Sermon on Matthew 17:1-9

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The season after Epiphany always ends with the perplexing story we call “The Transfiguration.”

I always feel bad for Peter and the other disciples, because they get told off for not really getting what’s going on. I feel bad for them because I’ve never really gotten what’s going on in this story either.

One minute, Peter, James, and John were going on a nice mountain hike with Jesus. Then next, Jesus started glowing so bright their eyes hurt and they saw not one but two long-dead ancestors in faith!I wonder if they thought the altitude was getting to them.

Poor Peter started nervously offering to build religious monuments when apparently all he was supposed to do was listen.Then a talking cloud rolled in to tell him to be quiet. And after they got back down the mountain, Jesus told them to keep what they had experienced to themselves.

No wonder they were terrified! That’s a lot to take in on one afternoon, and they couldn’t even process it with others.

But for all the perplexing supernatural elements, some important physical details ground this story.

First, it happens on a mountain. Like Moses meeting with God on Mount Sinai, Jesus was inviting some of his disciples to meet with him among the rocks and trees. The setting of this story, despite its mystery, is profoundly earthy.

And when the poor disciples fell to the ground, scared out of their wits, it was Jesus’ touch that brought them back to themselves. Sometimes words alone can’t shake our emotional state, but someone’s hand on our shoulder or a long hug can help regulate us.

Then, Jesus led them back down the mountain. They had a mystical experience, but they weren’t supposed to stay on the mountaintop. They had work to do in their ordinary lives ministering to ordinary people.

Have you ever had a mountaintop experience?

Perhaps you went to camp as a child and connected with God in a new way amid the beauty of nature.

Or maybe you’ve attended our annual women’s retreat and walked the labyrinth at night under the star-filled sky.

Or maybe you’ve had a mystical experience in a hospital room. Or maybe you’ve had a dream that felt like a vision.

God can do amazing things to get our attention.

But I wonder if we’re as open as we could be to receiving what God has to say to us.

I wonder if mystical experiences of God seem to happen most often on a mountaintop because that’s where we slow down enough to be willing to listen.

I’ve heard creativity researchers talk about why we most often have our best ideas when we’re in the shower or on a walk.Those are often the only times we stop giving ourselves input—we’re not listening to the radio or watching a show or checking our email.

Our brains need downtime, even boredom, in order to engage in creative thinking. I wonder if it’s the same for being receptive to God’s messages for us.

If we never slow down to breathe or notice what’s around us, maybe we’re missing messages from God.

Maybe we need to get out of our daily routine to change where we put our attention. So many biblical stories of encountering God happen on a mountaintop or in the wilderness.

We’re pretty disconnected from the natural world. We spend a lot of our lives indoors. That’s definitely the case for me. Even when I’m walking around the park near my house, I’m rarely without headphones. If I go to the mountains, I want to stay in at least a cabin, thank you very much. If I’m at the beach, there’s a good chance I’m walking on the sidewalk instead of the sand.

We may not pay much attention to the natural world in our fast-paced, climate-controlled daily lives.

But the good news is that though we might consider ourselves apart from the natural world, we’re actually a part of it. We can’t get away from nature, because we are nature.

So, we don’t necessarily need to go to a mountaintop or to the wilderness or any other natural place to have an encounter with God, because nature is all around us. Wherever we are, there is nature, which is God’s handiwork. We don’t need to go somewhere special to find God, because God is with us, God’s creations, wherever we go.

We just need to slow down enough to pay attention. God doesn’t always speak through something as dramatic asa voice coming from a mighty cloud or a burning bush or a talking donkey.

Sometimes God speaks through the sun warm on your skin or a child’s laughter or a leaf crunching underfoot or your own heartbeat.

Just as Jesus invited the disciples up the mountain, God beckons to us wherever we are to meet with God. And just like the disciples fear dissipated at Jesus’ touch, we can find comfort in the physical—in what God created. And then, God leads us back into our daily lives, where we get to live out God’s love for all creation, including you and me.

God created the world and called it good.

God created you and calls you good.

But when we humans forget that we’re part of nature, we tend to create problems for the beautiful planet we live on—polluting and extracting and dominating our own global home.

We’re going to spend the Lent and Easter seasons this year talking about creation: God’s love for it, why we should care about it, how we can love it better. From remembering this Wednesday that we are dust and to dust we shall return to celebrating that we have a God of new life, let’s find our mountaintops right where we are and meet with God, whose love permeates every seed and sparrow and strand of your hair.

God’s voice is still speaking, listen to it.

Sermon on Matthew 5:13-20

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

There’s some harsh stuff in our scripture readings today:Isaiah saying God doesn’t want fasting from people who oppress their workers and Jesus saying entering the kingdom of heaven requires being more righteous than the religious leaders.

Even these tough words, though, can help us understand God better.

Our readings show that God is dissatisfied with religious practice that’s solely individual and doesn’t address the needs of the larger community.

In Isaiah, God’s people had recently returned from exile in Babylon, and God was reminding them of how to show their devotion to God.

