Sermons at FUMC Schenectady

Ah, the parables of the kingdom of heaven! I know these ones. I even started writing a sermon to talk about the principles of good household economic policies versus the abundance of the kindom of God and then I decided to check my commentaries.

And in our scripture reading today there are actually 5 tiny parables, and in Amy-Jill Levine’s book “Short Stories by Jesus” she has a chapter on 3 of them. I mean 3 chapters each one of of those three. Which is both the most glorious thing to learn entirely new things about stuff I thought I knew and the worst time to be really constrained time wise in worship. How dare she have EVERYTHING interesting to say on this gospel passage THIS week??

The three she works with are “The Kingdom of Heaven is Like Yeast”, “The Pearl of Great Price,” and “The Mustard Seed.” So, lets get some snippets of the wonders of these parables.

She also re-translates, so here is the first, “Similar to the kindom of heaven is leaven that a woman, taking, hid in three measures of flour until was leavened all.”1 A basic reminder for the non-baking nerds out there: our modern yeast is a very modern invention. Bread then was made of sourdough, also known as leaven. So, how much is 3 measures? Well, its an ephah. (You are welcome). Also known as 40-60 pounds. That is, 8-12 normal bags of flour. This is, my friends, a lot of flour. Dr. Levine says it is “far too much for one woman to knead on her own, and the yield would be far too much for one person to consume.”2

I’m gonna go a little further with that. A cup of flour is 120 grams, or a bit over 4 ounces. King Arthur has a basic recipe for a sourdough bread that yields “one big loaf.” It calls for 5 cups of flour.

So, we’re talking 30-45 BIG loaves of bread. That’s more than you can knead on one TABLE, maybe more than could be kneaded in an average house in those days.

Which is a lot of detail to say that it is an extravagant amount of bread. And, as she says, perhaps we should take note if anywhere else in the Bible that much flour is used to make bread at once. And, voila, there are places. The first is when Abraham is visited by “three strangers” in Genesis 18 who will tell him Sarah is going to get pregnant. When they arrive, Abraham tells his wife “make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Which was a ridiculous amount of flour to use then too, and also, IT DOESN’T RISE QUICKLY. Oh, and Hannah – a beloved wife who couldn’t conceive- after she finally has her son and weans him she takes him to dedicate him to God’s service. “When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three year old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine. She brought him to the house of the LORD and Shiloh.” Which is also this same amount.

This then raises some interesting connotations about the woman “hiding” the leavening in the flour that would take a while to rise and then… voila a wonderful and extravagant thing has happened … and perhaps the wonder of life itself and childbirth is in all this amazing stuff happening. Or, as she says, “Perhaps the parable tells us that, like dough that has been carefully prepared with sourdough starter or a child growing in the womb, the kingdom will come if we nurture it.”3

She goes on, as she doesn’t think parables need have only one meaning, “Perhaps it suggests we adapt our lives in light of the kindom and do something that might seem foolish or wasteful to people on the outside. Imagine inviting three strangers to lunch. Imagine setting up a food pantry that stocks more than one family could eat. Imagine baking bread for those who have none and wonder about all those well-fed folks who pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’”4 And also she offers, “perhaps the parable tells us that despite all our images of golden slippers and harps and halos, the kingdom is present at the communal oven of a Galilean village when everyone has enough to eat. It is present, inchoate, in everything, and it is available to all, from the sourdough starter to the rain and the sunshine. It is something that works its way through our lives, and we realize its import only when we have it not.”5

This is what she can do with a SENTENCE.

The parable of the Mustard Seed is probably best summarized in the book we read for Children’s Time (“The Marvelous Mustard Seed” by Amy Jill Levine and Sandy Eisenberg Sasso) but I was intrigued by the ways that she drew conclusions about both the small seed becoming a large plant and the small amount of starter raising the large amount of flour.

“What we see now is potential, but that potential needs to be actualized. The yeast has to be placed into the dough; the seed has to be planted. Even small actions, or hidden actions, have the potential to produce great things. In addition, from both plant and dough we learn yet at least three more lessons. First, some things need to be left alone. Keep fiddling with the dough and it will not rise; keep exposing the seed to air and it will not germinate. Not everything, or even everyone needs our constant attention. Second, sometimes we need to get out of the way. We are not always the focus, sometimes we are the facilitators for something bigger than ourselves. The woman hides the yeast in the dough, whether people know she did the baking or not remains unstated. The man plants, or even tosses, the seed. Who sowed it is much less important than the tree into which the seed grows. The final image is not a focus on the human actor, but on the results of the action. Finally, both images of of domestic concerns: the seed parable is set in a garden or local field, the yeast parable is set at a village oven. The kingdom of heaven is found in what today we might call “our own backyard in the generosity of nature and the daily working of women and men.”6

Now, the third chapter was on The Pearl of Great Price, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man, a merchant, seeking fine pearls; on finding one pearl of extremely great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”7 She made some very fine initial points about this parable. Merchants weren’t liked, especially because they were sellers of expensive things for wealthy people and poor people in those days thought wealthy people had stolen wealth from them. Pearls were REALLY valuable back in that day, they were the most valuable of gems, so this was a wealthy merchant. Pearls are made by non-kosher animals, and further made by irritating the animal. The merchant isn’t looking to find a great pearl, he just does, and in order to get it he sells all that he has. At which point he has the great pearl but nothing else, and he isn’t a merchant any longer, he is simply a man who owns a great pearl.

She says, “Our merchant has obtained his desire: a beautiful object, but one that cannot nourish, shelter or clothe.”8

“Our erstwhile merchant first raises questions of our own acquisitiveness. We are continually seeking, whatever the object is fine pearls, a new job, another degree, or spiritual fulfillment. But each time we find our goal, it turns out to be ephemeral. There is always a new necklace, a new career, a new form of study, a nagging sense that we have not done what we need to do. We flit form desire to desire, never permanently fulfilled, always somewhat discontent. The merchant’s actions show that knowing one’s pearl obviates all other wants and desires.

Can we assess what is of ultimate value in our own lives, not simply in terms of relativizing, but in terms of ultimate concern? … Are we willing to step aside from all we have to obtain what we want?”9

Well, beloveds, I never heard that before, but I am glad I now have. What is the pearl that is worth EVERYTHING to you, and are you willing to change everything to get it?

May God help us find that answer, because as Dr. Levine says, “Jesus, the historical Jesus, cared about prioritizing. In light of the in-breaking of the kingdom, which is already here as his followers found manifest in his presence and yet to come as manifested by the full presence of justice, we are forced to act. We are forced to determine what we must do to prepare for this new reality. What do we we keep and what do we divest? … Once we know that material goods will only collect rust or dust, and once we know that the only thing that counts is treasure in heaven, surely we must find a new way to live.”10

May God continue to discomfort us with parables! Amen

1Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (USA: HarperOne, 2014), page 107/

2121

3123

4124

5125.

6166-7.

7127.

8137.

9147.

10149-150

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

Jacob and Esau were twins who were nothing alike. They had different bodies. Esau was hairy. Jacob was smooth. They had different preferences. Esau liked to hunt and be outside. Jacob preferred being indoors.

There are two stories about the brothers while they were still home with their parents. In the first, Jacob convinces Esau to sell his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. From which we learn that Jacob is cunning and manipulative and Esau short-minded.

The second story is of Issac at end of life giving his blessing to his firstborn, Esau, which also gets stolen by Jacob through the manipulations of both Issac’s wife Rebecca and Jacob. After this one Esau is angry enough that Jacob is reasonably afraid of being killed and gets sent off to find a wife from among his mother’s people.

And as soon as he leaves we get to our story today.

Jacob is on his way away from the life he’s known to find his mother’s family who he’s never met as a form of exile so his brother doesn’t kill him. They sound like siblings to me, I’ve always appreciated that Genesis doesn’t romanticize family dynamics.

It is here, on this journey from pretty violent family dynamics, that Jacob has encounters of the Divine and is blessed with God’s promises to him. In some ways I don’t get it. Jacob is far from innocent in these stories. Why him and why then? Then I remember that in the Bible, at least the Hebrew Bible, God isn’t invested in picking the “best” or “most faithful” people. God just seems to pick and make the person work with the Divine in working things out. The patriarchs aren’t great people, they’re just instruments of God, because God works with PEOPLE rather than waiting for perfect ones.

I note in the stories of the brothers that there are different kinds of violence going on. Esau is threatening to kill Jacob. That’s violent, at least a threat of overt physical violence. But, I think we need to acknowledge that Jacob is violent in his own right, tricking Esau and his father for his own gain. We can debate the appropriateness of inheritance practices all we want, and I’m for it, but tricking people is still a form of violence.

I often thing about how differently direct and indirect violence get perceived. Some violence in the world is Esau’s style – wars, murders, gun violence, even death sentences. (As Esau was basically giving Jacob a death sentence.) But some violence in the world, just as violent, is indirect and Jacob style. When I went on VIM trips to Cuba in the aughts, I saw many pharmacy’s with empty shelves and heard stories of people unable to access basic medicine or birth control. Those were the impact of the US embargo – a public policy called “nonviolent” that led to plenty of deaths. So too are the recent cuts to SNAP benefits. So too, let’s call it what it is, are our health care policies in the US where people can’t afford to access health care with or without insurance in many cases.

One of the most strikingly consistent truths about Jesus is that he was nonviolent. He lead a group of radically nonviolent people. He didn’t fight back when he was pulled from his followers in the middle of the night be killed – and when one of his followers did fight back he healed the one they’d hurt. But it wasn’t just that kind of nonviolence he practiced. He also practiced the nonviolence of making sure people had enough to eat, of healing community by healing the sick, of telling stories against those who hoarded wealth at the expense of the lives of the poor. He called out the ways systems are violent and death dealing even while pretending to be “just the way it is.”

So, I’m pretty sure he’d be calling how cuts to SNAP benefits, our hot mess of an insurance system, and a whole lot more if he was here.

And, I think he’d have called out both brothers for their bullying of each other.

But, that’s not where we are in Genesis quite yet. In fact, I think this is as good a time as any to bring up a theory of Genesis I find quite convincing. Have you ever noticed that all the people in Genesis end up becoming the fathers of nations? Jacob of course is the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Esau of the Edomites, who settle south of ancient Israel. Issac’s bother Ishmael births 12 tribes as well, other neighbors of Israel.

There is a solid theory that these stories of “patriarchs” are really stories of ancient nations told as if they’re people. Within this theory is the idea that the original “patriarch” of the Northern Kingdom of Israel was Jacob, and of the Southern Judea one was Abraham and so someone had to make them fit together and did it by making one the grandfather of the other. (This also fits with how Issac is really a passing character.) To create national unity, they had to created a shared origin story, and they did it by making everyone family, and then also made sense of their enemies by making them families they’d broken ties with.

Jacob and Esau do eventually reconcile in Genesis. After many years with his uncle/father-in-law Laban, Jacob has married both of Laban’s daughters and two of their servants, has 12 sons of his own, and heads back home. On that journey he is filled with terror that Esau will still want to kill him. Esau actually doesn’t. They end up doing OK, but the relationship was never truly restored, which also fits how the Israelites and Edomites were neighbors and sometimes enemies.

According to the stories of Genesis, this is because they were violent with each other rather than living peacably as siblings. The idea of the patriarchs as “personified” ancient nations suggests that the violence of the nations was trying to be explained in the family stories, but whichever way it came first, it does remind us that the way people treat each other matters.

So, too, do the social principles when they say, “bullying stunts emotional and intellectual development and turns schools, neighborhoods, and virtual or online settings into dangerous and unsafe environments. Bullying often has long-term traumatic effects on the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of its victims.” It is good news that more attention is given to bullying among kids today than it used to be, it is a hard reality that changing bullying requires more than education and even new rules. To truly eliminate bullying we probably need to create a world where people are free from violence – direct and indirect- and thus stop passing it on.

So the question seems to be, how we live peace instead of violence? How can we be part of moving the world away from violence and into peace? And that is a multifaceted question, with many different answers that vary for each of us.

But I do want to remind you that spending time with God is clutch in all this. After all, it seemed to help Jacob, even if in that case God initiated. In this day and age, when things that disturb our peace our basically constant, it takes intentionality to move towards peace. Spiritual practices, time in nature, maintaining relationships, laughter and play, worship, singing, art, movement, and even just the practices of letting go of expectations can all move us towards peace. I encourage you as strongly as possible to consider what brings you peace and move towards it. I believe God needs us grounded and peaceful so we are part of the solution and not the problem! May it be so! Amen

July 19, 2026

I took the parable today apart from the interpretation the gospels of Matthew and Mark give to it, to see what it says on its own. Commonly called “The Parable of the Sower”, this parable seems to me to be mostly about the seeds and the harvest. The Jesus seminar codes this parable pink, meaning it is thought to be more likely to be authentic to Jesus than not. This parable also shows up in the Gospel of Thomas sounding very similar but without interpretation.

I find myself deeply tempted by the allegorical with this parable. I want to ask, “Are we the seed, or are we the sower, or does it turn out that we are the soil?” but then I remember that parables are NOT allegories and I know better ;) Parables are stories told to shock people into a different way of thinking.

