Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo + January 26, 2025
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Pastor Hector's Epiphany 3 sermon examines the role of justice within the church as the body of Christ. He contrasts human attempts at justice with God’s justice, which began with the declaration of creation’s goodness. Using lessons from the Asian Lutheran International Conference he recently attended in Malaysia, he invites us to reconsider justice not as activism alone but as discipleship and equipping others to thrive. Justice calls for humility, listening to God’s voice in others, and participating in a divine plan that uplifts all.
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, and lightly edited for readability by AI chatbots
Grace to you and peace from God, our Father, Mother, and Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Savior, our sibling, our friend. And the people of God said:
Well, it’s good to be back with you. It’s good to be back. And, uh, to be honest with you, as I was telling some other members of the congregation earlier, my body is here; my spirit is still walking on the streets of Kotak Balo in Malaysia—enjoying the fish market, the smells, the chicken being cooked in front of me at 8:00 p.m., hanging there, and lots of people walking around speaking languages that I do not understand at all.
It was, uh—really, it is comforting for me to see—and I think I give thanks to God for knowing—that when I’m not here, the church keeps moving. Because that’s what the church is: all of us together. It’s not the pastor; it’s not one person.
As we are reminded today, the church is the body of Christ, in which each one of you—each one of us—has a specific role that is important in order for the church to carry out the mission that the Lord Jesus Christ has given us. Thanks be to God for you, and thanks be to God for the opportunity that God gives us to grow and to learn about God’s creation.
It is interesting that the conference—that I attended—the theme for the conference was justice. Because today, one of the emphases here in the church, and in many congregations in our synod and in the ELCA, is to talk about justice and inclusion.
The Asian Lutheran International Conference that I attended gathered churches and pastors from the U.S. and many countries in Asia. One of the things that became clear to me during the conference is that the Lutheran churches in Asia—and, in general, Christian churches in Asia—have a little bit of a different understanding of what justice is.
Here, when we talk about justice—and you can tell me more—we think about advocacy. We need to get out; we need to go protest; we need to manifest; we need to show up; we need to fight for the other; we need to be the voice of the voiceless, etc., etc.
However, when they were talking about justice in Asia, they were talking about how the church—the body of Christ—is going to provide an education for those who need to learn in order to survive, or to live, or to have a life. It is about equipping those who need a skill that will help them live a life that manifests the intent for which every person was created.
It is a time for discipling—to learn about, as we were singing in the Psalm today, that the law or the precepts of God are life-giving.
In the end, justice comes by obeying and proclaiming the Good News in word and in action.
Today’s passage in the Gospel that we read is a passage we need to read in the context in which it is located—or placed—in the scripture.
If you notice—and if you read chapter 4 of the Gospel According to Luke—the passage about Jesus going to the synagogue and reading the book of Isaiah comes right after Jesus faces the tests or the temptations. Jesus is confronted, or led, or pushed to look at himself and pay attention only to himself, for his own benefit.
By going to the synagogue to read the book of Isaiah, Jesus is reminded—and reminds us—that each one of us has received the Holy Spirit for us to be instruments of the Good News that liberates and frees those who are oppressed.
It is not about me and myself, but about how you and I are part of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ that we call the church.
So I invite you to think about this passage and to look at it from a different perspective—not so much by using the events and current issues we are facing here in our country and trying to make the Gospel fit what we are experiencing today, but by seeing how the Gospel of the Lord Jesus—the message that was read that day in the synagogue—speaks to us and addresses the issues we face today as a church, as a society, as a community, and as individuals.
As I said earlier, the emphasis today is justice. I think we need to be clear in identifying what is God’s justice and what is human justice.
My understanding of justice is that justice took place from the very beginning in creation when God said, “It’s good, and it’s enough.” That is God’s justice.
We are created with an intrinsic identity—you and I—in which justice is part of our DNA, our Christian and spiritual DNA, and it’s part of God’s intent for all creation.
Justice is not something you and I create, because we know what happens when humans take control.
Human justice, in my view, is the result of believing in ourselves. It is the result of thinking that there wasn’t enough good in the world and that we need to help God by taking over and telling God what needs to happen.
That’s what happens—if you remember early in the story in the book of Genesis—when humanity wanted to have knowledge, when Abel and Cain started fighting, when the Israelites said, “God, we want a king because you don’t know what you are doing, so send us a king who knows what they’re doing.”
We want justice.
