Sermon on Matthew 6:25-34

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Being humans, we tend to be pretty human-centric at church. We sometimes picture God as a human man with a big white beard. We picture salvation as something just for humans.

We assume loving our neighbor means loving our human neighbors and don’t always have imagination for what it might mean to love our non-human-animal neighbors or our plant neighbors, soil neighbors, ocean neighbors, or even algae neighbors. We sometimes act like humans are the only important lives and relationships that exist.

Yet, we’re interdependent. God created a beautiful web of life, not just a static backdrop for a stage dominated by humans. There are other actors: animals big and small, all kinds of plants, fungi, even the bacteria in our guts that I try not to think too much about but am very happy is there. We couldn’t survive without each other.

And it’s not always just about survival—we can genuinely enjoy relationships with the non-human world. This can take many forms, but since we’re doing a blessing of the animals today, we’ll focus on our relationships with our pets.

Pets can be some of the most important beings in our lives. They’re with us day in and day out, seeing the most mundane and intimate parts of our lives without judgment (generally). They miss us when we’re gone, greet us when we return home, snuggle with us, comfort us when we’re sad, and sometimes insist on playing with us, even when we’re trying to write a sermon…Thank you, Clara.

For many of us, a pet’s death was our first experience of grief. It’s a paradigm-shattering experience to encounter the reality of death for the first time. And yet, people so often downplay the death of a pet, saying things like, “you can just get another dog,” or “why are you still sad—it’s been a whole week!”

But, just like the death of a human, a pet’s personality can’t be replaced. The time spent, memories created, and trust built can’t just transfer to a new pet like downloading your photos from an old phone to a new one. The loss is real, the grief is real, the love of our pets is real. Yet, society doesn’t always treat them that way.

Even Jesus in our Gospel reading suggested that humans are more important to God than birds: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

But perhaps rather than giving a factual hierarchy of creation, like one human equals53.25 birds, Jesus was just using our human-centered worldview in his attempt to turn us from our worries about God’s provision to focus instead on building Beloved Community, where there’s abundant life for all, like we talked about last week.

Jesus was using the more than human world to teach us self-centered humans to trust God, who takes care of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and even the fleeting blades of grass. The natural world trusts God’s provision, not worrying about the latest fashions or diet craze, but doing what they were made for.

Animals have so much to teach us. Isaiah, too, used animal imagery to help us imagine God’s shalom, the peace that goes far beyond lack of war and instead brings wholeness to the world. Only in God’s shalom can the wolf live with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the baby goat, bears and lions graze likecows, and venomous snakes remain peacefully in their dens. This is what will happen, Isaiah tells us, when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

We need these images, because peace like that is hard to imagine. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if peace will come to animals first before humans will give up war. I don’t think we can get there without God. Thankfully God has a bigger imagination than I do.

Until the manifestation of God’s shalom and the fulfillment of the Beloved Community, I’ll cuddle my cat and try to be as lovable as she seems to find me.

While every animal has its own personality, in general, our pets past and present can help us remember God’s unconditional love. Our pets love us even when we flub the presentation at work or forget our friend’s birthday or get broken up with. They don’t care what our hair looks like, what car we drive, or how much money we make (as long as there’s room in the budget for treats).

They can be role models for us in focusing on what’s really important: relationships, affection, andlove—all components of shalom and Beloved Community.

Someone shared a poem by Angi Sullins online that perfectly illustrates God’s unconditional love:

god is a dog

not metaphorically

not in some poetic

kind of way

I mean literally

panting

drooling

wiggling

grace with paws

god doesn’t sit up

in some cosmic control tower

judging your calories

and catastrophes

nope

god is under the table

hoping you’ll drop

a potato chip

and when you do

she doesn’t say

“too bad that’s trans fat”

she says

“holy wow thank you

that was delicious

I love you

I love you

I LOVE YOU”

you stumble

in the door

after screwing up everything

again

and god bolts toward you

like you’re the best thing

that ever happened to Tuesday

she doesn’t care

that you yelled in traffic

or forgot to return the call

or ate the entire pint

of Ben & Jerry’s

with a spoon

that still had peanut butter on it

she just wants

to sit in your lap

and sniff your face

and listen

I don’t know about your theology

but mine’s built on

salty snacks

dark chocolate

and the unshakable truth

that mercy wears a collar

and chews socks

when you’re crying

in bed at 3 a.m.

