Sermon on Mark 2:23-3:6

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

At this point in our yearlong Sabbath theme, hopefully, you’re getting an idea of what Sabbath is for:

1.    It’s to delight in God’s creation, as God did on the seventh day at the beginning of time.

2.    It’s to care for creation—the land, the animals, and the people—by letting everything and everyone rest and renew.

3.    It’s for God’s people to remember that they are no longer enslaved in Egypt and to remember that it was God who liberated them.

4.    It’s to give us a glimpse of what the completed Beloved Community will be like someday.

Sabbath is about delight, renewal, liberation, and hope. It’s meant to be life-giving and worship-filled.

The Pharisees in our stories today were observing the letter of, but not the spirit of, the Sabbath laws.

It’s important, though, that we don’t make the Pharisees into evil, mustache-twirling villain caricatures, despite the violent choice they make at the end of our reading.

The Pharisees were a well-respected branch of Judaism. It’s even possible that Jesus was a Pharisee. When he criticized and butted heads with Pharisees in the Gospels, he was calling for reform from within not just the Jewish tradition but maybe even the school of thought from which he came.

The Pharisees were striving to live out the Law given to God’s people after they were freed from Egypt.

They were religious authority figures who were trying to honor God.

They were humans who were defending their understanding and the status quo.

As Lutherans, we can say they were simultaneously saints and sinners, just like the rest of us.

And, in these stories, they were definitely trying to control Jesus and catch him breaking the rules.

They were calling Jesus out for not staying within the lines of their understanding of how Sabbath should be observed.

·       They thought no work should be done on the Sabbath, even if that caused Jesus’ disciples’ stomachs to growl.

·       They thought no work should be done on the Sabbath even if it meant that someone would go without healing. After all, the man with the withered hand wasn’t bleeding to death. Surely healing him could wait until tomorrow.

But they were misapplying the Sabbath laws.

Before we pat ourselves on the back for not being like those Pharisees, let’s look at ourselves in the mirror and examine our own Sabbath practices or lack thereof.

How often do we really unplug—both literally our devices and figuratively ourselves?

What is our rhythm of rest and is it enough for true well-being?

Do we give ourselves enough space to pay deep attention to the Holy Spirit?

When was the last time we had fun? Is it something we prioritize or just hope for? Or maybe not even think about at all?

Far from rigidly observing the Sabbath commandments, we have swung so far in the other direction that we still misapply them.

We have misinterpreted the freedom we receive from God’s grace as an indication that we should shun anything that could come across as legalistic.

Instead of using Sabbath to remember that God freed God’s people, we have enslaved ourselves to grind culture.

It’s not bad to work hard, but grind culture only wants us to turn us into machines that only work hard with no rest or grace.

Grind culture tells us to monetize our hobbies, optimize every second of our schedules, and substitute caffeine for rest.

And fun? What’s that? Grind culture has no place for fun unless a grueling workout can be considered “fun.”

Anyone who doesn’t live up to grind culture’s standards must be weak, undisciplined, and lazy. It’s their fault for not measuring up. And by extension, because no one can live up to grind culture’s standards, it’s your fault.

But Jesus, the lord of the Sabbath, wanted something different for the Pharisees and for us.

The Pharisees wanted to uphold their rigid understanding of what counted as work on the Sabbath, but Jesus invited them to consider the needs of their hungry neighbors—in this case, Jesus’ disciples—and their neighbors in pain—in this case, the man with the withered hand.

It’s easy to observe a rigid understanding of work on the Sabbath from a privileged position like that of the Pharisees, who probably didn’t have to think about what they were going to eat or how they were going to manage a disability or chronic health condition.

Blanket rules rarely work for everyone.

Jesus wanted to turn their attention to the spirit of the Sabbath laws instead of fixating on the precise details.

He asked them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

He pointed them to their merciful and loving God, the instituter of Sabbath and Jubilee—practices of communal rest and justice and joy.

They were practices of freedom, not of control.

But we humans like rules, especially ones that help us control other people.

And so, these religious leaders tried to use Sabbath laws to get Jesus in trouble.

And over the years, we Christians have tried to distance ourselves from those Pharisees (probably not without a good deal of antisemitism).

We tried so hard to not be legalistic that we started serving an idol: grind culture.

We threw the freedom and joy of Sabbath out with the proverbial bathwater.

But Jesus still points us to our merciful and loving God who rested on the seventh day and freed God’s people from enslavement.

We do not need to serve grind culture. We can’t deprogram ourselves from it overnight, andwe can’t rid our society of it by ourselves, but we can learn to practice Sabbath in its full communal rest, justice, and joy.

