Sermon onMark 6:1-13

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’ve been talking about grind culture over the course of our Sabbath 2024 theme. It’s the rampant idea in our culture that we should work constantly. If we’re not being productive, then we’re being lazy.

A good amount of the American Dream is founded on the concept of the self-made person who started with nothing and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Anyone who can’t manage to succeed just isn’t working hard enough.

We also have a cultural icon of the pioneer, the rugged survivalist who can live off the land and tame the wilderness. There aremovements of folks learning to live off the grid or to homestead. They’re learning to grow and preserve their own food and provide for themselves and their families without depending on modern conveniences.

There’s something to be said for hard work, learning survival skills, connecting with the land, and being less dependent on systems that can become unreliable during crises, like a pandemic for instance.

There’s also something to be said for the sense of pride and satisfaction that comes with working hard and learning new skills.

There are some shadow sides, though.

1.    If, in our quest for independence, we forget to care for our neighbor, that’s not very Christlike.

2.    If we push ourselves to burnout because we’re working ourselves like machines instead of people, we’re not caring for ourselves in a way that’s honoring to God who made us.

3.    If we strive so much for self-sufficiency that we forget to lean on God, then our priorities are out of order.

Even Jesus ran into problems at times and leaned on others.

In today’s Gospel reading, he found people in his hometown unreceptive to his message. They voiced concerns that he had forgotten his place. After all, he was just a carpenter. They knew his family. They’d watched him grow up. Who was he to pass himself off as a rabbi and claim he could do miracles?

So, he went from calming a storm, casting out a legion of demons, curing a woman from her chronic bleeding, and bringing a young girl back to life to not being able to do a whole lot in the place he was raised.

Then, in our reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul admitted that he had been wrestling with a difficulty—a “thorn in his side.” He didn’t go into the details, but it was something he had asked God to free him from. He felt humbled by his circumstance.

Even in our first reading, God told Ezekiel that people might not listen to him. In contrast to some other prophets, (Jonah for instance who had a whole city repent and turn toward God after his half-hearted message,) the purpose of Ezekiel’s prophesying was not necessarily repentance or action. He just had to give the message, regardless of the response. A pretty depressing mission.

But Ezekiel trusted God that it was enough that the message was said. His mission didn’t depend on the response. He leaned on God and did what God asked, and we are still reading his words today.

The same with Paul. It’s rather remarkable that Paul with all his privilege—his Roman citizenship, power, and authority—still struggled and chose to boast of his weakness and all the times it outwardly looked like he failed: when he was beaten, insulted, and persecuted. He leaned on God when the answer to his prayer was not what he hoped.

Paul and Ezekiel both chose to be faithful to God regardless of their personal success. They (and we) follow a God who humbly became a human being to connect with us, who gave up power and even died an excruciating human death because God’s relationship with us mattered. When God answered Paul’s prayer by saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness,” God knew that firsthand.

That’s not to say we should seek out weakness or suffering or diminishment. We are human beings, and we’ll inevitably fall short and, if we live long enough, suffering will come to us. There’s no need to add to it. God gave human beings free will, and consequently our world is not as it should be. But it will be one day. The Beloved Community will be complete.

And until then, we lean on our loving God who knows what it means to walk around this imperfect planet with an imperfect body trying to love imperfect humans.

When Jesus was rejected by his hometown, he didn’t escape to a faraway place, change his name, and start a new life.

He got his disciples to help him spread his message of the Beloved Community even farther than he could by himself.

He sent them two by two, not from a position of power, but of humility. They weren’t to take anything with them. They would be reliant on others’ hospitality. They had to lean on each other, their hosts, and of course, God.

It’s kind of a terrifying prospect. I knew someone studying to enter the priesthood who had gone on a trip modeled after this story, and he must be far braver than I am. I’m not suggesting anyone should grab their sandals and head out the door.

But the vulnerability and humility Jesus inspired here is beautiful.

It’s so different from our success-driven, numbers-based society.

We are human beings, not machines. We can’t do everything perfectly. We can’t accomplish everything by ourselves.

