Eastertide

May 27, 2019

Scripture Reading: Acts 16:16-34

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.

 But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’ The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. –Acts 16:16-24

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6:10)

The United States of America perhaps the whole world is suffering from an epidemic of greed. If we do not overcome it, rampant greed will lead to our demise. From aircraft builders who shortcut safety inspections to make more money to thousands of lobbyists* trying to buy our government’s support, we are impacted in negative ways everyday by greed. Most of us have a touch of greed ourselves. We, also, want to have our cake and eat it too.

The evilest ramification of greed is that it demands layers of worth among people. A slave-girl suffering from a mental illness is only worth what her unusual behavior nets her owner in profit. Being healed resulted in the diminishment of her value to such an extent that her owner filed charges against Paul and Silas for robbing him of his cash cow. We have no idea what being made whole cost her.

The slavery we deal with today involves human trafficking. Similar challenges lie in our immigration issues. I totally believe that we do not have good and fair immigration laws because many individuals and businesses benefit financially from a readily available group of undocumented aliens who are willing to work for less than American citizens because that is better than life in their country of origin.

Greed is sin and we as followers of Christ need to recognize it for what it is, repent when we are directly involved in greed, and demand justice when we see it manifested in the lives of others.

Prayer: Lord, open our eyes to any situation where we are overtly or covertly practicing greed, forgive us and guide us in ways to defeat it. Amen.

*There were 11,444 registered federal lobbyists in 2018; there are 535 members of Congress. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/01/drain-the-swamp-lobbyists-are-filling-it-up/

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.