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[Sermon] Guarding the Common Good

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo



Isaiah 56 begins with a command: guard, not create. Drawing on the Hebrew shamar, the word used for a shepherd tending a flock, Pastor Hector reframes justice as something we steward rather than manufacture. God's common good already has intrinsic value and existence; our task is to tend it, not construct it from scratch. That shift changes everything about how we relate to the vulnerable and to each other. Using the image of a leaf guiding rainwater down its path, Hector shows how we become conduits rather than architects of God's justice.



Sermon Transcript

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


Grace to you and peace from God, Abba, Father, Mother, Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. And we said, Amen. Amen.

 

I think that the message we have in the gospel, I kind of shared it with our young worshippers, but I would like to expand a little bit more on it, especially in the Old Testament today. So I invite you to bear with me and spend a few minutes with me on these passages, especially the passage [laughter] in the book of the prophet Isaiah. So we were talking about unexpected things. What has been unexpected today for you?

 

How are you feeling dealing with the unexpected, whatever is happening to you or that you're going through? And how about us after we leave this place? What would we do with maybe some unexpected word, action, or experience that we have today, in order to be part of the overflowing grace and love of God? So in that framework, let us begin a reflection on these readings.

 

These readings that we have today are very well-known stories. I believe that most of you remember the story when you heard it from our sister Diane. What does this evoke in you when you hear this story again today? How does that sound? What does this speak differently to you? These stories are interpreted in many broad ways. We can hear about, in Matthew, about Jesus, that we hear some explanations or interpretations about Jesus testing the faith of the woman, or that the woman is testing, actually, Jesus, and enlightening Jesus to understand what the love of God is about, as I mentioned a moment ago. That's one approach. And in the book of the prophet Isaiah, we have this story, that we read the previous chapter and the chapter after, we will see that it talks about the law and rewarding those who are righteous, but also talking about how this free, or I would say undeserved, grace that people receive doesn't mean that we are going to do nothing with it. There is nothing expected from us. As I'm rereading these stories, then I believe that there is a profound message, and I believe that some of you will agree with me, that in these passages this deeper and profound message has to do with God's unstoppable rain that keeps coming in ways that are unexpected, unimaginable, and sometimes unable for us to comprehend. A rain that reaches all people, including the Canaanites, including those who, in the version of The Message, the translation called The Message, are called the mutilated, which is the eunuchs, received in the temple. And second, in this rereading of the scriptures I can find that the book of Isaiah talks about justice, but not justice in the common sense and the political context that we are talking about justice now, but talking about justice as our identity, as members, as part of the family of God's reign. So I invite you to step back today from these debates about Jesus being prejudged and enlightened by the woman, or the legalistic aspects of the prophet Isaiah, that we can say, yes, you need to obey the law, or you need to get rid of the law. We are going to get away from those debates and talk about justice as the common good, as it is translated in The Message, and so let's start with the first verse that we read today in this passage of Isaiah. Justice, and I'm going to use justice and common good interchangeably, so you will hear me going back and forth with those two terms. So this is the first verse in chapter 56.

 

"Guard my common good. Do what is right, and do it in the right way. For salvation is just around the corner."

 

Guard my common good. Keep the justice, or "do justice" would be another translation. And the reason this part of the scripture caught my attention, I don't know how you feel about this translation, but "keep" or "guard," this word comes from the Hebrew shamar. And shamar conveys the idea of a shepherd that guards a flock, or a priest that guards a sanctuary. It means tending to something that already has intrinsic value and existence. It is not about constructing something from scratch. And to me, that changes the understanding of justice in the life of the Christian faith and the Christian community. Because what we are guarding is this justice, this common good, that in Hebrew is mishpat, which normally, or mostly in the Old Testament, has to do with restorative justice, seeking out the vulnerable, those who have been taken advantage of, and helping them. But not only helping them in the sense of having pity on them, but in the process of restoration of their identity and the restoration of the God-given dignity of all people. And it's a call also that this justice is part of who we are, and justice happens, or the common good happens, through us as a natural pathway or a way of life for us. But we live in a society that has this compulsive need to produce results for God, which almost invariably turns into controlling other people for their own good. How many times do we decide what is good for the other? How many times do we decide, "I'm going to do justice for them because this is what they need, and who knows better than me"?

 

So what if the passages that we are reading today are about stewarding God's common good out of reverence, gratitude, and joy? And when I say reverence, I'm also thinking of the other word that we read in scripture, that we are kind of nervous to talk about, when we talk about the fear of God. Reverence, gratitude, and joy. Just read verses 6 and 8 in Isaiah, where God says, "I will bring them to my holy mountain. My house shall be called the house of prayer for all people." And notice, it is God's act, God taking the initiative to restore what God initially wanted for the entire creation: a relationship, a righteousness, where the relationship between God and us is right, and between human and human, or creation and creatures, is right.

