Week beginning 29 October 2018
Gospel Readings:
Mark 2:1-12
Mark 2:13-17
Mark 2:18-22
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Devotion 1
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, allowing space for God’s voice to be heard.
Read: Mark 2:1-12
In the background of this episode is the symbolic centre of Jewish life through which “sins” were properly forgiven—the Jerusalem Temple. Engagement in the Temple system was the means through which Jews remained, according to cultural traditions, in right standing before God. This meant offering the appropriate sacrifices and paying the temple tithe, which supported the priestly class. By the first century C.E. however, this system, which was meant to be the focal point of community identity and provide for the priests who had given up the possibility of landowning and providing for themselves, had become a means through which the priestly class grew more wealthy at the expense of the poor. Resources, in temple tithes and sacrifices, flowed from the rural peasant class to the wealthy temple elite in a relationship of exploitation—subverting their intended direction of flowing from the rich to the poor. For the peasant villagers of Galilee who were on the underside of this relationship, it might be no surprise that they were less than enthusiastic about participating in such a system.
In this context, Jesus astonishingly utters the words to a man whose condition no doubt was seen by others as evidence of his being a “sinner”—“Son, your sins are forgiven”. It is astonishing because forgiveness of sins was supposed to come through engagement in the Temple system. Sacrifices and priestly mediation were supposed to ensure right standing with God. Yet here, one with no connection to the Temple, a Galilean peasant, offers forgiveness.
Reflect
- What strikes you in this story?
- In what ways do you sense God’s Spirit inviting you to live out this story?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
Devotion 2
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, aware of God’s presence in a broken world.
Read: Mark 2:13-17
In today’s reading Jesus encounters Levi, a toll collector. Though we may be used to thinking of Levi as a rich tax collector growing more wealthy by exploiting the poor, a more accurate picture might be a little more complicated. Toll collectors like Levi were likely people who had found themselves in desperate times, perhaps losing their land or falling into a cycle of debt. Siding with Rome, and hence being seen as “unclean” by those concerned with Jewish purity (who in Marks’ portrayal are generally the Pharisees) and as a traitor by those burdened with exorbitant taxes was a last resort. Indeed, taxes were a tool of domination in the hands of the Roman empire. Local toll collectors, then, might be seen as the bottom rung of an exploitative system.
It is no surprise that Jesus’ encounter with Levi was scandalous to the Pharisees. Jesus, however, saw the person behind the system—someone who didn’t like being a cog in the machine of injustice—but perhaps felt he had little option. Perhaps Jesus helped him to imagine another way—a way to leave behind his complicity in oppression and begin a new vocation of living out God’s Reign alongside Jesus. And it seems he wasted no time in getting started!
Reflect
- How do you see God’s Reign lived out in this story?
- How do you see God’s Reign resisted?
- What encouragement or challenge do you find in today’s reading?
Pray for one another.
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
Devotion 3
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of repentance together, aware of our inadequacy and God’s grace.
Read: Mark 2:18-22
The fledgling movement now forming around Jesus was one of abundance on the underside; of sharing God’s Reign amongst those for whom life had never been oriented around elite concerns for purity and fasting but around the simple struggle for subsistence.
Those questioning Jesus’ views, it seems, had never tasted the struggle of those on the underside. Their concern for purity and fasting couldn’t accommodate Jesus’ practice of the Reign of God, nor tolerate those amongst whom he practiced it.
Reflect
- Consider Jesus’ words in verses 21-22. Are there ways in which you have experienced “new wine” poured into “old wineskins”?
- In what ways is God’s Spirit inviting you to live out this story?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
Devotion 4
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of gratitude together, giving thanks for the ways you’ve experienced God’s loving kindness.
This week’s Common Value: Living in marginal neighbourhoods.
Read: 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ask
- How might get alongside those who are marginalised this week?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer