First Lutheran Church

November 5, 2023 + All Saints Sunday

Matthew 5:1-12 + 1When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

“Remembering The Saints”

Pastor Greg Ronning

It’s November!  Yay!  November has always been one of my favorite months.  Why?  Well, my birthday is November 18th!  Football season is in full swing.  The Holidays, the Holiday Spirit, will soon be ramping up.  And I like the weather that November brings.  Hopefully we will finally get a bit of a chill, soon it will start to look and feel like Fall, soon I will get to pull out my sweatshirts, and for me there’s just a “freshness” about November.

Some people describe November as “attic, barn and closet time.”  It’s a season for gathering things up and storing things away.It's harvest time, and farmers are reaping what they have sowed.  There’s not very much farming around here, but perhaps you remember other times and other places, where the fall harvest was a big part of your community life.

I suppose the actual farm harvest took place last month, I imagine at this point, most of our country’s barns, corn silos, and grain elevators are filled.  However, there is another kind of harvest that happens this time of year.  As another year comes to an end, we are inclined, and we are invited, to gather up the pieces of our life, gather them into our barns, and take an inventory.  Do we have enough provisions to get us through the winter?  Did we plant enough seeds, did we nurture the tender sprouts, did we grow, and did we bear fruit?  What do we have in this season of gathering.  What does the inventory of our life look like?

In particular today, on All Saints Sunday, we are called to harvest our memories.   We are called to rememberall the saints in our life.  Saints past, and saints present, the people who have made an impact on our life.   Saints who have nurtured us and challenged us.  Saints who have revealed God to us, saints who have helped us uncover our gifts, the saints who have helped us bear the fruit of the kingdom.  We are reminded that the saints of God, are not just the heroic personalities of the past, but also the ordinary among us.  The “sinner-saints” who lived out their faith as best they could, the saints who were our friends, our colleagues, our family.  On “All Saints Sunday,” we take time to remember all these saints, we take time to harvest our memories, we gather them up today knowing they will give us the strength that we need to live abundantly today and tomorrow.

Which leads me to this question, have you ever wondered how you might be remembered?  As my days among you as your pastor are coming to an end, I wonder how you might remember me.

The first church I served as pastor was Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lafayette California.  I served there for four and half years before I took the call to be the Campus Pastor at Texas Lutheran University.  At the end of my time at Our Savior’s, the church gathered for a special event to remember and celebrate my ministry.  As part of the program, they showed a picture of me doing ministry with the youth.  The picture featured me wearing an old torn sweatshirt, my hair all messed up, playing my guitar, with a bottle of wine on the table next to me.  They had some fun with me and “that picture” before they completed the picture, reminding everyone that I was leading a communion worship service at a beach retreat.  And then they showed a video.  It took place on our church bus as we were crossing the US Mexico Border after a week-long mission trip.  At the border it was common to buy souvenirs through the window as we waited in traffic.  On that particular trip I was trying to buy a statue of the Virgin Mary.  The video captured me negotiating with a seller.  In the video clip, all you can see is me sticking my head out the window, nothing else, and I’m in the middle of intense bargaining, “How much for the virgin?”  And it gets worse, “I’ll give you five dollars for the virgin.”  You can’t always control how you will be remembered!  Memories can be tricky.How will we be remembered?

In the 2007 movie Coco, the story about a young boy who finds his calling in life by traveling to the land of the dead to remember his ancestors, a movie about the wonderful Mexican tradition of “Dia de los Muertos,” “The Day of the Dead,” we are reminded of the power of remembering and being remembered.  Father Virgil Elizondo of San Antonio when asked about “Dia de los Muertos,” replied, “We die three times, once when the body expires, again when we’re buried, and a third time when we are forgotten.  It’s the third death, of memory, that matters most.”So it is that we gather today to remember those who have gone on before us, those who now rest in the never-failing arms of God’s love and forgiveness, those whom we loved, those who loved us.  Those whom we do not want to forget.  And in those memories, we are re-membered with them in the mystery of the faith, in the timeless communion of the saints of every time and place.  And in those memories, memories reborn, memories come to life, we are inspired to live this day and the next to its fullest, to faithfully live out our calling in life.

So, who do we remember today?  How will we be remembered when people look back at these times? 

Whose memory awakens life in you?  Who might remember you and find a spark?  And then there’s the nagging question born of doubt, will I be worth remembering?

