Sermon on John 11:32-44

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

In a culture that glorifies youth and tries to ignore death, All Saints Day is a surprising, and maybe even off-putting, holiday.

We’ve just celebrated Halloween, teased ourselves with the macabre, the eerie, and the grotesque aspects of death, but even then, we largely keep it in the realm of fantasy.

There are many cultures that take time to remember ancestors, such as the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, but on the whole, the dominant US culture doesn’t like to acknowledge death.

We’ve delegated caring for the dying to facilities. We hide our funerals in mortuaries. We spend fortunes on anti-aging serums and detox diets to keep the thought of death at bay for as long as possible.

And yet, here we are, honoring All Saints Sunday. We pause and remember those who have gone before us—those who have died this year and the whole cloud of witnesses throughout time.

And that means we must acknowledge that we, too, will one day be among the cloud of witnesses who will no longer walk this earth as we know it. We, too, will die.

Some of our discomfort with this holiday can be heard in the way we talk about it. We say “Happy Birthday,” and soon we’ll be saying “Happy Thanksgiving,” but “Happy All Saints Day” doesn’t seem quite right…

This is a somber holiday—a memory of who is no longer with us, a recognition of our grief, and an acknowledgment of our mortality.

Even our readings are bittersweet:

Our readings from Isaiah and Revelation are beautiful images of the fulfillment of the Reign of God—a feast, a holy city, tears wiped away. But none of that has come true yet. We still live in a world of pain, sorrow, and death.

And our Gospel reading records the shocking raising of Lazarus from the dead. It’s an astounding sign that takes our breath away.

But Jesus doesn’t come to every grave and command our loved ones to come out and join the living once again. We don’t get to unbind our loved ones and free them like Mary and Martha did.

We’re still at a point where resurrection is a matter of faith and not of sight.

Even at the time of our Gospel story, it was an awe-inspiring event, but it also prompted the authorities to plot to kill Jesus.

Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, but he himself would be put to death soon after.

That doesn’t seem so much like something to celebrate.

Then and now, it can seem like death has the upper hand.

But as astounding as it was, our Gospel story isn’t just about Lazarus. The Gospel of John describes seven signs that point to God’s work in the world. From Jesus turning water into wine to raising Lazarus from the dead, it all points to who God is.

1.    Jesus turned water into wine, pointing to the abundance and joy of God’s eternal banquet.

2.    Several signs involved Jesus healing people, pointing to the healing of ourselves and the world.

3.    Jesus fed the multitudes and walked on water, pointing again to God’s eternal banquet and God’s authority over creation.

4.    Finally, Jesus raised Lazarus, pointing to Jesus’ triumph over death itself.

Because, of course, all these signs lead up to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

He himself experienced death and broke its power over us.

And as much as we still live by faith when it comes to resurrection, we do have the stories of Jesus’ defeat of death.

We do have the account of the signs in the Gospel of John, like the raising of Lazarus, leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection, which tell us what God is like: God is abundant, loving, powerful, generous, and beautiful.

And we do have the glorious depictions throughout scripture of what the fulfillment of the Reign of God will be like: a banquet without end, a peaceful city, a union with God that will dry every tear, where death will have no power.

All our ancestors in faith are cheering us on as we move through this life, putting our trust in the promises of our faithful God.

As much as this is a holiday that celebrates things our society would like to ignore, it’s a powerful holy day.

So, I will wish you a happy and a blessed and a beautiful All Saints Day.

And to mark this occasion, I invite you to share a story of someone who has gone before us.

As Lutherans, we acknowledge that we are all saints and sinners—both at the same time. No one’s perfect, so we can admit what was hard as well as what was beautiful about our relationships with our loved ones and ancestors.

If your story is about someone who was a part of this faith community, I invite you to share your story with us by writing it on one of the slips of paper or emailing it to Terri Robertson to be part of our Stories of Us project. We’re only doing it for one more week, so please send in your stories—meaningful, silly, sweet, or whatever you remember about this congregation.

If your story doesn’t involve this congregation, I would still love to hear it—feel free to call or email me or track me down in a hallway.

One way or another, please share your stories of your loved ones and ancestors. It’s how we honor their legacy and it helps us decide how we want to be remembered in the future.

As we talked about last week, practicing Sabbath helps us slow down enough to reflect. It’s hard to share stories if we have no downtime to remember and talk with one another.

Some of the best conversations happen after dinner when there’s no agenda or at a slumber party when the lights are out but no one’s ready to fall asleep yet.

