Sermon on Matthew 24:36-44

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent is always a bit jarring. We’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving, we decorated our sanctuary, our neighborhoods are more than beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the stores are overflowing with red and green.

And then, here comes Jesus, talking about the end of the world. Read the room, Jesus! We just want to celebrate your birth already! We don’t want to think about all that scary and depressing stuff!

But the beginning of our church year is Advent. It’s more than just a preparation time for Christmas. It’s about Jesus’ second coming, not just baby Jesus in the manger. It’s about the future, not just the past.

So, on this first Sunday of Advent, we read that as Jesus was nearing his death, he warned his disciples to watch for his second coming and to remain faithful.

Since they didn’t know when it would happen, it was important to alwayslive in the way Jesus taught them.

Paul wrote to Jesus followers in Rome in our second reading with some ideas for what that should look like. He gave us a nice little vice list to tell us what we shouldn’t do. Then, he said to “put on” Jesus and to “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

His advice, at least to a certain extent, is good. People don’t tend to make the best decisions when they’re drunk, it’s hard to stay in relationship with people who pick fights all the time, etc.

But I’m troubled by the line about making no provision for the flesh. This is a theme throughout Paul’s work and the epistles in general.

Paul draws on the idea in Greek philosophy that there’s a binary between the physical and the spiritual, between the flesh and the spirit. And the flesh is bad, and the spirit is good.

Greek thought has so influenced Western societies that it can seem normal and natural to think of the physical as bad and the spiritual or mental as good.

Christian thinkers built on Paul’s framework, cementing that binary into Christian philosophy throughout the centuries. The Enlightenment valued reason, order, and hierarchy—esteeming the mind over matter. Puritanism, which had a huge influence on American culture in particular regardless of one’s faith tradition, leaned heavily into not “gratifying the flesh,” instead valuing restraint, sobriety, and hard work.

None of these are bad things necessarily, but anything taken to an extreme can be a problem.

When we fully accept this binary, we try to divorce ourselves from our bodies and don’t worry about taking care of the earth.

We try to subdue our bodies, ignoring our needs and treating ourselves like machines.

If what’s physical doesn’t matter—or is inherently bad—then we miss out on the incredible beauty of this universe that God declared good.

A more troubling implication is that when we’re taught to ignore our bodies and not trust ourselves, our intuition, or our experience, we’re easier to manipulate and make obedient to authority figures. We humans don’t have a good track record for having others’ best interests in mind when we have unchecked power.

I’m not saying you should act on every impulse your body has, but our bodies have wisdom to share with us.

By listening to my body, I can realize that I’m acting aggressively because I’m hungry.

My body can let me know I have too much going on in my mind when I become short of breath and my pulse races.

My body can tell me when I’m feeling uncomfortable around a certain person or situation, and I can seek help and establish boundaries that can protect me.

Paul’s vice list perhaps should have included overworking, because I don’t make good decisions when I don’t sleep enough, and I don’t appreciate the good things God has provided for me when I don’t let my body rest.

Rest is an act of faith, because it requires admitting that we can’t do it all and must depend on God.And rest allows us to slow down enough to give thanks to God for what is beautiful in this world.

What is physical in this world is important to God, not just the spiritual.

Our theme for Advent this year is “Dreams and Visions,” because today we start a year of focusing on the Gospel of Matthew in the lectionary, and Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth involves a lot of dreams—Joseph’s dreams, the wise ones’ dreams.

And Advent is about God’s dreams for this world—in the first century with the birth of Jesus, the visions God gave to the prophets of old, and what God has envisioned for our world into the future.

We read today of the vision of God’s peace that Isaiah proclaimed. It’s a vision of a gathering of God’s people on the highest mountain, where everyone can see it, and people are drawn to it from all around the world.

And of course this passage includes the beautiful and vivid image of beating swords into ploughshares—repurposing weapons of war into tools for cultivating the land and feeding people.

Instead of studying how to wage war, people will stream to the mountain to learn how to walk in God’s paths. We won’t need our weapons or strategies for warfare—we’ll instead learn ways of peace and caring for the earth.

