Sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Focus: Just as Jesus pointed the guests and host of that Sabbath dinner to the liberation of the upside-down Beloved Community, the Holy Spirit connects us with others into the Body of Christ where all are valued and nourished.

Function:This sermon will encourage hearers to connect with others.

Last week, we talked about Jesus breaking the letter of the Sabbath laws in order to uphold the spirit of Sabbath by liberating a woman from her ailment.

This week, our Gospel gives us the story of a different Sabbath. Jesus was at a Shabbat dinner hosted by a leader of the Pharisees. Before we boo the Pharisees, remember thatthey weren’t the bad guys. They were highly respected religious leaders, and Jesus may have even been one of them.

Still, it seems that Jesus was getting their attention and not in a good way. After last week’s story, perhaps they were watching him to see if he would get involved in another disagreement about observing Sabbath.

If that’s what they were hoping for, they sure got it. Our reading today skips over a few verses where Jesus cured a man with edema, or swelling. Jesus then turned to the dinner guests and asked them if it was lawful to cure people on the Sabbath.

Everyone was silent, so Jesus echoed what he had told the religious leader in last week’s reading: if any of their children or animals fell in a well on the Sabbath, they would pull them out.No one disagreed, resulting in the most awkward of silences.

So, maybe Jesus was an obligatory dinner guest or even that person you might invite just so they can stir the pot and keep the conversation interesting. But either way, Jesus was getting their attention, and we can only imagine how tense that dinner was.

But Jesus was also paying attention to them. He watched as they claimed the spots of honor they felt they deserved.

The parable he told them draws from the Proverb we read in the first reading. It sounds like Jesus was reminding them of some advice for how to climb the social ladder.

But by giving them that advice, he was indirectly calling them out on the status-jockeying they were trying to get away with. So, really, he set up a lose-lose situation: either you pompously sit at the high place or show false modesty by sitting at the low place. Either way, you don’t get the result you’re looking for.

And then, he told the host a different piece of advice that definitely wouldn’t raise his social standing. “Don’t invite anyone who could return the favor. Invite those who have been ignored and excluded.”

Essentially, instead of teaching them how to climb the social ladder, Jesus turned the ladder upside down.

If the host followed Jesus’ instructions, probably none of that night’s guests would be invited. And ifsomehow they were, if they followed Jesus’ advice, they would sit at the lowest spot, deferring to those who were normally marginalized.

This is the upside-down Reign of God, where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The least in society will sit in the places of honor, and those who normally vie for the best seats will sit at the lowest, if theydeign to be there at all.

As we discussed last week, Sabbath is about liberation. And on this particular Sabbath, Jesus illustrated the way God would turn the world upside down, freeing us from our human hierarchies and injustices.

What’s good news to the impoverished and marginalized can sound like bad news to those who already hold the power in society, but full human flourishing manifests when all human beings are valued as the images of God they are.

The point of Jesus’ parables wasn’t about pride or humility at all—it was about inclusion, liberation, and love.

These are the things worth pursuing—then and now.

But so often, our world is focused on status, wealth, views, likes, and going viral.We network instead of connecting. We post instead of catching up in person. We strive for attention when what we really want is to be loved, valued, and included.

It may sound dramatic to say that loneliness is an epidemic, but that’s what experts are saying about our society today. We’re disconnected and don’t know what to do about it. Loneliness is a vicious cycle, where the more isolated we become, the harder it is to reach out.

As we spend more time online without really talking to anyone, as we increasingly work from home without connecting with people around the water cooler, and as third spaces like community centers and, yes, faith communities become less common, we’re falling deeper and deeper into loneliness.

We all want to be loved, valued, and included, but that can feel elusive.

But that’s exactly what we foster when we live into the Beloved Community Jesus calls us to.

When we set aside our concern for social standing and who to network with to get ahead, we start paying more attention to those around us, really seeing others instead of just how being in relationship with them makes us look.

We can view sitting at the lower spot as humility, but if we’re only doing it in order to be invited to a higher place, we’re still making it about us.

I’ve heard it said that humility isn’t about thinking less of yourself, but about thinking of others more. If we’re beating ourselves up for being proud, we’re still centering ourselves.

Humility is about “right-sizing”: those who are esteemed in society might need to quiet themselves and listen to others, and those who are marginalized might need to step into their authority and inherent worthiness.

