think about
them, you can see something new.  They grow with you.  This is,
obviously, amazing as a teaching tool.  But was it hard, as a first
follower, to be stretched and grown every day?  Did it feel like
drinking from a fire hose?  Did they ever feel like they got it, they
knew what he was up to, they were following along?

I
wonder too about the pace of life for those first followers.  The
gospel writer of Mark likes the word “immediately” and seems to
tell a rapid fire story.  But that just means he skips the quiet,
slow parts.  Did they linger of meals, talking and laughing?  Or was
everything GO-GO-GO like in the midst of an advocacy campaign with a
legislative deadline?  I suspect it was the former.  I don’t think
you actually build a movement that lasts unless you work at the pace
of human trust, and that pace requires a lot of talking, laughing,
story telling, meaning making, and even sitting around the fire in
quiet wonder.  

Some
of my questions really add up to, what kind of spiritual development
happened to those who were following Jesus?  The first followers were
members of a powerful faith tradition already, one that Jesus was
using and drawing from.  They were also, mostly, disenfranchised
people without any reason to have faith or trust in the systems of
the day.  They were marginalized people.  (And that’s where I have to
be so careful to pay attention to the fact that I am not one, and not
to project myself more than I should.)  In some ways, marginalized
people have an advantage in seeing what God is up to in the world,
because God is always up to upsetting the status quo to allow more
people to thrive AND survive and that is GOOD NEWS for the
marginalized people but threatening for those who are not.

And
they were spending all their time with Jesus, and with each other,
and that feels like the very best set up for rapid faith development.
Jesus was deeply connected with the Divine, likely a mystic, and
ready and able to put the needs of others before his own.  In my
life, people like that have taught me SO much, and I’d imagine being
with Jesus for a year would change EVERYTHING.

I’m
wondering this because of the easy way with which Thomas is able to
express his doubt to his fellow disciples.  This is an expression of
a rather well developed faith.  I want to consider a few “stages of
faith development” according to James Fowler, and wonder about
where the disciples were with those.  Yet, I want to be a little bit
careful. It can be really easy to hear about stages like these and
try to characterize one’s self as HIGH as one can, as well as to
deride others for being in LOWER stages.  That is NOT the point.  In
fact, I suspect that most of us move around between stages based on
the level of stress we’re under, the strength of the teaching we’d
received on any given topic, the level of stress around us, and the
number of other things we’re trying to do at the same time. God is
with people wherever we are, and while we do want to “develop” as
people of faith, part of that development is making peace with the
honesty of where we are and being peaceable about where others are –
without judgement.  This is also to say that if you feel like you’ve
moved backward over the past, say 15 months, then have grace with
yourself – that means you’ve been under unsustainable stress.

The
least developed “adult faith”1
is one that easily yields to authority and quietly pushes away any
conflicts in faith in order to minimize the threat to faith.  To help
grasp the stages, I think it may be instructive to see how the Psalm
might be heard from within this stage.  The Psalm’s opening verse,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!” can be heard as an encouragement to keep the peace, quiet
one’s own questions, and silence the concerns of those who raise
issues – in the name of “unity.”  Unfortunately, this
understanding of unity has the impact of silencing people who are
marginalized and preventing growth.  Yet, it is easy to see how it
can be heard that way, right? “How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!”  So— be quiet about issues
and experience the good and pleasant!!  Thomas is well past this
stage when he easily, immediately, questions the statement of TEN of
his friends and faith companions.  

The
next level of “adult faith”2
is characterized by angst and struggle as the person takes
responsibility for their own faith, instead of just following
blindly.  In this stage is greater nuance, greater open-mindedness,
and more potential conflict.  How might people in this stage hear,
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in
unity!”?  I wonder if the word “unity” becomes more complicated
here, or if “kindred” are subdivided.  Is this a place where the
unity of the kindred reflects similar thinking groups, but there are
several different areas of unity?  Does challenging authority become
a means of separation?  (There are many other possible answers.)  It
is clear that Thomas is AT LEAST at this stage, as he speaks his own
truth clearly.  He stands in his own integrity whether anyone is with
him or not, although it is worth pointing out that he remains with
the whole, and that might suggest that this sort of unity is large
enough for everyone’s integrity.

The
next level of “adult faith” seems like the one all of the
disciples were in the midst of transitioning into after the death of
Jesus.  It generally comes after a significant crisis, and James
Fowler calls this “Conjunctive Faith.”  This is faith that can
handle paradoxes and mystery, and let go of pieces of tradition or
faith from prior stages that don’t work anymore.  It is a stage and a
space where multiple truths can be held simultaneously, without
conflict.  So how might, “How very good and pleasant it is when
kindred live together in unity!” be heard here?  Perhaps this is
when “unity” becomes about seeking each other’s well-being
regardless of differences of perspective or differences of need.
Unity doesn’t require similarity, only love, and love flows from God.

I
cannot tell for sure if Thomas or the rest where in this stage yet.
I think most likely they were growing into it, and this is a story
about that transition.  This is, after all, a story remembering that
different people have different experiences and rather than all the
value going to the ones with greater experience, there is an
acknowledged blessing of those who follow without the experiences.
This is a story that anticipates us – the ones who did not
experience the first resurrection first hand, and yet celebrate it.  

There
is, for Fowler, a rare final stage of adult faith development, one
neither this story nor most people of faith reach.  I suspect that
most of the disciples reached it by the end of their lives, and I
further suspect it is what John Wesley was talking about when he
suggested that people could reach perfection in living God’s love
during their lifetimes.  I think that people in that stage would
hear, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together
in unity!” and immediately grasp that “kindred” is universal
and “unity” comes when all the people have the peace that comes
after the needs of justice are met.

Was
it because the disciples had time with Jesus that they reached the
final stage?  Or was it because they lost Jesus and had to find the
ways to go on that they did?  Or both?  Or neither?  It is
unknowable.

As
United Methodists, we are taught about that idea of reaching
perfection in living God’s love during our lifetimes.  It is most
often called “going on to perfection” and most frequently it
serves to make me sad when I realize how far I am from that goal.
Yet, when I slow down enough to listen to the voice of God, I hear
God saying that I don’t have to be there yet, God hasn’t asked that
of me.  Rather, God says, I’m asked to be where I am, and be open to
the next means of grace that will help me walk along my journey.
And, that seems fair, because God is a just God, and God doesn’t ask
more of us than we can give, and what we can give is based on who we
are today and where we are on our faith journey.

Which
means, really that I’m back to the metaphorical journey with Jesus,
and am encouraging you to think about how your journey is going, and
what the next steps are, and to check to see if you need any help
along the way.  I can think of no clearer role for the church than to
help each other as we move along our journeys with Jesus.  Or, in
other words, we help each other move onto perfect.  May God help us
all!!  Amen

1James
W. Fowler Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development
and the Quest for Meaning (San
Francisco: Harper&Row, 1981).  Fowler’s stage 3:
Synthetic-Conventional”
Faith.  Summary found at
https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/06/12/the-stages-of-faith-according-to-james-w-fowler/
(I have and love the book, but thank God for other people’s
thoughtful work.)

2 Fowler’s
stage 4: “Individuative-Reflective
Faith”

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

April 11, 2021

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