inspiral blog

We spend most of this week looking at the idea of the Kingdom of God, what it might mean to have it “near” and what the implications are for those of us who choose to follow.

We made two lists – one, the things that are important to the society around us – what we are told is good, important, a high priority. We came up with a fairly long list – money, power, job, family, social belonging, popularity/status among them.

Then we started to compare the list with the kinds of things Jesus did and the things he said about the Kingdom of God. Things like “blessed are the poor” and “whoever would be first must be servant of all” and “who are my mother and my brothers? whoever does the will of God is my mother, my sister, my brother”. Redefining what all these things mean hopefully started to clarify what subversive and starkly different values the Kingdom brings.

Of course in ways it looks rather stark and grim (and we probably didn’t explore that enough) – but then, I suppose that good news for the poor and oppressed is always likely to look like bad news to the rich oppressors! Simply by being white, middle class and western, we’re already in the elite as far as the world is concerned, and that puts us a lot closer to being Caesar in Rome than being Jesus or the disciples. So we have some unlearning to do first. Hopefully that began a little today.

We went on to look at the socioeconomic implications of the call to follow Jesus for the disciples (who left their jobs!), and I invited us all to reflect on our own jobs and see how we might be able to line them up more with Kingdom values.

It became clear after a while just what a costly exercise that would be for many people. There is something inherently sick about many people’s workplaces – structurally and systemically in particular – that is really hard to see where to begin.

So we continue the subversive journey into the story world of Mark. The next two weeks I’ll be in Shoalwater Bay, Queensland. I’ll miss this mob.

We kicked off this week looking at Mark 1:1-13. Identifying various themes, I created four stations for us to move around and explore them for ourselves.

One station involved going through the newspaper and identifying the “good news” of empire (which is really no good news at all). Then, we named what was false and stuck it on the wall.

And the finished product:

This was the confession station. It had the John the Baptist story coupled with the invitation to name our confession, symbolised by a rock that we “buried” (baptised) under the water, then our repentance as a floating candle we lit and placed on top of the water.

The centres and margins station. The themes of this passage revolve around where God is to be found – and the surprising theme that recurs is that God turns up in the margins, in the wilderness, in the abandoned places of empire. We were invited to name the “centres” and “margins” of our society, and draw them with the pencils and paper.

Exploring the theme of temptation, and particularly in the ‘wilderness’, was the theme of this station. We were invited to identify the “wild beasts” that assail us there, and to invite God to heal and minister to us.

The station in context.

It seemed to go pretty well, in terms of connecting our context with the themes of the passage, inviting us into the story. I’m really just beginning to think creatively about how we can engage with the text like this, away from just intellectual discussion. Hopefully time will expand those ideas.

Well, a bunch of us from inspiral, Footscray, Bendigo and Norlane headed up to the You Yangs on Sunday for a gathering of the clans…lots of kids, a beautiful spot and wonderful people. Here’s a pictorial tour of the day:

We headed back to Norlane afterwards for afternoon tea. Great to hang out with this bunch, and I only wish more of our mob were there.