I suppose all these questions, all these “All Saints Day” questions, raise the larger question of faith, the question of ultimate concern.  They invite us to take inventory of heart, mind, and soul.  What do I want to do with my life?   How will I use my gifts and talents?  What will I leave behind?   How will people remember me?  What will last?  What will endure?  In what should I invest our life?  How do I want to be remembered?

Today's Gospel, The Beatitudes, tell us of the values of the kingdom of God.  These teachings of Jesus are hard because they collide with the world.  They seem unrealistic, unattainable, and impossible to live out.Yet, as we remember the saints, the ones who really made an impact on our life, the ones who were bright lights in the darkness, the ones who helped light the candle of faith within us, - perhaps we have seen these Beatitudes come to life.  Perhaps these words found in today’s gospel, the Beatitudes, came to life and painted the pictures of the saints that we remember today.

Pictures of humility and integrity.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

Pictures of people who sought to do the right thing, the fair thing, the just thing.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Pictures of hearts that felt compassion, hearts that were giant and could hold anything,

hearts that were broken, yet in their wounded-ness knew how to heal.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

Pictures of people who could see God in the least of these,

people who found the kingdom in serving others.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Pictures of people who knew of a peace "beyond understanding,"

a peace that would comfort and yet challenge.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

People who were filled to overflowing.

“Rejoice and be glad, ...”

These are the people, the saints, that we remember.

“... for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

And that's how I will remember you!  Now I know that you don't live up to the beatitudes everyday, -nobody does.   But deep inside that's who you are.  You are the “blessed,” you are the beloved children of God, you are the ones for whom the saints pray, you are gifted and loved, and the kingdom of God is in you.  That’s what I see, and that’s what I will remember.  You are definitely worth be remembered!

But more importantly that’s how you are remembered by God. In Christ you will never be forgotten but remembered forever, here and now, and forever in the timeless communion of the saints, especially those precious saints we remember today.  May God bless our faithful remembering.  Amen.

Sermon on Matthew 22:34-46

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We humans like rules.

We may say we don’t, but there’s a lot to like about rules.

It can be satisfying to make rules that others have to follow—ask any kid playing “Simon says.” It makes life easier if others play by our rules.Whether we’re deciding “no shoes in the house” because it makes cleaning the floor easier or “no phones at the dinner table” because it opens us and our families up to more conversation and connection, setting rules can make our lives easier and better.

It can also be fun to find loopholes for rules. How fun was it as a kid to annoy your sibling or a friend by getting all up in their face and saying, “I’m not touching you”? Honoring the letter but not the spirit of a rule can make us feel clever while still getting what we want.

It can even be enjoyable to break rules.For example, as author Douglas Adams wrote, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they fly by.” There’s something intoxicating about “sticking it to the man” and disregarding others’ rules.

And for those rules we do follow, or at least try to follow, they can make our world simpler to understand. They keep our world in tidy boxes. I can only go this far before breaking a rule. If someone breaks a law, then they are a criminal, unlike me. And that red light I ran? It was only orange. I definitely obey the law. And I get to keep my concept of self and my orderly understanding of the world intact.

These are the very human games the Pharisees are playing,“Let’s trap this upstart rabbi into discrediting himself so that our understanding of the world will stay intact. He’s causing too much trouble, so let’s get him to say the wrong thing or break a rule so that we can quiet all this down and get back to business as usual.”

It's so human. We want rules that keep our lives simple. We want to understand the world in broad strokes: things are either this or that, with no gray area in between. Toddlers want rules—they test boundaries to make sure they understand how far they can go. Grown-ups aren’t much different.

And God gave us rules. God gave Moses the Law. God taught God’s people how to live in community.

Jesus sums it all up in our reading today: love God and love your neighbor.

It all comes down to love.

God’s Law is summed up by love. That’s what God wrote on the hearts of our ancestors in faith in our first reading from Jeremiah. Love.

Butfar too often, too many of us humans use the letter of God’s Law as a weapon to harm our neighbor instead of using the spirit of God’s Law to love them. People use the letter of God’s Law to bludgeon our LGBTQ siblings or to justify violence. That’s not love. But it’s way easier to quote the Bible to justify our own actions than it is to live our lives dedicated to the well-being of every single one of our neighbors—our Muslim neighbors, our Jewish neighbors, our atheist neighbors, our trans neighbors, our addicted neighbors, our neighbors who seem unfriendly or even hostile toward us.

