#We Cry Justice

[firstumcschenectady]

"Shared Burdens, Shared Resources” based on 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 and James 5:1-6

When we gather at the communion table, we are reminded time and time again that we are united by sharing from one loaf, by receiving from one cup. We receive the body of Christ to be the Body of Christ. We TOGETHER do the work of Christ in the world, we are fed together so we can act together.

We also talk a lot in the church about being church family, it happens enough that it becomes a struggle in hymn selection! I love kinship language, but I want us to use the more inclusive “siblings” and instead of the far more common “brothers and sisters.” Not that brothers and sisters is bad language, its good, its just not BEST.

Our Biblical passages today are also about being united in Christ, and becoming family to one another, although they come at it from a slightly different angle.

As we heard in Rev. Dr. Theoharis's essay, the often abused quote “He who does not work shall not eat” is not about condemning the poor and declaring it a person's own fault they live in poverty. Instead, 2 Thessalonians calls out the rich who aren't doing their fair share to care for the community. Because, those who can do so have been resting on their wealth without worrying about those who are starving. They are called on to share the burdens of the community, and to share the resources they all have.

Get up, the writer implores. The writer isn't calling everyone to labor in the fields, but he is calling everyone to contribute.

Sometimes, I find my internal voices telling me that only some work counts... and somehow the work that “counts” is NEVER the work I've been getting done. That's my own internal voices not God ;)

The writer is urging followers of Christ to interdependence. If one person has enough not to work, but their sibling in Christ does not, then the work is not done until the sibling can eat too!

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movements, grew up in poverty as a preacher's kid and became a preacher. He was an unusually good preacher though, enough so that his sermons were printed and sold, and made a lot of money. John Wesley was convinced by his understanding of God and the Bible that his wealth was not his own, and so he gave it away. He shared what he had with those who were struggling the most. One winter, when he was 80 years old, the cold was especially bad and the poor were struggling immensely. John Wesley begged on the streets of London – not for himself but for those who were impoverished – the ones he'd already given his own wealth to.

I'm pretty sure that fits with God's vision.

You may have noticed that as much as 2 Thessalonians pushes on the rich, James is harsher. James is vicious against the rich. (For some of us, this is pretty squirmy stuff. I'm not going to resolve that reality, but I am acknowledging it. It turns out following Jesus is hard.)

James says that those who are rich now will suffer later. All their wealth will rot and rust, and they'll be held accountable for the ways their wealth was accumulated. “The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” James warns those who live in luxury build on the labor of others that they are culpable for the harm done to the others.

These passages are saying the same thing. We are responsible for each other. We are community, kin, interconnected. And if we treat others unfairly, that's on us. If we are in community, we need to work for everyone's well being. Following Jesus isn't about getting comfortable or “taking care of number 1.” It is about expanding our hearts and our lives until we are able to truly “love our neighbors as ourselves.”

We now live in a world with fairly permeable boundaries. Where once it was easy to think of a neighbor as a person in one's village or neighborhood, there are many ways we live in a global village now, and the needs of neighbors are immense and overwhelming. The degree of concentrated wealth in this world is also immense and overwhelming.

We are mean to help each other, inter-personally, and even when it is hard.

I do want to say that it is possible for a society to organize itself in DIFFERENT ways than the ones we've chosen. It is possible to have tax codes that move wealth down rather than up. It is possible to house all the people in our country, and in our world. It is possible to feed people healthy and delicious food. It is possible to take care of everyone. It isn't even that hard. What isn't possible is to take care of everyone while consolidating all the resources at the top. It can't be done. This one can't be both and. We can share and take care of each other or we can let a few people have ridiculous wealth. But the ridiculousness of the wealth at the top right now – it makes it impossible to care for the many.

The writers of the New Testament lived in a world like the one we live in. Jesus and James at least had very little power in that system. They all called on the rich to see and care about the poor, to notice how they're treated, to take responsibility for not trampling on the poor.

Don't trample each other, God says! Also, seek the goodness that comes in a society that cares for all of God's beloveds.

