Week beginning 12 November 2018
Gospel Readings:
Mark 3:13-19
Mark 3:20-13
Mark 3:31-35
Exodus 5:1-23
Devotion 1
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, allowing space for God’s voice to be heard.
Read: Mark 3:13-19
In this scene, Jesus goes up the mountain and calls “those whom he wanted” to himself, appointing them as “apostles”, which literally means “sent ones”. It is a scene which is meant to point us back to the twelve tribes of Israel on Mt Sinai being constituted as Israel—the people of God. Jesus is doing a new thing here—this is a new constituting of the people of God; in continuity with the old yet renewed.
The twelve designated as apostles are to firstly “be with” Jesus, and then to be sent out to engage in Jesus’ twofold mission; to proclaim the message of the Reign of God, and to drive out demons. It is a mission which both renews and confronts, liberates and casts out.
Reflect
- How do you think this text helps us understand what it is to be engaged in God’s mission?
- In what ways is God prompting you to engage in God’s mission this week?
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 3:20-13
Jesus again comes into conflict with the ruling powers—this time “scribes who came down from Jerusalem”. They have come, no doubt, to check Jesus out in order to determine the level of threat which he poses to the dominant order. In this encounter, they engage in what Ched Myers calls the “war of myths”, going to the heart of the symbolic order by which a community makes sense of its life. In labelling Jesus’ activity as animated by “the ruler of demons”, they seek to delegitimate him in the presence of the crowd and tarnish his authority. Myers explains:
To put it in terms of the political war of myths, when the ruling class feels its hegemony threatened, it tries to neutralize challengers by identifying them with the mythic cultural arch-demon. The logic of the scribes was simple: because they believed themselves to be God’s representatives, Jesus’ “secession” necessarily put him in allegiance to Satan. To borrow from the symbolic canon of our modern cold war dualism, Jesus is being labelled a “communist.”1
It is a strategy which is ever present in our own world, which sees those in power seek to mystify their position of privilege not by reasoned debate, but by labelling their opponents. Jesus, however, is not to be dismissed, pointing out the flaws in their logic and giving what can only be heard as a threat to their power. The “house” of which he speaks is the house of Israel and the “property are its people. Jesus’ intention is one of liberation—to plunder the property from under the nose of the strongman. It is a war of myths in the struggle to define God’s order, that is, the way God wants things—and here in particular, power relations—to be among his people.
Reflect
- Where do you see the kind of delegitimation pictured here in the world in which you live?
- In what ways do you sense God’s Spirit inviting you to live out this story?
Pray for one another.
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
1 Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, 20th Anniversary ed, Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008, 165.
Devotion 3
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of repentance together, aware of our inadequacy and God’s grace.
Read: Mark 3:31-35
Today’s reading is undoubtedly an uncomfortable one which is sometimes taken as a call to reject family relations for the sake of the kingdom of God, though this is not Mark’s emphasis. Rather, Mark’s Jesus is depicting what is all too often the result, rather than the intention, of engaging in doing “the will of God”.
Engaging in the “war of myths” has a high cost, and it is often paid in family relationships. Jesus had departed from “business as usual” to imagine and live out a new world which called into question “the way things are”—usually the way seen to be ordained by the dominant religion. Whether on the side of the powerful—benefitting from current power arrangements—or on the side of the poor—in fear of what might happen if there is a shift in power arrangements—challenging the status quo is costly.
Reflect
- What strikes you in today’s reading?
- What has been your experience of family relationships intersecting with living out faith?
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: Exodus 5:1-23
Ask
- How might we get alongside those who are marginalised this week?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer