The Church We Hope For

May 11, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | John 21:12-17

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May 4, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Matthew 19:13-14, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17

Jesus centers the children and informs everyone within earshot, including us, whether you’re a parent or not, that children belong and blesses them. He invites them, carries them, lifts them up, and welcomes them in his presence. He rebukes anyone who keeps children from coming towards and finding belonging in Jesus.

Keywords: Children, Child Dedication

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April 27, 2025 | Nicola Patton | Luke 24:28-33

On the road to Emmaus, two disciples encounter Jesus without recognizing him. It is not until they sit at a table with him that they understand who has been walking with them. The same is true of us: Not all who wander are lost; Jesus is with us on our journeys. It is at tables where we can find real belonging and recognize the face of Jesus.

Keywords: Exclusion, Inclusion, Journey

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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

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April 18, 2025 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | The Last Seven Saying of Jesus from the CrossIn 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 the divine mystery of our God fully revealed in Christ crucified. Pastor Armando co-led this service with artwork from Scott Erickson and musical sounds from Pianist/Conductor, Jennifer Oikawa.

Keywords: Good Friday, Tenebrae, The last seven sayings of Jesus, Holy Week

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April 13, 2025 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Luke 19:28-44 & Zechariah 9:9-10Pastor 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 tensions, ultimately leading to the events surrounding Jesus' crucifixion on Friday.

Keywords: Palm Sunday, Holy week, Peaceable Kingdom, Peaceful Resistance

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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 Goodness, Original Sin

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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: Repent, Reimagine, Good Samaritan, Midrash, Radical love of neighbor, Love your enemies, Jesus

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March 23, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Matthew 14:13 and 22This 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 very much integrated with our whole body in our journey with Jesus.

Keywords: Mind, Mental Health, Rest, Self-Care

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March 16, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | John 15:1-11In 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 us understand deeper spiritual truths!

Keywords: Vine, Vineyard, Abide, Grapevine

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March 9, 2025 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | John 1:37-48In 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 sojourn with Jesus.

Keywords: Questions, Abide, Peter, Nathanael

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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.

Keywords: Jesus, Messiah, Questions

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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.

Keywords: Psalm 42, Lament, Psalms of Lament, Exile,

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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 the solidaric witness he hoped White Christians would show African Americans and the rest of the world. Dr. Allen examines the two letters from these men and reminds the church today of who we are called to be and the love we are called to display as a body of Christ followers.

Keywords: Love Letters, MLK, Black History Month, Solidarity, Justice, Witness

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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 wildfires, loss, grief, and displacement.

Keywords: Love, Lydia, Paul, River Church

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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

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December 22, 2024 | Nicola Patton | Luke 2:22-38, Isaiah 45:3, Matt 19:13-15As 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

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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 shrewd story and embodiment of peace culminates in the advent of Jesus's subversive birth narrative.

Keywords: Advent, Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, Isaiah 11, The Lion and the Lamb, Radical Peace, Christmas

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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, Shrewd Hope, Hope

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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 leaves invite us to "lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us"?

Keywords: Leaves, Fall, Hebrews

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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 she gifted to our community to plant, nurturing the hope of a beautiful Eastertide bloom in the spring. These seeds represent the growing edge of hope, renewal, and restoration, both for California land and our lives.

Keywords: Native American Heritage Month, Chumash Stories, Native storytelling, Ancestors, Jesus, Radical inclusion, Belonging, Buckwheat seeds, Indigenous stories

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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 the recent election results) will be the greatest in the kingdom.

Keywords: Sermon on the Mount, Lament, Elections

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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 who loved us and deposited a sense of belonging in us. We remember them to religament us and fix our eyes on Jesus.

Keywords: Ancestors, Dia de los Muertos, All Saints

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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 their questions, critiques and desires for a more faithful witness of the Church. Our community welcomed and affirmed all of it, knowing that our youth and emerging adults have good news to offer us as a faith community. Pastor Mondo leveraged the story of Bartimeus, a blind beggar as a case study on the cry of an emerging generation.

Keywords: Growing young, Belonging, Inclusion, Youth ministry, Young adult ministry, Fuller Youth Insitute, Radical Jesus

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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 resistance as they seek God's justice and shalom-wholeness for all people, especially those on the underside of power and privilege.

Keywords: Filipino American History Month, Migration, Resistance, Exile

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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 practice for Jesus and living this way came with much opposition and accusation for Jesus. So it stands to reason that we too, as radical Jesus followers would encounter that same opposition and accusation as we advocate for sacred inclusion and belonging of ourselves and others. breath has always been with us. God created us to belong first in intimacy with God before the world told us who we were not.

Keywords: Radical Inclusion, Sacred Belonging, Advocacy, Holy Spirit, Radical Jesus

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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 the world told us who we were not.

