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[Sermon] Changing the Narrative

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo



On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Pastor Hector invites us to see John 14 through a surprising lens: the power of narrative to hold systems in place — or set people free. Drawing on Psalm 31's image of God as refuge and rock, he grounds us in the one authority that liberates rather than controls. The resurrection life, he argues, is not passive comfort but active witness — joining God in dismantling the stories that separate, isolate, and diminish. From geopolitics to schoolyard bullies, he shows how smaller, truer stories can crack open what seemed unmovable. The gospel calls us not just to believe in resurrection but to live it, six days a week, in ways that change what the world accepts as normal.


Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.


Grace to you and peace from Abba, Father, Mother, Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, the one who is risen. And we say — amen.

 

As David was saying, and I told him this morning, there is very little to say for me regarding this passage in the gospel according to John, because I have been preaching on this passage for the past three months or so. We have been having several memorial services, and interestingly, families have chosen that passage for the very reason that David mentioned. It is a passage that brings hope, that is dear to our journey, our faith in our journey, and I think that we will continue to hear this passage. But today I would like to ask you just to make a pause and maybe to think a little bit different, or to take a different approach of this passage. And I would like to invite you just to join me in having this passage from a different perspective. Sorry, I'm doing something here for myself, and for you, maybe. But okay, let's do this.

 

Let's take a moment and just let's try to remember some of the words that we heard in the psalm that we read today, Psalm 31. The image, if you remember, that we hear in this psalm is the image of God as a refuge, or a rock, a fortress. What does that remind you in the Lutheran church? Safety, right? "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lord," right? This is the psalmist laying out our dependence and submission to God's authority, as we were saying last Sunday, right? And it says, "My life is in your hands. Everything that happens around me is in your hands." But also, this authority is not that imposed power to push us down or to control us, but authority as the sole source of life, hope, and the character that we need to face the despair in our daily lives.

 

And then the gospel that we just read, this passage that we read a moment ago, it is a passage that opens the possibility and challenges us to broaden our understanding of what it means to be members of the body of Christ as the risen Lord. And also, as David was saying with that little example of the matches little box, Jesus is also telling us and reminding us that Jesus can see the potential in the members of the body of Christ, the potential that Jesus sees in every person, each one of us, but also the potential that Jesus sees in the entire creation to continue to become what God intended from the very beginning. The evangelist describes the ways that we are interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent as partners with God and with one another in this journey. If you notice also in this passage that we read today, there is a second part, the next part actually, that I will be reading next week, that talks about the gift of the Spirit, and how the gift of the Spirit confirms and strengthens this unity and interconnectedness that we have with one another.

 

Today's passage is kind of sandwiched between two important aspects of the life of Jesus, but also in our faith journey. If you notice, in Chapter 13, the way the chapter ends is when Jesus is talking to Peter, and Peter says that he wants to follow Jesus. And Jesus says, "Where I'm going, you cannot follow me." And interestingly, in Chapter 14, Jesus says, "Actually, follow me, and I'll tell you the way to do it." So John is a little confusing sometimes, I know. But the way that I think that word is placed, in my perspective of this passage, is the way that the evangelist is helping the early Christian church, and therefore reminding us, how it is that we are going to live our lives as part of the body of Christ at a time when the Lord Jesus Christ eventually is not going to be with us physically. And that's the life of the resurrection people.

 

You see that Jesus talks to the disciples in Chapter 15 and talks about "I am the vine," and challenges the disciples to follow him in what we call the farewell discourses. He's preparing them to be part of the unfolding of God's reign in an environment where the narrative of despair and death continues to rip apart the community and the society. And yet Jesus tells them, "I am giving you the same work to do that I have been doing," something greater than they, and you, have ever thought about. Jesus is giving us to do the same work that he is doing. In other versions of the scripture, it says, "You will see and do greater things than you have seen me doing." So where are those greater things? And here is where I want to invite you to maybe look from a different perspective.

