#UMC – Page 2 – First United Methodist Church Schenectady

“Those Who Walked the Walk” based on Habakkuk 1:1-4;…

November 3, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

(Thanks to Kevin Kempf for the great picture!)

Have you heard of “thin
places?”” I’ve heard it described as places where the veil
between this world and the next is thinner – or where God’s
presence can be especially felt. Ideologically, thin places don’t
make any sense to me. I believe that God is all-present, so God
isn’t any more or less present anywhere.

And yet… I have experienced
thin places. I don’t understand them, but I know them. You may be
needing some examples. Mountaintops are commonly thin places, which
I suspect has less to do with the altitude and more to do with the
effort to get to them and the views they offer. Things just feel
different at the top of a mountain, and many people have experienced
them to be thin places. Sanctuaries are another common choice –
ones in churches or ones at camps. I have often wondered if places
where many people have prayed are changed in some way by the
pervasiveness of the prayers – and thus made more holy. (Again,
this doesn’t fit my understanding, but it fits my experience.)
Sometimes, I think, thin places are not places even, they are
moments. I once had a chance to ask a church about when they’d most
strongly experienced God and a whole lot of them mentioned the births
of their children. It is also very common (but not universal) for a
death to be a thin place.

I
also suspect thin places might have a lot more to do with us being
open to the presence of God that is always with us than a change in
the amount of presence, but however it is, I think they ARE. And,
further, one of those moments that has often been a thin place for me
is All Saints Sunday. Over the course of my ministry, more years
than not, this has been the holiest worship service I’ve led.

This year, like every year, the
names we are about to read lie heavy on my heart. Oh friends, the
saints who have gone on ahead of us taught us so much! We are who we
are because of them! It is an honor to read their names and remember
their lives, but it is also heavy to live without them. One of our
traditions, in this church, is to also name the saints whose loss is
still especially heavy on our hearts, even if their departure was
more than a year ago. The list of those names is also dear – and
beautiful and sad and heavy.

Today conjures in my mind that
simple line “the great cloud of witnesses” from Hebrews 12, which
is an incredibly comforting image. Life can feel overwhelming at
times, and sometimes I have no idea where to turn, but remembering
that those who taught me, and loved me, and guided me – guide me
still and show us the way – is very powerful. It is even better to
notice how many of there are!

So, indeed, All Saints Sunday
is, for me, a thin place, and the names we are about to read and the
lives they represent are an honor to remember and name.

Now,
the gospel passage may not seem terribly well connected to all of
that, perhaps because of the terrible Sunday School song that too
many of us learned about Zacchaeus. (If you don’t know it, I beg
you, stay ignorant.) The story itself, however, is not as trite as
the song. There are surprises all over this story, if you pay
attention to them. One is that a wealthy and powerful man was
particularly interested in Jesus, who aimed his ministry particularly
at people who were living in poverty and disempowered. The second is
that the wealthy and powerful man was willing to forgo his dignity to
try to see Jesus, which seems to want to remind us just how exciting
Jesus was in real life and how worthy of seeking out he was (is).
Then there is the amazing turn in the story when Jesus decides to
focus his attention on Zaccheaus, this wealthy and powerful man,
which I think absolutely no one expected. Zaccheaus, however, was
happy and gracious. Then there is the unsurprising grumbling of the
crowd, who are peeved that Jesus is hanging out with this guy (tax
collectors being about as popular then as border patrol agents are
today). And then there is the turn around where Zaccheaus, having
had this experience with Jesus, commits to a moral and fair life.
(I’m going to disregard my assumptions that he probably couldn’t
afford to pay back 4 times as much as he’d over taken…. that’s not
the point.) It seems that being with Jesus was a thin place for
Zaccheaus, where he could access love, hope, and wonder, and be
changed by it.

The beautiful thing about the
Zaccheaus story is that sometimes we are ALL Zaccheaus, and the story
seems to say that’s OK. Sometimes we have power, and sometimes we
use it wrong, but we’re still TRYING our hardest to know what’s right
and do it, and when we figure what what we’ve done wrong, there is a
chance to change it.

Now,
that’s where this fits in with our Saints today. Because none of the
Saints we celebrate today were actually perfect in their lives. Not
a single one. Our memories may get fuzzy around that, but all the
people we are remembering were fallible. All of them, as well,
sometimes had power and sometimes used it wrong. That’s human life.
What’s WONDERFUL is when people realize what they’ve done and seek to
change it. That’s why they are our saints – because of their
willingness to grow, learn, and change.

Friends, this is an interesting
reminder for those of us trying to follow in their footsteps. And it
is a two-fold reminder: (1) we are not expected to be perfect.
Really. We can’t be, and trying just makes it all worse. (2) And,
when we discover how we’ve erred, if we are willing and able to
change, it makes all the difference. This is, often, a cycle we have
to keep on living. I see it clearly in myself in working towards
anti-racism, a goal I yearn for. However, every time I learn
something new, I have to realize how much I’ve erred in the past, and
change it. AND THEN, you know what, the next thing I learn shows
that I’ve still been erring and I still need to change, and I’m not
there yet. It feels AWFUL, and yet it would feel way worse to keep
messing up once I know what I’m doing.

The
Habbakuk passage feels a little bit too on point for a while, doesn’t
it? It is bemoaning the injustices of the world, and THEN it totally
changes!! The prophet’s concerns are met by GOD’s response, and God
says, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner
may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it
speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for
it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their
spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.”
Oh. My. So our work is to dream, and vision, and make the vision
for God’s goodness clear and visible to others. A commentator
writes, “At at time when the wicked are in control, when the vision
describing God’s intention to reestablish justice has not yet become
a reality, Habakkuk is called in the interim to trust God’s
assurances and to remain faithful.”¹
Not to lose hope, not to give up, not even to keep on bemoaning
reality, but to trust and share the vision.

And the vision that has been
shared with all of us is why we are here. We want to be part of
building God’s vision in the world into everyone’s reality. And the
saints taught us it was possible and showed us the vision. And their
lives have made this a thin place, where we are able to see, a little
more clearly, the beauty of the vision of God and the hope that is
the world for the present and the future. Thanks be to God. Amen

Sermon Talkback Guiding
Questions:

I talked about “thin”
places in the beginning, does that idea make sense to you and if so,
where have you found some?
How are “Saints” related to
learn, growing, changing – and admitting erring?
What else do you see in the
story of Zaccheaus that I didn’t bring out?
Did the Habbakkuk reading
switch too fast for you? (Or not fast enough)
How do you name God’s vision
that we’re working on?
Of the saints we celebrated
today, or have celebrated previously, how did they teach you of
God’s vision for the kindom?
What helps you remember that
you don’t have to be perfect?
What helps you have the courage
to change when you’ve erred?

1Theodore
Hiebert, “Habbakkuk” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume
VII, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abindon Press, 1996), p.
638)

–

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

November 3, 2019

Sermons

“The New Covenant” based on Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Luke…

October 21, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Formally, a covenant is an agreement or legal contract,
although the word is used more often in the religious arena. In
fact, in the religious arena, LOTS of agreements get called a
covenant. The “marriage covenant” the “covenant of the
ordained” (which, btw, doesn’t actually exist but the powers that
be in the church like to hold us to one anyway), behavior covenants
at camp or on mission trips. I was a little shocked when John
Dominic Crossan was here a few years ago to learn that covenants
aren’t as morally neutral as I’d thought.

Religious groups use covenant language because our Bible
does, but it turns out that our Bible uses it because that was the
normal means of making agreements in its day. And covenants are
inherently power dominant. The dominant party sets the standards and
tells the less powerful party what the consequences will be if the
less powerful party doesn’t meet the standards of the dominant party.
It isn’t some particularly holy thing – it’s a form of agreement
between unequals, that functions as a means of naming the punishment
if the less powerful party doesn’t hold up to their end of the deal.
(Which they may not have had much choice about getting into anyway.)

The Hebrew Bible is full of covenants, and almost all of
them have condition in them and punishments delineated as well. They
tend to say, “If you do this, then I will be your God and you will
be my people and things are going to be OK. If not, then it follows
that the inverse will happen.” However, today we are talking about
the exceptions. The first exception is in the covenant made with
Abraham, mostly.

The story of Abraham’s covenant appears 3 times in
Genesis, and in 2 of the 3 versions it is unconditional. The the
3^rd, it is conditional on circumcision. The three
versions relate to the three different “voices” in Genesis, and
this story is important enough that all three versions are known and
told. My favorite is the Priestly version in Genesis 15, whereby God
intentionally takes on the roles of both the powerful and the
powerless in covenant making and thereby takes all the responsibility
for the relationship continuing to work.

That covenant is the one most like what we hear in
Jeremiah 31, where we hear of the “new covenant.” Jeremiah is
generally considered a downer prophet, as his role was to say that if
the nation of Israel didn’t change its ways, it was going to be
destroyed.

However, Jeremiah 31 is the middle of three hopeful
chapters whereby the prophet names that after the destruction that
would come, an even better relationship with God would be possible.
The hope is even more potent in the midst of the the rest of the
book, and its threats of dire destruction. The particulars of the
new covenant are worth noting. Let’s hear that part again:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a
covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I
will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to
each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive
their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

The comparison for the “new covenant” are the
covenants in the Torah. In those covenants God made promises to the
people that were CONTINGENT on the people upholding their promises to
God. In this new covenant God takes all the responsibility on God’s
self. The people don’t have to learn, or memorize, or interpret the
Torah because God will “put it within them” and “write it on
their hearts.” And in this way the people and God will be
inseparable.