The New Interpreter’s Bible says, “Jesus’ story begins in the ordinary world and concludes in the biblical world of hope and promise.”1 It also starts the work of figuring out what the original parable might mean, “The original parable of Jesus focused on the surprisingly abundant harvest despite initial threats. Neither this nor any of the seed parables is about the natural, slow, evolutionary progress of the kingdom of God, but portrays the mysterious, concealed working of God, who miraculously brings the harvest.”2

According to The Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels this parable presents peasant farmers, not the big wealthy ones. It may be that the sower was a bit reckless in seed distribution – although I’d say perhaps the sower was optimistic or it was windy ;) That said, the returns are not reasonable. The commentaries I look at like debating what was normal, The Social-Science Commentary tends to be one I trust and it thinks a four fold return was normal and five fold return excellent. So 30/60/100 fold returns are beyond reasonable.

The early Christian community understood the unreasonable returns to be the returns on investment in love. I think that’s what they mean when they interpreted the parable as an allegory about the investment of the good news in different hearers. I love the idea of the ridiculous return of investment on love, but I want to test it against the story to see if it holds.

That is, I’d like to keep trying to hear the parable for what it is and what it isn’t. Back to The Social-Science Commentary, they say, “If a hired laborer or tenant farmer struggling with hostile conditions were imagined, hence viewed sympathetically, the connection to God as generous provider would be seen as good news.”3

Maybe it is of use to start with the beginning. Matthew 13 doesn’t jump immediately into the parable. Instead it starts with, “That same day, Jesus left the house and sat beside the sea. Huge crowds gathered around him, so he climbed into a boat and sat down while the entire crowd stood on the seashore. He told them many things in parables.”(Jesus Seminary) This is the first of those parables. Perhaps the crowd here is relevant, because perhaps they feel like the abundance told about in the parables.

Not every wondering preacher attracts crowds so big they have to go off shore to be heard well. Maybe Jesus was astounded by the ways that the seeds of God’s love he was planting was growing in God’s people.

But, I think when we notice that, we are forced to hold some tension. The crowds in the Gospels are both signs of Jesus’ faithfulness and the ways he met people’s needs AND they’re dangerous… deeply related to the Empire’s decision to kill him. The Empire didn’t like popular preachers who empowered the masses, assured them of God’s power, and pointed out the ways they were being oppressed. So the more the crowds loved Jesus the more the Empire was threatened by him. And I think that tension might leak into the parable itself.

Because imagine if this farmer is getting a 60 fold return while his neighbors are getting 4. People would notice. They’d ask questions. They’d press in on him. It would be great, yes, to worry less about hunger! Absolutely. But when others are barely subsisting, or really not quite getting enough to eat, there are some immediate demands to share that harvest broadly, maybe so broadly that the one who harvests ends up with about the same as everyone else… enough but not too much.

Because in God’s kindom no one hoards a harvest while others starve.

But, in the Empire they did. Wealthy landowners acquired the best land, paid minimum wages, and extracted the wealth of the land to multiply their own wealth. Hmmm, maybe those were 30 or 60 or 100 fold gains. Immoral interest rates and abominable wages really can grow wealth quickly. And, in the Empire, the wealthy just kept at it, growing their wealth at the expense of other people’s lives and competing with each other to see who could get more even when they were well past the amount they needed.

(Ahem.)

But the people Jesus was talking to, the ones who were standing on the shoreline crowded together in hopes of finding hope…. those were the people whose lives were seen as expendable by the wealthy. They were maybe tenant farmers or day laborers, and they were either working the hardest land that was rocky or near the path or far from water…. Or they were working the land for someone else and got a very small part of the harvest – maybe even less than the amount of seed they had sown.

For those people to imagine one of them, the people barely making it, sowing seed and having some of it land in the good soil and produce with abundance… that would have been good news for everyone. They weren’t trying to compete with each other to gain wealth or influence. They were trying to survive, and they were in it together. I’m not saying every poor person was sharing extravagantly, although generally speaking those who are poor share much more than wealthy people do. I am saying that those who were following in God’s ways shared in the Torah were sharing extravagantly and those who were inspired by Jesus were too. So if any of then got the 30 or 60 or 100 fold harvest, it would help their whole village.

And, beloveds of God, that’s the sort of thing I still in Christian community. People share of their gifts, and together we are able to do things that none of us could do alone. It often feels like what we do together is 30 times what each of us puts in. The miracle of sharing our abundance creates more abundance in the world.

It really is the inverse of the ways that the ultra-rich hoarding their investments creates scarcity in the world.

So, anyway, I’m not sure that we should take the parable of the sower to be about being good soil or whatever we usually take from this passage. Instead, I think the parable calls us to notice how abundant resources are shared (or not.) And to encourage us to lean into the wonders of abundance and trust that sharing creates the sort of world we want to be in. That is, it moves us towards the kindom of God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1 Richard B. Hays “The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol IX”, Leander E. Keck et al editors, (Abingdon Press, 2000) p. 303.

2 Ibid

In the time that the gospel of Matthew was written, Christianity was new, vulnerable, and intensely internally focused. The followers of the Way of Jesus were radical in their sharing of resources with each other, in creating lives with kinship groups based in shared faith rather than family ties, in undermining the hierarchies of the world with inclusion across all barriers. So, the Gospel of Matthew is speaking to those who were Followers of the Way about how they treat other followers of the way. That’s the original meaning of this passage for the one who wrote it and the ones who heard it.

I don’t hear it that way though. Christianity isn’t new or vulnerable anymore, and we’ve shown that being internally focused does a lot of harm. Furthermore, we know that God is in every human being and so whoever we “welcome” we know we are welcoming God. I hear this passage as universal, and while I know that is NOT the original meaning, … I think it is the truer one.

I also think the work of welcoming God’s people in the world is multifaceted. Let’s take a moment with that. Sometimes the work of welcoming is the work of welcoming actually new humans – so the work of midwives, nurses, doctors, and hospital staffs along with new parents, and their support networks. Sometimes the work of welcoming is the work of welcoming people to a new part of their lives, so the work of day care and school teachers, coaches, employers, co-workers, caregivers, and others. There is also the work around all that – with people who clean and maintain spaces, those who administer programs, the ones who build what is needed, the ones who maintain the roads and traffic lights, the engineers and architects, and government permit givers and approvers….

Just to welcome a person to a school or a nursing home takes a lot of labor.

But of course it is much broader than that. While we’re taught to conceive of our “economy” as the means of production and consumption that greases the wheels of money passing hands and increasing the GDP ….

I’m not convinced that’s really what’s all about.

I think most of us on this planet are trying to work toward the common good, to make things better for each other, to ease each other’s journeys, to contribute to communal well-being. We try to do this with our paid labor if we can (and not everyone can), but we also do it in other aspects of our lives.

Often I am busy trying to think about if we need new wells, and if we do, what sort of labor practices should be enforced to dig them… and I miss the absolute wonder of the shared cups of cold water.

We hear in Matthew “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones” and I think about the times that we do something that is not that big of deal but helps. To give a cup of cold water in those days would require someone having pulled water up from the well, but the bucket that came up would have filled more than one cup. It is a notable gift, but a small one. Not a deep inconvenience for the one who gives it, but a significant help for the one who receives it.

FURTHERMORE, I want us to notice that you can’t give a cup of water to someone if you don’t have the water, or if you don’t have a bucket, or if you don’t have access to a well. Giving a cup of water is a gift that comes from something you have and can give without a huge drain to yourself. So, none of this is meant to add to your guilt about what you can or can’t give, it is ONLY about giving from what is EASY to offer.

I like thinking about the equivalents of “giving a cup of cold water to one of these little ones.” That can be when people put a hanging basket of plants on their front porch instead of the back – cause people going by can savor the beauty with them. That can be offering a little patience with another car in traffic. It can be responding to a minor annoyance with humor or grace, and letting someone we are working with for just a moment catch a break. It can be letting someone know we see them and the work they’re doing, or doing a little task that needs to be done. I think of one of our breakfast guests who once referred to herself as a public weeder. When she saw weeds in parks, she pulled them. A cup of cold water indeed.

Maybe the cups of cold water are about HOW we do what we do. Do we rush through life treating people as objects who may be in our way, or do offer as much care and empathy as we can while we move through this world?

Our Luke 10 Team in this church has been engaged in an intense 9 months of training on organizing to combat White Christian Nationalism. One of the pieces I loved best about the training we did was how profoundly it lived is own values. Our leaders treated us and each other as beloved people of God, remembered that we have to be grounded in faith and beauty to work well, made sure we had opportunities to connect with each other, and created schedules that had generosity to them.

So often I’ve been in church and church adjacent spaces that claim to be operating under kindom values and then schedule things as tightly and fiercely as capitalism does. But Luke 10 was spacious. We learned, and we worked, but we did so as humans…. While learning and working to optimize other people’s experiences of humanity.

One of the ways I have come to understand God is that God helps us become more human. I think earlier in my life I thought the idea was to leave humanity behind and become more perfect, more like God, but these days I think God rather LIKES humans and seeks to help us live into our humanity, our imperfections, our diversity, and especially our vulnerabilities. Humans are beings who need to connect, need to make meaning, and need to help. God is for it! And for US.

On this Graduation Sunday we may be thinking of education as a means to an end of “getting a good job” but I’m going to suggest that education is a means itself. And, “getting a good job” is about finding a job that helps someone welcome others to their humanity and fullness of lives – or, at least, a job that leaves space for someone to do that work.

In the Social Principals we not only hear about the dignity of work, and people’s NEEDS to contribute, but also about the boundaries around work. We talk about the importance of living in a world where children aren’t working in exploitative industries, where unions can organize for safety and collective bargaining, where TIME OFF matters.

One of my friends was working for the predecessor to United Women in Faith when she gave birth to her first child and she talked afterward about the ways she was supported. She had good parental leave, and she had a GREAT return to work schedule that prioritized her health and her parenting. I was thrilled that she had that experience, and also relieved. Because if the Women’s group of the church can’t treat new parents well, who can? But, while we’re at it, I’d like the answer to be “the whole world.” In recent years I’ve worked on some Parental Leave policies for United Methodists in Upper New York and we have a great policy now, relative to the US. But our country doesn’t have that for most workers, and that’s not good for children, parents, or our society.

The more we are able to build work places, norms, society, and nations that honor people’s humanity by offering living wages and paid time off to be humans, the more we build towards the kindom of God. People want to work, people want to contribute to welcoming each other and building the common good. For now, I think, the work is to get rid of the barriers that let people live their lives well. And, to honor the ways we see humans sharing and welcoming – from giving away cups of cold water to lives spent in service. Thanks be to God for the welcomes we receive and the ones we offer. Amen

June 28, 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

Father Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, our ancestor in faith, the patriarch of patriarchs... is a pretty lousy father in our passage today. In the passage today he sends his eldest off to die in the desert. To be fair, in the chapter that follows he takes his prized youngest up a mountain to sacrifice him. So it isn’t really just this passage. Oh, and in both are said to be at the behest of God, who many of us were raised to call Father as well.

So, um, happy Father’s Day? Glad everyone has good Biblical models ;)

While I’m ruining holidays this weekend, I am a huge fan of the recognition of Juneteeth and the ways it calls us to attend to our history, including the fact that freedom didn’t come until message got to the people that they were freed.

And, in preparing to preach on this passage I spent some time on the website of the nonprofit Voices4Freedom who report, “At this present moment, there are more people suffering under slavery than at any other time in history. The Global Slavery Index (GSI) estimates that more than 50 million people are currently trapped in modern day slavery. Women and girls account for 71 per cent of all victims of modern slavery. That means one in every 130 women and girls is living in modern slavery.” And, before you spend too much time hoping that the USA is an exception, I’m going to ruin that too, “Of every 1,000 people in the United States, 1.3 are living in modern slavery.”1 So, out of the approximately 350 million people in the USA, 454,000 of them are living in slavery. Those numbers do not include the people incarcerated in our so-called justice system, nor those incarcerated by ICE, probably because it is hard to maintain a non-profit status while naming state-sponsored slavery.

So, um, happy Juneteenth?

Hagar was enslaved. Specifically she was enslaved by Sarah and Abraham. Sarah had instructed her husband Abraham to rape Hagar so that Hagar could be the surrogate mother for Sarah’s child. The child born was Ishmael and he was raised as the son of the promise UNTIL Sarah bore Issac. Once it was clear that Issac would survive past infancy, we get to this story. Issac is weaned, he survived. And so Sarah has Abraham kick out Ishmael and Hagar to ensure that her son gets all of the inheritance and God’s promises.

What would be easy to miss in the passage as Sarah and Abraham keep calling Hagar “this slave woman” “the Eygpitian” and everything but her name, is that Sarah takes back her relationship to Ishmael, revokes her motherhood by surrogacy, and claims that Hagar who bore Ishmael is his mother.

That is, we see the slave woman having the child who was stolen from her returned to her. And, at exactly the same moment they are exiled and sent into the desert to die.

After wandering in the waterless landscape as long as they could, Hagar realized they are going to die and her son would die first. She can’t bear to watch, so puts him down and wanders away to wait, and in the meantime she cries.

