Sermon on John 10:1-10

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

During Lent, we read the story of Jesus bringing sight to the man who had been born blind. The religious leaders interrogatedthe man,they cast him out, and Jesus called him to be his follower.Today’s reading comes right after that.

Jesus starts a lengthy speech on being the Good Shepherd.There’s shepherd and sheep imagery throughout the Hebrew Bible. There’s Psalm 23—the Lord is my Shepherd—probably one of the most famous parts of the Bible.The prophets talk about some leaders of God’s people as bad shepherds. Jesus’ speech here builds on that traditional imagery.

Just as the prophets criticized kings and rulers, Jesus was criticizing the religious authorities for casting out the man who had been born blind and for being suspicious of Jesus for healing on the Sabbath and upsetting the status quo. The bad shepherds in the Hebrew Bible weren’t infiltrating and bringing threats from outside—they were the leaders who had been raised from within the tradition of God’s people.

And the thieves and bandits Jesus talked about weren’t outside threats either—they were the trusted authorities tasked with caring for God’s people. Jesus was criticizing from within his own tradition.

It doesn’t take outside forces to bring division. We see this in the polarization in our own country and world. It just takes people who care deeply about things but disagree on priorities and strategies.I think very few peoplewould say they don’t want fresh air to breathe or clean water to drink or who actively want species to go extinct.

There are disagreements, though, on how responsible humanity is for climate change, the extent of its effects, what strategies to pursue to mitigate those effects and whether they’ll make a worthwhile impact when compared to the economic effects.

Those are important questions to wrestle with. We may disagree with someone’s answer, and when they have power to make what we perceive as harmful decisions, it’s distressing, but it doesn’t make them a villain. We do great harm when we villainize or dehumanize people.It makes it hard to see their point of view. It makes it easy to write them off. It makes it hard to want to work with them. It makes it easy to make them an enemy.We deal with a lot of division in our world today.

And so did Jesus in the first century.He adds to the long tradition ofgood shepherd/bad shepherd imagery, and his speech is harsh—comparing respected religious authorities to thieves and bandits.

But as is so often the case, Jesus was concerned with the marginalized. He was defending the man who had been born blind, his new disciple, from those who would use him to discredit Jesus and make him a pawn in their political games instead of treating him like a beloved sheep of God’s fold.Jesus said he had come “that they [the sheep] may have life and have it abundantly.” He had little patience for those who would stand in the way of that goal.

God, of course, loves all people, and also God stands on the side of the powerless, the excluded, the marginalized, the forgotten, the suffering. Abundant life doesn’t mean having five houses, fifteen cars, and a yacht. Abundant life means having enough to share. It’s often those with the least that show that kind of love, sharing what little they have.

We see an example of that kind of abundant life in our reading from Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”

There may have been some wealthier patrons (such as Lydia) in the community, but unsurprisingly, the Jesus movement attracted a lot of people who had little: enslaved people, women, poor people.These people shared what they had, ate together, worshiped together, and experienced joy together. That’s what abundant life looks like.

In our world today, it can be easy to focus on the division, polarization, violence, and dehumanization around us. It’s important not to ignore those things as we strive to bring God’s peace and love to the world, but it’s also important to look for already-existing examples of abundant life.

This past Wednesday was Earth Day, and it can be easy to focus on climate change and what’s wrong in our relationship with the natural world. But it’s also an opportunity to look for good news and find hope. After all, as Pastor Jaz reminded us a couple weeks ago: “Hope is a group project.” Say it with me: “Hope is a group project.”

I was encouraged by an article[1] about a community in Colombia called Gaviotas, meaning “seagulls,” because of the many seagulls in the area. It was founded in 1971 by Paolo Lugari, an Italian-Colombian man with political ties and enough money to buy land on which to build a settlement in the harsh climate of Los Llanos, which alternates between heavy rain and intense heat.

Engineers, Indigenous folks, scientists, and farmers collaborated to create anenvironmentally friendly community. Things have changed a lot over the years, but they’ve developed a ton of inventions: things like incorporating a children’s see-saw into a mechanism to pump water and low-cost wind turbines. They planted a forest of fruit trees for food.They use a mixture of pine and palm oil for fuel, which still has emissions, but is cleaner than fossil fuels. They cooperated with their local environment to find strategies for sustainable living.

It’s easy to idealize stories like this. It’s hard to convey in a short news article the hardships, disagreements, challenges, and heartbreaks of a community over more than fifty years.

And it’s easy to idealize the picture of the early church in Acts. It’s way easier to daydream about a cooperative and generous community than to live it. At the end of the day, we’re all still people with our flaws and egos and insecurities and differing views and experiences. Abundant life is easier to dream about than to realize.

One striking thing about Gaviotas is that they don’t patent their inventions. Lugari explained the reasoning this way: “So people, fortunately, can imitate us and copy us all they want, and if someone wants to patent one of our projects and paralyze it, well, the Gaviotas imagination, the only thing that’s for sure, will work to make some changes and make something new again.” This trust in their own ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity allows them to be generous with their ideas. They can share their abundant life with others because they trust each other to continue to adapt and innovate for the good of their community.

