5th Sunday After Pentecost
Jeremiah 28:5-9; Matt 10:40-42 So I have been thinking a lot this week about who we welcome and what it means to be a faithful community in the midst of difficulty and change. Because the way of the gospel is and always has been hard and not always the easy or obvious choice. And our readings today reflect this. But they are also a bit tricky because both are just little bits of much larger stories that require a bit of context to understand. First, we have this little snippet from Jeremiah and his showdown with the false prophet Hananiah. And here, God’s people have found themselves in a bit of a tight spot. The growing Babylonian empire is threatening to swallow the land of Judah and it’s neighbors whole. The kings and leaders of Judah and their people as a whole have turned away from the one true God to worship other gods and have put their trust in other foreign leaders. And as a result, the old king and many of the country’s re...