Sermon on Luke 21:25-36

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Happy New Church Year!

The cycle of our liturgical year starts over again today.

And since Advent starts on December 1 this year, all the Advent calendars at the store are accurate this season, which makes the part of me that finds symmetry satisfying very happy.

But the truth is, even after almost a full year of focusing on Sabbath in this congregation, there is still a lot of weariness in the world. Can you feel it?

The world feels heavy. And December is one of the busiest months of the year for many of us, even amid (and maybe because of) the joys of the season.

So, our Advent theme this year is A Weary World Rejoices, a line from the beloved Christmas carol “O Holy Night.”

Each week, we’ll ponder one of God’s promises.

This week is the promise of truth.

And one truth is that life is hard.

Jeremiah was prophesying to people who were facing hard circumstances.

The Babylonians had taken many of God’s people into exile. They had destroyed Jerusalem, including the Temple. It must have felt like the end of the world.

And Jeremiah himself was writing from prison, because he was speaking the truth God had given him.

Life was hard. Jeremiah was no stranger to that.

And there’s plenty of harsh and challenging words in the book of Jeremiah.

But still, he spoke words of hope, too. Our reading today’s full of hope.

It was hard at that time, but the days were surely coming.

The days were surely coming when God would fulfill God’s promises.

God had promised that David’s lineage would rule God’s people forever.

The Babylonian Captivity seemed to break that promise.

But the days were surely coming when the line of David that seemed to be dead would indeed continue—a branch would grow from what seemed like a dead stump.

God had not abandoned God’s people.

Exile would not be forever.

Their home would be restored, ruled by a just and righteous leader—the Messiah.

That’s why there aregenealogies in the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke. The lists of names can feel a little boring to read, but both draw a line from Jesus back to David. They affirm that God keeps God’s promises.

One truth may be that life is hard, but another is that God keeps God’s promises. And God promised faithfulness to God’s people.

God promised the Messiah and gave humanity Jesus in another difficult time for God’s people.

Their land was occupied by the Romans, there was a crushing amount of poverty, the threat of violence was everywhere, and in a few decades, the Temple would be destroyed again.

God sent Jeremiah to tell the truth when all hope seemed lost.

And God sent Jesus to tell the truth at another point when all hope seemed lost.

But lost hope isn’t relegated to the past.

There’s still war. There’s still violence. There are natural and human-caused disasters.

People get diagnosed with terminal illnesses.

There’s loneliness, isolation, depression, and so much need in so many different areas.

We served a staggering 199 households at our pantry on Wednesday. It’s of course a joy to serve, but it also indicates great need in our local community.

That’s to say nothing of global poverty.

Our world is not as it should be. God’s people (everybody) are facing hard circumstances.

It’s still true today that life is hard.

And still, the days are surely coming.

In Advent, we not only remember the promise of Jesus’ birth, but the promise of his return.

The days are surely coming when he will come again in power and glory, and the Reign of God will be complete.

He shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

God keeps God’s promises.

It’s true that there is pain now. And it’s true that God will make it right in the end.

There’s a saying attributed to many people that says, “everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”

There are tragic, cruel, and heart-breaking circumstances in this life. They can feel like the end of the world.

But they are not the end of the story.

Only God says when the story ends. And even as the story of pain, sorrow, and death ends, a new, eternal story of peace, joy, and love will begin.

Advent offers us the permission to see the world as it really is while still hoping for a future we can only sometimes glimpse.

One year when I was in college, there were a couple wildfires. It was a very scary, disorienting time. But one day months later, I was walking by a grove of eucalyptus trees in one part of the campus, and even though they had been burned, the trunks were covered in new sprouts—branches growing from what seemed like a dead trunk.

I’m not saying we have to find the silver lining in every hard circumstance. People of faith have to be able to tell the truth about the hard things in life or else we’re minimizing our own and others’ pain. People can see right through that, and it damages our credibility, not to mention that it hurts our neighbor.

We have to be able to tell the truth.

And one truth is that life is hard.

But another truth is that God keeps God’s promises, and God has promised that, as Julian of Norwich wrote, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Life is hard, and God gives us hope to cling to during the Advent time of waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Receive this blessing from Kate Bowler for “Beginning Again in Advent”:

God, could this be the year when we see it?

