Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo + October 21, 2024
Rooted in Community Week 3 - Branching Out in Generosity
For Week 3 of our Rooted in Community worship series and stewardship initiative, Pastor Hector invites us to consider how our lives as disciples of Christ can mirror the natural growth of trees. He discusses the function of branches as extensions of love and support, calling on the congregation to embrace their role in the community. By being open to God’s guidance, we can become channels of blessing for those in need. God's infinite grace inspires us to cultivate an environment where generosity flows freely, reflecting the boundless love of God in our actions..
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, and lightly edited for readability by Chat GPT
Grace to you and peace from Abba Father, Mother, and Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, our friend, our sibling. And we said, Amen.
Well, I need to summarize now what I had here because, as I said—I mean, it has been already said today—but we continue with this journey in reflecting on what it means for us as a congregation to be rooted and connected with the community. A church that doesn't live for itself and by itself, but a church that is connected to what is happening in the community: laughing with the community, crying with the community. As you heard two weeks ago, we were talking about roots that orient us and ground us on a solid foundation. Last Sunday, we were talking about the trunks that are our core, our support, our structure—that which sustains us and ensures nurturing for our souls and for our relationships. And today, as you’ve heard for the third time now, we are going to talk about branches. So let me ask you a question: What specific function does a branch have on a tree?
Real question for you to answer.
Nutrients, sun, to capture the sun.
Outreach, bear fruit, and—say again?
Change.
Change? Oh, shade. Clean the air.
And we can go on for the rest of the day sharing how branches bring benefits for us and for the entire creation. Branches are part of the structure of the tree that gives trees stability, helps them with reproduction, but also with connection—connection with the environment for the reasons that you just shared with me. Think of the branches as the arms that are extended to both receive and release. And for those of us who live next to neighbors who have trees and fences that divide our properties, branches are good at crossing barriers, crossing lines.
Regardless, trees—if you notice, my siblings in Christ—do not grow inwardly. Trees expand, as you said, to capture the elements that generate their food, but also to provide shelter, shade, and to extend and release, as you said earlier, the fruit that they produce.
Our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to look away from ourselves, as the branches do on a tree, to grow away from the trunk and to connect with the environment. Trees do not grow inward; trees grow outward. And outward is how we are to grow as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we read, as disciples and apprentices of the Lord Jesus Christ, as I said last Sunday, trees do not give out of compulsion or obligation or fear. Trees give and extend because that is what trees do; that’s what they are created for, and they do it every day, all their life. And you and I are called to emulate the normal and natural way that trees grow: rooted, being the conduit for the nutrients, and extending our arms.
In the Gospel that we read today, in this specific version that I personally like—maybe because it speaks in a language that makes sense to me, as I am a simple person, and English is not my first language—so when English is simple, it kind of gets deeper when I hear it. But the Lord Jesus Christ shows us two things. One is that God's divine compassion and radical love extend out of Godself into all creation. And second, that since we are created in God's image, the potential is in us to reflect God's reign. We are to look away from ourselves, as branches grow away from the trunk of a tree.
The word “Beatitudes” comes from the Latin language and brings blessings, as Nancy said. That’s why I said, between my sisters here, I don’t have much to say that’s new now—all the things I wanted to surprise you with, you already know them. So, anyway, Beatitudes mean “blessing” in Latin. But if we take the word from the Aramaic, which is the language that the Lord Jesus spoke, this word conveys a much bigger and broader meaning. It’s more than just that sense of momentary happiness. It’s not just that sense of, “Oh, it’s good for me, great.” It can be translated as “blessful,” which is really a state, a way of life, an understanding, a posture, an openness to what God is doing in our lives. And blissfulness is not just a distant future—the day when we die and finally see the Lord Jesus. It is not just a condition that we need to earn with our work.
To reach this blissfulness, we don’t need to be poor in spirit or suffer or intentionally make ourselves suffer. This is a blessing that has been given to us from the very beginning of all creation. And I keep going back to Genesis, John. We keep going back to Genesis. Jesus calls us to be who we already are, to grow into who God calls us to be. Imagine if every one of us, every creature in the world, is open to that. Vianne, last Sunday, was telling us, as she described the tree and what the tree represents, how these little bits of ministry—if we live them out—connect us with the community: the shawls, the quilts. And today, you will see the branches. I invite you to go see the tree out there, and you will see that now it has branches that are made of the clothes that are given to our Neighbors in Need on Saturday mornings.
