Sermon on Matthew 10:24-39

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Happy Father’s Day!

As our Gospel reading says today:“For I have come to set a man against his father.” Wait, no, that’s not very celebratory.

How about: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”—that’s worse!

Let’s try a different part: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword”—that’s just a hard message to hear from Jesus all around.

This isn’t the “meek and mild” shepherd view of Jesus we sometimes hold onto.

But it isn’t a conqueror Jesus, or a jealous, controlling “you can’t love anyone but me” Jesus either.

Jesus, who blessed peacemakers, promoted loving our neighbor, and told Peter to put away his sword, wasn’t about warmongeringor hating people.

He was, however, realistic about how his message of God’s peace, inclusion, justice, and love would be received. He knew that people invested in the status quo wouldn’t be open to the upside-down Reign of God where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. They might even violently oppose it.

Jesus wasn’t going to sugarcoat his message to make it palatable for people who were made comfortable by systems that hurt and oppressed others.

He knew he would be called names like “Beelzebul” and would likely be arrested and executed for speaking against the exploitative values of the Roman Empire. So, as he was teaching his disciples to bring mercy and the Good News of the Beloved Community to those around them as we read last week, he was also preparing them for what the reactions of those in power would likely be.

If people were insulting Jesus, they would also insult his disciples.

If Jesus’ own hometown threw him out, his disciples’ families and neighbors would probably disown them as well.

If those in power threatened Jesus with violence, Jesus’ disciples were also in physical danger.

Jesus’ message about God’s Reign would be received poorly by some.

That’s still true today.

Christians disagree on a lot of things, to the point where people from two different denominations might hold opposing views on almost everything.

Too often it’s self-proclaimed Christians who hurl insults at each other. Too often it’s Christians who are known for exclusion.

Too often it’s the family of the Body of Christ that’s set against itself.

It’s enough to hurt one’s soul.

Our Southern Baptist siblings voted by almost three quarters last week to ban churches that allow women to be pastors or to preach. It’s easy to imagine why that was hard for me to hear.

And while so many churches proclaim that “all are welcome,” the best LGBTQ folks can expect in many congregations is bare tolerance, like “you’re welcome to sit in our pews, but if you don’t feel bad about yourself, then you’re not welcome until you’ve ‘repented.’ And don’t even think about asking if you can be part of a leadership team or lead worship music. But, of course, you’re welcome here.”

Churches—Roman Catholic and Protestant—have become known for sexual abuse and for going to great lengths to cover it up. That’s so far from the Christian value of protecting the vulnerable.

Sunday morning is still the “most segregated” time of the week instead of church being “a house of prayer for all nations,” like it says in Isaiah.We’re still feeling the legacy of racism and exclusion that stretches back centuries.

That the Church is known for exclusion, intolerance, discrimination, and abuse instead of the Beloved Community that Jesus came to invite us into hurts our souls.

The message of God’s peace, inclusion, justice, and love still isn’t always received well.

It requires us to be around people we would rather not spend time with. It challenges our ideas of who should be allowed to speak the word of God. It threatens our reputations and those of institutions we care about. It defies the way we’ve always done things around here. It’s uncomfortable, risky, inconvenient, and messy.

But if the world called Jesus names, his disciples should be living so much like him that the world calls them those names too.

If Jesus was going to be considered an enemy of the state to the point where he was arrested and executed, then his disciples needed to know what was on the line for them as well.

That’s what it means to take up the cross and follow Jesus.

Now, that doesn’t sound like very good news.

Even though Jesus wasn’t actually encouraging people to hate their families, it doesn’t sound like good news that he was teaching his disciples to live in a way that might result in their families hating them.

But he knew that the resulting Beloved Community would be worth it.

He promised that those who lost their life for his sake would find it.

He promised life for those who were so in love with the way of living he was inviting them into that it was worth the risk—people who were poor, outcast, suffering, and who saw something so beautiful in Jesus that they couldn’t look away, couldn’t pretend they hadn’t been changed by the possibilities he opened.

In other parts of the Gospels, he promised new family for those who would lose theirs for his sake.

Our LGBTQ siblings, many of whom have lost family members for being truthful about who our fabulously creative God made them to be, would call that “chosen family.”

Living fully into the identity God gave you might require sacrifice—Jesus was honest about that—and that loss is real and worthy of grief.