Keywords: Identity, Community, Inclusion

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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

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September 22, 2024 | Maren Jo Schneider | Genesis 24

We've all heard that we worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but when you read Genesis like an English major, it's not hard to see that a better name would be the God of Abraham, Rebekah, and Jacob. The text designates Rebekah as a chosen one of God with main character energy, but commentators have struggled to notice because they expect the women of Genesis to stick to supporting roles. Rebekah boldly subverts those expectations and, beyond biology, serves her crucial role in growing a people called to do righteousness and justice.

Keywords: Rebekah, Abraham, Women in Genesis

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September 15, 2024 | Nicola Patton | Joshua 2

The story of Rahab teaches us that morality is often a luxury but that God provides for the powerless. God is the God of radical inclusion and a border-crossing God who looks to tear down walls for us to belong together, not so that we can destroy each other.

Keywords: Rahab, Belonging, Inclusion

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September 8, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Gen 16:7-16

Mother Hagar is the first human and first foreign woman to name God, the God who sees. This is in response to God naming her son, Ishmael, which means, God hears. She finds herself in a difficult predicament after being taken advantage of. Yet, God earnestly pursues her, provides a name for her son, and promises to his descendants.

Keywords: Hagar, Ishmael, God who sees

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August 18, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Matthew 5:9 Pastora Inés grounds reconciliation in the work of Jesus on the cross in Ephesians 2:11-22. She centers peacemaking within the context of the upside kingdom of the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:9.

Keywords: Reconciliation, Peacemaking

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August 11, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde and Nicola Patton | Hebrews 6:12-19 The Voice In this communal sermon, Pastoras Nicola and Inés hold a conversation about hope. Hope is a habit that grows in the dark and hope has a root system. We created a communal poem of hope with the congregation because hope is not just one thing and there is not one way to hope!

Keywords: Hope, Community, Anchor

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August 4, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Matthew 6:33 NRSV God is the author, architect and arbiter of justice. From the Old Testament to the New, we see that God always has protested injustice and has a preferential treatment for the marginalized. In the life and ethical work of Jesus, we are invited to live into the verbs of Jesus which are the seeds of justice.

Keywords: Jesus, Justice, Margins

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July 28, 2024 | Armando David Scott-Canchola | Luke 4

As we look at the love of Jesus, we see how God is not retributive, but a God who is radically forgiving, co-suffering, and sacrificial. A God who teaches us to love all, including our enemy. Jesus invites us to follow His expansive Cross-shaped love, first revealed in His Gospel of Julibee found in His hometown sermon in Luke 4.

Keywords: Cruciform Theology, Cross-shaped Love, Radical Love, Enemy Love, Gospel of Jubilee

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July 14, 2024 | Bobby Harrison | Matthew 14

As we look at the life of Jesus, we see a God who draws near. And it’s the eyes of Christ, filled with compassion, that moves Jesus first toward us. May we be moved, as he was moved, to be the eyes of Christ to one another.

Keywords: Church, Compassion, Familia, Holiness, Jesus, Love, Nearness

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July 7, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde

The Holy Spirit is life, light and speaks a language. Pastora Inés gives an overview of how we see the power and presence of the Spirit as the 3rd person of the Trinity who was here from the beginning giving life-giving breath to all. We see the Spirit as the light of wisdom that falls over ordinary people like prophets, prophetesses, and even Jesus to raise him from the dead. We imagine that the language of the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians that begins with ordinary seeds.

Keywords: Holy Spirit, Ruach

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June 23, 2024 | Bobby Harrison We begin a new series focused on our Vision as a church, starting with "We are a Beloved Community." Hear how we've embodied this truth over the years and aim to continue to live into it with the triune love of God as our center.

Keywords: Beloved, Community, Grace, Identity, Hope, Jesus, Redemption

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June 16, 2024 | Dr. Phil Allen, Jr. | Matt 11:28; Psalm 46:10; Luke 22:31-32; 39-46

The liminal spaces and seasons (the in-between), also called transitions, can be challenging, scary, and confusing, but also exciting and hopeful. Jesus’s life, from his birth to death, resurrection, and ascension, is thirty-three years of an in-between season in the broader human history. In his life and ministry we have examples of how to navigate transitions in healthy ways: with rest, rituals of grief and joy, and communal rhythms.