Perhaps the early church in Acts grew and thrived despite their disagreements, conflicts, and challenges because they trusted their community and their Good Shepherd to guide the way. They could share their abundant life because they had been given so much.

Thankfully, we too have our Good Shepherd to guide the way, leading us to abundant life for all. It’s not easy, and we can’t do it on our own, but the Holy Spirit allows us to seek abundant life for all on this beautiful planet we celebrated this week.

As we continue our creation care theme for the rest of the Easter season, consider where you see abundant life in this community. What does it look like? Where is it lacking? How can we meet that lack with generosity? What pastures is the Good Shepherd leading us to?

Think about those questions this week, and in the meantime, receive this blessing:

Little children, sheep of the Good Shepherd:

As we journey toward the fold,

we travel through the valley of shadow,

growing in grace, becoming a blessing.

Baptismal wells restore our souls,

a rich feast is spread by divine abundance,

and divisions end as our cup overflows. Amen.

[1]https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260331-a-1960s-green-utopia-tried-to-reinvent-the-world

Sermon on Luke 24:13-35

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The words in our Gospel reading that always break my heart are: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

These two disciples tell the stranger on the road that they “had hoped.” They had lived in a state of hope until that stopped. They don’t have that hope anymore.

They had followed the rabbi they had hoped was the Messiah, “the one to redeem Israel,” but he had been executed by the Roman Empire. Most of his disciples fled the scene, trying to escape a similar fate. We read last week about most of them hiding in a locked room, fearful of the authorities.

These two disciples seem to have decided to skip town altogether.Once they were out of immediate danger and telling their story to a stranger on the road, I wonder if their shock wore off and their grief hit them full force.I wonder if they fought back tears as they spoke. I wonder if the words “we had hoped” caught in their throats. I wonder if their grief felt like the hope in their hearts was extinguished.

Even as we celebrate the Easter season and rejoice in the hope of the resurrection, I can imagine people a few decades from now saying, “we had hoped.”

“We had hoped the sea levels wouldn’t rise this much.”

“We had hoped we would find a solution for climate change.”

“We had hoped we would do enough to keep our kids, grandkids, or great-grandkids from suffering.” Or “we had hoped our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents would do enough to keep things from getting this bad.”

Hope isn’t always an easy thing to find or keep.

It can be hard to feel God’s presence in the midst of pollution, war, discrimination, everything that’s wrong with the world.

It’s possible to bury our heads in the sand as a coping mechanism. If we stay away from the news, if we keep from finding out what scientists are predicting, if we don’t learn the extent of the damage, maybe we can hope that things aren’t as bad as they seem, that they can be fixed if we just try harder.

But as we learn more, we can find ourselves saying, “we had hoped…”

And it can feel like God is nowhere to be found.

But Jesus’ two disciples, who had given up hope, discovered that Jesus had been with them all along.

It’s a strange story: the disciples not recognizing their beloved rabbi, him keeping up the ruse for hours, the sudden recognition, the even more sudden disappearance.

But despite this story’s surprising and supernatural elements, it’s grounded in the physical.

The disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread—physical food they had similarly shared with him only a few days before.

They marveled that they hadn’t recognized him, but realized their bodies knew all along: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

It took something physical to help them understand what God was up to, just like there’s a physical element in our sacraments, because God knows we understand better when there’s something of this world we can connect to.

We can recognize God in the breaking of bread, the pouring of wine, the splash of water.

We recognize God in the physical, because God made us physical beings. God formed our bodies out of the dust of the earth God created. God shows Godself to us through what is earthly and earthy.

We’re not just souls inhabiting inconvenient and messy bodies. We’re both physical and spiritual creatures. Our bodies can help us recognize God, because God shows Godself to us through what is earthly and earthy, like our bodies.

And that’s why this world we live in matters. We’re not just souls inhabiting a strange planet for a few decades before floating off into the clouds. The book of Revelation talks about a new heaven and a new earth. God loves this world and won’t abandon it. God loves you—all of you—the embodied and spiritual and everything about you.

Every time we touch water—sink, shower, garden hose, ocean—we can remember that God affirms our belonging to God’s family in baptism.

Every time we eat together—bread, wine, sushi, salads, or tortilla chips, dinner party or quick snack—we’re proclaiming our Savior’s death until he comes again. We’re recognizing God’s presence in and around us always—our communion with each other and all that lives.

We can recognize God in all that’s created.

A bright point in the news cycle lately has been the Artemis II mission, and I was moved by the impromptu response of the pilot, Victor Glover, to a request for an Easter message.

He said, “As we areso far from earth and looking back at, you know, the beauty of creation, I think that for me one of the really important personal perspectives that Ihave up here is I can really see earth as one thing.

And, you know, when I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us whowere created, you have this amazing place, this spaceship.You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, butyou're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos.

Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you, and I'm trying to tell you—just trust me—youare special.In all of this emptiness—this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe—you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we getto exist together.

