Sermon on Mark 8:31-38

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

During Lent this year, our readings from the Hebrew Bible will remind us of some of God’s promises.

Last week, we read about God promising Noah that God would never again flood the whole world. Indeed, that God’s weapon, God’s bow, was hung in the heavens, never to be wielded again. God made acovenant with humanity—a promise and agreement founded in relationship. It was a covenant of peace for all time.

This week, we read about God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah: that their numerous descendants would be God’s people forever.

These two promises, as well as the ones coming up in the next few weeks, all connect to baptism.

When we see a rainbow, we remember that God saved Noah and his family from the flood. In baptism, we remember that God saved us by becoming human, living and dying and rising again,to restore our relationship with God. Baptism is a reminder that God has already saved us.

And when God made those promises to Abraham and Sarah, God gave them new names, new identities in God. Baptism reminds us of our identities as children of God.

All of this—salvation and identity as children of God—comes through God’s grace. We don’t do anything to deserve it. God loved us before God made us. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more or any less.

Still, we are sinners—we mess up and hurt each other and ourselves. By God’s grace, we are also saints—people who love God and let God’s love show through the way we live our lives. Martin Luther said that we are simultaneously saints and sinners. We can’t escape either side of that paradox, but God loves us exactly as we are.

On this side of death, we will never stop messing up and hurting each other, but God chose us, knowing that full well and loves us no matter what. We mark that in baptism, because God knows we need physical things like water to remind us of the truth: that we are part of God’s family forever and God’s love will never leave us.

In baptism, we are reminded of God’s covenants with humanity: that God saved us and that God’s family is vast and includes us.

When we remember these truths, we are freed and strengthened for the work ahead: the co-creation with God of the Beloved Community.

We’ll need that strength, because when we get to our Gospel reading, Jesus has some harsher words for us. He tells his disciples of the sufferings he must undergo and warns them that following him means being willing to suffer and even die for the cause.

Jesus isn’t glorifying suffering or saying that his followers should seek out suffering or meekly put up with abuse. Christianity isn’t about trying to suffer. Jesus here is just being realistic about the path he was on. He was saying and doing things that the occupying Roman Empire wouldn’t like. He was defying the emperor and upending society. He didn’t need to seek suffering—it was coming to him, and he knew it.

And if his followers were really learning from him, there was impending suffering for them, too.

But again, the point wasn’t the suffering. The point was that living out the Beloved Community means living in a way that upsets the people in power, the people who benefit from keeping things the way they are.

There’s no freedom for captives, food for the hungry, or good news for the poor without changing the way the world works. And that’s what Jesus was here for. And he was preparing his followers for what that meant.

That kind of world-changing justice comes out of freedom. Freedom like we receive in baptism. The freedom to see what Jesus is up to and decide we want that love and freedom for others too. And so, we take on the task of helping the Beloved Community become a reality, which upsets people who benefit from the status quo and puts us in danger. We live in a society that doesn’t actively persecute Christianity, so we are likely not going to lose our jobs or be threatened or be subjected to violence, like Jesus was warning his disciples.(Though, there have been people like Martin Luther King Jr. who were 20th-century American martyrs.) In general, we’re more likely to suffer awkward family holidays or raised eyebrows from neighbors or getting asked to step down from leadership positions.

But even our Sabbath theme might earn us the names “lazy” or “irresponsible.” We’re going to disappoint people who want us to do things. It might earn us the resentment of our colleagues and friends. It’s very easy for people who aren’t taking care of themselves to resent the people around them who are. Rest is countercultural and so needed.

And when we are restored by resting, we might feel moved to advocate for rest for others. And the people who benefit from cheap or unpaid labor will feel threatened by the prospect of people being paid better or having more paid leave or having more support to care for their families. That’s the slippery slope of following Jesus.

It starts with God’s grace rooting us in our identity as beloved children of God, which frees us to live without fear or shame, which stirs in us a longing for others to live that way too, which leads us to take costly action for others’ freedom and wellbeing, which contributes to the Beloved Community. And if that costs us everything, it’s entirely worth it.

All of that starts with God’s covenants with us. God’s promises of peace and grace and love allow us to follow Jesus and make the world a little more as it is in heaven.

A commentary by the organization The Salt Project reframed God’s covenants that we’re reading during Lent not as “a series of separate covenants here and there, but rather that God’s covenantal relationship with creation unfolds in salvation history, like a single flower blooming over time…helping to reveal the inner depth and beauty of what was there all along.”[1]

So instead of reading this series of covenants over the course of these weeks as individual episodes, we can see them as a collective unfurling of God’s grace, each helping us to understand God’s love for us better.