And,God doesn’t abandon us. God surrounds us with chosen family—people we aren’t necessarily related to who love us the way we are, support us in hard times, allow us to support them too, and who believe in God’s peace, inclusion, justice, and love.Then, we get to do our best to live that out together.

What does that look like? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. I think we need artists and poets for that. It’s hard to imagine what God’s peace, inclusion, justice, and love look like when what we know is war, exclusion, injustice, and hate.

You probably saw in this week’s announcement email that the musicalHadestown will be in movie theaters for a few days in July. It was one of my favorite shows my family saw last year in London.It’s a retelling of the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. Hope you can join me for that—it’s a fantastic show (though it is a tragedy, so bring tissues).

Before we left on our trip, I started listening to the soundtrack, and three songs in, I burst into tears. Orpheus, who has a literal gods-given gift for music, is meeting Eurydice and has already fallen head over heels for her. He’s explaining that he’s writing a song because the seasons have gotten out of whack because of the gods.

He sings, “I'm workin' on a song
It isn't finished yet
But when it's done and when I sing it
Spring will come again….

A song to fix what's wrong
Take what's broken, make it whole
A song so beautiful
It brings the world back into tune
Back into time
And all the flowers will bloom”

I burst into tears in my kitchen, because the idea of a whole, unbroken, in-tuneworld was so beautiful I could hardly imagine it.

And the belief that music—art—could fix what’s broken in the world was so encouraging, hope leaked from my eyes.

That’s what Beloved Community could be. That’s what God is imagining and inviting us to be a part of.

It might cost everything, but Jesus promises to be with us and that it’ll be worth it.

Let’s join in the song.

Sermon on Matthew 9:35-10:8

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Jesus went to all the cities and villages to proclaim the Good News and cured every disease and every sickness.

And when he looked at the crowds, he saw how harassed and helpless they were and felt compassion.

His mission of love and mercy was important and needed, but it sounds like he was getting a bit overwhelmed.

But instead of getting burned out and deciding to throw in the towel, he looked at those he was serving and his heart was moved. He couldn’t just give up.

But even after going to all the cities and all the villages and curingevery disease and every sickness, the need was still great.

What was he supposed to do?

Compassion fatigue is real. It’s hard to continue to dedicate oneself to helping people when the problems of the world are so many and so enormous.

It feels good to help one person, but when you spend day after day, year after year, decade after decade trying to make a difference, it can feel like trying to stop a wildfire with a glass of water.

You come to church and hear about loving your neighbor, sharing God’s love and compassion with the world, and it can feel like you have nothing left to give.

And maybe you volunteer with Caring Hands and that’s so important and wonderful. But then you notice the same person in line who you saw last year or five years ago or maybe even ten years ago, and you know that person works hard and loves their family, and you just don’t understand why they still don’t make enough money to buy what they need.

And then you start thinking about the factors that might keep them impoverished:maybe growing up in a neighborhood with underserved schools, racism, sexism, or homophobia that kept them from certain job opportunities, medical debt, or needing to care for a family member without the resources to get outside help, or a multitude of other possibilities.

While we can help with food, which is so important, it can feel impossible for one person to make a difference when it comes to the factors that contribute to someone needing a food pantry.

And then, sometimes there are senseless acts of violence and hatred that can make us feel so powerless.

This Wednesday, we commemorate the Emanuel Nine: the nine Black people who in 2015 went to their Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, when a young white man,who had grown up in an ELCA congregation, shot and killed them, hoping to start a race war.

The ELCA commemorates this day to honor those who were martyred and as a call to dismantle the white supremacy that spurred that young man.

It can feel futile to speak of God’s love and inclusion in the face of violence like that, which unfortunately is hardly the most recent act of violence motivated by hatred.

So, what did Jesus do when he felt overwhelmed?

He invited his closest friends to pray. It’s easy for us to want to jump right to doing something, forgetting that prayer is doing something.

Prayer grounds us in God’s love for us and our calling to do, as is attributed to Mother Teresa, “small things with great love.” And praying with others reminds us that we as individuals are just small parts of the whole Body of Christ. We’re part of something much bigger than ourselves.

Then, Jesus empowered his friends and followers to do what he was doing. Instead of just trying to work harder and faster, Jesus invited other people in.

“Many hands make light work,” as the old saying goes. And while God’s work of justice, mercy, inclusion, and love may not be light, it does require many, many hands, and it’s easier to keep going when we can encourage each other instead of trying to maintain our motivation by ourselves.