 

And here is where I get into trouble with some of you who love music. As you know, I'm not a musician. I have trouble reading music, but I love music. But sometimes I disagree with some lyrics. And the lyrics I'm struggling with are from a song that is a beloved one. "For Everyone Born." Who knows that song? Say it again? "For Everyone Born." Do you know that song? Yeah. Well, one of the lines says, "And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy." And that is the part which I struggle with, because as I read the scripture I feel there is a misalignment with what the message of Jesus and the passage in Isaiah is. I believe that is a line that is culturally influenced by our Western way of looking at things.

 

We do not create justice.

 

Creators of justice inevitably step into the role of designers of others' lives. And this is how paternalism, manipulation, and condescendence are born. And I tell you this, my siblings in Christ, not just as a philosophical reflection here. I tell you this because I have worked in communities, and I am part of a community that in many cases has heard, and has felt, and has experienced the effects of other dominant communities and cultures that come to "do justice" to us. And I would say, probably, I'm doing the same to others who are a minority. It's very easy for us, when we believe that we create justice — this is, as I said, the beginning of paternalism, because we come to believe that we know what marginalized people need, and how they should receive it, and why, while we hold the power to dispense it.

 

"I'll tell you what you need, and I'm going to do justice for you." Wait a minute. But have you had a conversation with me? Wait a minute. Have you heard my story? Wait a minute. Do you know what I am actually saying and thinking?

 

Justice is not a project. Justice challenges us to see that God's justice is about God's gift for all creation, and when God breathes in us, that justice becomes part of who we are. Justice is thus received. We are compelled by our response to it. We go and seek righteousness and justice for others not because we do it for others, but because that's who we are as part of creation. Now this is a challenge, because we are always dancing with other realities in the world that push us — that make us, when we see injustices, want to do something about it, and then we cannot just sit there and look at them and say, "Well, too bad for you, but since you don't want me to do anything, I'll just step back and let you be." At the same time, we need to be able to see that you and I are the conduits, the means by which the justice of God comes to us.

 

So one time I was hiking — not with these shoes, different shoes, when I was young and could still go up mountains — and I got this short video that I'm going to show you. I just saw it and I took the video. See, we can look at it. I don't know how clear it is for you. It's very short, but you can maybe see the point I'm trying to make. This little leaf that fell from a tree allows the water that is running to run down. The leaf is the leaf, and the water runs on it. And the water can reach the places that the water needs to reach. And to some degree, that's how I understand that you and I are the conduits, the means, the instruments of the justice of God in this world. If justice is the water of God, the common good flowing through the riverbed of our lives, then we are entirely decentered. We don't get to dictate the flow, just as this little leaf didn't. We are simply breathing as God intended us to breathe — breathing in God's grace, and breathing out the common good for all creation, for all people.

 

But guarding the common good is not a passive posture. It is not a project for the weekend. It's not, "I'm doing fine, the world's oh — and this weekend I'm going to just put a few things on my calendar, take care of a few things, and come back, and everything is good. I did my project. I feel good about it." This is a daily life response to God. When we, my siblings in Christ, stop hoarding goods — whether it's food, or power, or theological correctness — maybe we aren't doing a justice project. My siblings in Christ, the common good is not a goal to be achieved. When our lives become an unforced, daily, everywhere extension of God's common good, the community receives life, and you are enlivened too. We don't have to manufacture reconciliation. We become the mending place where reconciliation happens. And it's my prayer and my hope that this congregation will be exactly that — that this congregation will be the space where reconciliation happens, because the people gathered by the Spirit in this place are practicing the justice that has been given to us, instilling in us the breath of God, where you and I are able to sit, and we are able to hear each other, to listen to one another, and we can leave this place knowing that we are acknowledging the God-given dignity that each one of us has received.

 

The common good is the beauty and healing that are not results from our work, but the byproducts of our surrender to who we already are in Christ. Justice is an active and costly response — is courageously making a deliberate, lifelong commitment to advocacy and structural change in our society. And justice is not something that we produce. We are made participants, as a grateful, humble, and active response to the justice that we have already received, by being an extension of God's justice every day, everywhere, all the time. Healing and reconciliation, beauty, will bring life to the community. My siblings in Christ, we are already the temple, the dwelling place of God's common good, of God's justice. And that, my siblings in Christ, is good news.

 

"Guard my common good. Do what is right, and do it in the right way. For salvation is just around the corner."

 

And with that, we go being justice in this world. Amen.

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