God’s vision for peace is physical—involving images of a mountain being climbed and fields being ploughed. We’ll read more next week about what the physicality of God’s peace looks like with predators lying peacefully next to prey.

God dreams of peace for this world—in this world. The full realization of the Beloved Community is material, not just spiritual. And it is very good.

For now, our good world still contains a lot of violence and war. God’s peace will one day be realized, but for now, there is much to be done, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Through the Holy Spirit, God’s dream of peace can become our dream too.

Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour of his return, but Paul also said in Romans that “you know what time it is.”

You know what time it is: it’s time to dream of what peace actually looks like.

It’s time to care for our bodies, letting them rest enough to be able to make room for holy imagination.

It’s time to learn how to walk in the ways of Jesus.

It’s time to live peaceably in our neighborhoods and communities.

It’s time to care for our neighbors’ bodies so that they can live in peace too.

It’s time to care for our planet, ploughing fields instead of bombing them.

It’s time to beat our swords into ploughshares.

It’s time for God’s shalom. Let’s turn to the Hebrew for an antidote to the Greek flesh vs. spirit binary.

At last Sunday’s Interfaith Thanksgiving service, Rabbi Mati from Temple Beth Tikvah reminded us that “shalom,” which is translated into English as “peace,” has a much deeper meaning than just the absence of violence. It means something more like “wholeness.” It’s a peace that’s about well-being and the world being restored to completeness. It’s physical and spiritual.

That’s God’s dream for this world.

It was God’s dream at the Beginning, when God made this world good and walked aroundthe Garden of Eden with us.

It was God’s dream when God became human and taught us how to love each other as ourselves.

And it is God’s dream for the future, when God’s shalom will be complete.

We don’t know the day or the hour, but we know how to spend the time that we have.

Beloved children of God, be the peace that God dreams of.

Sermon on Luke 23:33-43

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Today’s Gospel reading might seem like a strange one for Christ the King Sunday. We might expect to read about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem or Jesus’ righteous anger as he drove the moneychangers out of the Temple. Or maybe something from Revelation with a throne and a tongue like a sword.

But instead, we get Jesus at his lowest. He’s been arrested, passed from government authority to government authority in a sham trial, humiliated, tortured, nailed to a cross, and is waiting his last few hours for his body to give out.

What kind of a king is this?

Our country rejected having a king, but our society still glorifies power. We follow the lives of the rich and the influential.

We have a president, not a king, and still, British royal weddings always set the media on fire. We can’t get enough of the pomp and circumstance.

We want to see the insides of billionaires’ vacation homes in magazines, find out who designed the suit for that politician, and copy the habits of Fortune 500 CEOs.

We relish living vicariously through people who can’t be pushed around. Wouldn’t it be so nice to just throw money at a problem and not count the cost?

Despite our country’s values of independence and liberty, we still admire kingly attributes: powerful, prestigious, rich, aggressive, victorious.

But in order to gain and hold onto these attributes, it often requires an enemy.There needs to be an enemy to conquer or humiliate to make oneself grander, an enemy to unite against so that one’s followers will seek shelter in one’s protective walls.

In order for there to be an “us” for one to rule over, there must be a “them” to defeat. When we admire “kingly” attributes like power and aggression, what are we scared of?

This divisive, power-grabbing attitude is part of what Martin Luther called “theology of glory.” It’s basically a “name it and claim it” philosophy that means we get God’s blessing by our own power and achievement.

Luther contrasted “theology of glory” with “theology of the cross.”

There’s no better way to explain theology of the cross than by telling the story of our Gospel reading today.

Jesus was a king—his enemies taunted him with that title and wrote it sarcastically on his cross. But he was the Messiah, the Son of God. He could have saved himself, just like his mockers dared him.

But instead, his power was made perfect in weakness. At his lowest, he was at his most powerful. He joined humanity in all of our suffering. We have a God who knows what it’s like to hurt, to be mocked, to die.

The word “compassion” means to “suffer with.” We don’t have a God distant from us, who’s indifferent to suffering. We have a God who became one of us to fully enter the human experience (we’ll be celebrating that in the upcoming seasons of Advent and Christmas). God knows what the whole human experience is like, including suffering, humiliation, and death.