when you feel like

a burnt piece of toast

that no one wanted anyway

god jumps up beside you

licks your tears

and falls asleep with her nose

in your armpit

not because you smell good

'cuz chances are you don’t

but because

that’s where you are

and god always

wants to be where you are

she’s not interested

in your five-year plan

she’s not keeping score

she doesn’t care if you meditate

or hydrate or

know the number

for your senator

she just wants to be with you

god is a dog

and love

real love

has fur on the furniture

and forgiveness in the eyes

that’s all the theology I need

So today, at the beginning of National Pet Month, as we bless our animals, remember how much we have been blessed by the great pack, clowder, flock, nest, warren of witnesses and our great God who had wisdom enough to know we need their example and boundless love to help us connect with our unconditionally loving God.

Sermon on John 10:1-10

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

During Lent, we read the story of Jesus bringing sight to the man who had been born blind. The religious leaders interrogatedthe man,they cast him out, and Jesus called him to be his follower.Today’s reading comes right after that.

Jesus starts a lengthy speech on being the Good Shepherd.There’s shepherd and sheep imagery throughout the Hebrew Bible. There’s Psalm 23—the Lord is my Shepherd—probably one of the most famous parts of the Bible.The prophets talk about some leaders of God’s people as bad shepherds. Jesus’ speech here builds on that traditional imagery.

Just as the prophets criticized kings and rulers, Jesus was criticizing the religious authorities for casting out the man who had been born blind and for being suspicious of Jesus for healing on the Sabbath and upsetting the status quo. The bad shepherds in the Hebrew Bible weren’t infiltrating and bringing threats from outside—they were the leaders who had been raised from within the tradition of God’s people.

And the thieves and bandits Jesus talked about weren’t outside threats either—they were the trusted authorities tasked with caring for God’s people. Jesus was criticizing from within his own tradition.

It doesn’t take outside forces to bring division. We see this in the polarization in our own country and world. It just takes people who care deeply about things but disagree on priorities and strategies.I think very few peoplewould say they don’t want fresh air to breathe or clean water to drink or who actively want species to go extinct.

There are disagreements, though, on how responsible humanity is for climate change, the extent of its effects, what strategies to pursue to mitigate those effects and whether they’ll make a worthwhile impact when compared to the economic effects.

Those are important questions to wrestle with. We may disagree with someone’s answer, and when they have power to make what we perceive as harmful decisions, it’s distressing, but it doesn’t make them a villain. We do great harm when we villainize or dehumanize people.It makes it hard to see their point of view. It makes it easy to write them off. It makes it hard to want to work with them. It makes it easy to make them an enemy.We deal with a lot of division in our world today.

And so did Jesus in the first century.He adds to the long tradition ofgood shepherd/bad shepherd imagery, and his speech is harsh—comparing respected religious authorities to thieves and bandits.

But as is so often the case, Jesus was concerned with the marginalized. He was defending the man who had been born blind, his new disciple, from those who would use him to discredit Jesus and make him a pawn in their political games instead of treating him like a beloved sheep of God’s fold.Jesus said he had come “that they [the sheep] may have life and have it abundantly.” He had little patience for those who would stand in the way of that goal.

God, of course, loves all people, and also God stands on the side of the powerless, the excluded, the marginalized, the forgotten, the suffering. Abundant life doesn’t mean having five houses, fifteen cars, and a yacht. Abundant life means having enough to share. It’s often those with the least that show that kind of love, sharing what little they have.

