{"id":4542,"date":"2021-12-05T17:30:45","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T17:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2021\/12\/05\/the-road-home-is-under-construction-based-on\/"},"modified":"2021-12-05T17:30:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T17:30:45","slug":"the-road-home-is-under-construction-based-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2021\/12\/05\/the-road-home-is-under-construction-based-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Untitled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Road Home is Under Construction\u201d\tbased on Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6<\/h1>\n
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When preaching is done well the past helps make sense of the present to prepare the people for the future. Preaching isn’t ever supposed to be just retelling the stories of the past, they’re told to make meaning, to help make sense, to get perspective, to gain insight. In oral tradition, the stories themselves change as they’re retold, responding to the needs of the people who are hearing the story as well as the perspective of the story teller. In our tradition, the stories eventually were written down into our scriptures, into one or a few versions, but preachers PLAY with the stories until they build a bridge from the past to the present that can support the future.<\/p>\n

In this sense, I note that the scripture writers themselves are doing some \u201cpreaching\u201d with the stories of their own tradition in our texts today. In Luke we hear quoted Isaiah, and it is with Isaiah we’re going to start.<\/p>\n

Isaiah is speaking to the Exiles, displaced in Babylon, trying to make sense of the traumas they’ve experienced, the losses they’ve lived, the discombobulation of being displaced, and the sense that God let them down. I think more of us fit in here than we tend to admit. I hear my colleagues talk about the pandemic as collective trauma, and I believe they are right. When we add together the childhood traumas that most people have experienced, to traumas in adulthood, to collective trauma \u2013 it becomes clear that we have similarities with the exiles. And, trauma isn’t just a word for \u201c a bad thing.\u201d Shelly Rambo in her book Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining talks about trauma as \u201can encounter with death.\u201d1 She, like other writers on trauma, clarifies that it isn’t just suffering, \u201cSuffering is what, in time, can be integrated into one’s understanding of the world. Trauma is what is not integrated in time; it is the difference between a closed and an open wound. Trauma is an open wound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Into this brokenness, into this trauma, Isaiah speaks a vision. He says that God will level out the way home, create an easy pathway back to Israel with the mountains brought low and the valleys made high, and the curves straightened out. There are some important aspects to this story: God does it! The people don’t have to. God smoothing the way home tells them that God still cares about them, a response to their biggest fear. The trauma doesn’t go away, it isn’t solved by this vision of homecoming, or even the homecoming itself. However, the trauma ALSO doesn’t get to have the last word.<\/p>\n

Isaiah is preaching \u201cdon’t give up\u201d to a people who thinking about giving up. Isaiah is sharing that God still cares to a people who aren’t sure if God still cares. Isaiah is offering a vision of hope to a moment of hopelessness. And he does it with an imagery of justice, of bringing down the mighty and bringing up the weak. You see it? The past trauma, the present struggles, the bridge to the future?<\/p>\n

I wonder how Isaiah would say it to us today. How would Isaiah speak into the loneliness of the past and present, the constancy of ambiguity, the displacement in place that we know today? I wonder what our path home would look like, how we might construe the road construction on that path in meaningful ways. What are the mountains we struggle to climb? What are the valleys light doesn’t reach? What curves keep us from seeing the way forward? What rough spots slow us down?<\/p>\n

I’m struck that in all the layers of stories today, which are all themed on preparation, the preparation is always of \u201cthe people\u201d and never of a person. I wonder if Isaiah’s metaphor for us today would be of God building the bullet train tracks home \u2013 so that we can journey together instead of apart, and take care of creation while we’re at it.<\/p>\n

Now, Luke as a preacher, is using the story Isaiah told to make sense of HIS present. Luke’s present is situated in the powers and principalities of Rome, the passage starts by naming the era via the names of the men who were profiting from the control of the Jewish people. (And then the names of the high priests they’d appointed, which lacks subtlety.) And then, Luke switches, he says that into this powerful mess of oppression came John the Baptist, preaching and asking people to change their minds, turn around, get reoriented (#repentance). Luke uses the story of the past, the imagery of a safe road home, to make sense of John’s ministry. What had been a vision for exiled people to have hope that trauma didn’t have the last word became for Luke a vision of a prophet preparing the people to hear the words of the the Messiah, so that everyone might have healing (#salvation).<\/p>\n

Luke is preparing the people to stand up to Rome, by telling them a story of John preparing the way for Jesus by preaching repentance.<\/p>\n