Jesus showed us a different kind of king and a different kind of God than we humans could imagine.

Instead of “power over,” “theology of glory” domination, he showed us what real power looks like.Real power is forgiving, reconciling, merciful.

When the new Superman movie came out this year, my spouse, Eric, showed me several older Superman movies to get me oriented. He pointed out how much restraint Superman had, especially in his younger years. He was literally stronger than anyone else on Earth, and so when his classmates would bully him, he could have destroyed them. But he didn’t. He didn’t defend himself—only others. He didn’t give in to his ego—only used his powers to protect people from harm inflicted by those who exhibit the aggressive, dominating form of power.

As with any analogy, it breaks down eventually, but Superman and Jesus both showed the self-emptying power that surpasses the dominating, “kingly” power of this world.

Jesus shows his kingly power by living out his mission statement that he set out in Luke 4:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

To the end, he was proclaiming release to the captives by telling the person on the next cross, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

This is the king we say we follow. He doesn’t protect his ego or dominate others. He lifts up the lowly and brings healing and love to our world that needs it so badly, this world dominated by the powerful and ego-driven.

Jesus was creating a Beloved Community that continues to grow to this day, and we get to be a part of it. It’s not easy, and it’s not comfortable. It goes against the way we’re told the world works. There’s no pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. There’s no “God helps those who help themselves.” There’s no “looking out for number 1.”

There’s only following our dying king, emptying ourselves of power the way he did, showing the world there are other ways of being.

Instead of climbing the ladder, we love our neighbor.Instead of adoring the rich and powerful, we glorify our crucified God.

By Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are freed from the world’s power, freed from the striving and hustling and posturing.Thank God!

We are freed to live in Jesus’ example, bringing good news to the poor and healing to the world.

Not only is today Christ the King Sunday—it’s also Thankoffering Sunday. We’ll get to why that’s an especially meaningful day for this congregation a little later in our service.

But today’s a day when we get to celebrate Jesus’ compassionate power—our God who suffers alongside us and promises to wipe our tears away. And it’s also a day when we get to offer our thanks as we learn to follow his example with generosity.

We won’t ever follow his example perfectly, and we don’t have to, thanks to him, but we do get to do what we can to live out the Beloved Community where everyone belongs and is cherished.

As we sing “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” remember what kind of king Jesus is and give thanks.

Sermon on Luke 21:5-19

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

All three of our readings involve people struggling to remain faithful to God.

In our Malachi reading, the exiles had returned from Babylon, they had rebuilt the Temple, and then enough time went by for people to start losing that enthusiasm. People had lost excitement for following God.

The whole book involves Malachi exhorting God’s people to remain faithful and for religious corruption to cease. Our reading declares that God is active and will bring justice and healing to the world. Malachi was reminding God’s people to remain faithful as they waited for that day.

Then, our reading from 2 Thessalonians was reminding people that they still had a duty to love their neighbor even if Jesus was going to return right away.

But over the years, this reading has been used to justify exclusion and stinginess to any but the “deserving poor.”

The tricky thing about the Epistles is that we have only one side of a set of correspondence. We don’t know the exact situation being addressed.

What we can infer is that there was a group of folks who were so certain that Jesus was coming back soon that they stopped working and were taking advantage of others’ hospitality. This letter is speaking to that particular group of people, discouraging inaction and selfish behavior.

Certainly in other situations, there are people who can’t find work or have barriers to work. People deserve to eat because they’re human beings and they have basic needs like food and water, regardless of whether they have “worked” for it. Taking one line out of its context and applying it to every situation forever isn’t a faithful reading of the text.

And also, our 2 Thessalonians reading speaks to a group of people claiming to be Jesus followers who were not doing what they could to love their neighbor because they were so focused on Jesus’ return. Instead, they were to live faithfully while they waited.

Then, there’s our Gospel reading. Jesus and his followers had reached Jerusalem. There was the street theater, the political performance art, of Palm Sunday and then the cleansing of the Temple. Various groups of religious leaders tried to trap Jesus into saying something blasphemous or at least unpopular. We read one of those encounters last week.

