Sermon Preview October 18th 2026

October 18, 2026

Preacher: Rev. Anne J. Scalfaro

Sermon Title:

Helping

Becoming the Beloved Community Series

Sermon Blurb:

Using Paul’s encouragement to early Christian communities in Philippi and Galatia, Sunday’s sermon will explore Helping as a key quality of the Beloved Community.

Helping is not ground-breaking or complicated; it is as simple as it sounds—holding the door for someone who has their arms full, making a meal for a friend recovering from surgery, raking up the leaves in your neighbor’s yard, casting a vote on a proposition that protects vulnerable people.

It’s also simple to give another person the gift of allowing them to help you—asking a local for directions when you’re traveling, asking a friend for a ride to a medical appointment, allowing a dinner guest to help you wash the dishes.

We Become the Beloved Community when we understand that helping is not one-way; it is an interdependent act of service that reflects the mind and love of Christ, calibrates our egos, and reveals to us our need of God and one another.

Centering Quote:

“Helping one person might not change the whole world, but it could change the world for one person.”

- attributed to Paul Shane Spear

New Testament Readings:

Philippians 2:1-5a

1 If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 5:13-14

Common English Bible

13 You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. 14 All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.

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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.