Sermon on Luke 21:5-19

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

All three of our readings involve people struggling to remain faithful to God.

In our Malachi reading, the exiles had returned from Babylon, they had rebuilt the Temple, and then enough time went by for people to start losing that enthusiasm. People had lost excitement for following God.

The whole book involves Malachi exhorting God’s people to remain faithful and for religious corruption to cease. Our reading declares that God is active and will bring justice and healing to the world. Malachi was reminding God’s people to remain faithful as they waited for that day.

Then, our reading from 2 Thessalonians was reminding people that they still had a duty to love their neighbor even if Jesus was going to return right away.

But over the years, this reading has been used to justify exclusion and stinginess to any but the “deserving poor.”

The tricky thing about the Epistles is that we have only one side of a set of correspondence. We don’t know the exact situation being addressed.

What we can infer is that there was a group of folks who were so certain that Jesus was coming back soon that they stopped working and were taking advantage of others’ hospitality. This letter is speaking to that particular group of people, discouraging inaction and selfish behavior.

Certainly in other situations, there are people who can’t find work or have barriers to work. People deserve to eat because they’re human beings and they have basic needs like food and water, regardless of whether they have “worked” for it. Taking one line out of its context and applying it to every situation forever isn’t a faithful reading of the text.

And also, our 2 Thessalonians reading speaks to a group of people claiming to be Jesus followers who were not doing what they could to love their neighbor because they were so focused on Jesus’ return. Instead, they were to live faithfully while they waited.

Then, there’s our Gospel reading. Jesus and his followers had reached Jerusalem. There was the street theater, the political performance art, of Palm Sunday and then the cleansing of the Temple. Various groups of religious leaders tried to trap Jesus into saying something blasphemous or at least unpopular. We read one of those encounters last week.

Then, Jesus saw a widow give her last remaining money to the Temple.

Our reading opens with Jesus’ disciples admiring the Temple in all its glory. And Jesus rained on their parade by telling them it would be destroyed.

Not only that, but they should expect wars and persecutions and natural disasters and pandemics and starvation before “the Coming of the Son of Man.”

Indeed, the Romans would destroy the Temple a few decades from that time, not too long before the writer of Luke wrote this story down.

Jesus was preparing his disciples for how to be faithful in the coming difficulties, and the writer of Luke was encouraging Jesus followers to be faithful in difficulties that had indeed come.

And there have been difficulties and disasters and wars and tragedies in every age since then.

Christians in every age have faced trials. It’s easy to fall victim to distractions, disillusionment, or despair. Just because difficulties are common doesn’t mean they’re not daunting.

It’s easy to fall into judgment, taking perverse delight in the idea of “the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble,” as our Malachi reading puts it. Or becoming complacent and disengaged, like some in the audience of the second letter to the Thessalonians. Or giving into disillusionment and despair, like Jesus’ disciples might have after being told that the Temple would be destroyed.

And still, all of these readings encourage their audiences and us to remain faithful, to continue to choose life in the midst of difficult circumstances.

I met a young man this week who has faced terrible circumstances throughout his life.His isn’t my story to tell, so I won’t name specifics. But I will say that he has faced more deaths in his short life than anyone should experience in a lifetime, not to mention other traumas and struggles. His story broke my heart over and over again.

And still, he has worked really hard to make life-giving choices. He’s in a supportive living environment, has a job, has found a loving congregation, and even volunteers as a leader for their youth ministry.

And on Monday, his brother was killed. In his grief, he was sorely tempted to seek out former relationships, environments, and habits that were familiar but would be detrimental to the life he has built.

I wish I could have told him why the deaths and tragedies keep coming even though he’s following Jesus and making big, positive changes in his life, but it makes no sense in my limited understanding of the world.

It would be understandable if he gave up to despair. His struggles seem on par with the devastation Jesus talked about in our Gospel reading.

Sometimes there is every reason to give up: on the world, on human nature, on the circumstances of our lives, and even on God.

