Sermon on Matthew 11:2-11

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Last week, we heard John the Baptist boldly and even brashlyexhort the people who sought him out to change their minds and their lives in preparation for the coming Messiah.

But by eight chapters later in today’s Gospel reading, John had been imprisoned for speaking truth to power. He sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah that John had been preaching.

It seems that John’s circumstances had understandably shaken his confidence in his message. He had dedicated his life to preparing the way for the Messiah, but he wasn’t sure Jesus was the one.

In response, Jesus could have just told John’s disciples, “Yep! It’s me!” Or he could have said, “Yeah, I was born in Bethlehem, and all these prophecies were written about me. Let me show you all the scriptural evidence.”Or he could have been Transfigured right there instead of on the mountaintop and glowed with God’s glory.

But instead, Jesus told them to tell John about his actions. He invited them to listen and see—to witness with their own senses what Jesus was up to.

I often point to Luke chapter 4 as Jesus’ mission statement, when he quoted Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor and oppressed. But for the Gospel of Matthew, this part summarizes his mission, again drawing imagery from the book of Isaiah. This is what he’s about: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus didn’t command armies, amass wealth, or garner political popularity—all aspects of earthly power. Instead, he manifested God’s power through acts of mercy and compassion. He focused on the marginalized, the poor and the oppressed—those who lacked earthly power.

This is God’s dream for the world: liberation and healing.

Jesus showed the world this dream by acting it out and called his followers to do the same.

Unfortunately, we don’t always do a good job of that.

Christianity today is largely known for who ithates, excludes, and lobbies to legislate against.

Churches are known for infighting, abuse, and control.

And while I argue that the gospel is inherently political in a broad sense, because it involves how we live together as people, the Church has historically run into problems when it gets too enmeshed with political power. And too many Christian leaders are expending too much effort toward amassing political power right now.

On the whole, we’ve got a bad reputation.

We live in a society that wants to see to believe.

And people see us getting grumpy about people cussing, instead of turning the other cheek to people who cuss at us.

People see us judging people instead of welcoming the stranger as we would welcome Jesus himself.

People see us investing in building projects instead of housing our neighbors.

In my second year of my program, my seminary sold its property up in the hills of Berkeley and relocated to the second floor of an office buildingdowntown. It was great to be in the heart of the community. We found out, though, that some of our downstairs neighbors from Berkeley City College, saw the word “evangelical” in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and were a little scared of us.

It's unfortunate that a word that just means focused on good news has become so loaded and politically charged.Sometimes when people find out I’m a Christian, I have to resist the urge to cry out, “No! Not like that! I’m not that type of Christian!”

It’s not entirely fair that people see us the way they do when Christians have and do a lot of good, including the great work of Caring Hands and the other ways this generous congregation loves our community, but the reality is that when a lot of people hear the word Christianity, they don’t associate it with liberation, healing, or love. Often quite the opposite.

But we know that we have a God who calls flawed human beings into the Beloved Community. We’re simultaneously saints and sinners who are capable both of loving and of harming others.

God knows this and loves us and welcomes us into God’s family anyway.It doesn’t excuse any harm we cause—we need to try to make amends, whatever that looks like. But it does relieve us from the burden of trying to be perfect.

Trying to give off an image of perfection won’t help us salvage Christianity’s reputation. If anything, it’ll cause more distrust, because people can sense when people seem fake, especially younger generations.

Instead, we can bring our whole selves to church and to the world in our daily lives. We can be honest when we’re struggling. We can ask for help. We can admit our doubts, discouragements, and fears.Honesty and vulnerability can be risky, but they help our relationships with others deepen. Supporting each other and accepting support are how bonds form—the kind of bonds that make for the kind of imperfect and beautiful Christian community we would be proud to let the world see.

And we can follow in Jesus’ example—not trying to be a savior, but showing our gratitude for how God makes a difference in our lives through our actions.

Jesus told John’s disciples to tell John what they heard and saw Jesus do. We can follow in Jesus’ footsteps and imperfectly do what we can to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Roman Catholic Cardinal John Dearden wrote a poem about doing just that:

“Prophets of a Future Not Our Own”

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Beloved children of God, we don’t have to save the world. We don’t have to salvage Christianity’s reputation. We certainly don’t have to be perfect.

Jesus set us free to do our little part in cocreating God’s dream of liberation and healing for the world.As we sing “Light Dawns on a Weary World,” imagine what God’s dream for the world will look like and how you can be a part of making that dream come true.

Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Last week we talked about how jarring Jesus talking about the end times seems at the beginning of Advent, when there’s so much preparation for Christmas going on.

This week, our reading isn’t much cheerier. We’ve got John the Baptist telling people to repent and hurling insults at the religious authorities. Very festive.

There’s a gentleman who often hangs out in the parking lot of a grocery store near my home. He holds a sign that tells people they’ll go to Hell without Jesus, and he yells at people through a megaphone.

I often wonder how effective his strategy is. I, at least, find people loudly threatening me to be a turn-off.

And yet, our reading says that, despite John’s cantankerous demeanor, “Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him.” Something in his message was appealing to people.