It’s weird to talk about planning for unscheduled time, but it takes intention in our busy lives to make space for those timeless moments when you remember and imagine and dream with friends and family, or just daydream by yourself.

But that’s when we learn who we are, when older generations share the stories that shape the family, when we learn from the dreams of children and youth, when we connect with one another soul to soul.

It’s an important practice that we too often don’t make room for.

Sabbath helps us make room.

Sabbath helps us take the long view on not just our own lives, but the lives that came before and will come after us.

I’ve recently been introduced to the idea of “intergenerational empathy” or “seven generation thinking.”

Diane Schenandoah, a Faithkeeper of Oneida Nation, Wolf Clan of the Six Nations HaudenosauneeConfederacy, describes it like this: “We are here because of seven generation thinking. Every decision that we make today, we think of how is that going to affect seven generations ahead.”[1]

In our fast-paced world focused on convenience and instant gratification, seven generation thinking isa helpful and even novel way to view the world, even though it’s actually a deep and rich tradition.

How would our world be different if we all considered the next seven generations with every decision we made?

It would require us to slow down.

Sabbath can help with that.

And it would require us to be grounded in both past and future generations.

All Saints can help with that.

Let’s make time and space to slow down enough to tell the stories of the past and consider our impact on the future.

After all, we’re part of the grand story stretching from Creation to Jesus breaking the power of death to now to the fulfillment of the Reign of God.

This week, tell stories of the past, dream of the future, and rest in God’s promises that death has been swallowed up in victory.

[1] Long Time Academy podcast, episode 1, around 37 minutes.

Sermonon John 8:31-36

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

I find something in our Gospel story puzzling.

Jesus had been teaching in the Temple, and it says that “As he was saying these things, many believed in him.”

Then, our reading today opens right after that, saying that Jesus was talking to “the Jews who had believed in him.”

But then, they objected to Jesus saying that the truth would make them free, saying: “’We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.’”

Now, the Gospel of John is the latest written of our Gospels and makes a strong effort to make a distinction between the early Jesus followers and the non-Jesus-following Jewish community, even though Jesus was Jewish.

Over the next couple millennia, the way the Gospel of John talks about “the Jews” has led to an atrocious amount of antisemitism, even though it never means “all Jewish people.” So, we have to be careful how we read the Gospel of John when it says: “the Jews.”

And another thing to remember is that Jewish people are not and never have been a monolith, any more than Christianity is. Think for just a moment about the variety within Christianity and how very little we all agree on.

But still, it seems so strange that the Gospel of John would record a conversation where any Jewish people would forget the Exodus!

Arguably the most important event in the Hebrew Bible involves God’s people being freed from enslavement.

So, were these Jewish people forgetting their history? Were they speaking metaphorically? Ironically? Was the writer of the Gospel of John simply using them as a literary device to allow Jesus to elaborate on his teaching about freedom?

I don’t know. And that’s frustrating.

But,Jesus said in our reading that “the truth will make you free,” and the truth that we can glean from Jesus’ teaching and from the Exodus is this:

God frees God’s people.

Whether God freeing the Israelites from Egypt or Jesus freeing us all from the power of sin and death in his death and resurrection, God frees God’s people.

And especially on this Reformation Sunday, we remember that it is God who frees us. It’s God’s work, not ours. There’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more or any less. God already loves you infinitely.

We are freed from having to try to be good enough. We are freed from having to try to live up to some inhumanly impossible standard, because God loves us as we are.

Jesus has set us free, and so we are free indeed!

And still we forget—I probably forget multiple times a day—that we are free.

A primary theme in Martin Luther’s work during the Reformation is that we don’t have to earn our salvation. Again, it’s God’s work, not ours.

But so often we live like that’s not true.

We sometimes forget our history—where we’ve come from as people of faith.

We move so fast through our lives, powering through our to-do lists and striving toward the next thing.

It’s hard to slow down enough to look back.

But the past can help us in so many ways:

1.    We see whose shoulders we’re standing on when we honor the struggles and accomplishments of those who have come before us.

2.    Looking back helps us get in touch with our values. We see the values our ancestors held, and we get to decide whether we want to continue that work or live differently.

3.    Looking back helps us decide the legacy we want to have. We see where we’ve come from and look ahead at the path we’re on. We see the legacy of those who came before us and imagine how we want to be remembered in the future. That informs how we live now.

That’s important reflective work. And it’s hard to find the time and energy to actually do it.

One of the gifts of Sabbath is that it gives us time and restores our energy.

The point of Sabbath isn’t so that we can work harder the other six days of the week. It’s not something we have to earn by working hard, and it’s not a productivity tool.

