Sermon on Matthew 28:1-10

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We celebrate new life today, but the story of the first Easter begins with death.

Jesus was dead. There’s no Easter without the violence of Good Friday and the grief and helplessness of Holy Saturday.

Two of Jesus’ disciples, both named Mary, went in the first light of that Sunday morning to the tomb where Jesus had been laid.

And they weren’t alone there. The Gospel of Matthew spends a lot of time before and after our reading talking about the guards who had been posted at the tomb. According to this account, Pilate was concerned that Jesus’ followers would steal his body so they could claim he had risen from the dead.

As if Jesus’ death weren’t enough, the authorities used guards to make sure Jesus’ story wouldn’t be told as anything but failure, humiliation, and death.

It seemed like the Beloved Community had failed. It seemed like death and the status quo had won and that Jesus wouldn’t be remembered as anything but a failed radical phony rabbi. It seemed like it was all for nothing.

We talked throughout Lent about God’s love for this worldand our broken relationship with creation. We started learning about lament, talked about microplastics, and took a trip to the landfill to learn about what can be done with waste.

When learning about climate change, it can feel like death has already won. It can feel like our attempts at recycling or replacing a lawn withdrought-resistant plantsarea total waste. It can seem like nothing can overcome the status quo of overconsumption and pollution. It can seem like death has won.

But Easter is about remembering that death hasn’t won.

As those two grieving Marysmade their pilgrimage to the tomb, risking their safety by being alone with the guards in a secluded place, suddenly there was an earthquake that caused the great rock in front of the tomb to move. The earth moved the stone when Jesus’ followers weren’t able to. The earth cooperated in releasing Jesus from the tomb.

And on top of the stone was a supernatural being so bright their eyes hurt.There’s a reason divine messengers almost always have to tell people not to be afraid—they’re terrifying! It says the guards posted at the tomb “shook and became like dead men” upon seeing the angel. Professional soldiers fainted at the sight.

The agents of the status quo weren’t a match for God’s power of life. The giant stone they had sealed up Jesus’ body with wasn’t able to prevent life from bursting forth.

Though the Gospel of Matthew says the religious leaders bribed the guards to say that Jesus followers had removed the body, the authorities weren’t able to stamp out the good news of the Beloved Community. If they had, we wouldn’t be here together today. The Way of Jesus would have died out then.

Jesus rose from the dead, defeating death and bringing Good News of new life to the world.

And our God of new life is still at work.

We’re no match for the forces of death and destruction on our own, but God’s working with us every step of the way, guiding us, inspiring us, strengthening bonds between us as we do what we can to bring life to the world around us.

As I mentioned, some of us toured our local landfill week before last. We learned that the Olinda Alpha landfill in Brea receives 3,000 tons of waste a day. The hills we drove around were made up of compacted waste covered in dirt and native plants. They have devices for collecting the methane released by the buried waste and converting it into electricity. To a certain extent, they sort the waste, diverting some metal and wood for recycling or composting.

We drove to the highest point of one of the hills, where the waste was exposed, and massive excavators and other heavy machinery drove in and around it. It was sobering to see the waste instead of just imagining the masses of it under our feet.

Our tour guides informed us that seagulls create problems by swooping in and grabbing bits of toxic waste and migrating, dropping the waste all over—the beach, people’s pools and homes.

In the past, they would fire guns to scare away the seagulls, but what goes up must come down, so that wasn’t a safe solution.

Now, they bring in hawks and falcons to scare them away. We got to meet with two falconers, who had brought Harris hawks with them. These powerful and beautiful birds contrasted so sharply with the masses of garbage.

One of the falconers had a cross around his neck, so we asked him and his partner, who’s also a Christian, how their faith informs what they do. I wish I could tell you her exact words, but the partner said something to the effect of: it’s hard to be around the waste all the time, but working alongside creation in those birds helps her feel like she’s a partner in doing what she can to protect people and provide a safe and natural solution to the seagull problem. She sees God in everything around us.

