Sermon on Matthew16:13-20

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

They say notto read the comment section in online posts. If you publish an article or make a statement, there might be some supportive comments, but there will probably be a lot more toxic ones. It’s easy to get sucked into reading criticism and misunderstanding, internalize it, and stop creating, speaking, and sharing. It’s far easier to misunderstand and criticize for the sake of getting attention than to create something new.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus was being misunderstood and criticized. People didn’t really get him. When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” they shared positive responses: that people thought he was a prophet.

But we know from elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus was suspected of being possessed or in league with demons. His disciples didn’t mention that part.

But even the most positive answers didn’t present the whole picture.

So, Jesus asked his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”

And Peter answered: impetuous Peter, who in our reading a couple weeks ago asked Jesus to let him walk on water while the other disciples stayed in the boat.

Maybe it was that experience—feeling the waves roll under his feet and knowing Jesus had power over the natural world.

Maybe it was the feeding of the 5,000 before that, filling his belly with a miraculously abundant meal. Or the feeding of the 4,000, where Jesus fed people in Gentile territory, expanding his mission to the whole world.

Something made Peter realize that his rabbi Jesus was so much more than a prophet. This was “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This was the savior God promised,the anointed leader descended from David, the man after God’s own heart.

It was Peter, a fallible and faithful fisher, who really got Jesus. And Jesus declared that he would build the Beloved Community on the testimony of an ordinary, everyday guy with a big mouth and an even bigger heart.

It’s encouraging that Jesus didn’t pick the most learned, the most strategic, the strongest, richest, or most powerful person. He picked Peter.

That’s some good news for the days when it’s hard to be a follower of Jesus.

And it’s definitely hard to be a follower of Jesus sometimes:

1.    When the loudest Christians act in unloving ways

2.    When the media treats Christianity like a monolith instead of acknowledging its incredibly different traditions and perspectives

3.    When so many people have been hurt by Christians that it makes you not want to fess up to being one

4.    When you’re learning yet another aspect of how Christians throughout history have hurt people in the name of Jesus

People today often don’t get Jesus any more than they did in the first century.

It’s hard to really get Jesus when there are centuries of culture, theology, art, etc. to sift through to figure out what we believe about him. And so many people today speak in absolutes about Jesus and Christianity, leaving little room for questions, doubt, paradox, or mystery. There’s so much we don’t know for sure—why else would we call it faith?

One thing we don’t know for sure is what Jesus looked like, and yet, I bet for many of us, if we closed our eyes and pictured Jesus, he would look something like the Jesus window up there at the front of the church, based on the famous 1940 painting by Warner Sallman.

But, we don’t have any photographs, portraits, or even written descriptions of what Jesus looked like when he was walking around in the first century.

Chances are, he had dark brown hair, brown skin, and brown eyes. He was probably fairly muscular with calloused hands from learning carpentry from Joseph.

And yet, people would often joke that my next-door neighbor in seminary looked like Jesus. He was tall, lean, blond, with a trim, light-colored beard, and skin with a similar color to mine. Not exactly Middle Eastern looking.

Then, I have a family friend who is like a bonus grandmother to me. She’s originally from Lebanon, and she was my mom’s supervisor at the library when I was born. She grew up picturing Mary as blonde.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with picturing Jesus (or Mary)in different ways. It’s beautiful for people to imagine Jesus as looking like them and seeing Jesus reflected in their own humanity. Or imagining Jesus as someone very different from them and seeing Jesus reflected in the humanity of others.

But when white European missionaries carried portraits of a white looking Jesus with them to places where people looked very different, it was natural to conclude that the missionaries were more like Jesus than the people being preached to. This compounded the harmful and racist theologies often being taught.

So much damage has been done in Jesus’ name.

But it’s not too late to examine our own understandings of who Jesus is and what he looks like—maybe clearing up some misunderstandings and getting a clearer picture of Jesus’ heart.

A few years ago, when we had Messy Church, we were learning about the different stained-glass windows here at First Lutheran, because the kids had a lot of questions about them.

When we got to the Jesus window, I brought in a bunch of art depicting Jesus: the Warner Sallman portrait, a sixth-century Byzantine icon, a modern-day portrayal of Jesus as an unhoused person, paintings of Jesus as a Black person and an Asian person, a feminine-looking Jesus, a computer-generated image of what the historical Jesus might have actually looked like, etc.

It was so fun to hear the kids explore the different images. They noticed kind eyes or similarities in their hair textures.

And then, we drew our own portraits of Jesus and let me tell you: they were all very different. And that’s okay.

As I told the kids: it’s okay to imagine Jesus looking like us or any way we like, as long as we remember what Jesus probably looked like and don’t impose our version of Jesus on someone else.

