This Sunday: Modern Worship Collective @ 5 pm

Greetings!

As we get to the end of our annual stewardship month, we might be thinking about money and budgets and economics in the wider world. There’s a government shutdown happening and all sorts of people are not getting paid or missing out on needed benefits. The cost of things like food and health benefits is increasingly out of reach for many households. And there is a lot of suffering for marginalized workers, whether documented or not.

What does this have to do with stewardship in our church? Sometimes the ways we use our resources are just about addressing each practical need as it comes. Other times, the ways we allocate our time, economic resources, and attention, is more about sending a message about our priorities and values.

What does stewardship in our own church community say about us? This Sunday is when we dedicate our stewardship commitments for next year. Please join us to reflect together with our faith ancestors about our economic activity, and how we might convey a positive message for our community and world.

Faithfully,

Hardy

P.S. If you would like to make your stewardship commitment before Sunday, you can go to our church website to make a commitment or to set up your giving. Every commitment offers strength and hope to our community—no amount is too small!

Please join us immediately following the Sunday service for our Coffee Hour (in-person in Trinity Court or online via Zoom).

bit.ly/SVPCCoffeeHour

Theme for Sunday

“It is the hard work of biblical interpretation to do the teaching that subverts what had become ‘normal’ in ancient Israel and what has become ‘normal’ in the modern world. It is ‘normal’ to think that cheap labor is expendable, subject to whatever abuse, oppression, or disregard that might be required by the ownership class in its commitment to surplus wealth through cheap labor.”

-Walter Brueggemann, commentary on Deuteronomy 24

Questions for Reflection

• Is there any part of the cost of living that seems to be out of control to you, or any expense that has shocked you recently? What do you think about the livability of our area, or even the wider country?

• What are some ways that you hope the state of our economy could change? Are there particular groups or individuals that you are worried about?

Deuteronomy 24:10-22 CEB

When you make any type of loan to your neighbor, don’t enter their house to receive the collateral. You must wait outside. The person to whom you are lending will bring the collateral to you out there. Moreover, if the person is poor, you are not allowed to sleep in their pawned coat. Instead, be certain to give the pawned coat back by sunset so they can sleep in their own coat. They will bless you, and you will be considered righteous before the Lord your God.

Don’t take advantage of poor or needy workers, whether they are fellow Israelites or immigrants who live in your land or your cities. Pay them their salary the same day, before the sun sets, because they are poor, and their very life depends on that pay, and so they don’t cry out against you to the Lord. That would make you guilty.

Parents shouldn’t be executed because of what their children have done; neither should children be executed because of what their parents have done. Each person should be executed for their own guilty acts.

Don’t obstruct the legal rights of an immigrant or orphan. Don’t take a widow’s coat as pledge for a loan. Remember how you were a slave in Egypt but how the Lord your God saved you from that. That’s why I’m commanding you to do this thing.

Whenever you are reaping the harvest of your field and you leave some grain in the field, don’t go back and get it. Let it go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows so that the Lord your God blesses you in all that you do. Similarly, when you beat the olives off your olive trees, don’t go back over them twice. Let the leftovers go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. Again, when you pick the grapes of your vineyard, don’t pick them over twice. Let the leftovers go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. Remember how you were a slave in Egypt. That’s why I am commanding you to do this thing.