And Jesus knew that. He knew his disciples’ faith would be shaken by the destruction of the Temple, the fall of Jerusalem, and the deadly persecution by the Roman Empire.

He reminded them that God would be with them no matter their trials, not only accompanying them, but also inspiring them with what to say.

Knowing that many early Jesus followers were violently killed by the Roman Empire, Jesus saying that “not a hair of your head will perish” seems a little disingenuous.

Unless he meant something greater. He was preparing his followers for great trials, knowing that they had eternity to gain.

Just as we don’t always get the cures we pray for in this life, God still brings us healing: “the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

The free will that God has given us allows us to do terrible harm to each other and ourselves, but God is still active, inviting us to help make earth a little more as it is in heaven. And, at the end of time, God will make all things as they should be and will surround us with God’s love forever and ever.

God was active in the past, strengthening and inspiring our persecuted ancestors in faith. God is active now, building our relationships with each other and calling us to love our neighbors near and far. And God will be active in the future, bringing God’s justice and mercy and perfecting God’s love in the world to come.

In the meantime, all three of our readings call us to be faithful.

And that’s exactly what I saw in the young man I met this week. Despite his grief and the other circumstances that would daunt the strongest heart, he didn’t give in to despair. He reached out. He sought out support and Christian community. He didn’t try to do it alone.

We’re not meant to do life alone. That’s why God chose a peoplein the Hebrew Bible and why Jesus gathered a community in the Gospels that he sent out into the world.

Our God is active, past, present, and future, and will bring healing to this world.We as people of faith get to co-create a world that has more healing, more mercy, and more truth in it.

Be faithful to our faithful God! No matter the trials of this life, we are not alone, and by God’s grace, we will not perish.

Siblings in Christ, do not be weary in doing what is right.Take heart, and do life together.

Sermon on Luke 20:27-38

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

What happens after death is one of the big questions humanity has wrestled with since the beginning of time.

Some see religion as the byproduct of humanity needing reassurance that death isn’t as scary as it seems.

There’s the saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes,” which is certainly not true, but it speaks to the way humans sometimes put off the anxiety of what happens after death until we can’t put it off anymore.

Our society tries really hard to ignore death. We hide death in hospitals and funeral homes and try to get back to normal as quickly as possible after funerals, which we try to cheer up by calling them “celebrations of life.” We pretend that we get closure at funerals instead of recognizing that they’re just the beginning of grief.

Our society reveres youth and tries to prevent any signs of aging, and in the process, loses out on the gifts of wisdom, experience, and discernment that come with each additional trip around the sun.

The Bible is frustratingly unclear about the specifics of what happens after death. There are metaphors, parables, and cryptic statements. Tradition has pieced together those bits and art and popular culture to form an idea of what might happen: pearly gates, haloes, harps, clouds, etc.

But when it comes down to it, we know very little for sure, and that can be uncomfortable and anxiety inducing.

I’ve talked with people before who are deeply troubled by our Gospel reading today. People who are grieving their spouse of fifty years understandably don’t want to hear that they won’t be married to their spouse in heaven.

For a Gospel reading, it doesn’t necessarily seem like good news.

But let’s remember why Jesus said these things.

Jesus didn’t decide this was an important thing for his disciples to know and sat them down one day to tell them this.

He was responding to a “gotcha” question from a group of religious leaders.

This was only days after Palm Sunday and the cleansing of the Temple. Jesus had made some really public, in your face, theatrical statements that he was against the unjust, oppressive systems of the people in power—the occupying Roman Empire and the religious leaders who were trying to keep the status quo to stay on the right side of the Romans.

Jesus had gotten people’s attention—not just the poor, the suffering, and the marginalized. He was in Jerusalem, the religious and political center, stirring up trouble.

So,some of the religious leaders of different groups were trying to trap him into saying something they could use to discredit him or arrest him.

In our story today, it was the Sadducees who came up to Jesus and took to the extreme the laws about levirate marriage, meant to maintain bloodlines and secure legacies when men died prematurely.