It’s great to let our imaginations run wild. As our reading from Romans puts it: “we, who are many, are one body in Christ.” Jesus is present in the Body of Christ, and so can look any way we can dream up.

It’s helpful to imagine Jesus looking like us so that we see the image of God in ourselves.

And it’s helpful to imagine Jesus looking like people very different from us so that we see the image of God in every person.

How might opening our hearts to different images of Jesusopen our hearts to our neighbors, especially those who don’t necessarily look like the Jesus window?

How might that lead us to a deeper response to Jesus’ question: “who do you say that I am?”

It’s okay if your answer isn’t as succinct as Peter’s. It’s a powerful question that we can continue to answer for our whole lives.

Jesus is both Messiah and mystery, Son of the Living God and present in the least of our siblings, and present at this table, in our communities, and in our own hearts.

Jesus is in the mirror and in the face of the person you would rather not deal with today.

Let the question, “who do you say that I am,” live in your heart and let it shape the way you move in the world.

Maybe having more Christians with better questions and fewer answers will be an antidote to the ways our world is determined to misunderstand Jesus.

At least, it may help us be braver in loving people in Jesus’ name.

Sermon on Matthew15:10-28

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

As I’ve been reading article after article for the past couple months about the cyclospora outbreak, adjusting my produce buying habits and avoiding lettuce at restaurants, I’m not sure I agree with Jesus that what goes into the mouth doesn’t defile a person—at least on a literal level.

Jesus, of course, was talking on a spiritual level, though—saying that people should be more careful with the words they say than withobserving the intricacies of ritual. It goes along with Jesus’ teachings on not judging each other, like Jesus was saying to the religious leaders who were complaining: “Stop worrying so much about whether my disciples have observed the hand-washing rituals and pay attention instead to whether or not you’re hurting people with the way you treat them.”

And then immediately afterward, it seems like Jesus got a chance to practice what he preached. But, at least at first, he didn’t do a great job.

I have a hard time with this story.

Even when I read Jesus’ words as gently as I can and give him grace for maybe being overwhelmed already by his mission to spread the good news of Beloved Community just to his own Jewish siblings, I just can’t shake the feeling that what came out of Jesus’ mouth was defiling. To me, it seems callous, maybe even racist.

The Canaanites were the ones Jesus’ ancestors planned to wipe out so they could settle in their territory, the Promised Land.

So, I can understand Jewish people and Canaanites not getting along very well in the first century. Jesus’ disciples’ reaction of wanting Jesus to send her away is understandable, though not kind or compassionate.

But Jesus’ reaction is no better—ignoring her, comparing people of her heritage to dogs, saying she and her people are less worthy of God’s good gifts.

I don’t like this version of Jesus. I don’t like it when he reflects the prejudices we humans are prone to. I don’t like to see an uncompassionate side of him.

I don’t know what to do with that part of the story. Feel free to share your thoughts with me—I’d love to hear your insights.

What I do appreciate about this story, though, is that Jesus didn’t stay there.

He experienced the banter and exchanging of thoughts present in Jewish rabbinical culture with this woman who was considered so different from him on a social level, and it expanded his perspective.

I won’t go so far as to say she changed his mind, because Jesus knew his scriptures well enough to know thatGod loves the whole world, that the “year of the Lord’s favor” is for everyone, that God’s “house shall be called a house of prayerfor all peoples,” as our Isaiah reading today says.

But Jesus did seem to pivot his mission after this. Early on, he was focused on his Jewish siblings, telling his disciples to only go to Jewish towns as they started to share the good news of the Beloved Community, and spending most of his time in Jewish territory. But the plan was always to expand the scope of that mission to everyone.

An article[1] by Catherine Jones Payne compared this story to the wedding at Cana in the Gospel of John.

Jesus knew he was going to have a public ministry, but when his mom prompted him to help with the crisis of the lack of wine, he told her it wasn’t his time yet. But his mom simply told the servants to follow his instructions, confident that it was his moment to act. And he did, saving the event and foreshadowing the abundance of the eternal banquet of the Reign of God.This encounter with his mother seems to have prompted Jesus to begin his public ministry.

And this encounter with a desperate mother seems to have prompted him to expand his ministry to match his mission more fully.

Payne’s article notes that this interaction came after the feeding of the 5,000, which you all explored with Pastor Jaz a couple weeks ago, and shortly before the feeding of the 4,000.

It seems odd that Jesus would repeat a miracle like this and that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew would think it important enough to include both.

Payne argues, though, that the feeding of the 4,000 was a response to Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman. The crowd in the feeding of the 5,000 was mostly Jewish people, and the feeding of the 4,000 was mostly Gentiles.

