[Sermon] Living in God’s Ahorita

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

November 16, 2025 + 23nd Sunday after Pentecost

On this penultimate Sunday of the church year, Pastor Hector invites us to consider the divine "ahorita"—God’s mysterious and often frustrating sense of time. Through Malachi’s prophetic urgency and Jesus’ refusal to offer an ETA, we are reminded that God’s reign is already breaking in, even when we do not fully see it. Hector challenges the instinct to take justice into our own hands when the world feels chaotic and God seems slow to act. Instead of reactionary anger, we are called to enact the justice already planted within us—through relationship, compassion, and shared humanity. God’s justice is not a project but a way of life. We live in the unfolding “now” of God, participating in a reign that is both present and coming.

Sermon Transcript

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

Grace to you and peace from Abba—Father, Mother, Creator—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, the one we are waiting for. And we said, “Amen.” Amen.

Well, it's good to be with you again in this spot. I almost forgot how to preach. So—I think I forgot. I'll try to do my best today. But honestly, with the readings that we had today, I had to prepare two versions of a message: one that is, like, two minutes long, and then one that is a little longer than that. So, which one do you prefer?

Oh, come on. I know what you are thinking. I know what you are thinking. So I'm going to choose the opposite of what you're thinking. Sorry.

I invite you just to take a moment to take your bulletin and look at the picture—the illustration that we have on the cover page of your bulletin—and just think about what comes to your mind. Just pay attention to what comes to your mind immediately, almost instantaneously, when you look at that picture.

And I would like to invite two or three who want to venture to say—only say, you don’t need to elaborate—just say what came to your mind when you saw that painting, that picture. One, one, by one. Say—one more. One more. “Chaos.” “Chaos.” Okay.

Well, on that note of chaos, let's spend a few minutes on this. When I look at this picture, actually, it shows me many of the pictures that we are able to see now as we turn on media—whether it’s the newspaper, or the TV, or YouTube, or any page on the internet. You name it: Gaza. You name anything, including some neighborhoods in our city that may look like that.

And that breaks my heart, as I believe it breaks your heart. So what do we do with a message like this? As David was pointing out, we’re coming to this time on the calendar of the church when we think about what it means to live at this time, and how to live out the hope that has been given to us.

So let me—I invite you to keep this in mind, but let me step back a little bit and connect it with what we were talking about last Sunday when Dr. Kemp was here. And I told you—I ended the service by saying that at the end of the service I said that when Pastor Kempton came to me—Dr. Kempton came to me—the first time when I was here with you, he spoke to me in Spanish. And I thought that he was an angel because he speaks the heavenly language. Right?

So as I was preparing the sermon, and I was looking at the passage today and yesterday and the days before, actually, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus is Mexican.

Seriously—you don’t believe me? Let's get into that.

There was an article that I read many, many years ago. I was still in another state, anyway. And this was written by a writer, a journalist—I think she’s British—Susanna Reg, who wrote an article for the BBC. And she was writing about the Mexican culture and a specific word that Mexicans use.

So on the screen you are going to see that word. You see two words: the word ahora, which means “now,” and then you see the word ahorita. And ahorita is a word—as you can see—that when a Mexican says ahorita, it could mean tomorrow, in an hour, within five years, or never. So if you have asked me anything and I have told you “ahorita,” you know what to do—or not to do.

But when you hear a Mexican saying ahorita llego, it means “I will be there right now,” literally. But when we say that—when a Mexican uses the word ahorita, “right now”—it could mean, as I said: tomorrow, in an hour, within five years, or never. And this was said by one of the linguists in the oldest university in America, in Mexico City.

As I was reflecting on these words, I think that the word ahorita also means—or conveys—the idea of something that is happening; you just need to believe it, and you just need to live with it and in it. The writer, Susanna Reg, said that when she was in Guadalajara—actually where I used to live before I came to the U.S.—she said she went downtown and there were these people who sell ice creams on the streets. And she said, “Do you have ice cream?” And he said something like, “Well, they will bring it to me right now,” but he said the word ahorita… ahorita. So she went and sat—15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. It started to rain. And then she went to complain, and he said, “No, ahorita, ahorita.” And she sat, and then it started to rain, and she left. And the man was so puzzled why this person was so impatient.

The disciples wanted an ETA—an estimated time of arrival. I'm sorry—what is that? Estimated time of arrival. ETA. When, Jesus? When?

And if you notice, Jesus doesn’t answer the question. He doesn’t say “if.” It was not so much about “if,” because it was going to happen. It was not so much about “when,” because anyway, nobody knows. But it was more about the what. And this is what we were studying last Wednesday in our Bible study—the what: What does it mean to live in such a time when it seems that it is too long?

Malachi is a book that was written about—uh—years after the people of Israel left Babylon in exile and went back to Jerusalem, and they built this magnificent temple again. And they had these high hopes that everything was going to be good. They rebuilt their lives again, they rebuilt the temple, they lived in the promise that the Messiah was coming, that God’s reign was going to be established, and there would be unity and peace and justice in the land again.

But then—as I said—God (Jesus) is Mexican, and they said, “Ahorita.” And it was too long. And because it was too long, that opened the doors for the people of Israel—and maybe for us—to fall into our human condition: to turn around, to turn inwardly, and to be misled and manipulated by the forces around them, to the point that they turned away from God and they started living and placing all their trust in themselves.