As I was thinking of the Beatitudes, I was thinking of Benjamin Zander, who is a conductor in Europe. He says that when he is teaching people, when he is preparing students, when he is helping them to be leaders, his philosophy can be summarized as this: “My job is to awaken possibility in other people.” My job is to awaken possibility in other people. And how does he do it? Maybe you’ve watched that video, but if you haven’t, the way he does it is that he tells the students on the first day of class, “You have an A. That’s your score. You’re an A student.” And I say, “Why didn’t I have that teacher?” But he says what he does with that is to tell the students, “Now that you know you’re an A student—not a B or a C or a C+, or anything like that—you are going to write a letter to yourself in which you will explain why you are an A student.” For those of you who are teachers, you probably know where this is going and how it works. What he says is that by starting this way with the students, he helps them open up to the possibilities that are already inside them. In the letter, they write, “I am an A student because I am open, because I work, because I care, because I want to be a person who brings good to the community as I grow up.” So what the students do is strive throughout the year to be what they described in the letter they wrote—which means that the potential has always been there. It’s just a matter of being open and letting it grow.
A tree is, in the end, a seed that lives out the sacred purpose for which it was created—to live up to the full potential that was in it. A tree is, in the end, a seed that lives out the sacred purpose for which it was created, to live up to the full potential that was in it.
Each one of us is a seed like that, and we are invited to live up to the full potential that God has given us when God said, “You are mine. It is good. It is very good. You are mine.” And I believe the Beatitudes are exactly that. Jesus tells us the good news of this radical declaration of liberation from fear and resignation—resignation to the belief that we are at the end of the rope, or that we need to be mourning the rest of our lives, or that we need to be walking in this world hungry and thirsty for justice.
And how are we going to help one another to remind each other that we are the A students of God? That the potential has been given to us, and the only thing we need to do is to allow and to live out this potential that is in us so that you and I can live out the sacred purpose for which you and I have been called into this world. Father Richard Rohr helps me to understand that and to try to articulate it. He says, “The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God is to love what God loves—that means everything and everyone.” It is only when you and I are open to becoming the full tree, with extended arms and branches, to love everything and everyone, that you and I grow into the full potential for which we have been called. The day we were baptized, or the day the Lord Jesus Christ came to us in ways we cannot even imagine, because sometimes we are not baptized, yet the Holy Spirit is already working in us, helping us to grow and to be what God has called us to be.
The Beatitudes are the reckless, never-ending love of God that takes the chaos of our mess—of our lives—to compose a song, a song that is sung by all creation: by the trees, by the water, by the mountains, by the animals. As we were singing today at the beginning of the service, even the early pose sings the song. I would like to see one of those.
And let me use the words of this song that is sung by the City Harmonic, which is a Canadian band. They said:
"Let it be light, Word of God,
God from the start, recreating human hearts.
Make us like the moon at night, a mirror of your light.
Let it be light, let it be life, let it be love."
The love that helps us to grow out of the mess of our lives: out of the mess of learning how to be a parent, out of the mess of learning how to be a spouse, out of the mess of how to be a good coworker, or a partner, or a citizen, or a co-journer in this turbulent political and economic season, or a member of a church, or a sibling in Christ. Let it be light, life, and love that help us to be a branch that extends divine compassion to those God loves: the victims of abuse, of trauma, of loneliness, of depression, of isolation, of shaming, or despair. Because in the end, we are blissful students, the students who extend arms to embrace in unity, to receive and to release, to spread a prayer shawl on those who are in despair, or to extend our arms to hold a baby, or maybe to support an elder in need.
Today, in a few moments, we will hear how we, as a congregation, are extending our branches, our arms, as a response to the invitation of the Lord Jesus, who tells us that we are A students, blissful disciples.
This building, for which we were able to replace a roof in order to be a roof for the entire community, is a building where many groups come together, providing spaces that are sacred and safe, and an opportunity to grow and to lead others to reach the full potential of who they are as the seeds that God is planting in this community. This building, on Monday evenings, is used by a group of young students who come to learn music. They are led by an organization, and especially by one specific person who is with us today, conductor Paula Mrigal, and others, where they come to learn music so that the children in our community have a sacred and safe space where they can grow, stay away from the streets, from despair, from loneliness, and be equipped to grow and to be able to be, in the future, branches that will bring blessing to the communities where they will go.
Today, we heard about the prayer shawls and how these arms that expand beyond bring the warmth, care, and love of God through these pieces of fabric—whether they are quilts or whether it is the shawls that cover those who are in need of a hug or a sign of care. Blissful are you, rooted on the ground of your faith, channels of blessings for the community, fed with nutrients of the Spirit, with extended arms as branches to receive and to release out of your own self, to be able to grow and to be co-workers with God in building God's unfolding reign. Blissful are you.
In a moment, we will sing a song, a hymn that reminds us of a church that is different. I don't agree much with the words because they say, "I dream of a church," but I think that we don't need to dream of a church. The church is here, and we need to believe it, and we need to live out the potential that Jesus has given us in the good news that you and I are A students. Thanks be to God. Let's sing together.
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