One antidote to grind culture is play.

Grind culture has no room for play, thinking itfrivolous and unproductive.

But play helps us connect with each other, live in the present moment, and experience joy.

It helps us feel like human beings instead of human doings.

Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, defines fun as: “the confluence of three psychological states: playfulness, connection, and flow.”[1]

·       “Playfulness refers to having a lighthearted spirit,”

·       “connectionrefers to the feeling of having a special, shared experience with someone else,”

·       and “flow is the state we’re in when we’re totally engrossed and actively focused on the activity or experience at hand—it’s when we’re in the zone.”

Grind culture doesn’t want this for us. Playfulness is unproductive, connection is unnecessary because depending on other people is weak, and flow is only good if it’s in the context of work.

But there are people in our society today who are reclaiming fun.

For instance, there was a running group in Franklin, Massachusetts that decided they needed more fun in their lives.[2] They started having “fun interventions,” or “funterventions,” where each month one member of the group would plan something fun for them to do together.They’ve tried cross-country skiing, surfing, and even goat yoga, but most importantly, they’ve been there for each other during the ups and downs of life. Fun has led to connection and support.

If the funterventions sound familiar, it’s because they were the inspiration for our play dates starting this summer. Please email me about hosting one—share your fun with others.

We could probably all use some more fun in our lives, and we need connection with each other. God made us relational beings. God created Sabbath practices to deepen relationship, justice, and wellbeing among God’s people.

As we learn about and practice Sabbath this year, let’s do it out of joy and freedom, not fear or control.

Jesus reminds us that we can take care of ourselves, like the disciples did when they picked themselves a snack, and take care of others, like Jesus did for the man with the withered hand, even on the Sabbath.

Instead of worrying about what we’re not supposed to do on the Sabbath or ignoring Sabbath completely because of grind culture, we are freed by God to enjoy creation, delight in rest and play, rejoice in liberation, and hope for the ultimate Jubilee that God will complete one day.

Let’s practice letting go of grind culture. Let’s play.

[1]https://catherineprice.substack.com/p/what-is-fun

[2]https://omny.fm/shows/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/do-we-even-have-fun-anymore-a-listeners-story-of-f

Sermon onJohn 3:1-17

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

“How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.

It’s an appropriate question for Holy Trinity Sunday. Indeed, how can these things be? How can God be simultaneously Three and One?

No one has the answer, not really. And when we try and explain it, we often end up in heretical territory.

We can try to find analogies for the Trinity:

·       God is like water—gas, liquid, and solid, three states of the same substance.

·       God is like a shamrock—three leaves, but the same shamrock.

·       God is like an egg—the shell, the white, and the yolk, but all one egg.

And all of these have an element of truth, but none of them are completely accurate.

We get stuck when we get too heady about complex theological concepts like the Trinity.

That was Nicodemus’s trouble, too. He approached Jesus looking for head knowledge, and Jesus’ responses were…not straightforward.

It kind of feels like Jesus was playing with Nicodemus.

Nicodemus came to him privately after dark and started flattering him (or maybe being sarcastic—it’s hard to tell), but with the implication that he wanted Jesus to confirm his relationship with God.

And Jesus responded, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Nicodemus looked at him quizzically, like it didn’t quite compute, “What do you mean ‘born from above’? That’s not possible—please explain to me the exact logistics of that.”

And Jesus responded by talking circles around Nicodemus, referring to water and Spirit and flesh and wind.

You can almost see Nicodemus sweating, trying to keep up, and the twinkle in Jesus’ eye when he teased him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”

As if anyone could have understood these things.

But Jesus took some pity on him and, though it’s still not exactly straightforward, his monologue at this point at least reassured Nicodemus that God loves the world and sent Jesus to save it.

Nicodemus might not have walked away with a precise description of Jesus’ identity and plan, but it seems he got at least the seeds of understanding.

Nicodemus is mentioned twice more in the Gospel of John:

·       Once when he sort of stuck up for Jesus among the authorities, reminding them that Jesus should get a fair hearing.

·       And again when he brought a hundred pounds of spices to tend Jesus’ body after his death.

Something happened to Nicodemus between this initial nighttime meeting and when he cared for Jesus’ body.

We don’t get a full account of it, but it probably had very little to do with Nicodemus’s intellectual knowledge.

When Nicodemus came to speak with Jesus that first night, Jesus spoke to his heart, not his head.

Nicodemus wanted answers, and Jesus gave him puzzles and riddles that stir up awe instead of precise understanding.

