Scripture is full of people being afraid and being told, “don’t be afraid.” What was so frightening about God?
Why does God bless the poor? When Jesus says this, is he telling us that we should be poor? Or that only the poor, and not the rich, are blessed by God?
These questions make us pretty nervous, because Americans are straight-up rich by international standards. But the truth is that wealth can mess us up. It can get in the way of following God. Jesus tells that you can’t serve both God and money. You’ve got to choose. And we can choose to follow God, not money, and use our money to serve God.
This Sunday we’ll hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain from the gospel of Luke where Jesus says some pretty dicey stuff about poverty and wealth. We’ll grapple with it together.
— Pastor Mia