Beloved, we don’t earn God’s love through works. We are free to rest in God’s grace. God has already saved us, and there is nothing we can do to change God’s love for us.

And still, a hunger may creep into your life for others to experience that freedom and love too. That’s when following Jesus becomes both costly and powerful. That’s when the Beloved Community becomes more real for us. That’s the road that leads to the cross and the resurrection.

Remember always that you are a beloved child of God, saved by God’s grace and included in the flower of God’s covenants.

And when that hunger for following Jesus stirs you to action, take up your cross and follow him. The Beloved Community is always wort

[1]https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/20/cross-purposes-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-2

Sermon on Mark 1:9-15

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

As we begin Lent, we’re back to the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. We’ll be traveling with Jesus this season from the beginning of his earthly ministry to his death, and then, well, you know what comes next.

But for now, Jesus gets baptized by John, spends time in the wilderness, and then begins proclaiming the good news around Galilee. In the next verses, he’ll collect some followers, get attention for his ability to cast out demons and cure people, and we’ll see him begin that action and reflection cycle we talked about a couple weeks ago. He’ll take time alone to pray and reflect away from the crowds he ministered to and will come away with a stronger sense of his mission and next steps.

His earthly ministry starts, though, with his baptism. God tears open the sky and speaks Jesus’ identity to him: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

As we talked about at the very beginning of this year, Jesus hadn’t done anything yet at this point, and yet God was well pleased with him. His identity, not his actions, made him Beloved.

It’s only when Jesus is grounded in his beloved identity in baptism that he can withstand what he experienced in the wilderness. The Gospel of Mark doesn’t give us many details the way the Gospel of Matthew does. Mark simply says, “He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.”

The concept of wilderness is important in the Bible: from Hagar and her son Ishmael running away from Sarah and Abraham into the wildernessto the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for forty years to Elijah fleeing into the wilderness to save his life and many more stories. And all these people encountered God in the wilderness.

As much as our reading names Satan and wild beasts and angels as Jesus’ companions in the wilderness, it’s the Spirit that drives him out there. So, God’s presence is surely there with him too. The wilderness is a place where people encounter God.

In the wilderness, the distractions of daily life are stripped away, and our reliance on God is made clear. Now that Jesus had affirmation of his identity and belovedness, he was ready to spend time focused on God.

And we see what comes of it: when Jesus returned, he “came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”He knows what he’s here for, and he’s ready to begin his mission of sharing the good news of God with the people around him. And after this, he’s ready to start teaching others to do the same.

It's only once Jesus was grounded in his identity as Beloved and had spent time focused on God that he dove headfirst into his mission of spreading the good news.

We, too, need that grounding in our identity as beloved children of God and that clarity of mission that comes through time spent in prayer and discernment.

Living fully into God’s mission for us isn’t easy. It goes against the grain of so much in the culture around us. It’s costly and difficult. Loving our neighbor is way easier said than done.And still, we each have a unique contribution to the Beloved Community, Jesus’ way of justice, love, and abundance.

It's easier to live your life from day to day, going with the flow, doing what’s expected of you without question than it is to slow down and carve out time to really listen to what God has in store for you and then to do that.

Lent can be a wilderness for us. It can be a wilderness in time instead of space, and we can seek to quiet the distractions of our ordinary lives. We spend a lot of time trying not to be alone with our thoughts. How often do we pull out our phoneswhen in line at the store or put on music while doing the dishes or busy ourselves with pretty much anything so that we don’t have to be alone with ourselves?

Let’s find some simplicity this season—not for simplicity’s sake, but to counteract the noise and busyness in the world around us and in our own heads. When we stop filling the silence, we can make intentional choices about what to spend our time, energy, and resources on.

Instead of seeing Lent as a time of deprivation or restriction, let’s look at it as a time of simplicity for the sake of orienting ourselves toward what God has in mind for us.

We can use Lent to practice meeting God in the wilderness—as free as possible from the distractions we fill our lives with.Like Elijah, once the cacophony of the world around us quiets, we might find God in the still small voice.

Whatever happens this season (or any season), remember that you are a beloved child of God, and nothing can change that. It’s a truth you can hold onto in the wilderness times of your life.

And when you are in a wilderness time, whether it’s the season of Lent or a period of difficult circumstances or an existential crisis, it’s okay to wrestle with God. It’s okay to have questions, doubts, and frustrations. Having good questions is a mark of strong faith, because you’re curious and not willing to simply accept what you’ve been told. It’s good and faithful to wrestle with God.