Jesus talked of wind and Spirit and mystery.

But the bottom line was that famous verse and the verse that comes after it: “For God so loved the world…”

God loves the world in this way: God sent God’s Son, (and since we’re talking about the Trinity today) mysteriously also Godself, not to bring disapproval and punishment, but to bring wholeness and life-giving relationship with God to all of creation.

That’s not something to catalogue, label, or dissect. It’s something we can’t fully understand with our heads because it doesn’t make logical sense. But if we feel it with our hearts, it can evoke awe, worship, and love.

God created Nicodemus and the rest of us with hearts and not just heads. Head knowledge isn’t bad—it’s important to think critically and be well informed. But it’s not all there is. We are whole beings with intellects, intuitions, and compassion. We are meant to use these gifts God created us with.

When we insist on intellectually understanding everything, we are missing other parts of our intelligence.

Mysteries of faith like the Trinity are not for us to fully wrap our heads around but instead to tell our hearts things about God’s character.

Things like: God is relational—One in Three and Three in One. God loves the world, and therefore us. Thanks be to God! Jesus came to teach us God’s traits: healing, wholeness, compassion.

In insisting on head knowledge alone, Nicodemus was missing the Mystery. Maybe Jesus was teaching him to open himself to the mystery of God.

We can learn from Nicodemus’s mistake.

We grown-ups often try to trust head knowledge alone. Maybe part of being “born again” or “born from above” is to adopt child-like openness and curiosity.

Madeleine L'Englesaid that “if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

Children often have not lost the connection to their other ways of knowing.

It’s no wonder Jesus told his disciples that the Beloved Community belongs to those who are like children.[1] In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus says something to that effect, and we can draw a lot of conclusions from those passages.

But one thing I read there is an admiration Jesus has for the creative thinking of children, the willingness to not take themselves or the world entirely seriously, the capacity to be filled with joy at God’s wonders.

For the grown-ups in the room, we have a lot to learn from that, and it can teach us something about God’s nature.

G.K. Chesterton, who’s birthday is this Wednesday, wrote this:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”[2]

We grown-ups sometimes take ourselves too seriously. We sometimes lose our capacity for delight.

We just finished our Easter season of proclaiming joy, and we’ll definitely keep including our moments of joy in our weekly email newsletter.

But what if we practice playing this summer? It’s the perfect season for it. What if we try to recapture some of that “do it again” energy that we may have lost over the years?

You’re all invited to host a play date. After all, why should play dates be just for kids?

Whether you like to craft, hike, sing karaoke, watch sports, or something else, talk to me about planning a play date. You pick the activity and the day, and everyone is invited to sign up and try it out with you. Some may involve movement, and some will be seated. Some may cost money, and some will be free.With enough play dates, there’ll be something for everyone to enjoy.

Kids are often brave about asking others on the playground or in the neighborhood to play with them. Let’s be brave too and ask each other to play.

And you don’t have to limit your playing to church activities. In the spirit of our Sabbath theme, let’s do a summer slow-down for the month of July. It’s the middle of the year, so let’s take some time to catch our breath. We'll still have worship, Messy Church, and Caring Hands, but let's try to minimize team meetings and whatever else we can. Let's cut everything down to the essentials for a month.

I invite you to make that your intention in your personal life, too. What can you say no to for a month? What can you open up space for? Let’s use that time to rest and play and dream. Let’s try to be human beings instead of human doings. Let’s have some unstructured fun.

That’s one way we can open ourselves to listening to all the ways of knowing God gave us.

This summer and always, let’s get more familiar with our relational, loving, Three and One, “do it again!” God.

God’s hand is outstretched, asking, “will you play with me?”

Let’s say, “Yes!”

[1] Compare Matthew 18:1-5, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-17.

[2] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Sermon onLuke 24:44-53

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We extinguish the Pascal candle on Ascension Day to remind us that we no longer have the physical presence of Jesus among us in the way his disciples did after his resurrection. But remember that next week is Pentecost, when we remember that tongues of flame, like the one I just put out appeared on the forehead of each Jesus follower.The physical body of Christ became the Body of Christ in the Church.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

And that’s exactly what Jesus warned his disciples against: in Luke, he said, “stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” and in Acts, “he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”

 As much as we remember these two weeks as the start of the spreading of the Beloved Community beyond Jesus’ disciples, there was also a waiting period. This was an in-between time, not unlike Holy Saturday—the day between Jesus’ death and his resurrection, a Sabbath day when there was nothing to be done, no outlet for the disciples’ grief or fear.

