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"Peace Be With You" based on Acts 5:27-32 and John 20:19-31

“Peace be with you.” It is repeated 3 times in this passage, and that’s pretty notable. There are many possible explanations for it. It is quite common in the Bible when there are experiences of the Divine that the human being experiencing something extraordinary is greeted with “Peace be with you,” I’ve often wondered if that’s because they’re usually so startled by what’s happening that they need a soothing to even settle in and listen.

But, even then, the words are very specific. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you” might also be consoling, but that’s not the norm. The norm is “peace be with you.”

And, of course, whenever we’re dealing with the Gospel of John we have to assume that the language being used reflects the early church as the Johannine community knew it, and I think by the time John was written it was common for Christians to greet each other with “Peace by with you” or “The peace of Christ be with you.” It is assumed to be one of the most ancient parts of Christian worship, we do not have any sources of early worship that predate the tradition of passing the peace. Which raises a question of if they said that cause they remembered Jesus saying it or they remembered Jesus saying it because they said it. Both are good.

Based on both of these ideas – that this is what gets said during a Divine appearance and that this is something Christians have said to each other since maybe the beginning – this phrase is really notable. And then we have it THREE times in this passage alone.

I’m thinking that these particular words are really important, maybe even core to the Jesus-movement.

Now, the word “peace” in English is an accurate and valid translation of the word “peace” in the Bible, but it is much SMALLER than the word in Hebrew and Arameic. In English peace is primarily the absence of war and violence, and then might refer to a lovely state known as “inner-peace.” But in Hebrew the word is deeper and wider. Shalom refers to the kind of peace we know, and then it keeps going. Because it includes things like root causes. So Shalom has aspects of absence of violence and war, and tranquility, but also the things you need to get there like adequate access to resources, healthy relationships, family and friends and neighbors who also have adequate access to resources and healthy relationships.

These days when I think of Shalom I often connect it with the African word “ubuntu.” In 2018 the Love Your Neighbor Campaign – a great organization we’ve been a part of that was working for the collective well-being of people in the United Methodist Church1 - put out a statement on ubuntu as a means of clarifying our priorities as a movement. While not short, I can’t in good faith cut any of it, so here it is in wholeness:

Ubuntu is an African concept that embodies a way of life. In simple terms, it is translated to mean ‘humanity’, where humanity is based on the understanding of interdependence and community life. Ubuntu is more than an expression, value, or philosophical concept. Rather it refers to a way of life that is visible in all spheres of human existence. A lifestyle that values the humanity of others as an imperative for one’s existence. It is lived recognizing that we are all created in the image of God and should do unto others as we wish it be done unto us. It says ‘I am because you are, we are not born into a single family but a community’.

Ubuntu encompasses virtues that invite us to a new way of life and our journey as Christians.  In this way of life, human dignity is an inherent and inalienable virtue of all humans, from birth, regardless of any distinctive feature and circumstances, and should be protected by all at all times. When we recognize each other as created in the image of God, protection of one’s dignity and worth is a collective obligation tied our existence as we share the pains and joys of humanity.

Ubuntu invites us to extend grace to everyone, regardless of our views or situations. God’s grace is available to all, everywhere and all the times. We recognize that our lives are defined by free and undeserved favor from God and are called to extend that grace to everyone. Our humanity isn’t defined by our efforts or status but instead defined by remembering that because we have freely received, freely we give. The consideration of others isn’t based on formulated expressions of exclusion, but rather in embracing all people, God does not exclude anyone from God’s expression of grace.

Relationship is a key element of an interdependent and community life. Relationship is more than knowing my face and name. It includes sharing struggles and successes, living and working together on our path to a good earthly life and perfection to God. We are brothers, sisters, siblings, not because we think and act the same way, but because we are all created in the image of God and were created to help one another. The image of God in you isn’t temporary nor based on my perceptions or limitations, but is a permanent reminder that we all originate from God whose infinite grace and love compel me to uphold your dignity and value in our society.

God reminds us of what God expects from us, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. Thus, we share the collective responsibility to stand for one another when justice is denied to any one of us. We stand for one another because your safety and wellbeing is directly tied to mine, injustice is rotational, solidarity and love are the greatest weapons we have. Justice isn’t the decision of the majority, but rather the moral option that safeguards the welfare and integrity of all members of the family.

In a global but polarized world where individualism has led to racial profiling, injustice to the poor and vulnerable, religious intolerance, tribalism and nepotism, xenophobia, rejection of refugees and discrimination to people based on sexual orientation, we have failed to live to higher call of Jesus to love another just as God loves us. Ubuntu is a reminder that we share a common origin and destiny, our welfare is tied to another and we have the collective responsibility to protect the sacred dignity of our fellows, extend grace and seek justice for all, for our welfare is dependent on their welfare.

Our siblings who recently returned from Africa University reminded us in their presentation about their trip of this important concept that is now understood to be cross-African.

The words written by our African siblings in faith about ubuntu resonate with the profound meanings of shalom in the Bible. It brings the fullness needed back to the phrase “peace be with you.”

And, now, I think, we can hear more fully what it means to share a story about the risen Christ meeting with the disciples and starting the interaction with “peace be with you.” He spoke a blessing. He spoke a truth. He spoke a hope. He spoke a shared vision for the world as it should be. He spoke interconnectedness. And it was repeated THREE times in this one story because it is that central to their experience of God, of the risen Christ, of following Jesus.

To be people of faith in the tradition of Jesus is to be people of peace, of shalom, of ubuntu. It is to be blessed with knowing we are all interconnected and our well-being depends on others’ well-being. It is to be reminded that physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental health are interrelated, and our health impacts each others’ health. It is to seek the well-being of ALL, and not just some. The blessings of peace, of shalom, of ubuntu and the dreaming of the kin-dom of God are one and the same.

This sermon is, I freely admit, review. I haven’t told you much you don’t already know, nor much I don’t repeat on a regular basis. There are good reasons we have “passing the peace” in worship, and I’ve previously done my best to explain it.

The thing is, I’m about to be away for 11 weeks and while I entirely trust Karyn to preach and lead worship while I’m gone, I still feel some responsibility for offering you something to hold on to for a while. There are treacherous things underfoot, all trying to harm God’s beloveds and upset our… well, our peace.

So, for now, I leave you with the simple reminder that “peace be with you” is a fundamental Christian goal, that it has layers and layers of profound meaning, and it is worth spending our lifetimes seeking to live that blessing. Thanks be to God for aiming us well at peace, at shalom, at ubuntu. Amen

1https://www.lyncoalition.org/

April 27, 2025

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

[firstumcschenectady]

“When We Are Afraid” based on Isaiah 65:17-25 and Mark 16:1-8

(2024 Easter Altar)

I love Easter! I love Easter here with the Floral Cross and brass accompaniment and space for good theology. I love “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” with a passion that is a little weird. I have this memory of closing down in person worship in 2020 early in Lent and thinking to myself, “at least we’ll be back by Easter” and then gathering in person for the first time for Easter sunrise in 2021 and all of that has helped me attend to the true and utter delight that is worshipping God TOGETHER on Easter morning. I don’t take it for granted, and I try to savor it more than ever.

This year, when I sat down to write our worship service, and read the liturgy for Lighting the Candle of Peace, Hope, and Justice I found I simply didn’t want to include it. I didn’t want to start EASTER worship talking about Salvadoran Prisons that function as Concentration Camps. I even, I’ll admit, wondered if I could just… not. If we could do that liturgy next week and this week just have a “really nice Easter.”

I’m not proud of that instinct, but I’m telling you about it because I want to be honest. I didn’t want the world’s ugliness to interfere with the holiday where we celebrate that God is more powerful than the world’s ugliness.

Anyway, I didn’t follow that instinct, and we did read the liturgy for Lighting the Candle of Peace, Hope, and Justice and so here we are with a beautiful floral cross surrounded by stunning music and we started worship talking about people who have been trafficked to inhumane Salvadoran Concentration Camps. It is possible that you, too, didn’t want to, didn’t like it, wish we hadn’t. It isn’t really that strange of a human experience to want some unbridled joy on a holiday in the midst of struggles.

That said, the Easter stories we read start in the world’s ugliness. Easter doesn’t come out of joy and remain in joy, it starts in grief, fear, and dismay. In Mark, the women waited until the Sabbath was over to anoint Jesus’ body. To engage in the rituals of letting go. They had lost their friend, their teacher, their companion, their linchpin. (And in the case of Mary Magdalene, tradition wonders if that also included her husband and/or lover.)

Mark says that they were wondering about the gravestone as they walked. I’m curious about that. I wonder if it is simply a literary device put in place so we can notice the power of the metaphor of the stone being rolled away. Because, if we are pragmatic about it we would be able to notice that:

1. The stone was rolled into place and meant to be able to be rolled away, so it WAS mobile.

2. There were three of them, and three people can coordinate efforts.

3. If they really were going there alone as the three of them, presumably they assumed they could move the stone. If they didn’t think they could, they’d have brought someone else with them.

4. It just fits that a male writer would think about women’s weakness, whereas women are quite capable human beings.

Anyway, that’s a bit of an aside, I do think it is just a literary device. Truthfully, I think the stone itself is a literary device. The first Easter involved many of Jesus’ followers having some sort of profound experience of the continuation of Jesus in the world that shook them out of their grief AND their fear and empowered them to continue his ministry in the world. They became as committed to truth, to empowering the disempowered, to praying and connecting with God, and to following God faithfully no matter the consequences as Jesus had been.

No one knows what happened that first Easter. Maybe there was a shared vision, maybe a shared dream or a series of dreams, maybe someone just had an ah-ha moment and then it caught, maybe some quiet conversations ended up being transformational. Of course, while we’re putting maybes out there, maybe people encountered an empty tomb and instead of assuming grave robbers they assumed resurrection. I wasn’t there. But the specifics of how God transformed the lives of the disciples on Easter isn’t the interesting part to me, it is the transformation itself I am invested in.

I do know that SOMETHING happened and that SOMETHING was transformational and long lasting. Those who had scattered to the wind ended up becoming the steady rocks on which the church was built. AND, that something has been passed down to us, so that when we talk about the Church as the Body of Christ, we too are claiming that Jesus’ life did not end at his crucifixion because we too are able to continue his life and ministry in the world.

But, with that SOMETHING that happened, which was probably really hard to actually explain in normal human language (because that’s how God stuff works… and often why people are a little hesitant to talk about God stuff with others because it is so hard to convey), the way it came to be talked about was with an empty tomb. That was the metaphor that worked best, and must have felt closest to what they’d experienced. I see it, they were having all the “normal” experiences of grief and dismay, the ones that come both with losing someone you love, and with seeing the ugly power of the Empire’s violence up close and it CHANGED for them. They stopped feeling like he was gone and started feeling like he was with them. This is also, at least in the gospel of John, the way the Holy Spirit is described – as the one that showed up when Jesus left and filled that void.

They were sad, and then they weren’t. The world seemed like it ended, and then it came back! The power of violence stopped Jesus, but not for very long at all! It FITS this idea of he was dead and then he… wasn’t.

And so we have stories of empty tombs and rocks rolled away because it is the best way to state the inexplicable experience of transformation they had. So I’ll let go of Mark’s presumptions about women’s capacity to move heavy things and move on. Mark, or at least this first, original ending of Mark, has the best ending of all the gospels. We’re told those women who’d arrived sad and experienced the inexplicable left FLEEING and told NO ONE. Clearly, we know that not to be true BECAUSE WE ARE HEARING THE STORY, but it sets each of us up as a disciple to fill the space the women left. If they were afraid and told no one, will we be like them, or will we participate in telling the story so it gets heard? And, I particular, will we be stopped by fear or will we find the courage to respond with faith and love?

Easter exists in the midst of real life, of Empires killing innocent men, of the use of power to intimidate, and the work to separate people from each other. Jesus did this amazing work in reminding people that God was with them, and they were with each other. He took what the powers separated and reminded the people they could be for each other and do much better together. It was the power of his ability to connect to people, to connect people to God, and to connect people to each other that created such a disturbance that he ended up being killed as a revolutionary. Because the Empire does better when the people are separate and afraid. But God does better when the people are connected and courageous.

God meets us in the midst of the reality of life. God knows about domination systems, Empires, the powerful trying to break people apart, intimidate tactics, and lies, and God knows about injustice, racial profiling, and concentration camps. God knows. God has been through it before. God knows exactly how people can harm and kill each other.

