Scripture Reflections for the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year C, Lectionary 138
Are we noticing the needs of others or merely our needs? If we get comfortable with our possessions and blessings we begin to value objects over people. And in doing so we lose our compassion, our love, our God. Thereby living out our self-absorption in this life and into the next. Jesus is calling us to notice that we have more than enough food, resources, and time to share with those in need right in front of us. In coming close to others we approach God into eternity.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Care • Choice • Community • Compassion • Complacent • Discipline • Distraction • Encounter • Exclude • Fear • Focus • Forgive • Heaven • Hell • Hope • Judgment • Justice • Listen • Love • Money • Neglect • Neighbor • Notice • Poverty • Prepare • Priority • Prophet • Receptive • Resurrection • Reversal • Separation • Sight • Sin • Solidarity • Suffering • Understanding • Virtue • Wealth •
“He wants Timothy to grow in virtue. He wants him to acquire the virtue of righteousness and piety and gentleness and patience and faith and love. But in order to do that he's going to have to train like an athlete, it's not going to come easy.”
“The rich man in Jesus's parable is not presented as being cruel to Lazarus or mistreating him. He was condemned for doing nothing, for seeing the miserable state of Lazarus and doing nothing about it. And when we do nothing, heaven is not easy to recognize.”
“Jesus's radical call in the gospels is to reverse 'business as usual.' And it demands a shift in our own lives and our own attention, our own privilege and our own priorities.”
“So this is a really powerful parable about how wealth can lead us to fail in charity toward other human beings and that failure, a grave failure in charity toward other human beings, can be the cause of the loss of eternal life”
“nothing inside himself substantially changed and that's not going to ever happen if you hold yourself apart, if you hold yourself separate. You got to jump in with both feet. You have to mix in life, in people, in creation...or you'll never understand what your responsibility is unless you meet them”
“Today's gospel raises the question: can I continue living in comfort while turning a blind eye to those around me who are in misery?”
“if we are complacent in our relationships, what happens? We become lazy and we ignore things that are problematic. And if we ignore things that are problematic, what happens? The things that are problematic become poison and that poison seeps into our relationships”
“the gospel is asking us, who is the Lazarus at your gate? Will you walk past or will you notice, stop, and act? Because in the end the greatest danger is not what we do wrong but the good we fail to do.”
“The readings from today, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, remind us that justice is not automatic and compassion is not passive”
“The wall the rich man willingly built in this life against the poor now becomes after his death a chasm, a gap that no one can breach. The time to break down the barriers, the time to build the bridges is now.”
“It is not exactly that seeking comfort or security is the central problem but that these behaviors have resulted in a complacency that has a carelessness to it, it has an obliviousness to it in the face of some dire societal problems”
“when we see so many people suffering in our own communities and around the world it can be overwhelming...Doing nothing isn't an option. It's important to remember that even if each of us can't solve the whole problem we can all contribute.”
“His sin was not committing some terrible act. His sin was a failure to act. It was a sin of omission. And today Jesus is challenging you and I to search our consciences to ask: are we doing the right things? Particularly, are we doing the right by the poor?”
“God is asking us when all is said and done and our earthly life is over, who's going to be there to pick you up? When our earthly journey is done, who's going to be there to come and get you?”