Phyllis Trible, one of the great Biblical Scholars, writes about her, “Hagar is a pivotal figure in biblical theology. She is the first person in scripture whom a divine messenger visits and the only person who dares to name the deity.” (Those were in chapter 16) “Within the historical memories of Israel, she is the first woman to bear a child. This conception and birth make her an extraordinary figure in the story of faith: the first woman to hear an annunciation, the only one to receive a divine promise of descendants, and the first to weep for her dying child. Truly, Hagar the Egyptian is the prototype of not only special but all mothers in Israel.”2

Hagar’s story is a common one. Trible goes on to say, “all sorts of rejected women find their stories in her. She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeling from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others.”3

Hagar’s child, Ishmael, is claimed by Muslims as their ancestor in faith, the one who makes them Abraham’s child. It is truly terrifying today to see the ways that Hagar’s children are still being dehumanized by the physical and spiritual descendants of Issac.

Hagar the Egyptian. Hagar the slave. Hagar who gets called “this slave woman” by Sarah, but is called by name by God. Hagar, whose eyes were opened and who found life where she thought there was only death.

My dear friend Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green did her PhD dissertation on women presiding at the communion table, and attending to the metaphors we use. Within that work she found that African American women very often talked about God as the One Who Makes a Way Out of No Way. God did it for Hagar, and has done it for people since, and it is a defining characteristic of God.

In one of the books I quote far too often, “Debt: The History of the First 5000 years” by David Graeber, he talks about slavery in a way I hadn’t heard before. In particular, he talks about the ways that humans have identities, and that our identities are inherently relational. We are family to people – child and parent, sibling, nibling, etc. We are teachers and learners who relate to other teachers and learners. We have professions and ways we give our gifts to the world. We have friends and groups we belong to and hobbies we’re a part of. A person existing in their own space in society is deeply rooted in many relationships.

Consistently throughout history when people have been enslaved they’ve been forcibly removed from their place in society and thus had their humanity itself stripped from them. And, to be stolen from a community is to be stolen from identity. Removed from community, people who are enslaved don’t belong anymore. They usually don’t speak the language. They don’t have value. They become an object used by others to gain wealth or pleasure and no longer a subject who exists in relationships with others.

Hagar was a slave, taken from her people, her language, her family, her friends, her place in the world and used for her service and her body. In the end, she was disregarded and she and her child – the child she’d JUST gotten to have as her own after 16 years – were sent to die alone. Hagar, in so many ways, tells a universal story of slavery.

Hagar, quite notably, is seen by God. In the version of this story found in Genesis 16, Hagar names God “God Who Sees” and the well that saves them “Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” She knows that she is unseen in Sarah and Abraham’s household, unseen as a slave, not seen or treated as a human being. But the ways of the world are not the ways of God. God sees her. God responds to her distress. God makes promises to her, ones that are still claimed by multitudes today.

In the midst of a slavery that stripped her identity, Hagar was given identity by God, and became the mother of a people. God saw Hagar and acknowledged that Hagar was made in God’s own image. While she was less than human to the people she interacted with, she was claimed and loved by God.

This piece about identity, that people are at their most vulnerable when they are robbed of their community and thus their identities is really insightful about what constitutes our humanity. People in context are people. People out of context are objects – or at least that’s how millions are being treated right now (and have been).

As people of faith, even though we’re the spiritual descendants of Abraham and Sarah who are the antagonists in Hagar’s story, we believe that each and every human being is made in the image of God and is thus holy and sacred and fully human.

That includes everyone incarcerated, it includes farm workers, food service workers, construction crews, health and beauty workers, those living under the poverty line, those with addictions, children of those with addictions, those whose countries are a threat to their lives, those who have immigrated without papers, those who are forced into sex work (and those who choose it), climate refugees, orphans, and widows. Made in the image of God. Holy. Sacred. Human.

As United Methodists, ‘We understand slavery to be a repudiation of the basic Christian understanding that all people are created in the image of God.” All people. Including the 50 million estimated to be enslaved right now plus those incarcerated. Knowing slavery still exists, being willing and able to see and acknowledge it, is important. So too is paying attention to where our produce comes from, as Voices4Freedom says, “Up to 30 percent of farmworker families are living below the federal poverty line, experiencing situations of modern slavery where they are held against their will, through the use or threat of violence, and forced to work for little or no money. Thus, the fruits, vegetables, and meats we consume are often the product of slave labor happening in the United States.” But, even beyond produce, “The United States imports over $144 billion dollars worth of products created by forced labor or at-risk populations, more than any other country in the world.”4 Like the Social Principle say, “We urge individuals, families, congregations, and retailers to practice socially responsible consumerism by educating themselves about the sources of labor and the working conditions involved in production processes.”

There are in this world all these amazing people, made in the image of God, who are enslaved. And one of the most important responses that we have to it is to keep on claiming that they are made in the image of God. And every time we practice reminding ourselves that others are made in the image of God we’re doing a little tiny bit of the work to undermine the practice of stripping people from their identities. May we keep at, along with paying attention to where our produce comes from ;) Amen

1Quotes from https://www.voices4freedom.org/what-is-modern-day-slavery/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17137923068#:~:text=The%20Global%20Slavery%20Index%20(GSI)%20estimates%20that%20more%20than%2050%20million%20people%20are%20currently%20trapped%20in%20modern%20day%20slavery.%C2%A0, accessed 6/18/2026.

2Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 28.

3Ibid.

4https://www.voices4freedom.org/what-is-modern-day-slavery/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17137923068#:~:text=The%20Global%20Slavery%20Index%20(GSI)%20estimates%20that%20more%20than%2050%20million%20people%20are%20currently%20trapped%20in%20modern%20day%20slavery.%C2%A0 Under “Modern Slavery in The United States"

June 21, 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

I hear the word “disciple” used a lot in a lot of different ways, enough so that I’m not sure people know what they mean when they say it. So, years ago I decided to stop decoding it and just translate the word as it was originally meant.

A disciple is a student of a teacher. Jesus’ disciples were his students. When we talk about being disciples today we are claiming Jesus as our teacher or guru.

When the Gospel says “Go and make of all disciples” it is really an invitation to being students of Jesus together. While the early Christians called themselves “followers of the way” of Jesus, this is nuanced a bit as “learners of the way of Jesus.”

Which, I have say, I really like. At it’s core, the teachings of Jesus are neither complicated nor unique: Love God and love your neighbor. It is the living of them that is challenging.

One of the most consistent metaphors among disciples of Jesus is that of being siblings in Christ. It shows up in the New Testament, and continues to this day. If we are made kin by our shared faith, then it has implications. Because kin take care of each other. Kin redistribute resources so that everyone has enough. Kin rally to uphold those struggling. Kin have a right to make requests and sometimes even demands of each other. If we are siblings in Christ, we have responsibilities for each other.

If we are disciples, then we are siblings in Christ, students working together to understand God and engaging in mutual care and concern along the way.

The United Methodist Church talks about itself as a “connectional” church, and we are. In our structure, we are first United Methodists of Upper New York, and then this church is a local expression of the Annual Conference. We are united first of all. We also have national and global expressions, uniting us well beyond Upper New York. Which means that within our denomination we have siblings in Christ around the world.

The Gospel tell us to “go and make of all disciples” but these days, with 2+ billion Christians in the world, I think maybe that instruction might need to be heard a little bit differently. Mostly, I think the question should be about how we treat each other as kin as well as how we treat outsiders.

Which is to say, that I think the Social Principle about “Sustainable Policies and Practices” has a lot to say about how we treat our fellow disciples, and all the people on earth that God has made. Because the choices we make that are are sustainable have a lot of impact on others – as do the choices that are not sustainable. When we use single use items, they land as trash somewhere, usually near people already struggling and impoverished. When we consume fossil fuels we are using resources pulled from the earth somewhere, transported somehow, and impacting the quality of air in some places. And, those impacts too are disproportionately felt by already vulnerable people.

As a world, we desperately need sustainability, sound policies, and practices, and to think together about the long run. It is beyond time for countries to mandate that companies who make products to take on responsibility for the impact of their products and packaging over the lifetime of their products. As human beings and citizens, we need to prioritize each other’s lives and well-being over cost-cutting short-cuts.

I am the great-granddaughter of anthracite coal-miners, and there is a great example to be found in mining. Anthracite coal is the “clean coal” that fueled of of the US 100 to 150 years ago. Clean coal is, of course, a marketing scheme. One of my great-grandfathers who was a coal miner died of black lung, and the other died in a mine explosion.

But the example I’m thinking of here is that to safely mine anthracite coal, people had figured out how much coal needed to be left in “pillars” on each level of the mine in order to maintain the integrity of the mine and the land above it. As time went on, those pillars were required and regulated. And still the mine companies, after an area was completed, paid people on the side to go in and take some the pillars. After all, it was easy coal to extract and they cared about money, and not lives. Which meant collapsing mines, people buried alive, and even today the occasional collapse of homes into holes in the ground in the anthracite region.

The coal companies had no reason to care about their workers, the people who lived in their region, their impact on the environment, nor their customers. They were set up to maximize profit, and ONLY to maximize profit. And they did it, at any cost. Even taking out the pillars, even killing their employees, even lying to the public, even buying out the police, even shooting protestors and killing them. ANY cost. The anthracite coal miners ended up having some of the most important strikes in US labor history, and gained safety mechanisms, but the companies fought them every step of the way and ignored regulations continually.

It is safe to talk about the coal mine companies now, because they aren’t coal companies anymore (they are still fossil fuel companies though, so there hasn’t been a change in goals or values.) But the truth is that this is how US companies function. Once a company goes public, responsibilities are to share-holders to maximize profit. And, even private companies USUALLY follow the same model.

To even think about sustainability requires us to listen to God’s voice throughout creation calling creation good and telling people to act as stewards of the goodness. And, it would be possible to structure our country so that companies are responsible for profits AND for their employees. We could even add for the common good. Or for consumers. Or simply make them responsible for the impact of their existence.

These things are possible once we shake off the assumption that “maximizing profits” is a good reason for a company to exist! And heavens, it is a terrible reason for a society to exist.

A friend of mine spent the first few years out of law school in a warehouse looking through old documents so her firm could protect companies that engaged in prolific destruction of the environment. She hate it quite a bit, and eventually stopped being a lawyer. She also stopped recycling, and while that may sound horrifying, let me explain the reasoning. She read the papers about how much waste companies were making and she managed to fathom it. And then she thought about how much waste she made in her life and realized that unless the big producers were stopped, nothing we do as individuals would matter.

I still recycle, but her point is valid. Sometimes pretending that the container I get my yogurt in will recycle manages to help me pretend that things are OK and I have enough power to make the world a better place. But most plastic doesn’t really recycle and all of us recycling perfectly doesn’t impact things as much as changing our laws would. (Also, consuming less is just better than recycling later.)

What a wonderful line we have in our Social Principles, “Such cooperative efforts must include the development and enforcement of policies and practices that protect all sentient beings, and the promotion of sustainable economic development.” “Protect all sentient beings” is really just lovely.

Now, we aren’t going to get there all at once, nor by just wanting it. But paying attention to sustainability, caring about it, thinking about what it might look like, even being idealistic about it matters too. We won’t get there unless we think it has value and we’re willing to work on it.

For me, today, “Go and make of all disciples” means working with and for other people around the world in building the kindom of God. Which, pretty clearly, also means not making our lives easier on the backs of those already struggling more.

When you think about sustainability, what do you dream of? (Real question, asking for real tangible answers, even if they feel small.) What are you already doing? What are you ready to take on? (Also real.)

Thanks be to God for dreams of how life could be, and for the nudgings God gives us all towards it. Amen

May 31, 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

Note, by this point in worship we'd heard the Scripture read in French, Portuguese, English, and Spanish and learned the Lord's Prayer in American Sign Language (ASL).

I hope that everyone here today has encountered a language they didn’t already know. I’m not sure you all have, because a few of you are polyglots, but I hope most of us have. And, I wonder what it is like for you to sit and listen to a rather long passage that isn’t in one of your languages. Was it boring? Was it intriguing? Was it uncomfortable? Did you try to decode it? Did you tune out? Did you notice the windows are pretty? Did you listen for any words you might be able to figure out? Was it frustrating – having your brain work so hard to connect words and meaning and missing?

When I was a teenager I spent a summer in Ecuador, and attended school as part of an attempt to get better at Spanish. (Alas, I am not a polyglot and given my years of study and exposure my Spanish is an embarrassment.) I remember being passed a note in class one time, and it was SO exciting – I was being included, someone wanted to share something with me, I had a reason to stop trying so hard to listen to the teacher and instead to focus on something fun. And, I remember a profound disappointment when I realized that the note itself was also in Spanish and I was still going to have to work really hard to figure out what it said.

I also remember feeling stuck while I was in Ecuador. I knew myself to be a person capable of nuanced thought, and wit, and even complicated ideas. But I struggled to communicate as well as a 2 year old, and realized that people interacting with me had no way of knowing the person I was on the inside- because I couldn’t articulate it to show it. I also remember that the only exception to this was trigonometry class – because I’d already done trig at home and the math terms aren’t difficult to translate and the numerals were the same and when I was asked to solve a problem on the chalkboard I could do so without any struggle.

I am really glad I had those experiences. They taught me to be in awe of anyone who speaks with an accent, because anyone speaking a language that is not their first is IMPRESSIVE. They were also important in teaching me what it feels like to be on the outside, and that helps me value finding ways to bring people in.

