Sermon Preview November 1st, 2026 October 28, 2026 Ru-Lee Weller Passman November 1, 2026 Preacher: Rev. Anne J. Scalfaro Sermon Title: Mystical Mindset Becoming the Beloved Community Series Sermon Blurb: This Sunday is All Saints’ Sunday, a threshold occasion where we remember those dear to us who have died. We light candles, read names, toll bells, and hold silence—all in an attempt to honor the complex fullness of someone’s life and the tender mystery of their death. There is so much we do not understand with our rational minds about our faith or even, for example, about what happens after we die. Yet, many of us have experiences in our lives that reveal to us a deeper sense of ‘knowing’ in our soul that there is a Bigger Mystery surrounding us and an All-Embracing Love holding us all—in life and in death…and that perhaps those two ‘places’ or ’states’ are not as different as our humans minds bifurcate them to be. Our spiritual intuition often gives us hints that the veil between the Here and the Hereafter is thin and perhaps even permeable. On Sunday we will explore some of the deepest questions and mysteries of our faith as expressed in Job, Ecclesiastes, and 1 & 2 Corinthians. We will proclaim what we can know to be true, while holding space for all that we have yet to know and discover. Having a Mystical Mindset—a willingness to ’not know all the answers’ and a willingness 'to trust the deepest knowings of our heart’—is an essential quality for those of us who claim faith. Sitting in Mystery and Unknowing is different than saying “There is Nothing We Can Know.” Could it be that embracing a Mystical Mindset helps the Beloved Community become a reality we can taste here and now, and not just in some far off future or heavenly realm? Centering: “Therefore, since we are encompassed with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” - Hebrews 12:1-2 (MEV) “To live in the presence of God on a continuous basis can become a kind of fourth dimension to our three-dimensional world, forming an invisible but real background to everything that we do or that happens in our lives.” - Thomas Keating Old Testament Scriptures Job 11:7 7 “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? 8 It is higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know? 9 Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. Ecclesiastes 8:16-17; 11:5 16 When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how one’s eyes see sleep neither day nor night, 17 then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out. 5 Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything. New Testament Scriptures 1 Corinthians 2:6-13 6 Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed. 7 But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory 8 and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. 13 And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, 12 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. // 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 17 For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18 because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. —————— Series Blurb: (longer description on website) Becoming the Beloved Community – Our Focus for 2026-2027 This year we’re grounding ourselves in the theological conviction that all persons are beloved children of God—and as we live out our belovedness, together we come closer to becoming the “Beloved Community” that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King envisioned, where all people are honored, cared for, and treated as equals. The word Becoming embodies both what we already are and what God is yet creating us to be. We ourselves are “in process”—and as a community, the vision of the Beloved Community is something we will never quite actualize here on earth even as we strive to embody it more and more each day. The word Beloved is also important. As Pastor Anne says, Calvary is a place where people come to be, be love and to be loved, and as we engage those three practices we grow as a beloved community. For this series each week from Gathering Sunday through Pentecost, we’ll explore a different quality of the Beloved Community—qualities that stand alone, yet also build on one another, deepening our sense of what it means to be God’s beloved and shaping our sense of who we want to become as individuals, as Calvary, and as global citizens.