#thinking Church

[firstumcschenectady]

"Be on Guard" based on Jeremiah 33:14-16 and Luke 21:25-36

As a general rule, I really hate Advent texts. I hate them because they're apocalyptic and messy and scary and generally reflect a future I hope we don't have.

When I reflected on this with Worship Committee last month, they looked at me knowingly and pointed out that perhaps that's exactly why we need the Lectionary Advent texts right now. Because 1. we need some connection to our traditions and 2. it feels really real right now.

Which, since you just heard the utter wonder of the Luke 21 text, you can tell I was convinced by those ideas. However, I'm particularly lucky that the Sunday Night Bible Study also just finished reading the book of Daniel and I'm way more aware of the genre of apocalyptic literature in the Bible than I normally am.

I do not, for the record, recommend reading the book of Daniel outside of the context of a Bible Study or without some truly excellent commentaries. However, I had the benefit of reading it with excellent commentaries and insightful fellow readers.

The thing about Daniel, and the book of Revelation, and I think this passage in Luke is: they're written as resistance literature. They can't be direct and make the point, “The person who has all the power an is oppressing us with it is not doing God's will,” because if they say that then anyone who has access to the document will be killed. #OpressiveRegimes So, they put things in different times. Daniel pretends to be from the past, Revelation pretends to be in the future. Then they speak about the abuses of power they see now, and do it in a way that it clear that God is still God and the horrors of this time will come to an end.

They are powerful tools of encouragement, of hope, and of resistance.

But, in order to obscure their points so people don't die, they're also a little bit hard to decipher.

I'm not really sure what Luke is trying to get to in today's passage. (The Jesus seminar is pretty clear this is all Luke's writing, not reflective directly of Jesus.) What we do know is that the early Christian communities experienced fairly extreme circumstances, and often needed encouragement and resistance literature. It seems that it could be common enough to feel like things were so bad that “people would faint from fear”. But Luke assures the people that things getting bad are just a sign they're going to get better soon. Because the people needed to be encouraged.

So, beloveds, as people who also might need some encouragement, the part of the passage that encouraged me this week was one little line, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.” Oh, I needed that reminder. Be on guard that your heart is not weighed down.

Sweet Jesus, thank you. (Or, rather, thanks Luke.)

Now, Jeremiah goes at this from a different perspective. Which is interesting because Jeremiah is known for being a significant downer as a prophet. But chapter 33 is one of Jeremiah's “good cop” chapters and Jeremiah encourages the people that the end has not come and good times are going to come again.

Now, I have to admit something to you. I rebel against the word “righteousness.” I don't think my objections are particularly fair. It is a good word. It means living well, living “rightly,” living in right relationship with God and neighbors. And yet, somehow, when I come across it, I connect it with purity culture and judgmental-ism and people judging whether or not one is righteous and it just ruins the whole thing for me. (I believe others struggle with Justice for similar reasons, and oddly enough I like that one.)

So, I thesaurus-ed “righteous” and the simplest substitute for it is “goodness” which I can handle. With that, we get a passage from Jeremiah that says:

The days are coming, God says, when I'm going to fulfill my promises.

In those days David's line will continue,

and the leader in the line of David will bring goodness and fairness to everyone.

The people will be safe and well.

Things will be so good that other nations will call my people by the name,

“God is our goodness.”

I like it. Sounds to me like yet another description of that beloved community or kindom of God we're co-creating with God. God reminds us, even in dark times, not to give up hope.

And Luke reminds us to be on guard so our hearts aren't weighed down.

Which leads me to invite us to think about both what weighs down our hearts, and what lifts those weights.

I can share that my weights are lifted by:

remembering all the organizations and people working for goodness

jokes and memes that hit at the crux of things with humor

feeling heard

being able to truly hear another person's heart

singing together

fiction and fictional portrayals that give me a break from the problems of this time

telling God exactly what I'm feeling and why

giving God time to respond (I may use this less than I wish)

helping others

baking

and as I was reminded in today's Advent Devotional – a snack and a nap!

It's my list, I don't know if yours has baking on it or not ;) But, if you are willing, would you work on making your list? What lifts the weights when your heart is heavy?

And, if you are willing, could you then put that list somewhere you can see it, as a reminder for when your heart needs you to guard it and lighten it's load?

Someone wise reminded me this week that it is hard to be disconcerted by reality at the same time that others are, because instead of steadying each other, people are pulling each other further off kilter. I say we work on becoming a fire break in the anxiety storm, a source of calm in the midst of it all. We guard our hearts and each other's, so we can be steady when others are off kilter. Are you with me?