God made us for community. God told the first human that it wasn’t good to be alone. So, God created another human, and the three of them walked around the Garden together.

We are made for community. We are not made to be islands, cold and self-sufficient. We’re meant to be interdependent—to lean on each other and on God.

Bill Withers’s song “Lean on Me” kept playing in my head when I was working on this sermon:

“Lean on me
When you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on...

For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need somebody to lean on”

That’s Beloved Community right there.

God made us for community—we’re not meant to do it all on our own. It’s not just okay but essential that we ask for help, because that’s how community is built. I lean on you in my time of need, and then you know it’s safe to lean on me in yours.

If we boast, let it be of our weaknesses, because they prove we are human, dependent on God, and in need of community.

Lean on each other and God. Ask for help. Support each other. Do not believe in the myth of self-sufficiency or let grind culture trick you into trying to do it all yourself.

Remember: whenever I am weak, we are strong.

Sermon on Mark 5:21-43

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Last week we read about Jesus calming the storm as he and his disciples crossed the sea. They were on their way to Gentile territory, and while they were there, Jesus liberated a man who was occupied by a legion of demons. For reference, a legion of Roman soldiers was about 5,000.Jesus let the demons take possession of a herd of pigs who then ran off a cliff. The locals were not pleased that their livelihood had died, and they asked Jesus to move along.

So, when our reading today starts by saying, “When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side,” that’s where he was coming from.

One of the religious authorities, Jairus, rushed to beg Jesus to heal his dying daughter.He “begged him repeatedly,” which is exactly the language used to describe the demons begging Jesus not to send them away. Both physical and supernatural beings were pleading with Jesus for mercy.

Then, another story enters the mix when Jesus was on his way to see Jairus’s daughter. A woman with chronic bleeding braved the crowd with the desperate hope that touching even Jesus’ clothes would heal her.

Jesus commended her truth-telling and trust in him and sent her on her way.

Meanwhile, Jairus’s daughter died.

But Jesus asked Jairus to trust him too.

And amid the wailing of the people at the house, Jesus took only his most trusted disciples and the Jairus and his wife to see the body. Jesus took her hand and lifted her up, restoring her to life. He told the amazed parents to feed her and went on his way.

Three strange and surprising stories.

The recipients of Jesus’ care represent a vast variety of people.

The demon-possessed man was a Gentile, completely outcast from society. He was desperate.

Jairus’s daughter was young—twelve years old—with a powerful parent advocating for her and many people grieved by her death. They were desperate.

The woman had been bleeding as long as Jairus’s daughter had been alive. She was impoverished aftersearching unsuccessfully for a cure. She had no one to advocate for her. She was desperate.

In these three stories, the characters are very different, but their desperation is the same.

And Jesus restored all of them to new life.

Jesus showed the breadth of his mission by showing mercy to individuals.His mission included Gentiles, those oppressed by demons, privileged people like Jairus’s daughter, those overcome by death, the impoverished and forgotten, those plagued by illness.

Jesus cared for all of them and cared for them wholly.

The word for “being made well” throughout this passage is sozo, which could be translated as “save,” “heal,” “preserve,” or “rescue.”All forms of well-being are brought together in this one word. There is a glorious conflation here of salvation, healing, and wholeness.

That can get us into dangerous territory if we mistakenly think that illness or disability is a sign of God’s disfavor or someone’s sinfulness. Let’s agree that’s an unloving and discriminatory perspective that needs to stay in the Middle Ages.

God loves all people. All bodies are made by and loved by God. Sometimes people don’t receive a cure in this life. That doesn’t make them any less worthy of love. I don’t know why people suffer. Any trite explanation for the world’s suffering is inadequate for the realities people face every day.

But we see in this passage that Jesus doesn’t care only for people’s souls getting into heaven. We see that Jesus cares about people’s bodies and their lives on earth.

He didn’t just say, “I’ll pray for you,” or “You’ll get a new body in heaven” or “God needed your daughter as another angel.” He restored their bodies. He brought the people in our stories well-being in this life.