The part that is particularly inspiring to me is, “ No
longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know
the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to
the greatest.” God’s self is not entirely knowable within the
human realm, and it is easy to get lost in figuring out God even when
we’re trying our hardest. The idea that everyone could know, and
intuit the goodness and love of God AND act out God’s kindom is
really powerful.

The final line is both really powerful in its original
context, and likely the reason that the Christian Tradition has so
strongly claimed this text. The line is, “for I will forgive their
iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” For those who heard
Jeremiah, and for those who complied his remembered speeches into a
book, the reason for the exile was that the people had been
unfaithful to the covenant with God. They had not followed the Torah
laws, they had allowed the rich and powerful to abuse the poor and
powerless, and they had forgotten God’s will. Whether or not that
was the reason for the exile, it is the reason that is assumed within
the book. To forgive iniquity and sin, then, was a form of
restoration. To continually forgive iniquity and forget sin is to
take away the threat of punishment and create the hope of security.

Now, as the Christian Tradition has strongly claimed
authority over God’s forgiveness of sins, it makes a lot of sense
that it has strongly claimed this “old” (by the standards of
Christianity) idea of the “new” covenant. However, claiming
Jeremiah’s vision of the new covenant is a really radical claim for
Christianity to make! Sure, Christianity also claims that we and God
have made an eternal covenant, God is our God and we are God’s
people. That one is easy. We also claim forgiveness, that fits.
But we aren’t yet in a time, as far as I know, where we are past
having to teach each other of God and God’s goodness. Nor are we
living in a time when all people intuit and live out right action
that allows the kindom to come and continue.

The “new covenant” of Jeremiah in some ways reminds
me of the kindom itself – it is here and now! But it is here and
now IN PART and we are working towards the day when it is here and
now in completion! I love, though, that Christianity is claimed this
deep and profound dream as ours. Of course, I hope we all remember
that the dream is one from our Hebrew Bible and we don’t have a
unilateral claim to it.

A while ago, one night at Bible Study we came across our
Gospel passage for today, and someone raised a question, “What is
this ‘new covenant’ thing?” The answer referred us to the Jeremiah
passage. For a lot of people present that night, things CLICKED. The
United Methodist communion liturgy refers to the new covenant twice.
The first time it shows up describing the life and ministry of Jesus
where it says:

Holy are you, and blessed is your Son Jesus
Christ.
…
By the baptism of his suffering, death, and
resurrection
you gave birth to your Church,
delivered us from
slavery to sin and death,
and made with us a new covenant
by
water and the Spirit.
When the Lord Jesus ascended,
he promised
to be with us always,
in the power of your Word and Holy Spirit.

The second time is when the communion cup is named and
raised, where it says:

When the supper was over, he took the cup,
gave
thanks to you, gave it to his disciples, and said:
“Drink
from this, all of you;
this is my blood of the new
covenant,
poured out for you and for many
for the
forgiveness of sins.
Do this, as often as you drink it,
in
remembrance of me.”

Those who had grown up hearing those words, over and
over, without context, were excited to know the context of it.

In addition to showing up in our communion liturgy, the
concept of the New Covenant is also found in our language for our
Scriptures. The so-called New Testament which is alternative
language for, yep you got it, “New Covenant.” Our Bible itself
claims that the stories of Jesus and the early church ARE the stories
of the new covenant of Jeremiah being lived out on earth. And, I
think this is claimed because it is believed. And, I think the claim
that our faith tradition is an expression of Jeremiah’s “New
Covenant” is both excessive and hopeful.

Someday, may it fully be so. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

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

Sermons

“Afterlife?” based on Job 14 and Mark 12:18-27

October 13, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

I want to start today by asking
for your trust – particularly from those who are here particularly
for the baptism. I do know that the first hymn and the scriptures
have been an odd match for a baptismal Sunday so far, and it is going
to get worse before it gets better, but it IS going to get better, I
promise.

The question of “what happens
after we die” is relevant to us for two separate reasons. One
reason is entirely personal: we want to know if we are simply mortal
and if we cease to exist when we die. The other may be just as
personal, in a different way: we want to know if the connects we
have to those who have died before us are still alive or if they only
feel that way.

Both of these are good reasons
to want to know, but nevertheless, we don’t know what happens after
death. And our believes about it end up being profoundly personal.
If we are looking at afterlife through the lens of the Christian
Tradition, there are three big questions people to disagree over:

Does afterlife exist?
If there is an afterlife, do
both heaven and hell exist, or just heaven?
If both heaven and hell exist,
how are people sorted between them?

While many people have deep
conviction about their answers to these questions, and believe their
answers to be the “normal” ones, the truth is that Christians
have disagreed about this for about as long as there have been
Christians.

For
centuries, Christianity has taught about afterlife and the existence
of heaven and hell, all while arguing about the means of sorting
people into each. Yet, there is also a large group of Biblical
Scholars who think that we’ve gotten those assumptions wrong. They
say that 1^st
century Jews, Jesus, and the earliest Christians did not believe in
heaven and hell the way we do. At best, heaven and hell were
temporary resting places while waiting for bodily resurrection that
would come along with the Kindom of God on earth.¹
More commonly, people believed that there was nothing until the
moment of universal bodily resurrection, which they expected to come
within the first generation after Jesus. For some others the
perspective of Job 14 was accurate: humans die but at least God
doesn’t.

For
the most part, I think afterlife is an aside to Christianity. The
goal is to build the kindom on earth, not in heaven. However, the
reality of deaths of those we love and the looming reality of our own
deaths don’t let us go. We really want to know, and for many people,
what they believe about afterlife profoundly connects to how they
understand God.

Now,
this is the fifth and final sermon in a sermon series
comparing the salient points of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the
tradition of the Christian Right, and what I’ve been calling
“Jesus-followers”. (That final group is us.) Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism was discovered through sociological research on the
belief system on teenagers, and we have reason to believe it is the
default belief system of most Americans. Unfortunately, as we’ve
found, its a rather problematic belief system, at least in my
opinion. It consists of 5 intersecting assumptions:

“A
god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
life on earth.”
“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in
the Bible and by most world religions.”
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
“God
does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
God is needed to resolve a problem.”
“Good
people go to heaven when they die.”

Today we are looking at the 5^th
and final point, “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

Of course, if you asked most
people what Christians think, that would be a key part of the answer,
“good people go to heaven when they die,” but – of course – our
tradition is far more complicated than is generally known.

Historically,
I think the concepts of heaven and hell came into clarity in the 3^rd
or 4^th
century, as that’s when the fights over who went where really picked
up. So let’s look at our three questions:

Does afterlife exist?

Christians
of good faith disagree about this one. Some, including some in this
community, say, “no. This life is all there is, so let’s make the
best of it instead of pretending there is more.” Others, including
some in this community, say, “I think so. I’ve had some
experiences that lead me to that conclusion and/or it just feels
right.” Still others simply aren’t sure. Because the “word on
the street” about Christianity so profoundly conflates belief in
God with belief in afterlife, I feel the need to say this explicit:
all of these are faithful statements that are congruent with knowing
a loving God through Jesus.

So, the second question, which
presumes an answer of “yes” to the first one about afterlife
existing. The second question is:

2. If there is an afterlife,
do both heaven and hell exist, or just heaven?

I’ll admit that I nuanced this
one to lead to a particular answer. While I’m not always confident
about afterlife (and yet sometimes I am, it is a confusing place
inside my head), I never think there is a hell. It just doesn’t make
the tiniest bit of sense to me that over the long run anything but
God’s grace could win out. I read one time a suggestion that people
continue to have free will after death, and so if heaven is unity
with God, people can take AS LONG AS THEY WANT to get there, but in
the end, they will because grace wins. Put another way, I simply
don’t believe in a God of eternal punishment, it is incomprehensible
to me. That said, I think most modern Christians believe in a heaven
and a hell, and most of them think it is heresy not to. (oh. Well.)

I
think that for most people who believe that “good people go to
heaven when they die” and the unspoken but obvious corollary “bad
people go to hell when they die” there is a desire to believe that
there is fundamental justice in the world and that bad things are
punished and good things are celebrated and even if we don’t see
evidence of that on earth, it will get balanced out later. I can
understand a desire to believe that!

Now, for me the third question
is null and void, but since Christianity has spent the past 1600-1700
years fighting over it, I guess we should take a moment to hear the
arguments. 😉

3. If both heaven and hell
exist, how are people sorted between them?

Possible answers:

In order to get into heaven you
have to BELIEVE the right things ( “Justification by FAITH.”)
This is the primary perspective of the Christian Right, although it
intersects some with the next idea.
In order to get into heaven
you have do DO the right things. For many of those Christians there
is a list of good things and a list of bad things to guide behavior.
( “Justification by WORKS” or “Works Righteousness.”)
In order to get into heaven one
must be baptized. This is often even subconscious now. This is one
of the strongest arguments for infant baptism. It is also one of
the strongest arguments against it. Some in this mindset will claim
that only baptism in their PARTICULAR part of Christianity will
matter. However, when Christianity was much younger, this often
resulted in people refusing to be baptized until the very last
moment. (I think, in fact, this is the historical basis for the
Catholic ritual of last rites.) They thought that once baptized all
their sins were forgiven, and if it was done late enough they
wouldn’t have time to sin. I’m not kidding. This was very common
practice.
In
order to get into heaven we need God’s grace, and God’s grace given
to us results in our ability to have faith. (“Justification by
grace alone though faith.”) UMC option
Thus it is not what we do or do not do; nor what we believe or do
not believe that results in our welcome into heaven. It is simply
God’s nature. This does raise a rather large question about those
who do not believe in God though.

