Sermon on John 3:1-17

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We see in both our readings from Genesis and John that God cares about the world.

In Genesis, we have our introduction to Abram, later Abraham, one of the most well-known ancestors in faith. God was calling him to a long journey away from what he knew.

But with this big ask also came a blessing: that Abram’s descendants would be many and that God would use them to bless “all the families of the world.”

And then, in our reading from John, Jesus says what’s probably the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…”

And that’s immediately followed by: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

God loves the world! God created the world and called it very good. A bit later, God declared that God’s people would be a blessing to all the families of the world. Then, God became human in Jesus to save the world because God loves it so much.

Sometimes we hear John 3:16 and only think of God loving the people of the world, especially when it’s used in an evangelistic way, trying to convince people to become Christians.

But if God loves the whole world, the cosmos (which is what it says in Greek), and God sent Jesus to save the world, then it’s not just people that God loves and wants to save. Maybe God really meant that Jesus came to save the whole world—the people, yes, and also the animals and birds and plants and rock formations and oceans and bacteria and the sun and other stars and everything!

As ELCA Pastor Leah Schade wrote in her commentary on our Gospel reading, “Because God loves the entire cosmos, Jesus’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection is meant for all of Creation, including – but not limited to – human beings.”[1]

But we humans tend to put ourselves first and act like the world is just a thing to be used and used up as we please. We don’t tend to be a blessing to all the human families of the world, let alone its non-human families.

Because we ourselves are humans, we tend to take a human-centric view of the world. We think ourselves smarter than animals who can’t write books. We think we know better how to manage forests than the natural processes they experience. We think our profits in the human-made systems of currency and the economy take precedence over delicately balanced ecosystems.

Yet, if time were telescoped into one 24-hour period, and the Earth was created at midnight, humanity would have only appeared in the final couple minutes of the day.

We act as if we’re the wisest beings in the universe, when we’re the youngest siblings of the family of life, which maybe tracks if any of you have annoying younger siblings.

Maybe we need to stop acting like we’re God’s gift to the world. We haven’t on the whole acted very much like blessings to the families of the world—the schools of fish, the groves of trees, the flocks of birds.

Many of us see coyotes roaming the streets in our own neighborhoods, looking for food in the suburbs that have overtaken their habitats. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of marine animals and birds caught in plastic packaging.

During the COVID lockdowns, we saw news articles about cougars in the capitol of Chile and sea lions taking over ports in Argentina. Scientists estimate that with less human risk, animals traveled 73% farther in a 10-day period during the lockdown than they did in 2019.[2] It’s too simplistic to say that with less human activity, nature was improving across the board, but it did illustrate the large effect humans have on the world around us.

What would it look like to be a blessing to the whole world?

What would we learn if we stopped acting like humans know best?

What would it take to live in right relationship with our planet?

I don’t know exactly what that would look like. I don’t think anyone does. I do believe it’ll take a lot more than recycling, the occasional beach clean-up, and installing a low-flow showerhead, though of course those are good things.

We as a species are going to have to reimagine a whole lot of things to get off the trajectory of warming oceans and greenhouse gases.

You and I as individuals can’t do it by ourselves, but I hope that enough people become passionate about climate change in time to avoid the worst effects.

I don’t believe this is something we can do from a purely intellectual perspective. There’s an essential spiritual aspect to this work, and that’s where you and I as people of faith can make a difference.

Being a blessing to the families of the earth starts with our hearts—not in a sentimental way, but in the deep work of learning to love the world the way God does.

Close your eyes, if you feel comfortable, and think for a moment of someone you love deeply.

Feel your love for that person fill your heart.

Now remember that God loves you abundantly more than that.

And God loves the whole world like that.

Imagine God’s love for you and the whole world filling your heart and spilling over until it brightens everything that exists.

Reflect God’s love for the world with your heart and your life.

As you open your eyes, I’d like to share a blessing from Buddhist dharma teacher Mary Stancavage. It’s a beautiful way to practice our love for the world. Again, if you feel comfortable, you may close your eyes. You can put a hand over your heart if it feels good to you.

In gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whether they are weak or strong

Great or mighty, medium, short or small,

Seen and the unseen,

Living near and far away,

Born and to-be-born —

May all beings be at ease!