The goodness that is coming,

like starlight from a distant time?

Could this be the Advent when we sense it?

That the springtime of the soul will one day last forever?

Could this be the Advent when we notice

the inbreaking of your coming promises?

Promises full of blessing:

of truth so clear, so bright

that every shadowy lie must flee away.

of compassion so deep, so strong

that everyone is encircled in its embrace.

of restoration so complete, so beautiful

that there is gladness everywhere.

and of justice so satisfying and so right,

that all will be well.

May this Advent be the new beginning,

as we learn to live by the light

of your coming promises.

Glimpsing the world through tears,

while also seeing something

sacred shining through too.

Our Truth. Our Light.

Our Promise incarnate.

Amen.

Sermonon John 18:33-37

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

There’s a lot wrapped up in today:

1.    It’s Christ the King Sunday, instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, who felt that we Jesus followers needed to refocus on the Reign of God instead of the secularism and kingdoms of this world.

2.    It’s also the final Sunday of the church year. We’re ending the year both by remembering Christ’s kingship and reading about his death. We’re situated once again at the cross, even as we get ready for a season celebrating Jesus’ birth and proclaiming his coming again.

3.    And it’sThankoffering Sunday, a particularly treasured day for this congregation, when we remember the hope, vision, and generosity of our founding members and follow their example with our own generosity and care for our neighbors.

4.    Not to mention that this Thursday is Thanksgiving.

That’s a lot for one Sunday, and the messages seem like an odd combination: Christ’s glory, his death, his birth, gratitude, generosity, legacy, hope.

So, let’s begin by focusing on Christ the King Sunday.

Jesus walked this earth in land occupied by the Roman Empire.The powers that be perceived him as a political threat and conspired to have him executed. That’s where our reading today comes in.

Jesus stood before Pilate, a representative of Rome, who expected Jesus would beg for his life or at least answer his questions in a straightforward way (which we know is very un-Jesus-like).

Pilate asked him if he was the King of the Jews, but he didn’t realize that Jesus was a different kind of king. His kingdom was a different kind of kingdom—one that surpassed Pilate’s imagination.

On the surface, Pilate seems to be in charge in this scene, but he didn’t realize that there was something cosmic going on.

This wasn’t about executing a would-be rebel against the Romans, but the moment when God would show that “power is made perfect in weakness” and when death’s power would be broken forever.

Our God is so different from what Rome imagined power looked like. Jesus said his kingdom “does not belong to this world.” Quite the opposite: this world belongs to his kingdom. There is no empire, no government, no tyrant, no army that can overcome the Reign of God.

The Reign of God is not like the dominating powers of this world.It does not enforce Pax Romana, Roman peace, by the sword, but true peace, God’s shalom, that’s full of abundance and compassion.

Our readings from Daniel and Revelation are apocalyptic, which means unveiling. They give us glimpses of the completion of the Reign of God. They were written to remind oppressed, persecuted, and hurting people of the truth that God is ultimately in control.

God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, willfulfill God’s promises at the end of time as we know it.

That doesn’t mean, though, that we get to relax and put our feet up while we wait for the Reign of God to be complete.

On the contrary: people are hurting now. Jesus calls us to love our neighbor now. Just because we know the end of the story doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work now to make earth a little more as it is in heaven.

That’s where we can remember that today is not just Christ the King Sunday, but also Thankoffering Sunday.

We get to act in gratitude for God’s promises, for God having become human to meet us in our troubled world, for Jesus breaking the power of death, for God showing us a different way of being in the world that displays love instead of dominating power.

Because we know the end of the story, we are freed to love our neighbor now.

The apocalyptic images from our readings and elsewhere in the Bible show us what the fullness of the Reign of God will look like, and we can work alongside God to bring more glimpses of that abundance, compassion, and love to the world around us. They inspire and give us hope as we live our lives now.

This is the intersection between Christ the King and Thankoffering.

Cole Arthur Riley in her book This Here Fleshshares an odd and oddly moving poetic image of the freedom that will come with the completion of the Reign of God. Similarly to the apocalyptic readings we heard today, her writing here is unusual and even surprising, but it unveils truths about our relationships with God and each other that can give us hope.

