Well of Hope Sermons

This is a difficult text with lots of moving parts and questions, but at the end of the day God's call to creatively prioritize God's way, in the same way that many prioritize wealth and personal power looms large. It is a real choice riches and wealth and not stewarding those gifts well means we simply won't see the real and true gifts of God. Standing for justice and love with our whole selves however leads to eternal gifts. One cannot serve two masters.

This week, Lauren Smith from ELCA World Hunger stopped by and shared with us about ELCA World Hunger, Disaster Relief, and AMPARO. It was so cool to have her with us on a week where Jesus invites everyone, to come eat with him. We are encouraged to do the same and ELCA World Hunger is one way we as a Church answer that call.

Our guest preacher Asher Vincent shared a wonderful message this week on Jesus telling people not to take the seat of honor at the table. It's not just good party etiquette, it's actually an invite into Jesus' radical grace filled life where everyone is welcome and God's love is experienced by all. At Jesus' Table there is always room for one more; the poor, the oppressed, the weird aunts, and us.

In the text this week, Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath who was incapacitated for 18 years and "in bondage by an infirmity". Jesus reminds everyone that the origin of the Sabbath is to remember that they were once enslaved in Egypt and that Sabbath is actually intrinsically tied to freedom and healing. 

In today's text, we encounter Jesus talking about swords, division of families and fire. Its not the Jesus we might be used to seeing and it can feel scary because of what we might be used to those things meaning, but Jesus is promising good news for the world, rest for the weary, hope for the hopeless, and sometimes that can feel unsettling if we are not ready for another person's liberation. Jesus is encouraging us to take heart and embrace the kingdom despite this discomfort.

This week we continue our way through Luke with 4 mini parables aimed at reassuring Jesus' followers of the coming kingdom of God and urging them to join in. In these teachings, Jesus shows what discipleship is going to look like and emphasizes the difference between God's way of love and relationships of equality and the world's way of greed and lonely isolation.

Today we took a look at "The Parable of the Rich Fool" who builds bigger barns to hold his abundance. Though he has a lot of material wealth, it's revealed that he is poor in God. Like the rich fool, we humans also make plenty of irrational choices for self-preservation, and spiral out of control. This parable from Jesus frees us, and points us toward gratitude and God's blessings again.