HELLO!

Tomorrow…will the sudden jump in attendance be replicated or will all those new people last week conclude the minister, who looks like he was just rescued after a 12-hour search in the woods, “preaches like I golf, long, to the left, and frequently near a hazard”. We shall see. Perhaps an enticement for you…if you bring your backpack, satchel, kitbag, Bethe will be blessing them during our worship time. Or maybe Nick Allen can interest you in “disc golf” at the Dartmouth Commons at 130 pm (Sunday). One thing for sure, if you walk through our front-doors you will be welcomed by our warm, engaging and ever-cheerful ushers!

Our theme on Sunday is grounded in the wisdom found in Matthew 20:1-16. I have been digging into the Biblical notion of abundance, like when the disciples see the large crowd gathered to listen to Jesus. It gets dark, the disciples want to send these them home. Instead, Jesus tells them to offer bread. They share it. Everyone eats. There are leftovers. Abundance isn’t having more than I need. Abundance happens when what we have is broken and shared. That’s different from the “prosperity gospel”. The prosperity gospel tells me God’s abundance means I get more. More money. More success. More comfort. More evidence God is blessing me. The prosperity gospel has nothing in common with how I experience God!

In Matthew 20:1-16 we hear about a landowner, often characterized by preachers as a stand in for God, offering labourers the same wage, whether they worked all day or just an hour. It’s a story that makes our western 21^st century ears burn with anger, “that’s not fair”. But imagine that God’s goodness is not about “fair” but rather about abundance, offering “enough” to everyone, all God’s children. Matthew 20:15 “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” implies God’s generosity is based on fairness in the way we imagine the contract of work for wages. In this case, Jesus is characterizing God’s reign as a culture in which everyone receives, not at the whim of a contract system but according to the vision that there is enough for everyone. In this parable, God’s reign is not characterized as a judge of who deserves or has earned what, but rather, one of grace, where there is enough for all. The basic assumption of Jesus’s parable is not one must act a certain way for the giver, but rather that it is good and right and beneficial for all to have what they need.

Peace, Kevin