She writes, “One day, at the end of all things, the legs of all the tables in the world will come alive. And without apology, they’ll each begin plodding toward the space where the top and bottom of the earth meet. And we’ll be terrified, of course, so some of us will go into hiding underground, but some, after pausing to feel sad or terrified or betrayed, will get brave and follow them. Those who are able to withstand the pilgrimage, who are able to push back despair in the company of the tableless, will make it to where they’re going. And when they arrive, they’ll find all of the moving tables lined up into one great plank tracing the entire equator.

“The children will sit first, because they are unafraid. And the elders will follow, because they are unafraid of their fear. And eventually everyone will take a seat, squirming their elbows in tight. Some will be grunting, complaining about how absurd the whole thing is. Some will be laughing, in awe of how beautiful it is. And some will be crying, sensing how familiar it all is. And in mystery, and all at once, we’ll look up from the table. And we’ll see ourselves. At that moment, the wood of the table will begin to suck all the shame out of the air, and once it does, the air will become so light that we all will realize how little we’ve been able to move in our own bodies before this moment.

“When we understand that the food is not going to fall from the clouds or manifest from the knots in the table, we’ll take ourselves and begin wandering off to collect things. And we’ll probably get lost now and again, but the table will just send out a long whistle and lead us back.

“I believe that the individual, collective, and cosmic journey is the path of unearthing and existing in our liberation. But liberation is not a finality or an end point; it is an unending awakening. It is something we can both meet and walk away from within the same hour. Our responsibility to ourselves is to become so familiarized with it, so attuned to its sound, that when it calls out to us, we will know which way the table is.

“To answer the question of how one becomes attuned to liberation, I think we must ask ourselves: What sounds are drowning it out?”

As odd as the image of animated table legs is, this passage speaks of the unity and community care God is leading us to. It’s so different from what the world values: power, status, individualism, self-sufficiency, control. Instead, liberation in God is found in taking a seat at a giant table that stretches into the horizon, where people are freed from their shame and isolation.

Jesus’ kingdom does not belong to this world, but this world belongs to it, even when we can’t see it.

So, pull up a chair—for a neighbor.

Say grace—and show your gratitude through acts of compassion.

Help yourself—to another portion of generosity.

Fill up—on the knowledge that God wins in the end.

This is where Christ the King meets Thankoffering. Our trust in God’s ultimate victory of love frees us to live differently than the world expects by living out God’s love every day.

Because God’s love is sweeter than any dessert, and one day we will feast togetherforever with all of our neighbors at God’s endless table.