Let none through anger or ill will wish harm upon one another

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings.

With that, let us say Amen! Let God’s love for the world overflow in your life, now and always.

[1]https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2026/02/for-god-so-loved-the-world-creation-and-john-3-16/

[2]https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-wild-animals-were-really-doing-during-covid-19-lockdowns-180982351/

Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our readings today speak to the human temptation toward domination.

Our archetypal ancestors in faith, Adam and Eve, weren’t content to walk with God through the lushness of Eden, at peace with God and creation.

They feared God was keeping something from them. Their egos didn’t want to be told they weren’t as smart as they could be.They wanted what they didn’t have. They wanted knowledge and power and control. There’s a reason why this story has continued to be told through the ages, and it’s not just because it’s in the first few pages of our Bibles.

We keep telling it, because we see ourselves in it:

We recognize the scarcity mindset that wasn’t satisfied with the abundance of Eden.

We recognize the insecurity that rose up when the serpent said that God wasn’t telling them the truth.

We recognize the desire to gather knowledge and power and resources beyond our basic needs.

Then, we get another version of that story in our Gospel reading.

Newly baptized Jesus wandered in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights without food and without the comforts and safety of home.

The accuser came to tempt him, and the temptations seem awfully familiar: the temptation to gratify our own desires, the temptation to test God’s relationship with us, and the temptation of power over others.

Jesus succeeded where our archetypal ancestors did not, but the temptations are common to the human experience.

We human beings still fall prey to these temptations.

We succumb to these temptations:

1.    when we choose the convenience of single-use plastics without considering where they will end up.

2.    when our companies choose short-term profits over the long-term cost to our planet.

3.    When we ignore research that warns of the devastating effects of climate change.

4.    When we allow species to go extinct because we only consider our human needs instead of considering those of our sibling species.

5.    When we choose not to make lifestyle and business changes now that would improve the lives of the generations that will come after us.

6.    When we cling to a scarcity mindset instead of letting our God-given imaginations find new ways of creating abundance for all.

We’re surrounded by these temptations. Marketers and lobbyists and advertisers spend their careers trying to get us to succumb to the temptations to consume and extract and acquire and dominate without considering the polluting and death-dealing effects of our choices.

We’re spending this season of Lent considering our broken relationships with creation. There’s a lot to grieve and lament.

And the dominant Western culture doesn’t give us a lot of tools for how to do that.

We’re encouraged to move on from grief and any unpleasant emotions as quickly as possible (preferably by buying something to make us “happy”).

We’re encouraged to numb ourselves (preferably with something we can buy or through media that has advertisements that will get us to buy).

We’re encouraged to hustle and grind and work harder until we’re so exhausted we don’t have time to think about what needs lamenting.

We’re encouraged to think positively, with “good vibes only.” It’s called “toxic positivity” because it keeps our other emotions bottled up instead of processing them in a healthy and mature way.

We don’t have many models or tools for lament.

Fortunately, the Bible gives us some.

There is, of course, a whole book called Lamentations.

And then there’s the book of Psalms, which is full of songs—poetry that shows us an incredible range of human emotion: from the pinnacles of delight to the depths of despair. They show us that God isn’t afraid of our emotions—no matter how big, unpleasant, or shameful they might seem to us.

There’s a whole category of psalms called “lament psalms.”Some are individual, lamenting circumstances in an individual’s life, and some are communal, lamenting events in the world and ways God’s people have strayed. These psalms can help us learn to lament and give us some frameworks for what lament can look like.

My therapist gave me a lament exercise a number of years ago, and I’d like to share it with you today. We’re going to write our own lament psalms using Psalm 71 as a guide.

On the first page, there’s more information about lament psalms.

The second page breaks down the parts of Psalm 71 and gives us space to write down equivalent parts of our own laments.

The third and fourth pages contain Psalm 71 so you can see the different sections.

We’re going to take some time to work on this exercise. We probably won’t have enough time to finish, and that’s okay. You don’t have to share this with anyone—it’s between you and God. Read over the exercise and start writing whatever you can. You don’t have to stick to the parts of the psalm as described—it’s just a framework to get us started.You can also draw your psalm or sit in quiet prayer.

