Invocation (given in Zulu – in acknowledgement of our need to hear and speak other languages)
Wozani, uMoya Ongcwele, izinhliziyo avulekile, izingqondo kanye emaphaketheni ukuze abampofu othandekayo wakho.
Worship: Psalm 119: 113-120 (The Message)
I love your clear-cut revelation.You’re my place of quiet retreat; I wait for your Word to renew me. Get out of my life, evildoers, so I can keep my God’s commands.Take my side as you promised; I’ll live then for sure. Don’t disappoint all my grand hopes. Stick with me and I’ll be all right; I’ll give total allegiance to your definitions of life. Expose all who drift away from your sayings; their casual idolatry is lethal. You reject earth’s wicked as so much rubbish; therefore I lovingly embrace everything you say. I shiver in awe before you; your decisions leave me speechless with reverence.
Scripture Reading 1 Enoch 94:6, 8
Woe to those who build iniquity and violence, and lay deceit as a foundation; for quickly they will be overthrown, and they will have no peace. Woe to you, rich, for in your riches you have trusted; from your riches you will depart, because you have not remembered the Most High in the days of your riches.
Meditation
By uprooting the harmful identity-constituting stories that have shaped a person’s own sense of who she is, counterstories aim to alter the person’s self-perception. If she replaces the harmful stories with a counterstory, she may come to see herself as worthy of moral respect…
Counterstories, then, are tools designed to repair the damage inflicted on identities by abusive power systems. Hilde Lindemann Nelson
Silence
Reflection
“From the end of the discipleship catechism (in Mark) to his crucifixion, Jesus continues his twin ministry of confronting the upholders of imperial religion while trying to strengthen and prepare his fledgling community to experience the full, raw brutality of empire lashing out against them… In the midst of these challenges is the famous incident involving ‘Caesar’s coin.’ The passage has become a virtual litmus test for both one’s method of interpretation and one’s understanding of the relationship between discipleship and citizenship….
Jesus says, ‘Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ This is the oft ignored key to the passage: Jesus does not traffic in the imperial coin… Jesus…rejects imperial economics altogether… The central purpose of this section of Mark’s gospel is to undermine the authority of those who benefit from dual allegiance to empire and temple.
BROOKE, WH. 2010 (2012): “Come out my people!” God’s call out of empire in the bible and beyond. New York: Orbis
Questions
Which religious stories have shaped your life?
Which of these have, upon reflection, harmed you more than blessed you? Why?
If Brooke’s exegesis is correct i.e. that Jesus’ statement about paying Caesar is not an invitation to pay taxes, but rather a rejection of imperial economics, and if our current monetary system is no different to the one Jesus rejected, what are some of the alternatives Christians or other faith/non-faith groups might offer?
Again: if Brooke is right, should the church use money?
Prayers for the earth, for the world, for my community and myself
Hymn
Be Thou My Vision (Irish: Bí Thusa ‘mo Shúile) Dallán Forgaill
Benediction
We go in the peace of God to both be and do God’s will, reconciling all things in and through Christ in the love of the Spirit. Amen.
