[Sermon] Disrupted by Praise

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo + April 13, 2025

Palm Sunday

"Full to the Brim: Even the Stones Cry Out"

Palm Sunday is a story of holy disruption. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the voices of the crowd—raw, loud, and joyful—refuse to be silenced, even under pressure. Pastor Hector reflects on how voicing our deepest emotions, even when messy or uncomfortable, is essential for personal and communal growth. In contrast, silencing dissent or pain often stunts the soul. Like newborn cries or shouting stones, our honest voices are part of how God's truth breaks through. When we praise, grieve, question, and cry out—we participate in God’s unfolding story of liberation.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatically generated captions, lightly edited by ChatGPT for punctuation and readability.

Grace to you and peace from Abba, Father-Mother, Creator, our God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord—who one day, riding a donkey into Jerusalem, reminds us of his love by washing our feet and feeding us for the journey together. And we said:

Voices. Words. Ideas that disrupt the order.

Have you ever experienced anything like that? When you think that there is a good order in your life, and somebody says one word—or two words—or a phrase...

Or when somebody shares an idea, or when you hear a voice that just disrupts you?

In 1996—199... 1996 to 1997—I was doing my internship in Austin, Texas, at the seminary program in the Southwest. By that time, the supervisor decided to take a call and left me, the intern, in charge of the church. And I have shared this with you.

You can imagine: a foreign-born seminary student trying to figure out how to speak the language, how to live in the U.S., and now—in charge of a congregation in Austin, Texas.

And then, it was in June that my daughter was born—exactly when the pastor left me alone. So, my daughter was born on a Friday morning. Pastor Jay, my wife, and I—we went, of course, to the hospital. You know: labor and etc., etc.

She is born—my daughter is born—and then, almost from the moment that she was born, she started crying.

And my daughter is here, so I'm not going to say much, but she knows this story, because we constantly tell her how my wife and I—Jade and I—were going through that.

So Friday, all Friday afternoon, there was a baby crying in the room. We knew that Saturday would come, and we would need to leave the hospital, and we would need to go back to church—because guess who had to preach on Sunday?

So it's Saturday afternoon, and the baby's still crying. It is Saturday night, almost midnight, and the baby’s still crying. So there was a point where I wanted to calm her down, but I think that when I held her—actually—she was not crying. She was screaming.

So that wouldn't work.

So Jade and I were thinking, "Oh my goodness, we need to rest. Should we just call the nurses to take care of the baby, so that we can sleep?"

But then that little thing inside you, as new parents, is like, "No... that's too cruel. We'll just keep her with us in the room."

Well, it was midnight... it was like 2:00 a.m., and the baby was still...

My order was disrupted.

So on Sunday, when I got to church—I don’t remember, first of all, how I had a sermon. Second, by that time I was learning English, and I couldn’t do what I do now, which is speaking more fluently. I don’t say perfectly, but fluently at least.

And I was standing on the pulpit, because that church had a pulpit that was on the high—and believe me, I couldn’t read anything. I lost track of what I was reading. I don’t know what language I was speaking. But we went through the sermon, and we finished that service.

The order of life is disrupted by the good things that happen sometimes in our lives. The cry of a newborn child is both a cry of suffering—because of the change of environment, the fear, the discomfort, and the new source of life that they are experiencing—and, at the same time, it is an expression of the new beginning: a new way to communicate, a new way to express the deepest emotions and needs that the baby has.

But our tendency, as a society, is to silence those things that disrupt our order. And we know that when we silence, we prevent the natural growth—and it causes short- or long-term mental health situations or emotional traumas.

So I’m glad that we didn’t silence my daughter. But I tell you, till today, I hear her cry in my ears. I still have those vivid moments when we were in the room, and I see the little cradle with the baby screaming.

We see, currently, in our society a common thread—of what is happening with words or actions or ideas that disrupt the order. And we notice that thread also in the stories that we read last Sunday, when we know that the disciples were complaining about Jesus for saying things and wanted to silence him.

And today, when the Pharisees are telling Jesus to tell his disciples to be quiet—and not to disrupt the order that they wanted to keep, because they were under the domination of the Roman Empire. They wanted to stop the spread of God's prodigal grace and brazen acts of beauty.

These acts that counter—or that bring to us—the new thing that is bursting in front of us, leading us to praise and to rejoice, or leading us to complain and try to silence them:

“Make them stop. Be quiet,” they said.

And you and I, as I said earlier, we are experiencing that today in our society—when we see policies, we see behaviors among the powerful in this world, in our society—who are trying to silence voices.

And I'm not talking about only this administration. We can talk about two or three—the three past administrations too. I'm talking in general: when the powerful do not like what people are speaking, they silence them. They silence dissenting voices, which makes them uncomfortable and confronts them with their actions that are hurting and destroying societies.

We know that suppressing the expression of emotions—as I said earlier, whether it is individual or institutional—can have a profound psychological effect in people, in communities.

In this highly polarized society in which we are living, how could we express our emotions—our joys, our grievances—without trying to suppress one another?

What can make us be open to hear one another, instead of trying to silence each other?

The scripture says: "If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them—shouting out praise."

[sound of crows cawing]

Were you disrupted?

The word shout out, that we read in the scripture today, actually is based on the piercing cry—or caw, or croaking—of the ravens. And it means: to cry out loudly, an urgent scream, an inarticulated shout that expresses a deep emotion.

So, can you imagine when the Lord Jesus responds to the Pharisees—to the leaders—and says, “If you make these disciples stop praising, these stones will shout out praise”?

That is what Jesus meant: It is going to pierce your ears. It is going to disrupt you. You are not going to stand it. You will want it to stop. It will be worse than you can imagine—because nothing, absolutely nothing—(well, my cross!) absolutely nothing—can stop the unfolding of the good news that God brings to us.

All creation cries out praises:Trees, says the scripture.Trees, rivers, mountains.

But stones—yes, even stones.

The message raises above the noise, even when the oppressive power is trying to silence it. God—the gospel—the good news—is that dissenting voice that counters the old and disrupts the old delusional order of violence and hate that the powerful have tried to impose on people.

And what the stones and the disciples are wanting to shout out is the message of peace that Jesus brings.

According to Luke, from the very beginning—when Zechariah, when the angels, when Simeon remind us—that the reign of God in Jesus brings peace. But it's a peace that also divides, because it’s a peace that will make those who are in power feel disrupted.

This message of peace is an anticipation of the coming of God’s reign in Jesus. And that’s what alerted the Pharisees. They sought to maintain the order that they imposed on people—the illusion of peace and order.

Jesus declares: the divine truth transcends human attempts to control it.

The stones’ potential cry is both a warning and a promise:What God ordains will be revealed—with or without our permission.Nothing is going to stop the reign of the Lord that has started.

Next to you—maybe you’ve found a friend who has not said anything to you.Have you found somebody next to you who is saying nothing to you?

I think Brand found it. Can you show us your friend next to you?Are there other friends that are sitting next to you?

These stones tell us the good news.They are a reminder that when we stop—God will not.And when we keep silent—even the deadest—(I don’t know if that’s an English word, but the deadest, and I’m breaking our rules!)—inanimate objects will shout out truth and praise, and proclaim that despite the painful reality that we may be living here, that we are part of in this messy life—

God’s mercy and forgiveness are poured out for us.Poured out in us.All over us.

So that you and I may be full to the brim.

And for that, we thank God.

Amen.