conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

from sarah...

This is powerful stuff...

Jesus wasn't kidding when he said what he did about wealth any more than he was kidding when he said what he did about relationships. God's kingdom, God's rule, God's way of using power are entirely incompatible with our way of using power to maintain our wealth and shut the rest of the world out of it. "Charity" -- the practice of doling out money from our considerable wealth to those who are poor in a way that in no way changes the recipient's lack of access to wealth and power -- is a seductive trap that consolidates our power, adding to it even the power of doling out life and death around our choices of how much to give and to whom, and yet lets us feel particularly generous and self-righteous in the process. Jesus is not calling us to make some minor tweaks in our relationship to wealth. He's calling us to something far more radical and far more transforming; he's calling us to reconciliation, with one another and with God.

I like what she said in her exegesis of the Mark passage for this Sunday. The passage is more challenging than any of us can bear. It is impolite. It is, well, impossible. Thus, through God, all things are possible...including the realligning of our social institutions that keep systems of "purchase power status" alive. No one escapes this system. And that is why we must pray for an act of God. But are we ready for that act of God to come through us?

This is what I am pondering through with my sermon. God knows that we are stuck. God knows that we have an increasingly expensive educational system. God knows we have an increasingly burdensome health system. God knows that wealth greases the wheels of the world. This is not some secret we keep from God. And Christ recognises that it is impossible for us to overcome it, to perfect ourselves in the midst of it. Forutnately, God desires it...and thus it is (all things are) possible through God. God wishes to free us from this burden.

But that freedom (of perfection...salvation) does not come without our willingness to turn all things over to God, to follow Christ by giving away our riches. We do not sit and wait.
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In other news, today is the Men's Golf Outing. Community Church has been doing this for a good long while. The temperature is currently in the 30's. It may get into the 50's. We have a noon tee time. This is going to be painfull.

So, I need to get my sermon completed this morning. Trish is still asleep. She needs it. Caged Dames opens Wednesday. They have been working very hard all week long. They rehearse today and again tomorrow...from 9-5. Oy. Veh. She and I are supposed to go out for dinner tonight. It is a date to clelebrate our wedding anniversary...which was in September. Ah well. We'll get there. I believe we are going out for tapas. I so love those little plates of Spanish goodness.

Posted by tripp at October 14, 2006 07:22 AM