This week, the flavor of our worship will be a little different, more contemporary/modern. Join us at 9:30 AM before the service to learn some of the songs you may not know.

Sermon Notes

Wealth inequality is not a new phenomenon, it is present throughout the ancient world. In the Biblical context, it is important of the concept of righteousness, or right relationship with God and one another. Torah, gives specific instructions on creating a world in which the resources available to the people are distributed as fairly as possible. When the Hebrew people get to Canaan, each tribe and family is allotted lands to support them. There are clear rules about providing mutual-aid for those who have a tough growing season so that they will be provided for. Texts such as Leviticus 25 give instructions on a ‘year of Jubilee’ when all debts are to be wiped out every 50 years: monetary debts, enslavement of Hebrew people, and return of ancestral lands. It is an economic system that ensures the impossibility of either generational poverty, or generational wealth accumulation.

However, there is no evidence that they ever followed such rules, especially the Jubilee practice, so those who had acquired more, usually benefiting off of those who had less. As the kings and elite of Israel and Judah accumulated more and more wealth, the gap between the haves and have-nots grew, a fact that was well noticed by the Hebrew prophets. Those like Jeremiah, Micah, and Amos, cultivated a tradition of the ‘prophetic critique’ warning those who were rich that their religious pageantry was worthless while unhoused people begged in the streets. They warned of a ‘Day of the LORD’ in which God would raise up the lowly, and bring those who lifted themselves down from their thrones.

In many ways, the Exile was a fulfilment of these warnings. The rich and powerful of Israel and Judah were taken away from their homes by foreign empires, and the poor (who were left behind) got to reclaim the lands that had been taken from their families.

Questions

– What do you think about the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine? Do you think this is the way that shepherds normally operated? Is this different or similar from the way that our human institutions deal with very small populations?

– What do you think about the woman’s search for the coin?

– Who do you most identify with in the parable of the sons? The younger one? The older one? Someone else?