We can embrace that we are deeply valued by God and at the same time be awed by that fact. And most of all, we can treat those around us as the miraculous images of God they are. Turning outward can help us do that humble “right-sizing.”

In our vicious cycles of loneliness, it’s hard to reach out, but that’s how we break out of loneliness and break into the Beloved Community.

Who’s on the periphery of your social sphere? Who do you pass by? Whose day might you brighten by making contact? Who might you reconnect with or deepen your connection with?

Maybe there’s someone in this room you could connect with, or someone down the street, or even someone in a different country—thanks, modern technology for making that possible!

Whoever it is, please reach out. It’s scary to make the first move, but usually people are happy to be reached out to. Remind someone that you see their worth, and so does God.

And when we show hospitality to strangers, whether or not we entertain angels without knowing it, we can start seeing the divine in every guest.

We’re at the midpoint in Ordinary Time, the long green season of the church year that stretches from Pentecost to Advent. Let’s use this time to reflect on how we spend our ordinary days. Let connecting with people be part of your everyday life, and may our lives be as open and inclusive as this Table. That’s how Beloved Community spreads.

Sermon on Luke 13:10-17

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Sabbath was our theme throughout last year. We spent a long time talking about how important rest is, how our culture doesn’t make room for it, and the biblical mandate for rest practices.

And yet in today’s Gospel, it sounds like Jesus was flouting the Sabbath laws given by God.He cured this woman even though it was the Sabbath. The religious leader in the story called him out on breaking the Sabbath commandments.

It’s not like the religious leader didn’t want this woman cured. He was just trying to faithfully observe the way of life given by God after the exodus. Sabbath means no work, and surely curing someone was work. If there were life-threatening circumstances, then of course, he could intervene, but why couldn’t Jesus have good boundaries and cure her tomorrow?

This was an ongoing controversy among God’s people. What counted as work? When was it permitted to do work even though it was the Sabbath: to save someone’s life? To ease someone’s pain? When were humans overstepping and pretending we’re too important not to work—essentially playing God? Even God rested on the seventh day of creation.

The synagogue leader seems to have fallen on the stricter side of the question. But instead of pulling Jesus aside to voice his concerns, he called him out publicly. And instead of speaking to Jesus himself, he addressed the crowds. Not just once, but he “kept saying to the crowds” that there were six days to work, and that they shouldn’t come looking to be cured on the day of rest.

But Jesus wasn’t having it.

Jesus was making it clear that Sabbath is about liberation. The language throughout the story uses imagery of bondage, not just healing and illness. Jesus used the language of “bound,” “bondage,” and “set free.” Jesus didn’t just cure the woman: he liberated her.

That’s important, because Sabbath isn’t just about rest. It’s about liberation.

When God liberated God’s people in the exodus, God gave them the Law, including Sabbath laws. Those laws reminded God’s people week in and week out that they were God’s, not Egypt’s. They were no longer enslaved—they had the freedom to rest and enjoy God’s creation, just as God had done at the beginning of time.

God reminded God’s people about the Sabbath laws in our reading from Isaiah, too. This came at the end of the Babylonian Captivity, when God’s people had been taken into exile by the Babylonians. They were once again being freed from a foreign power, and God was reminding them what it means to be God’s people.

The reading opens with reminders to live into their newfound freedom by speaking life-giving words and taking care of those who were hungry and afflicted. And then, it goes right into a reminder of the importance of Sabbath. Taking care of each other and observing Sabbath go hand-in-hand. These are what it means to be God’s free people.

God freed them from the oppressive power of the Egyptian Empire and the Babylonian Empire, as well as all other empires forever. The Sabbath laws weren’t just about the weekly Sabbath. They also included a sabbatical year every seven years and a Jubilee year every seven times seven years. During these special years, the land and the people and animals that worked it would get a break.

God promised to provide enough food to allow them to let the ground lie fallow for a year, restoring the land and its creatures to health and flourishing for the coming years. In the Jubilee year, debts wereforgiven, enslaved people were freed, and land was returned to its previous owners.

All of this goes against the human urge to expand and hustle and dominate. It goes against human empires’ desire to get bigger and more powerful no matter the cost.

Instead, God frees God’s people from that oppressive hunger for more by instituting cycles of rest and rejuvenation.

So, when Jesus set the woman free from her ailment, it wasn’t breaking Sabbath laws; it completely aligned with the spirit of Sabbath.