Her words were a powerful reminder that there are things we can do to work alongside God even when it seems like death has won.

I’ve often heard Christians described as Easter people, and that’s beautiful. But I think part of a life of faith is holding the truths of Good Friday and Easter together.

Easter makes no sense without Good Friday. There’s no resurrection without death.

There is death. There is also new life.There is waste, and there is also compost that nourishes.There is violence, and there is also compassion that heals.God is present in all of it, weeping, rejoicing, comforting, guiding, inspiring.

It’s such an abrupt shift emotionally from Good Friday to Easter. It’s dramatic, but it can also feel dissatisfying to celebrate Christ defeating death when we still feel death’s effects so profoundly.

There’s still so much wrong with the world—violence, hate, and destruction. And we celebrate that God works in and despite that to create new life and hope and love.

It would be irresponsible of us to talk throughout Lent about our broken relationship with creation, and then turn around and pretend like everything’s fine because it’s Easter.

Easter doesn’t mean we stop talking about the hard things, the broken things, the things that make us want to crawl back into bed and never leave.

Easter means we acknowledge the hard things about life, do what we can that’s life-giving for our neighbors and the world, and trust in our Savior who faced the world’s death-dealing forces and whose love burst forth into new life.

Our Creator is everywhere we look.

Jesus brings new life.

The Holy Spirit brings healing to our relationship with the earth and hope for a future where all life flourishes in the Beloved Community.

This is why, even as we tell the truth about what is hard, we can still proclaim, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Sermon on John 12:20-33

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’ve been talking throughout Lent about God’s love for this worldand our broken relationship with creation. We’ve started learning about lament, we’ve talked about microplastics, and we’re taking a trip to the landfill this week to learn about waste and what can be done with it.

We’ve dipped our toes into some heavytopics. Climate change is scary. It’s challenging to figure out what’s true. And it’s even harder to figure out what to do about it. It’s daunting as an individual faced with such enormous, global issues.

It would be easier to go onwith our lives pretending that nothing’s happening. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

But when we find that we can’t ignore what we’ve learned, our stomachs can ache or our hearts can beat uncomfortably fast. It can be hard to get out of bed. Despair threatens to immobilize us.

In The Lord of the Rings, the character Denethor, steward of the kingdom of Gondor, gave in to despair.

Grieved by the death of one son and the grave injuries of his other son, he started looking more and more into a magic orb that gave him visions of the future.

He saw enemy ships arriving to a battle of already overwhelming odds and decided that killing himself was preferable to being killed by the enemy.

Too late, it’s revealed that the enemy ships were captured, and it was actually allies that sailed toward them. The reinforcements turned the tide on the battle, and Denethor’s death was in vain.

We have to be careful of the narratives we tell ourselves. Despair is powerful and destructive.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus’ disciples could easily fall into despair at the excruciating and humiliating public execution of their beloved rabbi.

And we know that to at least a certain extent, they did despair. Many of them ran away instead of keeping Jesus company in his last hours. Peter denied even knowing him in order to protect his own safety. Judas, haunted by what he had done, took his own life. In the following days, disciples huddled in the locked upper room, hiding from the authorities so that they might escape execution themselves.

We humans are understandably afraid of death and prone to despair.

But in our Gospel reading, Jesus offered us a different, more hopeful, perspective on death.

In this last of his public teachings, he was trying to reassure his followers that his death wouldn’t be in vain.Some Greek people (people outside the Jewish and even Samaritan communities) had come to see Jesus. Word had spread, and his mission was expanding.

He knew the religious authorities were suspicious of his popularity and wouldn’t let him upset the status quo for much longer. He knew his death was coming, but that wouldn’t put an end to his mission. It would grow beyond the control of those in power.

He drew on the natural world to illustrate his point: just like a seed dies to its current form when it’s buried in the ground but grows into something much bigger, Jesus’ death would create life abundant beyond anything they had yet seen.