As
a reminder of how complicated all of this is, I do not think that
our Gospel lesson supports or disproves any of the schools of
thought. Rather, it urges humility. The Sadducees were trying to
trick up Jesus, and they brought him a tricky question in order to do
it. The question supported their belief about what happens when
we die, but Jesus’ answer did not let them trip him up. He says,
““Is
not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the
scriptures nor the power of God? For
when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being
raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about
the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the
living; you are quite wrong.”

This
passage keeps me humble. I don’t know what it means, I don’t know
what heaven is like,or if it exists, and that’s OK. Many of us are
not same worldview as moralistic therapeutic deism who say “good
people go to heaven when they die” or the Christian-Right who say
that and have clarity over who counts as “good.” Many of us
simply don’t know what happens after death.

I
think that at the core, the questions of if afterlife exists or not
and whether there is cosmic justice are really questions about
existential anxiety. That is, as beings who are conscious and who
know we are mortal, we struggle with the reality that someday we
won’t be (at least in this form) anymore.

I
think that our shared, all the way back to Jesus, Christian Tradition
offers Jesus-followers two ways we can respond to existential anxiety
and the claims of the other traditions. If we are about continuing
the work of Jesus – about building the kindom and inviting others
to be partners with us in building the kindom – then our work does
not end with our deaths any more than Jesus’ did. This is not same
as individual afterlife, but is really powerful in a different way.
Certainly the ways that each of us work towards the kindom is unique,
but the end goal is shared, and after we are gone others will be
following up on our work with theirs … until the kindom comes.

The
other piece of our response to existential anxiety is simply trusting
in God. Whether or not we cease to exist at the end of our lives,
God and God’s memory will still hold our lives, our loves, our
actions, our thoughts, and our feelings. And, whatever is on the
other side of the proverbial curtain – God IS and God is GOOD and
what will be is possible to trust in.

And
that brings us full circle to say, that while I know it is awful to
acknowledge death while celebrating a new life, I am happy to say
that the kindom building and the goodness of God will outlast even the life of the baby baptized today life and thanks be to God for that! Amen

(http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/13.36.html?paging=off)

Sermons

“Communion with Migrants and Refugees” based on Exodus 17:1-7…

October 6, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Our faith says, a wandering
Aramean was our ancestor – that is, Abraham and Sarah, displaced
people from Syria, are our shared ancestors.

Our faith says our people were
enslaved, oppressed, and hopeless until God acted to free them.

Our people were desert nomads
for generations, looking for a home but not finding one.

Our people, when they found a
home in the so-called “Promised Land” struggled with those who
already lived there, and centuries (ok, millennia) of unrest
followed.

Our faith says, that a poor,
foreign widow came to live in Israel, and became the great
grandmother of the King of Israel.

When our people had lived in the
land for centuries, had built a temple, had established a government,
and had found peace and stability – a foreign empire defeated them
in battle, destroyed the temple, killed the king’s descendants, broke
open the defensive walls, and took the leaders away as exiles.

Our leaders in exile were told
to “work for the good of the city they were in” because it was
going to take a while.

Our faith says that generations
later, God worked to bring the exiles home, and guided the people to
rebuilt, and restore, and it was hard and there were disagreements.

Other nations fought for power
and control over the land of the Israelites, empires grew and empires
fell, tributes were paid and governments were seized. The people
sought freedom, and sometimes they got it.

Eventually the Romans came to
power, and 30 or so years later, Jesus was born.

Matthew says that Jesus’s family
fled to Egypt to protect him from death, and resettled in Nazareth
after they returned.

Nazarenes knew destruction and
its power, but Rome didn’t yet know the power of the stories of the
Jews, who knew their God to be one who overcame oppression time and
time again.

Jesus’ ministry was most often
with people who were poor and had been displaced from their families’
lands. His was a ministry in motion – homeless and dependent on
the hospitality of strangers. He sent his disciples off with nothing
but the clothes on their back and trust in God.

Our faith says that our
ancestors have known displacement in all of its forms. Our faith is
the faith of slaves, of immigrants, of refugees – people who have
had nothing but hope in God, who has proven faithful time and time
again. The fact that God is with and for displaced people is
particularly important as our world has more displaced people than
ever.¹

Today in 2019 there are known to
be 70.8 million people²
who have forcibly displaced from their homes, and that number is
likely lower than reality. Of those, this year the USA says it will
welcome at most 30,000 (and likely only half that).³
In this country we hear horror stories about people trying to enter
our country – but we often don’t hear about how small the numbers
are compared to the global crisis.

In the USA, the stories we hear
are of concentration camps at our Southern Border, children being
torn from their parents, and atrocious conditions for people who are
simply trying to survive after being displaced from their own homes
and countries. These situations are worthy of our strongest
condemnation and protest. Tthe situation in our own southern border
is AN ATROCITY and, because the USA is welcoming so few of the
displaced people in the world we must also look beyond our country to
see the extend of the problems.

For me, step one in wrapping my
head around the experiences of people who are displaced is simply an
act of empathy. What would it be like? While I have spent most of
my life in the United States, there are two exceptions: 2 months in
Ecuador when I was a teenager and 3 months in England when I was a
college student. My brain simply can’t wrap itself around what it
would be like to have to leave this country and never come back. I
know from my time in Ecuador how HARD it is to be in a place where my
brain struggles with the language, and how disconcerting it is to
have intelligent thoughts in my head and no way to communicate them
so that other people know they exist. I know how much I can yearn
for familiar things – food I know, using water directing from the
tap, the plants and terrain that feels familiar. But I don’t know
what it is like to leave those things behind and NEVER be able to
come home again. Nor can I wrap my head around the atrocities being
committed at our Southern Border to people who have already been
displaced, who have already had to show resilience, who have left
their homes and their communities, their people and their dreams in
order to (hopefully) live– only to be dehumanized again by our
government.

While things feels stable, to
me, here, the world is noticeably destabilized. There are twice as
many displaced persons as there were FIVE years ago, and the trend is
only upward. Half of displaced people are children. Less than 3% of
those who have been forced to leave their countries are able to
return there.⁴
It is important to stretch our imaginations, our empathy, and our
LISTENING to those who are refugees, because from their stories we
can learn how to be allies to those who are struggling.

The book of Exodus, in our
reading today, gives us a great example of the challenges of being
displaced. The people, having been freed from slavery in Egypt, are
in the midst of their wanderings in the desert before they settle
into the Promised Land. The people are displaced, all that is
familiar has been stripped from their lives, and even though the
familiar was awful, it was the familiar and the unfamiliar is
overwhelming. The people were whining, and grumbling, and
threatening Moses. God took mercy on them and their fear, and
provided for them when they needed affirmation that they would
survive.

It is a powerful reminder that
it is hard to leave home EVEN when home is AWFUL, and that even when
where you are going is GOOD, it is still new and different. Worse,
for many displaced people, a new home isn’t on the horizon yet.

Our faith tradition, the one
that KNOWS the reality of displacement, also knows that we can forget
or ignore the pain of those around us. In 1 Corinthians, Paul names
that at the early communion table some were eating and drinking too
much while others had nothing at all, and he says that the table is
to be SHARED. Those who have plenty share with those who have
nothing. This is the earliest teaching we have in Christianity about
communion.

There are those in this
community who have plenty, and there are those who don’t have enough.
Together, though, we have this table. It isn’t something we tend to
pay a lot of attention to, but a table, in a shared community of
faith, is something many of God’s displaced people no longer have
access to. For us, today, this table is extended, and we seek to
share it with God’s people who are displaced around the world,
including at our own southern border. We know God’s table is big
enough for all people, and we ask God to extend our hearts until they
are grow as large as God’s table. May the blessings of God’s table
be with all who need them, and may we who receive of these gifts be
mindful of those who can’t access them today. Amen

1 https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/10-infographics-that-show-the-insane-scale-of-the-global-displacement-crisis/

2 https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html

3 https://immigrationforum.org/article/fact-sheet-u-s-refugee-resettlement/

4 https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/

October 6, 2019

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

Sermons

“God With Us” based on Psalm 139:1-18 and Matthew…

September 29, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Children’s
Time: Let’s play an
imagination game. If you were going to play hide and seek in this
church, where would you hide? OK, now what if I change the rules?
If you were going to try to hide from God where would you hide? Is
that a ridiculous question? Why? (OH…. you can’t hide from God
because God is everywhere? Well, then let’s thank God for that!)

Sermon:
“The One in whom we live and move and have our being,” is a
description of God used by Paul in the book of Acts. It is one of my
favorite descriptions of God, because it fits so well with my
experiences of the Divine. I FEEL surrounded by and supported by the
Holy One. I love the idea that the boundaries between “me” and
“not me” are irrelevant to God, and God is as much in me as as in
you as in the air between us. Thus, the phrase “the One in whom we
live and move and have our being” is often repeated inside my head,
a regular reminder that the God of Love is the foundation of all that
is, and can be accessed in all times and places. I suppose it would
be fair to say it is one of my faith mantras, something I come back
to regularly, ponder often, and draw strength from.

In
Acts, when Paul uses this phrase to describe God, he is intentionally
appropriating a Greek poet speaking of the Greek god Zeus, and
applying the idea to YHWH instead. This makes me giggle, but it
doesn’t make the attribution feel less true. At the core of our
faith is a believe in God who is “omnipresent”,
a Latin-derived word meaning All-present, used to say that God’s
presence is everywhere all the time. This is why you can’t hide
from God. Further, this idea means that God is within us as well as
around us, so that not only our words and actions but even our
thoughts and feelings are known to God. To believe that God is
omnipresent is to claim that nothing can separate from the presence
of God, just as nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Our
Jesus-following faith also teaches that that God is “omnibenevolent”
another Latin word that means that God is “all good” or “all
goodness.” It might make more sense to say that God is “all love
for all of creation.” It isn’t JUST that God is with us, it is
also that God is FOR us, seeking good at all times. I’ve said it
before, and I think it is worth saying again: I don’t find it
particularly important whether or not people believe in God. I do,
however, find it VERY important how they understand God. Whether or
not a person believes in God as all-present and all-loving is
significant in who it is they think God is. Very different belief
systems develop when you believe in a God who is all-present and
all-loving … or not.