But it can give us the time we need to slow down and reflect and make sure we’re going in the right direction those other six days.

Sometimes we work so hard trying to get through our to-do lists that we don’t stop to wonder if those things even need doing or if they’re contributing to the way of life we want to live.

It takes rest to remind us that we’re humans, not machines. We have agency and the Holy Spirit to guide us in creating our way of life and our legacy.

We’ve been contemplating and practicing Sabbath throughout this year. I hope it’s been giving you some time to reflect, play, take life a little less seriously, and at the same time, do the serious practice of orienting your life toward God.

Sabbath can give us time to remember our past as we journey into the future.

The stewardship team has invited us all to write down our stories about this congregation—whether from last week or fifty years ago. Let’s embrace it as part of our Sabbath practice this season.

Take some Sabbath time this week and reflect on the past. You can do it while sitting quietly, journaling, drawing, walking, talking with a loved one—whatever lets you settle and just be.

Take that time, reflect on the past, and see how it informs your future.

Our Lutheran tradition was birthed from and is steeped in reform. Knowing our history, examining our present, and deciding what we want the future to look like is an important part of our tradition.

When you reflect on your ancestors’ stories and your own life story, what do you want your legacy to be?What do you want this congregation’s legacy to be?

What do you want your life and the life of this congregation to say about God?

There is much generosity, service, love, and hope in stories of this congregation, and I’m looking forward to hearing more of those stories on Thankoffering Sunday next month. Generosity, service, love, and hope sound like a pretty good legacy to me. We can decide how to contribute to that into the future.

Don’t forget: we are free in Jesus.

Now, let’s slow down enough to reflect.

That reflection may lead to reformation—a new way of being in the world that better reflects our values and what God is calling us to.

On this Reformation Sunday, I want to close with part of a prayer from our Presbyterian siblings:

"O Lord our God, on Reformation Sunday we remember the complex legacy of our church. Grant us the internal space to view the ancestors of our faith as their whole selves, gifts and sins together.

We give thanks for the beautiful legacy of the Reformation: for the resurgence of the humanities and the gift of reading Scripture and offering our prayers to you in our own tongue, for the examples of those who resisted government overreach and abuse of power, for those who stayed true to their conscience in the face of great loss. We carry these lessons with us knowing they came at a great cost.

Through the gift of baptism, you have not only called clergy or special Christians or only some of us, but you have called each one of us to use our God-given gifts to reflect your grace and glory, to impact this world for Christ’s sake, and to engage in activities that enable our neighbors to thrive and flourish in this world you so love.

Help us to rejoice in the legacy of the Reformation, according to your Word, Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen."[1]

[1]https://pres-outlook.org/2022/10/a-prayer-for-reformation-sunday/?utm_source=EDLARJ+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1ef8849459-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_10_05_06_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-1ef8849459-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Sermon on Mark 10:35-45

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Last month, we talked about this pattern in the Gospel of Mark where three times, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection, the disciples misunderstand him, and then he teaches them more about what it means to follow him.

We read two of these passages last month, and this week, we’ve finally reached the third time.

James and John remind me of a time when I was in first or second grade. I was in class, and I had some sort of minor physical ailment (I don’t even remember what it was). But I told my teacher, and she asked if I wanted to go to the office or tough it out.

I didn’t know what “tough it out” meant, but I was proud enough that I wasn’t going to ask. I decided to tell her I would tough it out, thinking maybe it was something that would make me feel better. To my dismay, she went back to the lesson without doing anything to ease my woes.

I learned an uncomfortable lesson that day about pretending I understood something I didn’t.

Similarly, James and John asked Jesus for glory and special treatment, and he replied, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” James and John replied in the affirmative, but they obviously didn’t know what they were talking about, and Jesus knew it.

They apparently had not been paying attention to Jesus’ prediction right before this that he would be “handed over to the chief priests and thescribes, and they [would] condemn him to death; then they [would] hand him over to the gentiles; they [would] mock him and spit upon him and flog him and kill him, and after three days he [would] rise again.”

That’s not a cup James and John, with their daydreams of glory, should have been so excited to drink from. And remember: this was the third time Jesus had told them all of this. But they still weren’t getting it.

And then the other disciples were miffed at James and John for presuming to ask for those positions of status. They obviously missed the point, too, that Jesus was going to suffer and die very soon.

So, Jesus began to teach them what power really means in the Beloved Community.

Our culture today values power and status in a similar way to what James and John were picturing.