Israel seemed to have learned nothing from the time in exile. They are complacent, and they fall into the old patterns. And here is where the prophets come—the prophets who are the voice, the prophet’s voice, the yearning cry of God for God’s people, when God sees that we constantly go back to the old ways and we are seeking control and self-gratification.

I have been, since I was young, involved in movements.

When I was in high school, we were already receiving education for community organizing.

If you are interested—you might think that maybe Marx’s writings were for philosophers. Well, high schoolers: we were reading it. We were in political movements, worker movements, when we were in high school.

And I have been hearing all these movements, looking and seeking for justice. One of the more recent ones that I’ve heard in recent years is when people say, “No justice, no peace.”

These are—and I say this because I participate, I have used slogans—but this catchy slogan is… is that just a catchy slogan? Because I believe that “no justice, no peace” may not align very well with the biblical understanding of justice.

Malachi chapter three: if you read chapter three, you will find that the people say, “God seems to do nothing about what is going on.” And because they think that God is doing nothing, they decide to take charge and take justice into their own hands and do whatever they think justice is.

Our justice becomes a channel of our anger, our frustration, and our discontent with the systems that we do not agree with, or do not like—or we can say systems that are oppressing us, truly oppressing us. Unfortunately, this discontent becomes temporary and reactionary.

Commonly, it becomes a feeling of retribution—actions that are seeking to inflict the same pain that we have suffered onto others.

We get obsessed with looking for something to be against, rather than to be spotters of hope.

And that is a lot of what is going on right now.

And it's very easy for us to fall into that trap. And it's very easy for us to close our hearts and our ears to the prophetic voices that invite us to think differently and in the alternative way that God is bringing in Jesus.

Instead of using our vernaculars to look for and spot the hope that God is placing before us, we look inwardly. We look into ourselves, and we become the centers and the creators of a justice that is based on our own limited understanding of the world, of life, and of the people around us.

Prophets denounce and speak against the patterns and behaviors that do not belong to the new order and the systems in which those in power—or those who think that they are doing justice—sometimes just repeat the party lines that support the structures of injustice and the human-made justice.

Father Richard Rohr helps us to differentiate the roles and the calls that we have. He says that in the church, in the Christian faith, there are priests and prophets. Priests are those who take care of the system; they become very jealous and zealous of the system. They create it. They love it. And then the prophets come, and these are the prophets who go around and say, “Hey, actually, you know…”—and priests do not like that.

Prophets, he says, do both. They put together the best of the conservative with the best of the liberal—if I want to use contemporary language. And prophets honor the tradition, and say what is funny—or what is off—about the tradition.

I think that Jesus is challenging us and inviting us—and the prophet Malachi is inviting us—to remember that when we are able to work with both, that is what a fully spiritually mature people are called to do.

The images and the language that they use in this style of writing that we are reading today are images that magnify emotions—to convey a deep meaning and a sense of urgency.

David already saw Mary and Joseph coming. Some of the kids didn’t, but I think they are coming. I see them from here.

The prophet proclaims an indictment of our human condition—selfishness and sin—and it speaks of the agony in God’s heart. And God will do anything—we’ll talk about how God will do anything—to reach out to us and heal the brokenness of our souls, the chaos that sometimes makes us feel lost and disoriented.

God’s justice is us living out what has already been placed in our hearts. Justice is not a project. Justice is not something that we do temporarily. Justice is beyond screaming and yelling and finding something to fight against. Restoration, again, is not a project or an ideology. It is about living out—and living up to—the initial call to be partners with God, who sends a messenger to teach us how to live the freedom that we already have in us.

Justice and righteousness are intertwined with the right relationship, restoration, and wholeness that God promised us in Jesus.

So, going back to where we started, I still believe that Jesus is Mexican, because the divine ahorita is a reminder that we are to be justice in a time that we cannot determine by ourselves. We are living in the ahorita of God—something, a reign, that is already present, that we don’t fully see, that is not fully completed yet, and yet is already in us and through us.

Justice is enacting—we are called to enact God’s justice through our lives: extending a hand, listening deeply, honoring, creating spaces. Today, for example—and I will just quickly say this—I was telling, in our pre-worship meeting, we have a number of things going on in church that I believe are a reflection of what we, as church, are trying to do to reflect that justice.

And this is justice: imagine when we live out the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ—as we were singing earlier in the opening hymn—it is when we live out that justice that there is no hunger, because we will be sharing. There is no need to go and yell and hate someone, because everybody will be living out God’s justice, what is already in us.

When we open our hands… when we are willing to listen… when we are willing to learn from each other… when we are willing to open the spaces where we are able to honor each other where we are in our journey… where we know that we can come to a place where I will not be judged because of what I believe, or what I learned when I was a kid—and unfortunately that’s who I am right now.

That, for me, is justice. And I pray, and I hope, that this congregation will be that:

That we will be known as a place where anybody who comes—from any spectrum of theology, political positions, whatever journey in life—can sit in this place, can be heard, can be listened to, can be walked with, and be accompanied. Because when we do that, that is when we live out the justice that has been placed in our hearts.

And I invite you, my siblings in Christ, that we do not concern ourselves with the estimated time when the kingdom is coming—because the reign is already here. Ahorita mismo.

But be willing to do that.

“But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings, and you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.”

In the freedom of the divine ahorita of our Lord, we live. And we say, “Amen.”