Today
we’re going to look at two belief systems that disagree with my
belief system at the core. Right now we are comparing three
different belief systems: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the
Christian Right, and “Jesus Following”¹.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism was identified by sociologists through a
large research project with US teens, and is the actual belief system
of most teens, despite any religious tradition they claim.
Furthermore, as teens are most heavily influenced by their parents
when it comes to faith, we have reason to believe that a rather large
segment of the population actually believes “Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism.” So, we are looking at it, and finding where it does and
doesn’t match our actual faith tradition.

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points:

“A
god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
life on earth.”
“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in
the Bible and by most world religions.”
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
“God
does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
God is needed to resolve a problem.”
“Good
people go to heaven when they die.”

This
week we are taking a closer look at the fourth one: "God
does not need to be particularly involved
in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.“
In essence, I think this statement stands against the idea that God
is “all-present.” Or, at least, makes God so irrelevant that
God’s presence doesn’t matter. Now, the Christian-Right definitely
believes in God as all-present. However, I am not convinced that
they believe in God as all-loving. (Or, if they do, the words mean
something so different that it doesn’t count as the same idea.)

Let’s
look at Moralistic Therapeutic Deism first. This perspective, which
reflects the generic belief system in the US, says, "God
does not need to be particularly involved
in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
This makes God the last resort – and our LAST resort tends to be
something we don’t have much investment in. It also seeks to control
God. (Which those famous 10 commandments seem firmly against.) A
person who only reaches out to God when that person wants God to DO
something for them …. that person is thinking of God like a big
gumball machine. That is, “Insert prayer, and God gives you what
you want.” God becomes a means to an end, de-personalized,
unimportant for God’s own self, just there to please us.

I
suppose the statement doesn’t actually SAY that God isn’t all
present, but it make’s God’s presence irrelevant – other than as a
TOOL one uses for one’s own needs. I think it also denies God as
all-loving, because if you believe that God is all-loving, then you
believe that there is a SOURCE OF LOVE IN THE WORLD YOU CAN CONNECT
TO. And if you believe that, then I guess I figure you’d do so. Or
try to do so at least. Because humans are hungry for love – so we
seek it out (in productive and unproductive ways) all the time! So
this indifference to the Divine itself tells me that people aren’t
thinking of God as GOOD, or LOVING. Rather, they’re thinking of God
as …. well, meh.

Now,
I suspect this meh-ness about God is actually reflecting some of the
influence of the Christian-Right.²
(The Atlantic seems to be agreeing with me on this, they’re writing
a lot these days about how the decline in US religiousity is linked
to people associating the Christian-Right with Christianity and
opting out of it.) Now, I’m pretty sure that the entirety of the
Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam- teach and
believe that God is all-present. I don’t know of any part of any of
those traditions who argue against it. There are some stronger
understandings of it, like pan-en-theism which says that everything
that is exists within God and yet God is more than all that is. (I’m
a panentheist.) But the all-presentness of God isn’t in any way
controversial.

However,
the all-loving part of God IS. In fact, I think this is the breaking
point between the Christian-Right and Jesus-followers. While both
sides may make the claim, what we mean by it is profoundly different.
When I say God is all-loving I mean:

God
loves and wants good for ALL people, regardless of their
acknowledgement of God, desire to “worship” God, or the
morality of their actions.
God
seeks the COMMON good, and works to create the kindom in the world –
a time and place where ALL people can both survive and thrive.
No
one is more valuable than anyone else, and no one is less valuable
than anyone else in the eyes of God.
God
encourages us, nudges us, and calls us into loving words and actions
– all of us all the time – and we get to pick whether or not we
respond.
God’s
nature is to be loving, which is an awesome and delightful reality.
If we want to respond to that love, then we are led by gratitude and
by love itself. God’s request of us when we attend to God’s love is
that we RESPOND to it – by letting love grow in us and change us.
The love that grows in us is for God, for others, and for ourselves.
Another way to think of this is that deepening our relationship to
God is growing in compassion.
NOTHING,
no NOTHING – not death,
nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, or height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

When
the Christian-Right says God is all loving, it starts from a
different place. The Christian-Right worldview starts with “the
fall” – the idea of original sin. Within this perspective, there
is a separation between God and humanity that exists in two parts.
First, the fall itself is understood as fundamental to reality, it
create a separation between God and humanity as a whole. Secondly,
as each individual person sins that sin separates them from God.
From here, the Christian-Right considers ways to move from this
brokenness into “right relationship with God.” God as loving,
then, is God who gives humans the means to move from broken
relationship into right relationship.

Right
relationship with God consists of fulling a required set of actions
and beliefs. In this view, because God loves everyone, God gives
everyone the opportunity to be in right relationship. As God wants
to be in right relationship with everyone, God steers people towards
the correct actions and beliefs. Thus judgement and even punishment
by God of people are seen as corrections that are part of love, like
a parent correcting their child for the child’s development. (The
fact that punishment is a terrible motivator and, at the core,
doesn’t work, isn’t acknowledged from this perspective.)

In
the Christian-right view, wrong belief and/or wrong action can
distance one from relationship with God. And, at the point of death,
the opportunity to move into “right relationship” is cut off.
Thus, those in the Christian-Right try to encourage others to choose
right beliefs and right actions, so that they too can be in right
relationship with God and thus not spend eternity in hell, cut off
from God. It is possible to see, from this viewpoint, how judgement
could be seen as an expression of love.

I
haven’t actually been directly exposed to much Christian-Right
theology, but I actually was exposed to the core of this viewpoint,
one time when I was a teenager at my Annual Conference session. The
Bible Study leader showed us a video in which the human sin created a
chasm with us on one side and God on the other. The video then
showed us how Jesus’s death on the cross changed the nature of
reality, and that if we accepted God’s forgiveness (right belief),
then the cross would become the bridge we could walk to connect with
God.

I
think I was 13. The next day I complained about the video to my
pastor, and that particularly youth bible study leader never
returned. At that point I didn’t understand exactly how that
viewpoint was different from mine, but I could FEEL it. Somewhere
along the line I realized that I think the idea that sin separates us
from God is blasphemous because it indicates that SIN is more
powerful than God and God’s love.

Like
the passage from Matthew suggests, God does not call us into being
afraid of God. Rather, God is with us and we need not be afraid. God
loves us, all of us, and nothing can separate us from the love of
God. Thanks be to God. Amen

(Sermon
feedback leads me to add a PS to the end of this sermon: Therefore,
as people connected to the all-present and all-loving God, as people
freed from the fear that pervades the world around us, go and be
present and loving in the world!)

1The
use of the phrase “Jesus following” is not meant to suggest that
the Christian-Right are not Jesus followers. Rather, I find that
because of the hateful action of many people who claim the word
Christian, many of us are uncomfortable claiming that language and
prefer to take on “Jesus-follower” as a way of recognizing the
core figure of our faith tradition without the baggage of the word
“Christian.”

2I
love it when people do research that supports my assumptions:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-is-helping-drive-liberals-away-from-religion/.
(Don’t we all?)

Sermons

“Central Goal of Life” based on Rev. 21:1-6 and Matthew…

September 15, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
original meaning of the word “believe” didn’t have anything to do
with what we think or what we mentally affirm. It had to do what
what we “belove” – how we act. We’re looking at beliefs right
now, for the purpose of considering what we belove, and to check and
see if our lives are lined up with what we belove.

We
are comparing three different believe systems: Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism, the Christian Right, and “Jesus Following”. Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism was identified by sociologist through a large
research project with US teens, and is the actual belief system of
most teens, despite any religious tradition they claim. Furthermore,
as teens are most heavily influenced by their parents when it comes
to faith, we have reason to believe that a rather large segment of
the population actually believes “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
So, we are looking at it, and finding where it does and doesn’t match
our actual faith tradition.

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points.

“A
god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
life on earth.”
“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in
the Bible and by most world religions.”
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
“God
does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
God is needed to resolve a problem.”
“Good
people go to heaven when they die.”

This
week we are going to take a closer look at the third of the them:
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel
good about oneself.” For me, at least, this is a complicated
statement. I don’t disagree. However, before you get your hopes up
for a really short sermon, I don’t actually agree either. I have no
objection to happiness or feeling good about yourself – I’m all for
that – but I still think it falls short as the CENTRAL goal of life.
So, YES, we are meant to be happy and it is great when we can feel
good about ourselves BUT….

And
the BUT has three parts. We’re gonna take two of them together. So
first,… BUT we don’t really know how to seek our own happiness and
actually find it! And, secondly, … BUT we are not called to be so
individualistic. We are meant to increase joy in the world, yes, and
to increase the ways that people notice goodness and God-ness in
themselves, but not JUST for ourselves – for each other! More
interestingly, most studies suggest that the best way to make
yourself happy is to bring joy to others.

In
one of those studies, they gave people money with instructions.
Those told to spend it on themselves did, and those told to spend it
on others did. And who was happier the next day? Those who spent
the money on others. The boost in their joy was bigger and longer
lasting – having given someone ELSE a gift. They tried it with
various amounts of money, in a few countries, under different
scenarios, and it held. Further, they also found that if people were
given money and instructed to spend it on a team member, the success
rates of the whole team when up! (True of sports teams and business
teams.)