But the spirit of God’s Law is love.

We also remember today, though, that it is not God’s Law that saves us, but God’s grace, as Martin Luther reminded the Church of his day over 500 years ago.

We humans want rules—rules to enforce, bend, and even break. But God gives us grace.

That is our starting point. That is what matters more than anything else. We cry for rules, and God says, “I created you. I love you. There is nothing you can do to make me love you any more or any less. I love you for every bit of who you are, because I am who I am.”

God’s Law is love, because God is love. And it is God’s grace that sets us free to strive for love in this world. And God’s grace is what God wraps us in like a blanket when we miss the mark. And God loves us through it all.

Today marks the 35th anniversary of Pastor Greg’s ordination. Pastor Greg has spent 35-plus years preaching God’s grace and love in his words and actions. What a gift!

And we now prepare for him to follow God’s call to do ministry in new ways apart from this immediate community. It’s okay if our feelings are mixed. We can be happy for his exciting new chapter and also sad that we will be losing his gifts and vision and leadership and friendship in this place.

We can celebrate his 35 years of ordained ministry and mourn that they will continue elsewhere.

God is with us in all of it—joy and grief, love and loss.

We can give thanks that we have been collaborators with Pastor Greg in the ministry the Holy Spirit is up to here at First Lutheran and in Fullerton.

And we get to carry on the legacy of God’s love that Pastor Greg has shared with so many in this place.

We will carry that love forward into the world as we discern where God is leading this congregation in this new chapter.

Whatever God is leading us to, it will be full of God’s grace and love. Because that’s who God is and who we are created to be.

First Lutheran Church

October 22, 2023 + The Twenty-First Sunday in Pentecost A

Matthew 22:15-22 + 15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap [Jesus] in what he said. 16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Sermon

“Allegiance”

Pastor Greg Ronning

“I pledge allegiance” …  What does that mean? “A faithfulness to something to which one is bound by pledge or duty.”

The Merriam-Webster’s dictionary fleshes it out further …. A strict and continuing faithfulness to an obligation, trust, or duty.  An adherence like that of citizens to their country. A fidelity acknowledged by the individual as compelling as a sworn vow. A faithfulness that is steadfast in the face of any temptation to renounce, desert, or betray.   A devotion marked by zeal and service amounting to self-dedication.  An expression of commitment and devotion in the firmest sense of the word!

“I pledge allegiance” …   So, what is “worthy” of your allegiance?What deserves your allegiance? What has your allegiance?

In this week’s Gospel the religious leaders try to trap Jesus with a question about “allegiance,” a question about living in “two different worlds,” a question about ultimate concerns.  They begin by trying to “butter Jesus up” with flattery, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God …” And then with no sincerity, with guile,they ask him, “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"

You see the Pharisees know that if Jesus says “no” to paying taxes the Romans will arrest him for treason; and if he says “yes” they can perhaps discredit him with the faithful as a Roman sympathizer.  Once again, it’s a trick question, he will be damned if he says “yes,” and he will be damned if he says “no.”  It’s funny how “allegiance” is always framed in such ultimate ways in this world, often leaving no room for critical thinking and honest questions, for any kind of nuance,for any conversation as if such things are solely a matter of “blind” allegiance. 

But Jesus does not fall into the trap, as he so often does in the Gospels, he does not answer the question with a “yes” or a “no” answer.  He rejects that kind of simplification of life, he refuses to reduce things to “black or white,”to “us or them,” or “red or blue.”  Instead, he asks those with questions to be thoughtful and reflective about answers, he invites them to seek after truth, to be in dialog, to be comfortable with the tension of living in between.  Jesus shows us all once again, that he is not “the answer,” but rather to the contrary, that he is “the question” that leads us more deeply into “the way, the truth, and the life,” the abundant life of faith.

At face value one might suggest that today’s Gospel is all about paying taxes, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus’ answer takes us to a very different place …"Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."  When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Theologian Marcus Borg, in an essay entitled, "What Belongs to God?" writes…

“… this text offers little or no guidance for tax season. It neither claims taxation is legitimate nor gives aid to anti-tax activists. It neither counsels universal acceptance of political authority nor its reverse. But it does raise the provocative and still relevant question: What belongs to God, …”

 “At issue is not merely my economic relationship to the government, but my existential relationship with God. On that ancient coin was an image of Caesar, and merely money is owed to him. On the other hand, and far more importantly, every human being bears the image of God, implying that I ‘render to God’ wholly and without condition my entire self. So, pay your taxes to Caesar, and give your whole self to God.”