And also, eat this bread, drink this cup – they united us, and that unity is a holy and wonderful gift. (And challenge.) Amen

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

July 7, 2024

[hinamie]

"I'll show you every day that choosing to live was worth it"

some of my favourite scenes from @hijinks-n-lowjinks' fic things i would miss from the other side . this fic tore my heart out fr but like in a good way and i wanted to pay it homage the only way i know how <3

[miraculoususername]

People warning about shows getting cancelled because of the writer's strike fail to understand that all my favorite shows have already been cancelled. You can't hurt me more than Netflix already has.

[salty-and-spiraling]

There is nothing I could ever say that would truly encapsulate how I feel about the season 7 trailer coming out so I'll just put this

Clearly I am very okay about this

[caput-medusae]

One thing I genuinely appreciate about the TROP showrunners is that, unlike Star Wars post-TLJ (the best movie of the sequel trilogy), they didn’t back off of their vision, but instead doubled down.

You don’t like diverse characters, even background characters? Fuck you, there’s more and we’re making the camera linger on them extra long.

You don’t like the Harfoots? Fuck you, now we have desert Hobbits. Also we retconned Poppy back into the show because we wanted to.

You don’t like Hot Sauron? Fuck you, he’s the main character now. Also we gave him a wig and a sparkly outfit.

You don’t like non-canon ship teases? Fuck you, Elrond and Galadriel kiss.

You don’t like Celebrimbor? Too bad, we’re giving him Shakespearean monologues now.

Fuck you, we’re giving Adar gay subtext.

Fuck you, we’re stopping the action to sing a song.

Fuck you, Tom Bombadil is here now.

[ihatebrainstorm]

No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.

[purpleofmadness]

Us Superboy fans can't win....

[sam-reid]

Lestat de Lioncourt INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE SEASON 2 (2024) | THE VAMPIRE LESTAT by Anne Rice (1985).

[theoneprecioustome]

The Answer (now titled Episode Aigis, just like its Japanese counterpart) has now been announced! With it we got the other half of this artwork... and it turns out that Makoto was looking at Aigis all along 😭

[jounosparticles]

tetchou threw his entire stance on justice aside to put everything into saving jouno. he broke his own morals because he was so distraught to find out jouno went missing and needed to save him at all costs.

and after he came to his senses, he asked to be killed because he misunderstood what jouno would have wanted him to do.

this is love you cannot convince me otherwise.

[im-still-watching-anime]

apollo: valentine’s day is a corporate holiday it isn’t even that special

trucy: you were just yelling and blushing for three hours because klavier got you a bear that says “i wuv you bear-y much”

apollo: that’s not fair those emotions were because i’m afflicted with feelings for klavier and NOT because of capitalism induced romance

[firstumcschenectady]

“Hope for Just Justice" based on Ezekiel 22:23-29 and Deuteronomy 16:18-20

Our two scripture readings today clarify for me that I prefer to hear the dreams of God in the positive instead of the negative. Deuteronomy lays out how a just society should be ordered, in this case by clarifying what a just justice system looks like. Ezekiel points out that the justice of God has not been fulfilled and describes what things are like instead. And, boy, I like the Deuteronomy reading a lot better. But, it does seem fair to point that they're making the same point in different ways.

The ways that the Bible, especially the Torah in the Hebrew Bible, obsesses over just justice, tends to surprise me a bit. It pushes back on some assumptions I have about how complicated the society of ancient Israel was – and makes it clear that ancient Israel was a complex and REAL human society. It wasn't some dream state, or .. I don't, a part of such early history that the hurts of society weren't present yet. (My assumptions are really off and need some reflection.)

Part of the ancient Israelite narrative was that they were people who had been freed from slavery in Egypt. The scholarship I respect the most suggests that those who were actually in Egypt and freed may well have been a very small number, but their story resonated with others and was taken on as an identity narrative – first by nomadic people in the desert and later by some of the people in the land they would come to call the Promised Land and the culminating group of people who understood themselves to be ancient Israel were the people who identified with this story of God freeing them from slavery.