Our society often ignores people’s bodies.

We’re taught to ignore our needs.

Children are taught very early to sit still and suppress their bodies’ need to move.

Diet culture has us ignoring our hunger cues and fixating on making our bodies as small as possible or requiring our bodies to conform to a certain mold.

Many people’s bodies are treated as disposable or an inconvenience: unhoused people, newly arrived immigrants, disabled people, seniors, and the list goes on.

Christianity has a history of leaning into the idea that our bodies are bad—full of evil urges, sinful desires, and selfish interests—and only our souls are good. You can find this idea especially in the New Testament letters.

But it’s important to remember that the earliest Christians thought Jesus was going to come back right away, so it was unnecessary to worry about our bodies or about the future.

It's also important to look at the whole of scripture and remember who made our bodies and the world we live in. We have a loving God who chose to take on a human body and live the fullness of human life alongside us. We have a savior who brought sozo to many and inspired his followers to carry on that lifegiving work.

God cares about people’s bodies, not just their souls.

And so, we should care about people’s bodies too, including our own.

We care for people’s bodies by feeding them and their families through Caring Hands. We care by sending fans to the ELCA Youth Gathering for survivors of natural disasters. We care for each other’s bodies through our prayer chain and checking in on how we’re doing.

Our Sabbath theme helps us to care for our bodies too. We’re rarely at our most generous and caring when we’re run off our feet. Sabbath rest restores us to well-being.

We’re “the church that feeds people body and soul.”

What are you hungry for?

What are our neighbors hungry for?

How is the Holy Spirit filling us with new life?

Last week’s reading was about trust—the trust the disciples had to learn to put in Jesus, who commanded the wind and the sea.

In this week’s reading, Jairus and the woman with the chronic bleeding put their trust in Jesus—that he could bring new life.

And Jesus showed his faithfulness to all of them.

We’re about to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” a beloved hymn for many.

I have found it to have the most meaning when sung in difficult times. It is, after all, based on our reading from Lamentations this morning, a piece of scripture written by our ancestors in faith in exile, wondering why God had let them be defeated and taken into exile and had not rescued them yet. They longed for sozo, for God to “save,” “heal,” “preserve,” and “rescue” them. Though sozo is Greek, not Hebrew, the longing was the same. Save us, God!

What did they remind themselves of in their time of despair? God’s faithfulness.

Though our reading says that it’s good to wait quietly for God, God is surely big enough to handle our times of lament, our shouting and wailing. The book of Lamentations also includes plenty of that. We can bring God all of our big feelings.

In their time of trial, our ancestors in faith also remembered God’s faithfulness.

Our God, who is with us in the storms of our lives, created and loves all of us, including our bodies and those of all our neighbors. God saves, heals, preserves, and rescues.

As we remember God’s faithfulness to us, our community, and the world, let’s sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

Sermon on Mark 4:35-41

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

“Why are you afraid?”

If professional fishermen are afraid of a storm, that seems like a good reason to panic.

But there Jesus was, napping, duringa storm big enough to swamp their boat and scare the pants off the disciples.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

The disciples were terrified.

But what happened next terrified them even more.

Jesus commanded the sea to be still.

And it was so.

The verbs he used were the same he had used earlier in the Gospel of Mark in exorcisms. This storm was supernatural, even demonic. And Jesus quieted it in an instant.

You might think the disciples should have been overjoyed. They were presumably at least relieved. But they were also afraid. They had been afraid of the storm, but now they were afraid of Jesus.If Jesus could so easily overpower a supernatural storm, he must not have been an ordinary rabbi.

The bottom line of this story is trust. Did the disciples trust Jesus?

At that point, no.

They trusted Jesus enough to follow his instructions to get into the boat, but the great storm followed by Jesus’ apparent command of nature itself shook them.

Who was this that they had entrusted their lives to?

Our reading from Job gives the answer and was maybe ringing in the disciples’ ears as they continued crossing that smooth, glassy sea:

Job 38:8“Or who shut in the sea with doors
  when it burst out from the womb?—
 9when I made the clouds its garment,
  and thick darkness its swaddling band,
 10and prescribed bounds for it,
  and set bars and doors,
 11and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
  and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?”