But God, also, knows the rest of the human story. God knows about systems of equality and equity, about self-governance, about compassion and empathy, about solidarity. God knows about peace, justice, and hope. God knows about HEALING, and human connection across differences, and the work to create a world of justice and mercy. God knows about apologies and reconciliation, about truth telling and its power, and about means of grace and their power to transform.

When violence has its way, we can trust that God is at work to find the ways of kindness, compassion, healing, and restoration. When brokenness comes into being, we can trust that God is at work to smooth rough edges, to mold together broken pieces, and to create something anew. When death has its way, we can trust that God is STILL at work, finding ways to plant life and love despite it all.

There is nothing at all that is OK about people being trafficked to concentration camps. Nothing. It is completely and utterly immoral and atrocious. And, God is also not a peace with what has happened, and is working to change it. All the people motivated to speak up, to show up, to write, to call for change are a part of God’s work in the world. We don’t yet know WHEN the love of God and acts of compassion will change this reality. We know it has ALREADY been far too long, but we know that the love of God and acts of compassion WILL change this reality because God is not at peace with this, and the people of God are not at peace with this.

We say and shout and sing Alleluias today, praising God for God’s transforming power that we see in Easter and all around us. There is more work to be done, but Easter reminds us that God is at work and we are able to make a difference with God. LOVE WILL WIN IN THE END. That’s the miraculous reality the early Christians were trying to tell us about with an empty tomb and rolled away stone. That even death wasn’t able to stop God’s work in Jesus, God’s work of compassion, justice, and hope. Given all that, dear ones, I believe stones are about to ROLL. Thanks be to God. Amen

April 20, 2025 - Easter

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

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“Context is Everything” based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Luke 19:28-40

I grew up understanding Palm Sunday to be a “yay Jesus” parade, and with a vague sense of confusion about how the “yay Jesus” on Sunday became the “crucify him” by Friday. Luckily, I came across “The Last Week” by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan and they taught me about a whole lot of things I was missing.

The most important thing I was missing in understanding Palm Sunday was CONTEXT. First of all, Passover. This year Passover started last night, and it is really good when the Jewish calendar and the (adapted) Christian Calendar line up because our stories from this week are all connected to Passover.

Passover is the Jewish celebration of God freeing the people from oppression and leading them into freedom and self-governance under a system of justice and equity. Specifically it is the freedom from the oppression in Egypt, but it turns out that that specificity is and is not important.

In the time of Jesus, Galilee and Judea were under the control of the Roman Empire. And while the Roman Empire would have stated things quite differently, emphasizing how great the Roman Empire was for all the people in it (uh huh…), the people disagreed. They noticed how the tax rates impoverished the poor to enrich the elite. They noticed how the military that “kept the peace” did so by silencing people’s basic concerns. They noticed that more and more people were dying of starvation. They noticed that their religion was being used to support the Empire, when clearly the God they knew wasn’t in favor of all the ways that justice and equity were being ripped away from the people.

And, despite all of the propaganda to the contrary, the Roman Empire knew all this too. Which is why when the major Jewish holiday of “The Passover” came up every year, and massive numbers of Jewish pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate God’s acts of liberation for God’s people, the Empire got antsy.

Like authoritarian regimes do when the people gather, particularly when the people gather together to celebrate FREEDOM.

Anyway, it was the Empire’s tradition that the Roman Authorities of the Day would gather in Jerusalem during Passover as well, along with some extra military power, to discourage people from getting any ideas about their God’s capacity to overthrow THIS oppressor.

Furthermore, the normal seat of power in the area was on the Mediterranean Sea, so coming to Jerusalem required moving. And if you are going to move the authorities, and the military, into the city where you want people to remember you still hold the power, you might as well do the moving as a big happy parade, right?

This is the second supper important piece of context. Before the Passover, every year, there would be a massive parade coming in from the West. Pilate, the Roman appointed Governor of the province of Judea had an Imperial Procession to accompany him – soldiers on gleaming horses, drumlins in union, glittering silver and gold on crests, golden eagles (the symbol of Rome) mounted on pole. The people who came to watch would have shouted the things they were taught to shout, “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.”

Thus, even the entrance into the city emphasized the power and authority of Pilate and Caesar and served to discourage the people from getting TOO excited about Passover and its basic meaning.

And this happened every year. People knew it happened every year. People knew that the authorities were big on shows of power, and the authorities counted on the shows of power to discourage the people and encourage compliance with authority.

Jesus knew this too.

I am pretty sure Jesus also knew that creating a mockery of the Parade of Roman Authority would not endear him to the Roman Authorities.

But it would diminish the power of the parade to intimidate, it would give voice to the needs of the people, it would remind the people that the God of the Passover was still with them.

And Jesus that breaking up the illusions of the Empire for the sake of reminding people of the power of God was worth it.

So he staged a counter-parade, one to come in from the East instead of the West.

His had no military to threaten the people with violence, instead it had cloaks on the road showing people’s profound, unforced trust in Jesus.

His had no gleaming trained horses, just an untried colt, according to the other gospels a young donkey. Now, make no mistake, this wasn’t just a contrast with the Western Parade. It also fulfilled an expectation about the Messiah. Zechariah 9:9 says:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you;    triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey,    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

So, in riding on that colt, Jesus was reminding the people of what a King was supposed to look like to the Jewish people, and what the Roman Empire was NOT offering them afterall.

In response, instead of those golden eagle banners on display coming in from the West, the people waved Palm Branches, both easily accessible and historically a symbol of Ancient Israel.

And then, finally, whereas the shouts coming in from the West exulted Caesar, the ones coming in from the East exulted God and God’s servant, “"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"

Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. Also, once you see it, you get a better sense of why the Roman Authorities saw Jesus as a threat to their power, right? Palm Sunday is no where near as far from Good Friday as I thought it was as a child.

Now, at the end of Luke’s version of this Palm Sunday story, we hear, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

I want to remind us all that in Luke, the Pharisees were Jesus-friendly. They were making a practical and pragmatic suggestion that may well have functioned to save Jesus’ life if it was followed. They were reading the situation correctly. They wanted to help.

Jesus replies that the momentum has taken over and can’t be stopped, and we can note he also decided not to try.

I want to offer one more piece of context into this story, in this case into the whole story of Holy Week, and this one instead of coming from the scholarship of Borg and Crossan comes from the wisdom of our Disciple Bible Study group. Our texts all suggest that the Jewish authorities of the day were a part of the arrest and condemnation of Jesus. Only the Roman Empire could crucify a person, so we know that the Roman Empire killed Jesus, but all of our scriptures say they acted with the Jewish authorities.

The most important piece of context around this information is that the Jewish authorities of the day were PUT IN PLACE BY ROME to SERVE ROME and were REPLACED when they were insufficiently loyal to ROME. So it is really, really, really, REALLY important to distinguish between Jewish “authorities authorized by Rome” and “the Jews.” The failure to make that distinction has been deadly for our Jewish siblings in faith.

But I think, based on our conversations at Disciple, that it is possible to take this even a step further. In 70 CE a revolt against the Roman Empire emerged in Jerusalem and the response from the Roman Empire was a massacre and destruction of Jerusalem in a way that still has impact to this day.

I think it is possible that the Jewish authorities who were authorized by Rome and judged on their loyalty to Rome were still, in fact, trying to do their best by their own people and protect them as much as they could. Those leaders saw clearly what would happen if a revolt or revolution got out of control, and they didn’t want to see their people massacred.

Which is to say, it is possible to look at the position of the High Priest and his family, and others who were complicit in being loyal to Rome and probably condemning Jesus and, well, seeing why they did it. And that their intention was to protect their people.

Isn’t that a bit uncomfortable? Furthermore, the sect of Judaism that was in power during the life of Jesus was the Sadducees, but that tends to get misconstrued in the gospels because the Sadducees were so completely wiped out when Rome destroyed Jerusalem that the writers of the Gospels seem to have forgotten about them.

Jesus, clearly, had decided that it was time to defy the authorities, empower the people, and remind everyone of the wonders of God. Other people thought that was too dangerous, and it was going to get them all killed.

Because in systems of oppression no decision is easy or clear, and lots of decisions are between bad and worse, and they were operating in a system of oppression.

Which, beloveds of God, is a very good set up for Easter. Because in the end the authorities of the day can threaten violence, can threaten death, and are far too often capable of inflicting both. But on Easter we remember that not even death can stop the work of God in the world.

But, that’s for next week.

For this week, I think, our primary task is to dream a little bit about what kinds of protests, what actions of disobedience, what teaching and empowering of the people TODAY would count as following in the footsteps of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem. It is more than a little terrifying, and I have a lot of compassion for those Sadducee leaders, but I’m a follower of Jesus and that includes following his lead in protesting systems of oppression and reminding people that God cannot be stopped.

So, what forms of protest and disobedience is God calling you to?

May we listen well. Amen

April 13, 2025

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

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“The Lost Son(s)” based on Joshua 5:9-12 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 March 30, 2025

If you have been part of the church for a while, you probably think you know the parable of “The Prodigal” pretty well. In short, many of us were trained to hear this as being about God who is generously forgiving, like the father in the parable. It is probably better for those of you who are a little new to this game, because today you are going to have to unlearn less stuff.

I’m working today with the wisdom of Amy-Jill Levine, in her book “Short Stories by Jesus.” Dr. Levine is a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. Yes. New Testament and Jewish Studies. Dr. Levine is unusual in that she is a Jewish New Testament Professor, and that means she does incredible work bringing the history of Judaism as context for the New Testament.

She is also, let me be clear, awesome. And, a number of years ago she was in Schenectady to lecture at Union College. I’d had the privilege of meeting her even more years ago when I co-lead worship for a retreat where she was the key-note speaker. So I invited her to coffee, and somehow we ended up sitting in my office for hours talking. One of the things I remember saying is that this church gives her hope.

OK, so you are caught up? There is a brilliant scholar who brings incredibly useful Jewish context to the New Testament, and also she’s been here and she was impressed with you. (I am too, I love this church.)

Dr. Levine’s work on the parables in Luke 15 are the first chapter of her book “Short Stories by Jesus” and she brings some critiques even to the names we call it. She says, “there is nothing complimentary about being prodigal, that is, in wasting resources for personal gratification.”1 She ends up calling it the “Lost Son” parable, although she toys around with “The Father Who Lost His Son(s).”2

As good scholars do, Dr. Levine rejects attempts to make a parable into an allegory. She maintains the right of the father and both sons to be simply characters in the story. She does NOT think that the father represents God. Which is good, because he’s not a great father. She even takes the story as a stand alone, outside of the interpretation that the Gospel of Luke applies to it. She lets the parable stand as it is. So, let’s hear what happens when you do it that way.

Luke 15 opens with, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”3 (Luke 15:1-2) Dr. Levine thinks we may mess a bunch of the memos in even those opening lines. She writes:

The problem with “tax collectors” is not that they have have denied the covenant; it is that they work for Rome and so would be seen by many in the Jewish community as traitors to their own people.

Sinners are not “outcasts”; they are not cast out of synagogues or out of the Jerusalem Temple. To the contrary they are welcome in such places, since such places encourage repentance. The Gospels generally present sinners as wealthy people who have not attended to the poor. That is a dandy definition of the term. Thus, in a first-century context, sinners, like tax collectors, are individuals who have removed themselves from the common welfare, who look to themselves rather than to the community.4

Such a good definition of sin, and such an idea worthy of reflection. I suspect many of us can FEEL the truth of sinners being people who care only about themselves and not about the common well-being of the community. Yes?

Luke 15 then has three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin and then the lost son. The three seem presented to build on each other and reflect on each other. In each case the person who loses something has more than average. Most people didn’t have 100 sheep, most people didn’t have 10 silver coins, most people didn’t have a wealthy estate to liquidate to give to a son as an inheritance. Also, 100 sheep can be hard to count. Most people can’t immediately see in a pile of coins if there are 9 or 10. But two sons are supposed to be pretty easy to notice. But we’ll come back to that.

Dr. Levine points out that “some man had two sons” is a fabulous opening line that would lead its initial hearers to think about Cain and Abel; Ishmael and Issac; Esau and Jacob; etc. She says:

All Biblically literate listers know to identify with the younger son. But those first-century biblically literate listeners were in for a surprise, when the younger son turns out not to be the righteous Abel, faithful Issac, clever Jacob, strategic David, or wise Solomon. He turns out to be an irresponsible, self-indulgent, and probably indulged child, whom I would not, despite his being Jewish, be please to have my daughter date.5

Some of you are also quite biblically literate and you know that it was normal for a first born son to get a “double share” of the inheritance, so that an elder son would get 2/3 and a younger son 1/3. But, that was actually up the discretion of the father, who decided not to do it that way. Dr. Levine says that asking for an inheritance while the father was alive was probably similar to doing so today – not super common but not super problematic either. It is clear that the father is very fond of this younger son, probably problematically so.

