Sunday, September 18, 2022

Season of Creation

God’s Revelation to us is found in Creation, Scriptures and in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ.

This Sunday we reflect with the Scriptures and how they connect to this Season of Creation and the challenge to ‘engage in transformational conversion’.

What word, image or idea find a place in your heart and mind as you reflected with these Readings?

What action is stirring up within you?  Find a way to bring your ideas to action.

What Community or Personal Transformational way of being is challenging you?

 

Jeremiah 8: 18 - 9:1   The Prophet Mourns for the People

My joy is gone; grief is upon me;

    my heart is sick.

Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people

    from far and wide in the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

    Is her King not in her?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images 

    with their foreign idols?”)

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

    and we are not saved.”

For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken,

    I mourn, and horror has seized me.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

    Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of the daughter of my people

    not been restored?

O that my head were a spring of water

    and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night

    for the slain of the daughter of my people!

 

Psalm 79: 1-9

O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance;
    they have defiled your holy temple,
    they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble.
They have left the dead bodies of your servants
    as food for the birds of the sky,
    the flesh of your own people for the animals of the wild.

 They have poured out blood like water
    all around Jerusalem,
    and there is no one to bury the dead.
We are objects of contempt to our neighbors,
    of scorn and derision to those around us.

How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever?
    How long will your jealousy burn like fire?
Pour out your wrath on the nations
    that do not acknowledge you,
on the kingdoms
    that do not call on your name;
for they have devoured Jacob
    and devastated his homeland.

Do not hold against us the sins of past generations;
    may your mercy come quickly to meet us,
    for we are in desperate need.
Help us, God our Savior,
    for the glory of your name;
deliver us and forgive our sins
    for your name’s sake.

I Timothy 2: 1-7   The Appeal Renewed

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.  Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.

Luke 16: 1-13     The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measure of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

 

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”