Then, Jesus saw a widow give her last remaining money to the Temple.

Our reading opens with Jesus’ disciples admiring the Temple in all its glory. And Jesus rained on their parade by telling them it would be destroyed.

Not only that, but they should expect wars and persecutions and natural disasters and pandemics and starvation before “the Coming of the Son of Man.”

Indeed, the Romans would destroy the Temple a few decades from that time, not too long before the writer of Luke wrote this story down.

Jesus was preparing his disciples for how to be faithful in the coming difficulties, and the writer of Luke was encouraging Jesus followers to be faithful in difficulties that had indeed come.

And there have been difficulties and disasters and wars and tragedies in every age since then.

Christians in every age have faced trials. It’s easy to fall victim to distractions, disillusionment, or despair. Just because difficulties are common doesn’t mean they’re not daunting.

It’s easy to fall into judgment, taking perverse delight in the idea of “the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble,” as our Malachi reading puts it. Or becoming complacent and disengaged, like some in the audience of the second letter to the Thessalonians. Or giving into disillusionment and despair, like Jesus’ disciples might have after being told that the Temple would be destroyed.

And still, all of these readings encourage their audiences and us to remain faithful, to continue to choose life in the midst of difficult circumstances.

I met a young man this week who has faced terrible circumstances throughout his life.His isn’t my story to tell, so I won’t name specifics. But I will say that he has faced more deaths in his short life than anyone should experience in a lifetime, not to mention other traumas and struggles. His story broke my heart over and over again.

And still, he has worked really hard to make life-giving choices. He’s in a supportive living environment, has a job, has found a loving congregation, and even volunteers as a leader for their youth ministry.

And on Monday, his brother was killed. In his grief, he was sorely tempted to seek out former relationships, environments, and habits that were familiar but would be detrimental to the life he has built.

I wish I could have told him why the deaths and tragedies keep coming even though he’s following Jesus and making big, positive changes in his life, but it makes no sense in my limited understanding of the world.

It would be understandable if he gave up to despair. His struggles seem on par with the devastation Jesus talked about in our Gospel reading.

Sometimes there is every reason to give up: on the world, on human nature, on the circumstances of our lives, and even on God.

And Jesus knew that. He knew his disciples’ faith would be shaken by the destruction of the Temple, the fall of Jerusalem, and the deadly persecution by the Roman Empire.

He reminded them that God would be with them no matter their trials, not only accompanying them, but also inspiring them with what to say.

Knowing that many early Jesus followers were violently killed by the Roman Empire, Jesus saying that “not a hair of your head will perish” seems a little disingenuous.

Unless he meant something greater. He was preparing his followers for great trials, knowing that they had eternity to gain.

Just as we don’t always get the cures we pray for in this life, God still brings us healing: “the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

The free will that God has given us allows us to do terrible harm to each other and ourselves, but God is still active, inviting us to help make earth a little more as it is in heaven. And, at the end of time, God will make all things as they should be and will surround us with God’s love forever and ever.

God was active in the past, strengthening and inspiring our persecuted ancestors in faith. God is active now, building our relationships with each other and calling us to love our neighbors near and far. And God will be active in the future, bringing God’s justice and mercy and perfecting God’s love in the world to come.

In the meantime, all three of our readings call us to be faithful.

And that’s exactly what I saw in the young man I met this week. Despite his grief and the other circumstances that would daunt the strongest heart, he didn’t give in to despair. He reached out. He sought out support and Christian community. He didn’t try to do it alone.

We’re not meant to do life alone. That’s why God chose a peoplein the Hebrew Bible and why Jesus gathered a community in the Gospels that he sent out into the world.

Our God is active, past, present, and future, and will bring healing to this world.We as people of faith get to co-create a world that has more healing, more mercy, and more truth in it.

Be faithful to our faithful God! No matter the trials of this life, we are not alone, and by God’s grace, we will not perish.

Siblings in Christ, do not be weary in doing what is right.Take heart, and do life together.