Now, I am blessed beyond measure to be allowed to co-Dean a camp for people with Special Needs every summer. Because I’ve been spending part of my year in the care of people with Special Needs for most of my life, and because within that population there are a significant number of people who can’t easily speak, I’ve learned some American Sign Language in passing. As we do Bible Study at camp, one verse is selected as the Memory Verse and when we learn it, we learn it in English and ASL. Truthfully the two together help all of remember, and for people who are dominate in one or the other, it is good to have space to communicate easily. Many of our campers read quite well, and all of our campers get a chance to read from the Bible every day. Sometimes that requires a lot of support. With our campers who only speak through ASL, we strategically have them read the portion of our text that includes the memory verse so they can read in ASL. (I always memorize it in ASL and English the night before.)

Forgive me, I’ve told this story before, but it meant the world to me. Once year we had a camper with us for the first time and when she got to read in ASL her whole body lit up. She signed enthusiastically in response, a sign we didn’t know and had to look up. It turned out to be “chat” as in “We’re CHATTING!!!!!!” For her, the chance to be included, by having some of Bible Study be in ASL so she could participate was AMAZING.

When I hear the Pentecost story, and hear, “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” The difference between trying to figure out what someone is saying with their regionalized accent of a language you may or may not know and hearing in your own native language is PROFOUND. Until you are in a place where you don’t know what is being said, it is hard to know how big of a deal it is to be able to understand.

In Genesis 11:1-9, we get the Tower of Babel story, a narrative bent on explaining why people speak different languages while dissing the Babylonians and their Towering Temple:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east,they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6And the Lord said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

The Acts passage today is the full circle of this story, taking the people whose languages had been “confused” and who had been scattered and bringing them together and with the gifts of the Spirit helping them to hear and understand each other.

The people heard and understood each other. They didn’t have to work at it. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t take concentration or effort. It was, as my camper once said, “CHATTING!” Just communication, happening between people, despite it all.

The Pentecost miracle.

Beloveds, even when we speak the same language fluently, miscommunication happens a lot. It is possible that it happens more often THAN not. We misspeak, mishear, understand words and phrases differently, add assumptions to what we hear, listen with emotional filters on, and – heavens – listen to each other while we MULTITASK. It may be a miracle anything ever gets through!

And, when it does, when we speak and are understood, when we listen and are able to hear, the Holy Spirit is at work, and it is good, and we have every reason to be grateful. Thanks be to God, who speaks all the languages, and is at work in the world helping us communicate.

Amen

May 24, 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers 

We, in The United Methodist Church are part of a global church. The majority of United Methodists are located outside of the United States, although I think it is important to note that the United Methodist Church is still incredibly US-Centric. We are a global church, but we’re not terribly good at being one. That said, we’re getting better, particularly as we institute the “Regionalization Plan” that will allow different parts of the church more localized authority.

Psalm 96 is a global Psalm, a universal one. While its origins are in Ancient Israel, it is a Psalm about “all the earth” with declarations to share about God’s glory to “All the nations” and “among all the peoples.” Today, because we’re celebrating Miracle Sunday, I’m going to put aside my inherent dis-ease about if that’s colonialist and/or evangelistic and assume the best.

The best, as I know it, is knowing that God is with and for all people and all peoples everywhere AND that people and people’s know God in their own ways. We are all formed by our histories, our lives, the land we live on, and the ways we see the world. I went to seminary in the southwest, and really struggled with the desert climate. Many of my classmates found the desert to be the holiest of places where they felt closest to God and I could hear their passion and even understand their reasoning…. But the desert feels foreign to me. The forests of the Northeast sing to my soul, not the desert (although, shout out to Redwood forests which are ASTOUNDING.)

A desert and a forest are both parts of God’s creation but they form and nurture people differently. In a similar way, I often notice ways that the Upper New York Annual Conference is culturally different than Wyoming was and both are distinct from who Troy was.

Relative to the world the impact of desert vs. forest and one Northeastern US United Methodist Annual Conference from another is pretty trivial, but those little differences are notable and the world is BIG and DIVERSE and WONDERFUL and there are a lot of ways of knowing God and taking care of God’s people that are different in different places.

While Methodism started in England, the United Methodist Church’s history is very United States based. It emerged as a distinct church expression because of the Revolutionary War, it was formed by the same sets of thoughts and ideas as the US government, and it has had its ideological and financial base in the United States. United Methodist Churches outside the United States mostly started through missionary work from the United States, but we’ve now gone past the tipping point and more United Methodists and United Methodist Churches are outside of this country than it.

Many of our United Methodist Siblings in faith are in Africa and the Philippines. Some are in Europe as well, where United Methodism is small but mighty. The goal of Miracle Sunday for United Methodist Churches in the United States is “to raise funds for the Endowment for Theological Education in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines, creating 500 permanently endowed scholarships each year to prepare pastors for ministry in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines. The initiative responds to a significant global leadership gap, where far fewer clergy outside the U.S. have access to advanced theological education. By uniting in prayer, learning, and generous giving, the church aims to build sustainable, long-term support for theological schools abroad and ensure well-trained pastoral leaders for generations to come.”1

The truth is that educated clergy are a mixed bag. Really! Studies show that educated clergy are less effective in growing churches and are often correlated with denomination decline. (To be fair, correlation is not causation.) After last week’s celebration of the 70th Anniversary of Full Ordination Right of Women, I got motivated to open up history books from the former Annual Conferences. At which point I read a paragraph in a biography of another historian that stayed with me:

...one of the most significant transitions which occurred within the heats and minds of religious people, specifically Methodists in this nation. I write of the acceptance of the need for sound education...We need to remember than in the early part of the last century, Conferences were made up of preachers only, and that the need for an educated clergy, as opposed to the unlettered lay preacher, had by no means been established.2

For clarity, the book was from 1984, so the prior century was the 19th.

That is, an expectation of educated clergy in Methodism in the United States isn’t that old, and it is not entirely consistent either. Elders and Deacons have very firm educational requirements prior to ordination, but many of our churches are served by people who are not ordained. Licensed Local Pastors are required to get education as they go (although they aren’t always held accountable) but sometimes churches are served faithful lay people who haven’t had the chance to get any theological education. Still, though, we are blessed in the United States with largely educated United Methodist clergy.

And while we may be less charismatic, and studies say less prone to grow churches, I think there is value in educated clergy!! At its best, education in general and theological education in particular increase a person’s capacity to be aware of their own assumptions, help people see and question the status quo, and expose people to thinking and experiences beyond their own. For much of history, clergy have had more opportunity to be educated than most people, and were thus sources of educated perspectives in their small towns and villages. That remains true in some places today. In other places – like here – there are plenty of people with education, and we simply offer a particular vein of knowledge and curiosity.

I am so grateful I got to spend 3 years getting a Masters of Divinity Degree. Exposure to different ways of thinking about God in different theological traditions broadened my perspective. Courses forced me to become aware of my beliefs about God and check them against reality and logic. Classmates shared their live experiences with me, professors shared their wisdom and research, and there was a lot of time set aside for reflecting on what we experienced in churches and how that did or didn’t fit what we thought God wanted. I loved it so much that I was ready to go get a doctorate in Spiritual Formation when I was offered the chance to come here. (Serving here is a choice I’ve never regretted.)

Back to Miracle Sunday, “In the United States, 71% of United Methodist clergy hold a master's degree in theology, outside of the U.S., fewer than 5% do. That gap is not merely an academic inconvenience. It represents communities where the church is growing rapidly but the people called to lead those communities have no sustainable access to formation. Over 20 theological schools in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines receive little or no endowment. The barriers are real: distance, language, cost, faculty shortages, library resources.”3 71% to 5%. It becomes clear why we are seeking a miracle to start creating a significant change!!

That wonderful Psalm we read, the one that has a global perspective, nudges us to acknowledge the ways things are different around the world, but ALSO urges us to create more equity around the world. People everywhere are declaring the glory of God, but the nuances should be different – and ideally might be impacted by solid education.

Or, to say it in the words of Pastor Pierre Bandorayingwe of the Congo, “God’s glory is not confined to one culture; it is a global calling.”4 He also says, “Miracle Sunday is an act of faith: giving so that others may be formed and sent. God invites every congregation, regardless of size, location or circumstances, to join the mission of declaring God’s glory among the nations.”

Now, I want to have some transparency. We in this church are big fans of education, and we’re already supporting some really important educational initiatives We’re working with Upper New York on supporting dorm construction for Africa University and we’re working on our own to provide funds for students to get laptops at Africa University. And AU does theological education! There is a possibility this Miracle Sunday isn’t as distinct of a project here as it might be elsewhere.

But, nevertheless it gave us a chance to be more informed about the nature of The United Methodist Church, educated clergy, and to be reminded of how Big God is when we say God is the God of all peoples. So, for those who are willing and able to give today – thanks be to God! For those willing to become educated and serve – thanks be to God! For those who serve as clergy without the foundations of education – thanks be to God! And for this amazing and diverse world where we can all sing to God a new song in our OWN languages – thanks be to God! Amen

1https://www.unyumc.org/event-details/miracle-sunday-2026

2Jack Topolewski, “With Deep Thanksgiving: Wyoming’s Historians” in Notes and Sketches From Along the Susquehanna, ed by John Goodell and John Topolewski (Academy Books, Rutland Vermont, 1984), p 10.

3https://www.neumc.org/Miracle

On Monday we celebrated 70 years of full ordination rights and clergy membership for Women in the United Methodist Church – which is as we’ve already mentioned in worship a little more complicated that it initially sounds. What history isn’t? Really that happened in the Methodist Episcopate Church (of which this church was part at the time) and there had been clergy women for the prior 36 years but they were “locally ordained” which means two things: they had no guaranteed appointments and they had no to access to retirement funds.

Women preachers existed in the Methodist movement from the time of John Wesley whose own mother was a FABULOUS preacher through 1880 when rights were taken away and then in 1920 women regained local ordination and in 1956 full ordination rights. For all those years women preached, led, taught, and organized.The first woman who was given full clergy rights and membership in the Annual Conference was Maud Keister Jensen who got those rights TWO WEEKS after they became available in the Central Pennsylvania Annual Conference which merged into the Susquehanna Annual Conference – our sibling conference in our current episcopal structure. She gained her rights in abstensia cause she was a missionary serving in Korea. When she eventually heard it had happened she responded by wire, “I am deeply grateful for the privilege, but the honor was completely unexpected and due entirely to the early meeting of my Annual Conference. I feel that Georgia Harkness and other active women ministers deserve first recognition after their long struggle and able contributions to the church.” 1 2

In case you didn’t know, Georgia Harkness was the first woman to teach in a US seminary, and she’s from upstate NY and even lived and taught Sunday School here in the Albany District. Which is to say that this history is our history. And Rev. Jensen’s words emphasized how much she was part of a movement of women working together for each other.

The framing of this celebration of Ordination has been that it was a movement of the Holy Spirit, and that’s clearly true. It even sounds like our gospel passage where the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit and truth and remains with us to remind us of our call to love God and each other! Because, loving people involves letting them do the work God calls them to. (SNAP.) It seems worth mentioning though that even at that historical General Conference in 1956 where full ordination rights and conference membership for women were accepted, it wasn’t the plan! 2000 petitions came in about the topic, and the committee that was responsible for them came to the floor of the plenary with a majority report that meant to allow SOME women rights but only if they were single or widowed AND a minority report that hoped to prevent ALL women from full rights. A whole lot of people were in the Spirit’s way.

But she moved anyway.

And since then it is has been good and bad and in-between. And to share some of that, I invite my sisters to speak. (Remarks by Rev. Eileen Deming, Rev. Dana Carroll, Rev. Jane Baker, Rev. Pat Loughlin, and Rev. Sara Baron followed.)

1Many of these details came from the podcast/video found here: https://www.youtube.com/live/JJTpqiUF8uU?si=WXUiGyLC4_oT3NQy

Biblical Scholars who study the first 5 books of the Bible – the Torah, distinguish 4 unique “voices” in the text. One is the one that calls God YWHW; one is the one that calls God El; one is the Priestly voice that is always cleaning thing, putting things in order, and making things sound appropriately liturgical; and the final one is the Deuteronomy voice which is mostly found in Deuteronomy. Like any theory, this one is debated, and not everyone agrees about it.

What I find particularly interesting is the idea that both the source that call God YWHW and the one that calls God El are primarily folk wisdom, the first from the Southern Kingdom and the Second from the Northern. The Priestly and Deuteronomy voices are professional theologians making things more palatable for other professionals. But our Bible itself speaks tells a lot of folk wisdom. The stories are often really good stories that tell important truths and also (from this religious professional’s perspective) have some issues. They make assumptions, they personify God. They’re inconsistent. They’re messy.

And, I love them. They feel more real and more human than the other voices. They tell me about how other people have struggled to make sense of the world, and life, and hardship, and God and they don’t feel obligated to make things more perfect than they really are. They’re human stories with great wisdom that tell great truths about God and also sometimes don’t.

If you are wondering, these folk stories include Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, the Jacob and Esau disasters, and … well, actually most of the Torah.

It seems worth mentioning this because European based civilizations often claim cultural dominance over indigenous wisdom because of the Bible, and I think we should be honest that a lot of the Bible is based in indigenous wisdom too. And while that is true, it is also true that it has been used to do great harm.

When I was in elementary school we were asked to write about what time and place in history we’d want to go back and experience. I gave what I thought was the obvious answer and said that since I was female and I didn’t want to back to any time or place where I’d have LESS rights, I’d like to experience the Americas before the Europeans arrive. I also thought I’d like to use my part of the world in as would look if it could be used sustainably – although clearly that wasn’t the language I used. Now, I was a child. I fully admit that I wish that I didn’t lump together all Native Americans. I also wish I’d known that lots of indigenous cultures offered freedom and respect women – not just the ones in this hemisphere.