We see an example of that kind of abundant life in our reading from Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”

There may have been some wealthier patrons (such as Lydia) in the community, but unsurprisingly, the Jesus movement attracted a lot of people who had little: enslaved people, women, poor people.These people shared what they had, ate together, worshiped together, and experienced joy together. That’s what abundant life looks like.

In our world today, it can be easy to focus on the division, polarization, violence, and dehumanization around us. It’s important not to ignore those things as we strive to bring God’s peace and love to the world, but it’s also important to look for already-existing examples of abundant life.

This past Wednesday was Earth Day, and it can be easy to focus on climate change and what’s wrong in our relationship with the natural world. But it’s also an opportunity to look for good news and find hope. After all, as Pastor Jaz reminded us a couple weeks ago: “Hope is a group project.” Say it with me: “Hope is a group project.”

I was encouraged by an article[1] about a community in Colombia called Gaviotas, meaning “seagulls,” because of the many seagulls in the area. It was founded in 1971 by Paolo Lugari, an Italian-Colombian man with political ties and enough money to buy land on which to build a settlement in the harsh climate of Los Llanos, which alternates between heavy rain and intense heat.

Engineers, Indigenous folks, scientists, and farmers collaborated to create anenvironmentally friendly community. Things have changed a lot over the years, but they’ve developed a ton of inventions: things like incorporating a children’s see-saw into a mechanism to pump water and low-cost wind turbines. They planted a forest of fruit trees for food.They use a mixture of pine and palm oil for fuel, which still has emissions, but is cleaner than fossil fuels. They cooperated with their local environment to find strategies for sustainable living.

It’s easy to idealize stories like this. It’s hard to convey in a short news article the hardships, disagreements, challenges, and heartbreaks of a community over more than fifty years.

And it’s easy to idealize the picture of the early church in Acts. It’s way easier to daydream about a cooperative and generous community than to live it. At the end of the day, we’re all still people with our flaws and egos and insecurities and differing views and experiences. Abundant life is easier to dream about than to realize.

One striking thing about Gaviotas is that they don’t patent their inventions. Lugari explained the reasoning this way: “So people, fortunately, can imitate us and copy us all they want, and if someone wants to patent one of our projects and paralyze it, well, the Gaviotas imagination, the only thing that’s for sure, will work to make some changes and make something new again.” This trust in their own ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity allows them to be generous with their ideas. They can share their abundant life with others because they trust each other to continue to adapt and innovate for the good of their community.

Perhaps the early church in Acts grew and thrived despite their disagreements, conflicts, and challenges because they trusted their community and their Good Shepherd to guide the way. They could share their abundant life because they had been given so much.

Thankfully, we too have our Good Shepherd to guide the way, leading us to abundant life for all. It’s not easy, and we can’t do it on our own, but the Holy Spirit allows us to seek abundant life for all on this beautiful planet we celebrated this week.

As we continue our creation care theme for the rest of the Easter season, consider where you see abundant life in this community. What does it look like? Where is it lacking? How can we meet that lack with generosity? What pastures is the Good Shepherd leading us to?

Think about those questions this week, and in the meantime, receive this blessing:

Little children, sheep of the Good Shepherd:

As we journey toward the fold,

we travel through the valley of shadow,

growing in grace, becoming a blessing.

Baptismal wells restore our souls,

a rich feast is spread by divine abundance,

and divisions end as our cup overflows. Amen.

[1]https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260331-a-1960s-green-utopia-tried-to-reinvent-the-world

Sermon on Luke 24:13-35

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The words in our Gospel reading that always break my heart are: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

These two disciples tell the stranger on the road that they “had hoped.” They had lived in a state of hope until that stopped. They don’t have that hope anymore.

They had followed the rabbi they had hoped was the Messiah, “the one to redeem Israel,” but he had been executed by the Roman Empire. Most of his disciples fled the scene, trying to escape a similar fate. We read last week about most of them hiding in a locked room, fearful of the authorities.