It may be because John was proclaiming that something big was coming. The prophets had said there would be a forerunner of the Messiah, that the prophet Elijah would return to prepare the way. The Gospel of Matthew’s description of John evokes Elijah—all the details about his clothing and lifestyle.

People recognized his role as someone to pay attention to because God was up to something.

John was letting them know that now was the time to examine their lives and make sure they were ready for what was coming—or rather who was coming.

As much as the word “repent” can sound threatening, it really just means to “change your mind,” or maybe more practically to “change your life.”

There’s a reason why self-help is a multi-billion-dollar industry. There’s a reason why people keep making New Year’s Resolutions year after year. The idea that you have the power to dramatically change your life for the better is appealing. And maybe transformation like that is only possible with God’s help.

So, John’s message to repent wasn’t punitive: he was inviting transformation. Most of us get to a point where we would welcome a fresh start at least a few times over the course of our lives. 

So, people came to John to be baptized.

What baptism meant to them is different from what it means to modern day Christians.

In the first century, baptism was a cleansing ritual for converts to Judaism. It wasn’t something people who were already Jewish did.

But John called his fellow Jewish people also to be cleansed and confess their sins in preparation for the Messiah.

From John’s reaction to the religious leaders, we can assume that they were questioning why John was baptizing people who were already Jewish.

John responded by saying not to rely merely on their ancestors’ faith, and perhaps for the religious leaders, not to rely on their positions of power either. Instead, they should engage and connect with God themselves. He was, in his own cranky way, inviting them to join the Beloved Communtiy.

And we see in our reading from Romans that God’s mission of Beloved Community is for the whole world. Paul declared that Jesus came to “confirm the promises given to the ancestors and that the gentiles might glorify God.” Gentiles are included in the Beloved Community too—thankfully for any of us who don’t have any Jewish heritage. The Beloved Community includes anyone who wants to be a part of it. It’s open to all.

That’s God’s dream of inclusion and belonging for this world.

And our reading from Isaiah shows us another aspect of God’s vision for the world. It tells us that “with righteousness he shall judge for the poor / and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth.” And then there’s the beautiful list of the vulnerable living safely: the wolf not harming the lamb, the leopard and the baby goat, the lion and the calf, the bear and the cow, and the snake not harming the human child.

In God’s vision for the world, the vulnerable will be safe.

Over the course of this week, though, I was starting to feel uncomfortable with this passage. The idea of cohabitating with predators started to trouble me.

Marginalized people probably won’t feel safe in the presence of someone who victimized them, even if they can’t harm them anymore. And someone who has been abused would probably feel unsafe around their abuser, even if they can’t harm them in the same way.

So, maybe the image of the wolf living with the lamb isn’t as comforting as it sounds. But perhaps it’ll help if we refrain from personifying the creatures in the Isaiah reading. Instead of reading the wolf as a human predator, we can let the wolf just be a wolf. A literal animal wolf isn’t wrong for hunting.

So, instead of the predator/prey aspect of the metaphor in our reading, we can understand it as expressing that, in the fullness of the Beloved Community, nothing will be harmful anymore. There will be no violence or injury or even anxiety about the possibility of harm—there will only be peace and safety, which will make room for joy. Fear will be replaced with delight in God.

John talked about bearing fruit. The fruit of the Beloved Community, as we see it in our readings today, is inclusion, safety, justice for the oppressed, and belonging for all.

As Lutherans, we might be uncomfortable with John’s calls to change our lives and bear fruit. It sounds awfully like works righteousness, having to do certain things to earn God’s love.

But let’s think about the image of bearing fruit. A tree doesn’t try to prove its worth by bearing fruit. It bears fruit as a natural process of living in a healthy environment and getting the right amount of sun and water and nutritious soil.

God’s creating a Beloved Community for a reason—with God’s help, we build a healthier environment together, and the fruit grows out of that.

We need God’s help to be ready for what God’s up to in the world—whether the first Christmas or the Advent of Christ at the end of time. There’s no amount of self-help books, New Year’s resolutions, or people yelling into megaphones in grocery store parking lots that can change our lives without the Holy Spirit bearing fruit in us.

In our baptisms as we understand them—distinct from John’s—God declares that we are part of God’s family forever. We can trust in that as we work together with God to create a safer, more inclusive, healthier Beloved Community where harm will give way to pure joy.

That’s God’s dream for this world. Instead of shouting that into a megaphone, let’s show it with our lives. That’s how we can prepare the way this Advent.

Sermon on Matthew 24:36-44

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent is always a bit jarring. We’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving, we decorated our sanctuary, our neighborhoods are more than beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the stores are overflowing with red and green.

And then, here comes Jesus, talking about the end of the world. Read the room, Jesus! We just want to celebrate your birth already! We don’t want to think about all that scary and depressing stuff!

But the beginning of our church year is Advent. It’s more than just a preparation time for Christmas. It’s about Jesus’ second coming, not just baby Jesus in the manger. It’s about the future, not just the past.

So, on this first Sunday of Advent, we read that as Jesus was nearing his death, he warned his disciples to watch for his second coming and to remain faithful.

Since they didn’t know when it would happen, it was important to alwayslive in the way Jesus taught them.