The reason I remember this exercise though is not because of the imperfections of my thinking. It is because of the responses of my classmates who thought my idea was TERRIBLE. How could I even think of wanting to be a part of THAT. I don’t actually remember exactly what versions of horrible stereotypes came at me, but they were ugly. And I found them unconvincing. I was firm that t I wasn’t going back to any European or European influenced culture where I was dismissed because of gender.

In my life, I have often tried to figure out exactly what went wrong in Europe and the Near East. In so many places in the world people created egalitarian societies that engaged in mutual responsibilities and care. Resources have been shared well in many societies, enough so that competitive models of great wealth and massive poverty are historically weird. Although, let’s note, they’re common back to the time of Jesus, and even the Hebrew Bible seems to be fighting against it a lot, so its our long term tradition even it if it isn’t normal.

However it came to be, I am one of many inheritors of a system that massively benefits the few at the expense of the masses and justifies it by dehumanizing people in a variety of forms. Women, people of color, anyone who is poor, people with disabilities, those whose live started in other cultures, those who speak other languages, and any member of the queer or trans community – for example – are to various degrees “othered” and not fully human and thus OK to oppress and steal from. That is, I’m not that impressed with whatever is the opposite of “Traditional Wisdom” and where it has gotten us.

And, when we read about the value of Traditional Wisdom found in Indigenous Communities, I’m fully in. I don’t entirely understand what is wrong with our society and the ones it emerged from, but I’m grateful for each and every community that knows and practices other ways of being.

Today, on Native American Ministries Sunday, it is imperative not just to celebrate the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples in North America, but also to name The United Methodist Church’s collective sins against Native Peoples. The United Methodist Church and its peoples were instrumental in setting up “Indian Schools” that stole Native American children from their families and tribes, abused them, and tried to erase their wisdom and replace it with competitive capitalism. AND, A Methodist clergyman led the massacre at Sand Creek in 1864. (This is a sickening enough narrative that I leave it to you to research and will not share the details in worship, but it is important to know about.)

There are many reasons to engage in Native American Ministries Sunday. Those include the chance to hear some of the wisdom of our siblings in faith, to notice our Sibling Churches that are Native American and consider giving to support their important ministries, and to learn our own history of harm. Knowing what people have done in God’s name by our church is important for not repeating it, for learning why others may be hesitant about our tradition or repelled by it, and for humility. Christianity as a whole and United Methodists in particular have done great harm while claiming to act for God.

Our Scripture today is another version of a Creation story, a poetic one, that focuses on the delight of creation. To me, it feels like part of our Scriptures that give us great space to engage with delight with other sources of wisdom. The space seems small between worship this God the Creator and the traditional wisdom of Native Americans who know the sanctity of Mother Earth. They’re different, to be sure, but could be conversational! Those of us who think of God as Creator know Creation to be a source of wisdom and knowledge about the Creator. Those who know Mother Earth to be holy know the wisdom and knowledge she gives to be Truth.

Despite our history, both as a church and a nation, Native Americans are still alive today, and some are United Methodists. In Upper New York there are three Native American United Methodist churches:

Four Corners United Methodist Church, located on the Cattaraugus Territory

Hogansburg United Methodist church located on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation at Akwesasnee

Onondaga Nation United Methodist Church located on the Onondaga Nation Indian Territory

Some of us here participated in a Volunteer in Mission Trip to Hogansburg in 2015, working on building a handicap accessible ramp into their sanctuary and getting to know truly wonderful people. The sweet grass basket we usually display in Fellowship Hall was a gift from that church to our VIM team. The Native American churches in our Annual Conference are not wealthy churches, as the territories and reservations are places where resources are scarce and needs are high. The history of the ways that Native Americans WERE treated in our country and by our church continues to impact lives today in every way.

And, those churches are vibrant, loving, and grace-filled places filled with extraordinary people who are able to hold multiple truths from multiple traditions together. They’ve enriched my life and my faith, and I count myself lucky for each interaction I’ve had and for the Native American churches we’re connected to through our denomination – despite it all.

As the preacher, it is my responsibility to pick Scripture texts for the week, and I most commonly pick from 4 texts recommended by the Revised Common Lectionary. These days it is also my responsibility to pair the readings with particular parts of The United Methodist Social Principles and it has occurred to me that my pairing today come with some assumptions.

The Gospel reading has Jesus talking about how sheep know the voice of their shepherd, and trust their shepherds, and the shepherd wants good for the sheep. So, too, then does Jesus care about all of us and take good care of all of us. It follows, but isn’t spoken, that we know the voice of God and attend to it and trust God’s voice.

And I picked the Social Principle on Eco-systems as the partner passage to the Gospel. This make sense to me, but might not make sense to others because when I think of the sacred voice of God that we’re tuning in to, Mother Earth is one of the tones of that voice. For me, to listen to God and to listen to nature/ Mother Earth/ Creation are so correlated as to be hard to tease out. But, it seems important to acknowledge that not everyone experiences Creation that way, and you may or may not have had any idea why I connected these two passages.

With in the Social Principle we hear, “Whether human beings are conscious of it or not, we are participants in and beneficiaries of complex natural ecosystems…” So many of the messes we are in today as a society seem to stem from the ways we haven’t remembered that we are participants in and beneficiaries of complex natural eco-systems. Including, I think, ways that people dismiss and distrust the wisdom of their bodies as an important source of knowledge!

Together, the Gospel passage and our Social PrInciple seem to me to remind us to attend to the Sacred. The sheep know the shepherd’s voice, and we are to attend to God’s voice, which can come to us in many ways.

The gospel says, “They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." I wonder what voices we associate as being the voices of not-God. Perhaps there are many? The voices calling for violence. The voices claiming that some people aren’t made in the image of God. The voices encouraging us to consume our way out of discomfort. The voices that tell us to hurry, to rush, to do more, that what we’re doing isn’t enough. The voices that claim scarcity – arguing that God didn’t make the world full of abundance. The voices of hopelessness that argue against the story of resurrection.

There are a lot of voices calling for our attention, that don’t benefit us or the kindom.

In fact, many days, if one attends to the news and/or social media, the voices of harm are overwhelming.

But, beloveds, we are called to attend to the Voice of God. That may even suggest we are to limit the amount we listen to the voices of harm.

Hopefully, this raises a question within us, “What does it mean to attend to the voice of God?” You will probably not be surprised that I think a great piece of this is to attend to nature/creation/Mother Earth. People who study attention say that one of the best things we can do for our modern-phone-addicted-minds is to put them on “do not disturb” and go into nature. Depending on our bodies and their abilities this might be a walk on a nature trail or sitting on a bench in a park – but I believe the further we get into un-manicured nature the more our brains and spirits can heal.

I also think that worship, prayer, and meditation are ways to attend to the Voice of God. One of the scientific pieces that supports the value of worship itself is that group singing is great for human beings! It connects us to each other in a myriad of ways, and connecting to each other is really good for our whole beings! Worship also gives us a chance to consider the values we live by, and talk together about what we’ve noticed from and about God. And, I’ll note, the pace of worship is slower than a lot of life. Sometimes there are transitions that simply take a bit, and it is OK. We have music that centers us and a space that fills us up and people to be with and it is glorious even when its just sort of a normal Sunday.

Prayer and meditation, sometimes called spiritual practices are intentional means of bringing our attention to God and away from other voices. Walking a labyrinth or coloring a mandala can be ways of letting our body have activity so the rest of our being can attend to God. Watching a sunset, or the stars, or listening to music, or the sound of waves hitting sand can fill us with awe and take of the weights off our shoulders. Writing in a journal or simply praying from our hearts helps us find words for the things we are worried about and the ones we are delighted in, and as we give them to God we find we can hold them differently. In prayer and meditation we manage to simultaneously make space to attend to God and ourselves, and in the best cases to tune ourselves to God.

One of the practices I’ve found most astounding in recent years are the practices of somatic awareness. These practices are ones that start with the assumption that our bodies know things and when we attend to their wisdom we become more whole. The ways I’ve been taught about somatic practices have startled me because they’re so different from anything else I knew before them. The practice I know best comes from Nonviolent Communication training, and “nonviolent communication” is really a method of attending to feelings and needs so we communicate with more integrity.

One of my teachers taught us that the feelings we feel are at their core sensations in our bodies that we’ve learned to name with feelings words. (Well, that’s if we’re lucky. Sometimes even feelings words can be new to some of us.) With some intentionality, and some help, we can start to find the sensations under our feelings and when we do that we learn even more about their intensity, connections, and nuances.

Turning to our bodies as sources of wisdom undercuts a lot of what we’ve been taught in this world, and gets us back to being a part of the natural world. We are creatures like all others, and our bodies are sacred and wise.

Our bodies are often ahead of our cognizant awareness. They know when we don’t feel safe, and when we really like another person. They hold our tensions and our traumas, and also give us clues about our joy and delight. I’m going to go so far here as to say that our bodies are a source of connection to God, and a way we are able to attend to God, and it can be really wonderful to explore that connection.

I really love the Emmaus story. I love the way it is a journey to the place the people thought they were going that ended up leading them right back to where they started- transformed – hours later. I love the way it speaks to the power of communion “he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” I love the scholarship that suggests that one or both of the disciples were likely a woman because that’s who wouldn’t be named in a story. I love John Dominic Crossan’s line “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens” to talk about the larger Truths of the Bible contained in the story even if the stories themselves aren’t factually accurate.

All week I smiled to myself in happy anticipation of preaching on a text I like so much with so many wonderful facets to attend to and then I sat down to write and I had nothing. Nothing. NOTHING!

For hours.

I haven’t had a sermon block this hard in a long time. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to stay about this passage that I REALLY, really like.

So I procrastinated. And while doing that I read my e-mails. During which I opened on by Frank Rogers, a Spirituality Professor at Claremont School of Theology, whose book “Cradled in the Arms of Compassion” is one of the most formational books I’ve read in the past decade. And, wouldn’t you know it, the email from Dr. Rogers was a snippet from another of his books and it was EXCELLENT. The book is “The Radical Way of Jesus: The Spiritual Path of Transformative Compassion”.

Mostly, beloveds, it has nothing to do with Emmaus. But it has everything to do with everything else, and it is so well said, and I had nothing. So, here is most of his email:

Religions promote compassion. All else is commentary. When true to their spiritual essence, religious traditions do no more than deepen people’s connection to the compassionate source of life, restore people to the fullness of loved and loving vitality, and send people forth with expanded capacities to be active embodiments of compassion in the world. This is the heartbeat of any religion that is truly spiritually alive—its communities, teachings, and practices beat with the pulse of compassion, and it nurtures the pulse of compassion within the heartbeat of its followers. Quite simply, religious traditions are meant to be spiritual paths of transformative love. They are called to be schools of compassion.

Christianity is no exception. Its vital essence lies not in being a religion but in creating a spiritual path—and the spiritual path that it maps out is one of transformative compassion.

Now, to suggest that Christianity is less a religion and more a spiritual path of compassion demands critical scrutiny. For one thing, religions are constituted by religious forms—sacred writings, liturgical practices, codes of conduct, and the like—and Christianity is as laden with religious forms as any other religion. Christianity includes institutions to belong to, creeds to believe in, commandments to obey, doctrines to espouse, clerics to esteem, texts to internalize, and rituals to practice with steadfast routine. Often these forms become ends in themselves—their observance demanded regardless of how wooden or rote they have become. Anthony de Mello, SJ, an Indian Jesuit priest, compares this to visiting a restaurant and eating the cardboard menu.

We should not confuse religious forms with the palpable Presence of the Divine. Forms may contain that Presence, mediate that Presence, bear witness to that Presence, but the forms themselves provide a feeble substitute for the living reality of God. As Sandra Lommasson conceives of them, religious forms are like the ring of stones that encircle a sacred fire. Stones can shelter a fire, even intensify its warmth and enhance its strength, but stones grow cold if the fire within dissolves into cinders. The stones of Christian religious forms are as vulnerable to such coldness as any other ring of religious stones.

More troubling, however, is the tragic truth that these stones have often been used to bruise and to batter. The shadow side of Christianity has contributed as much violence to our world as it has peace and compassion. Throughout history, wars have been waged and territories raped in the bloody spread of the gospel. Muslims and Jews, women and witches, gay people and pagans, the divorced, the unorthodox, the sexually active, and the sexually abused have all been burned on the sinister stakes of Christian intolerance. Church teachings and spiritual practices have demonized our emotions, bodies, passions, depressions, hungers, urges, egos, doubts, and pride while feeding the shame-filled self-loathing that has ravaged innumerable souls. And through it all, ecclesiastical hierarchies, communities of faith, and families of Christian conviction have all too often silenced dissent, demanded obedience, required conformity, and exacted fidelity in unyielding and scarring alliance with the Christ they have created. If Christianity is a spiritual path of compassion, this path has sometimes been very well concealed.