What feels important about that is that ancient Israel was thus a place that knew how worldly systems of domination worked. Right? Egypt was a monarchy with slavery and forced labor and money flowing from the bottom to the top. Those who were listening to God and dreaming a new society were wanting to prevent the same thing from happening again. Those same scholars also suggest that the hills of Judea were largely populated by people who had exited the early societies in both the Fertile Crescent and Egypt, which suggests they were the ones who weren't successful in those systems, who left because they thought they could do better on their own than in a society that was pressing down on them. This may be why the “God freed us from slavery” narrative resonated so well.

The first 5 books of the Bible create shared identity and a shared dream, the idea of creating a society the way God wants it to be. We know that they were written down AFTER the destruction of the Temple in 587-586 BCE and the biases of those times impact what how things were written down, including a yearning to have listened better so as not to be in that situation. Ezekiel is a prophet OF the exile, he was called while in exile in Babylon, and spoke his prophetic words from Babylon. Which gives us the context that it is from another domination system – Babylon – that todays words came into being. (Although there were more edits later, of course.)

Anyway, Deuteronomy makes these points about what justice should look that feel so ON POINT that it is hard to remember they were written down 2.5 millennia ago. Judges need to be everywhere – an assumption there will always be disputes that need an impartial third party to help. Judges should render JUST decisions. Judges should not distort justice. Judges should not show partiality. Judges should not accept bribes ( ah. hem.) Bribes blind wisdom and prevent right judgement. Justice and only justice must be the work of those who judge – and their work is imperative to making it possible to live in the land in right relationship with God and each other.

So, apparently all groups of humans have disagreements and need trustworthy ways of finding just solutions AND being able to offer that justice to people WITHOUT BIAS based on power or wealth is one of the fundamental pieces to creating not only a functional society, but a society where people find it easiest to connect with God.

Well, Deuteronomy, no lies are found there.

Ezekiel goes a little further, condemning all the leaders for the lack of justices that the vulnerable experience: the upper class is violent towards the poor; the clergy enable the wealthy to skip the sabbath in order to seek more wealth; the officials destroy lives for their own gain; and the prophets claim it is all OK. The result, then is oppression of the poor and needy, and the immigrants being mistreated without having any capacity to seek justice.

Um. Wouldn't it be super cool if the prophet of the exile who remembers the destruction his society and reflects on what issues might have brought down his beloved nation sounded like he was talking about a really, really different place than the one we live in??

Yep, I'd prefer for Ezekiel not to resonate and Deuteronomy to be self-evidently the way things already are.

And... here we are anyway.

I do not wish to make a comprehensive list of all the ways our justice system lacks justice, because I'm told people don't like multi-day sermons (🤷🏻‍♀️), but one of the end results of our system is that we have 2.3 million people incarcerated in the USA, which is about 0.7% of our population. Therefore, While the United States represents about 4.2 percent of the world's population, it houses around 20 percent of the world's prisoners.1 And, as we know, the prison population is incredibly disproportionate by race, and those who are imprisoned are the people in the US who lack the right not to be in slavery, and many of the jails and prisons in the US are run by for-profit industries who are making money both on the labor of the inmates and on the fees they charge to offer sub-human care to the inmates.

Maybe I am more open to how Ezekiel expresses concerns than I thought I was! ;)

As is often the case, I think I've managed to preach us firmly into despair, and now we get to move together towards hope. Because of being part of the church, I was introduced early on to the concepts of restorative justice and how they differ from punitive justice. Even knowing this has been life-changing. Our current, imperfect, Social Principles say:

In the love of Christ, who came to save those who are lost and vulnerable, we urge the creation of a genuinely new system for the care and restoration of victims, offenders, criminal justice officials, and the community as a whole. Restorative justice grows out of biblical authority, which emphasizes a right relationship with God, self, and community. When such relationships are violated or broken through crime, opportunities are created to make things right.

