Bedrest & Lizard Boy Summer

Pr. Jaz Waring |

Advent 3 December 10, 2023 Luke 1:46b-55 46b

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,   47my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for you, Lord, have looked with favor on your lowly servant.   From this day all generations will call me blessed: 49 you, the Almighty, have done great  things for me   and holy is your name. 50 You have mercy on those who fear you,   from generation to generation. 51 You have shown strength with your arm   and scattered the proud in their conceit, 52 casting down the mighty from their thrones   and lifting up the lowly. 53 You have filled the hungry with good things   and sent the rich away empty. 54 You have come to the aid of your servant Israel,   to remember the promise of mercy, 55 the promise made to our forebears,   to Abraham and his children forever. At the end of my two-year intense seminary program, I was burnt out. I remember around this time two years ago I was deep in my winter finals writing punishingly long essays in the midst of the holiday season. By the time I graduated, my brain was like a fried chicken nugget. I needed some rest! In order to keep myself accountable to this season of recovery, I decided to adopt the ethic of a lizard. For the next three months I only did what a lizard did: take naps, lay in the sun, eat cute snacks, go to the beach, and do a push-up every once in a while. I called it, “Lizard Boy Summer.” At the end of the summer, I was ready for “Girl Boss Fall” and it's been a rocket ride since. Rest is one of my favorite theological topics to talk about. You might remember a sermon I gave a couple years ago about “The Liberating Power of Naps.” I was so excited to hear Pastor Jennifer’s series on rest for Advent this year. Coincidentally, The Table is also focusing on rest this Advent, so it looks like Spirit is trying to teach us something. Last week, Pastor Jennifer preached on John the Baptist’s single-minded focus of his purpose and mission in the world: to prepare the way of Christ. We are called to let go of distractions that are sucking out or energy and rest in our belovedness. We don’t need to prove our worth or earn our keep in the Kingdom of God. This week we are celebrating the third week of Advent, which is traditionally Magnificat Sunday. This is the week where we remember a pregnant Mary boldly proclaiming the coming age of justice through Christ, where the mighty are cast from their thrones and the lowly are lifted. The hungry will be filled and the rich are sent away empty. We light a candle with joy knowing our current pain is temporary, and our world is about to turn. If Advent is about waiting to give birth to Christ among us, then we are on mandatory bedrest. Our world is in need of deep healing, and working like business as usual is not going to save us. Wages are not keeping up with the rate of inflation, so people can’t make ends meet. Babies are being pulled out of the rubble of bombed hospitals. Mass shootings are the new normal. All the while the threat of climate change is an ever present reality. I’ll say it again: if Advent is about waiting and preparing to give birth to Christ among us, then we are on mandatory bedrest. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of using rest to ignore the world around us. Sometimes we can spiritually bypass suffering by curating a worldview of “good vibes only” and shield ourselves from the suffering of Christ in the other. Rest does not mean we lower our eye masks and neglect justice. Rest is a justice issue. Ask a refugee living in an encampment when was the last time they had a good night’s sleep. Get in a time machine and ask an enslaved African in the South when was the last time they took a nap. For working class folks, rest is a luxury and a privilege. I remember seeing my grandfather, with only an 8th or 9th grade education, work every day as a janitor in his small business and worked manual labor well into his 70’s. I’d find him around lunch time asleep sitting up on the couch while “watching” the soccer game on Telemundo. My grandparents were not able to retire until they moved back to Chile over ten years ago. Rest is not a luxury, it is necessary for our survival and is a human right. Sleep deprivation is a warcrime according to the Geneva Convention. Why are we committing war crimes against ourselves and our neighbors? Christ, have mercy on us. So then, what does rest look like in the face of injustice? First, we need to get out of heads that rest is supposed to make us more productive. Yes, we can do more when we’re not tired, but the point of rest is not to become a better capitalist worker bee making money to buy more things. The kind of rest I’m talking about is a robust theological understanding of claiming our baptismal promise of our belovedness. When God created the sabbath as a holy day of rest, God was speaking to a people who were enslaved for generations, who’s worth was based on how many bricks they made or how much grain they can carry. Sabbath was created to remind God’s people that they are free. God created the sabbath because even God almighty rested after creating a “very good” world. Rest is the resistance of the idea we have to earn love and acceptance from society and the embrace of our identity as beloved children of God. Rest is an act of faith and a deep trust that God will help to provide for your needs through community care. This is our foundation from which we move and act in a weary world. We work from a place of rest, instead of working to a place of rest. We’re not working for the weekend, as if rest and leisure is a prize to be won or is a reward. Our week begins in sabbath, whatever day that is for you where you are not doing your job. For me, it’s Mondays. All the work we do in the days after our sabbath is our response or is sourced from that reservoir of rest. When we work from a place of rest, we have the capacity to pour ourselves out into others, helping our neighbor get set free and rest. Our liberation from the oppression of grind culture, violence, and suffering is not individual. Our liberation is collective and intertwined with each other. Which means I am not free until my neighbor is free. I cannot fully enter into rest if my neighbor cannot rest. If we could have the singleminded focus on our purpose and mission like John, casting off anything that is sucking our energy away from pursing Christ…think how much the world would change. If you’re having trouble finding what your purpose or mission is, I’ll tell you. Our purpose is to love God, love people as you love yourself. Our mission is to join in and participate in God’s reconciling and liberating work in the world. Whatever we do that falls under this is up to you. This past summer a couple of friends asked me if I was going to do “lizard boy summer” again, because they wanted to join in this year. One person just got out of a really toxic work environment and was taking time off to change careers, and an other person felt overloaded with clients. More people heard about it and wanted to join Lizard Boy Summer! Anyone who wanted to take time over the summer to play, say no to overcommitments, take naps without guilt, and lay in the sun, was welcome! During this time, we had the capacity to help put on a drag brunch fundraiser for The Table’s mutual-aid fund. The mutual-aid fund is something we started this year to help members at The Table who are experiencing financial hardship. In the first five months of having the fund, we spent our budget for the year because the needs were so high. We put on this fundraiser to fill up the mutual-aid tank and continue our commitment to community care. It was an amazing event, and we raised over $2.8K, almost triple our goal! None of this would have been possible without our volunteers, and it would not have been as successful if we had not taken the time to begin from a place of rest, and rest some more after. Eventually all of the lizard boys got tattoos to commemorate this summer, and to remind ourselves to take time to be a lizard whenever we can. Because Lizard Boy Summer is not just for the summer…it's a lifestyle. Our world is in need of deep healing, and working like business as usual is not going to save us. If Advent is about waiting to give birth to Christ among us, then we are on mandatory bedrest. Rest is not a luxury, it is necessary for our survival and is a human right. Rest is claiming your baptismal promise that you are loved for who you are, not what you do. Remember, we work from a place of rest, instead of working to a place of rest. Remember, our liberation is collective and intertwined with each other. Which means I cannot fully enter into rest if my neighbor cannot rest. And if you are having trouble getting started with this journey of rest, just ask yourself, W.W.L.D? What would lizards do? Amen.

