Sermon on Luke 1:57-80

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our Advent theme this year is A Weary World Rejoices, a line from the beloved Christmas carol “O Holy Night,” because there is a lot of weariness in the world, even after almost a full year of focusing on Sabbath in this congregation.

Each week, we’ll ponder one of God’s promises.This week is the promise of compassion.

During this season, we understandably focus on Jesus’ birth and the journeys of Mary and Joseph as they prepare to welcome their new heavenly family member.

But Elizabeth and Zechariah’s journeys are remarkable as well. And for them, probably equally as overwhelming.

Mary’s cousin Elizabeth hadn’t been able to have children until her husband, Zechariah, who was a priest, was visited by a divine messenger. He apparently doubted the angel, who told him that because of his lack of trust he wouldn’t be able to speak until the child was born.

No one’s life was going as expected. Elizabeth and Zechariah hadn’t had a baby when they expected, and now when they were at the point where Zechariah was wondering how this was physically possible—an angel comes with a baby announcement!

And Mary and Joseph certainly weren’t expecting to raise the Child of God before they were even married.

Their lives were not going the way they expected.

But, despite the challenges these new futures held, God’s vision for them was greater and more wonderful than they had expected.

Mary visited Elizabeth, whose baby jumped for joy inside her. And Mary was inspired to sing what has become known as the Magnificat—a song magnifying God. We’ll take a closer look at that two weeks from now.

But there’s a song for today, too. Our reading picks up when baby John was born. Suddenly, Zechariah was able to speak again, and not only did he speak: he sang! He joined the ranks of Hannah, Miriam, Mary, and later Simeon to sing God’s praise in a moment of joy, wonder, and trust in God’s promises.

Though the lives of the people in these stories were not going as planned, God was creating a future more wonderful than they dreamed. God became human in Jesus to bring compassion to the world.

Of course, we know that Jesus’ life and death included pain and humiliation. The fulfillment of God’s promises still involved suffering.

Our lives often go in directions we don’t expect, like the people in our stories, andit’s not always in ways that make us want to sing God’s praises.

We experience loss, pain, grief, confusion, and any number of other forms of suffering. Sometimes our lives change in an instant. Sometimes it’s a slow fade until we hardly recognize ourselves. Sometimes it feels like suffering is all around us.

But that’s what God’s promises are about. God promises compassion.

The word “compassion” means “suffering with.” When we talk of Christ’s Passion, we’re remembering that God loves us so much that God became human in Jesus to live alongside us in the world’s suffering. He endured the cross, suffering with all humanity and experiencing all the pain this world contains.

When God promises compassion, God promises to suffer with us. God is with us whatever our circumstances, holding us, weeping with us, and never abandoning us.

Advent is the anticipation of God’s compassion revealing itself through Emmanuel, God with us.

We can hold onto God’s promise of compassion, because God was willing to become one of us to experience all of life’s joys and suffering alongside us. God knows the full breadth of human experience and loves us in it and through it. And in the fullness of the Reign of God, there will be no more suffering—only complete union with God forever.

In the meantime, we can let that compassion fill us and overflow into the world around us as we do our best to love our neighbors as God loves us, opening our arms to the world.

Receive this “Blessing for Open Arms” from Kate Bowler:

Blessed are you with open arms

to welcome God this Advent,

willing to invite its promises

into the center of your longing.

Blessed are you,

even now in the waiting.

Open to receiving what is beautiful

though clothed in such precarity.

Blessed are you,

agreeing to stand still long enough

to let your eyes adjust to the darkness

until the starlight begins to appear,

the dawning of God’s promises.

In that gentle light,

find a corner of your heart

where hope can stay protected.

A place from which we can

nurture a little gratitude,

a little compassion,

enough to go around.

Some for God and some for yourself.

And some for the next unsuspecting

soul that wanders into your light.

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.