Topic: Greed

Hope for our troubled world requires turning anger into tears, resentment into prayers, and financial power into generosity.

The cross of Jesus can teach us to recognise the innocence of suffering, and so enable us to recognise our own dependence on God’s mercy and to stop digging our own hells.

Where affluence creates consumers, abundance creates neighbours. It is the ethic of possessions which Jesus commends to us as a promise of how God deals with us.

The things we have we are to hold with open hands, looking with a generous eye for the oppotunities to share our resources in ways that make a difference.

We have been adopted as the children of a king who does not withhold his love until we comply, who does not ask us to sing for our supper, who does not use us or abuse us, but longs to bind up our wounds.

Jesus calls us to be open to others, not shutting anyone out of our consciousness or care, and treating all as beloved neighbours.

God blesses us with much more than we need, but instead of throwing away the excess, we are to take what we don’t need and do something with it.

Jesus reveals that God is a God of abundance who will lovingly provide plenty for all, but the common perception of scarcity easily corrupts us and leads to treachery and abuse.

When greed and fear demand that we give our attention to money, Jesus calls us to reclaim the image of God within us, and offer ourselves to God.

Real life is found in a trusting relationship with God, but the greatest obstacle to that is a culture of trusting money and we will only be able to avoid that if we fight it together.

The search for meaning and fullness of life without cost, risk or struggle is futile, but the Kingdom is still a free gift, given by God, to all who will accept it.