Today’s Gospel invites us to engage in this very hard question, the question of allegiance, a question about belonging, one of those questions of ultimate concern, the questions of faith.  What is “worthy” of your allegiance?  What deserves your allegiance? And what truly has your allegiance?

This past Monday I was walking into a store and came upon a couple walking out of the store.  One of them was wearing a “Dallas Cowboy” jersey, and the other a “Los Angeles Charger” jersey.  It made me laugh, as the Cowboys and Chargers were set to play each other that very night.  So, I asked them both, “Whose gonna win tonight?”  The guy wearing the Cowboy jersey quickly answered, “We are!”  And the woman with Charger jersey, just smiled and shook her head, - No.  I laughed again and wondered, “How in the world does that relationship work?”I am so thankful that Melissa and I share an “ultimate allegiance” to the “San Francisco 49ers!”  Anything else just might have been a deal breaker!  I can see how Democrats and Republicans can make a marriage work, but being fans of different football teams???  I don’t know???

We all live our life in different “spheres” that demand our allegiance.   Our family makes demands on us, our work makes demands on us, our country makes demands on us, the various organizations we belong to make demands of us, our political parties make demands on us.  Sometimes it feels like everyone wants our allegiance.Sometimes it feels like everyone wants, even demands, our complete “blind allegiance.”

Managing our various allegiances can be tricky.  And what happens when they overlap? (Seinfeld Episode) What happens when our different worlds collide? What happens when they demand different outcomes?  What happens when they conflict?  And they do, often, conflict!  The allegiances of this world seldom leave room for differing opinions and approaches, compromise and the possibility of working together for the common good.  More and more in our world, allegiance demands separation, conflict, and the demonization of the other.  At times we seem completely and utterly divided by these allegiances that that seem - less than worthy.

As the followers of Jesus,we claim that our allegiance belongs to Christ and the Kingdom of God.  However, we all know that is easier said than done.The Kingdom of God by its very nature is always going to be in conflict with the world, and ultimately in conflict with the other “spheres” in which we live and work and play.  Christ and the Kingdom’sproclamation of love; love for neighbor, love for the needy, love for the forgotten, love for the stranger, and even love for enemy, challenges each and every allegiance of this world. 

The demand for allegiance in our world and in our faith, leaves us conflicted at best.  The allegiance demands of this world leave us despondent and hopelessly divided against each other.  And the invitation to be a part of the Kingdom of God, though it resonates deep in our soul, is always a challenge to our flesh in this world.

As we find ourselves struggling between the various spheres in which live, struggling with demanding loyalties, struggling with competing values, struggling with the ultimate concerns of our hearts, struggling with the hard teachings of Jesus, struggling with our belonging to the Kingdom of God yet living in the kingdoms of this world; we are invited to reflect on the question found in today’s Gospel, "Whose head is this, and whose title?"

I know it’s not an easy question.  It’s a hard question.  But it’s also a question that opens us up to a promise, to a great truth that will set us free.  You see in the question about the image found on the coin, there’s an unspoken question that is also being asked, “Who’s image do you bear?”

Our faith and the scriptures proclaim that we have been created in the Image of God, that we are nothing less than the beloved children of God.  What does it mean to be created in the image of God?It means that we were created in love, to be loved, and to love others.  We were created to be “co-creators” in the Kingdom that is present and “at hand.”  And in that identity, in that calling, there is great peace, that peace that passes all understanding; there is great joy, in a life of loving purpose; and there is an untouchable salvation, grounded in a radical grace that “cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

So where does your“allegiance” belong?  Where does your fidelity belong? Where does your devotion belong?  Certainly not to your identity in this world, not to allegiances that are unworthy and cause division and the demonization of others.  "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."Give you “allegiance” to that which is your true identify, the image of God, your beloved-ness, the promises of the Gospel, the coming of the Kingdom - and your unique ability to love and bear witness to love.

Our allegiance to the Kingdom of God, while it may put us in conflict with the world around us, will bring about in us that peace which surpasses all understanding, a life of purpose and meaning, a life filled with hope, a life that will make a difference, a life claimed by love.

"Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."  May it be so.  Amen.