The Widow’s Mite & The Widow’s Last Bite

Pr. Jasmine Waring |

Pentecost 25 November 10, 2024

Our readings today share the stories of two widows—two women who were invisible in their time, as many marginalized people are today. They had no name, no wealth, no power in the eyes of society. And yet, their stories endure, echoing through the corridors of time, because they reveal profound truths about God’s love for the vulnerable, the systemic injustices that perpetuate inequality, and the kind of radical generosity that can transform the world. These stories speak just as loudly to us today as they did when they were first told. In Mark 12:38-44, we meet a widow in the Temple who gives her last two coins—her mite. The context is critical: Jesus is entering Jerusalem in a triumphal procession, challenging the powers that be, subverting the empire’s might, and cleansing the Temple of its corruption. The Temple, which was supposed to be a place of justice and worship, had become a place of exploitation. Jesus calls out the religious leaders for their greed, their love of status, and their use of faith as a tool for self-enrichment. At the heart of Jesus' message is the love of God and the love of neighbor, but these things were being distorted by the very system meant to uphold them. And then, in the middle of this powerful critique, we see the widow. She has nothing left—no safety net, no resources to rely on. She’s one of the most powerless people in this society. And yet, she gives all that she has—her last two coins, everything she owns. Jesus sees this woman and offers a lesson—not in admiring her generosity, but in pointing out the failure of the system. The rich, he says, give a fraction of their wealth —barely anything—but it’s the poor widow who gives everything. And that, beloveds, is where the injustice lies. Jesus isn’t saying that poverty is a virtue. He’s not glorifying suffering or asking the poor to give until they have nothing left. No. What he’s saying is that the system is broken, that the rich are hoarding wealth, and the poor are being asked to give out of their scarcity, all the while being made to sustain a system that benefits only the powerful. The widow’s mite is an indictment of that system. It’s not a call for more sacrificial giving; it’s a call to dismantle the system that exploits the vulnerable in the first place. This passage challenges us, beloveds, to examine the systems around us. We live in a world that asks the poor to give more and more, while the rich accumulate wealth and power. How can there be justice in such a system? How can there be equity in a world where the wealthiest hoard their resources, and the most vulnerable are left to scrape by? Jesus exposes this injustice—calling us to wake up to the disparity, to recognize how it disfigures God’s vision for the world. God's vision has always been one of abundance. God’s economy is not one of scarcity, but of generosity. The Bible makes it clear, especially in Deuteronomy, that the rich are called to care for the widows, orphans, and immigrants—the very groups who are most vulnerable in society. And yet, in the story of the widow’s mite, we see how the Temple leaders have failed to live up to this mandate. They’ve created a system where the rich give only what they can spare, while the poor are drained dry by it. Jesus isn’t just critiquing the poor widow’s situation—he’s exposing how the Temple leaders have upheld an unjust system. I remember, growing up, watching my single mother give her last few dollars to televangelists who promised that if she gave out of her poverty, God would bless her with abundance. It was a lie—a distortion of the Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel, beloveds, is a false gospel that preaches that wealth and power are signs of God’s favor. It distorts the truth of God’s love and justice. God does not want us to accumulate wealth for ourselves; God’s vision is a world where wealth and resources are shared, where people care for one another, and where everyone has enough. This is the world God dreams for us—a world of justice, not exploitation. A world of beauty, not hoarding. God’s vision for the world is a vision of Beauty. It’s an intense harmony that’s not about accumulation but about the interdependence of creation. It’s a beauty that is found in our mutual care for one another. It’s a beauty that lifts up the weak, the vulnerable, the forgotten, and makes them visible again. The widow’s mite exposes the failure of human systems and calls us back to a vision of shared abundance. But there’s also hope in this story—because Jesus doesn’t just condemn the system. He offers a new way—a way of radical generosity, a way of beauty, a way of justice, where provision is not about what we have, but how we give. In 1 Kings 17:8-16, we hear the story of another widow, this time in the midst of a famine. This famine is a consequence of the nation’s failure to honor God, a result of the leaders leading Israel into idolatry and injustice. And so, God sends Elijah to a widow in Zarephath—a Gentile widow, someone outside of Israel, someone marginalized by society. She has nothing left. She’s preparing to die with her son because she has only a handful of flour and a little oil left. She has no hope—no resources—and yet, she opens her hands to share what she has with Elijah. Even in the face of death, the widow chooses to share. And in that sharing, in that radical hospitality, God steps in. Elijah speaks a word of promise: “The jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry.” God’s provision, in the face of scarcity, flows through her act of generosity. This story echoes the message of the widow’s mite—reminding us that even in the midst of scarcity, God’s provision flows through those who give from their lack. The widow’s last bite is a sign that God works through the vulnerable and marginalized to bring about transformation. Even when it seems like all is lost, God’s promise is that provision will not fail. This is God’s economy—the more we share, the more we give, the more God’s abundance flows into the world. So what do these two widows teach us? They teach us that God’s vision for the world is one of beauty, justice, and abundance. They show us that in the face of systemic oppression, God is with the vulnerable. God is with the widow, with the marginalized, with the poor. These women challenge us to ask: What kind of world are we living in? Are we living in a world where the rich hoard their wealth while the poor are asked to give from their scarcity? Or are we working toward a world where we share our resources, where we share in each other’s struggles, and where the powerful use their privilege to lift up those in need? God’s promise is not that we will be wealthy in the way the world defines it. God’s promise is not that we will be powerful in the way the world understands power. God’s promise is that we will have enough—and that enough is always in relationship. It’s in community. It’s in the shared abundance of love, care, and justice. The widow’s mite and the widow’s bite are not just stories about individual generosity —they are symbols of God’s vision for the world. A world where scarcity is transformed into provision, where love overcomes injustice, and where all are fed. Beloveds, may we have the courage to live into this vision of beauty, to stand with the vulnerable, to challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality. And may we trust that when we give—no matter how little—we participate in God’s work of restoration, and God’s beauty is revealed in the world. Amen.