Nevertheless, the heartbeat at the core of Christian spirituality pulsates with compassion. This beat began with the spiritual teacher who inaugurated this path in the first place. Jesus of Nazareth never intended to found a religion. Strictly speaking, he was not even Christian. He was a Jewish mystic, an itinerant rabbi, and a social prophet much like Jeremiah before him or Martin Luther King Jr., who later followed in his footsteps. To be sure, Jesus’ followers—on Easter and beyond—experienced a risen Christ, a living and eternal presence across time and space. Yet that risen Christ was the living presence of a very particular man, and that presence only confirmed and sustained that man’s historical teachings.

And this man Jesus was decidedly Jewish. He attended the synagogue and observed the faithful practices of having a bar mitzvah and reciting the Shema daily. He absorbed the stories of Moses, Elijah, holy men, and liberators, and he studied the law and the prophets. He kept the sabbath, taught the Torah, celebrated Passover, and made pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To his death, Jesus remained unwaveringly devoted to the faith of his people. Yes, he exposed hypocrisy, critiqued abuse, and encouraged radical renewal, but his teachings and practices were rooted in the living essence of the faith to which he passionately committed himself.

Jesus was also Jewish within a very specific historical context. Jesus was a poor peasant within a brutally occupied land. This occupation possessed political, economic, and ecclesiastical dimensions. Politically speaking, Palestine was a conquered territory. A strategic trade and travel corridor within the Roman Empire, the country was ruled by Roman proxies—Pontius Pilate, for example—and garrisons of ever-present Roman centurions. The Roman governor maintained order through Jewish aristocratic rulers, such as Herod the Great, who lived in obscene luxury in exchange for their service to the Roman Empire. These Jewish rulers were ruthless in their own right. One was so debased that, as an orgy gift to an exotic dancer, he had John the Baptist, the mentor who baptized Jesus, beheaded.

Economically speaking, the peasant class of Palestine—90 percent of the population—paid the price for keeping peace with the Empire and maintaining the opulence of the aristocratic elite. Taxation—severe beyond human endurance—generated so much resentment that tax collectors, though fellow townspeople, became social pariahs. When farmland fell into foreclosure, absentee landlords seized it. Indentured servants, day laborers, and people encumbered by impossible debt so populated the countryside that their plight was immediately recognizable to those who heard Jesus’ parables.

...

Within this land of military occupation, economic depression, and religious exploitation, Jesus traveled from town to town and gathered the people, healed the wounded, and shared a message that brought hope to the hopeless. All who encountered him recognized that something was special about this man. He had a presence about him, the aura of a man on intimate terms with God. He had a kindness about him, an understanding for the plight of the suffering and a care for the weak and discarded. He had an authority about him, an inner wisdom as present while debating with the religious experts as when illuminating the scriptures through stories to the poor. Clearly this man knew a way of sustaining life within the system of death that surrounded him. He knew how to live in harmony with God apart from the snares of the religious structures. He knew how to claim dignity and power in the midst of forces that try to deaden and dehumanize. He knew how to practice peace within the violence of an oppressive society.

In short, Jesus was a spiritual teacher. Like Buddha or Lao Tzu or Mohammed, he taught a path of transformation—a means, at once personal and political, internal and external, through which people may live vitally connected to God. This way of life is what most characterized those who pledged allegiance to Jesus. Indeed, his earliest disciples were known after his death not as Christians but as followers of the Way.

The Way that Jesus taught was radical, both in the sense of its rising from the deepest taproot of his tradition and in its scandalous upending of the foundational assumptions on which an entire system of oppression was based. It offered a radical understanding of an extravagantly loving God and how such a God could be known; it promoted a radical sense of human dignity and a capacity for emboldened and abundant life; and it cultivated an ethic of radical care that extended not only to loved ones, neighbors, and strangers but also to enemies, opponents, and oppressors. This path of Jesus—summed up as loving God with every dimension of our being, cultivating an authentic love for ourselves, and loving our neighbors as ourselves—was, at its core, a way of radical compassion.1

To assuage my guilt at using Frank Roger’s words rather than my own, I’m going to mention that I think the Emmaus story is actually a really lovely story of compassion. The visitor along the road who talked with the disciples gave them space to tell their stories! And helped them make meaning of it! He responded to their welcome and invitation and shared a meal with them. And it was in those hours of walking and talking, in being heard and understanding things a new, and in sharing together, that the disciples were transformed. It is almost as if in being present with compassion, the visitor along the road changed everything for them. And I’ll note that this is likely a story that has been true many times, in many times and places. Approaching people with compassion can be incredibly transformational.

Phew. Now I feel like I at least connected the email with the story. And that frees me to go back to the main idea of the passage. “Religions promote compassion. … They are called to be schools of compassion.” I believe this. And I think it is a really useful framework for thinking about what we are doing as people of faith. What things that we do help us build capacity to be compassionate? Those are good and important! Where do we experience compassion? Those are important! When are we able to expression compassion in places it is desperately needed? That’s important! Frank Rogers said this as, “When true to their spiritual essence, religious traditions do no more than deepen people’s connection to the compassionate source of life, restore people to the fullness of loved and loving vitality, and send people forth with expanded capacities to be active embodiments of compassion in the world.“ That’s the point of it all!

I appreciate reminders of what we’re all about. When we talk about being an Easter people, following a risen Christ, knowing a God of resurrection, it is a means to building and living compassion. We are people of a compassionate God, often called the Merciful God.

Beloveds, I see your compassion in what you do and don’t do, in what you say an don’t say, in how you think about decisions you are making and how you engage with others. You are a community of compassion, which is to say you are people of God. I am so thankful for you, and for Frank Roger’s words, and for having something wonderful to share with you today even when I didn’t have anything on my own. Thanks be to God! Amen

1While I got this in an email, it is most easily accessed here: https://frankrogersjr.substack.com/p/the-radical-way-of-jesus?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6495423&post_id=194332493&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1vgibm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

April 19, 2026

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

Friends, beloveds of God, I’m going to take a moment to place myself in context. I am a United Methodist pastor. The United Methodist Church was formed with a set of immutable Articles of Religion, the third of which reads:

Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature, wherewith he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until he return to judge all men at the last day.

To return to context, I am also a scientifically minded person of faith and I serve a church where faith and science have long lived together in harmony. The hymn “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning”1 says quite beautifully what I and many here believe:

May our faith redeem the blunder

of believing that our thought

has displaced the grounds for wonder

which the ancient prophets taught.

May our learning curb the error

which unthinking faith can breed l

est we justify some terror with an antiquated creed. (vs 3)

And given all that, what do we do with Easter? At one point, in my last church, a 3 year old said to me, “You know that story we talked about in spring… the one where Jesus died and then he didn’t? When you die, you die? So….?” I thought she made a good point. I in fact remember working furiously in my head to answer her in a way that fit her age without diminishing her question and in the meantime I ended up giving her my real answer as filler… and it worked! She took it!

The real answer was that I’m not too worried about what happened 2000 years ago, I’m interested in the story that God’s love doesn’t die and Jesus’s ministry didn’t die with him but continued on his people and continues on with us even today and when we say “Christ is Alive” what we really mean is that we are continuing his life with ours.

Throughout my ministry, I’ve also leaned strongly on Bishop John Shelby Spong’s summary of Easter that “something happened” and whatever that something was, it transformed a bunch of terrified disciples who had fled, into a group of solid faith leaders who stayed even to their own deaths. These two pieces “something happened” and “what matters is that we continue Jesus work with our own lives” has gotten me through a lot of Easter sermons.

But, for some reason, this year, I want to go a little deeper. This seems like a ridiculous idea because refusing to do so has worked really well for a while now, but here we are. So let me just say that if you are a person who can painlessly believe in bodily resurrection then you are firmly and emphatically doing well according to The United Methodist Church and I applaud your faith and the ways you got there.

Now, for the rest of you. Let’s do this thing.

Each of the Gospels tells the Easter story in a different way, some of them in several different ways within one Gospel. When we once did a Bible study on the Resurrection narratives we were startled at how little is similar.

Today we’re working with Matthew. His story says that Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (which other Mary? I want to know. My commentaries do not) went to see the tomb early on Sunday morning. While there they experienced an earthquake and then saw an angel who rolled away the stone. The angel was bright and shiny as was his clothing, he freaked out the guards, he gave the women a message. They left “with fear and great joy” to tell the disciples and “Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’” (9-10)

That’s the story. The angel who showed up was last seen in Joseph’s dream in 2:19, the angel has all the trappings associated with angels, and the whole story is curious in that it is much more about the angel than Jesus.

The Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (yes, that one, my favorite) has REALLY interesting commentary on this passage. That is, it says, “The appearances of both the angel of the Lord and of the crucified Jesus are best described as altered-state-of-consciousness experiences. They are quite real. The visionaries see a being from an alternate reality (the realm of God) and then the crucified Jesus, also in alternate reality, where he continues to live. The interpretation that the visionaries gave to these experiences was that God raised Jesus from the dead.”2 The commentary goes on to talk about resurrection narratives in general saying:

“Altered States of Consciousness...are common in much of the world and yet generally unavailable to human perception in a culture such as ours. … There is no reason not to take these persons seriously, at their word, and interpret what they have to say within the framework of their culture – and not ours. What this means is that if the disciples witness to repeatedly experiencing the risen Lord, it is only because they were culturally prepared to have such experiences.”3

And then it goes on to talk about altered states of consciousness in general saying. “Anthropologists studying cross-cultural psychology define altered states of consciousness as conditions in which sensations, perceptions, cognition, and emotions are altered. … When a person is in such a state, the experience modifies the relationship of the individual to self, body, sense of identity, and the environment of time, space, or other people. One scholar has identified twenty such states of consciousness.”4 That is, 19 states of altered consciousness and “normal.” Moving on, “Mainstream U.S. culture frowns upon and even denies the human capacity for trances, visions, and experiences of alternate realities. We are very curious about nonrational dimensions of human existence, but tend to label all such occurrences as irrational.”5 We’re weird on that. We the US. In our society we pretend we are able to be objective, and that we always are. The authors conclude, “If we recognize that ‘objectivity’ is simply socially tutored subjectivity, we might be more empathetic with persons of other cultures who report perceptions that we find incredible just because they are socially dysfunctional for us.”6 (329)

I really, really appreciate this perspective. This feels like what could be the footnote under Bishop Spong’s “something happened” as the most likely explanation. People experienced something, we aren’t sure if it was a vision or a dream or what it was, but it was profoundly life changing for them and the way they could explain it to others was to say that Jesus was still with them after his death. And, since that fit the understanding of the time, where many Jewish people believed in the possibility of bodily resurrection,7 the metaphor gained momentum as the way it got talked about.

Beloveds, the thing here is, to talk about Easter requires us to acknowledge that altered states of consciousness exist and can be important. That’s not necessarily something we talk about a lot. But, ignoring that altered consciousness can be a powerful reality is just silly. They often change the trajectory of people’s lives. This isn’t just something that happened on one Easter 2000 years ago.

Many people speak tentatively about their experiences, but I’ve heard powerful stories of near death experiences, the wonder of being present to the thin veil at deaths and births, profound dreams and visions, as well as life-changing worship services prayer times, and meditations. That’s not all. People experience profound and life changing moments when they see the sunrise, glimpse a rainbow, hear a piece of music, reconnect with a loved one. And, I think in a lot of cases those are also states of consciousness Truly, even the modern idea of “flow” is probably an altered state of consciousness, one where we lose track of time and just savor being in the present doing what we are doing. For me, that’s making dinner most nights.

We are human beings, we are meaning makers! Whether we are in an altered state of consciousness or simply aware of the profound beauty of reality, we make meaning of it and it forms us. For many people deep down in the core of their faith is some experience like this that has formed their life. (Maybe several). Sometimes, even those aren’t their own experience, but that of a parent or grandparent or parent in faith who passed it down to them. That isn’t to say everyone has them, but it is to say that these experiences are common and real and valuable. I was really stuck in the commentary about the visionary experience of the women on Easter morning the line “It was real.” The vision was real, and that’s real!

Sometimes, in this place where engineers have roamed and logic has been valued, we haven’t been good at making space for the fact that faith is more than logic and concrete realities. But Easter pushes us to acknowledge that the central narrative of our Christian faith tradition, the story that Christ died but lives among us, isn’t logical nor concrete. And yet it is real.

And it is particularly important because most of the time the ways we experience the Divine in our lives is not in the concrete, coherent, logical aspects of our lives. Although I will say that’s where good theology lives and I like good theology. Most of the ways that we experience God acting in the world requires us to be open to the Divine, so it mostly happens in altered states of consciousness. This is also why I’m often pushing prayer and meditation and spiritual practices because they’re are INTENTIONALLY altered states of consiouslness.

So, this Easter I’m grateful for a story that pushes us. That reminds us that we’re formed by things we can’t entirely explain. Matthew says that Jesus says to the women, “Greetings!” and the story unfolds, and keeps unfolding. A real experience of 2000 years ago lives on still in our lives. How great is that? Christ is Risen indeed! Alleluia, praise be to God works in the world in all kinds of ways! Amen

1Thomas Troeger in The Faith We Sing #2004, copyright 1987 Oxford University Press Inc.

2Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 140.

3Ibid, 399.

4Ibid, 327

5Ibid, 328-9.

6Ibid, 329.

7The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), footnotes on this text.