In any case, the younger son gets his inheritance, leaves, spends it, and ends up in trouble. Dr. Levine reflects on the question, “What went wrong for him?”:

Readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa tend to attribute his desperate status to a combination of bad parenting, lack of community values, separating himself from his network, and personal responsibility. …

Readers in Russia tend to note neither personal failure nor fiduciary ineptitude but the famine – there was no food to distribute. In a Vanderbilt University seminar on Luke’s Gospel, a graduate student from Kenya proposed that the real problem was lack of generosity, for no one gave him anything. This reading is particularly commended by the narrative context of the parable. Junior’s yearning to be fulfilled is the same term used to describe the sick and destitute Lazarus in Luke 16:21.6

Lack of generosity. That’s a good take.

Many of us know that good Jewish boys didn’t raise pigs, but we’ve been taught it would have been problematic for a Jewish boy to even feed pigs, but Dr. Levine disagrees, “the son did what he did in order to live; Jewish Law is law by which one lives, not by which one dies. The prodigal is in an impossible situation, but the issue is not Jewish xenophobia or purity. The problem is starvation.”7

Then the younger son decides to return home. He claims he is going home to be a hired hand, but keeps calling his father father and assuming he’ll be received with open arms. Its manipulative. Basically, his plan is “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”8

As he returns, his father is thrilled to see him, is filled with compassion, runs to greet him, kisses him, and throws a party. I’ve been taught that the father acted too enthusiastically for a proper patriarch, but Dr. Levine is having none of that. She leans hard into proving that fathers who thought they’d lost their children and meet them alive again were welcome to respond with joy – and that no shame came on anyone for his delight.

The issue is entirely different. The issue is that he throws a party and FORGETS TO INVITE THE ELDER SON. Which is where we go back to 100 sheep are hard to count, 10 coins aren’t necessarily visibly different from 9, but heavens one should be able to count to 2 when it comes to children. But this father forgot to count to TWO. It really does seem like his preference for his younger son impaired his capacity to express love to his elder son.

So the older son comes out of the fields, notices the party, and asks one of the slaves what is going on. He gets told “your brother has come, and your father has sacrificed the grain-fed calf, because he received him healthy. And he became angry and didn’t want to go in.”9 Would you? It is, at least, very uncomfortable to be the last one told and to have been uninvited to the party, isn’t it?

So the father comes out to the elder son, the one who it turns out is lost to him in a way he hadn’t realized, and tries to comfort him and urge him to come in. But the elder brother is angry, and – finally- says so. The elder son rejects his familial connection to his brother, referring to him as “your son” but the father tries again and calls him “your brother.” (Truly, the use of family references in this parable is brilliant.) The father affirms “all that I have is yours” which is a truth the son needed to hear.

But the parable ends without a true conclusion. The father has made an appeal, but the two of them are left standing together outside of the party, with the son’s answer unmade. Does he go in? Does he refuse? Dr. Levine keeps asking:

What would we do, were we the older son? Do we attend the party? What will happen to this family when the father dies and the elder son obtains his inheritance? Will he keep Junior in the restored position to which the father elevated him or will he send him to the stables, to be treated as one of the ‘hired laborers’? …

What do we do if we identify with the father and find our own children are lost? Is repeated pleading sufficient? What would be? What does a parent do to show a love that the child never felt?”10

She concludes, “In this household, no one has expressed sorrow at hurting each other and no one has expressed forgiveness. … Recognize that the one you have lost may be right in your own household. Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share the joy and so that others will help prevent the recovered from ever being lost again.”11

She speaks truths I’ve heard from so many people, including many of you. This ancient short story seems like it resonates today as well as any day, when we let it speak for itself. The parable leaves me yearning for healing in that family’s relationships, similar to a way I often yearn for healing in people’s family’s today.

That yearning for wholeness and goodness, that’s a whole big piece of what we’re trying to do as people of faith. Build a world where more and more people get to be whole, where more and more families get to be whole, where wholeness is easier and easier to access. And in this time when it is hard to impact the big stuff, maybe it is a good reminder to look around and work on the relationships with those closest to us. And to let our yearning for wholeness lead us to act in ways that lead to healing and wholeness here and now. May it be so! Amen

1Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, (USA: HarperOne, 2014) p. 29.

2p. 27.

3p. 31.

4p. 33.

5p. 47.

6p. 51.

7p. 52.

8p. 52 – quoting David Buttrick.

9p. 61.

10p. 68-69.

11p. 69.

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

March 30, 20215

[firstumcschenectady]

“Provisions” based on Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9

I was reading a commentary on Luke and I realized I’m “getting” Pilate more and more these days:

Josephus’s accounts of Pilate’s confrontations with the Jews confirm that bloodshed was not uncommon: Pilate’s troops killed a group of Samaritans climbing Mt. Gerizim; Pilate introduced Roman effigies into Jerusalem; Pilate seized Temple Treasury funds in order to build an aqueduct.1

I don’t appreciate having a more visceral understanding of the experiences of ancient Jews in oppression by the leaders of the Empire, but here we are nonetheless.

I have been convinced by Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Walter Brueggemann that the Bible sets up a contrast between human systems of oppression and domination and God’s aims for systems of wholeness and interdependence. Various entities play the role of “oppression and domination” in different parts of the Bible. Egypt and the Pharaoh get to be the first and primary example of oppressors.

Egypt and the Pharaoh oppress the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and then God intervenes and frees the people. The people learn dependence on God and each other, and then get to settle into the “Promised Land” where they live in mutuality with sustainable practices and relative equality for a nice long time. 400 years or so.

The next example of oppression in the Bible is the Ancient Israelite Kings, perhaps none more so than Solomon. Once the people get a King, they get high taxes, forced labor, and class differentiation, not to mention kings who think they have the right to do whatever they want regardless of settled laws. The people are oppressed by their own Kings, mostly, although there is some debate about if that oppression was “better” than some others.

Then the next big oppressors are the nations who capture Ancient Israel and Ancient Judah, Assyria and Babylon. We hear more about Babylon, and it Babylon that features in our Hebrew Bible lesson today.

Isaiah 55 comes from the time of exile, when many Ancient Israelites were exiled in Babylon. While the exiles were taken away in waves and returned in waves, we often summarize the exile as lasting about 70 years, which means that most of the people taken into exile died there and most of the people who ended up returning had never been “home” before.

Today’s passionate passage dreams of the joy of homecoming, and contrasts the oppressive systems the people knew in Babylon with a return of God’s dreams back home. Walter Brueggemann writes:

The poet makes a sharp contrast between old modes of life under Babylonian authority and the new offer of life with Yahweh. The initial verse, perhaps in the summoning mode of a street vender, offers to passerby free water, free wine, and free milk. This of course is in contrast to the life resources offered by the empire that are always expensive, grudging, and unsatisfying. Israel is invited to chose the free, alternative nourishment offered by Yahweh.2

The thing is, the author of Isaiah 55 knows that not everyone will make that choice. The people who were thriving in Babylon were likely going to stick with the oppressive regime that benefited them instead of trying to live out God’s dreams. Others would stay because they just didn’t believe things could be any different. Despair kept them in place.

Whenever I encounter this passage, I’m drawn like a magnet to verse 2, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” This just has so many layers of truth. One is probably too literal, but in these days of ubiquitous processed food designed to create cravings without satisfaction I take the passage as a reminder to eat food that satisfies. Similarly, why do we spend money on cheap plastic gadgets that we’ll eventually tire of and trash?

More spiritually though, this passage guides me to reflection. What am I spending time, money, or energy on that doesn’t actually matter? Where is my labor being wasted? What good things is God wanting for us that we’re too distracted to attend to? What things that we have and hold dear might actually be getting in the way of what need or what would be great for us? What do I think of as “bread” that is really “fluff” and where do I seek satisfaction where I’m really being exploited?

The premise here is that God wants goodness for the people. Satisfying food that everyone can access, labor that builds up life and doesn’t drain it, delight, love, hope, a clear sense of God’s closeness, mercy, complete and utter wholeness and freedom. Contained within though is the reality that even when that kind of goodness is offered, people don’t always take it. Probably, at least in some ways, we don’t either, and God invites us to goodness again and again.

And to turn away from the things of death and destruction, from cheap tricks that distract us, from oppression and evil in all forms. So that we, and all, can move towards life.

Of course, we never get to do that in a vacuum. While we’re trying to learn how to live into God’s goodness, and let go of the things that don’t satisfy or bring life, we have to do it in the midst of a world where domination systems exist and oppression is present. Sometimes those are heavier than others, which I think we have already noticed today, but they’re never gone (at least in Western societies, I think some indigenous societies were and are quite different.).

By the time of Jesus the domination system of oppression was the Roman Empire version, and it was about as brutal as usual. While we hear Jesus talking about two incidents – one where Pilate had killed a group of people and one where a wall or tower collapsed and killed a group of people – I think the author of Mark was probably talking a lot more about the destruction of Jerusalem itself. There are profound questions being asked here, generally amounting to “are people who die in random incidents killed because God is punishing them for sin?” to which Jesus answers, “no!” And yet, Jesus says, unless things change and people engage differently with each other it will keep happening. Which, I’ll say, is true. For the early Jesus movement, there was a sense of urgency in this, perhaps because the early Jesus movement had also just experienced the massacre and destruction of Jerusalem and had a strong sense that the world was ending.

The end of our passage is also meant to bring urgency, but it also brings grace. The desert climate of Israel isn’t an easy one to grow anything in, there isn’t spare land or spare water for trees that don’t produce fruit. And yet, the gardener intercedes on behalf of the tree, asking for one more year to nurture it more deeply and see if it is able to fulfill its purpose.

I love that it reminds us that when we aren’t able to “fulfill our purposes,” we too may need some gentleness and nurture to give us a fighting chance. I love that it reminds us of a good way to treat others who are struggling. And I notice that the end goal is a tree that bears fruit, so that the people can eat from it.

Jesus and his followers get accused of being gluttons, drunkards, and violators of the Sabbath because they eat when they’re hungry and drink when they are thirsty. Jesus tells stories about fig trees, and wanting them to make figs so people can eat them.

It feels a little bit like the fulfillment of Isaiah’s dreams of what it would be like for the people who returned from exile. There was in the time of Jesus a plenty powerful oppressive system in place, but Jesus and his followers just ignored it. They lived as if they were responsible for and to each other, and savored life. This wasn’t a simple way to be, and it definitely had consequences, but I think it was a faithful way to be.

In the midst of systems that seem to push people down, one of the strongest forms of resistance is to eat bread that satisfies AND share it! To simply refuse to participate in oppression and instead participate in enjoying the goodness of life that God offers, and inviting others to do so as well. To find what satisfies, and share that too. To live God’s mercy.

Come to the waters, beloveds of God. You are not obligated to drink the oppressors’ poison, you are are invited to eat and drink and be satisfied and whole. Receive the provisions of God. God’s goodness remains, no matter what the oppressors have to say about it, no matter what they do. Thanks be to God! Amen

1R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke in” The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol IX, editorial board convened by Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) Commentary on Luke 13:1-9, page 270.

2Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), page 158-9.

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

March 23, 2025

[firstumcschenectady]

“Smoking Fire Pot” based on Genesis 15: 1-12 and 17-18 and Luke 13:31-35

On first glance, there isn’t much in our two scripture lessons today that jumps out as relevant. The Genesis story of the Abrahamic covenant is definitely an ancient story and frankly reads as a little creepy. The Lukan narrative about Jesus is obscure and feels out of context even to the gospel itself.

Luckily, first glances aren’t the only way to read scripture. One is permitted to dig into them until they start speaking important truths. And, these ones will do it, if you let them.

There is a passage in Jeremiah 31 about the “new covenant” that God is going to make with the people:

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. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

The new covenant is different from the prior covenants because the people had the ability to mess up the other ones, but in this “new covenant” God is going to ensure that the covenant is successful and not be dependent on the whims of people.

The ways that many people talk about the Bible today, saying the “Old Testament” and “New Testament” which amounts to the “Old Covenant” and “New Covenant” reflect an understanding from Christianity that Jeremiah’s new covenant came into being with Jesus and transformed how they interacted with God. It was no longer about the people’s failure, but instead about God’s faithfulness. (Note that I’m not particularly fond of this language, as I don’t think that the Hebrew Bible was “replaced” by the Christian Testament, and proclaiming it is ends up being really dismissive of our Jewish siblings in faith.)