While the twelve baskets left over from the feeding of the 5,000 might have symbolized the twelve tribes of Israel, the seven left over from the feeding of the 4,000 may have symbolized the seven nations of Canaan or simply the number of completion. Either way, it seems like there was an expansion of the Beloved Community into Gentile territory from this point on.

Jesus freed the woman’s daughter, he then fed people outside his bubble, and after his resurrection, he commissioned his disciples to make disciples of all nations.No one is excluded from the Beloved Community—not then and not now.

But today, even though we have more access than ever to people around the world and we live in a diverse area, it’s easy to get siloed.

Social media algorithms put us in echo chambers. AI chatbots tend to reinforce whatever we already think. Media companies have their biases. Our neighborhoods tend to be largely one ethnic group or another, even though overall Southern California is a very diverse place. Human beings tend to gravitate toward people we perceive as being similar to us.

Our lives can get small, curated, and biased really easily.

But even though it can be anxiety-inducing to strike up a conversation with someone different from us, those interactions can be incredibly enriching.

Sure, we can learn from books, articles, documentaries, and so on, but hearing people’s stories and perspectives can be one of the most effective ways of broadening our horizons.

In seminary, one of my program requirements was a cross-cultural experience. There were several options, but the only one that fit my schedule was a program all the way in exotic Los Angeles.

I felt silly signing up for a “cross-cultural” experience so close to where I grew up, but I have to tell you: I got to see sides of LA I never had before.

It was coordinated through New City Parish, a coalition of ELCA congregations that joined together in 1992 to respond to civil unrest around the not guilty verdict inthe Rodney King police brutality court case. Their vision was to provide“hope, healing, and support to the community as it began the long process of rebuilding.”[2] And they’re still doing great work together throughout LA.

We stayed with families from those congregations. I got to stay with a family from Belize for a few days and then a Salvadoran family.

We spent time learning Spanish and bits of Mexican culture from teachers from Mexico, visited various historical and cultural sites in LA, and learned from and worshiped with our various host congregations.

For all I thought I knew about LA, I experienced so much on that trip. I learned about my similarities with and differences from my LA neighbors and siblings in Christ. It deepened my love for Southern California. It expanded my understanding of what church can look like and what it means to be Lutheran.

Despite some lingering stereotypes, pupusas are just as Lutheran as Jello salad.No matter what cultural foods we bring to the table, we’re Lutheran because we believe God’s unearned grace is for everyone, and out of gratitude and love for God we can joyfully love our neighbors.

Those neighbors include people of all cultures, skin colors, religions and other beliefs, income levels, housing situations, people with piercings and tattoos and those who get squeamish at the thought, people of all gender identities who love people of all gender identities, people with any nation on their passport and people with no passport, people with any kind of disability or addiction or mental illness—I could go on and on. You get the idea.

For all my issues with Jesus at the beginning of his encounter with the Canaanite woman, maybe the most helpful way to read the story is as a mirror.

In Jesus, I recognize my own biases, discomfort, and fatigue at one more person asking something of him, someone he might have preferred not to cross paths with.

And also in Jesus, I can recognize our human potential to be changed by an encounter with a stranger. It can help us see the world in a new way.

It can help us be generous, giving more than we thought possible, and, maybe more miraculously, being generous to ourselves, giving ourselves grace and allowing ourselves to grow and change.

After all, there is a wideness in God’s mercy, and it’s for everyone, including you.

[1]https://www.catherinejonespayne.com/p/it-is-right-to-give-the-childrens?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=22w6vy&triedRedirect=true

[2]https://www.newcityparish.org/blank-1

Sermon on Matthew14:22-33

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Peter gets a bad rapin this story for getting freaked out and starting to sink, but no one who has never walked on water should be judging.

Peter’s the only one who got out of the boat! Granted, he’s the one who suggested it, as a test to make sure it was really Jesus. I don’t blame him, though, for being scared by an ominous figure approaching their wave-battered boat in the early hours of the morning. All it takes is a dark hallway to fill my mind with all kinds of scary things.

So, yes, Peter sank, but he had faith that Jesus could give him the ability to walk on water in the first place and then the trust to call out for Jesus to save him.

Peter made a faith-filled suggestion and then accepted Jesus’ invitation to join him out on the water.

And when that became too much and his fears overcame him, Jesus was there to rescue him.

Those who witnessed the exchange, though they stayed in the boat, worshipped Jesus, confessing him as the Son of God.

That’s truly what this story is about. Yes, it’s a vignette about Peter biting off more than he could chew, but ultimately, it’s about showing that Jesus has the kind of relationship with the natural world that only the One who created it could have.

And at the same time, there’s something personal about this. Yes, Jesus has awesome power. And also, Jesus responded when Peter cried out in his panic, “save me!”