They weren’t coming in good faith, wondering about their deceased loved ones or beloved spouses. They were ridiculing the idea of an afterlife and wanted to trap Jesus into saying something incriminating.

And in Jesus’ typical manner, he was able to outwit them and sidestep their trap.

By invoking the story of Moses calling God“the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” he was using scriptures important to the Sadducees to show them that there is life after death in a way that wouldn’t seem absurd like their hypothetical story of a woman with seven husbands.

The concept of death is at least as important as the concept of marriage in this story, because the two were related.

Marriage was differentthen. Marrying for romantic love is a fairly new concept.

Marriage then was a business contract between two men: the groom and the father-in-law. The bride was often in her early teens and was an asset to be bargained over.

The law about levirate marriage was to protect the lineage of a man who had died.

If there is no death, there’s no need for protecting lineage.

If God is the God of the living, if there is no death, then we are each beloved children of God, whole unto ourselves, not anyone’s property.

That is what it means to neither marry nor be given in marriage. It means our relationships will be as complete individuals without social systems that benefit some and oppress others.

We will be equals in the love of God.

I don’t know the specifics of what our relationships with each other will look like in the next life, and neither does anyone else, not for sure.

But we can trust that our God of the living will continue to be the God of love and peace and justice and mercy that we know now.

And we can trust that in the next life, not clouded by the ways we hurt each other, the cruelty and selfishness and violence that distort our world, we will experience complete union with God, and that will satisfy our needs for connection, community, and love in ways we can’t begin to imagine now.

This isn’t a situation where I’m telling you not to ask questions, just believe the right things, or just trust me. No, please, ask questions, wonder about God and this world and the next. Be curious. Think deeply. Question everything. That’s an important part of a life of faith.

Just recognize that there are a lot of answers we don’t have access to yet. It doesn’t mean the questions aren’t worth asking. But when the limits of our understanding run up against the infiniteness of God, that’s when we have to trust our relationship with God, that God is good and faithful and loving and won’t let us down.

So, while we ask those good questions and trust that God will abundantly satisfy every need and desire of ours in the next life, let’s spend this life living out love as best we can.

We can show the character of God in the world around us.

God’s love is for everyone, and we don’t have to worry about who’s “in” and who’s “out.” Just like this Table, the eternal banquet is for everyone, and we can trust that our loving God will work out the details. Too many Christians get caught up in the details of the next life and show the world their own judgment instead of God’s love.

Let’s make ourselves known for something different.

Let’s make ourselves known for caring for our neighbor in this life.

Let’s make ourselves known for who we include and embrace and empower.

Let’s make ourselves known for showing the world the love of our living God.

Let’s trust the future to God and make God’s love known in the present.

Sermon on Luke 18:9-14

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Today’s parable challenges our human categories.

The term “Pharisee” has come to be a derogatory term, largely due to the portrayal of Pharisees in the Gospels, but that’s not fair.

Our society has understandably become rather suspicious of authority figures, but when Jesus’ audience heard “Pharisee,” they would have thought of a well-respected religious leader, because that’s who Pharisees were. Think of maybe a mayor or a school principal or a well-regarded professor—someone trusted and up-standing.

And as for the tax collector, while no one today is excited to see an IRS agent, tax collectors in the first century were outright hated. They were known for skimming off the top for themselves, plus they were working for the Roman Empire—they were collaborators with the occupying enemy.

So, when Jesus started telling a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector, his audience would have understood the characters in this way: a Pharisee (yay!) and a tax collector (boo!).

But as ever, Jesus turned our human categories inside out.The Pharisee’s prayer conveys his inner self-righteousness and contempt for the tax collector, and the tax collector’s prayer conveys his remorse and desire for God’s mercy. Not everything is as it seems on the outside.

We humans tend towant to know the rules for getting ahead or doing the “right” thing. We also tend to judge other people for not doing those things.