I hope so. Thanks be to God for the opportunity to lift some weights from our hearts, so we have capacity to help others when their weights get too heavy. Amen

December 1, 2025

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

[zillychu]

everyone sh. shutd up im cooking smthn

[fullmetalswift]

Lila Shapiro does an amazing job at explaining Gaiman's family history with the church of scientology and how that fucked him up as a child, without ever implying that the trauma excuses his actions as a grown man. the entire article is masterfully written but that part really stuck out to me. she provides context so well but it never veers into a justification whatsoever. and that said, i also think we should pay attention to that part and talk about it. of course, primarily we should uphold the victims' voices and their experiences. but i also think we need to talk about scientology. something needs to be done about that goddamn cult. i knew about the financial blackmail and insane psychological abuse they do, but i had no idea prior to this that they punished children this way. it's fucking insane

[mellosghosts]

this is what you get for dating an atheist

original

[technically-human]

The infamous puppy debacle of '94

[yak-leather-whips]

Guys, its not some fucking “bad luck devil” or whatever. It’s clearly this fucking time gargler or whatever the fuck that’s behind all this nonsense. Aguefort literally lays it out for us that the quangle makes things happen out of order. Things like, say…Zelda and Gorgug being broken up even though we know from the Seven that they’re still together in Junior year, or Aelwyn suddenly moving out and going from a snarky 19 year old whose never had a job or gone to college to a middle school teacher with 5 cats in the course of 3 months, or the sophomore album being 10 months late even though Fig only finished her debut a little over 16 months ago AND they were in the middle of the tour, or Hallariel and Gilear getting engaged after like a year when 3 months ago Gilear wasn’t even allowed to sleep in her bed, and Sklonda defending one of the organizers of this folk festival when the festival hasn’t even happened yet, or Figs birthday suddenly moving from Christmas to July.

[teethburied]

rust + hallucinations

[pinbones]

I've seen a few posts about women and pants now and many of them are very good, and not to nitpick those posts or downplay religious sexism or anything, but I have to emphasise:

Somebody who DOESN'T live in a controlling religious country/cult/family is also affected by sexism. We all know that, right? Secular parts of the first world also have opinions about how women dress, including when it comes to trousers, especially in childhood and in institutions like schools and the workplace

Me and many people my age (20s) remember being forced into skirts, punished and shamed by parents & teachers & peers & possibly then bosses about what we wear not being feminine enough, and it wasn't by deeply religious sects. Many updates to dress codes are very new and sexist views are still in place in many institutions. Normalised societal misogyny wants women (and people they want to treat as women) to dress femininely, down to what KIND of pants they're allowed to wear (compare a pink top and jeggings to mens jeans and tell me these two women are treated the same. Hating women in pantsuits is still a sexist office joke today, and even those outfits are feminine compared to male suits, which raise eyebrows when worn by women). The women I know who wear trousers regularly are literally otherwise feminine, and all wear dresses to events.

I know trousers have become much more normalised over the past few decades in secular society (yay!! the result of many many years of effort and lawbreaking) but let's not be absolute when we talk about the pants concept lol. Especially within a larger conversation about female/transmasc/intersex/transfem masculinity and social perceptions, especially in an age of rising fascism

[statisticalcats2]

I feel like there's this weird like... mirroring of white man's burden where instead of the burden being to "civilize" non-whites, the burden is to help preserve their culture but in the most racist way possible by acting like BIPOC would never come up with concepts like democracy or gender/race/class equality or secularism on their own and it's not just bad for white people to force themselves into BIPOC cultures and try to change, it's also bad for the BIPOC cultures themselves to try and change and all the human rights activists, democracy supporters, and secularists are traitors brainwashed by the West and it's right for their governments to suppress, abuse, imprison, and murder them.

[r-aindr0p]

Mr. Flamme never works (unpaid) overtime

He might reconsider

[potato-lord-but-not]

sorryyyy sorry sorry

[firstumcschenectady]

“Starting With Care” based on Genesis 2:1-3 and Matthew 6:26-34

We're going to start with the bad news: you can't control anything.

Or, at least you can't control anything important.

You can't control how long you'll live, what the quality of that living will be, what illnesses or injuries you will endure, how long your loved ones will live, if or when traumatic events will occur, nor how they'll be responded to.

I was recently a part of a conversation about suffering led by a medical professional who – rather appropriately I thought – was worried about the fact that patients sometimes assume their suffering is God's punishment. I agreed with him that this is just not TRUE, and it is awful to think that you are both in pain and that you deserve it. But, I am also aware that if pain and suffering aren't a punishment from God, another option is that life is a crapshoot and there isn't any meaning to be found in it – and for a whole lot of people that's MORE uncomfortable than thinking God wills it. Because if God's punishing them, or teaching them a lesson, then the suffering AT LEAST means something and maybe even has redemptive value. But if it was just a random thing, and it could have happened to anyone and just happened to happen to them – well, for a lot of people that's WORSE.

Because then it is entirely out of their control. If God is punishing them, then IF ONLY they'd acted differently, then they could have prevented this from happening.

Right? It is an awful theology, but the human desire to pretend we have control is really quite powerful.