Easter - April 5, 2026

The Roman Empire was doing it’s Empire thing. It controlled its territories and their people by keeping the regional leaders on a short leash. They were expected to pay taxes, obey orders, and be responsive to whatever the Emperor wanted. The regional leaders passed those expectations down the line, and it continued, landing of course most strongly on the poor people. People were losing their ancestral lands all over the place due to tax policies, those without land were forced into day labor where sufficient calories were hard to come by and life ended young. Power, violence, and instability, were tools used to keep the system going.The idiosyncrasies of various Emperors almost didn’t matter, their desires and their capacity to change their minds and make new demands was all people needed to know.

Furthermore, the Empire knew how to use religion to its own advantage. The Jerusalem Temple looked like it always had, but the leaders were appointed by and responsive to the Empire. Which meant it wasn’t serving God nor God’s people. It was, shall we say, a bit Nationalistic, or maybe we’d call it Jewish Empiricism. (OK, I’m trying to say it was the Roman version of White Christian Nationalism, but I think my premise is good and language is weak, so here I am spelling it out.)

Yet, the power of the stories of faith and people’s experiences of God’s actions to free people from oppression couldn’t be squelched. The Passover, those holy holy days, celebrated the acts of God to free the people from the Pharaoh’s power in Egypt, and people gathered in the city to worship and give thanks for that story and how it had formed their lives.

Which meant, of course, that Passover was ripe for uprising despite the Empire’s best efforts. And they knew it, so they counteracted it. The local leader for the Empire usually resided on the Mediterranean coast, but came up to Jerusalem for Passover along with supplicants and supporters and enough military might to encourage people to think twice about starting a revolution.

That year, as usual, Governor Pilate came from the West, from the Coast, with banners with golden eagles to represent Rome, and gleaming horses, and pounding drums, showing patriotism and the not terribly subtly threatening state violence against any who would stand in their way. It was an annual display, calculated and intentional, the sort of thing people would come out and see and be awed by. The Empire’s crowd stayed through Passover, and returned home after the city stopped being over-filled with religious people celebrating God’s acts of freeing them from their oppressor. The people were trained, and as the parade passed by they shouted: Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.

Power, money, threats of violence, gleaming in the sunlight and marching along in step. I can see it. I can think of the sorts of people who would get a thrill from it. I can even see the strategy of it.

It seems that Jesus could too. So, like a parable that he enacted rather than spoke, he made clear what was going on. That is, he led a counter-parade. He came in the eastern gates – he came from the other side. He came without military precision, and without a military. He came as a man on a donkey (or two if you want to get literal about Matthew which can be amusing although otherwise not helpful.) And, in the Eastern side, the crowds are said to shout something different: "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" Hosanna means “save us we pray.”

The power, the money, the threats of violence came in from the west. Jesus came in on his own from the east. He showed the parade for what it was – a threat of violence. He offered a contrast that looked like the kindom of God.

The Jesus seminar thinks that Mark’s version of this story is most accurate, and about it they say:

For his part Jesus made it clear that he was entering Jerusalem to face death (10:33). In that case the ‘triumphal entry’ as Mark depicts it is a satire of revolutionary processions and of the kind of triumphal entry the Romans enjoyed making into cities they had conquered. The Romans celebrated their victories with horse, chariot, and a show of arms – with a military parade. In contrast, Jesus entered Jerusalem on a beast of burden. Thus Jesus was not making a statement about his own messiahship, but contrasting God’s imperial rule (“Congratulations, you poor! God’s domain belongs to you”) with Roman Imperial Rule.1

There is significant scholarly debate about this whole Palm Sunday passage, particularly since it looks like Jesus was claiming kingship and messiahship to some eyes – which leads some scholars to think this whole thing was a later addition to the story. I’m not one of the ones whose votes count in Biblical scholarship, but I tend to think Palm Sunday happened AND was one of the reasons Jesus got killed. (The Temple protest being another reason.)

The conclusion of the Jesus seminar that he knew he was riding to his death tracks for me, it makes more sense that he was making a mockery of displays of power and violence than that he was trying to claim an ancient kingship out from under the Roman Empire. But I do think he was trying to undermine the Roman Empire, and I think he was trying to change things to be better for the people, and I think the contrasts between “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.” and “Save us, We Pray” are pretty notable.

So Jesus is doing his thing on a donkey riding into the city and the people GET IT. They’re grabbing those symbolic palm branches, they’re shouting “Save us, we pray,” they’re throwing their CLOAKS on the road for him. And I continue to be blown away by that last bit because we talk about cloaks sometimes, right? Jesus’ followers were people who had two articles of clothing: inner and outer. And the outer garment, the cloak, was so important for survival that the Hebrew Scriptures ban anyone from keeping it as loan collateral overnight. Cloaks were necessary for survival and people ONLY HAD ONE. And there they are throwing them on the road for the donkey to walk on?

Fine, let’s note, this part is probably a later addition to the story by the Early Christian Community trying to get a point across of how important Jesus was. But, boy they do it for me because I want to make sure that if the people are throwing out their cloaks they are GOING BACK TO GET THEM AFTERWARDS because the nights will still come anyway. This is the sort of act of faith that borders on suicidal and it really bugs me. But, symbolically it is powerful, I’ll give you that.

The contrasts between the military show of might and power and the man on the donkey are pretty stark.

So, too, are the differences between the kingdoms of this world and the kindom of God.

Because it turns out that the power of violence just looks really different from the power of God who values connection, relationship, and community.

And, it turns out that if Jesus had simply gone into Jerusalem on a donkey, no one would have cared. It was the people showing up with Jesus who made the difference. They saw what he was doing, they participated, they were excited, they wanted to be part of the God’s way and wanted out of the Empire’s way. And it was the number of people who showed up who made it so dangerous. Jesus was killed for leading a violent revolt against the Empire. The problem is that he didn’t lead a violent one. Palm Sunday says he did lead a protest though, and maybe it was a bit of a revolt, and the people came and the Empire was threatened.

It can be easy to debate the relative value of protest, but the response of the Empire seems to indicate that they’re threatened by them. There is some base awareness that if the people are to reclaim their own power instead of ceding it to the current power structure, that everything could fall apart. And when the people really want freedom, or and end to a reign of terror, or an end to a war…. It matters when people show up.

It mattered when Jesus was riding his donkey, it mattered yesterday, it will matter again. To be citizens is to participate together in thinking about the society we want to live in and who that society benefits. It includes protesting. Thanks be to God for those who can and do. Amen

We just read a very different version of John 11 than you would find in your pew Bibles, or really in any published Bible. It reflects recent scholarship that looks at the most ancient versions of the Gospel of John – which date to 200 CE and contain a lot of errors and scribal corrections. Most scholars date the Gospel of John to 90-100 CE. Thus the OLDEST copy we have the text comes from about 100 years after it was written. And, in 2021 someone looked carefully at a digital copy of that text and noticed that a scribe had messed with the original language.

The messing around essentially ADDED a Martha into a story about Mary and Lazarus. I’ve made copies of a more extensive look at the changes and they’re here: and I’ve read the scholarly article on it, and I’m going to gloss over the details. But the gist is that the Mary of John 11 has a brother named Lazarus and is very, very, VERY likely to be the Mary of John 20 who witnessed the resurrection. That’s the first important thing.

The second important thing, the revelatory one is that the whole story in John 11 is about MARY but for the past 1800 years has been split so that it sounds like it is about two women – Mary and Martha. And to keep us on our toes, the Mary who is a sibling to Lazarus, a witness to Easter, and the foot-washer is NOT the Mary of Mary and Martha in Luke.

As common as Mary is as a name today, so too was it in Jewish circles in the time of Jesus since it is the Greek-version of the name Miriam, the sister of Moses in Exodus. It was a good faithful name for a good Jewish woman.

When we read John 11 in the way we just did, we have Mary saying the words “Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into this world.” This is the same Mary who prepares Jesus for his death by washing his feet with her hair – an action of profound faith and humility. This is the same Mary who is called by name on Easter morning when she has shown up at the tomb by herself trying to protect Jesus even in his death.

When one person does all of those things, that one person is a really important disciple. Reasonably, even, more important than Peter whose most significant accomplishment is that in the other Gospels he is the one to first name who Jesus is, to call him the Messiah.

It seems possible, and I’m going to go ahead and say likely, that someone changed the Gospel of John to diminish the role of Mary ON PURPOSE. If they hadn’t, if the text stayed the way it was originally written, Mary would be EVEN MORE important in Christian narrative. And we find evidence that even in the early Christian movement, the radical inclusion of Jesus was being modified to conform more and more with the norms of the world. Which could mean that by 200 some people wanted smaller roles for women, or more authority for Peter, or just… to make Mary a little smaller.

The funny thing, though, is that Peter is a title. Peter was really Simon who was RENAMED after this little exchange: “Jesus turns to Peter and says, “Who am I?” And Peter actually says, You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” And Jesus turns around and says to him, “You are Peter, upon this rock I will build my church.”1 And PETER is ROCK so Simon becomes “The Rock.”

Well, it turns out Magdalene is a title too, “The Tower.” Almost as if Mary also got a name change when she stated the truth, and Mary became Mary the Tower, Mary Magdalene. In fact, she kinda goes from “Mary the sister of Lazarus” to “Mary the Tower” who is able to see what others miss. She goes from being defined by her kinship to her brother to being defined by her role in the kindom of God. In some of the ancient texts SHE is listed first in verse 5, that it is said that Jesus loves Mary and Lazarus, and it is WEIRD to have the woman listed first unless she REALLY matters.

Mary is the Tower. Peter is the Rock. PERHAPS the suggestion here is that Peter is the foundation on which Mary builds communal well-being??

Mary the Tower does it all. She’s the disciple we all aim to be. She sees Jesus as Messiah, she nurtures him, grieves him, shows up for him, and has a direct experience of the hope of life after death. She continues his work of building up the community. She is the one – in John – who he passes the torch too. I can see why people who thought they wanted to follow Jesus, but wanted to make him a little bit more respectable might want to make her role a little smaller.

But, let’s put her in her place. She’s Mary the Tower, she’s a beloved disciple, she’s a friend of Jesus. She’s so important that her name is changed to reflect her importance in the Jesus following movement. And at the same time, as we’re told a lot of times in John 11, she is a sister of Lazarus.

And, I think that is particularly relevant. This story says she understood who Jesus was first, even as she was grieving. But it also says that when she had lost her last family member, Jesus brought him back. She experienced some of his most profound healing, and it impacted her. She was already beloved. She was already seeing clearly. She was already important.

And this is a story of a transformation in her life. Maybe this is the change that helped her see clearly the path that Jesus was on led to his death. Maybe this is the change that gave her the fierceness to show up at the tomb and offer to carry his body to safety ON HER OWN. This is the story of a woman strong in her faith getting stronger.

This is the story of a woman who thought she’d lost her family getting it back.

This is the story of a woman who thought she’d lost her identity getting it back two-fold. She regains her family and she gains a title in the kindom. Mary, the sister of Lazarus, the Tower.

One of the things I love about Mary is that her family unit isn’t the most traditional. She’s united to her brother, not a husband. Is she young? Is she simply unmarried? We don’t know! But we know her family is her brother and that matters to her!

It sounds a little bit like our social principles acknowledging that family units come in various sizes and forms, and they all matter. I love our social principles, acknowledging that and noting that what matters is how people treat each other in a family. It seems to make space for chosen family and all kinds of family structures. I like that it acknowledges the complications of adoption without judgment, and that as a whole it focuses on good care of children.

I wish more parts of society could be open about families. As we keep learning more about the struggles of our unhoused neighbors, we keep hearing that shelters prioritize married couples and families and dismiss all other forms of family units – even though families look MANY different ways.

AND I love that Mary isn’t a mother, based on what we know about her. I love this because far too often the importance of women is presented as being about our maternal roles. But Mary is the TOWER and the sister, she’s a person and a role model NOT because of who she procreates nor who she offers care to, but because of what she does and what she notices.

All of this suggests that we who follow Jesus – an unmarried Jewish man - follow in the footsteps of those who understood his role first: an idiotic and likely uneducated man named Simon the Rock, and an unmarried woman with profound insights named Mary the Tower. It is almost as if the Jesus movement from its inception did family differently, and let people connect by kin-ship markers of love and faith. They did family through equality and love, NOT power and dominance and that was antithetical to the power structure of the time. Which was really profound in the Roman Empire when the patriarchy functioned through the POWER of families and family dynamics, and EVERYTHING about the Jesus movement threatened it.

Including a woman whose brother died and who Jesus talked to and cared about. One he loved. One who loved him. (Funny, isn’t it, that we don’t know what kind of love. Good ambiguity there.) Mary the Tower. Thanks be to God for her witness, and for the scholar who unearthed it. Amen

1ALL THE MARYS Wild Goose Festival, Closing Sermon, July 17, 2022 by Diana Butler Bass https://dianabutlerbass.com/wp-content/uploads/All-the-Marys-Sermon.pdf

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

The heart of our scripture passage today as I hear it is “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” This is a pretty obvious part of faith – to try to figure out what is pleasing to God and do it. That’s living the life of faith.

And, of course, it is easier said that done. Sometimes we have easy clarity on what is right, what is wrong, what is pleasing to God and what would be displeasing to God. We know we shouldn’t kick people when they’re down, we shouldn’t ignore the pleas of the hungry, and we should take a few breathes before speaking in anger, take the time to savor the good parts of life.

But, truth be told, we don’t struggle with knowing what is pleasing to God when it is easy. Though sometimes we struggle to DO it. We struggle with knowing what is pleasing to God when it isn’t clear.