God’s justice is not about bad people getting punished or good people being rewarded. God wants everyone to realize how much God loves us in the way that we are, where we are, in our faith journeys, and to discover the unique role for which God created each one of us: to be the body of Christ, where nobody is less than the other and nobody is better than the other—a body in which we are interconnected in every aspect of life: every person, every creature, and everything in creation.
But as I said, unfortunately, we have gotten into this idea that we are the Messianic presence in the world. We have this Messianic complex and this inflicted guilt that we are trying to fix everything.
As I said earlier, many times we are, you know, out there saying, "We need to be the voice of the voiceless." Well, I will say perhaps what Jesus is telling us is not that we need to be the voice of the voiceless, but that we need to hear the voice that God has already given to everyone in creation. Sometimes we spend time—and I have heard this in all circles in the church—saying, "Who is not at the table?" Well, maybe the question is not so much about who is not at the table but what are the tables that Jesus has prepared and is inviting us to sit at, to listen, and to learn what God is doing in and through all the people around us. Maybe we need to pay attention to these tables and to be less self-centered in how we can help God to be God.
As I return to the country, I am returning to a new situation where the conversations, the concerns, and the fears are valid and real. There have been changes. I left the country before the inauguration of the new president; I am coming back after the inauguration. New laws and new policies have been proclaimed. Things are changing. Many people are being affected. There are controversies all over the place—here and there, up and down, in and out.
One of the controversies that we know is going on right now has to do with the sermon at the inauguration. How do we respond as the body of Christ? What justice are we imploring—our justice or God's justice?
As much as I may agree with the bishop who was preaching that day, I would say I would push her a little more. I would push her to be... I know that she was talking about something that everybody knows, and to be honest, those things everybody talks about, everybody knows, and everybody will agree with her.
Of course, the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, in 2020, published a report in which it mentions that about 38 to 59 million people have been displaced from their homeland by U.S.-led wars. I wish that the bishop had mentioned that.
Because it's great, and I know it's part of justice, to address the needs of the people right now here. But it is just and is justice if people do not need to leave their homes because of the wars that we inflict for the sake of power and control.
As an immigrant, I can say I wish that—and I came for different reasons; this is a disclaimer—I didn’t come under the circumstances that many people have come to this country. But I can see that I wish any person who needs to leave their homeland didn’t have to think about leaving the place where they were born, their family, their land, and their people because they are pushed out due to war, sanctions, blockades, or other forces. I wish they could remain and be the body of Christ where they were born, flourishing as the people of God in the place they call home.
So, the question—and I’m conflicted as I talk about justice today, and believe me, this message is more of a dialogue within myself and with God—is how the message of justice and inclusion can be reflected through the life of our congregation.
As members of this congregation, we are called to be a church that, in word and action, creates a space where anyone with different views of the world can sit, be transformed by listening to one another, and respect each other. Parades, protests, destruction, and rage—all of these are symptoms of pain, frustration, hurt, and violence that have been inflicted on people through human justice. Too often, this kind of justice is more about taking advantage of others. Seeking God’s justice, however, requires a major paradigm shift in our lives. God is the source and author of justice, and we are called to join in God’s justice, living it out in everything we do.
That’s why, when Oscar Romero was facing the challenges of war created by a superpower inflicting violence and killing others, he wrote in his compilation of writings, The Violence of Love, about the need for a love that is stronger, resilient, and, in a sense, “violent.” But this violence is not like the violence we know—it is the power of love that breaks the chains of sin, frees us, and liberates us so that we can see and learn from one another.
Imagine if you and I, in this place, in this church—with our most different perceptions of life, understandings of life, or experiences in life—could sit together, talk about those differences, and truly listen to one another. At the end of such a conversation, even if we don’t agree, we could still say, “I see you for who you are because you listened to me.”
I leave this place knowing that we may never agree on certain things, but if you look into my eyes and ask me about the stories of my childhood, my family, my community, and you listen to me, then I will value you as you value me. Can you imagine if our congregation were a place where we lived out inclusion at that level? A place where we were vulnerable enough, in an intentional space, to be transformed to the point that we saw the presence of the Lord in each other?
We can have signs, statements, or letters. I could spend the rest of my life writing letters about how inclusive we are. But if we are not able to sit and listen to one another, to see each other eye to eye, heart to heart, and journey together in our differences, I don’t believe we are living out the justice God has placed in our hearts. When God created us, God said, “You are good. You are enough. You are the body.”
So today, I invite us—where we are as a society, where we are as a congregation—to pray that the Spirit will liberate us to be the true body of Christ in this world. May we bring hope and light and create space for one another to walk humbly with God and with one another.
Amen.
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