Except, if we’re honest, the Genesis 15 covenant between God and Abraham is more like that “new covenant” than like the ones we think of as the “old” ones. And Genesis 15 is – to state the obvious – rather early in the Bible.

Covenants are a form of contract between two parties. It was common enough that when the contract was being finalized animals would be cut in two and the two parties would walk between them to symbolize that if they broke covenant they deserved to die.

But in Genesis 15 something weird happens. First of all, it helps to know that in Genesis 14 Abraham won a battle that gave him the right to spoils, but he didn’t take the spoils as a way to indicate that he credited God with his victory. So in Genesis 15, God is pleased with Abraham and promises good things. But Abraham points out that good things aren’t that great for him when his family lacks an heir. God promises Abraham an heir. Abraham asks for proof.

Then Abraham, as instructed by God, gathers a bunch of animals and cuts them in two for a covenantal ritual. And then Abraham falls asleep – possibly a sleep given to him by God. And then either while he is sleeping or after he awakes (unclear) he sees “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.” That is, he sees a sign that God walks the covenant – alone. God takes responsibility for making this happen, and them promises Abrahams descendants what would come to be called the promised land.1

Abraham isn’t asked to do anything, to promise anything, to enact anything. It is all God. Which is exactly like that “new covenant” that comes up so much later. Which is to suggest that God has known all along that people weren’t particularly dependable covenantal partners, and God has been working to make things good for us anyway – all along.

I think this also leaves space for us to work alongside God, an idea I find important in faith, but it does give us a little space to remember that God is God and we are not and God can make good things happen with or without us and is going to do so! Which I find a bit of a relief.

Quite a while passes between Genesis and Luke. In the meantime Abraham does end up with descendants, and they do become quite numerous, and they do enter the promised land – and lose it – and get it back again. In the time of Luke the “promised land” is occupied by the descendants of Abraham but overseen by Rome which is rather complicated. And the center of the promised land is Jerusalem, the capital, and the center of the capital is the temple, Jesus is a faithful Jewish man who sees the holiness of the land, the capital, the temple, and sees the temple as the center of the world. And Luke, whoever he was, writes after the destruction of the temple and the capital, with grief for the Jerusalem massacre present in his words.

So when we hear Jesus lamenting, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” we can hear it in it Luke’s grief and a wish for the Jerusalem of old. It fits, as well, that while Jerusalem was the center of Jesus’s world, Jesus knew that it was corrupted by the influence of the empire, and he grieved what the city should have been!

But, I think the most interesting piece of this Luke passage is the part about the Pharisees. In Disciple we’ve been reading Matthew for two weeks and boy oh boy does Matthew like to diss on the pharisees. But Luke isn’t presenting them as a problem here. In fact, he is presenting them as allies. They give Jesus a real warning, one that they didn’t have to offer. The Pharisees were NOT a part of the power-sharing arrangement with Rome, like Jesus they didn’t approve of it. Jesus knew Herod was dangerous, he didn’t need to be told, but he probably appreciated that they cared.2

Biblical Scholar Richard Swanson summarizes the conversation they have this way:

“After you go,” says Jesus, “tell that fox I’m a little busy right now.” The scene plays best if the allies laugh. “Okay, we’ll do that very thing,” they say, “as soon as we see Old Foxy Pants. Which will be, ummm, never.” 3

The Pharisees joined Jesus in his lament of Jerusalem, they were actually his allies. Swanson concludes, “The Messiah has more allies than you might imagine. So do you. Recognizing that is how you prepare to welcome the one coming in the Name of the God Whose Name Is Mercy.”4

Which is to say, Genesis tells us that God is on our side.

Luke tells us that expected allies are with us.

They both remind us that we’re not alone, we’re not solely responsible for bringing the kindom, that we are able to rely on God and others along the way. And I don’t know about you, but I’m on board with those reminders. We are not alone. We have allies who care. We are in God’s care. God, who is working for good.

So much that is out in the world is meant to divide us, but God is here to unite us, and remind us that we’re in this together. Thanks be to God. Amen

photo by David Allan Baker

1Wisdom here from https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-genesis-151-12-17-18-6

2Wisdom here from: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=l&d=26

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

March 16, 2025

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

[firstumcschenectady]

“It. Is. Well.” based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Luke 4:-13

If I rewrote the temptation of Jesus story for today, it could sound a little different:

The tempter said to Jesus, “If you are the son of God, scan social media for updates about your friends and ignore all rabbit holes and clickbait.” Jesus answered, “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love… so, no.” (Hosea 10:12a)

The tempter said to Jesus, “Here is the world on a piece of paper, it is called the newspaper. Read this and tell me again that God is good.” Jesus answered, “God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s faithfulness for all generations - and that truth is deeper than any news.”

The tempter said to Jesus, “Here is a way to protect yourself, to get yourself out of the messes all around you.” And Jesus said, like Jesus liked to say, “Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.”

That is, I think that a significant temptation facing us today is the temptation to become overwhelmed, to slide into despair, or to become self-protective. As many have pointed out, that temptation has been handed to us on a golden platter by those who believe that having us overwhelmed and mired in despair means we will be more compliant, but even knowing that, it is hard to stay centered.

And, I want to make space to say, I don’t think any of us can stay centered all the time and we all have different vulnerabilities, different access to resources, and different levels of tolerance, and with GOOD REASON some of us can’t find our centers very much at all. Or ever. Which isn’t any sort of personal failing, it is just that being attacked is dis-regulating.

Some of you are already familiar with the story behind the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul,” but as I think it is otherwise an odd choice of chorus for our gathering hymn for Lent, I want to tell the story again. Horatio Spafford’s life was a bit like Job’s. (Grimace) Spafford had 5 children and a lot of wealth. One of his children died, and then much of the wealth went up in smoke in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Two years later the family traveled to England but Horatio sent his wife and remaining children ahead of him while he finished some work. Their ship sank and all of his children died. His wife was saved. When he followed, and his ship traveled over the waters where his children died, he stood on deck and watched. And it is said that the song came to him then and there.

Now, I fear that the story can be a little bit too poignant, and someone could take from it that grief and loss are to be ignored or dismissed, and a person of sufficient faith can face any disaster with poise and grace. I don’t mean ANY of that. I think that any grief comes in waves, and sometimes one finds a grace-filled peace and sometimes one finds the depths of despair. And I don’t think being a person of faith insulates anyone from disaster or being deeply impacted by it.

I do think though, that somewhere within us is a piece of our being that is connected directly to the Divine – some people call it soul – and nothing in the world can damage our souls. Our bodies can be harmed, our minds can be harmed, sometimes even our so called “spirits” can be broken, but nothing in the world can damage our souls. And we all have them.

One of the reasons to engage in Contemplative Prayer is to allow the soul – who knows God intimately – the space to offer guidance to our beings as a whole. Another is to find that “peace like a river” that our souls know but usually our whole beings can’t access.

The Quakers have done a lot of work in thinking about and learning about souls in this sort of definition. One of the things they teach is that souls are SHY. They get compared to wild animals, who spook easily, trust hesitantly, and need a lot of space. Some of the continued education time I’ve engaged with while here at First UMC Schenectady has been devoted to “soul-work,” led by the Center for Courage and Renewal which was founded on the teachings of Quaker Parker Palmer.

Courage and Renewal engages in practices to let our soul-wisdom out. Their retreats include a lot of silence, time for journaling and art, and the use of “third things.” Third things are some sort of art – music or poetry or paintings, etc – that are used as a vehicle for reflection and as an indirect way to seek soul wisdom. People have a chance to notice aspects of the art, notice the feelings they have in response to the art, and wonder a bit about the connection. A practice like this is part of our offering on Wednesdays in Lent, a space with lots of silence, some intentional questions, and plenty of spaciousness. Those shy souls might feel safe enough to peak out!

The wonder of the work I’ve done with Courage and Renewal has been in learning that when one soul peaks out, other souls get really curious and are more likely to do their own peaking out as well. The wisdom of one soul is never exactly like the wisdom of another soul, but nevertheless they recognize that type of wisdom and their “ears” perk right up.

In an ideal world, this sort of wonder would happen every week in worship too, and I think to some degree it does. But worship doesn’t have quiet enough silence, or patience, for it to happen a lot. Nevertheless, grace appears because God is like that, and sometimes we’re really able to share our deepest truths and be heard by others deepest listening.

Dear ones, the point I’m trying to make may be a little obscure this time, so let me attempt to be clearer. Deep within you there is an unbreakable connection to the Divine. You may have other language for it, today I’m calling it soul. While the upheavals of the world can do profound damage to you, they can’t hurt your soul. Your soul might hide more deeply within you, or be more shy about sharing its wisdom, but it can’t be hurt! It can’t be hurt by distressing decisions or outrageous news or even by direct harm to you.

Because God’s own self is a part of you, and God is bigger and stronger and more loving than anything in the world could ever stop.

Which is why, in the middle of Lent, in a time when it feels like our society and the world are rolling backward, I think it is really important to sing, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.” I also think it is a great time to engage in contemplative prayer practices that help us connect with the Divine, with our own souls, and with peace.

All of which helps us feel the truth of “it is well, it is well, with my soul.” Because the wonderful thing is, it always is, always, no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen

March 9, 2025

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

[firstumcschenectady]

“Catching Glimpses” based on Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36

The story of the Transfiguration is intentionally placed on this Sunday, the final Sunday before we start the season of Lent so that it can foreshadow the Easter narrative. Jesus is seen “in his glory” and Peter, James, and John get to see and hear his connection to God’s-own-self. He became bright and shiny, like lightening even, reminiscent of how Moses looked after he’d been talking to God.

Because, the texts seem to say, God is bright and shiny, so amazing and beyond-this-world that those in close contact with the Divine are changed so they don’t appear to be exactly from this world either. Holiness appears in them, and it changes how they’re seen.

In the story of Moses, the people are disconcerted by this shining, and he ends up having to wear a veil most of the time so they’re less terrified. In the story of Jesus, Peter is more delighted than freaked out, but then again maybe not because delighted people aren’t as apt to put their feet in their mouth as freaked out people are.

In any case, the culmination of the Transfiguration is God saying, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him,” yet another affirmation of the connection between God and Jesus.

There is a tendency to think of Moses and Jesus as special, some versions of official Christian doctrine focus heavily on the “uniqueness” of Jesus. I’ve always wondered about that. Clearly the life of Jesus and his teachings have had profound impact on the world and on my own life. That said, I’ve always thought of Jesus as consistent with the other messengers of the Divine – that all those sharing God’s love, God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s compassion, God’s dreams for peace and justice are … well, on the same page, or at the very least in the same book ;).

Clearly Moses and Jesus were both profound messengers for the Divine, ones from whom major religions developed. But, just as clearly, there is wisdom in each person and in each part of creation that can also speak to the wondrous love of God.

Or, to put it in the words of the poetic anna blaedel, “All around me I see love swirling, too. Ferocious love. Liberating love. Love that leaves no one alone, and no one behind. Love that refuses siloing, and zero-sum-games of divide and conquer. Love that risks it all. Love that fights to stay open-hearted, tender, soft, here. Love that fights, to be with and for each other.”

CC0 licensed photo by Pawel Madeja from the WordPress Photo Directory: https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/148645e33f/

There is holiness all around us. Sometimes it is easy to find when sunlight illuminates the veins on a green leaf. Sometimes one finds it standing by a river or stream and watching water flow. Sometimes one finds it seeing two people hug each other. Sometimes in watching someone walk down the street bopping to music. Most often, I see God’s shiny, astounding love in the human beings I take the time to get to know. Because, heavens, people are extraordinary- creative and thoughtful, resilient and funny, loving and compassionate. Maybe not all people all the time, but most people much of the time.

OK, fine, I can hear you all thinking it. There are exceptions, yes. Some of them seem very visible right now. But I think when people attempt to snuff out the love of God within it unusually because of a deep hurt within. But go with me on most people most of the time, and ignore the exceptions for now, can you?

These days when I think of the transfiguration, it is less about the specialness of Jesus and more about the ways that reality snuck into the mundane. I think God’s shiny love exists EVERYWHERE and in EVERYONE, even if some people try to smother it in themselves. And if we were able to see with people as they really are, they’d shine like lightening too. So, too, would all of creation. Once piece of grace is the capacity to catch a glimpse of the holiness that is everywhere all around us, and every glimpse we get is a gift.