In my last church I served a church that was basically built for IBM engineers and their families. While there I was given advice about engineers from someone who had managed them professionally. The advice was: if an engineer comes to you to ask you to pick between two options, then just pick one. The premise, I’m told, is that if there was any significant differences between the two choices the engineer would have simply picked the better one. The only reason you’d be asked to decide as their supervisor, then, was if they were entirely equal and thus the engineer was stumped. In that case it doesn’t matter what you decide because they’re equal and what the person needs is a decision so they can move on – preferably done by someone they can blame later if it was wrong. So, I was told, if you trust the engineer, just pick one. That’s what they need.

Clearly, that was very particular to IBM engineers ;)

It is also relevant to the times when we struggle with figuring out what is pleasing to God. If one choice clearly worked better than others, then we’d just make that choice. Or, at least, we’d try to. Discernment is the spiritual activity we engage in when we are trying to do what is pleasing to God and the answer isn’t obvious in advance.

As I examined The United Methodist Church’s words on Military Service, I was struck by how deeply they’re reflective of a need for good discernment. It is abundantly clear that we need good people to serve in the military, including people of faith who do so with their convictions and conscience, and who will seek the well-being of all to the greatest extent of their abilities. It is also abundantly clear that some people of faith are called to refuse military service out of their faith. And the answer is particular to the person, and their faith, and their gifts, and their circumstances, and their callings, and is not the same for different people. Together, as a Body of Christ, and as a nation, and a world we are strongest when we have both people in the military who serve with integrity and people who choose not to serve as a means of expressing their faith.

For some people, knowing where to land on that question is easy, for others it could be the ultimate discernment. But, for all of us, there are times when we face questions of importance where we need to engage in discernment to find our way.

Now, I need to offer a little bit of my own nonconformist framing to this, simply because I am me and this was imperative to my development. For many years when I heard people talk about “finding out what is pleasing” to God, or discernment, or in the words I heard most often “doing God’s will” I thought of it was… well… obedience. My framing was that God – the creator of the universe – had expectations and plans for me and my job was to “discern” what God wanted and then obediently enact that. Which, I’ll be honest, got me to about 30 without significant issues.

And then it became really uncomfortable.

I didn’t like the implications about God and me that came with that framework. I wanted to be more than a cog in a wheel doing what some external being desired of me. And I wanted to fit the framework into the understanding I had of God as compassionate and kind and intimately involved in my life. The framework started to splinter because it didn’t really fit either the God I experienced nor my theology.

As I sat with my discomfort, and engaged in conversations about it, and wrote about it my prayer journal, and generally pondered about it I built a different understanding of what it means to “try to find out what is pleasing to” God.

While I do think of God as Creator, and that is huge in my personal belief system, when I pray I really think of it as becoming aware of the Holy Spirit who is everywhere – in me and around me and in and around everyone else – connecting us and loving us and just being the foundation of love in everything and everyone. Prayer is attending to and bringing my awareness to God who is with me, NOT to God is above me or beyond me.

And that means that discernment – for me – is not about figuring out the will of some OTHER being. Instead it is about listening to God-with-me, who I know through my own body and being, whose wisdom I access through my own. This, of course, has some dangers. The big one is that my own perception bias can impact how I hear God and lead me wrong. However, that’s always true! But, trusting myself as human who is able to to listen to the whisperings of God within is what discernment looks like for me. And it is hard, sometimes, to trust myself to do it. But it feels a lot more real and honest and even comfortable for me than my old framework did.

A few years ago our Church Council created a “Futuring Committee” to consider where our church is headed. We engaged in a process of group discernment. Our meetings were heavy in prayer, and we moved to silence when we got stuck. We did careful thinking and listening, but we also paid deep attention to what delighted us AS A MEANS of knowing what God might be nudging us towards. Eventually, in conversation with the church that went both ways, we landed on a plan to try to use our building as a resource to the community that will also help us build a more financially sustainable future. In specifics, we planned to make our space particularly available to dance and music groups, to increase the use of our space by outside groups (like All of Us in the Pine Room), and to renovate space we aren’t using for people to live – without having to do the development or oversight ourselves.

(Please note that as in any discernment, finding the way is one part and enacting it is a different part and we’re trying but not getting as far as we’d like with using our space for housing as of yet. But we’re still trying!)

I’m still happy with the work we did, primarily because we took a chance in trusting ourselves to be people who could “find out what is pleasing to” God. And, I think we did.

It seems important here to end on some practical notes about discernment. So, here we go.

First important thing to know: emotions are a TOOL of discernment, not a distraction from it. Does something excite you, bring you joy, energize you, delight you? THAT MATTERS!!!! Does something fill you with dread, bore you to tears, elicit disgust, make you recoil? That matters too! At least in my model of discernment, we have to take ourselves seriously as part of the data set we’re working with as we work with God.

Second important thing to know: when you get stuck, get curious. Why are you stuck? What values are in conflict? What is scaring you or holding you back? What would you need to feel more confident about your way forward? Does anyone else know what you’d need to know to figure this out?

Third important thing to know: discernment often involves a lot of time and silence, because sorting through our own emotions and wisdom and sorting what is real from what we’re afraid might be real, and sorting the past from the present, and generally just finding clarity is slow and takes attention and looks like nothing is happening for a really long time until it does.

Forth and final important thing to know about discernment: there are books written on this and practices that people have found really useful. For me, the ones that have helped the most are:

Prayer journaling. That is, writing it all down where the audience is God) which is helpful because I can sort it out as I write it down

Daily examen where you take time every day to notice the best and worst parts of your day, or the parts most and least connected to God, or the most loving and least loving parts and notice the patterns in them over time. (This can also be done with a journal where you write down both the best and the worst and review it on occasion).

Talking things over with those who are willing and able to hold the space for my own wisdom. I’ve most often practices this in Sacred Circles that come out of the Center for Courage and Renewal and Parker Palmer’s teachings, but really this is a Quaker practice with a long and beautiful history.

The real key here is to know that if you want to engage more deeply in intentional discernment, there are resources and you can find them or I can help you and you need not flail on your own!

We are people who are always trying to figure out what is pleasing to God. Thanks be to God for our trying, and our succeeding, and for the resources that can help us along the way. 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

There are 4 really specific pieces of advice in our short scripture reading today and are are more radical than they first appear. Some of you have heard this before, and for you it is a review. Some of you haven’t, and this is new information. Both are good.

When I was a child I was taught that these recommendations were to be a doormat -to allow violence to be done to me and to… well, I guess to suck it up as passively as possible. That’s not what the text says.

Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek. Why? Because there was a difference in ways people were hit. Equals were slapped (or punched). Subordinates were backhanded. To be backhanded was to be put in one’s place, and that place was “lower.” To turn the other cheek is to REFUSE the other person’s narrative that you are lesser.

Important note here, only the right hand got used for hitting people, the left hand was unclean. Not because lefties are bad, but because left hands were used for unclean tasks so one hand could be clean.

Walter Wink explains, “This action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, ‘Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status doesn’t alter that fact. You cannot demean me.’” 1 Because if the person strikes the second cheek the only way they can do that is to treat the person as an equal! Which is to say that the Biblical themes that all people are created in the image of God and are beloved by God is the basis of this advice! To turn the other cheek is to refuse the position of subordinate and to reclaim one’s status as a full human being!

Similarly, comes the bit about suing a person for their outer garment. Let’s be clear, only someone who has nothing else would put up their (one) outer garment as collateral. And the Bible knows this well enough that there are repetitions of the law that if an outer garment is taken as collateral it must be returned to the person every night so they have it for warmth while they sleep.

As Wink says, “Indebtedness was endemic in first-century Palestine… It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy. Emperors had taxed the wealthy so stringently to fund their wars that the rich began seeking non-liqiuid investments to secure their wealth. Land was best, but it was ancestrally owned and passed down over generations, and no peasant would voluntarily relinquish it.”2 So high interest and high taxes were used to squeeze landowners out of their land and get their land into the lands of the wealthy. Note that Jesus assumes his hearers are the poorest of the poor, the ones whose outer garments are their debt security.

So why does he tell them to offer their inner garment as well? Because it would leave them naked. They couldn’t win in court, they couldn’t change the system, but they could expose it. “Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell less on the naked party than other person viewing or causing the nakedness.”3 Thus, nakedness became a prophetic protest! And, it took back power and dignity for people who didn’t have any in the systems of the day.

So, too, is the recommendation to “go the second mile.” The context here is that Roman soldiers could require someone to carry their heavy (65-80 pound) packs ONE mile, but not more than one. And the soldiers were known to abuse this regularly, so there were various punishments for them, although it wasn’t ever clear what the punishment would be it if was violated. Offering to carry it a second mile would take a person whose labor had been forced and give that person back their dignity. The solider wouldn’t’ want the second mile, would have to ask the person not to, would have to acknowledge the person. And meanwhile the person whose labor had been forced would “have taken back the power of choice.”4

The final piece of advice is to give to everyone who asks, which is hard and complicated and like the rest of these deserves its own sermon, but here we are. The gist seems to be that the only way the peasants could survive was if they engaged in mutual support and sustenance.

Taken as a whole, these pieces of advice establish a radical system of nonviolent resistance. They are a significant part of the reason that the first few centuries of Christianity were emphatically nonviolent, and nonviolence was considered the essence of living out Christian faith. But nonviolence isn’t passive, nor powerless. All of this was mean to empower, to connect, to expose, to invert the system.

These are teachings central to Jesus’s third way. That is, NOT violence, NOT passivity, but nonviolence. This is one of the cores of our Christian tradition. And, as we heard in our shared reading of our United Methodist Social Principals, there is now a debate about whether or not violence is ever acceptable and while I think that conversation has immense value, we’re not focusing there today either.

However, it seems worth mentioning that those who believe violence and war are sometimes necessary usually would do so within the confines of Just War Theory which states that before a decision to go to war can be considered justified these conditions must be met:

The war must have a just cause.

It must be waged by a legitimate authority.

It must be formally declared.

It must be fought with a peaceful intention.

It must be a last resort.

There must be reasonable hope of success.

The means used must possess proportionality to the end sought.5

Note that for Christians and United Methodists, stating that Just War conditions have been met and it is thus legitimate to go to war is the most permissive standard within our Christian tradition, and others would say that there is no such thing as a just war, nor any justification for violent action.

Walter Wink is one of the thinkers who lands in that second position, but he points out that there are places where those who believe in just war and those who believe only in non-violence line up:

Both acknowledge that nonviolence is preferable to violence.

Both agree that the innocent must be protected as much as possible.

Both reject any defense of a war motivated solely by a crusade mentality or national security interests or personal egocentricity.

Both wish to persuade states to reduce the levels of violence.

Both wish to hold war accountable to moral values, both before and during the conflict.6

I would suggest for us that those are the principals we use was we make our shared assessments about what our faith requires of us in the days we are living. And, I’m going to go ahead and state the obvious that the current war in Iran does not meet the standards we hold.

Furthermore, the non-profit “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” reported this week that complaints have come in that commanders are telling their troops that the war in Iran is part of God’s plan to usher in the return of Christ.”7 More than 200 such complaints have come in, from more than 40 units (as of Thursday). The first one was. “A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer on behalf of 15 of them.”8

Now, we around here are not well versed in the premise of Armageddon, so let me clarify a few things. The first is that the book of Revelation was written as a letter to support people living the violence of the Roman Empire while trying to live the nonviolence of Jesus. It is written as vision, and with some warping of time to give it deniability as being about the Roman Empire. Some parts of American Christianity have globed on to an idea of a final battle based on Revelation 16:16, “And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.” That said, while the battle lines are drawn, in the book of Revelation they never occur, and instead Jesus comes in and ushers in the new heaven and the new earth. Which is to say that the WHOLE of “Armageddon” premise is just… made up.

And using those myths to justify war, which is what happens every time the US enters a war in the Middle East, is an abuse of Christianity and Christian tradition to serve the values of the empire. The debate within the Christian tradition is about if ANY war can be justified. What is being articulated to try to motivate our military is a perversion of Christianity that is antithetical to our scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Christianity, like other world religious, holds that are people are of sacred worth. We never take killing lightly, and the power of the state to kill doesn’t change that standard. For now, we need to hold firmly to our own tradition, and refute any premise that tries to use Christianity to justify unjust war. We need to hold firm to the sanctity of human life, and commit to nonviolence in all the ways we are able.

We need to live out the love of God we have experienced, and trust that love has its own power. And, while we are at it, The United Methodist Board of Church and Society has some trainings for us about how we can respond with nonviolent resistance like Jesus taught us.9 Thanks be to God for a denomination that helps us know how to follow in the ways of Jesus. Amen

1 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), p.176.

2 Ibid, p. 178

3 Ibid, p. 179.

4 Ibid, p. 182.

5 Ibid, p. 214.

6 Ibid, p. 224.

7 https://myemail.constantcontact.com/MRFF-Inundated-with-Complaints-of-Gleeful-Commanders-Telling-Troops-Iran-War-is--Part-of-God-s-Divine-Plan--to-Usher-in-Return-o.html?soid=1101766362531&aid=3OTPFAZxIrI

8 https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for, accessed 3-

9 https://www.umcjustice.org/latest/lenten-webinar-series-ashes-to-action-lent-as-non-violent-resistance-8953

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers

 http://fumcschenectady.org/