The Church We Hope For

April 20, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Luke 24:1-12 NRSV Resurrection is about looking for the Living One among living ones. Those living into the way, the truth and the life of Jesus. Those who find life after death, not only eternal life, but present life. Resurrection is rising up and rising again as Jesus is slowly making all things new. Keywords : Resurrection, Easter, Life About: The Chur...

April 18, 2025 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | The Last Seven Saying of Jesus from the Cross In this contemplative liturgy of sight, sound, and solidarity, we center a table of remembrance and reflect on the last seven sayings of Jesus on the cross. In this Tenebrae-style service, exploring verbal, visual, and musical meditations centered on the unjust crucifixion of Jesus and seeking solace in t...

April 13, 2025 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Luke 19:28-44 & Zechariah 9:9-10 Pastor Mondo explores the significance of Palm Sunday, when Jesus arrives in the capital city of Jerusalem as a rival king, promoting a counter-kingdom agenda that embodies a peaceable kingdom. This pivotal moment marks the onset of what we now recognize as Holy Week and is laden with both political and religious...

April 6, 2025 | Nicola Patton | Luke 15:11-32 As we look deeper into the background of repentance, we step further back into the traditions that have kept us from seeing our true selves. In the beginning, God called us very good. How can we call something bad that God has called good? God's goodness calls to our goodness in the invitation to return to our Maker. Keywords : Repentance, Original...

March 30, 2025 | Armando David Scott-Canchola Pastor Mondo re-explores the familiar story of the Good Samaritan by focusing on Jesus' pivotal conversation with a religious scholar, culminating in Jesus telling one of his most favored parables. We discover that Jesus is having a healthy, not hostile conversation with his neighbor, engaging the power of curiosity in asking questions. Keywords :...

March 23, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Matthew 14:13 and 22 This time, we will focus on the theme Returning to the Mind and have a brilliant panel of therapists from our own Church familia speak to us. We are privileged to have the wisdom of Dr. Jennifer Arias [Clinical Psychologist], Dr. Eleanor Baylon [PsyD], and Kristen Olsen [AMFT, APCC]. Pastora Inés and the panel explore how our minds are...

March 16, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | John 15:1-11 In John 15, Jesus repeats the word "abide" 12 times in the famous statement, "I am the vine". We lean into the common agricultural method of vineyards, science behind grapevines, and converse with the work of Susie Lipps and "Conversations in the Vineyard". Grateful for the many ways creation is a teacher to help...

March 9, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | John 1:37-48 In John 1:37-48, we find two intimate conversations and the call narratives between Jesus and Peter and Jesus and Nathanael. The questions that lead Jesus and these disciples to interact, invite us into curiosity, and intimacy of relationship. The verb "abide" plays a particular role in what it means to seek, follow, remain, stay, and...

March 2, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Mark 8:27-30 In this pivotal moment in Mark 8, Jesus begins to make his way to Jerusalem and to the cross by asking 2 questions: Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? Jesus asks 309 questions in the gospels and is asked 183 in return. On our road to the cross and resurrection, the art of question and conversation is a tool of discipleship....

February 23, 2025 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Psalm 42 Pastor Mondo focuses on Psalm 42, delving into the deep lament expressed by the Psalmist as he struggles to make sense of life and faith in the midst of tragedy. He explores how lament serves as an honest and appropriate reaction to life’s challenges and how lament is a faithful way to engage with God, especially during the darkest times....

February 16, 2025 | Dr. Phil Allen, Jr. | Phil 2 Dr. Phil Allen preaches for our Black History Month celebration. Paul and Martin Luther King, Jr. both write love letters to the church. Paul applauds the church in Galatia for their witness, while King challenges, even rebukes the clergy in Birmingham, AL who criticized the movement for justice. King’s rebuke was out of his love for the church and...

January 26, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Acts 16:11-15 and Phil 1:1-9 As we do a soft launch into the book of Philippians, we dig into the origin story of the Philippian church. Lydia and a group of women found the river church, outside of the city gates, as there is no synagogue in Philippi. The markers of this river church that abounds in love is an encouragement to us today in the midst of w...

January 5, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde Epiphany means revelation and the wise magi that followed the stars found revelation in the dark night sky. Their rhythms were simple: waking, watching, and walking. God spoke in a language that anyone could understand. Keywords: Epiphany, Magi, Revelation, Star About: The Church We Hope For is a beloved community moved by the Spirit to follow the life, lov...