We don’t have to look far to hear about or scroll past people striving for power and status:

1.    Celebrities are nothing new, though, it’s an odd phenomenon to have so many people today who are “famous for being famous.”

2.    Other people are making entire careers out of being social media influencers, vying to shape culture and get the attention of brands.

3.    And in a contentious election year, we’re killing countless trees to print the political advertisements that stuff our mailboxes.

So many people spend so much energy to attractpeople’s attention, support, and esteem. And rarely do people consider the cost.

After all, attention is fickle—a household name one day is forgotten the next, political careers come and go.

If the goal is so dependent on others’ opinions, what happens to one’s sense of self when the attention diminishes?

The Church too in the US is grieving its loss of influence in society. Many of you remember the heyday of the Church in the US in the 20th century.

It was a time when church was the center of community, when business connections wanted to know what church you attended, when Sunday school rooms overflowed, and youth groups thrived.

Christianity was people’s assumed religion, and a Norwegian-Swedish Lutheran couple was considered a “mixed marriage.”

The Church in the US today is not what many people had picturedthe future would look like 50, 60, or 70 years ago.

So, many Christians have gotten caught up in the power struggle, striving for political power, demeaning anything in popular culture that’s getting more attention than church, denigrating younger generations for not attending church or taking over the committee roles their parents and grandparents held, or doubling down onworldviews that are exclusionary and ungenerous.

Too many of us, in trying to resist culture, have actually fallen prey to the same values and tactics so many people use to try to acquire power and status.

Brene Brown calls this “power over.”[1] She describes this approach to power as being driven by fear. People who wield “power over,”

1.    Believe that power is finite and use fear to protect and hoard power.

2.    See decency as a sign of weakness—something “for suckers.”

3.    Believe that being right is more important than getting it right.

4.    Give people someone to blame for their discomfort—preferably someone who looks/acts/sounds different than they do.

5.    Maintain power over by shaming and bullying.

Our society rewards “power over.” It’s even seen as necessary in business or politics or media.

It sounds a lot like what James and John were asking for. They were afraid they weren’t going to have the positions of status they wanted, so they went over the other disciples’ heads to vie for power directly from their rabbi. They expected Jesus to be a “power over” sort of messiah.

But that’s not who Jesus was.

He used this opportunity to teach his disciples a different form of power: the power of service.

Instead of clawing their way to the top, stepping on others to get what they want, Jesus taught his followers to follow in his example of service. In the Beloved Community he was instituting, power is inverted: “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”

Brene Brown also describes a form of power other than “power over”: she calls it “power with/to/within.”

Leaders who work from a position of “power with/to/within”:

1.    Believe that power becomes infinite and expands when shared with others.

2.    They value decency as a function of self-respect and respect for others.

3.    Create learning cultures. Getting it right is more important than being right.

4.    Normalize discomfort and move away from shame and blame and toward accountability and meaningful change.

5.    Frame leadership as a responsibility to be in service of others rather than served by others.

This type of power isn’t easy. It’s against the grain of the human instinct toward “power over.” Jesus came to teach us a different way, and he died for it.

But fortunately, that’s not the end of the story, and the upside down Beloved Community will be complete one day, where the last will be first and the first will be last.

Until then, we too can follow Jesus’ example of greatness through service. It’s not easy, and there’s plenty in our culture that resists it.

But we have the Holy Spirit within us to guide us, and we have each other to encourage us along the way.

This congregation has a spirit of service—it’s our mission and purpose to feed our neighbors, body and soul.

And I’ve experienced your humility and servants’ hearts. A while back, the stewardship team led a project where we collected acts of kindness. We encouraged you all to write down the acts of kindness you did throughout the month.

But even though I witness your kindness all the time—watching out for each other, showing generosity to the community—I had a couple people pull me aside and tell me how uncomfortable it made them to have to write down their acts of kindness. The slips of paper were even anonymous, but you were too humble to even write down that you held a door for someone.

It's beautiful, and I love that about you. You care about other people so much and want to serve and don’t want to be acknowledged.

So, as the stewardship team is collecting stories about this congregation for our Stories of Us project, you don’t have to write anything about yourself. But maybe this week, write down a way you’ve seen others in this congregation serve the community.

It’s okay to brag about each other’s kindness. Let’s remind each other of how much this congregation strives to serve.

That’s a way we can remember to follow in Jesus’ example of servanthood instead of the world’s “power over.”

Let’s continue this congregation’s legacy of service as we serve our community and all our beloved neighbors together.

[1]https://brenebrown.com/resources/brene-brown-on-power-and-leadership/