The story says God was visible in Moses and Jesus, but let me assure you, God is visible in you too.

And, because the world says otherwise, let me be very clear:

God is visible in you, beloveds who are trans and nonbinary.

God is visible in you, beloveds who are women and femmes.

God is visible in you, beloveds with beautiful shades of brown skin.

God is visible in you, beloveds who have immigrated, migrated, or become refugees.

God is visible in you, beloveds who are living in poverty.

God is visible in you, beloveds who are incarcerated.

God is visible in you, beloveds who are unhoused.

God is visible in you, beloveds who work in or for government.

God is visible in you, beloveds who are scared and overwhelmed.

God is visible in you, beloveds of God.

And in everyone else too.

God’s holy wonder is with us all, and everywhere in the world. May we be blessed with the grace-filled capacity to notice. Amen

[firstumcschenectady]

“Hosier” based on Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26

It is Black History Month, a wonderful month when all of us have opportunity and encouragement to learn about African Americans in this country – their experiences, their contributions, their lives! I appreciate the reminder that African American history is American history, despite the emphasis in any particular history book any of us may have read in schools.

Here at First UMC Schenectady, we’ve now in our second week of singing songs written and/or composed by African American authors and composers, and what a gift that is to this moment in history!

In the gospel today we hear Luke’s sermon the plain, the Lukan version of Matthew’s sermon on the mount. Matthew’s version is better known because it is more palatable. Which, contrarian as I can be, means I like Luke’s version better. Luke’s is more concrete. Matthew says “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Luke says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Matthew says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Luke makes it concrete again, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” And while Matthew promises comfort to those who mourn, Luke promises laughter to those who weep.

And, of course, Luke includes “woes” that Matthew does not. Luke makes it clear we are not talking about keeping the status quo with a few more people included in the “haves” group from the “have nots.” Luke says we’re talking about a full reversal of fortunes.

OK, fine, I don’t love that. I get it, but I don’t love it. I don’t want those who are laughing now to weep, I just don’t want them cackling with glee at hurting people. And I don’t want ANYONE hungry. But, regardless of my preferences, here is the text, challenging as anything, pushing us past comfort zones to consider deeply that one should not assume good fortune is God’s will AT ALL.

Which is quite important, because all of us know people who are like Jeremiah’s trees planted by streams of water – people who soak up the goodness of God and have it to share in abundance – who don’t happen to have material wealth or social power.

And I want to tell you about another of those people. I mentioned in the Call to Worship that God likes to surprise us. If you were thinking about what opportunities presented themselves to African Americans born into slavery in North Carolina in 1750… what might you say?

Right, of course: one of the greatest preachers in the world, one of the most significant voices of the First Great Awakening. That’s what I thought you’d say.

from https://www.umc.org/en/content/harry-hosier-americas-first-black-methodist-preacher

Now, we aren’t sure of much about Harry Hoiser’s childhood. People think he was likely born on our about 1750 (his life overlapped with that of John Welsey), most likely in North Carolina, more likely than not into slavery. No one knows. At some point he became a Christian, and although he was not literate he could memorize a hymn on first hearing, and shared scriptures entirely from memory. He was a preacher, and he became Bishop Francis Asbury’s traveling companion.

You may know of Asbury, he along with Thomas Coke was commissioned by John Wesley to lead the Methodist Church in the burgeoning United States. He was the traveling companion of Asbury, meaning Coke said of him, “I really believe he is one of the best preachers in the world, There is such an amazing power attends his preaching, though he cannot read; and he is one of the humblest creatures I ever saw.”

Harry Hoiser was a PREACHER. His sermon, "The Barren Fig Tree," preached at Adam's Chapel, Fairfax County, Virginia, in May of 1781, was the first recorded Methodist sermon by a black person in America.1 He was also an organizer, and a man who worked for justice. He was also a known companion of Freeborn Garrison.

You may have heard of Freeborn Garrison, perhaps because he was the one charged with making a Schenectady Circuit and thus with organizing, oh, you know, our church in 1789...under the authority of and sent by Bishop Frances Asbury.

So, what I’m telling you, is that one of the, if not THE most famous Methodist preacher of the Great Awakening was Harry Hoiser, whose best known companions were responsible for forming this church, and that great preacher was an African American man. I will say that our history books do not mention him, so I am unable to say with any certainty if he was directly a part of the formation of this church, but he was so great a part of the Methodist movement, that he impacted this church even if he was never here.

Harry Hoiser, along with Richard Allen (who later broke off and formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church), were the only 2 African Americans at the formational Christmas Conference of 1784.

It was said of him, “His voice was musical, and his tongue as the pen of a ready writer. He was unboundedly popular, and many would rather hear him than the bishops.”2 Those Bishops, I might add, were Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury and the story has it that when he became Asbury’s traveling companion he would exhort the listeners after the sermon to enact what Asbury had preached. At some point he became the principal preacher.

Now, Freeborn Garrettson, “following his conversion, found himself dejected. Then one Sunday as he led family prayers, a thought penetrated his melancholy gloom: “It is not right for you to keep your fellow creatures in bondage.” Whereupon he told his slaves they were free. Later, Hosier, a former slave, and Garrettson, a former owner of slaves, ministered together.” (shivers)

In addition to being the first African American Methodist preacher in the newly formed United States in 1781, only 3 years later he became the first African American Preacher to preach to a white congregation.3 On at least one occasion, Hoiser preached to more than 1,000 people at once!

Booker T. Washington said Harry, “was the first black American Methodist preacher in the United States..  He traveled extensively through the New England and Southern States and shared the pulpits of the white ministers whom he accompanied.  But he seems to have excelled them all in popularity as a preacher”.

Francis Asbury and Harry Hoosier baptized so many people that Asbury wrote in his journal that on any given day Asbury and Hoosier would baptize more people than a typical parish minister back in England would baptize during his entire ministry.4

One more interesting piece about Harry Hoiser – there is not scholarly consensus on why Indiana is the Hooiser state, but one of the solid theories is that the State of Indiana was unusually Methodist at the time of its founding, and they were Hooisers in remembrance of Harry Hoiser (sometimes spelled Hoosier.)

So, clearly, God was at work in Harry Hoiser, and despite the limitations attempted to be imposed on him by society and the challenge of being illiterate was widely renowned as a preacher. The United Methodist bookstore is Cokesbury (Get it? Thomas COKE and Francis AsBURY), whose symbol is of John Wesley riding on horseback while reading a book, a trick he was famous for. And yet, John Wesley’s movement in the United States was largely dependent on the preaching skills of someone whose life never afforded him the opportunity to read one.

We don’t have direct lines we can draw from our existence today to Harry Hoiser’s preaching, but it seems safe to say that Hoiser’s influence was so significant that both American Christianity and the Methodist movement would never be what they are without his work for God and God’s justice.

Blessed are you who are born in obscurity, the world will know your name.

Blessed are you who learn from others instead of from books, many will learn from you.

Blessed are you who break barriers, the world will be blessed through you.

Blessed are you who seek justice, you will be part of building it.

And, to be concrete like Luke, I suspect Harry Hoiser was hungry as a child, but the Methodists kept him well fed later in life. He was poor as a child and likely as an adult, but he lived the kindom of God. He was often excluded, but won people over. Whatever weeping happened early in his life, there was laughter in abundance as he connected and reconnected with friends the Methodist movement.

Harry Hoiser is one of many examples of what God has been up to. He reminds us that the limitations we see in life are ones God enjoys blowing away. He reminds us that what we think a person can do isn’t in any way related to what God thinks a person can do. He shows us that humble beginnings don’t need to define a life, at least not a life within God’s people.

Harry Hoiser reminds me of the basic Christian affirmation- the limits humans put on each other don’t limit God. Nothing, nothing, NOTHING can stop God’s work in the world. NOTHING.

Thank goodness. Amen

1https://aaregistry.org/story/black-harry-hosier-orator-of-spirit/

2https://www.umc.org/en/content/harry-hosier-americas-first-black-methodist-preacher

3ibid

4https://harryhoosierproject.org/the-story

Feburary 16, 2025

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

[firstumcschenectady]

“Steadfast Love” based on Psalm 138 and Luke 5:1-11

Our nation’s oldest colleges and universities were created to educate clergy. In terms of undergraduates, that isn’t the goal anymore, and when it happens it is accidental. This is probably good, because many ways of serving God and building the kindom require education, and we definitely want people who can do their work well.

Africa University, founded in 1992, offers 7 faculties or colleges:

theology,

education, agriculture & natural resources,

management & administration,

humanities & social sciences,

health sciences,

the Institute of Peace, Leadership and Governance.1

I have to admit that I’m so interested in this list, first that it still includes theology (which most of the graduates I know from Africa University focused on), but also how broad it is and how it seems to be responsive to the needs of the students who attend. It is very clear that leaders of nations are being educated at Africa University – with attention to the many kinds of leadership nations need.

It is said, “When Africa University students and graduates express their hopes and dreams, they often speak about changing the African continent - making a difference in their world.”2 I have to say, this dream feels bigger than most institutions of higher education I know in the USA.

There is a phrase I hear sometimes, “a God-sized dream.” It is used to encourage people to dream bigger, vision more broadly, take risks with what is possible. I have to say, I think that when African Bishops Emilio J. M. Carvalho of Angola and Bishop Arthur F. Kulah of Liberia challenged their colleagues at the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM) to support the establishment of a university in Africa”3 that they dreamed a God-sized dream. Perhaps it fits then, that their motto is “The Dream is Alive!”

Today, there are more than 10,000 alums in 32 countries, 92% of whom are still in Africa. In 2020, there were 3010 students, 57% of whom were female. 57%! The university has teaching halls, administration buildings, student residences, faculty residences, and guest housing – which is about to house our four beloveds!

From Africa University “About- History and Development” Website, accessed 2/6/2025 https://africau.edu/about/history-development/

I am, I’ll admit, star struck by Africa University. It is one of the best things I think the United Methodist Church has ever done, and every alum I’ve ever met has blown me away. Some of this may be that I was raised in the United Methodist Church, and I heard about the development of Africa University when I was growing up, and about fundraising to make it possible, and about church members who went on trips to see it, and about what impact it could make in the world. And then, as a seminary student, I was suddenly in classes with Africa University alums, and I realized that how big that dream had become, and how tangible it was in the world.

Both the former Troy Conference (which this church was a part of) and the former Wyoming Conference (where I grew up) were huge supporters of Africa University, and Bob is well known for riding his bike to Annual Conference to raise money for Africa University. (And, by the way, the Africa University development office called this church this week to thank us for our support of Africa University!)

So this week, when I hear the beginning of Psalm 138:

I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise;

I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted your name and your word above everything.

On the day I called, you answered me; you increased my strength of soul.

I hear it in the context of the dreams of Bishops Carvalho and Kulah, and the wonder in the world that is Africa University. It resonates. We give thanks to God for the dreams that were dreamt, and for the willingness of the institution to listen, for the affirmation of General Conference, and for the willingness of God’s people to fund the University. We give thanks for faculty and students, for alums and supports, for scholarships and networks, and for the ways that students from 28 countries get to learn from each other and alongside each other. There is a lot there to sing praises for! There is a lot of God’s faithfulness seen in the creation and running of Africa University, a living proof that people called out and God answered – often through other people.

Now, dear ones, I’m aware that the US news cycle contains a few things that some of us have found upsetting this week. I’m not being intentionally obtuse in ignoring them, but I don’t think they need more of our attention when we are given the great gift of sending our siblings in faith to Africa University for the first time! I think the story of the creation of Africa University and the continued story of its impact in the world is awe-inspiring, hope-filled, and quite worthy of our attention. And, it deserves to be said, our souls need to be fed by the Good News of God.

Because I fear that in parts of some days, we feel a lot like the fishers who had fished all night and caught nothing. We have these deeply held values, we have these kindom building dreams, we have these movements in our souls to care for all of God’s people – and yet our efforts may feel like fishing all night with nothing to show for it.

But the truth is that kindom building isn’t really a whole lot like fishing. Because kindom building is long, slow, careful work – and quite often what we do doesn’t have any visible impact – UNTIL all of a sudden, it does.