Only God, who made the sea, has power to command it.

The disciples had to face the fact that Jesus was not an ordinary, human rabbi. And they were terrified.

But Jesus was patient with them. He didn’t throw them out of the boat or leave them behind once they got to shore or demand instant full allegiance. He continued to slowly reveal himself to them and let their trust grow over time.

Though it scared them in the moment, Jesus did calm the storm. He didn’t let it sink the boat. They all got safely to the other side.

Jesus didn’t just show off his power to command the sea to intimidate people or impress them. He used his power to protect the disciples and save their lives. His power showed his compassionate nature.

And as the disciples spent more time with him, he continued to show them his power and his character by healing the sick, liberating people from demons, feeding people by the thousands, teaching them about the Beloved Community, and ultimately standing up for his message to the point that it got him executed.

And of course, it didn’t end there. After breaking the power of death, he sent his disciples into the world to continue his mission of peace and healing and love.

The disciples who had been filled with fear learned to trust their beloved Jesus and carry on his message.To follow Jesus is to be like him: to use whatever power we have to be compassionate and show God’s love for the world.

Sometimes fear can overwhelm us, though.

There’s a great storm of things to be afraid of in our world today, too.

1.    There are wars and violence around the world,

2.    the cost of living is increasing,

3.    there are natural disasters,

4.    it’s an election year, and whoever wins will have a great impact on the future of our country,

5.    some of us are navigating diagnoses and changes in our health or that of our loved ones,

6.    and this congregation is going through a transition as LSS relocates and we discern how to make up for lost income and steward the resources of our space.

That’s just to name a few local, national, and global storms we are facing.

It’s easy to focus on the storms and forget who’s next to us in the boat.

Jesus showed power and compassion to the disciples, and God will show power and compassion to us, too.

The disciples had glimpsed Jesus’ power already—he had healed people and cast out demons. But faced with the great storm, they forgot the times Jesus had shown power and compassion in the past.

It can be easy for us, too, amid whatever storms we are in right now, to forget the times God has been faithful to us in the past.

Let’s take a moment to think about our life together as a congregation. God has been faithful to this congregation. It was founded more than 80 years ago and is still doing ministry in this place.

Most of you have been a part of this community longer than I have. You have seen the storms this congregation had survived. You have seen the ebbs and flows of life together as a community of faith.

When and how has God shown faithfulness to this congregation?

Fair warning: I’m about to ask for some congregational participation.

Take a moment of silence and think about the times and ways God has shown faithfulness to First Lutheran. What would you share with this group?

When and how has God shown faithfulness to this congregation?

I’ll start us off: this congregation navigated COVID, finding creative ways to worship, and transforming the way we served our neighbors through Caring Hands.

Now it’s your turn: when and how has God shown faithfulness to this congregation over the years?

Thank you.

God is with us in our storms. The Holy Spirit has worked through First Lutheran Church and will again. The Holy Spirit has worked in your life and will again.

I’m pretty good at worrying. In any situation, it wouldn’t take me long to assemble a list of things that could go wrong. This story has been a good reminder for me this year that Jesus doesn’t ask, “What are you afraid of?” but “Why are you afraid?” The disciples were afraid of the storm, but they didn’t need to be because Jesus was with them. Remembering that I am beloved by God helps quiet my perpetual list of worries. The storms are still there, but they become quieter as the voice of God becomes louder.

The storms you are facing might be bigger and scarier than you have ever experienced before, but Jesus is right there in the boat next to you. The one who created the seas will not abandon you—will not abandon us.

God is present in the tools you turn to in your storms: prayer, silence, therapy, friendship, the natural world, and whatever else shows you God’s compassionate nature.

Our compassionate God, who has seen this congregation through many a storm, is worthy of our trust and is present with us no matter what we face.

Because we trust God, we can say to our souls, “Be still.”

May you find peace in whatever you face today, Beloved.