I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about, you know, all the cultures all around the world,whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are thesame thing and that we got to get through this together.”

What a great reminder that God created this beautiful planet and created us as part of it. What a privilege it is to live on this planet. Such a powerful message of unity and cooperation. After all, as Pastor Jaz reminded us last week: “Hope is a group project.” Say it with me: “Hope is a group project.”

This Easter season, let’s renew our hope in our risen Savior. Let’s do our best to recognize God in the world around us, in what is physical—bread, wine, water, the face of a stranger.

God is with us. Jesus is risen. The Holy Spirit breathes new life into our home in the cosmos.

Let your heart burn within you and hope again.

Hope is a Group Project

Pr. Jaz Bowen-Waring

2nd Sunday After Easter April 12, 2026

It’s a Sunday evening, and they were hiding behind locked doors. Their lives were turned upside down, and they feared for their safety. They were afraid because someone they loved and trusted was lynched and murdered… and they could be next. It’s a Sunday evening, and they were hiding behind locked doors— not knowing if they were going to be snatched up and never heard from again on their way to work, to get groceries, or walking home minding their own business. It’s a Sunday evening, and they were hiding behind locked doors because they never knew what their paranoid and violent emperor would do next. This scene could be anywhere: immigrants hiding from ICE in Santa Ana, Palestinians and Iranians hiding from soldiers and bombs, students hiding from a gunman in a classroom. But the scene was in 1st-century Jerusalem, after Jesus was executed. That particular Sunday evening, through locked doors, Jesus enters. Resurrection begins in locked rooms and tombs. Not by busting down the door like Rambo, but in gentle mystery. His first words to his disciples are not: Why are you hiding, cowards? Have faith! or Get it together! But: Peace be with you. Jesus’ response to the disciples’ fear shows us how God meets us. God does not coerce. God does not force transformation upon us. God offers presence. God works relationally. God meets fear with companionship and community. Even in fear: Hope is a group project. The disciples survived because they stayed together. Then there is another familiar scene—where Jesus shows his scars. The holes still in his hands and feet. The wound in his side. Marks of the violence he endured under intense interrogation, public humiliation, and a criminal’s execution. These are the marks of Christ’s solidarity with those who have endured the oppression of detention centers, assaults in school bathrooms, and innocent people sitting on death row. Jesus shows us that a divine body is not a perfect body, but a wounded body. A scarred body. A surviving body. Resurrection is not about pretending the trauma never happened. It is about refusing to let trauma define the future. God does not rewind history, because time is always pushing forward. God works with the real skin and bones of humanity, and gathers the broken pieces and creates new possibilities. Communities carry wounds: grief, injustice, betrayal, violence, burnout, and disappointment. And still—we are here in spite of it all. The wounds are not proof that God failed. They are proof that love survived. Healing is communal. Recovery is communal. Resurrection is communal. Hope is a group project. There are times when we question—or even doubt—hope. When we become cynical, or just so weary from fighting the good fight that we start to ask: Where is God? How much longer must we endure this? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Thomas speaks for us in this moment. Thomas is not weak in faith. On the contrary, Thomas is a person of action and embodied hope. He is not with the disciples hiding behind locked doors. He is out in the streets—probably getting groceries with Mary and the other women disciples. Thomas was grieving too, and perhaps even more weary from helping taking care of everyone. People like Thomas and Mary Magdalene are people who pray with their feet and look for practical expressions of hope. So Thomas was honest when he was told that Christ had risen. Thomas was not going to settle for a secondhand, shallow kind of hope he had not experienced for himself. And Jesus honors that. Jesus appears to Thomas and draws him closer to hope enfleshed. God does not demand blind belief or shallow optimism. God invites participation. We do not believe alone. We question together. We search together. Hope is a group project. From a Sunday evening hiding behind locked doors, to a public proclamation, Peter finds the courage to step into active hope. His fear of violence and social stigma is transformed into public witness—not because the circumstances suddenly became safe, but because resurrection changed what he believed was possible. And he was not speaking alone. He was supported by his community of fellow disciples. Resurrection turns survivors into witnesses. Witness today looks like: showing up for neighbors, protecting the vulnerable, telling the truth, building community, and organizing care. Hope becomes real when we act together. Hope is a group project. Speaking of group projects, on Friday we watched the Artemis II successfully complete their mission around the moon. NASA was able to resurrect the dream human space travel with the hopes of one day walking on the moon again. Through the efforts of thousands of people, and billions of dollars, four brave individuals were able to travel further and any human ever has. That wasn’t the only achievement! This was the first time a Canadian, a Person of Color, and a woman traveled to the moon. I don’t know about you, but this fills me with so much hope. Artemis II showed all of us that it is possible for thousands of people work together through complex problems and be successful. In a country where progress feels stagnant, and our hope for a better tomorrow seems dead in the water. Hope breaks through the atmosphere of our cynicism and opens us up to new possibilities. Hope is not something we wait for. Hope is something we build. Together. Because hope—is a group project.