Fasting as an individual practice wasn’t what God was looking for.Fasting while exploiting others wasn’t what God was looking for. Fasting without letting that spiritual practice moveone into collective acts of justice, mercy, and love wasn’t what God was looking for.

Then, our Gospel reading picks up right after the Beatitudes, which we read last week. Jesus had named the surprising people God favored. The Beloved Community was to be composed of people brought low by life’s circumstances and people who sought peace in a world of violence and domination. The Beatitudes answer the question of “who” was part of the Beloved Community.

Then, Jesus encouraged those blessed people to be public about the Beloved Community: to be salt and light. They were to bring their unique flavor and shine so that others would understand what the Beloved Community is about and join in.

This wasn’t about undoing the way of life God haddescribed in the Law. It was about living out that way of life in their current reality. Jesus was fond of reinterpreting the Law with his formula of “you have heard it said…but I say to you…”

Jesus wasn’t replacing those laws but leaning into them.He was inviting his hearers to live out not just the letter of the Law but its spirit. They would need to live out the way of Jesus in a way that the scribes and the Pharisees—the religious leaders invested in the status quo—weren’t prepared to. Not just their actions mattered, but the attitudes of their hearts. It’s a tall order, but no one said Beloved Community was going to be easy.

If the Beatitudes answer the question of “who,” then our Gospel reading today answers the question of “how” people in the Beloved Community are supposed to be in the world. The bulk of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is about “what” people in the Beloved Community are supposed to do: loving enemies, being exceedingly generous, not judging others, etc.

So, between our Isaiah and Matthew readings, we can see that God is concerned not just with individual piety but justice and how God’s people treat others.

As Lutherans, that’s a little challenging to hear, because we’re really concerned with not trying to earn God’s love or salvation.

But what our readings are talking about isn’t works righteousness; it’s about living in community.

Being a follower of Jesus isn’t about a checklist of individual spiritual practices or a pass/fail test about getting into heaven. We can’t earn God’s love, and we can’t save ourselves.Jesus took care of that.

At the same time, Jesus was working to make heaven here on earth, and if we want to, we can be part of that. Both our Isaiah and our Matthew readings talk about how to do just that: to live together as a community of God’s people.

The English word “economics” comes from the Greek “oikonomia,” which has to do with the household. And our word “politics” comes from the Greek “polis,” which has to do with a city. Both have to do with how we agree to live together as humans.

The founders of this country decided (wisely, in my opinion) not to establish a national religion. We talk often about the “separation of church and state,” and that’s a good thing for a lot of reasons.

It has, however, resulted in religion in the US becoming something personal that we largely practice in private. Religion is something we do as individuals or maybe as small groups for an hour on Sunday mornings.

So, we’ve lost the communal aspect of religion. I’m certainly not in favor of shoving religion down our neighbors’ throats or enforcing practices from one religion onto people who subscribe to another. But we’re missing important aspects of our readings today if we read them as commands directed toward individuals instead of as a recipe for building Beloved Community.

God throughout scripture talksdirectly or through prophetsto groups of people.

God is concerned not just with individuals but with the “polis” and the “oikonomia”—the city and the household of God’s people, which is everyone.

We’ve lost that when we insist that there shouldn’t be politics in church.

Don’t get me wrong—I will never endorse a candidate from the pulpit. And you’ve probably noticed that I’m not the best at preaching “with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” as Karl Barth recommended. It takes me a while to process what’s going on and feel like I have something to say.

But I am deeply troubled by the events of the past few weeks in Minneapolis and, to be honest, with many events over the past months.

I’ve watched videos of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

I’ve seen with my own eyes an ICE agent sitting in the back of an immigration courtroom, waiting to take people away the moment they step out of the room.

I’ve heard accounts from colleagues in Chicago of being arrested for protesting after they were denied permission to bring communion to people in a detention center.

I know a Fullerton resident—a US citizen who happens to be Latina—who won’t take her kids to the grocery store with her in case she gets racially profiled and detained, because she doesn’t want her kids to witness that.

We have neighbors—documented and undocumented—who are afraid right now.

We as Christians, as salt and light, are called to love our neighbors publicly. If immigration is where your heart is right now, do what you can to love our neighbors in that way.

But immigration doesn’t have to be what you’re passionate about—it’swhat’s on my mind right now, and it certainly has to do with how we live together as humans.

But maybe you’re passionate about education or the environment or disability advocacy or LGBTQ rights or cancer research.I know you care about feeding our neighbors body and soul.

All of this has to do with how we live together as groups of people—a polis. We’re called to love our neighbors publicly. Andwhen we bring our salt and light to these collective efforts, we are building Beloved Community.

Jesus said to those who were considered by society to be disposable and undesirable that they are favored by God.

He then said, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”

They were what was needed, as they were, to do the work of building Beloved Community together.

You, too, are the salt of the earth.

You, too, are the light of the world.