Studies
also say that the happiness of our friends friends friends impacts
our own! We are social animals, impacted deeply by one another, and
the best way to increase our own happiness is to increase the
happiness of others. On the converse, self-indugence doesn’t bring
happiness.

If
you want to increase your happiness, spend more time with people you
love – engaging with them – and bringing them joy. These two
objections really end up being similar. We are called as Christians
to seek goodness together, and that’s how it really works.
Other studies also point out that when we are doing the work we love
best we are profoundly happy. This suggests a way of understanding
our roles in the world as our calls by God. Amazingly though, that
happiness that we have when we lose ourselves in a task we love –
we all tend to describe it as a way of NOT being in ourselves. There
is something to giving ourselves away that is deeply related to
happiness.

I
chose two scriptures this week to offer the Christian perspective on
happiness, mostly because either of them individually seemed
incomplete. The Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes,
the “blessed are they…” which are sometimes actually translated
“happy are they….” or could be translated “fortunate are
they…” but the blessing or the happiness are definitely NOT the
assumed ones.

The
beatitudes don’t say blessed are the rich because they can buy what
they want or blessed are the young because they don’t have aches and
pains or blessed are the aged because they have enough wisdom or….
or anything like that! They say, blessed are the peacemakers,
blessed are the humble, blessed are those who mourn! The beatitudes
turn upside the idea of who is lucky, and with whom God’s presence is
found, but they can be read, easily, as a means of social happiness.
This fits with the Gospel message itself.

Let’s
look at them: Blessed are the:

…the
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3) – those
who do not seek wealth for themselves, or well-being for themselves,
but for others.

…those
who mourn: for they will be comforted. (5:4) – those who have
loved.

…the
meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (5:5) – those who let
others get what they need.

…those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be satisfied.
(5:6) – those who care for the needs of others

…the
merciful: for they will be shown mercy. (5:7) – those who are
merciful and kind to others

…the
pure in heart: for they shall see God. (5:8) – those who love with
purity.

…the
peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. (5:9) –
those who bring wholeness to others

…those
who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. (5:10) – those who believe enough to be willing
to take on pain for others

Who
are the happy? The blessed? The fortunate? The ones in deep and
wonderful relationships with others – the ones giving themselves
away to others. The ones whose lives intersect.

The
second scripture is a vision of the completion of the kingdom of God
on earth, the coming of God’s spirit to dwell with the people, in a
time without death or pain or sorrow. Its the ultimate “happiness”
and its for the people as a whole. Its the goal toward which we aim,
as Christians, the completion of the kindom of God.

Which
gets us to the third objection. YES,
we are meant to be happy and it is great when we can feel good about
ourselves BUT….it is not the central point. The central point is
building the kindom of God. Because I believe these two things are
the same thing expressed in different ways, I can also say, the
central point is sanctification – creating space for the process of
growing in love for God, self, and others. Our Jesus-following
tradition says that sanctification is a gift from God, but there are
known “means of grace” that are likely to open ourselves to the
process.

I
think joy is a means of grace, and hope that people take their joy as
a source of wisdom about their particular roles in the world. I
think God wants us to be joyful both because God loves us AND because
each instance of joy in the world is a blessing to others and
increases the wholeness of joy. But in the end I agree with the
often shared (and regularly misattributed) quote , “The meaning of
life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
Yes, this bring joy and happiness, but it also blesses the world.
And, dear ones, we are blessed TO BE blessings. Not just so we’re
happy while others … aren’t!!

Thus
far I’ve left the Christian-Right out of this conversation. I’ve
argued only with the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism perspective, and
shared from the Jesus-follower one. In this case the Christian-Right
perspective is radically different from both. Within the
Christian-Right, suffering is seen as redemptive. This one has bled
into mainstream Christianity in ways I’ve often worried about. In
other churches I’ve served there has been an innate fear of too much
pleasure, as if it is unholy to enjoy the goodness of life. But in
the Christian-Right this goes deeper, suffering is assumed to be a
punishment from God, a “gift” in the form of a lesson to be
learned, a way of knowing that one needs to seek forgiveness from
God. I’m told, however, that this assumption is sometimes biased:
other people’s suffering is thought to be good for them, but in one’s
own life the goal is to be blessed through righteousness rather than
suffering. The idea that the righteous are blessed directly and the
unrighteous are blessed through correction is inherent in this
perspective.

The
part of this that REALLY concerns me is that if suffering seen as
redemptive, the desire to lift people out of oppression is hindered.
You see, if suffering is … necessary… then there isn’t a reason
to worry about people in poverty, or about people being mistreated by
employers, or about people being abused…. because their suffering
brings them closer to God’s desires for them so it is … sort of
anyway… good. And, since the Christian-right is focused on
afterlife, the idea is often presented that suffering in this life
will be rewarded in the next… another motivation to allow the
suffering of people or groups.

Now,
I’m not entirely sure that the Jesus-following movement has a
fantastic theology of suffering. We tend to do one of two things:
ignore it and hope it goes away, or fight against suffering as
oppression as hard as we can. While the latter is something I value
in our believe/belove system, there ARE some sufferings of life that
are simply unavoidable. Making space for people to be in pain, and
to be heard and valued when they are in pain definitely matters to
making space for all of God’s people – and we can’t solve
everything. We can’t solve cancer, we can’t solve trauma, we can’t
solve grief. What we can do is be with people where they are, and I
hope that some of our work on sanctification/ kindom building is work
in increasing our capacity to sit with people who suffer.

I
think God is with people in suffering, and sometimes suffering can be
very holy work. However, I don’t think God ever GIVES people
suffering as punishment NOR as a lesson to be learned. That’s where
the Christian-Right and the Jesus-follower movements disagree.

So,
in the Jesus-follower perspective, happiness and joy are GOOD, but
they’re not everything. Suffering and pain are real, but they’re not
“gifts from God.” The central goal of life is not our own
happiness. Instead, the central goal of life is
sanctification/building the kindom. That is, the central goal of life
is increasing communal well-being – and with it communal joy and
happiness. God is working with us to bring more joy into the world –
for all. Thanks be to God. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 15, 2019

Sermons

Untitled

September 8, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

We’re
currently looking at 3 different worldviews: Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism, the Christian-Right, and (for lack of language that is better)
“Jesus-Following.” “Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” was identified by sociologist through a large
research project with US teens, and is the actual belief system of
most teens, despite any religious tradition they claim. Furthermore,
as teens are most heavily influenced by their parents (No! Really!)
when it comes to faith, we have reason to believe that a rather large
segment of the population actually believes “Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism.” So, we are looking at it, and finding where it does and
doesn’t match our actual faith tradition.

“Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism” has 5 salient points:

“A
god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
life on earth.”
“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in
the Bible and by most world religions.”
“The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
“God
does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
God is needed to resolve a problem.”
“Good people go to
heaven when they die.”

This
week we are going to take a closer look at the second of the them:

“God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to
each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”

Unlike
last week, where I directly contrasted Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
with the perspective of the Christian-Right and then both with
Jesus-following, in this case I think Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
and the Christian-Right largely overlap. I don’t see a noticeable
difference, other than perhaps in the degree of openness to other
faith traditions.

The
difference from both is in how Jesus-followers see our tradition,
including in our Micah passage today. That passage claims that what
God wants is for us “to
do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

For
some people, what Micah says and “be good and nice” may look
similar at the outset. That’s what makes it so dangerous!

Now,
obviously, I take no issue with the last bit, where the Bible is
conflated with other faiths. When it comes to the basic moral
principles of the world’s religions, there is enough agreement to
speak in such terms. The issue, rather, is what a moral life looks
like!

The
first statement is that God wants people to be “good.” That’s
not particularly controversial at this point, but it is circular
logic! What does it mean to be good? Isn’t this a statement about
what being good means? Then simply saying, “being good is being
good” doesn’t help us figure things out much does it? That means
we have to decide from the next two words what this goodness looks
like.

This
is where we get “nice.” “God wants people to be nice.” In
fact, if you take out some words, this statement could read, “God
wants people to be nice, as taught in the Bible.”

Here
is the problem. It doesn’t. The Bible doesn’t tell people to be
nice.

Actually,
the Bible does not include the word NICE. And I mean AT ALL. Its
not there. It doesn’t show up. And I don’t think its an accident or
a mistranslation. I think its not there ON PURPOSE. What is nice
anyway? We use the word so much that we easily lose its meaning.
Apple dictionary defines it this way: “Nice”
pleasant;
agreeable; satisfactory.” I think the most important part of that
definition is “agreeable.” The word “nice” has very serious
connotations of “don’t rock the boat!” A nice person doesn’t
argue, doesn’t disagree, doesn’t tell you when you’re wrong, doesn’t
tell you when you are harming another person. A nice person doesn’t
name injustice, doesn’t upset the status quo, doesn’t willingly
engage in conflict. A nice person is always pleasant, even when
things are profoundly wrong. To be NICE is to take the path of least
resistance.

Our
Micah passage says that God wants us to do justice, to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with God. For clarity’s sake, I offer 3
different translations of this verse for you:

NRSV:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;  and what does the
Lord require of you  but to do justice, and to love kindness, 
and to walk humbly with your God?

NIV:
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD
require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly
with your God.

Message:
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God
is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair
and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.

Now,
there is something in there about loving kindness or showing mercy.
They aren’t the same thing as “be nice.” Now, the definition of
kindness, “the
quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate”,
helps, but I think its in the definition of mercy that we really see
the difference. Mercy is compassion
or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to
punish or harm. WHOA. That’s so not the same thing as agreeable.
Its so much STRONGER!

Jesus
says that the greatest commandments are to Love the Lord Your God
with all you heart, all your soul, and all your mind – and to love
your neighbor as yourself. In fact he suggests they aren’t so
different. This Micah passage is another way of saying it. To
love mercy is to love your neighbor as yourself, ESPECIALLY when you
have the power and reason to do otherwise.

