Needles and Camels

For those of us who are focused on stewardship this month, today’s Gospel reading offers a lot of potential…potential for engagement, potential for exploring the meaning of generosity, and the potential for tying ourselves up in interpretive and linguistic knots! I mean, Jesus doesn’t tell the rich man to give his money to the church, does he? Nevertheless, this second encounter in our walk with Jesus presents us with an opportunity to wrestle with the complicated relationship we have with wealth in meaningful and life-giving ways.

Reflect for a moment on the sermons and teachings you’ve received about this text in the past. Was it used to condemn and even shame people with wealth? Was it used to promote certain attitudes about having money? How did those teachings align with other lessons you received about stewardship in the church? It is important with a familiar text like this one to assess the way we’ve received it in the past and discern whether those are the lessons we want to convey in worship or not. It is also important to recognize that people bring various understandings of this text with them into worship, so we need to be clear and intentional about what we are trying to communicate, especially if we are offering a new approach to a well-known text.

Perhaps one of the underlying messages in this text is the pull money can have in our lives and the need to resist and release that pull to use money as one of many resources that can further God’s work in the world. Money is a tool, not an end in itself. Consider, then, what aspects of worship might help people resist, release, and reorient their relationship with God and money. Perhaps we need to take time to confess the ways that our approaches to money and our faith have been at odds with one another. We may need to take some time to discern and name the vast spiritual gifts and assets in the congregation that have nothing to do with money. What might it look like to pray for the church to live into God’s abundance instead of the world’s scarcity? How might you name all the ways Jesus has looked at the community with love, despite its struggles to live in God’s economy instead of society’s economy? There are many opportunities today to not only teach a new thing but also to enact a new thing in the community as we let go of the weight of stuff so that we can use what we have to further God’s beautiful purposes in the world.