Worship & Congregation

“[This Sunday’s] parable reminds us we are not to be overwhelmed by bad news but to stay in communion with God,” writes Summerlee Staten, Executive Director, Faith Formation and Education, “to keep the lamplight of our faith burning in trust and in hope.”

Jesus’s teaching in his Sermon on the Mount gives us a “new vision of how the world should be organized,” upending the status quo “by favoring the poor, the merciful, the mourning, and those rejected for doing the right thing,” writes Dr. Kathy Bozzuti-Jones, Associate Director, Spiritual Practices, Retreats, & Pilgrimage. “How shocking that the way to blessedness is through inadequacy and vulnerability.”

Looking over the past few weeks’ Gospel readings, Kathryn Carroll, Program Manager, Children and Family Formation, suggests “if we remove what sounds to our ears as treachery or snark, the conversation becomes deeply philosophical and filled with longing,” leading us to ponder the divinity of Jesus, humanity, and ourselves.

God made the world and created us in God’s image. We, in turn, have created political structures and currency — which can be used for good or not. But Jesus tells us we must always put God first, in every decision we make, in how we use our resources and the resources of the earth.