Sermon on Mark 1:1-8

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

This is the beginning of the Good News? Some guy standing around near a river in the middle of nowhere, wearing camel hair and eating what he can forage, splashing people with water and raving about untying someone’s sandals?

John isn’t exactly a glamorous messenger for God’s Messiah. We might expect the herald of the Chosen One to stand in the halls of kings or in the midst of the Temple, clad in whatever the equivalent of a nice suit was in those days. A great, charismatic orator. But no. We get John, who’s someone we might avert our gaze from if we saw him in a dark alley.

But this is where the writer of the Gospel of Mark decided to begin. No genealogies, no birth narratives, no poetic introduction. Just John.

The Gospel of Mark gets right to the point.

And perhaps that’s what’s fitting about John. There’s no pretense with him. There’s nothing flashy or impressive. John is just John.

He’s the ultimate minimalist. He lives away from the distractions of the world. He wears and eats what he can find. He certainly doesn’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses.

But none of this is for simplicity’s sake alone. It’s so he can focus on his mission. John knows why he was put on this earth, and he doesn’t let anything distract him from that.

And people respond. They flock to the wilderness—not exactly a top vacation destination. They want to hear John speak; they want to be baptized by him. They seek a pilgrimage to confess their sins, to be touched by water, to feel connected to God. Perhaps they seek some of the simplicity John embodies.

But John never lets it go to his head. He always, always points to the Messiah who’s coming. He knows his role in the story. He knows his purpose and pursues it with everything he is. He constantly points people away from him and toward what God is doing.

I so admire that type of single-minded focus. And I’m not alone in that.

There are whole industries and philosophies that help us focus, cut out the noise, minimize distractions, and live our best lives.

There are mountains of self-help and productivity books out there. From Greg McKeown’s Essentialism to James Clear’s Atomic Habits to Marie Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, whether you’re looking to embrace minimalism, maximize your efficiency, or pare down physical, mental, and digital distractions, there’s a book out there for you. I should know—I’ve read a lot of them, and I’m always looking for more.