I’ve mentioned that Bishops Carvalho and Kulah called on GBHEM to establish AU in 1984. However, the timeline of Africa University doesn’t start with them. It starts 86 years earlier when “Bishop John Hartzell stood on Mount Chirembe above Old Mutare and looking down upon the valley, envisioned hundreds of young Africans with books in their hands, running to school.”4 That’s a long time, from the first dreaming to the calling for action. But, it strikes me that Bishop Hartzell’s dream must have been remembered and reflected on, since it wasn’t lost to history. His dream was planted, and it took a rather long time for it to start to show growth, but when the call came, all of the pieces were ready to go. Bishops Carvalho and Kulah called on GBHEM to establish AU in 1984, it was affirmed by General Conference in 1988, and only 4 years later the first students matriculated.

Our kindom building work matters in the now. The people we find patience for, the ones we listen to, the ones we find ways to express concern and care for all matter. Furthermore, the ways that we act now are part of that invisible growth of God’s dreams – the parts that are happening slowly and quietly and invisibly, like a seed preparing to break out of the soil.

Take heart, dear ones. God ensures that the good work of sharing love and hope in the world doesn’t go to waste. It matters in the now, and God is able to work within what’s possible to amplify the good into the future. As the Psalm says as it ends, “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.”

And, truly great things can happen. Africa University is one piece of proof, and this trip that Upper New York is taking that allows those who have worked for Africa University for decades to see it with their own eyes is another.

God’s roots are deep, and they soak up goodness. God’s roots are deep, and God’s steadfast love endures forever. God’s roots are deep, and God is at work in the world. Thanks be to God! Amen

1 Africa University Fund “Four Areas of Focus” Brochure.

2Ibid

3Africa University “About- History and Development” Website, accessed 2/6/2025 https://africau.edu/about/history-development/

4Ibid

[firstumcschenectady]

"If I Fall" based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Lay Leader Karyn McCloskey's sermon:

Friends, all I can say is what a week to end up preaching…

I suspect there are at least one or two here today who climbed into a pulpit on September 16th,2001 and the months following and may remember what this feels like.

I don’t mean the sheer incomprehensibility of the attacks – at least to those of us born and raised in this country – but rather the aftermath.   The hateful response to anyone who looked or sounded “foreign” --especially those with brown skin.   The changes in our own government, the “Patriot Act” and the like.  “See something, say something.”  Distrust your neighbors – especially those with headcoverings and accents.   It still bottoms out my stomach when I think about it.

This week feels the same.  Changes in government, gag orders, stepping out of treaties and away from world citizenship.  And now the ICE raids, families keeping their kids out of school, worried about neighbors turning them in—or at the very least not standing up to power.  

It’s a lot and it’s overwhelming and it has the potential to seem completely hopeless…except that we are called to be people of hope.   In essence for me, that’s what our baptisms recognize – they’re an outward sign of inward grace.  Grace found in all people – regardless of race, religion, creed, time, place, socioeconomic status, or ability. There’s no clearer indication of this than the baptism of the Divine by a human.   And for me, no clearer call on my heart than our baptismal vows.

I chose to use them as our call to worship because I think we need to have them in front of us.  To give us strength when we’re weary.  To pull us back when we’re getting distracted.   To make us angry enough to flip tables that society would like us to quietly sit at.

This isn’t the first time that people of faith—and to be clear I don’t mean just Christians --  have been called to action, called to stand with the vulnerable, called on a massive scale to respond with a very clear “NO”.   Some of you have heard me tell the tale of Denmark in 1943, when after three years of Nazi occupation during which time the entire population, including the royal family, refused to comply with even intolerance, Hitler sent transport ships on the eve of Rosh Hashanah to gather up the Danish Jews.   Word was spread across the countryside and through the cities – and overnight the Danish people hid over 7,000 of their fellow citizens away – in hospital beds, under fake names.  In barns, in basements.  And then shuttled them away in the holds of fishing boats across the waters to neutral Sweden.  The German ships returned empty --- and Denmark holds the distinction of being the only country in occupied Europe where the majority of those sent to the death camps were not Jewish.

A more recent example comes closer to home, when in March of 1965 came first the horror of Bloody Sunday, when 600 African Americans marching from Selma to Montgomery Alabama were beaten, run down, and tear gassed by State troopers and county possemen on the Edmund Pettus Bridge --- followed by two more marches along that same route when thousands of people of all races, many of whom were clergy and other people of faith –  with the third one ending with more than 25,000 assembling to protest at the Alabama State Capital, demanding the removal of obstacles to Black voter registration.  ( On a side note – if you want to be inspired, I highly recommend watching the film “Selma” – that’s how I spent part of last Monday.)

There are others—like the decades of struggle, pain, and hard work that made possible this brand new Book of Discipline I got this week – but you get the point.   At such a time as this, we are called to build the kindom.  

To fall down and get back up.

To pick each other up – or lay down beside each other until we can rise again.

To stand behind, beside or in front of those who are vulnerable.

To use every ounce of whatever privilege we have

to speak out,

to lead out,

to fight our way out of this mess going on around us.

Because that’s how we renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil and unjust powers of this world, and repent of our separation from God and each other.  So that we can accept the freedom and power God gives us    to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves!

And this becomes possible, because we know, to the very core of our beings, that the God of Jacob formed us too and the promise that echoes through the ages remains true:  “I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

Amen.

January 26, 2025

[firstumcschenectady]

“If I Fall…” based on Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 5:1-16

January is National Mentoring Month, and so this year for Human Relations Day, we decided to look at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in context – along with the people who inspired him, and the people he inspired. Thus, I opened a lot of articles on the people who served as Dr. King’s mentors and I have three things to say based on that: OH MY GOODNESS were those impressive men; thank goodness for Ghandi and his witness to the powers of nonviolence that these mentors heard loud and clear; and finally – what an extraordinary group of superbly well educated men of color!

In the end though, I found myself more interested in Dr. King’s co-mentoring relationships. Perhaps that would be more normally construed as his collaborators. The key, I think, is to remember that Dr. King was the best known leader in the Civil Rights movement, but he was by no means alone. Dr. King worked side by side with Ralph Abernathy, and the impacts on the movement of Coretta Scott King and Juanita Jones Abernathy was also enormous. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was working tirelessly as well, with its wise leaders and faithful on the ground workers. Movements, it turns out, involve a lot of PEOPLE. No one person is a movement, nor can a single person lead a movement alone. Movements are the embodiment of “we’re in this together.”

With the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was a woman by the name of Fannie Lou Hamer:

Born in Mississippi in 1917, Hamer was a working poor and disabled Black sharecropper who joined the Civil Rights Movement at the age of forty-four. In 1962, her life changed dramatically after attending a mass meeting at a local church. The gathering had been organized by activists in SNCC. The speakers that night highlighted how ordinary citizens could transform American society with the right to vote, a message that resonated with Hamer. She went on to become a field secretary for SNCC and assisted Black people in Mississippi and beyond with voter registration.

This was dangerous work. In June 1963, Hamer was returning from South Carolina with a group of other activists. They stopped in Wynona to grab a bite to eat. Hamer’s colleagues encountered resistance from the owners of the café who made it clear that Black people were not welcome. The police arrived. And when Hamer exited the bus, an officer grabbed her and started kicking her. After Hamer and her colleagues were arrested, they received brutal beatings from the police officers who also instructed prisoners to do the same. Hamer’s injuries left her with kidney damage, a blood clot in her eye, and worsened a physical limp that she would carry for the rest of her life. However, Hamer was undeterred and continued her efforts to expand Black political rights.

...In April 1964, she joined forces with several other activists to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the MFDP. The group challenged the Mississippi all-white Democratic party. In August of 1964, only months after the establishment of the MFDP, Hamer and others traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to attend the Democratic National Convention.

...The experience in Atlantic City transformed Hamer. Although she encountered resistance, she persisted and delivered the most well-known speech of her political career before the Credentials Committee at the Convention. Hamer used her speech to describe the acts of racist violence Black people faced on a daily basis in the Jim Crow South. She told the stories of shots being fired at the homes of those who supported voting rights, and she told the story of what happened to her in Wynona. As she reflected on the painful experiences that Black people face in the South, Hamer could not help but to question America. In her words, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”1

She was a woman who was inspired by Dr. King, and then inspired Dr. King. They were even known to disagree and push on each other. That is, she was a full collaborator with him in the movement towards freedom. One of many famous quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer is, “If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.” Another great one, one I think we’re going to need in coming days is, “There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.” Finally, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

I hadn’t heard of Fannie Lou Hamer in my education, I didn’t learn about her until Shirley Readdean’s daughter Cyndee co-directed “Freedom Summer.” I’m so glad I did learn about her, because she was a living force for good, and I needed to know.

The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, with their commitments to freedom for all people, to transforming oppression, and to doing so through non-violence carefully followed the Way of Jesus, and the calling of God. We hear in Micah famous words:

[God] 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?

It is awe-inspiring how well the Civil Rights Movement embodied this. Dr. King and others preached goodness for oppressors, including in Dr. King’s sermon “Loving Our Enemies”:

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system..2

As they worked for justice, as they walked with God, they embodied kindness on the deepest levels – calling for true love for those who harmed and oppressed them.

Beloveds, this is a reminder we need. There is no one in the world that we are allowed to discount the humanity of – no one we seek to defeat. We want to change systems, we want to bring freedom, we want to care for the vulnerable, but we aren’t going to get to the kin-dom of God any way but through love – EVEN for those who do immense harm.

No one ever said following Jesus was easy.

Not even Jesus, whose famous Sermon on the Mount blesses those who are struggling with hopes that it will not always be this way. But not with the power to oppress those who oppressed them. The Jesus movement is nonviolent and loving – it isn’t passive, it isn’t willing to let injustice stand, but it is COMMITTED to being nonviolent and loving.

Jesus showed us that the nonviolent love of God could change the world. So too, did the Civil Rights Movement. Today, so too does the Poor People’s Campaign.

Dear ones, in the days to come, I am going to hold on to Fannie Lou Hamer, especially her words, If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.” Whatever comes at us, if we respond with a commitment to justice, to goodness, and to being with God – we can bring good out of ANYTHING. (Eventually.)

May we follow the lead of those who call us to love, to justice, and to nonviolence. They have already shown us the power, we simply get to follow in the way and trust in God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 Keisha N. Blain, “Fannie Lou Hamer Embodied Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Vision of Courageous Black Leadership” March 02, 2022, found at https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2022/03/fannie-lou-hamer-embodied-martin-luther-king-jrs-vision-of-courageous-black-leadership.html, on January 15, 2025.

2https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church

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

January 19, 2025

[firstumcschenectady]

“Grounded Hope” based on Luke 1:39-55

Somehow I messed up the order of the Advent Candles this year. They're supposed to be Hope, Peace, Joy, then Love, but we did Peace, Love, Joy, and now hope. Truthfully I copied from a prior year, which likely copied from some lovely liturgy of yet another year, and didn't notice until Louis asked me why on early we were doing Love on week 2. By that point it was too late to change so we left it.

So perhaps I'm just justifying things here, but I also have been thinking that it feels right this year to end on hope. I'm not disparaging love! It is, after all, “the greatest of these things.” It is just that this year, hope seems like the hardest one to come by.

To speak plainly, there are already a whole lot of problems in our country and our world, and we're facing a future with a government who will do intentional harm to the vulnerable. Usually when we think about hope, we think about hope for building the kindom, for making things a little bit better, piece by piece. But right now, we're facing everything getting worse, and it isn't even entirely clear what we hope for.

I'm a big fan of Dr. Emily Nagoski, a writer and pod-caster who thinks deeply and writes clearly. Dr. Nagoskisends out a regular email newsletter that I get, and this July she sent out one on hope. Emily struggles with depression, and she shared that while she's delighted when other people can resonate with Emily Dickinson's poem “hope is the thing with feathers” where nothing can hurt hope, she can't actually access that hope.

Here is an excerpt from that email:

Moral philosopher and author of “How We Hope” Adrienne Martin developed an “incorporation model” that formulates hope as “a desire for an outcome and the belief that the outcome is possible but not certain” and you use your assessment of its possibility as justification for feelings, thoughts, and plans.

Got that? Hope is justifying your feelings, thoughts, and plans based on your assessment that a desired outcome is possible.”1

This definition of hope, where the desired outcome is “possible but not certain” may be why hope see so hard right now. I'd like to hope for an end to hopelessness, but that is a whole lot less likely then “possible but not certain.” I'd like to hope for an end to hunger, but that, too, is a whole lot less likely than possible but not certain.

For Dr. Nagoski, living with chronic depression, assessing what was possible with an optimistic viewpoint became so hard that from her perspective hope died. But, she says, that's not the whole story:

Hope is a sustaining energy, it keeps us working through trials when we’re being challenged, but it is contingent on that assessment of the probability of that desirable outcome.