 

A few days ago, I was trying to keep updated on the things that are going on in the world, and I came across an interview. It is an expert in Asian society and politics and culture, and they were talking about the war against Iran. And I want to be clear here, because have you noticed that we normally say "the Iran war," "the Ukraine war," and we always name the wars with the country that has been attacked? That's very interesting, right? How about we change the narrative, and we say "the war that we have against that country"? It changes the narrative. It changes the way that we think about the situation.

 

In any case, in that interview, the authors were talking. They said, "It's interesting to see how the narrative can shape our minds." The war against Iran has helped us to see how greater things can be accomplished by smaller countries, especially when our country unfortunately has believed that we are on top of everybody else, and that there is nobody else who is going to defeat us, to show us that we have weaknesses. We believed that we are a power that is exceptional in the world. But this war against Iran has shown us the power of changing the narrative. Why? Because a smaller country has beaten up the country that thought there was nothing in the whole universe that could beat it.

 

And when the little countries around this other little country that has beaten up the big country start seeing that, they say, "Huh, I think that we can do it too. That we cannot be dominated, oppressed, and manipulated, that we can stand straight and look forward and take our own decisions."

 

Just imagine this, for those who maybe are in a school here, or who have been in a school, or have children in a school: what happens when the bully in the school is beaten up by a little child, right? It starts going through the school: "Oh, the little one just punched the big one on the face." And then the rest of them start feeling empowered and fearless about the powers that control, destroy, oppress, diminish, and despise the little ones.

 

Others will see that it is possible. Narratives define the stories we tell ourselves, because they hold systems in place, and changing those stories allows for challenging and reversing the systemic, political, and social inequities in our society. Stories create new neural pathways and patterns, building the familiarity necessary to shift what a society views as normal. And maybe that's one of the questions that the gospel is inviting us to think about today. What are the things that in our society have become normal, and yet are the very things that are ripping apart families, societies, economies, communities?

 

What has become normal that, instead of expanding our understanding of what it means to live as the resurrection people, we are compartmentalizing people, placing them in small homes and huts, pushing them, oppressing them to stay separated, isolated, discriminated against, hated for a difference of views in the world, experience of life, or simply how they understand themselves?

 

Jesus says the resurrection people are to change the narrative with reckless, never-ending love. As we were reminded just a moment ago, when we live with love, the new-order narrative is that the powers of this world are in fact fallible before the Lord's power, and that the unfolding, life-giving power of the resurrection is going to stand against anything that is going to separate people, and to bring us together, as you see on the cover of the bulletin, into this place where everybody will be able to live together.

 

I was watching a video, a blogger who is showing us some of the oldest churches in Syria, in the cities of Syria, in Aleppo. And she is showing how the different religions are living together, Muslim, Orthodox, Christians, Catholics, playing, eating, doing business together.

 

What leads us to normalize things that separate us? The greater things may be the ability to join God to transform lives, to challenge the systems, and also to vivify the people. And when I say "vivify," it is because I believe that we are conduits of love and life for the society, where salvation is made tangible through acts of divine compassion. And that's exactly the image of a world with many rooms, a place for all people, no longer divided by the empire's hierarchies. That is what changes the narrative, that helps us in our daily lives as sojourners who come to realize that the new-order narrative of love tears down the barriers that separate, segregate, isolate, and take life away from one another.

 

But also, Jesus in this passage tells us that the cost of discipleship, the cost of living the resurrection life, is one that brings us what Jesus experienced: the resistance of the world to the narrative of reconciliation, love, justice, and beauty. Changing the narrative brings and reminds us of the God-given dignity of every person and the entire creation.

 

Jesus says, "I am giving you the same work that I have been doing." And Jesus continues: "You can count on it."

 

So as we are leaving today, I want to conclude with something that we heard yesterday, in one of the remembrances that was shared in the memorial service yesterday. One of the coworkers of Richard at Boeing was sharing, and at the end of his remembrances he says, "I want to say something about him: the gospel that he received in this, his church, his congregation, was the same gospel that he lived the next six days of the week." Does that sound familiar?

 

"You can count on it. I am giving you the same work that I have been doing."

 

The resurrection people are called to join in changing the narrative of the world with our witness, which has an impact far beyond what we have ever imagined. Are we ready to be church for the next six days?

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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