Friday, June 24, 2005

Good Morning!
Hope everyone has had a good week. Note that I will be gone on this Sunday.

The new unit for this week is Unit 8 , Reaching Out to the Poor

Focus Scripture for the Week: Leviticus 19:10

You shall not strip you vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.

Today's scripture: James 2:1-7, II Corinthians 8:8-15, Luke 14:1-14

-- last three scripture readings for the week.

-- The scripture from James offers a completely different view of the idea of reaching out to the poor, one that I hadn't taken into account.

-- up to now, my focus on this topic has been about money -- about the need for those who have to give to those who are have nots. But James opens a completely new window on the subject -- the concept of favoritism. He gives a great real-life example -- of two people, one well-dressed and obviously rich, and the other shabbily dressed and poor. Who do we treat better?

-- one of the points that James makes is why would we treat the rich person better? As he notes, we don't know how the rich person made his money, or how he has used it -- we could honoring/favoring someone who is not a Christian over someone who is devote, based on the wrong thing.

-- the commentary in my bible notes three reasons why we might treat the rich person better -- (1) poverty makes us uncomfortable, we don't want to be reminded of our responsibilities to the poor (2) we want to be wealthy too, and we hope to use the rich person to help us (3) we want the rich person to join our church, and provide financially for our church. It also notes that when we show favoritism to the rich, we are putting appearances ahead of character.

-- today's message is something that we can put to work right away in our lives -- we encounter the poor all the time as we live our lives. If we just took into account the earlier scriptures, it would seem that our response to them would be to give them money, or to organizations that helped them. But today's lesson pushes us and actually demands much more from us -- that we treat the poor with respect and dignity and equality. That really represents more of effort than giving. All of us have written a check or simply handed over a few dollars when encountering someone begging. That's not that hard. But how well would a really obviously poor person fit into our church family? Our social circles? Or, looking at one of Wesley's 22 Questions (available on the blog) how often have we thanked God that we were not poor like some person we encounter, like the story we read earlier about the Pharisee and publican. Today's lesson is about attitude towards the poor, and that is really the challenge set down by the lesson today.

Today's prayer request: Alex Lloyd, Monica's nephew

He had surgery last week for a difficult hip condition, and recovery from that and from the condition in general is going to take a long time.

Today's class member prayer:

Matt Rocksvold

Have a great day.

Jay