But there is a noncontingent sustaining energy, which cannot be interfered with by any assessment, no matter how dire, of the probability of a desired outcome.

That noncontingent sustaining energy is an unimaginable hope.

What’s it called, when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference? What’s the name for that emotion, when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?

Adrienne Martin calls it faith.2

Now, to be clear, Dr. Nagoski is an atheist, so her faith may look different than ours, but I found this reflection so startlingly helpful. Because what we are doing now, when we hope for good care for those with disabilities, when we hope for compassionate responses to immigration, when we hope for changes of heart around medical options for trans kids in red states – that's the stuff of “when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference” That's the stuff of, “when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?”

Now, as people of faith, maybe we still get to call this hope, but more like “faith-hope” or “God-hope” or “we'd have no hope in this without trusting God” or just “hope grounded in love” or “grounded hope”? Or some other nuance. But it isn't practical, pragmatic, having assessed the likelihood and deemed it possible sort of hoping we're doing now, when we try to build the kindom of God on earth in this day and age. What we're doing is continuing to love because the world needs love, is practicing peace because only peace begets peace, is seeking joy because joy is resistance, and continuing to work towards building the kindom of God because God has done crazier things than bring justice out of THIS HOT MESS. That is, we hope.

And to a significant degree, what I hear in Luke is pretty similar. Mary and Elizabeth, the too young and the too old, pregnant and shocked and processing, and speaking hope in the faithful God in the midst of the world that was a hot mess.

The Roman Empire at that time had highly concentrated wealth and power, most people felt vulnerable in their positions, so tried to press harder on those below them to stabilized themselves, the masses of people were struggling in life threatening poverty, and the government was trying to control the religious narrative to make itself look good. I know it is all hard to imagine, but do your best. ;)

This young, vulnerable, faithful Mary speaks her faith, her grounded hope, to Elizabeth. She speaks of God's mercy – God's compassion shown to those God could instead choose to punish. She speaks of God's strength – God's capacity to make things happen.

And then she talks about what God does with God's mercy and compassion. Which is, inverses the fortunes of the world. For many people at that time, especially those who were not a part of the Jewish faith (but probably many who were too), it was assumed that those who had power and money had it because they were favored by the gods and “good.” And those who didn't' have things were being punished. Right? That way it looks like the world is fair, if everyone gets what they deserve. (You realize people think this now too, right? Sigh.)

The book of Job, I would say, is one of the ways the Bible fights back against that idea, because even in the Bible there is this tendency to want to justify things by saying all is as God would have it be, so don't mess with the status quo. But, luckily, there are also A LOT of narratives that say God isn't' happy until justice comes, and that's the tradition Mary is drawing on here.

Mary speaks of God lifting up the lowly, bringing down the powerful, filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, scattering the proud, and fulfilling God's own promises. To have that happen would overthrow the empire, and install in it's place God's own kindom on earth. She is talking about leveling, about making it so everyone can eat, and no one lords over anyone. She is talking about building the kindom on earth.

It makes sense, of course, that these words would be in Mary's mouth to make sense of Jesus. The early Christian community saw all of this happen in Jesus's life, and they used Mary's words as a narrative device to tell people what to pay attention to in his story. (Also, I contend, it makes sense to think of Mary as one who had such faith and was able to teach it to Jesus.)

I think that from the perspective of Mary and Elizabeth, the Roman Empire was immutable. It couldn't be changed, couldn't be toppled, couldn't' be bested. This was probably even MORE true by the time the gospels were written and the destruction of Jerusalem occurred with mass causalities. Moving from that system to justice as God wills it would have looked....

Well, it wasn't “possible but not certain.”

It was much more “when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference?” In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the primary points of Jesus's teaching was that we have to work towards the future we want, the kindom of God on earth, as if it is possible because unless we work together on it – IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE. Jesus brought the people together and showed them that together they had enough where as apart they did not. Jesus taught them they had power, not the kind of violent power over of the Empire, but the amazing power of connection and love that can change things to make life BETTER.

Beloveds of God, the likelihoods are not in our favor right now. Very little that improves the lives of the vulnerable is going to happen on the federal level in the short run.

Oh well.

God is still God, God is a God of mercy who brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly and we're working with God on that kindom building project. Our hope is grounded, faithful, and impractical. We do what needs doing even if it isn't likely to bring the outcomes we want. We do it anyway, because we are the people who follow Mary's son. Amen

1 "An Alternative to Hope Or, The Secret Medicine for When the Thing With Feathers Stop Singing” an email from Emily Nagoski on Jul 9, 2024.

2 ibid

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

[firstumcschenectady]

"Vulnerability" - 2024 Christmas Dawn Meditation

A lot of theologians like to make a big fuss over Jesus being born a baby. Or, really, over God being born a baby. They talk about infinity becoming finite, about spirit taking on flesh and mortality, about the God of all becoming embodied – and as a tiny baby at that. My conceptions of who Jesus was don't entirely jive with this, but...

It is, in fact, rather awe-inspiring to think of Jesus as a baby. In most of the gospel narratives he is a grown man with profound insight, incredible spirituality, and unusual wisdom. While he didn't possess much power in the ways of the world – he was poor, homeless, and peace-able – he had a lot of the other kinds of power. He was well liked, even loved, by many. He had followers who trusted him, supporters who enabled him, and the kind of faith that can move mountains. His was the power of Love, but he had it in spades, and we are people who believe in the epic power of Love.

But as a baby, he was fully vulnerable. I have been reminded of this, this year, this second time I've picked up a newborn and been responsible for keeping him alive. Babies are 100% dependent on others. They can't eat without help, they need others to change their diapers. They often need to be soothed to sleep, or reminded to wake up. And all that is when everything goes RIGHT.

The funny thing though, is that we're more like babies than we'd like to admit. We, too, are 100% dependent on others. We can't eat without the supply chain enabling food to get to our tables. We can't excrete safely without the work others did on our septic lines. Many of us also need to be soothed to sleep and nearly all of us need alarms to remind us to wake up.

And that's, too, when everything goes right. Because it turns out that being in these finite, mortal, human bodies is ripe with things going wrong. Injury and illnesses plague us. Abilities come and go, and dis-abilities ebb and flow in the opposite direction.

We are so profoundly vulnerable in these bodies of ours.

Many years ago, while serving as an intern hospital chaplain, I had the honor of getting to know a man who was being treated for very serious cancer. He was in isolation even within in the cancer unit because treatment required the complete dismantling of his immune system. (Sadly, this happens more frequently than we'd like to discuss.) His family was too far away to visit, and he was bored and scared. Also, being sick didn't fit his identity. He was, as he said, “a bouncer in the seediest bar in the city.” He wasn't supposed to get SICK.

Bodies. Are. So. Vulnerable.

And nothing we do, nothing we say, nothing we imagine can keep them safe negates their vulnerability.

We're all dependent on each other, we're all in bodies that can't fully be trusted... we're all a lot like that baby placed in the manger – and a whole lot MORE like that baby than I think we'd like to be.

And, in case you hadn't heard it or forgot about it, the mangers at that time were hewn out of the bedrock. To place a baby in a manger was to put the baby BELOW floor level, where anyone could step on him or trip over him in addition to the animals feeding around him. It is a profound metaphor to think of that level of vulnerability for that new baby, one that makes me squirm a little.

Confession, when Isaiah was born I was utterly horrified at the idea of putting him down on his first night on earth, and simply refused to sleep because in my mind he HAD to be held. The nurse – wise woman that she was – responded to me that I HAD to sleep if I was going to recover from the c-section. My best friend, therefore, held Isaiah for his whole first night, so I would sleep without the horror of him being... gasp... in safe bassinet in a hospital. I may resonate a little too much with the concept of placing a baby in a manger! I think that's a hard no.

I think we can take from this Christmas story, and from human life in general, that vulnerability is holy. We may not like it, we may ABSOLUTELY HATE IT, but it is holy. In our vulnerability we are bound to each other by our needs, in our vulnerability we become more open to the Divine, in our vulnerability we learn again and again that God is with us, in our vulnerability we see how little control we have... and hopefully make some peace with it.

The angels sang, the shepherd came, Mary pondered it all in her heart – a baby was born, as vulnerable as any of us, and it was good. So, too, are our fragile, vulnerable existences. It is HOLY to be vulnerable. May God help us. Amen

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

December 25, 2024

[firstumcschenectady]

“Led Home” based on Jeremiah 31:7-14

Jeremiah, the prophet of the exile, speaks to the exiles in the midst of their exile. You get it? EXILE, “the state of being barred from one's native country, typically for political or punitive reasons.1” The state of exile is a state of displacement. Who you used to be has been ripped away, along with your connections to what roles you used to play, what people you used to be connected to, AND what places you used to occupy. In many ways, to be in exile is to have ones identity ripped away.

The Exile in the Bible, the time when the leaders of ancient Israel were force marched to Babylon tore away the identity of a nation. Those left behind were decimated by violence and continued to be defenseless against invaders. Those sent into exile were decimated by violence and displaced. They had known themselves to be God’s people, protected by the Divine and formed by their relationship to the God-Who-Is. To have lost their city, their status, the lives of their loved ones, their temple, and their treasures to Babylon SERIOUSLY threatened their identity as beloved by God.

In fact, I believe that the Hebrew Bible was written down in this period largely to make sense of the exile, and to figure out identity once again.

So the words of Jeremiah, the prophet of the exile, are particularly poignant as they come from the time of displacement and lack of identity, a time of pure shock and dismay. Jeremiah is known as a downer, because most of his prophecy was about warning what would happen if the exile came to be. But once it happens, he ends up telling the people that God won’t let it last forever.

Our Hebrew Bible reading today, from Jeremiah 31, is a prophecy of RETURN. A word from God that says that the people will return (they do) and that it will be glorious.

When we talk about Jesus today, at least for most Christians, the emphasis is on Jesus as Savior. For me, it is often a relief to notice what saving means in the Hebrew Bible. Which, in this case, is “return.” The people ask God to save them, God brings home a remnant of the people and thus keeps the people alive as a people – maintaining their identity and connection to their God.

Christianity today is focused on saving being about afterlife, but in most of the Bible it is more pragmatic than that. Jeremiah suggests that this is a story of salvation – that the people will come home.

The specifics, it is worth mentioning, are profoundly lovely. While Jeremiah as prophet of doom and reports of the destruction before the exile talked about the deaths of babies and pregnant women, Jeremiah singing the story of salvation says that God is going to bring the people home – and the list of who will make it home safely is remarkable:

people who are blind

people who have physical disabilities

people who are pregnant, including those in labor

And those beloveds of God will be gathered back home. They will be comforted after the years of grief. They will be safe, walking near water so they can drink as they wish, on a smooth straight path where they cannot get lost and will not be tripped.

Then, when they people come home, they will sing with joy! They will be fed with abundance. The crops will grow, the animals will thrive, life will be easy and good. The people will dance, and be happy. Their mourning will turn to joy. They will be comforted. Their sorrow will become gladness. There will be so much abundance that the priest’s small portion will be more than enough and the things of life will overflow and satisfy.

Its lovely.

But I think my favorite part is who is named as the ones God is bringing home. The focus isn’t on the descendants of the king, nor the priests and Levites, nor the warriors or scribes…. Even though those were most of the people who were taken into exile because Babylon thought they were useful (and that Jerusalem would founder without them). It is the most vulnerable people in this case also the ones who would have the hardest time with long-distance travel to return. It is the ones for whom returning home would be most miraculous.

God says God will make the way so smooth, so straight, so easy that they too can make it. This feels the the Biblical equivalent of those wonderful internet memes that remind us that EVERYONE can use a ramp, but not everyone can use stairs, so ramps should be the highest priority. God is building a RAMP home so that those least able to make it on their own will have an EASY journey. The return home is meant to be so easy that a woman in labor, a person who is blind, and a person who cannot walk on their own can all make it. God will lead them home, and it will be possible.

There is a way home, with God. The people will be saved, the return is possible and will happen, everyone will be able to make it if they wish to.

Thanks Jeremiah.

It seems to me that the powerful experience people had with Jesus and then the powerful experience people had with the Holy Spirit after meeting the followers of Jesus must have been REALLY STRONG for those people to start claiming that God’s salvation was KNOWN in him. Because, let’s be frank, the man was killed by the Empire on cross as a condemned man, and his most faithful male followers ran away in fear afterward.