Paul wrote to Jesus followers in Rome in our second reading with some ideas for what that should look like. He gave us a nice little vice list to tell us what we shouldn’t do. Then, he said to “put on” Jesus and to “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

His advice, at least to a certain extent, is good. People don’t tend to make the best decisions when they’re drunk, it’s hard to stay in relationship with people who pick fights all the time, etc.

But I’m troubled by the line about making no provision for the flesh. This is a theme throughout Paul’s work and the epistles in general.

Paul draws on the idea in Greek philosophy that there’s a binary between the physical and the spiritual, between the flesh and the spirit. And the flesh is bad, and the spirit is good.

Greek thought has so influenced Western societies that it can seem normal and natural to think of the physical as bad and the spiritual or mental as good.

Christian thinkers built on Paul’s framework, cementing that binary into Christian philosophy throughout the centuries. The Enlightenment valued reason, order, and hierarchy—esteeming the mind over matter. Puritanism, which had a huge influence on American culture in particular regardless of one’s faith tradition, leaned heavily into not “gratifying the flesh,” instead valuing restraint, sobriety, and hard work.

None of these are bad things necessarily, but anything taken to an extreme can be a problem.

When we fully accept this binary, we try to divorce ourselves from our bodies and don’t worry about taking care of the earth.

We try to subdue our bodies, ignoring our needs and treating ourselves like machines.

If what’s physical doesn’t matter—or is inherently bad—then we miss out on the incredible beauty of this universe that God declared good.

A more troubling implication is that when we’re taught to ignore our bodies and not trust ourselves, our intuition, or our experience, we’re easier to manipulate and make obedient to authority figures. We humans don’t have a good track record for having others’ best interests in mind when we have unchecked power.

I’m not saying you should act on every impulse your body has, but our bodies have wisdom to share with us.

By listening to my body, I can realize that I’m acting aggressively because I’m hungry.

My body can let me know I have too much going on in my mind when I become short of breath and my pulse races.

My body can tell me when I’m feeling uncomfortable around a certain person or situation, and I can seek help and establish boundaries that can protect me.

Paul’s vice list perhaps should have included overworking, because I don’t make good decisions when I don’t sleep enough, and I don’t appreciate the good things God has provided for me when I don’t let my body rest.

Rest is an act of faith, because it requires admitting that we can’t do it all and must depend on God.And rest allows us to slow down enough to give thanks to God for what is beautiful in this world.

What is physical in this world is important to God, not just the spiritual.

Our theme for Advent this year is “Dreams and Visions,” because today we start a year of focusing on the Gospel of Matthew in the lectionary, and Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth involves a lot of dreams—Joseph’s dreams, the wise ones’ dreams.

And Advent is about God’s dreams for this world—in the first century with the birth of Jesus, the visions God gave to the prophets of old, and what God has envisioned for our world into the future.

We read today of the vision of God’s peace that Isaiah proclaimed. It’s a vision of a gathering of God’s people on the highest mountain, where everyone can see it, and people are drawn to it from all around the world.

And of course this passage includes the beautiful and vivid image of beating swords into ploughshares—repurposing weapons of war into tools for cultivating the land and feeding people.

Instead of studying how to wage war, people will stream to the mountain to learn how to walk in God’s paths. We won’t need our weapons or strategies for warfare—we’ll instead learn ways of peace and caring for the earth.

God’s vision for peace is physical—involving images of a mountain being climbed and fields being ploughed. We’ll read more next week about what the physicality of God’s peace looks like with predators lying peacefully next to prey.

God dreams of peace for this world—in this world. The full realization of the Beloved Community is material, not just spiritual. And it is very good.

For now, our good world still contains a lot of violence and war. God’s peace will one day be realized, but for now, there is much to be done, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Through the Holy Spirit, God’s dream of peace can become our dream too.

Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour of his return, but Paul also said in Romans that “you know what time it is.”

You know what time it is: it’s time to dream of what peace actually looks like.

It’s time to care for our bodies, letting them rest enough to be able to make room for holy imagination.

It’s time to learn how to walk in the ways of Jesus.

It’s time to live peaceably in our neighborhoods and communities.

It’s time to care for our neighbors’ bodies so that they can live in peace too.

It’s time to care for our planet, ploughing fields instead of bombing them.

It’s time to beat our swords into ploughshares.

It’s time for God’s shalom. Let’s turn to the Hebrew for an antidote to the Greek flesh vs. spirit binary.

At last Sunday’s Interfaith Thanksgiving service, Rabbi Mati from Temple Beth Tikvah reminded us that “shalom,” which is translated into English as “peace,” has a much deeper meaning than just the absence of violence. It means something more like “wholeness.” It’s a peace that’s about well-being and the world being restored to completeness. It’s physical and spiritual.

That’s God’s dream for this world.

It was God’s dream at the Beginning, when God made this world good and walked aroundthe Garden of Eden with us.

It was God’s dream when God became human and taught us how to love each other as ourselves.

And it is God’s dream for the future, when God’s shalom will be complete.

We don’t know the day or the hour, but we know how to spend the time that we have.

Beloved children of God, be the peace that God dreams of.