8.11.23 - Matthew 19:23-24
Peace, equity, justice. We don't have to do it all, but we are called to do something. If you were to pick one to focus on today, what's your choice and how will you act?
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
This difficult saying has been debated for centuries, with countless efforts to sanitize the force of the message towards “rich persons.”
What it means to be rich is of course dependent on cultural and historic context. In Jesus’s day, there was less of a gradual economic scale, or prominent “middle class,” but rather a wide division of rich and poor.
Like much of the scriptures, Jesus’s warning to rich persons is a critique of their individual wealth and status, but also just as much, a critique of a system of economic inequality and oppression, where many suffered, and often were exploited, as some enjoyed abundance and comfort.
The Kin-dom of God is God’s plan for creation–where all things exist in shalom, harmony, through the flourishing of peace, equity, and justice.
How might you join in this Kin-dom work in your community today?
—Evan Amo