Now
its time to go back to the rest of Micah’s claim. To do justly, to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. I will admit that its best
the Moralistic Therapetic Deism’s claim that God wants us to be
“fair” is entirely true, and I suspect that its a similar
articulation as the theme of Justice throughout the Bible. It seems
clear, Biblically speaking, that God is OBSESSED with justice. There
are all sorts of commandments that have to do with making sure that
the justice system is fair – and that it doesn’t benefit the rich
more than the poor, men more than women, natural citizens more than
outsiders. There
is a deep awareness that left to its own devices, a society will bend
justice toward power so that the powerful will constantly become more
powerful and the powerless more powerless. God’s commandments are
meant to prevent this!

Justice,
and judgement, and the judicial system even are all there to make
sure that things are FAIR for people no matter who they are. You
might remember the story of the prophet Nathan telling a sob story to
King David … the story is that a very very wealthy man with many
herds noticed that his very poor neighbor had a very nice lamb, and
so, he stole it! David’s was so angry at this rich man, and Nathan
pointed out to him that HE was the wealthy man in the story. The
prophets were the ones making sure that people didn’t forget about
justice!

Justice
often demands the opposite of niceness. While niceness is the
path of least resistance, justice often requires being part of active
resistence. The demands of justice in the world may require
upsetting the social order, upsetting other people, upsetting the
institutions of power and privilege. Those fighting for women’s
rights were told they weren’t being NICE. Those fighting to end
slavery weren’t NICE. Those fighting to end segregation weren’t
NICE. But…. they were just, and they were merciful.

In
the best case scenario, if “fairness” is given all the power and
energy that it deserves, then YES, God does want us to be fair, but
note that it isn’t some fairness that has mostly to do with trivial
matters – it is a fairness that has to do with everyone having a
fair opportunity to LIVE and THRIVE. That’s where the Leviticus
passage comes in. It does, of course, include “love your neighbor
as yourself” but it seems to also be pretty explicit about what
that looks like. In this passage, loving your neighbor as yourself
means leaving a means of livelihood for the poor rather than
enriching yourself. In this passage, loving your neighbor as
yourself means telling the truth in order to produce fairness and
justice. This passage worries about the disempowered, and tells
those who have power to act responsibly with their power: to give
wages when they’re earned, to refrain from doing harm simply because
it can be done. Loving your neighbor as yourself means creating a
JUST justice system, impartial to power and wealth, and to refrain
from profitting from violence. This is some PRATICAL and real stuff.

It
isn’t “nice” stuff. It is “just” stuff.

That
tiny Micah passage includes, as well, that God wants us to “walk
humbly with our God.” This is not paralleled at all in Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism, and from my understanding of it, that is not
accidental either. People following that way of thought do not
believe that in spiritual practice or discipline. They see prayer as
a way of manipulating God into giving them what they want. For the
most part, they do not read the Bible, or reach out to others as a
way of sharing God’s love. They think of God as existing for THEM,
rather than thinking of themselves as existing to do God’s work in
the world. Its an enormous switch!

This
may be one significant place where the Christian-Right and
Jesus-followers align. Our Tradition teaches us that we are the Body
of Christ – we are gifted and blessed so that we can be a blessing
to others. We exist so that God’s love can spread. We are the
continuation of the ministry of Jesus himself. We are part of God’s
transformation of the world, and our work in that includes
significant time studying and praying and worshipping and discussing
so that we might BEST use our lives for the goodness of all.

Micah
tells us to be humble before God. That is, to remember that God is
God and we are not! That the purpose of life is not that God serve
us, but that we serve God. And that in serving God we are both
blessed and a blessing! That our lives AND the lives of those we
meet are improved!

You
see, our Tradition is not all about us, it is about everyone. It
is DEFINTELY not about “ME”! Micah reminds us with simple words
about humility – which are put next to justice and mercy in their
importance! Those THREE things are what it means to be a “good”
person, if you listen to the Bible. Justice, mercy, humility.
They’re balanced, and they push us beyond ourselves to being truly
good neighbors to those we meet.

So,
my friends, despite the the apparent similarities, again we find that
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a mistranslation of our faith. Our
tradition does NOT teach us to be nice. In many ways it teaches the
opposite. It teaches us to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with our God. May we do what we are taught. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 8, 2019

Sermons

“Find Joy” based on Isaiah 66:10-14 and Psalm 66:-19

July 21, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Weeping
may linger for the night,
but
joy comes with the morning.

–
Psalm 30:5b

I have a fondness for
… um… expressive language ;), and that fondness was significantly
stronger when I was in college. However, in April during every year
of college I cleaned up my language to pristine levels. I did it so
that when I got to camp, I would not accidentally speak a word that
would harm, or offend, or get repeated by any of our campers with
special needs. We were also careful then, as we are now, not to
offer too many hugs or to permit any loosening of manners – not to
allow anything at camp that would cause potential harm in the real
world.

I did this because I
loved our campers, and I wanted them to be safe, secure, and at ease
both at camp and in the world.

During my second year
of seminary I started an internship with an urban church, one that
was doing important ministry with people who were homeless. People
who are homeless are more likely to be assaulted – both physically
and sexually. People who are homeless are often hungry, unable to
get clean, struggling with physical health, and most people who are
homeless for a long time end up with an addiction even if they didn’t
start out with one. Being homeless is one of the hardest and most
vulnerable positions in our society, if not THE hardest.

The history I’d
learned in college about the closing of state hospitals for people
with disabilities, and the resulting (continued) failure of the
system to care for the most vulnerable people in our society suddenly
became very clear in reality. People who were in the same population
as Sky Lake’s beloved special needs campers were homeless on the
streets of Los Angeles. The disconnect between the intentional care
I’d been offering to God’s beloved people with special needs at camp
and the reality that people with special needs were being assaulted
every day on the streets of LA, and that society was doing NOTHING to
change it broke open my heart.

I have not recovered
yet.

Instead, over the
past 15 years, I’ve discovered more and more ways that the world is
fundamentally broken and been disillusioned repeatedly. Some wise
ones have pointed out that is it because of the color of my skin and
the stability of my childhood that I was able to be so naive to begin
with, and they’re right. Yet, for me seeing the world as it is, and
seeing clearly what its priorities are and are not, is painful.
Similarly, seeing the church as it is, and seeing clearly what its
priorities are and are not has been painful.

I believe that part
of the purpose of church is to offer a God’s vision for the world to
the people, and as such to offer hope that we can build the kindom
together. Further, I believe that the pastor’s role is to be a
speaker of the vision, and of hope. People NEED hope, and our faith
tradition offers it. It has been hard at times, though, to have
integrity and be truthful about the brokenness, and simultaneously
offer real hope. The challenge, I think, has been in my own
discomfort with reality. Once reality is accepted, then it can be
worked on, but I’ve been struggling for years to accept that things
really are as broken as abundant evidence points to.

The realities of the
world, however, are exactly WHY we need to speak hope – real hope –
and be inspired by God’s visions of justice. We can’t just let
ourselves wallow, we have to face reality, but we can’t offer weak or
trivial hope. The world, and its people, NEED to know that another
way of being is possible, and we can create it together.

Family Systems theory
teaches us that when we are anxious, we get more close minded. When
systems (groups of people) are anxious, they get more close-minded
too. They take less risks. They make worse decisions. They create
anxiety in their people, and then people with raised anxiety tend to
revert to old ways of functioning and coping mechanisms that often do
more harm than good: gossip, triangulation, demonizing others,
consuming, addictive behaviors, lashing out, etc. Anxiety can easily
become it’s own self-perpetuating cycle.

Dear ones, the
anxiety in our systems right now are at unhealthy levels. I remember
reading articles during the 2016 election cycle about the impact the
election was having on our shared mental health (it was bad). It has
gotten worse. The injustices around us take a toll every day, and I
hear from all of us how much we want to create change. It doesn’t
help right now to be part of the United Methodist Church, because
being part of a CHURCH that is an oppressor is really darn
depressing, and adds our anxiety and dismay. Further, in this
particular congregation, we’ve been working on something that is also
really hard: we’ve been in conversations about balancing our budget,
which we have not done since 2004. (And even that was a bit of an
anomaly.) We have been living beyond our means for a long time.
Balancing the budget requires making difficult decisions about who we
are and what we do and what is imperative to our shared life
together, and it requires that we have really difficult conversations
where we don’t all agree – and that is anxiety producing as well.

It is tempting, in
these days, to give up: to stick our heads in the sand, or to lash
out in anger, or to become comatose on the couch. It is REALLY easy
to let the anxiety win.

But.

Dear ones, beloveds
of God, we aren’t going to do that. We
aren’t going to give in and we aren’t going to lash out. We aren’t
going to let anxiety take over. We are going to keep on
keeping on, working towards the kindom, loving each other, spreading
love and goodness in the world, and trusting that God works with us,
through us, and when necessary despite of us. We are going to find
the ways to let go of the anxiety, and find some trust and some hope,
and be sources of transformation.

We are going to break
out of the cycles, because anxiety is terrible for us, it is terrible
for the world, and it enables all the things we don’t want to see!
Now, here is the weird twist. Given all the brokenness of the world,
it can feel really disrespectful, or trite, or privileged, or even
mean to …. have fun, seek joy, laugh, and play. (Or even just to
take breaks and deal with reality for a bit.) That’s real! I know
how hard it can be to enjoy life when we know the awful things that
are happening, but I want to share with you wisdom that I heard
second hand. This wisdom came from a person who was impoverished and
disenfranchised in a country with dictatorial rule. That person was
asked, “Why are you so joyful when things are so bad!?” And they
responded, “Why would we let them take our joy too? It is all we
have left.”