And, let's be honest, we can't control things but we can …. impact probabilities, right? Cancer is MORE likely if you smoke, if you don't exercise, if you don't eat well. Even better, you aren't likely to get hurt falling off a rock wall if you don't attempt to climb a rock wall. Right?

That said, once I broke a toe because a container of chili fell out of my freezer and landed on it. No rockwalls involved. Another time I sprained an ankle horribly – at the ski mountain – on the INDOOR stairs when I was grabbing lunch. Probabilities aren't guarantees.

I find some comfort in the Matthew passage that tells us that worrying and trying to control the uncontrollable is in human nature. This one isn't a modern day problem and we don't have to blame the 24 hour news cycle, smartphones, or social media. This is a human problem. We are aware enough of the uncertainties of life to worry about what may happen.

Jesus seems to recommend not worrying about the little things – about eating and drinking and finding clothes. Which, funnily enough, were exactly things that most of his audience was worried about most of the time because he was speaking to people who often didn't enough enough food, or drink, or a change of clothes.

In the face of their daily struggle for survival, Jesus says,

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

And I get his point. Life is vivacious, nature takes care of itself, hoarding is unnecessary, and truly no one is as beautiful as a flower. But also, I don't get his point. Because it sounds a whole lot like saying, “Sure, there is a system of oppression out there that took away your family's land and livelihood, and now you are hoping every day to get hired back to work the land so that you can afford to eat tonight, and sure you are likely to die soon of malnutrition, but don't worry about it, God will take care of you.” And, while I TRULY believe that God does want to take care of everyone... well, deaths from malnutrition HAPPEN so it seems like that “promise” isn't one that often works out.

Compassionate people don't say to starving people, “don't worry about food.”

So, what the heck is Jesus doing?

I think I did a bad job in picking this passage, particularly that I didn't look at the verses PRECEEDING these ones. Namely, “No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” These lines are a big deal in the Bible. For a world in which people thought being wealthy was a sign of God's favor, it really turns the tables. This passage encourages the poor while challenging the wealthy. And it is placed before the bit about the lilies of the field.

And I wonder if Jesus is at this point talking to wealthy people. The ones who DO have enough to eat, but are worried about it anyway. The ones who do have clothes, but fret that they're not enough.

And I wonder, too, if Jesus is doing one of those really deep teaching things where he is saying to the poor - if you work together you'll have enough, but when you have enough don't worry about getting more like the rich people do. Trust in each other and God, don't horde.

Furthermore, I think maybe Jesus wants those who are oppressed to look up long enough to see they system that is oppressing them, and that it isn't God's will. God made a world of abundance, PEOPLE are keeping each other from accessing it. Part of the problem of trying to survive is that you can be so pre-occupied with it that you don't notice you shouldn't have to fight that hard.

God made enough. It was true then, and it is true now, just as it is true that people died of not having enough then and people die of not having enough now. God made enough, people have distribution problems. And I think it's OK to worry about the distribution problems.

I really appreciated this week's essay from We Cry Justice. I'd like to read a little more of it to you:

God creates human partnerships. In short, God created a system whereby all material and emotional life is tended to. So if we are to be fruitful and multiply – if we are to add to creation – the systems we create must extend the provision of care.

…

Within us lies the potential to create and re-create a system that revolves around and produces care, a system where needs are met. We will need each other to do so. We will need to be in partnership, working together to be fruitful and multiply.1

We can't CONTROL anything, although we can do a lot of damage trying. We can, however, be in partnership with each other and God and seek to “extend the provision of care.” We can choose to notice that care is inherent in creation, and that God's care hasn't changed. We can remind ourselves that there is ENOUGH, and that's good. We can remember the lilies of the field – when they're useful – that creation is beautiful and awe-inspiring.

(Image of mutual care: Ellis Nurses with supporters picketing for better care for their patients, and for each other. Photo by Sara Baron)

We can remember that things aren't now as they should be, but they CAN get better, that God is working with us to make them better, that we're working together, that many people are in this together. That we want a world where no one has to worry about what they will eat or drink or wear, because the resources of the world are abundant there is enough for everyone – and in the kindom of God the resources are shared with the abundance of God.

It is a dream worth holding onto, and remembering, and seeking. We can start with care. And every little bit helps. We can't control it, but we can shape it. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Solita Alexander Riley “In the Beginning, There Was Care” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 145.

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

May 26, 2024

[chetney-pockopea]

Pitying the poor ardent who has to symmetrical-ise Kal’s name now he’s a herald. Kalalak. Kala’alak. Kaladidalak. None of these are good options. There’s already a Kalak, even. Religious scholars are gonna HATE this.

[hinamie]

we may not get forever / but forever is far

[welcometogrouchland]

♫ I do what I want/Crying in the bleachers and I said it was fun/I don't need anything from anyone ♫

(ID in Alt) you guys ever think about your own posts and get upset?? Anyway Damian Wayne I love you I'm so sorry your life is like that

[technically-human]

Edwin after the confession is a menace

Bonus Charles being normal about it: