Preaching Connection: Greed

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Movies for Preaching

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Fargo (1996) – 1

Fargo, Written and Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, and Steve Buscemi.   98 minutes, Rated R. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) has had it up to here working under the thumb of his cold, stingy father-in-law, Wade Gustafsan.  For years Jerry has been the lead salesman in the…

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Reading for Preaching

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“Avarice,” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’S of Faith

“Avarice, greed, concupiscence, and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have.  The remark of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35) is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you...
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The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat

In the summer of 1973, a British journalist named Jonathan Dimbleby filmed a dispiriting report of hunger in Ethiopia.  To show some of the setting of this misery, the journalist juxtaposed shots of famished Ethiopians with shots of Emperor Haile Selassie’s feasts.  News people from across the world soon showed up in Addis Ababa to...
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Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Lewis and Clark, moving north on and alongside the Mississippi River, entered Sioux Country near today’s Yankton, S.D. Jefferson had warned Lewis that the Sioux had turned back previous white men trying to enter their territory. But Lewis was determined. He met with a few of the Yanktons and invited them to a council. The...
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Wonder Boy: Barry Minkow, the Kid Who Swindled Wall Street

In the 1980s people elevated money-making “to the level of a sacrament . . . the economists extended their hegemony far beyond the narrow realm of dollars and cents to claim dominion over political science, ethics, and philosophy, much as theologians ruled the intellectual roost in the MA. People in casual conversation talked about market...
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“All Fall Down”

All Fall Down “I spent Sunday afternoon brooding over a great piece of Times reporting by Eric Dash and Julie Creswell about Citigroup. Maybe brooding isn’t the right word. The front-page article, entitled “Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk,” actually left me totally disgusted. Why? Because in searing detail it exposed — using Citigroup...
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The Bonfire of the Vanities

He heard the stories while he was still at Yale—“how. . .Frederick Jackson Turner, William Lyons Phelps, Samuel Flagg Bermis, and the other three-name giants of American scholarship, how these inheritors of the lux and the veritas now flocked to Wall Street and to the bond trading room of Pierce and Pierce! How the stories...
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Sullivan’s Sting

“Why, there were people who believed wearing a copper bracelet would prevent arthritis, people who believed they could beat a three-card-monte dealer, people who believed in astrology, flying saucers, and the power of crystals. There were even people who believed professional wrestling was on the up-and-up. How could you respect the intelligence of the populace...
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Additional content related to Greed

Commentary

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Few virtues are, arguably, rarer in the twenty-first century than “contentment.” Relatively few people seem deeply satisfied with their situation in life. A variety of things fuels this dissatisfaction. Many citizens of what we sometimes call the “first world” live in a conspicuously consumptive society and time. What’s more, the media that has such a…

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Commentary

Psalm 49:1-12

At times there is a very fine line separating the poems we call Psalms from the biblical literature we call Wisdom such as in the Book of Proverbs.  Psalm 49 is a classic example of a definite blurring of that fine line.  In fact, Psalm 49 sounds sufficiently like any number of passages in Proverbs…

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Commentary

Luke 12:13-21

Whether it’s Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life, prompts for charitable donations on Giving Tuesday (after the two biggest shopping days of the year), or the persistent sound of the Salvation Army bells ringing at storefronts, Christmas seems to be the season when we think it…

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Commentary

Mark 12:38-44

Our two sections are directly connected by the mention of widows. In the first section, the widows are made destitute at the hands of the scribes, and in the second, a poor widow gives the last of her financial goods as a contribution to the faith community. Jesus clearly condemns the scribes in the first…

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Commentary

Psalm 49:1-12

At times there is a very fine line separating the poems we call Psalms from the biblical literature we call Wisdom such as in the Book of Proverbs.   Psalm 49 is a classic example of a definite blurring of that fine line.  In fact, Psalm 49 sounds sufficiently like any number of passages in Proverbs…

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