15th Sunday after Pentecost

Year 4: September 2, 2018

Preaching Text: Luke 12:13-34

It’s Not Fair! A Book About Having Enough by Caryn Rivadeneira

(Written for ages 5-9)

Comment: In this passage, pastor Karl Jacobson suggests that Jesus’ words here to not be afraid show a connection between fear and greed: “fear that I won’t get mine, that I won’t have enough — prevents us from seeing what it is that God has done and will do for us.”  To focus soley on our needs and desires leaves us in a state of greed focused fear. When we open our eyes to the needs of others and the sharing of abundance, we live in a state of praise. Roxy has a generous heart when she knows she has more than enough for the chemistry set she wants, but her attitude turns to a sad state of “it’s not fair,” when she realizes she forgot to calculate tax. By letting go of her original desired purchase, she is able to find joy in what she can purchase and the community with which she can joyfully share. This text and story invite us to consider the things in our own lives for which we are saving and building bigger barns. How do our savings help or hinder our relationship with God and the world?

*This book is available for preorder to be published August 14, so you may want to place your order now if you want to use this on September 2.*

**For this three-week series, be sure to check out our stewardship bibliography for many additional books that work well with these texts.**

This concludes the posts for Year 4 of the Narrative Lectionary. We want to thank Noell Rathbun who has faithfully written the Links for the Narrative Lectionary for the last two years. She wil be writing for the Revised Commmon Lectionary Links later this year, but for now, she’s going to concentrate on raising a young child, going to school full time and working! We have appreciated her great gifts at Storypath since the Links began.

Lectionary Links (NL): September 2, 2018 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.