This time too between Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost was a liminal space. Jesus was no longer among the disciples, but the Holy Spirit had not arrived yet.

I imagine there was some confusion and some grief in this in-between time too, just as there must have been on Holy Saturday. Jesus had risen from the actual dead but only stayed with them for a few more weeks? He gave them instructions, but what did it all actually mean?

Liminal spaces, in-between times, are uncomfortable. We like the security of one thing or the other. But Jesus was asking them to wait.

I tend to get anxious and restless during in-between times. I have a hard time focusing, and I tend to find mindless, repetitive tasks to occupy myself with so that I don’t have to deal with the discomfort.

Perhaps this is an in-between time for you right now. Maybe you’re awaiting a medical procedure or recovering from one. Maybe you’re in an in-between time at work. Maybe you’re considering a move or a career change or a leadership position and an answer just isn’t making itself clear.

It's hard to wait. It’s hard to know what to do with yourself in an in-between time.

What did the disciples do during their in-between time?

They could have hidden out in the upper room like they had after Jesus’ death. Or they could have given in to their impatience and disobeyed Jesus to go out on their own.

But they didn’t. Instead, “they worshiped [Jesus] and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”

They stayed in Jerusalem, and they worshiped God.

This part at the end of Luke reminds me of something at the beginning of Luke that might sound familiar: “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”[1]

Jesus’ disciples’ reaction to seeing Jesus ascend was similar to the shepherds’ reaction to seeing baby Jesus in the manger. There’s something about an encounter with Jesus that causes an outburst of joy and praise to God.

The disciples took the liminal time in between Jesus’ ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to rejoice and just spend time enjoying God.

And that’s where the Gospel of Luke ends, with the disciples “continually in the temple blessing God.”

It’s only a breath before the book of Acts begins, by the same author, to the same audience. The two are so closely tied that they’re considered two volumes of the same work, called by scholars “Luke-Acts.”

This liminal moment of joy and praise could be considered the hyphen between the two volumes.

It’s easy to overlook these details and just read ahead into the exciting and powerful stories in Acts. I had never really noticed what the disciples did in the meantime until I looked at this story through the lens of Sabbath.

But it’s meaningful that the disciples spent their time of waiting enjoying God.

For us today, even though God’s presence is all around us, it’s hard for us to find time to just enjoy God.

In an in-between time, it’s easier to access anxiety than joy.

And whether you’re in an in-between time or not, I know you all have a lot going on with working, parenting, grandparenting, caregiving, volunteering, studying, leading in this faith community and elsewhere, and so much more.

That’s enough to raise anyone’s anxiety level.

It’s no wonder it’s hard to find time to spend with God.Even an hour on Sunday mornings can be a struggle. I get it.

We have grind culture breathing down our necks, trying to tell us we’re not enough unless we hustle 24/7, optimize our schedules down to the second, and squeeze every drop of productivity from our exhausted bodies. That’s not healthy or helpful.

So, let’s take a moment to check in with our bodies.

As you feel comfortable, take a couple deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Again, if this feels comfortable to you, turn your head to the side and the other side a few times. Now look straight ahead and tip your head from side to side. And if it feels comfortable, roll your head (not back) just with your nose going from one shoulder to the other. Roll your shoulders if that feels good.

Just that can be enough to ground us in our bodies and in the present moment.

That’s the opposite of what grind culture wants from us, but exactly what God invites us to.

It can and will look different for each of us.

It can, but doesn’t have to, look like reading your Bible or spending time with your hands folded and your head bowed.

It can, but doesn’t have to, look like stargazing or dancing or crying or napping or holding someone’s hand.

What brings you joy or causes you to be in awe?

What places cause you to be in awe?

God is, of course, everywhere, including within you. And also, we humans tend to find the sacred more easily in some places—places of beauty or serenity or connection. T.S. Eliot put it this way, “You are here to kneel / Where prayer has been valid.”[2]

Prayer is, of course, always valid, and the Holy Spirit intercedes for us even when we don’t have the words. But still, there is something significant about connecting to generations before us, standing in aweof the glory of creation, seeking the presence of God in a peaceful place.

I encourage you this week, whether you’re in an in-between time or just the normal busyness of life, to carve out some time to just enjoy God.

Maybe a good place to start would be finding your own place “where prayer has been valid.” Spend some time there—or if it’s too far away or exists only in memory, spend some time visualizing yourself there, making it a sacred internal place you can return to in your mind and heart whenever you need it.

Wherever that place is, spend time there this week, worshiping God with great joy.

[1] Luke 2:20

[2] T.S. Eliot. Four Quartets, “Little Gidding.”