Tossing the Greedy out of the Church

As we continue to seek out A Carefree Attitude Towards Possessions through the lens of Ron Sider’s challenging book, ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ let me go back a paragraph to remind us where we are and then continue with words i hope you will wrestle with and share with your friends:

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Matthew, Mark and Luke all recall the terrible warning: “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!”(Luke 18.24, Mark 10.23, Matthew 19.23). The context of this saying shows why possessions are dangerous. Jesus spoke these words to His disciples immediately after the rich young man had decided to cling to his wealth rather than follow Jesus (Luke 18.18-23). Riches are dangerous because their seductive power very frequently persuades us to reject Jesus and His kingdom.

a rollins stoned gathers no…

so, in the divine way that coincidences seem to work at times, this last week i heard from my new friend matt about a guy called peter rollins and then a day or so later my tag team buddy sean posts a comment to me in the facebook ‘worshipping community’ group about peter rollins…

i really liked the provocativenessity of it so thort i’d share it…

Peter Rollins retells the parable of Jesus and the feeding of the 5000 like this:

“Jesus withdrew privately by boat to a solitary place, but the crowds continued to follow Him. Evening was now approaching and the crowds, many of whom had travelled a great distance, were growing hungry.

14 Seeing this Jesus sent his disciples out to gather food, but all they could find were five loaves of bread and two fishes. 15 Then Jesus asked that they go out again and gather up the provisions which the crowds had brought to sustain them in their travels. Once this was accomplished there stood before Jesus a mountain of fish and bread. 16 He then directed the people to sit down on the grass.

17 Standing before the food and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks to God and broke the bread. 18 Then he passed the food around his disciples and they ate like kings in full view of the starving people. 19 But what was truly amazing, what was miraculous about this event, was that when they had finished the massive banquet there was not even enough crumbs to fill a starving hand.”

which is quite controversial and touching on blasphemous i guess if that is all it is – but when you read the explanation it lights up the dynamite and sets the challenge…

‘Rollins’ ending is not intended to raise questions of Jesus—but questions of us. If we consider it scandalous that Jesus and His disciples would hoard food from the hungry crowd, do we consider it just as scandalous if we do the same?

While Jesus provided generous food for everyone, I’m often consumed with making sure there is just enough for me. I can’t say I follow Jesus if I hoard God’s generosity for myself.’

[got this from an article – on ourdailyjournal.org which you can find here – http://www.ourdailyjourney.org/2010/04/08/enough-for-me%5D