December 22, 2024 | Nicola Patton | Luke 2:22-38, Isaiah 45:3, Matt 19:13-15 As the world around us gives us little reason to find joy, we must be shrewd in actively looking for joy, becoming like children who find wonder in mundane things. Shrewd joy is a muscle we exercise, a means of healing and resistance, and it is the handhold that gets us through the dark. Keywords: Advent, Joy, Wonder Abou...

December 15, 2024 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Isaiah 11 / Luke 2:8-16 On this 3rd week of Advent, Pastor Armando tracings the wise roots of shrewd peace through the story of King David's ancestral lineage. Isaiah the poet prophet gives us a vivid picture of how God provides us with a picture of audacious hope and peace through the story of Israel's tragic loss and hopelessness. And how that s...

December 8, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | 1 Sam 2:1-10 Luke 1:46-55 Mother Hannah in 1 Samuel has a melody of hope that is harmonized by Mary's Magnificat. Both matriarchs of the faith point to an ancient present hope as we are rooted in the promised Messiah to arrive. They give us the gift of a bold, audacious and shrewd hope that can nourish our waiting today. Keywords: Hannah, Samuel, Mary, S...

November 24, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Hebrews 12:1-3 The liturgy of the leaves teaches us something about letting go as a spiritual practice that nourishes our understanding of Hebrews 12:1-3. In the fall, toxic waste is secreted in the leaves that fall. If the trees don't let go of this waste, the leaves weigh the tree down, stunt its growth, and prevent new growth in spring. How do the le...

November 17, 2024 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Luke 18:1-8 In celebration of Native American Heritage Month and sacred act of remembrance, Pastor Armando shared stories about his Chumash ancestors’ resilience and the sacred shrewdness. Armando weaved it with the shrewdness of the persistent widow we see in Luke 18. In addition, Salena shared about native Californian seeds from her garden that...

November 10, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Psalm 31, Matthew 5 The gift of lament in Psalm 31 is a reminder that we can openly call out and say that things aren't as they should be. It reorients us towards the sermon on the mount where Jesus speaks to a community marginalized by both empire and temple systems. Jesus centers the margins and says that those who are the least (and most affected by...

November 3, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | 1 John 1:1-5, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Heb. 12:1-3 Abuelito John writes to a diverse community of churches in 1 John in the latter part of his life. He writes as an old man to churches that had not been eyewitnesses of Jesus, thus highlighting that they had seen him, heard him, touched him. The focus of this letter is love. Love is the legacy of our ancestors wh...

October 27, 2024 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Mark 10:46-52 In this service, we "grew young" and center our emerging generation of youth and young adults. It was such a vital moment to acknowledge the growing number of young people who have felt disenfranchised from the American Church. We sat, listened and communally processed the desires of this emerging generation, allowing space to name th...

October 20, 2024 | Gillian Garcia | Jeremiah 29:4-11 (NRSV) In this sermon, guest preacher Gillian Garcia draws a parallel between the Babylonian Exile and the Filipino American experience to point out that God calls God's people in exile (be it an external, geographical exile, or an internal kind of exile) to recover their humanity. The sermon implores people experiencing exile to pursue joyful r...

October 6, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Psalm 139 v1-16 Belonging begins IN our bodies and belonging is cultivated in community. The beginning of our belonging begins in the womb of God's imagination and in the womb of our mothers who carried us. In Psalm 139 we see that Creator God who gave us our first breath has always been with us. God created us to belong first in intimacy with God before...

October 13, 2024 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Mark 1:21-24, 3:20-35 In this series, we have drawn from the margins of scripture to see how God is setting a pattern of disruptive radical inclusion. In this sermon by Pastor Armando, we explore how this belonging reaches its culmination in God becoming flesh to dwell with us, in Jesus of Nazerth. This sacred practice of inclusion is an essential...

September 29, 2024 | Janet Hale | Matthew 19:14 Our very own Janet Hale, a kindergarten teacher of 30 years, teaches us how Jesus shows us his true nature by welcoming children into the kin-dom. She shares provocative truths about how children have taught her the inclusive love of God and how to connect ourselves to our inner child. Keywords: Children, Inner Child About: The Church We Hope For is...