I won’t even get into the apps, planners, devices, software, podcasts, life-coaching services, and journals created to help us focus and prioritize.

Many of us are hungry for simplicity, for figuring out what’s most important to us and cutting out what doesn’t serve those values. We long for a clear understanding of our mission in life and the freedom to pursue it wholeheartedly.

That’s why I’m inviting us into the theme of Sabbath for the entire year of 2024.

Let’s rest from the grind, quiet the noise, cut out the distractions, and really listen to God. Let’s face our wildernesses, so that we can let the Holy Spirit guide our paths—as individuals and as a community.

Let’s learn what gifts Sabbath has for us and dedicate ourselves to rest, play, joy, peace, and connection with God in 2024.

And for today, we can see in Johna single-minded focus on what God was doing in the world. What was God doing in the world?

God was meeting people in the wilderness. God wasn’t only meeting people in the Temple or in the big cities. God was meeting people in the most unexpected of places.

And God was speaking through a most unexpected person. God was using John to evoke the passage from our first reading in Isaiah: a voice in the wilderness crying that God’s glory would be revealed. John reminded people of the prophet Elijah, wandering the wilderness and speaking God’s truth. And they listened to him, hoping to feel divine connection.

Most importantly, God was preparing the way for Jesus the Christ to meet us in our everyday, human messiness. The Gospel of Mark brings Jesus into the scene fully grown and ready for ministry. This is a Gospel of action, known for its frequent use of the word “immediately,” rushing from one story to the next with a powerful sense of urgency. There’s no time to waste.

No time to waste on anything but pointing to what God is up to. Like John, focusing on his priority of proclaiming that Jesus was on his way.

That is what we proclaim, too, especially during Advent.

We proclaim that God shows up in the most unexpected places: the humble places, the messy places, the dangerous places.

And we proclaim that God uses the least likely people, like John and me and you, to spread God’s message of love to the world.

And we proclaim that God came to live among us in Jesus and lives among us still—in the least, the last, and the lost. In our most unexpected neighbor, and in us as well. And Jesus will come again at the end of time to complete the Beloved Community, ending death and sorrow and pain forever.

That is the message of Advent. It was John’s message, and it’s ours.

God spoke through Isaiah and John, saying, “Nothing is going to keep me from my people.”

God might even say:

“Ain't no mountain high enough

Ain't no valley low enough

Ain't no river wide enough

To keep me from getting to you, babe”

There’s no wilderness vast enough in our world or in our hearts to keep God out.

There are no pilgrimages we need to take, no self-help books we need to read, for God to love us more. God tore heaven apart to be with us. That love is there for you always.

We can rest in that simplicity: we don’t and can’t earn God’s love. There’s nothing left to earn; God’s love for us has been 100% since the moment of creation.

That is what matters. God’s Advent love letter shines forth from your heart every moment. May you find rest in God’s love and peace now and forever. Amen.

Sermon on Mark 13:24-37

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The first Gospel reading in Advent is always tough. I want my stars to top Christmas trees, not fall from the heavens. I want twinkle lights in candy colors, not a sun and moon darkened with apocalyptic foreshadowing.

And still, the annual apocalyptic reading that kicks off Advent is a strangely good reminder that Advent isn’t just about wrapping all the gifts on our list and decking the halls. It isn’t even only about waiting for baby Jesus in the manger.

It’s also about preparing for Jesus’ second coming.

The word “apocalypse” means “revealing” or “unveiling.” This reading begins a season of watching for what God is revealing to us.

But that still doesn’t make our reading today entirely palatable. Jesus warns of some pretty terrible things.

This reading startsright in the middle of a long speech by Jesus. It’s after Palm Sunday, and Jesus and the authorities have been butting heads over several different controversial questions. The authorities are about to start plotting Jesus’ death.

Right before the beginning of Jesus’ speech, his disciples are marveling over the beauty of the Temple. And then, Jesus bursts their bubble by telling them it will be destroyed.

The disciples ask him how they’ll be able to tell that’s about to happen, and he starts warning them about all kinds of distressing signs and difficulties to come. He warns them about people who will claim to be the Messiah, about wars and disasters, and about persecutions of Jesus followers.

Just like Advent, when we remember Jesus’ first coming and await his second—operating in two times simultaneously—we can interpret that this passage is about multiple times.

Jesus talks about the destruction of the Temple. In the Gospel of John, the narrator, so to speak, interprets for us that Jesus was talking about the “Temple of his body” being raised three days after being destroyed.[1] Jesus was warning his disciples about what was coming in the next few days.