Today is Reformation Sunday. It’s a celebratory day: we might wear red, we might belt out “A Might Fortress is our God,” this congregation hosts a really fun Oktoberfest event.

And it’s also a bittersweet day. Martin Luther didn’t want to start a new denomination. He wanted to reform problematic practices in the Church, not split it. There was a lot of violence in the wake of the Reformation.

So, today’s a day when we can celebrate what’s helpful in Luther’s work and that of those who have come afterwards. And we can grieve the animosity between followers of Jesus from different traditions that still persists today.

We can rejoice that we’re saved by God’s grace, not by anything we do. And also, we need to be careful not to pat ourselves on the back for having the “right” theology and find ourselves judging other denominations and even other faiths for believing the “wrong” things.

Not that we shouldn’t call out beliefs that harm people—we should. That’s part of loving our neighbor, especially neighbors who are marginalized and often hurt by people of faith.

But we also have to remember that no one has a complete and 100% correct understanding of God and the universe. God is way too big for that—thank goodness!

And we don’t have to have a perfect understanding—again, thank goodness!—because we’re saved by God’s grace.

We humans tend to judge others in areas that we’re self-conscious about. If we put our trust in God’s grace and love, we can let our judgment go.

But, the parable today sets a trap for Jesus’ audience and for us: the moment we start judging the Pharisee for judging the tax collector, we’re becoming judgmental just like the Pharisee! Funny how judgment becomes a vicious circle!

Our reading opens by naming that Jesus was telling this parable to people who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

John and Julie Gottman, incredible relationship researchers and psychologists, talk about Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for relationships. These are behaviors that can predict the end of a relationship. They are: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stone-walling.

I’m not going to go into each of them—you can find a lot of great information about them online—but I want to share what their website says about contempt:

“When we communicate in this state, we are truly mean—we treat others with disrespect, mock them with sarcasm, ridicule, call them names, and mimic or use body language such as eye-rolling or scoffing. The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless.

Contempt goes far beyond criticism. While criticism attacks your partner’s character, contempt assumes a position of moral superiority over them.”[1]

Their description is in the context of a romantic relationship, but it shows how deadly contempt can be for any relationship between people.

This parable to reminds us how easy it is to fall into self-satisfaction and self-righteousness and then judgment and contempt for others. Jesus teaches us how to love our neighbor and how dangerous contempt is for our relationships with fellow beloved children of God.

So, we must be careful not to fall into contempt, even for the Pharisee in the parable. None of us have earned our way into God’s family. None of us are A+ students living a perfect moral life—because it’s not about that. It’s about God’s grace and love, which God gives freely and abundantly.

The Pharisee and the tax collector are caricatures that remind us that we don’t know what’s going on inside a person. Humans are complex. Rarely are our motives and behaviors entirely pure or selfish.

Luther described that with the paradox that we are simultaneously saints and sinners.Humans have the potential to do unspeakably mean and cruel things to each other and at the same time have the potential to act with selflessness, kindness, and compassion.

Even Luther, who wrote beautifully about God’s grace, translated the Bible into German so ordinary people could read it for themselves, and had a deep love for his family, also wrote really terrible things about Jewish people and incited violence against the poor during the Peasants’ Revolt.

We’re all a mixed bag. We’re all simultaneously saints and sinners.

Again, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold people accountable for harmful behaviors, but we also have to be willing to recognize our own flaws and failings and rest in God’s mercy.

On this Reformation Sunday, we can rejoice in what’s life-giving about Luther’s legacy and Lutherans’ contributions to the Christian faith and the world.

And, we can grieve broken relationships between Christians and with other people of faith.

Remembering that we are all simultaneously saints and sinners, we can recognize that none of us has all the answers or a corner on right practice.

When we let go of judgment and contempt, God’s grace and mercy allow us to learn and respect how other people experience God, whether we agree or not.

We can lean on God’s grace to protect and save us.

One might even say: a mighty fortress is our God.

[1]https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/