Most criminal justice systems around the world are retributive. These retributive justice systems profess to hold the offender accountable to the state and use punishment as the equalizing tool for accountability. In contrast, restorative justice seeks to hold the offender accountable to the victimized person, and to the disrupted community. Through God's transforming power, restorative justice seeks to repair the damage, right the wrong, and bring healing to all involved, including the victim, the offender, the families, and the community. The Church is transformed when it responds to the claims of discipleship by becoming an agent of healing and systemic change.

And this isn't just TALK in the church. The United Methodist Church has standards for companies it will and will not invest in, including in our clergy pension programs, and companies that make profits from private prisons are on our DO NOT invest list. If you were wondering, this church holds the same policy. United Women in Faith have a specific focus on stopping the school to prison pipeline. The General Board of Church and Society advocates on our behalf in Washington for criminal justice reform. There is a program called “Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century” that aims at strengthening predominately Black congregations in mission and ministry, and one of their foci is on ending mass incarceration. More of my education on these concerns has happened here in this church, in the Intersectional Justice Book Club, and in conversations with you wise people. We also have in our midst a United Methodist Home Missioner whose job is to offer family law services to inmates in NYS prisons. Just by being part of the UMC our local church is part of changing what is into what should be. That's a big part of why our connection matters.

I think a lot about being the tragic gap – the place where you see both how things are and how things should be and are vulnerable to the pain that results from the distance between them. I believe the tragic gap is a holy and important place to be, but NOT because we need to be left in despair. Rather because change can't happen unless we see with clarity what is AND see with clarity what can be. Being vulnerably in the tragic gap is a way to be open to God's creative work within us. For most of us, the work to make the justice system more just isn't our primary work – but here is the amazing thing! By being in the church and doing our own primary work, we enable others TO DO that work. The goal of the Body of Christ is to work towards justice, but no one person is meant to do all the pieces. Thank God for all who are seeking restorative justice, criminal justice reform, working on behalf of those incarcerated, for those seeking the well-being of friends and family in prison, and thank God for those who are living in prison and finding ways to seek justice and live love despite it all.

Things aren't as they should be, but that's not a reason to lose hope. God and good people are working on change, and change will come. On this, and on many other ways justice is lacking. Thanks be to God. Amen

1https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2022-statistical-tables

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

March 17, 2024

[spyxfamily-yapper]

Thinking about Anya's intelligence, as her ability to be smart is kind of a big point in the story and Operation Strix...

With Anya being younger than the rest of her classmates and still getting by (albeit barely lol), it's logical to assume she is smart for her age, but I do wonder how much smarter. Like did her experimentation have any effect on her ability to learn / intelligence? (There's a fantastic post here looking into the specifics of the psychology, neuroscience, & physics and all that that might be involved when it comes to Anya's mind reading abilities and how her brain works. Super cool highly recommend.) Or has her ability to read minds severely stunted her ability to actually learn things because she can just get answers from people's minds without absorbing it? This sort of thing has been shown/implied in canon, but I do wonder how deep it goes.

She has been shown to be intelligent in other ways, too, specifically through navigating the absolutely BONKERS life she is living. She is keeping up with who knows what and who is where and knows what to say to specific people to encourage a specific outcome. She is obviously not a super genius or anything (which is one thing I love about her...a character who reads minds but is too young to truly grasp everything so she only does silly goofy things with the information instead of using it like a stereotypical "smart character" would is hilarious), carrying all that mental weight as a child is impressive. She is doing what she thinks is best with the information she has, and though those decisions might not always be conventional, she helps her super cool parents constantly and not only recognizes but also helps maintain the fragile web of lies and deception set up around her.

I also wonder if the perception others have of her as a dumb/less intelligent kid is just adding to the list of things that will affect her as she grows up. I imagine she'd internalize that and think less of herself because of it despite her "objective intelligence" being greater than average for her age. Which is just so sad on top of all the things she experienced before she was adopted by Loid. She has this great fear of being abandoned because it has happened before, and was most likely physically and mentally abused in some way by the people monitoring her at the lab, and this is just another thing for her to deal with. Based on how she is with studying, her reactions to not doing well on exams and such, and just how hard she tries when it comes to school, she seems very overwhelmed by this academic pressure. And who wouldn't be? There's pressure from not only Loid directly as a father, but also from the school itself and WORLD PEACE being at stake through Operation Strix for her to do well academically. At a prestigious school with a slim entrance rate and a student body that famously exceeds expectations compared to that of any other school. With little to no typical schooling experience / proper education beforehand. All while being one, maybe two years younger than the age the curriculum is meant for. She literally has to do the impossible and is kind of DOING IT and YET she will still be seen as less intelligent by those around her (and herself, too, most likely).

