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Between Sundays for the Week of October 27, 2025

Note: Sunday’s sermon included a vivid description of the Wickham Farm’s candy canon (pictured below) as a metaphor for God’s generosity! Listen to Pastor Hoffman and Pastor Amy’s full sermon by viewing Sunday worship  through our YouTube channel (Sunday readings and the full sermon begins around 19:05).

Wickham Farm's Candy Canon in action

God’s generous abundance is evident everywhere around us in the natural world. Psalm 65 gives voice to this. The writer seems to say: just open your eyes, and you will see this abundance overflowing!  At the heart of our praise, this Psalm tells us, is God who receives our prayers, blots out our transgressions, and showers us with goodness!

Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:9-14 is an interesting one to pair with Psalm 65. One way to think about the parable is to imagine the Pharisee and the Tax Collector as people with two very different responses to God’s abundance that the Psalm describes.

You have the Pharisee who thanks God, but thanks God for letting him be so amazing! So smart, and skillful, and … righteous. It’s as if he’s saying: I am so satisfied that you have made me so great that I could gather all of this abundance for myself!

And then you have the tax collector, who beats his breast and says, in essence, I am nothing. God have mercy on my soul.

The tax collector thinks he’s done nothing to deserve God’s abundance, and the Pharisee thinks he’s done everything to deserve the abundance. And they BOTH have it wrong because God’s abundance isn’t about deserving. God’s abundance isn’t offered like some scare commodity that has to be rationed. It showers over us all!

It doesn’t matter if we have it all, if we have nothing, if we think we have earned it, if we don’t even know that we have it. At God’s table of abundance and mercy, we are all beggars, and God provides for all.  And in God’s abundance, we shall be satisfied!

P.S. Links to previous worship videos on Facebook and YouTube are always available on our website.

Faith Connection at Home

October 31st is not only Halloween, but Reformation Day! In JOY this week we talked a little bit about Martin Luther and his message to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. We focused on the Lutheran Rose, a seal developed by Luther to reflect the hope that Jesus offers to all of us through his death on the cross. If you would like a VERY brief refresher on Martin Luther and a copy of the Lutheran Rose to color at home, click the link here.

Between Sundays… Stay connected in the middle space of each week on our podcast. Find past episodes on the BLC website or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!
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Ponderings

Reformation Day is October 31

By the end of the seventeenth century, many Lutheran churches celebrated a festival commemorating Martin Luther’s posting of the Ninety-five Theses, a summary of abuses in the church of his time. At the heart of the reform movement was the gospel, the good news that it is by grace through faith that we are justified and set free.
On the last Sunday of October, many Lutheran congregations celebrate Reformation Sunday in worship. Many church sanctuaries are draped with red cloths which symbolize the movement of the Holy Spirit and congregations sing hymns written by Martin Luther, such as A Mighty Fortress Is our God, based on Psalm 46.