These two disciples seem to have decided to skip town altogether.Once they were out of immediate danger and telling their story to a stranger on the road, I wonder if their shock wore off and their grief hit them full force.I wonder if they fought back tears as they spoke. I wonder if the words “we had hoped” caught in their throats. I wonder if their grief felt like the hope in their hearts was extinguished.

Even as we celebrate the Easter season and rejoice in the hope of the resurrection, I can imagine people a few decades from now saying, “we had hoped.”

“We had hoped the sea levels wouldn’t rise this much.”

“We had hoped we would find a solution for climate change.”

“We had hoped we would do enough to keep our kids, grandkids, or great-grandkids from suffering.” Or “we had hoped our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents would do enough to keep things from getting this bad.”

Hope isn’t always an easy thing to find or keep.

It can be hard to feel God’s presence in the midst of pollution, war, discrimination, everything that’s wrong with the world.

It’s possible to bury our heads in the sand as a coping mechanism. If we stay away from the news, if we keep from finding out what scientists are predicting, if we don’t learn the extent of the damage, maybe we can hope that things aren’t as bad as they seem, that they can be fixed if we just try harder.

But as we learn more, we can find ourselves saying, “we had hoped…”

And it can feel like God is nowhere to be found.

But Jesus’ two disciples, who had given up hope, discovered that Jesus had been with them all along.

It’s a strange story: the disciples not recognizing their beloved rabbi, him keeping up the ruse for hours, the sudden recognition, the even more sudden disappearance.

But despite this story’s surprising and supernatural elements, it’s grounded in the physical.

The disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread—physical food they had similarly shared with him only a few days before.

They marveled that they hadn’t recognized him, but realized their bodies knew all along: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

It took something physical to help them understand what God was up to, just like there’s a physical element in our sacraments, because God knows we understand better when there’s something of this world we can connect to.

We can recognize God in the breaking of bread, the pouring of wine, the splash of water.

We recognize God in the physical, because God made us physical beings. God formed our bodies out of the dust of the earth God created. God shows Godself to us through what is earthly and earthy.

We’re not just souls inhabiting inconvenient and messy bodies. We’re both physical and spiritual creatures. Our bodies can help us recognize God, because God shows Godself to us through what is earthly and earthy, like our bodies.

And that’s why this world we live in matters. We’re not just souls inhabiting a strange planet for a few decades before floating off into the clouds. The book of Revelation talks about a new heaven and a new earth. God loves this world and won’t abandon it. God loves you—all of you—the embodied and spiritual and everything about you.

Every time we touch water—sink, shower, garden hose, ocean—we can remember that God affirms our belonging to God’s family in baptism.

Every time we eat together—bread, wine, sushi, salads, or tortilla chips, dinner party or quick snack—we’re proclaiming our Savior’s death until he comes again. We’re recognizing God’s presence in and around us always—our communion with each other and all that lives.

We can recognize God in all that’s created.

A bright point in the news cycle lately has been the Artemis II mission, and I was moved by the impromptu response of the pilot, Victor Glover, to a request for an Easter message.

He said, “As we areso far from earth and looking back at, you know, the beauty of creation, I think that for me one of the really important personal perspectives that Ihave up here is I can really see earth as one thing.

And, you know, when I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us whowere created, you have this amazing place, this spaceship.You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, butyou're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos.

Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you, and I'm trying to tell you—just trust me—youare special.In all of this emptiness—this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe—you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we getto exist together.

I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about, you know, all the cultures all around the world,whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are thesame thing and that we got to get through this together.”

What a great reminder that God created this beautiful planet and created us as part of it. What a privilege it is to live on this planet. Such a powerful message of unity and cooperation. After all, as Pastor Jaz reminded us last week: “Hope is a group project.” Say it with me: “Hope is a group project.”

This Easter season, let’s renew our hope in our risen Savior. Let’s do our best to recognize God in the world around us, in what is physical—bread, wine, water, the face of a stranger.

God is with us. Jesus is risen. The Holy Spirit breathes new life into our home in the cosmos.

Let your heart burn within you and hope again.