Sabbath is about liberation, and Jesus liberated that woman, just as God had liberated her ancestors.

The synagogue leader observed the letter of the Sabbath laws, while Jesus observed the spirit, but it’s still hard today to discern how to observe the spirit of Sabbath.

We talked last year about Sabbath not just being about showing up to church on Sunday mornings, though it’s wonderful to worship with you all. And it’s not necessarily about rigidly setting aside a 24-hour period of not doing certain things.

We spent a whole year talking about Sabbath, because it’s really countercultural today. Our culture values hustle and productivity, trying to squeeze the last drop of potential out of every second of our days and maximizing the profit. We’re not encouraged to rest unless maybe it’ll make us more productive tomorrow.

As we’ve been talking about today and all of last year, Sabbath isn’t about making us more productive. It’s about freedom, gratitude, and remembering Whose we are.

But it’s hard to live that out in a culture that doesn’t value rest and where we’re bound to systems that value people based on their productivity and not their inherent worthiness as human beings made in the image of God.

Our culture values some bodies and tries to ignore and even erase others. People who aren’t white, straight, cisgender male, able-bodied, middle-class and above, neurotypical, documented, slim, and young are marginalized, written off, given lower paid jobs, considered drains on the system,maligned with various unflattering stereotypes, and even criminalized.

It's hard to practice the spirit of Sabbath when you have to work three jobs, take night classes, and take care of your kids as a single parent. Or when because of a disability, the system makes you choose between getting paid to do the meaningful work you feel called to and receiving the benefits that make it at all possible to pay for the treatment, equipment, and assistance that keeps you alive in a society that’s not built with you in mind.

There’s a lot of work needed to make our society and world more just for everyone. And it’s tough to discern how and when to rest, remembering our freedom and belovedness in God.

It’s hard to rest when there’s so much injustice in the world, and it’s also hard to keep going and not give up under the weight of everything wrong in the world.

And yet, God knows what in this world doesn’t align with the Beloved Community and still calls us to rest. God calls us to both rest and liberation. We can’t completely have one without the other.

But God also never calls us to do it alone. Even the big names like Moses didn’t do it alone. We sometimes forget, but Moses’ siblings, Aaron and Miriam, had big parts in the exodus too. Later on, God told Moses he was doing too much trying to be the judge in every matter the Israelites brought to him, so God gave him other leaders to help.

I know a lot of you have participated in choirs and other musical groups. Choral singers and wind instrumentalists have to stop producing sound when they breathe. So, in big groups like choirs, they do what’s called “stagger breathing.” They take turns breathing, so that the sound is maintained by those who aren’t breathing at that second. No one of us can sustain our work constantly by ourselves, but together, we can keep the liberating work going, even as we each participate in liberating rest.

And God works, too, when we rest. The breath of God’s ever-sustaining Holy Spirit moves through us and our world constantly, comforting the suffering and inciting good kingdom-building trouble, bringing about freedom and shalom for all.

The spirit of Sabbath is liberation. We observe the spirit of Sabbath by incorporating rest into our justice work and justice work into our rest. We do both together and with God’s help.

A lot of work needs to happen to make sure that every single human being is treated like the image of God they are, but instead of saying, “we won’t rest until that’s a reality,” we will rest as part of making that a reality.

Rest well, beloved. Continue to live into your divine calling to do justice and to love mercy. The God who created the world and called it good created and loves you and every one of your neighbors.

Live out the spirit of Sabbath by continuing to discern together the rhythms of rest and justice work that set the world free.

Sermon on Luke 12:49-56

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Over the past few weeks, Jesus’ teachings have become scarier and scarier sounding.

We had the parable of the rich fool, where instead of being able to enjoy his riches, his life was going to end that very night. Then last week, we heard about being ready and staying alert for Jesus’ coming.

This week, we get fire and division and families fighting among themselves.And while the fire Jesus talks about here is metaphorical, I’ve seen too many Southern California wildfires to be comfortable with the image. In today’s Gospel, we see a side of Jesus that’s very different from themeek shepherd we sometimes think of.

Our reading from Jeremiah isn’t much better. It sounds nice at first: sure, God is close by—that’s a good thing! But then, God starts railing against false prophets. We even get another reference to fire. God sounds punitive and harsh here.

“How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart?”

“Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

Our Gospel reading shows Jesus with a similar tone:

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!”

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

“You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Yikes! This is not the God I’m used to encountering.

And still, something feels so familiar in these readings. Not God’s harshness, but the division and the deceit our readings talk about.It feels like they could be talking directly to us today.

We do have families turning against each other. We live in a politicized and polarized time. At best, holiday meals are often tense. For some, certain family members or even entire branches of the family get cut off. LGBTQ teensget kicked out of their childhood homes. Trans family members get disowned.Families are indeed divided, and people often use (and misuse) the Bible to justify it.

And as for false prophets, you can easily find someone today to tell you whatever you want to hear—whether a newscaster, a social media influencer, a commentator, a politician, a spiritual leader, or a lifestyle guru. Whatever you want to believe, you can find someone to follow.

Division and deceit are everywhere. It’s hard to discern what’s true and what’s meaningful.It’s no wonder our readings for today resonate.

But both the Jeremiah and the Luke passages remind us that God is engaged with our world. God is not far off, and Jesus wants to bring the world-changing power of God’s Beloved Community now.

Our first reading shows us that God cares when people are teaching harmful things in God’s name and won’t passively stand by. God didn’t create the world and then walk away. God is paying attention and will hold people in power accountable.

And our Gospel reading shows us that Jesus isn’t just meek and mild, and that’s a good thing, because it means we have a passionate savior who’s willing and able to turn the world upside down for the sake of God’s justice and mercy.

There’s a reason Jesus got executed. His teachings were a threat to the status quo, to the people in power, and to the Roman Empire that kept peace by the sword. It’s not that Jesus didn’t want peace, but he knew his mission would bring controversy, and he even suffered a violent death for it.

And then, there’s the Hebrews reading we haven’t talked about yet, which chronicles stories of faith throughout the history of God’s people.These are people inspired to action by their faith in God—the God who is nearby and not far off, the God who fills heaven and earth.

They participated in miraculous works, they underwent terrible suffering, they forsook earthly comforts, and they were even killed. The writer of Hebrews was encouraging early Jesus followers in a time of persecution to remain true to their commitment to the Beloved Community. They weren’t the first and wouldn’t be the last to see God’s wonders and to suffer for their trust in God.

Throughout history, the writer of Hebrews reminds us that God has been faithful to God’s people, and they have trusted God, so we can too.

I’ve never been a runner. In fact, I was often dead last in the races in the annual Girl Scout Olympicsas a kid. But somehow, even gasping for breath with a stitch in my side, no one else still running, the cheers of the crowd got me to the finish line.

Despite not being a runner, I’ve always found the end of our Hebrews reading inspiring. I love the image of the great cloud of witnesses watching all of our earthly race: from the triumphs and high fives to all of the hurdles, leg cramps, and maybe even the occasional face plant—they’re rooting for us through it all. I imagine Abraham and Sarah, Queen Esther and John the Baptist, St. Augustine and Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr., and my grandparents, and so many others looking on with pride and joy, not judging my human failures, always seeing the best in me and cheering me on, waiting to celebrate together at the finish line.

We often talk about the Beloved Community here and now and our kinship with humanity around the world, but we’re also joined with all those who have gone before us and will come after us: in baptism, at this table, and through God’s love for each and every one of us.No matter what we face, we are not alone.

And when we face challenging readings like Jeremiah and Luke today, we can remember that our God is not passive or far off. God fills heaven and earth. God meets us with passion, wanting the fire of the Holy Spirit to fill the world with God’s justice and mercy.

Just as Jesus isn’t merely meek and mild, simply being nice won’t fix the things in this world that aren’t aligned with the Beloved Community. Being nice won’t get everyone fed or stop wars or end corruption or stop pollution or reverse climate change or protect the human rights of every individual.

It's good to be kind, but that’s not the same thing as being nice. Being nice means not rocking the boat. It means holding your tongue when you disagree, because someone might not like you as much if you speak up.

Being kind means telling the truth in a respectful way. Being kind means siding with the most marginalized, making sure those with the least power are still heard. Being kind means acting from our values, even when it might cause division, even in our own families.

It’s way easier to be nice, but this world needs people who are kind, who stand for community-building values, and who are filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit.So, be kind and not just nice. God is with you every step of the way, and you’ve got a whole cloud of witnesses cheering you on.