It didn’t, at least at first, look like the salvation Jeremiah was talking about. It didn’t look like return from exile, it didn’t look like the prior story of freedom from bondage in Egypt through the Passover.

Nor did it fit the salvation of the expected Messaiah. It didn’t look like King Solomon’s rule over many neighbors. It didn’t look like political freedom, or overthrowing the Empire, or even a temple that was dedicated to truly honoring God again.

But those Early Christians claimed the idea that God saves us, and claimed the idea that God was sending a Messiah to restore the Kingdom of Ancient Israel – a Messiah to save them and their IDENTITY. And the Early Christians said, YES, God did, and it was Jesus!

And friends, let’s be clear, Jesus DID NOT FIT THE BILL. When our Jewish friends point out that Jesus didn’t fit the identity of the expected Messiah, they are ENTIRELY CORRECT.

But, also, I think the early Christians were onto something. Jesus didn’t bring political power, a resurgence of the Ancient Israelite Empire, the power of violence to kill enemies, a restoration of the Kingship or Nation, or even help the priesthood cleanse itself of Roman influence. He didn’t do any of it.

But, he did empower those who had been disenfranchised. He did listen to widows. He did show people the miracles that happen when people combine their resources. He did preach about God with the people everywhere they go. He did teach about God’s incredible power of love. He lived a life of radical connection, radical love, radical trust in a God of goodness. And those who met him – and those who met those who met him – and those who met them – and so on – saw in him a different sort of salvation. Maybe one more like Jeremiah’s after all. They saw in him that their lives had value, even if the empire couldn’t get rich off them. They saw in him that they could love each other and it would matter, and that no power of violence could destroy the things that really matter. They saw in him that God is bigger than even death, and fear can start to take a backseat to love because love always wins and its far more worth basing a life on. They saw in him the power of peace, of connection, of relationship, of faith, of trust, and of hope.

And they called those things salvation.

And I think they were right. I think that’s why Jeremiah preached it too. Because before return comes, you have to want it, and you have to believe it is possible. Before freedom comes, you have to want it, and you have to believe it is possible. Before the kingdom comes you have to want it, and you have to believe it is possible. Because believing in it makes it possible.

May God lead us all home to the kindom! Amen

1Apple dictionary, accessed 1/2/2025.

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

January 5, 2025

[firstumcschenectady]

“Joy Like a Fountain” based on Isaiah 12:2-6 and Philippians 4:4-7

There is a bit of a challenge to this week. Today, on this 3rd Sunday of Advent, we have lit the candle of Joy! We have texts calling us to joy! We're meant to engage in and savor the joy of God.

But, also, we have the Long Night service this week, the time when I will tell attendees that they don't have to be joyful if they're not joyful – that God meets them where they are – that one can honor Christmas with tears as well as anything else.

For some reason I don't feel like it would be particularly authentic to preach to you today about joy, and then talk about grief and sadness on Wednesday as if they're entirely separate things.

I've been thinking about the spaces that joy and grief intermingle. I know that this perhaps a bit personal, but adoption is one of those places. Our family is profoundly joyful that we're complete, that we have a delightful baby to adore, and that our adoption is finalized. But adoption never exists in joy alone, because it is profoundly sad that birth parents cannot parent their children, and it is heartbreaking that children need to be separated from their birth parents. It can be the right thing, the best thing, the thing that brings us the most joy – and still be filled with grief.

Truthfully, many deaths are like this too. We who are left behind are aghast at the loss of loved ones, but often also relieved at the end of suffering. Sometimes, even, the one who dies has expressed being ready and waiting to go, to be joy-filled to be done, and we have to hold our grief with their joy.

A now-deceased church member, Miles Martin said all of this much better than I've been able to in his poem “Bittersweet”

“Bitter-sweet”           by Miles J Martin                                                              

In the strange dichotomy of living

The purest joys are bitter-sweet,

And happiness often lingers

Where tears and laughter meet.

Of all accumulated treasures

That crown the passing years,

Most precious are the jewels

That crystallize from tears.

Above the bitterness of parting

And the sadness of farewell,

An all-pervasive sweetness

Casts its blessed, healing spell.

Though familiar ties be severed

And old friends seldom meet,

Fondest memories intermingle

The bitter with the sweet.

Throughout this mortal journey

Where time is short and fleet,

We find that all of living

Is a blend of bitter-sweet.

The first time I took a Nonviolent Communication Course (which is sometimes called Compassionate Communication), we were asked how we were feeling after a lunch break. Luckily there were cards with emotions on them for us to look at and consider, since we were like most people and not particularly fluent with emotions. I don't remember how I was feeling, but I remember one of the teacher saying that she felt conflicted, because she was both excited about teaching us and worried that not everyone had made it back from lunch yet. I remember it because it was an ah-ha moment for me, that more than one emotion at the same time is real, valid, and even normal.

This week, we're talking about joy and sadness, and we're acknowledging that they often intermingle, and “all of living is a blend of bitter-sweet.” Now that we've acknowledged that, I feel a lot more comfortable putting the majority of our attention this morning on joy.

Our scriptures emphasize gratitude as a natural response to God's goodness. God who cares for us, God who gives us peace, God who is our strength, God who is trustworthy, God who is with us – God being God is reason enough for joy. There is truth there.

God who created brings joy. God whose creation includes waterfalls and starlit nights, sunrises and autumn colors, raspberries and coffee, the oceans and the plains, hummingbirds and blue whales is definitely a God of joy. And it turns out life itself is filled with joys, when we're able to attend to them. To eat is a joy. To drink is a joy. To move is a joy. To talk is a joy. To hear is a joy. To watch is a joy. To make meaning is a joy. To play is a joy. To create is a joy. To offer care is a joy. To receive care is a joy. And even when we can't have all of those things, most of us get many of them EVERY DAY!

When I think about sadness and grief, I'm often struck by how much grief relates to change. We grieve what we've lost and identified with – people and identities and hopes and dreams. It could be far too easy to conclude that change makes for grief, and it may even be partially true. But to return to the idea of bitter-sweet, change also looks like growth, and healing, like the fulfillment of dreams, and the letting go of identities that don't fit anymore. Change itself is bittersweet, and I think it is important to notice how it feels and what delight there can be in it.

That amazing spiritual “I've Got Peace Like a River” seems to summarize both of our scriptures and all that I've said so far. It seems worth noting that African American spirituals didn't come from times when all was well, they came from souls that knew that there was more than external realities. To be in the midst of oppression and sing “I've got peace like a river, I've got joy like a fountain, I've got love like an ocean in my soul” was to refuse the power of the oppressor to define reality. It was to make God's peace, joy, and love the centerpiece of life. It was to claim goodness, even the midst of hardness.

I have said it before, but I think it bears repeating: we are formed by what we give our attention to. In the era of social media and 24 hour news cycles it is really easy to get pulled into despair and distress. But we're called to peace, love, joy, and hope. Which requires that we give attention to goodness and God-ness too. We have to be more intentional that people who came before us, in making sure we bring our attention to the little miracles of life. Now, I'll admit it, I'm in an easier position than many to do that. I get to be awed every day at things my kids are learning, and that is an unfair advantage compared to those who don't get to do that in this era of their lives. But dear ones, I encourage you to savor the things you love – great flavors, great music, great decorations, great relationships, great fiction, great naps!

One of the best spiritual practices I know is the practice of daily examen. (Yes, I push this regularly, if you now all do this and haven't' told me yet, let me know and I'll move on.) In daily examen you get centered with God, review your day, look for the best and worst parts, share those either in a journal or with others, and then offer thanks to God for the best and the worst and everything in between. When practiced daily (or even at any regular interval) it can help us see what we're loving about life and what our constant struggles are, which can also guide us towards moving our lives towards greater joy.

More simply though, it gives us a chance to pay attention. To notice what days are bustling with little joys, or what days really weren't that hard, and mostly it gives us a chance to listen WITH God and find some delights we missed the first time around but can delight in as we reflect on them. I'm personally shocked at how often the worst part of my day is related to the best part. As previously mentioned, “We find that all of living is a blend of bitter-sweet.”

Dear ones, seek joy, savor joy, attend to joy, allow for joy. And, remember, it is human to feel multiple emotions at once. You joy won't cancel out your sadness or anger, but neither will it be canceled out. We're people of faith – we have joy like a fountain! Thanks be to God! Amen

December 15, 2024

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

[firstumcschenectady]

“The Way Home” based on Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6 December 8, 2024

The story says that the descendants of Jacob, freed from slavery in Egypt, wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They weren't meant to be wilderness dwellers, they just took a really long time to be ready to come “home.” Home to the promised land. Home to being settled, and engaging in agriculture. Home to being ready to trust God and create a society based on treating one another with the love God wants people treated with.

The wilderness wasn't the goal, but it was important. It was there that they learned to trust God. It was there that they figured out the basics of their story, and the basics of their structures, and the basics of their faith. The wilderness was imperative – even though it was the journey not the destination.

In our Disciple class this week we read a lot of texts placed in the wilderness, laying out the VERY specific details of sacrifices, which are mind-numbingly boring most of the time (to me). One of the specifics caught my attention though, the means by which the Holy Tent – the Tabernacle – itself was cleansed. The idea seemed to be that periodically, maybe once a year, the high priest would re-sanctify the whole space. He had to start by purifying himself, then symbolically purifying the people. This is actually where the scapegoat comes in – for the people he brought two goats. One was sacrificially killed and the other symbolically bore the people's sins away from them and back into the wilderness. Then the ark of the covenant itself is cleansed/re-sanctified/prepared for its continued work.

The work of the Tabernacle (and later Temple) was the work of forgiveness, and it required that the place of forgiveness be cleansed periodically, so the sin didn't... soak in?

The whole idea is so far from my worldview, I struggle to wrap my head around it, but it felt connected to the Malachi reading when one person is going to purify things. God's messenger – seen at the time it was written as the return of Elijah – would purify the whole people. Like the high priest, but more so. The high priest was cleansed himself and cleansed the people and then purified the Tabernacle.

This messenger purifies it ALL. The messenger purifies the whole people, and in doing so restores relationship between the people and God.

It could make sense to say that the messenger is taking the people out of another wilderness and leading them back home too.

In Luke, John the Baptist quotes Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, the start of “second Isaiah” is written to the exiles, promising them that the exile will have an end. The prophet speaks to people who have been force marched through the desert wilderness, and are yearning for home. He assures them that not only will they go home, but the horrible journey they remember won't be the same on the way home – it will be flat, straight, safe. They will be with God and God will be with them, and they will be journeying home with ease.

Phew. OK, so far we've talked about the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land thorugh the wilderness- a long journey to a new home; we've talked about the wilderness of distance from God and the purification and forgiveness to bring people back home to God; we've talked about the journey through the wilderness to the exile and the road back home... enough Bible meta themes yet?

Well, no.

Because now we have to deal with John the Baptist quoting Isaiah, which means we don't just need to know what Isaiah was saying but why John decided to quote it!

We know that John was a wilderness preacher, which is pretty much the opposite of the important people we hear about first. Ceasar, the governor, the rulers, the high priests.... and well, John who was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and quoting Isaiah from the wilderness around the Jordan. There is a significant contrast there, a notable difference in power. Or maybe, a notable difference in what KIND of power they were wielding. The empires officials (and I include the high priests as such) wielded the threat of violence, hierarchical, and official power.

John the Baptist wielded the power of hope.

In particular, the hope that even from THERE, the people could get home again. Where was there? I think by the time of John and Jesus, the people of ancient Israel felt like exiles at home. The power structures abused them, the religious authorities abandoned them, the financial structures strangled them, the nation their ancestors had yearned to come home to was bleeding under the oppression of the Empire.

It can be a hard thing, it turns out, to be home and still be yearning for home.

It can be hard when home isn't safe.

It can be hard when home has been appropriated.

It can be hard when home doesn't value its own people.

It can be hard when home seems to violate the most basic principles of Godliness and goodness.

(Just saying.)

To these people, living under the oppressive, violent power of the Empire, this camel-hair-wearing, wilderness-living, baptizing prophet says, “God is going to make the home easy. The mountains will be made low. The valleys will be lifted up,” and WOW, but doesn't that sound like good news to the poor and those made low and hard news for those who might be on the top? And then he goes on to quote that the ways will be made straight and smooth and the people can get home and the home is going to be LEVEL and FAIR, and SAFE and JUST and GOOD.

And GOD is going to do it.

And God's people are going to help

There is a way home. God is working on it. We can help.

And that dear ones, I believe, is the good news of God for the people of God. 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

December 8, 2024