Jesus promised to “draw all people to [himself],” drawing the circle of the Beloved Community ever wider.

What looks like death can actually be a form of new life. But we have to wait long enough to see it.

Denethor was wrong. He saw a glimpse of the future, buthis interpretationcaused him to give in to despair. He didn’t wait long enough to see the life that would emerge from what looked like death.

When researching climate change, it’s easy to fall into despair.I’m not a stranger to being overwhelmed and demoralized by it. Good news is challenging to find. So much is beyond our individual control, and the whole thing feels like a group project where no one’s cooperating, and so we’re all getting a failing grade.

Still, we don’t know what the future holds. Scientists can make educated guesses, but no one knows for sure.

In our reading from Ezekiel, God asks the prophet, “can these bones live?” and he replies, “O Lord God, you know.”That’s a good response to our situation:

“Will the planet be okay?” “O Lord God, you know.”

“Will climate change get worse?” “O Lord God, you know.”

“Will humanity do enough to make a difference?” “O Lord God, you know.”

And then, after remembering that only God knows the answer to what the future holds, start living like that answer doesn’t matter.Martin Luther is rumored to have said, when asked what he would do if the world were ending tomorrow, that he would plant a tree today. We can live in defiant hope for a better tomorrow, even if we don’t expect it.

Whether or not it’s possible to save the world as we know it, let’s live in a way we can be proud of, that our descendants can be proud of.

As of Friday, spring has just started, even though it feels like summer already. Let’s live in this season when new life emerges from what appeared dead.

Here in Southern California, we don’t have the dramatic shift from winter to spring that other places have, but some of you have lived in snow. You know the thrill of hope that comes from the first splash of red and pink and purple tulips and the sunny faces of daffodils—reminders that the ice won’t last forever.

Just as God breathed into the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, God still breathes life into our world.

Will this world live? God knows. As Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry said, reminding us about God’s time, kairos time: “It is not too late to protect our climate. With God, it is never too late. Kairos means that this is an opportune and urgent time to address earth’s climate crisis.”

Beloved children of God, Beloved Body of Christ, we humans don’t know for sure what the future holds. Do not give in to despair. How you live makes a difference. It may not save the world. But it reflects the love and grace God has shown you. That matters.

Even if you see ships with enemy flags sailing toward you, don’t give up the fight.

Even if the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree.

What looks like death may be the seed that flowers into Beloved Community.

Even a cross can turn into a tree of life. Thanks be to God.

Sermon on John 9:1-41

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

You’d think people would just let Jesus perform miracles in peace. But no, the religious leaders were nitpicking the details: Jesus shouldn’t have healed this guy on the Sabbath, so obviously he’s not from God, and the whole thing is suspect.

The religious leaders were determined to misunderstand Jesus and to oppose the Beloved Community he was expanding.

I realize they were trying to protect the people in their care in the sensitive political situation of occupation by the Roman Empire. But they were so busy trying to discredit Jesus that they didn’t appreciate the literal miracle.

They weren’t willing to tell the truth about what had happened. And so, they were missing out on the healing and restoration of the Beloved Community.

Jesus came to reconcile the world with God in a way we could grasp. We humans connect with the physical world. We connect better to God when we can see God in human form, hear Jesus’ voice, touch his hand or the hem of his clothes.

When Jesus healed the man, he mixed his saliva with the dust of the earth and smeared it on his face. It sounds a little gross, but I’m reminded of the children’s rhyme: “God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt.”

This healing wasn’t dissimilar to God creating Adam out of the dust of the earth and blowing God’s breath into his nostrils.

Jesus was reenacting the creation of humanity, showing us we have a God who still creates and wants to be in relationship with us and the world.

And this story isn’t just a healing story; it’s a call story. After the miracle, the religious leaders were so committed to opposing Jesus that they refused to believe the healed man was who he said he was, then they interrogated his parents, then they interrogated him again, and when they didn’t like what they heard, they kicked him out.