One thing to note is that it might sound jarring that Jesus told his disciples not to go to Gentile territories or to the Samaritans. But remember that by the end of this Gospel, Jesus told his disciples to “make disciples of all nations.” We read that just a few weeks ago. Jesus started his mission by sending his Jewish disciples to his own Jewish people, and his mission would eventually extend to the whole world. For now, he and his disciples stayed local and focused.

It’s a good reminder that even Jesus started small. He saved the world, but he started in his own community. Not many of us will have a national or global platform to effect change. Often, we can make the biggest difference on a local level.

And we can make a bigger difference locally if we work together. One person handing out groceries is good. Many people joining together to form Caring Hands makes a much bigger difference.

One person making a public comment at city hall is good. Many people making public comment about something they collectively care about will hopefully get attention and bring about change.

There were people before Rosa Parks who refused to give up their seats on the bus to white people, but it took a lot of people boycotting the buses for over a year and setting up rides for each other and walking together to work and helping each other out before the Montgomery bus system was integrated. And of course, the Civil Rights movement did far more than that.

But it took groups of people working together, sacrificing together, believing together in the possibility of a better world to make change. And it was on a local as well as a national scale.

Even Rosa Parks and Dr. King couldn’t make a difference on their own. They’re two of the leaders we remember most vividly, but there were so many others who contributed. It was a community effort—a Beloved Community effort.

I often use Beloved Community interchangeably with the Kingdom of God, and the term was popularized by Dr. King.

According to The King Center, “The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

While I don’t believe we’ll fully realize this before Jesus comes again, I do believe it’s our mission to cocreate with God toward this powerful and costly form of peace and justice.

It’s a mission that can seem overwhelming in the face of violence, hatred, scarcity, and fear. But, like Jesus, we can start by praying with each other and then acting with compassion, mercy, and justice in our local community.

With God’s help, we can be the hands and feet of Jesus, sharing God’s love with the world and building Beloved Community right where we are.

Sermon on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’ve made it to Ordinary Time in the church year. We’ve made it through the preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent and the big festivals of Christmas and Easter and Pentecost, and the second half of the year has begun. We’re beginning a long season of green paraments and stories of Jesus’ life and teachings.

There’s something appropriately ordinary about our Gospel reading involving people bickering and judging and bleeding and dying. It’s all so deeply human. It may seem a little cynical, but it’s so ordinary for people to raise eyebrows at each other. For so many people, chronic illness and pain are daily companions. And none of us escape death, even as we proclaim that because of Jesus, death doesn’t have the last word.

Even after two thousand years, we’re still bickering and judging—just spend thirty seconds on social media or look at the campaign ads from this week’s election.

And as amazing as modern medicine is, there’s still so much we don’t know and don’t have treatment for. When there’s no easy fix, our society is determined to ignore illness and death. We don’t want to think about it until we have to, and our culture shame’s people who are facing illness or death into being as quiet about it as possible.

And unless you’re a disabled person with an amazing, inspirational story to make everyone around you feel good, then keep that to yourself and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, why don’t you?

And, God forbid your disability be invisible or involve mental health. It’s probably all in your head anyway, so why should anyone else care? You’re not going to be employable if you keep asking for accommodation, and if you’re not able to work, why do you even matter?

Ableism is everywhere.

And today’s Gospel reading is about healing. It’s easy to read the stories of Jesus curing people with an ableist lens. We can decide that the good news in these stories is that Jesus cures people of their injuries, disabilities, illnesses, and even death.

But when someone with unexplained symptoms hears these stories and goes to another fruitless doctor’s appointment, they might ask themselves, “Why am I not getting cured?”

And when someone with a chronic illness hears these stories, they might ask themselves, “Aren’t I beloved and enough as I am?”

And when someone whose loved one has died hears these stories, they might ask themselves, “Why didn’t God keep my loved one from dying?”

To people asking those questions, I want to say, “I’m sorry you’re not finding the answers you’re hoping for. I’m sorry you’re in pain. Of course, you’re beloved and whole and enough as you are. I’m sorry for your loss, and I hope we can hold you and journey with you in your grief.”

If we look at the whole of our Gospel reading—all four stories—we can see that Jesus did bring healing, but it wasn’t merely about the cure. Jesus was healing society through inclusion.