Joy, it turns
out, is resistance. Joy is OURS to claim, and we shouldn’t give
it up, because giving it up won’t help anyone – in fact it will
hurt everyone. The world needs more joy.

Joy, unlike anxiety,
creates space for creativity, for connection, for hope. Out of the
box thinking can happen when joy replaces anxiety, and the problems
of the world today REALLY need new solutions. Joy makes space for
people to regain their humanity. And laughter really is the best
medicine (trust me, I laughter until I cried at camp – twice –
and I haven’t felt so whole since before General Conference).
Whatever you do, dear ones, don’t cut out joy from your life.

And, if you need help
getting to joy – which is totally fair – most wisdom teachers say
gratitude is the way to get there. So, practice advice here: keep a
gratitude journal, and take 5 minutes at the end of each day to
notice what you are grateful for in that day. Putting our attention
on what is good is a great way to create more good, and to make space
in our lives for joy.

Now for the REALLY
good news. Our God is a God who knows all about oppression, and has
worked to overcome it throughout all of history. In all these years
where I have become further and further disillusioned with society
and the world, I have found great comfort in the Bible. The Bible is
VERY WELL AWARE of the brokenness of the world, of the reality of
domination systems, AND of the power of God to break them open.

The Bible tells this
story innumerable times, but there are three really big versions of
thie story: (1) The Bible says that God knows about the oppression
of slavery, and moves to free the people who are enslaved. (2) The
Bible says God knows about the oppression of exile, and moves the
people to restoration. (3) The Bible says God knows about the
oppression of being part of empire because of the force of the
military, and moves the people to empowerment, to resistance, and
ultimately to freedom. That is, the stories of (1) Exodus, of (2)
Exile and Return, and (3) of the ministry of Jesus.

The passage from
Isaiah today is a response to Exile and Return, and it speaks in the
language of God as mother of the people, nursing them and caring for
them. After a WHOLE LOT of condemnation of the injustices of ancient
Israel, in the end of Isaiah we hear, “ Rejoice with Jerusalem, and
be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all
you who mourn over her– that you may nurse and be satisfied from her
consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her
glorious bosom.” Rejoice with Jerusalem, despite it’s history of
oppression, despite its history of exile and destruction, none of
those are the final words. The final words are that God cares for
the people and finds a way to nurture them and it brings great joy.
The final words in the book of Isaiah are God’s comfort, and care,
and the people’s JOY.

I’ve told you before,
but this bears repeating: Our faith says that Love wins in the end,
and if Love hasn’t won yet, then it isn’t the end yet. (In this case
Love and God are interchangeable.) The brokenness of day is not
the final answer, God is still at work. We are still partnering
with God to make things better. So, in the meantime, practice
gratitude, find joy, allow for rest, and in doing so let go of
anxiety. God is working, and looking for for open-hearted, loving,
partners to work alongside. May we find MANY ways to be those
people, and encourage each other towards joy. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Finding Compassion” based on Luke 10:35-37

July 15, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The
Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best known stories from
the Bible. Some of you are likely sick of it, some of you are bored
by it, and some of you don’t know a thing about it. Any of those
responses are acceptable around here, but I am going to review the
basic facts for those who haven’t heard them, I’ll let the rest of
you know when you may want to tune back in…

The
Samaritans were hated by the Jews. They had a shared history, to a
point. Both were part of the formation of Ancient Israel, both were
led by Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but after Solomon the Northern
and Southern Kingdoms had a civil war and separated. The North kept
the name Israel and had two parts: Samaria and Galilee, the South
became the nation Judah – from which we get the language “Jew”.
As you’d expect, the two nations that had fought a civil war to
separate from each other had some resentments towards each other.
Then, the Northern Kingdom fell in battle to Assyria in 922, its
leaders were taken into exile, and those who remained intermarried
with foreigners. Thus, the 10 northern tribes of Israel were “lost.”
Except, they weren’t really. They didn’t become a self-governing
nation again, but the love of YHWH and the Jewish tradition remained,
it was just different.

Of
course, the southern nation also fell, and also went into exile, but
it was nearly 350 years later, and they WERE able to rebuild their
nation. Because of these differences (and similarities) the Jews
HATED the Samaritans, enough that those who were going from Judah to
their Jewish colonies in Galilee would tend to walk AROUND Samaria
even though it made the trip much longer.

Thus,
having the hero of this story be the Samaritan is a really big deal,
it shakes up all kinds of assumptions about who is good in the world.
In fact, the Jewish law scholar can’t even admit that it is the
Samaritan who does right, he instead answers “the one who showed
mercy.” Indeed, the priest and the Levite (also a religious
leader) should have been the models of good behavior, and aren’t.
This story not only talks about what it means to be a neighbor, and
how showing mercy is what defines a good neighbor, it also upsets
assumptions about WHO can be good, and who IS good, and how we see
possibility in those we might identify as our enemies.

YOU
CAN COME BACK NOW

Now
that we’ve reviewed the characters in the parable, I want to zero in
on one line that jumped out at me this week. It is verse 33, “But
a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he
was moved with pity.” (NRSV) Or, in the Message, “A Samaritan
traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition,
his heart went out to him.” Or in the New American Translation,
“But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with
compassion at the sight.”

The
thing is, that every time I’ve read this story, I’ve read into it
something along the lines of, “The priest passed by on the other
side, even though he was supposed to be a person of God, the Levite
passed by on the other side, even though he was supposed to be a
person of God, but the Samaritan did what a person of God should have
done.” I’ve missed the ATTRIBUTION of motivation.

For all these years, I thought
the Samaritan did what was right because it was right, and because
God wants us to take care of each other, so we’re supposed to.
However, the story doesn’t actually say that!! The story says that
the Samaritan was “moved” and then acted on his response. The
hero didn’t do the right thing simply because it was the right thing,
the hero was moved to do it. His heart went out. He felt
compassion. He saw the man who had been robbed and something in his
humanity connected to something in the man’s humanity and he
responded to that.

Hearing it this way, it is
almost as if we aren’t responsible for fixing every single brokenness
in the world, and we don’t have to stop what we’re doing for every
hurting person we encounter, and … well, we don’t always have to be
THE Good Samaritan in every situation. Now when I say that, you
hopefully think I’m crazy, because OF COURSE we don’t, because we
can’t. Humans are finite and we simply can’t do everything for
everyone. Further, we can do a lot more good if we focus and do what
we do well than if we try to respond to every little thing that we
see.

And yet, like most people I
know, I’m so overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world, and I feel
responsible to do my part, and often unclear about where the
boundaries lie on where my part is. Which is to say, I often feel
guilty that I’m not doing more.

Two Sundays ago I was at camp,
and I invited the staff to do a little introductory ice breaker which
included the question “what kind of toothpaste do you use and why?”
I have previously found this to be an amusing question, which has
ended up giving shocking amounts of insight into people’s choices.
This time, however, the first two people to introduce themselves had
found ways to minimize their plastic use and carbon footprint in
their toothpaste choices (cool!), and were happy to share that their
WHY was out of love for creation. That was awesome. However, it
meant that for some other people who pick their toothpaste for other
reasons, and for those who hadn’t (yet) decided to make
eco-consciousness in toothpaste purchasing their priority, there was
a lot of guilt in answering the question.

That
sort of guilt isn’t productive (if any guilt is productive, which I’m
not sure it is). But it did serve as a good reminder to me of how
many things there are to pay attention to: how are we treating the
people we see in day to day life? How are responding to those who
make requests of us? How are we deciding what to buy, and who to buy
it from, and how much to pay for it, and what factors should impact
our purchases? How do we decide what to give, and where to give, and
how much to give? How do we decide when to work, when to play, when
to connect, when to rest? How do we decide where to advocate, and
for what, and how? How do we know if it has been effective? How
much attention do we give to our physical bodies and their needs,
what about our emotional needs, what about our spiritual needs, what
about mental needs, and what about worrying about if we are being too
selfish thinking about all this? How do we invest, if we can? How
do we use our time, our energy, our resources, our responses, our
responsibilities, … our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our
service, and our witness 😉 … to do the most good, and the least
harm without burning out?

The only clue I have is the one
in this story. The Samaritan didn’t act simply because it was the
right thing to do, because there are a lot of right things to do and
we just can’t do them all. He acted on the need in front of him that
MOVED him. He let his compassion guide him.

As far as I can tell, that’s
REALLY important. For the Camp Staff who care about eco-choices in
toothpastes, thanks be to God!! For the ones who don’t, whose hearts
go in other directions, thanks be to God!! If we try to push
ourselves to care about everything, we will burn out and be able to
care about nothing. If we try to become someone we aren’t, someone
who cares about things we don’t really care about, we’ll exhaust
ourselves and ignore our actual gifts.

Each of us in this room have a
wide range of things we’re good at, and enjoy, that support and
benefit others. Each of us have ways that compassion naturally moves
in us, and if we follow the compassion, if we allow the movement of
our hearts to guide us, we will be doing GOOD work that benefits
ourselves AND others, and the kindom, and we might even be able to do
it in sustainable ways.

But
wait, you may be asking. What if NOTHING moves me? What if I have
no compassion? What if my heart is broken and it simply doesn’t go
out to anyone? Am I damned to be the priest and Levite in this
story, the one who showed no mercy and are the examples of bad
neighborliness?

No, dear ones, you aren’t. If
NOTHING is moving you at all, if your compassion doesn’t reach out
beyond yourself then there are two possible realities. One is that
you haven’t found the place where your gifts lie yet, and it would be
useful to expand your exposure to the world until you find where it
does move. More likely though, knowing all of you, if your heart
isn’t moving and compassion isn’t flowing it is because you’ve given
too much of yourself away, and you don’t have anything left to give.