How would we name our present day? Would we say, \u201cDuring the presidency of…\u201d or \u201cWhen \u2026. was governor of NY\u201d or \u201cin the time when trust was at an all time low\u201d or \u201cwhen income inequality had reached new highs?\u201d It seems that how we name the present impacts how we contrast it with what God is up to. Funny that. Its true of how we name the past too, right? What stories do we tell, and which ones do we leave out? How do our memories adapt over time?<\/p>\n

You may notice that different parts of Christianity understand Jesus pretty differently. It is likely fair to say in ways that are polar opposites. In the United Methodist Church, there is a similar phenomenon with John Wesley \u2013 the ways he is interpreted say more about the theology of the interpreters than of John Wesley. To be honest, I think Luke is pushing Isaiah’s vision pretty far here, to make it fit John the Baptist, but it does tell us how Luke understood John and Jesus which is exactly what it was intending to do.<\/p>\n

How we tell the stories of the past (and which stories we tell), relates to what we perceive and we need in the present and what we dream for the future. This applies to our individual lives as well as our communal lives.<\/p>\n

The past isn’t quite as… fixed as we might imagine it to be. It is complicated, and it can only be seen through the lenses brought to it. In this season of preparation, it seems fair to be asking ourselves: what are we preparing FOR, and how does that relate to our past and our present?<\/p>\n

The rest of our lives are going to be \u201cafter the start of the pandemic.\u201d Which means that the time before the pandemic is now our past. How do we tell its stories, and how do we tell them to make sense of the present and the future? More broadly, I suspect the days of Christianity being the de facto religion of the United States and mainline denominations dominating the religious landscape are also in the past. How do we tell those stories, and the stories of our own church with awareness that the present is different from the past and the future from both?<\/p>\n

In between Isaiah and Luke, speaks Malachi. Malachi speaks to the POST-exilic people, who were a combination of the exiles who had come home, the people who had been left behind, and those who had moved into ancient Israel in the meantime. For the returned exiles, the return wasn’t as idealized they might have hoped. They got home, but it wasn’t what they expected. There were conflicts between groups, misunderstandings, and DIFFERENT traumas that led to DIFFERENT triggers, all mixed up together.<\/p>\n

In the midst of this, Malachi tells of a messenger who is preparing the way by purifying the people into righteousness. Malachi is preparing the people for the work they have to do by re-imagining the stories of the past. He reuses the idea of God sending a messenger, but changes what the messenger would do. Malachi looks to the past to purify the present to make space for the future, but to do so requires reworking the past.<\/p>\n

All this preparing the prophets and writers were doing, all this worrying about the people and their connection to God, all of this awareness of the flow of time and its intersections, all of these criss crosses of timelines and imagery:<\/p>\n

What do they say to us today? How do they help us be in our uncomfortable present? Well, all of the \u201cpresents\u201d of the texts were uncomfortable. They were all times where people were just waiting it out, hoping for it to end \u2013 the exile, the discomfort after the exile, Roman rule. For what has felt to us like a very long time, we’ve been trying to wait out this pandemic.<\/p>\n

But, the prophets and writers of God spoke into those uncomfortable presents to make meaning and do the work that needed to be done. This pandemic has lasted too long to just wait for it to go away. This IS our present, this one, not the one we expected, and God is with us in it, and God is working with us to build a bridge that can support the future.<\/p>\n

I wonder what it will take to sort through the stories of the past, to tell them and hear them, and pick from them what stories we need to take with us into the future. I wonder how we get better at being in this uncomfortable and ambiguous now. I suspect a lot of it has to do with telling stories, and with taking the time to listen to God and ourselves. It has to do with not rushing away, but being present. And so once again, I invite you into the uncomfortable, into the present, into the NOW, with trust that God meets us here. Amen<\/p>\n

Time with Young People<\/p>\n

What is it like to be YOUR AGE years old today? What do I need to know, since I haven’t ever been YOUR AGE OLD in today?<\/p>\n

Things are different than they have been, and it is hard to make sense of, but I’d love to know what you know, as I try to tell you what I know.<\/p>\n

I\u201dm 40 years old right now, and \u2026 I still have dreams that I am in public and forgot my mask…. and I also left the house this weke and got 5 steps away before I realized I really had forgotten my mask. My brain still forgets even big changes!!!<\/p>\n

God is with us, God will always be with us, and God helps us adapt. Thanks be to God!<\/p>\n

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1 12.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Rev. Sara E. Baron<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/
<\/a>https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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December 5, 2021<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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