After all this, Jesus came back to the man and had a conversation in which he revealed his identity as the Messiah. It’s similar to (though shorter than) the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well that we read last week.

Jesus was revealing his identity to surprising people, who told others about their encounters with Jesus, spreading the good news of the Beloved Community. Many people believed in Jesus because of the Samaritan woman’s testimony. The man in today’s story found a much more resistant audience. But they both told the truth about their encounters with Jesus, which is what followers of Jesus do.

The truth can be hard to hear, though, and even harder to tell.

It’s often the case for our relationship with creation.

When I was in seminary, one of my professors was a big advocate for climate justice. So, as I procrastinated on papers for her class, I found myself going down various rabbit trails online to learn more about climate change and things I could do to live a less wasteful life.

I learned about recycling and composting, found some low-waste swaps for various household items like shampoo bars and safety razors, and educated myself on how damaging the fashion industry is to the planet.

I found myself getting overwhelmed, though, when I learned about microplastics: pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters.[1]

They might be from larger pieces of plastic that have degraded into smaller pieces, or they could be from things like body washes and toothpaste that have plastic microbeads for exfoliation. They can come from our clothes when we wash fabrics like polyester.

When they wash out to our oceans, marine life can swallow them, thinkingthey’re food. Then, we eat fish that have microplastics built up in their systems. Plus, it impacts our drinking water and even the air we breathe.

In preparation for our creation care Lent and Easter, I read a book called Total Garbage: How We can Fix our Waste and Heal our World by Edward Humes, and it says,“we each consume somewhere between five grams of plastic a year, and five grams a week,” which is about a credit-card-sized amount of plastic. There’s a big difference between eating a credit card a week and a credit card a year, but neither sounds good.

There’s a lot we don’t know about the full impacts of microplastics, but I think it’s safe to say they’re not ideal.

So, when I was sitting in my little apartment, reading about things you can add to your washing machine to catch microplastics, I was hyperventilating and starting to panic.

I know it doesn’t help to hide from the truth, but there are some truths I don’t want to know.

And yet, in the chapter right before our Gospel reading today, Jesus said, “the truth will make you free.”[2]

I still find the concept of microplastics overwhelming, but I recognize that in order for there to be free and abundant life for all, we have to tell the truth about what’s going on with our planet and the impact we’re having on it.

We can’t change what we don’t know about.

When my nervous system calmed down after reading about microplastics, I decided that I wasn’t going to let the fact that I couldn’t do everything perfectly keep me from doing something. I try not to shame myself for ways I’m still growing.

Yes, I still buy salad kits that come with numerous plastic bags, but I also try to buy as many personal items as I can that have compostable packaging.

No, I haven’t bought any of those microplastic-catching devices for my washing machine, but I do try to thrift and buy clothes in natural materials when I can.

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” is a quote attributed to Voltaire.

It’s impossible to live a perfectly eco-friendly life. We can’t let that stop us from making small, gradual changes toward simpler, more conscious lives.

The most important word in that sentence is “we.” We’re not in this alone. That’s why we’re doing this theme for Lent and Easter. We’re not just individuals. We’re part of the Body of Christ, who came to create Beloved Community and bring a more abundant life for all.

We can tell the truth:

1.    The truth that plastic is an incredible material that has amazing life-giving possibilities and also takes hundreds and hundreds of years to break down and can have harmful effects on us and our environment.

2.    The truth that we can’t fix our environment without massive global changes.

3.    The truth that God created this world and called it very good.

4.    The truth that God still loves this world.

5.    The truth that God invites us to cocreate a healthier relationship with creation.

Like the Samaritan woman at the well, we can tell the truth to people who are hearing it for the first time.

Like the man who had been blind, we can tell the truth to people who are actively resistant to it.

Either way, we can follow Jesus, who came to heal, reconcile, and bring life abundant.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Do what you can to love the earth.

Tell the truth.

Build life-giving community wherever you go.

Share God’s love with the world.

[1]https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html

[2] John 8:32