[Sermon] Living Generously: A Life in Common

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

October 27, 2025 + Reformation Sunday

Living Generously, Loving Boldy Week 4: Love that Unifies

On this final Sunday of Living Generously, Loving Boldly, we are invited to see generosity as an act of communion. God’s grace gathers us not by merit but by mercy, forming a community where each person has a place. Pastor Hector reminds us that to live generously is to live with life—con vida—sharing what we have so all may flourish. In prayer and thanksgiving, we offer our commitments as signs of unity in Christ’s abundant love. This is the heart of Reformation: love that frees, grace that gathers, and faith that works through love.

Sermon Transcript

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

Grace to you and peace from God—Abba, Father, Mother, Creator—our Lord Jesus Christ, who is with us always, who comes to us and invites us to be always with open hands and open arms. Amen.

We began four weeks ago with a little mustard seed to remind us of the potential in this tiny seed—the potential of the faith that has been instilled in our lives for us to grow and to be a blessing for many people. We don’t need much. We need only a little that is powerful.

We continued with the lepers—one of them especially—who, in spite of being healed and probably feeling so happy, forgot the blessing that he had received. He sacrificed the joy of celebration to go back to Jesus, to prostrate before Jesus, and to thank Jesus for the blessing that he had received.

Last Sunday, we heard of this woman—of this woman who didn’t let the judge, the unjust judge, go—and her persistence helped her to get the justice that she wanted. We were reminded last Sunday that generosity is a result of transformation. We were reminded that persistence is an act of generosity. We were reminded that living generously means to experience the incarnation and the justice and the wholeness of God that God brings to us today.

Here we are, and we just read this story that I just shared with the young worshippers. And as I was reading this passage, I started to wonder: how does this speak to us in the context of generosity? And how does this speak at the same time to us at a moment when we are celebrating Reformation?

As I started thinking about the passage—as I started looking at this passage—I noticed that one of the ways that we traditionally understand it is very oversimplified. It is basically a warning against pride and self-sufficiency. In other words, it’s more of a moralistic type of story: Be good and God loves you. Well—God is no Santa Claus.

Right?

I believe that the passage we read this morning has a deeper meaning—not so much about us and our accomplishments to be accepted, but about the God who has claimed us by name and has made us whole as God’s people.

Last Wednesday, in our Bible study, as we were reading about the attitude of this character in the parable that Jesus is telling—this Pharisee who starts believing in himself only—Pastor Joshua, who was teaching the class, reminded us that we cannot be righteous or justified on our own. That is self-righteousness.

And as I was listening to him, a story—an experience that I had many years ago in the congregation where I grew up—came to me. And again, I’m going to share this story not because I am trying to vilify or demonize the congregation where I grew up, because regardless, the Spirit worked hard, and I believe that out of what was happening at that time, with the challenges and the problems that I saw in the church where I grew up, God made it possible for this congregation also to be an instrument of God’s reign.

But this is the story.

I have told you that the congregation in Mexico was—due to the context in which it was serving—very enclosed. And there were good reasons for that, reasons that I can share some other time with you. But I remember that we tried to be very… what would be the right word? We tried to be very clean and good inside the church—to differentiate ourselves from the world outside.

One morning, as we were like this, there came this man—and you know, the churches in Mexico sometimes have the front door right on the street, basically, so anybody can come in. There was this man who probably had had a long Friday and Saturday drinking—I don’t know, maybe Modelo or Tecate, and maybe some tequila, I don’t know—but he was very drunk. And he came into the church, and he was loud and moving erratically, making noise, distracting people—the Christians who wanted to be like the Pharisee.

And then I gave thanks for our ushers, because immediately as the man came in, the ushers stood up, and between the two of them, carried him and threw him out onto the street. And all the people in the church were glad that this disruptive, drunken man had been kicked out of the church.

At that moment, I felt, We are good.

As I have grown up—and as I probably have been not drunk with alcohol but drunken with all the challenges in life, the distress, the traumas, and many other emotional and spiritual challenges—I was thinking of this man, and thinking of myself, and maybe thinking of ourselves.

This man was kicked out by members of the congregation who wanted to be, in their sense of purity, faithfulness, and righteousness.

Some versions of the scriptures say that the tax collector was, that day, in the temple. And the way that they translate it is that the man had only a few words to say: “God, have mercy, for I am a sinner.”