Our reading opens with Jesus calling a tax collector to follow him. Tax collectors were hated. They were considered collaborators with the Romans, and they were crooked on top of that, skimming a bit off the top for themselves. And yet, Jesus extended an invitation to join him.

Behavior like this was noticed. In the second story in our Gospel reading, some of the religious leaders saw Jesus eating with crooked collaborators and other undesirable people, and they pulled aside some of Jesus’ disciples to express their disapproval.

But Jesus responded that his mission was for people who knew they needed healing, not for those self-righteous enough not to know they needed help.

And then, he quoted our first reading, saying that God desires “mercy, not sacrifice.” He reminded them that Hosea’s message to God’s people was that God wasn’t impressed by religious practice if it wasn’t rooted in love for God, which, as we know from Jesus’ teachings elsewhere, is deeply connected to love for our neighbors.

Our Gospel reading skipped another story about John the Baptist’s disciples asking Jesus why other religious leaders fast and Jesus’ disciples don’t. Jesus describes himself as a bridegroom, saying it’s appropriate for his disciples to celebrate while he is with them. This, too, goes back to the Hosea quote that God wants mercy and steadfast love instead of religious practice by a people group whose heart isn’t in it.

Jesus was including the excluded among his disciples and table company, showing them the unconditional love of God. They, then, could love others as they were loved. This builds community—Beloved Community.

And these two stories are followed by two more stories—the ones we more customarily read as healing stories.

But maybe instead of focusing on the cures, we can view these stories as opportunities Jesus was given to show that mercy to the people around him.

Jesus was demonstrating how mercy mattered more than worrying about fasting the right way or who to exclude from a dinner party. And mercy wasn’t just about healing people, butinsisting that God’s family includes everyone. Everyone is needed. Everyone is important. Everyone is loved.

A colleague, Rev. Dr. Michelle Bodle, wrote an article[1] in Fidelia magazine, published by Young Clergy Women International. She wrote about a particularly difficult discussion in one of her seminary classes. A classmate had asserted that “mental illness needed to be healed in order for people to be whole.”

As someone who had been diagnosed with generalized anxiety, she understandably had been hurt by this statement.

She wrote: “When explaining this to people in everyday terms, I say I worry about everything and anything. My brain processes stimuli around me, putting me on high alert. I also believe that, for me, there is a gift in anxiety. In fact, I refer to it as my superpower. However, before explaining, let me note that this is not the case for everyone. Some people may experience anxiety as debilitating. I can only speak from my experience.”

Like she said, everyone’s experience of mental health and disability is different. Anxiety is not the same as bleeding for twelve years is not the same as anyone else’s experience. She experiences anxiety as a strength, but someone else might experience anxiety totally differently, and no one is required to look on the bright side of any situation. At the same time, no one should assume what someone else’s experience of mental illness or disability is. We’re unique.

For Rev. Dr. Bodle, she sees her anxiety as part of her wholeness, not something that detracts from it. She wrote, “I’ve tried to be a good steward of the gift of anxiety. Part of that stewardship is making sure that it doesn’t tip into being in the driver’s seat. When I think of the superheroes that I grew up with, for most of them, their greatest strength could become their greatest weakness if they weren’t careful. This means that I need to be attentive to my own moods, prioritize self-care, see a therapist, and use medication. When I neglect this posture of self-reflection, I become like the superheroes who tried to lead solely through their superpower, rather than seeing it as part of the greater whole of who they were, they could become derailed. So it is with anxiety. If I lead from an anxious place, instead of seeing this as simply part of who I am, then I can quickly lose track of the bigger picture. 

“Back in that classroom during seminary, I didn’t view anxiety as a gift or a superpower. I simply saw it as part of who I was. I bristled at the thought that I needed part of me fundamentally changed to be “whole.” I am whole, including my anxiety. It does not need to be healed or redeemed in order for me to be more fully me. I simply need to be aware of its presence and hold it gently, allowing it to speak but not lead. For me, that is the gift of anxiety.”

Again, this is her experience. Yours or your neighbor’s might be different. But our stories of healing today point to the inclusion Jesus brings—not that people need to be “cured” before being whole or healed. Jesus invites us to make society whole and healed by including and appreciating every person.

You are whole. You are worthy. You are included at God’s table. You are loved just as you are. And so is your neighbor. Thanks be to God!

[1]https://fideliamagazine.org/2026/05/28/reframing-illness-gift-of-anxiety/