In that wrestling, you might figure out your unique contribution to the Beloved Community, to making earth a little more as it is in heaven right now. There are so many amazing people in this room and among us virtually. You all have such important qualities that the world needs, like compassion, generosity, honesty, insight, and creativity. This season is about listening to God about why your gifts are needed in this place and this time.

And it’s a lot easier to listen to God when we pause some of the distractions that fill our lives. People of faith have been using practices that help with that for millennia. Sacred reading practices, meditation, ways to move our bodies in prayerful ways—there are so many tools that can help us slow down and listen to God. Let’s explore some of them this season, together and individually.

Beloved children of God, you are loved beyond measure.

But there are so many in the world who don’t feel loved.

God has given you specific gifts with which to love the world.

Let’s spend this season listening to how God wants us to use those gifts.

Rest in God’s love, slow down enough to listen to God’s dreams for you, andhelp share God’s vision of a justice-seeking and compassion-fueled Beloved Community.

Rest well, embrace the wilderness, and share God’s abundant love.

Lent Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

There’s always some irony in reading this passage from the Gospel of Matthew on Ash Wednesday. Jesus encourages us not to show off our spiritual practices but to let them be just between us and God:

Give anonymously, pray privately, fast inconspicuously.

And we read this passage on the one day of the year when we do a spiritual ritual that involves something visible on our foreheads. It’s one of the few days of the year when our faith tradition is most conspicuous—written on our bodies.

Likewise, there’s some irony in Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine’s Day this year. One of our most solemn and somber holy days falls on the day our culture celebrates romantic love.

Our mortality and our sentimentality coexist this year.

But there’s also something fitting about all these contradictions and strange pairings. Because all of it is about relationships.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus teaches us how to relate to God. This isn’t about salvation; Jesus has already taken care of that. God loves us forever and nothing we can do will make God love us any more or any less.

And,now that God has given us that gift, we get to respond. In our reading, Jesus teaches us a way to respond to God’s amazing grace. How we respond by learning about God, delighting in God, and thanking God is called “discipleship:”being a lifelong learner about our grace-filled God. That’s what our reading is about.

Jesus teaches us that discipleship isn’tabout being holier-than-thou with our neighbors. It’s not about making sure we get a pat on the back from our colleagues or making our rivals jealous of how our bodies look after restricting what we eat and calling it fasting. It’s not about how we’re perceived by others. It’s about quality time with God.

This is where there’s some overlap with Valentine’s Day. If I take my spouse out on an elaborate date tonight just so I can post it on social media and make people jealous but I’m not actually doing it out of care, regard, and love for my spouse, that’s going to be pretty obvious to him, and that’s not going to earn me any brownie points. My performance of love is not the same as love.

It's the same as discipleship. Performative discipleship that makes me feel holy and better than other people is not discipleship.

So, let’s set aside some of our expectations of what Lent “should” look like.Let’s let this season be about relationship instead of restriction orshame.

This is all between you and God. You and God get to decide what’s right for you in this season. I have suggestions, but feel free to disregard any of them that don’t feel right.

Feel free to try something new. Do you normally give something up? Try taking something on instead. Or vice versa.

This year at First Lutheran, we’ve been exploring the theme of Sabbath. If you’re inclined to take on a Lenten discipline this year, I encourage you to try different restful practices. See what they do for your well-being and the way you notice God in your life.

Are you feeling physically tired? Maybe finding time for a nap or some meditation or taking time to rub lotion into your tired hands and feet before bed would be helpful.

Are you feeling mentally tired? Maybe do something methodical like doodling while listening to relaxing music or taking a walk.

Are you feeling emotionally tired? Can you call a friend once a week as your Lenten discipline? Or maybe journal for 10 minutes a day as prayer?

Are you feeling spiritually tired? What would it look like to read scripture in a different way? Do you normally read small chunks? Maybe try reading more at a time. Or if you normally read quite a bit, try reading a single verse over and over. Or try a spiritual practice you don’t frequently do:light a candle, pray for your neighborhood on a walk, pray out loud or silently or write it down or draw your prayer.

There are so many options. If you’re having trouble choosing, talk to me—I’d love to brainstorm with you.

My hope is that you’ll find what works and doesn’t work for you, what helps you notice God more and what distracts you from God.

This Lent, how can you slow down and notice how God is working in your life?

Our powerful God created the whole universe and then rested.

God provided for God’s people in the wilderness so they could rest.

God included restful practices in the Law so that God’s people would rest and remember that their freedom came from God.

God in Jesus took time apart from the crowds to rest and pray.

God invites you, too, to rest and to enjoy God’s company.

On this day when we remember both love and mortality, let’s remember to use the time we’ve been given well. Let’s use it for love. I’m going to borrow poet Mary Oliver’s words and ask, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”