Messenger 09/18/25
15th Sunday After Pentecost
This week’s scripture readings will be Jeremiah 8:8-9:1
How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us,” when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? The wise shall be put to shame; they shall be dismayed and taken; since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what wisdom is in them? Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of the daughter of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. They acted shamefully; they committed abomination, yet they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord. I will surely gather them, says the Lord;
there are no grapes on the vine nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.
Why do we sit still? Gather together; let us go into the fortified cities and perish there,
for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish and has given us poisoned water to drink because we have sinned against the Lord. We look for peace but find no good, for a time of healing, but there is terror instead. The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan; at the sound of the neighing of their stallions the whole land quakes. They come and devour the land and all that fills it, the city and those who live in it. See, I am letting snakes loose among you, adders that cannot be charmed, and they shall bite you, says the Lord. My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick. Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from far and wide in the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”) “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken, I mourn, and horror has seized me.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? O that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Luke 16:1-13
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
To view the entire bulletin, click the link below.
Coming up next week we have:
Wednesday (9/24)
Men’s Breakfast - 7:00 am at Avenue Bread on James Street
UWIF - 12:00 pm in Rooms 11 & 12, 2401 Cornwall Ave.
Wesley Club - 6:00pm at 2401 Cornwall Ave.
Sunday (9/21)
Christian Book Club - 10:30 am via Zoom. email office@gardenstreetumc.org to join
Handbells - 11:15 am at 2401 Cornwall Ave.
Choir - 1:00pm at 2401 Cornwall Ave.
Sunday Worship - 2:30 pm at 2401 Cornwall Ave.
Can’t make it in person? View the live on YouTube!