The actual Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed in 70 CE—it was an absolutely devastatingevent akin to 9/11 for us. There were certainly wars and persecutions during that time in the Roman Empire. Jesus was warning his disciples about what was coming in the next few decades.

And still, we await Jesus’ return at the end of time. Jesus was encouraging his disciples that he would come for them—and for us.

Jesus promises to come and collect his people, who have experienced all kinds of disasters and horrors.Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat, but at the end of it, he reminds us that God is more powerful than any human or natural forces.

The point of apocalyptic literature is not to threaten people into submissionor to give us nightmares. The point is for us to remember that no matter what terrible things we experience, God, who loves us, wins in the end. God will not abandon us, no matter how bad things seem.

And Jesus’ command to “keep awake”?It’s not so that we can crack the Bible like a code and find out secret timelines for the end of the world—after all, Jesus himself says “about that day or hour no one knows.” It’s also not so he can look disappointedly at us when we miss something.

It’s so that we don’t get complacent and forget what Jesus is about.

What is Jesus about?

Loving your neighbor, feeding hungry people, seeking justice, working for peace, declaring the worth of every person because they are made in the image of God, sharing God’s love with everyone around you.

That list sounds good, but honestly, it can sound a bit overwhelming, especially during the busiest season of the year.

Yes, there are extra opportunities for sharing with our neighbors by bringing in fuzzy socks, donating a toy, or participating in Giving Tuesday. Those are good, important, and lovely things.

But even those things can feel like an extra item on a mile-long to-do list.

What does it mean to “keep awake” when we’re already run off our feet catching up on end of the year work, doing all the things to make Christmas magical for our kids or grandkids, and struggling to pick out the perfect gift for that one relative who’s, well, particular.

What does it mean to “keep awake" when we’re inundated with stress, debt, alcohol, rich foods, advertisements, and expectations?

What does it mean to “keep awake” when we’re hardly sleeping anyway?

What if the hum of busyness in our lives this time of year is actually what’s lulling us to sleep?

What if we’re so busy rushing from one store to another to a party to another errand that we don’t have time to catch our breath and reflect on what God is actually calling us to?

What if sacrificing our wellbeing on the altar of society’s expectations is not what God wants for us?

How would we live differently if we believed that “keeping awake” meant saying “no” to things that are keeping us busy but unfulfilled?

I’d like to introduce a theme for 2024. Let’s make 2024 the year of Sabbath.

Sabbath, rest, and reflection are not things the dominant western culture appreciates or even necessarily approves of. We’re told to hustle and grind. If rest is tolerated, it is only so that we can be more productive when we return to work, which is of course as soon as possible.

It’s not just in the workplace either. We’re told to turn our hobbies into side hustles, monetize anything we create, and become more and more efficient at whatever we do.

Rest, we are told, is lazy.Rest is for losers.

And yet, in the very first story in the Bible, God rested.

“On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”[2]

Surely, God doesn’t need to rest. God doesn’t need to rest to be more productive. And yet, God rested anyway and instructed us to do the same.

Maybe being more productive isn’t the point. Maybe God rested and calls us to rest simply because it’s enjoyable.

Let’s spend 2024 exploring that idea and learning what rest looks like as a community dedicated to God.

And let’s dedicate this Advent, this season of waiting and preparation, to preparing to rest. Have you ever noticed that it can take a few days to really relax while on vacation? Or unwind after a big project or event is over? When we’re spending all our energy moving forward, it can take our bodies a while to catch up with us.

So let this Advent be a time of preparation for the rest that’s coming in 2024.

Let’s hear Jesus’ command to “keep awake” not as a call to work harder or faster but instead to pause, reflect, listen to the Holy Spirit’s direction.

That’s how we cut through the white noise of the busyness of the season that’s lulling us to sleep instead of paying attention to what Jesus is about. It’s hard to love our neighbors when we’re barely functioning ourselves.

So, pause. Breathe. Let go of what’s not making you shine with the love of God this season.

We’re about to sing “Wake, Awake for Night is Flying.” Instead of hearing it as a call to sleep less and worry more, let it be a cry of joy that we get to rest in the arms of our loving savior, who’s on his way. It’s an invitation to a banquet of joy that will never end.

When Jesus returns, no matter what terrible things have happened along the way, that is what he promises us: that eternal banquet where we sing of God’s grace and love. Let us sing with joy.

[1] John 2:21

[2] Genesis 2:2-3