If that’s true, and I’d lean
towards thinking that is true in this beautiful collection of Jesus
followers who try to be Good Samaritans in the world, then your job
is to sit with YOURSELF and offer your heart, and your compassion to
YOURSELF until you are filled back up. You might even need to seek
out others who can offer you their hearts, and their compassion,
their listening ears or supportive shoulders.

The world can be a very
difficult place, and if you are a person with empathy, it can be
incredibly draining. If your heart isn’t moving, then it needs some
tender loving care, from God, from yourself, and from God’s other
beloveds. If compassion doesn’t move you, then give yourself
compassion.

I know this is a
funny way to preach on the Good Samaritan, the normal method is to
tell you to be a good person and take care of your neighbor, but
instead I’m telling you to follow your hearts, and to trust that God
works in you through your compassion and energy – and not to push
further than your heart leads you. Let mercy guild you, as the
parable says. But if your heart doesn’t move, then stay put. You’ll
be needed later, and being ready and rested will be good too.

Dear ones, follow
your compassion, and if you can’t find it, give it to yourself. God
wants full, whole, loving beings, and that means we need to make
space to be them – even if it means walking on the other side of
the road!!! Amen

–

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

July 14, 2019

Sermons

“Find Hope” based on 2 Kings 5:1-14

July 7, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Leprosy is understood by the Bible to be highly contagious, dangerous, and even deadly.

The ancient Israelites had laws about how to identify leprosy, how to know if it had been healed, and how to prevent it from spreading. Leviticus chapter 13 deals with nothing else. After an extensive 44 verses about how to examine sores to determine if they are leprosy, the chapter concludes, “Now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare; and he shall cover his mustache, and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall be unclean. All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Lev 13:45-46, NRSV)

Now that doesn’t sound awesome at ALL, but the New Interpreter’s Bible informs me that it is far worse than it sounds. They say, “All three of these actions – tearing the clothes, messing up the hair, and covering the lower part of the face – are signs of mourning for the dead. So serious is the state of uncleanness that it is similar to the state of death.”¹ Leprosy in Ancient Israel, referred to a wide variety of skin diseases, some of which likely were highly contagious and potentially deadly, but most of which were not. Yet, it because it was poorly understood, and dangerous to the community, a person with leprosy was exiled from the community, which is itself a form of death.

The Bible is primarily a communal document, a reflection of the way that society was supposed to act. As such, it was worried about the spread of dangerous disease within society, and took the well-being of the whole more seriously than the well-being of the individual. That is, the stigma of being removed from society, and having to go around yelling “unclean” so no one would touch you, was clearly TERRIBLE for the individual, but kept the community safe. Leprosy was the ultimate stigma: something entirely beyond the individual’s control that isolated them from their entire community. (Hmm, what else is like that?)

The irony of course is that germ theory hadn’t come into being yet, and there wasn’t much differentiation of skin diseases. In fact, the Bible spends a lot of time differentiating between a SCAR and a SCAB, indicating that people thought that was important – that people not become lepers because of SCARS. Medical science still had some development to do, but people had noticed the contagion idea, and they did what they could to care for the whole.

If there is any good news in this, it is that there was a way to be UN-DECLARED a leper, it was not a permanent stigma. Or at least, it didn’t have to be if one’s skin cleared up. Heaven help those with eczema though. And, of course, we want to be aware in any conversation about leprosy that this not an ancient problem that is now simply a good metaphor. Today, about 180,000 people a year contract leprosy, although it is now treatable. Also, it isn’t really THAT contagious. You have to have repeated contact with “nose or mouth droplets” from someone who is infected. It isn’t, say, the measles. (Perhaps the measles were also considered part of leprosy in Biblical times??? That would actually explain A LOT.)

I’ve gone deep into explaining leprosy in Ancient Israel, because the story indicates that leprosy was understood differently in the neighboring country of Aram (modern Syria). While the Israelites expelled lepers from society, in Aram the general of the King’s army had leprosy, and was regularly talking to the king. I’m not sure what to make of this. Perhaps this is a bit of a Biblical dig at Aram, indicating they didn’t know how to care for society. Perhaps, though, it reflects some historical memory. What if Aram didn’t expel its lepers? What if something that created a stigma in Israel, didn’t in Aram? The two countries were neighbors, and were eternally in skirmishes with each other, so were likely pretty equally matched, which would indicate that perhaps excluding lepers didn’t really help.

What if there didn’t have to be a stigma, and people could still survive as a society without kicking others out?

What if, instead of observations about contagions, Ancient Israel was really allowing the natural human tendency of “ick, get away from me!” to have its way? What if people just didn’t want to see the ways that skin diseases can disfigure? What if fear simply got the best of them?

The human response “ick, get away from me” is real. It has applied to many individuals and groups over the eons, perhaps it is a defining factor of society about who is called “icky” and who has the power to decide who is “icky” and who isn’t. This is the power to define stigma.

People who are transgender are most likely to be violently assaulted and murdered in our society, and the greatest danger is for tranwomen of color. There isn’t any logical reason for this. It has basically come down to a response from individuals of “But gender is supposed to work the way I thought it did when I was a kid, and if it doesn’t, ick.” The power of stigma is the power of murder.

In the past few years there have been culture wars over bathrooms, and who gets to use them. (eyeroll) Somewhere along the line, I read a piece² that clarified that bathroom wars were an old trick being revived. In our shared past of segregation, bathrooms were segregated. White women sought to maintain segregation by indicating they were afraid of getting diseases from sharing toilets with women of color. That is, they said they were afraid of contracting sexually transmitted infections from toilet seats. That was another way, among a myriad of ways, that white society indicated that bodies of people who weren’t white were “icky.” This is how marginalization works. 🙁 This is also how we get concentration camps on our Southern border filled with people with dark skin, because stigma dehumanizes and allows inhumane treatment of God’s beloved people.

As a child I was taught not to sit on the toilet seat in public bathrooms by my Grandmother, but was told I could by my mother, and it took a loooong time to figure out why they disagreed about that. Today the fear of bathrooms has been transformed to create fear of sexual assault in bathrooms, when the truth is that what we’ve done is make going to the bathroom a terrifying experience for transgender people – who are themselves especially vulnerable.

Yet, there are Arams. Many societies in the past, and many in the present, recognize more than 2 genders, and a lot of countries have better protections for trans people than we do. The United States has created racism in its own image, and we have managed to export it along the way, but societies and countries in the past and the present are able to show us other ways to understand race, identity, and ethnicity.

Years ago now, Sylvester stood in this pulpit and preached about what it was like when he was first diagnosed with HIV. He talked about visiting his sister and knowing that his cup would be thrown away and his sheets burned when he left. A United Methodist retreat for people living with HIV and AIDS that I once got to volunteer at offered massages for the retreat participants – because of reality that people with HIV and AIDS don’t get enough human touch. I’m not sure I know of places in the world where this has been solved, although basic education and the passing of years has decreased the stigma some, and intentionality to include and TOUCH has mattered.

I also think there is a stigma in our society around poverty. “Don’t get too close, or it will get you” seems to be an unspoken fear. I suspect the danger really is, “don’t get too close, or you’ll be motivated to change things, and that will change your life forever.” Yet, we live in a society that is comfortable with obscene wealth for a very few at the expense of the lives of nearly half. Yet, by associating a stigma with people living in poverty, it becomes “their problem” instead of the reality that poverty is the natural outcome of our societal laws and priorities.

Stigma is POWERFUL. It is dangerous. It is contagious, and it is deadly.

It is a far bigger problem than the people who get forced to hold it. One of the worse parts of stigmas is when they get internalized by the people who have been stigmatized.

In 2 Kings, God has the power to free Naaman from the stigma of leprosy. Elisha is God’s prophet in this story, and he is able to offer a means of healing in God’s name. Of course, Naaman doesn’t have all the stigma of leprosy in Ancient Israel, but he does have leprosy, and then he comes into Ancient Israel with it at which point he was a foreigner, who had bested them in war, who had the stigma of leprosy too. (They must have been terrified.)

The story says God healed him, and he was clean, and free of stigma, and very, very grateful. Just because was healed doesn’t meant that others were, and that also draws some big questions about who gets access to let go of stigma and why. However, I’m firmly in the camp that God is anti-stigma. Or, perhaps I should say, God doesn’t DO stigma. God is against stigma, and the ways that it gets used to dehumanize, violate, dismiss, and separate people. God is about shared humanity, peace, acknowledgment, and connection. Stigmas work against God.

We know and love a God who welcomes and delights in a lovely diversity of human beings and human bodies. God is the one who who says, “Blest are people who are transgender; they shall know my complexities. Blessed are people who are marginalized because of their race; they are able to build the kindom. Blessed are the people who live with HIV and AIDS; they are holding my hand already. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kindom. Blessed are the lepers, for they shall be healed.” Stigma just doesn’t hold up under the weight and power of God’s love.

And it isn’t supposed to hold up for us either. May God heal us, that the stigma society places on God’s beloveds might lose their power for us. May we, like Namaan and Elisha, trust in God’s power to eliminate the power of the things that keep us from a full and abundant life. May we build a society more like Aram – able to welcome people into our midst as full partners in our shared work, regardless of the stigmas others would want to put on anyone. May we follow our God who is against stigma and for connection. Amen

1Walter C. Kaiser Jr. “The Book of Leviticus: Introduction, Comment and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol 1., ed. Leander E. Keck, convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 1097.

2Maybe this one? https://psmag.com/magazine/how-social-bias-is-segregating-americas-bathrooms

–

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 7, 2019