I started to think about this man, and why Jesus may have used this example. What had led him to believe that he was not worthy to be loved, worthy to be part of the community? What were the systems at that time—and the systems today—that push people to believe that they cannot be loved or that they cannot belong?

What are the behaviors that we take sometimes, in congregations, to exclude and to decide who is in and who is out? And how is that really internalized by people, to the point that they come to believe that they cannot be loved?

And when there is a person who really loves, and they are not able to see the goodness—because they distrust it, because they have been hurt, because those wounds are open…

What had happened if that day the members of the congregation had acted differently—had listened and asked, had accompanied these men who came into the church, disrupting?

The scripture said that the tax collector went justified—made right with God.

These words convey a relationship. These words convey that there was a more powerful force that tore down all the systems created in society to separate and to push away people, in order to bring this man into the fold of God's grace and mercy.

The separation that was caused by human-made justice and the self-righteousness of human beings has been dismantled by the power and generosity of a God who says that we belong to God—that nothing can separate us. Not even how bad we believe that we are, and how convinced we are that we cannot be loved or that we cannot belong.

The word justified conveys the idea of being set free—set free from isolation, from being held hostage by the systems around us. Being set free for us to belong, for us to experience reconciliation, for us to experience the restoration of God's original intent for all creation.

To conclude, I want to share with you a Spanish word that is very meaningful to me. The word is convidar. The word convidar, as you can see, is formed by two words in Latin—invitare and convivium.

The first part, the red part, means “with” or “include,” and the second word, vida, means “life.” If we put them together, it means “with life.” Convidar is “to invite”—to invite someone and motivate someone to act on their own will—and it is an act of life in common.

So if I’m going to convidar Alan, or if I’m going to convidar David, basically what I’m saying is that what I am offering, I want to bring him into it—not that he feels pushed or obligated, but that in the way I am approaching him, he will be motivated to be part of the feast and the banquet that I’m offering.

And I think that this is what God is telling us in this parable—that the man, the tax collector, as I told our young worshippers, was open to the possibility of the invitation that God is bringing to him:

“You are loved. Yes, you are a sinner, but you are loved.

Yes, you think that you cannot be loved, but I love you.

Yes, you think that you cannot belong, but you belong to me.”

And that is the way that this man went right with God—not for what he did, but for what God has been doing from the very beginning of creation, when God said, “All is good.”

And the only thing that God saw that was not good was when God saw that Adam was by himself and said, “It’s not good that you are by yourself, because I have created you to be with others.”

So you know the rest of the story—Eve, and together…

“I invite you.”

“I invite you to come with me, to celebrate and to enjoy what I have done for you.”

And to me, this is the essence of the Reformation.

And to me, this is the power that propels us to live generously.

To live generously means joining God in creating a space where every person can find and experience God’s presence and justice—being claimed and being made whole. It’s about being free, like the seed, that the potential that is in us, like in the little seed, will flourish and produce fruit.

Loving boldly are the acts of generosity that you and I live—acts that evoke the desire for others to be part of what God is already doing: a life in common, a collective seeking of God’s reckless and never-ending love.

Today, you saw in the back that the fences are away around the community center. You can see inside now. You’re going to be approached. You are not a stranger anymore, because the invitation to come together—to be a community that has an impact, that transforms lives, that brings wholeness to the community—is happening right now.

And guess who is invited to be part of that? All of us. All of us.

Through the ministries of the congregation, through the partnerships with Volunteers of America, the Diversity and Inclusion Team, the Care Ministry, the Neighbors in Need, the NET, the ZOE, the Quilts, the Shawls, the Cocoon House Team, the Esperanza Team, All for Peace Team—all of us are invited to share in a space striving to move away from comparison and pride, and instead embrace a humble, united spirit.

Our collective giving and loving flow from a place of shared grace and humble hearts.

Dios nos convida. God invites us. God calls us to share a life in common.

For that reason, today, as we prepare to sing our Hymn of the Day, I invite you to take a moment and hold your commitment card. And in a prayer, ask how you and I are going to be the instruments of the invitation of a God of grace—a God who invites us.

Let’s hold our cards. Take a moment of prayer.

As we sing together, I would like to invite you to come and place your card here. And at the end of the collection of our cards, we will bless one another and commit one another to create that space—to experience this God of grace.