I just wonder what all of this means for Anya beyond Operation Strix. Putting it lightly, it's a weird way to grow up and learn to navigate the world.

[bunny-snot]

i went into dungeon meshi thinking it was about sapphic monsters and elves but came out of it obsessed with Senshi.

also i love Laois and i think if he could eat his freinds without harming them he probably would and that cool, we could always use more cannibals

[littlefankingdom]

~ Batgirl (2000)

They are sad and disappointed in themselves and they should be. What they did is not justice.

So, I'm mad about this issue, like really mad for personal reasons I will explain later. For context: a young girl has been kidnapped by a thief who escaped jail. It's not the first time said thief kidnapps this girl. This young girl, around 10 years old, is an artist and her mother exploits her, making money by selling her daughter's art. They are rich. This woman doesn't love her daughter, she loves the money she is making from her daughter. The man that keeps kidnapping this young girl? Her father. Her father that loves and cares for her, that turned to crime to take care of his daughter, and refuses to sell any art she makes because she made it for him, because she loves her father. And she pleads, she pleads Batgirl to let her with her father and not bring her back to her mother who doesn't love her, she pleads her to not put her father in jail. And what do Batgirl does? She stops the father, gives him to the cops and brings back the girl to her mother. On those panels, they are looking at a sad child with her abuser they brought her back to.

My mother doesn't love me. She will say she does to others, but it's not true and it has been the case for a long time, since I was very young. I wasn’t unwanted, I was just not what she wanted. My life was supposed to be centered, until my death, around taking care of my mother (she is not disabled or anything, she just wants people to do everything for her). Raised to make money I would gift to my mother, so she could have luxuries, but I was not successful in that. I grew up pleading for love, pleading for people to listen to my pain. Nobody did. I learnt that people prefer the comfort and peace of their lives over helping others. I learnt to distrust authority figures (teachers, doctors, any adults/people at least 5 years older than me in general), because either they were power hungry assholes who abuse kids, either they preferred to look away, who would tell me to be nice and listen to my mother. It's too much problem to help children. In the end, I could count on nobody but myself to get out. I can count on nobody but myself. I hate the system, and I promised myself I would never be like those who look away, I will defend any child that needs it.

So, to read a story where a little girl pleads a HERO to not bring them back to their abuser, only for said HERO to still bring her back to her abuser, to tell her to be nice and stay with her awful parent... I am furious. This issue is literally telling me that, if heroes existed, the heroes you adore since you are a child, they would not have saved you. They would have bring you back to your mother and told you to be nice, like everyone else. They would have let you go through those years of pain. Heroes would have looked away.

What is the logic here? Because it's neither justice or the good thing to do. That it is the law? Since when do they follow the law? I don't remember vigilantism being legal, or assault and battery, or owning all the weapons Bruce owns. Yes, it was still a kidnapping, her father is a criminal, it would not have been a good life for a child. But, the Bats could have tried to find a solution, instead of simply giving this child back to someone who will treat her like shit.

I know it's just a fiction, so it's not like a real child is being exploited and will be more abused later when she stops being good enough because her mental health deteriorated, nobody is going to become depressed and lose trust in heroes because the bats brought her back to her awful mother. And also, it's not the characters who are at fault, it's the writers. It's not about Cass and Bruce being bad people heroes, it's about who the fuck decided to write that. New entries in my list of enemies, Keller Puckett and Dylan Horrocks.

[beldaroot]

when our oppression is shared, our struggle for liberation will remain and therefore, our solidarity will never cease