You can lament about our broken relationship with creation, but you don’t have to. You could lament about a situation in your life or something broader. However the Holy Spirit moves you is exactly right.

The Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness, where he overcame human temptation to domination.

Let the Spirit lead you in lament, which can help us move toward right relationship with God, each other, and creation.

The Lord be with you.

Gracious God, Creator of wilderness and garden, accept our laments this day and continue to teach us to lament the ways we succumb to the temptations to domination. Heal our relationships with You, each other, and creation. Draw us to your heart and renew a right spirit within us, this Lent and always. Amen.

Sermon on Genesis 2:4b-9

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

On Ash Wednesday, we remember our mortality—that we are dust and to dust we shall return.

It’s an uncomfortable and maybe even depressing day of the church calendar.

We might feel some shame for the ash crosses on our foreheads that remind us that we were made out of earth. It can feel like one day our bodies will fail us by not being alive anymore.

Anything to do with our bodies can feel shameful when we get told so often, particularly in the epistles in the New Testament, that spiritual is good but the physical is bad.

But that was influenced by Greek philosophy, and it’s just not present in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, in the same way.

We read today from the second creation story in Genesis, and we can see the joy God put into creation.

It’s our origin story, and in it we can relish details like God planting a garden full of “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”

When we read that God formed the first human out of earth and breathed God’s breath into those newly-created nostrils, we can imagine God as delighted as a child with a mudpie and as tender as a potter at the wheel.

How can it be shameful to be crafted so expertly?

How can it be shameful to have God’s very breath in our lungs?

And as with all living things, there is a life cycle that is natural, even though it can be painful.

We are, of course, promised that that isn’t the end of our story, but even that doesn’t mean that our bodies are bad or shameful.

They’re as beautiful as any other part of God’s creation.

But we’ve grown disconnected from our bodies and the earth. We confessed today some of the ways our relationship with the earth is broken.

Most of us go about our day without thinking about the earth at all.

We live in climate-controlled homes, drive in cars with the windows rolled up, walk on treadmills at the gym, listen to the radio instead of the birds, and buy precut produce at the grocery store without wondering where it came from or who grew it or what will happen to the plastic packaging when we throw it out.

When we grow disconnected from the earth, our home, we start treating it as disposable. We start acting like we’re the only species that matters. We lose the patterns of rest and activity dictated by the natural world, and we forget that we ourselves are part of nature. And when nature suffers, we suffer, because there’s no us apart from nature.

Here at First Lutheran, we’re going to spend the seasons of Lent and Easter this year exploring our relationship with nature and God, who called it very good.

And our siblings in Christ at Emanuel Lutheran, our partners for this Ash Wednesday, are exploring the theme of stewardship this season.

Our themes enrich each other.

We often think of stewardship as only being about money, but it really has to do with every aspect of our lives: gratitude for and generosity with what we have been entrusted with—our time, talents, and treasure, our relationships with each other, our communities, and the cosmos we’re a part of.

How do we show our love for God by being good stewards of these?

God is still inviting us to love God and our neighbor.

And our neighbors include all species and the land on which we live.

God is still creating the very good cosmos, and we get to have an impact on it in big and small ways, because we are a part of it.

Marking a cross of water on our foreheads to remember our baptism reminds us that we are a part of the family of God.

Marking a cross of ash on our foreheads reminds us that we are part of the family of the God-created cosmos.

Our good bodies will return to the earth from which they were formed, continuing the cycle of life, even as we’re held forever in God’s loving embrace.

And until then, we have agency in cooperating with God to make the earth a more habitable place for all life.

We have some resources available at the entrance for contemplating how to be good stewards of creation, which works for the theme for both Emanuel and First Lutheran. If you get the Thursday announcement emails from First Lutheran, you’ll get links to these tomorrow.

Consider cutting down on shopping, meat, or single-use plastics for Lent. Or instead, plant a garden, call your representatives, take a nature walk, or support a local sustainable business.

There are a ton of ways we can learn together to be better stewards, more mindful consumers, and nicer neighbors on this planet.

On this Ash Wednesday, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Remember you belong to the family of the cosmos. You get to show gratitude and generosity in that kinship.

And most of all, remember God’s deep and abiding love for you and all creation.