You are what is needed to build Beloved Community here on earth—not by yourself, but together with your siblings in Christ.

God isn’t impressed by individual spiritual practices if they don’t lead you to joining in making earth a little more as it is in heaven.

You are needed to join in caring for your neighbors who are afraid.

You are needed to join in providing for your neighbors who don’t have enough.

You are needed to join in speaking up until every human being is treated like the image of God they are.

So, yes, do spiritual practices—they help ground you and help you listen to God’s voice. But don’t stop there. We’re not meant to do life alone. Join with your siblings in Christ to build Beloved Community by being the salt and light you are.

The world needs your flavor.The world needs your glow.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, let’s build Beloved Community together.

Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

A lot of people in the first century were considered undesirable.

Those the Bible calls “lepers” had various skin diseases that were contagious, and society made them live apart from people without those diseases. They were made to yell out “unclean” to keep people from approaching them. Can you imagine what it must have felt like to have to do that?

There was also a big gulf between those who were citizens and those who weren’t. Roman citizens (who were, of course, only men) had a lot of rights that those who weren’t citizens didn’t. Non-citizens weren’t allowed to participate in public life in the same way. They didn’t have a voice or protection from those who governed. We’re largely accustomed to a lot of rights that haven’t been so broadly given throughout a lot of history.

Some folks were enslaved, making them property of another. They weren’t “undesirable,” but they were disposable—a resource to be used up instead of a human being.

Women were desirable, but also only for what they could do—bear children, household labor. Women’s testimony wasn’t even considered valid in court. Women were property too, and it was ideal if they silently acted as such.

And there was a large class gap in the first century. The majority of the population lived at subsistence level or below, scraping by with nothing left over. The elites had plenty while most people could scarcely fill their stomachs.

Many people of different circumstances were considered undesirable, disposable, or for whatever other reason less than fully realized human beings.

We’re not much better today.

I had to delete the Nextdoor app, because I was exhausted and demoralized seeing my neighbors post suspicious things about unhoused people and teenagers hanging out.

The news is full of narratives that make us fearful of groups of people.

We still have a large class gap today. Billionaire CEOs are so removed from the people who clean their offices that they might as well live on different planets.

We indicate to people with disabilities that they’re undesirable when we don’t provide accommodations that would allow them to participate.

During COVID, we indicated to seniors, people with diabetes, and others who were especially vulnerable that they were disposable when people resisted getting vaccinated or taking other measures to protect them.

Having worked with at-risk young adults before I went to seminary, I saw how challenging it is for people with a criminal record to get a job or be eligible for services that would help them break the cycle of poverty that got them locked up in the first place.

A lot of people today are considered undesirable or disposable.

Who else can you think of that’s considered undesirable or disposable today? Take a moment to think about it while I get a pad of paper set up.

That’s quite a list. Thank you for your thoughts.

When Jesus went up the mountain, the first thing he did was list people who were undesirable and disposable and say that they were favored by God:

1.    “The poor in spirit”—those crushed by life’s circumstances

2.    “Those who mourn”—those grieved by life’s circumstances

3.    “The meek,” “the merciful,” “the peacemakers”—those who went against the “might is right,” violent, dominating common sense of the world, especially the Roman Empire

We’ve gotten desensitized to how radical that sounded because we’re so familiar with the words of the Sermon on the Mount.

But what if Jesus stood in front of us today and said, “Blessed are the [items from our list]”?

It’s jarring, isn’t it?

What Jesus said was shocking. It wasn’t feel-good embroidery on a pillow. It was unsettling for those who thought they were blessed and earth-shakingly hope-filled for those who thought they were undesirable and disposable.

These were the people Jesus was collecting into the Beloved Community—people who had been told they were worthless, unimportant, undeserving, even less than human.As Paul put it: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are.” Jesus was turning the world upside down.

People who found hope in Jesus’ words were indeed blessed—blessed by getting to follow Jesus and being part of the Good News he was spreading.

We’re in the season after Epiphany, when we reflect on how God reveals Godself to the world.

How do the Beatitudes—so well-known, but so surprising when we really hear them—how do the Beatitudes change how we understand God?

How do they change how we understand the world?

How do they change how we understand each other?

How do we best honor a God who looks at the least, the last, and the lost and says “I favor you”?

How might we treat the neighbors we don’t normally think about and maybe don’t want to be around, remembering they’re blessed by God?

How might we treat the parts of ourselves we try to hide because they’re undesirable? If you feel comfortable with it, close your eyes for a moment. Take a deep breath. Imagine those parts of yourself you want to ignore. Then, imagine Jesus in front of you. He looks at you with kind eyes and a gentle smile. And he says, “You are blessed—all of you, every part.”

When you’re ready, you can open your eyes.

Check in with yourself: how did that feel?

Might you be able to love your neighbors differently if you could really internalize your own blessedness too?

God created you, loves you, and became human to show you that love.

No human is undesirable. No human is disposable.

Feel the fire of God’s love for you in your heart and let that belovedness overflow into doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.