At the end of this story, Jesus’ disciples believed more fervently that Jesus was the Son of God. And also, they had experienced something that surpassed head knowledge. I wonder if they ever woke in the early hours of the morning and remembered Jesus’ words calling to them through the rough wind, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Though it’s clunky in English, “it is I” is better translated as “I am,” God’s name given to Moses from the burning bush.For both Moses and Jesus’ disciples, they were experiencing both an illustration of God’s miraculous nature and a personal encounter with God that would change their lives forever.

One of my favorite poems uses the story of Peter walking on water to describe multiple ways of learning that can connect us with God. It’s called “Poetics of Faith” by Denise Levertov:

‘Straight to the point’
           can ricochet,
                      unconvincing.
Circumlocution, analogy,
           parable’s ambiguities, provide
                      context, stepping-stones.
 
Most of the time. And then
 
the lightning power
           amidst these indirections,
                      of plain
unheralded miracle!
           For example,
                      as if forgetting
to prepare them, He simply
           walks on water
                      towards them, casually –
and impetuous Peter, empowered,
           jumps from the boat and rushes
                      On wave-tip to meet Him –
a few steps, anyway –
           (till it occurs to him,
                      ‘I can’t, this is preposterous’
and Jesus has to grab him,
           tumble his weight
                      back over the gunwale).
Sustaining those light and swift
           steps was more than Peter
                      could manage. Still,
years later,
           his toes and insteps, just before sleep,
                      would remember their passage.

I love the way she concludes that Peter’s body remembered the miraculous amid what’s often pointed to as a failure. “Sustaining those light and swift steps was more than Peter could manage,” but even the momentary experience of walking on water would stay with him forever.

Maybe what we consider failure deserves further consideration.

We all have seeming failures in our lives—embarrassments, times we’ve been passed over, mistakes (even grave ones), decisions that led to outcomes we didn’t want.

In my early twenties, I moved to Denver to be near my college boyfriend. I quit my job and movedseveral states away to live in a friend’s furnished basement. I moved in January, which was not the best call for someone who had never lived in snow before.

I found a temp job and a church community and did everything I could think of to try to build a life there.

But I quickly became horribly homesick.I cried daily and felt my energy draining away. I tried to exercise and eat well and make friends and get involved in the community and continue my hobbies—everything I could to adjust to what was arguably a very comfortable and privileged life.

But as spring arrived and the weather warmed and the flowers bloomed, I was still miserable.

So, in April, only a few months after arriving, I broke up with my boyfriend and moved back to California. I moved back in with my folks, got my old job back, and licked my wounds.

I felt like a failure—a spoiled young adult who couldn’t cut it in a life others would kill for.

“Sustaining those light and swift was more than [I] could manage.”

Still, as much as I wouldn’t want to relive those months, I’m grateful for what they taught me.

I learned a lot about growing up and living on my own.

I learned that most other places don’t say “the” before freeway numbers. And that you have to shovel your car out while it’s still snowing or you’ll get a ring of ice around your car. Learned that one the hard way…

I found out how much I love where I grew up, which paved the way for me to serve this community.

I learned that there’s room in my heart for more than one congregation. I fell deeply in love with the congregation I worshiped with there even as I missed my home congregation terribly.

I found out how very strong my safety net is, which I try never to take for granted.Without it, what was a very mild setback could have been devastating. It built my awareness that so many don’t have that kind of support and connection.

And I relearned to lean on God. This wasn’t the sort of situation where I hit rock bottom, pleaded with God, and then everything got better. I was praying fervently throughout, and things didn’t seem to improve. I wondered if I was doing something wrong.

It felt like a long time that the waves battered and the wind buffeted, and it felt like a long time that I was crying out, “save me!”

But even though things didn’t miraculously or instantaneously get better, God was with me the whole time. Even though I was still sad and scared and lonely, God was in the church community that embraced me. God was in my generous friends who housed me. God was in my safety net that made it so I could return home. God was in the small things that kept me going day by day and helped me return to myself over the course of time.

Now, again, in the grand scheme of things, this was a pretty mild “failure,” and you might not even call it a storm, but it felt like it at the time. The wind and waves knocked me off balance, I sank, and Jesus “tumbled [my] weight back over the gunwale.” Then, I sat sopping wet and embarrassed in the boat for a while.

But “still, years later,” I can look back and see how Jesus was there with me through the whole thing, inviting me to try something new, be willing to take risks, and trust that he would be there to respond when I cried out for help, even if it wasn’t as quickly as I would have preferred.

Whatever storms you’re facing, whatever winds are stinging your eyes, remember Who made the water in the first place and remember that God’s on your side. Be willing to get out of the boat. Even if you sink, Jesus is there with you.

Even when it feels like the wind is against you, Jesus is calling out: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”