Keywords: Transition, Rest, Rituals, Community

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June 9, 2024 | Bobby Harrison | Matthew 11:28-30 This past Sunday, I shared with our familia that I will be transitioning out of my role as Co-Lead Pastor. If you missed the message, I believe watching and hearing the story will be most helpful in holding the sacredness of the story. I also wrote a letter (https://thechurchwehopefor.com/pastor-bobby-harrisons-transition) about this movement in my life – and the life of our church – to our congregation last week that you can read here. I want you to know how profoundly grateful I am for the compassion and care so many of you met me and my family with in that moment. Your words, your eyes, your embrace, your presence. To see your faces was to see the face of God. Over and again, each person anew. And the texts and emails and calls this week have been a gift I will long treasure. The Church We Hope For is that rare community that can hold a community’s story of loss while still honoring a pastor’s (and person’s) reality of pain. What embodied grace. What expansive love. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Pastora Inés has begun a transition plan that she outlined below my announcement here (https://thechurchwehopefor.com/pastor-bobby-harrisons-transition) as well. And please know, familia, there is already a deeply thoughtful and intentional vision for our community being implemented in real time. More of this will continue to be communicated each step of the way. But as a people that take grief and practices of lament seriously, we also don’t want to abruptly move too quickly beyond the gravity of this moment. All of this is being taken into great consideration and care, with that deep balance of compassion and wisdom.

Keywords: Embodiment, Faith, Discernment, Transition

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June 2, 2024 | Nicola Patton | Acts 2:41-47 NRSV

After Pentecost comes ordinary life in community among the believers. And within that community, we find unity that celebrates diversity. The differences among believers are not prerequisites for belonging but unique aspects that contribute to the beloved community. The group had everything in common and that looked like belonging together in safety.

Keywords: Belonging, Community, Resurrection, Unity

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May 19, 2024 | Janette Hur Ok | Acts 2:1-13; 1 Corinthians 12:12, 21-26 Diversity is both a gift and a challenge because embracing difference is incredibly difficult. We need the continual presence and power of the Spirit to unify our diversity. The Spirit's Christ-centering power empowers us to divest ourselves again and again of any power that hoards resources and opportunities and devalues, disregards, and disadvantages others. It also challenges us to embrace disagreement and difference as a gift of the Spirit.

Keywords: Pentecost, Body of Christ, Unity, Diversity, Holy Spirit, Power

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May 12, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Joel 2:23-29 Before the wind of Pentecost, we find the waiting of the prophetic fulfillment of Joel 2:23-29. The promises are for the restoration of all things, beginning with the soil, the animals, and humankind. God sees our devastation and promises to restore the years that the locusts have stolen.

Keywords: Eastertide, Joel, Locusts

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April 28, 2024 | Bobby Harrison | Deuteronomy 38-40

This sermon looks at the relationship between death and resurrection, particularly by looking at the end of the life of Moses. In his story, we see ways we may be led to resist death alongside paths of receiving death. And this just may inform how we can live into these realities in our own lives.

Keywords: Death, Resurrection, Peace, Resistance, Trust

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April 21, 2024 | Salena Marie Scott | Earth Day – Eastertide

Salena Scott shares her unique journey of how caring for creation began to care for her disabled body in return, and why she thinks Jesus calls us to commune with the land we live on. Salena is a poet and an advocate of renewing the California indigenous story through native plants.

Keywords: Creation, Earth Day, Healing, Indigenous Jesus

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April 14, 2024 | John Williams | Matthew 5:6 The sermon explores the concept of Restorative Justice and its vital role in building a beloved community. Through the framework of the Sermon on the Mount, the address invites congregants to embrace deep humility, courageous listening, unintimidated speech, and the amplification of the stories of the racially oppressed.

Keywords: Restorative Justice, Racial Reconciliation, Community Building

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April 7, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Luke 24:36-43

After the revelation at the table at the end of the road to Emmaus, Jesus again appears to his disciples and introduces himself saying, “Peace be with you”. Through a wordcloud exercise, Pastora Inés invites our congregations to a communal reflection of Scripture asking what keywords, emotions, images, and phrases stand out to us from this passage. Our road to resurrection is still ongoing and our people are the teachers.

Keywords: Road to Emmaus, Resurrection, Peace

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March 31, 2024 | Inés Velásquez-McBryde | Luke 24:28-35

After the resurrection, Jesus goes searching for his friends and listens to their dashed hopes on the road to Emmaus. The disciples don’t recognize him until he takes the bread, gives thanks, and shares it. Resurrection is a road and a ritual where Jesus’ presence comes after us so that we may see him.

Keywords: Road to Emmaus, Resurrection, Ritual, Table

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March 29, 2024 | Mondo and Salena Scott, Mike Hale

A contemplative liturgy of sight, sound, and solidarity as we center a table of remembrance and reflect on the cross of Christ. This Good Friday Observance included musical, poetic, and visual exploration where we meditated on the unjust crucifixion of Jesus and sought solace in the divine mystery of our God fully revealed in Christ crucified.

March 24, 2024 | Bobby Harrison | Mark 11

In our bilingual Palm Sunday service, we reimagined the biblical narrative of Jesus riding in on a donkey through the eyes of a little girl and her family. May this immersive, imaginative tale bring new eyes and ears to a familiar pillar of our Easter experience. And in it, may Jesus be revealed to you again and anew, as a King who cries.

Keywords: Story, Lament, Hope, Imagination, Faith, Familia

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