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Friday Feb. 16 2007: Jesus and Politics
February 19, 2007
Jesus and politics
Matthew 22:15-40
Introduction
Did Jesus’ life and teaching have political content?
This week’s fairly academic reflection is a review of a book by Alan Storkey called ‘Jesus and Politics’.
In the book politics is defined as ‘all the business of the state – rule, law, nationhood, power, justice, taxation, statehood, international relations, war, and government economic policy’.
Storkey recognises that Jesus may ‘not seem political’ inasmuch as ‘he did not have an army, collect taxes, or wear royal robes, except in his final trial’ but he made comments on all kinds of political issues.
Please reflect on three different conversations that Jesus has in Matthew 22: 15-40; according to the definition above all would be deeply political statements. How did people react to these in Jesus’ time and how do they challenge us to review our own practices.
‘Following Jesus’ politics today would require radical changes in our practices, both as individuals and as nation-states.’
Prayer
Please pray:
* That we follow Jesus’ example and when necessary dare to be as radically different from the traditional culture of our time as he was.
* For Micah Challenge exploration meetings in Hungary this week and Botswana and South Africa next week.
o Please pray for wisdom for those who present Micah Challenge to invited organisational and church leaders. May they be courageous as they work together and plan for the formation of national campaigns.
* That in this decade malaria incidences would begin to reverse as Target 8 proposes.
o Please pray for good will and appropriate allocation of resources from the pharmaceutical industry.
Meditate on the Statistics
As you spend time in prayer and reflection, you may like to take a moment to silently understand with your heart the focus statistic we include each week (see below). Our hope is that you will find this series of statistics a useful resource in preparing presentations.
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Target 8: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
‘Malaria has significant measurable direct and indirect costs, and has recently been shown to be a major constraint to economic development. For developing economies this has meant that the gap in prosperity between countries with malaria and countries without malaria has become wider every single year.’
Source: ‘Economic costs of Malaria’, WHO 2007
You can view all our reflections to date on our website
Posted by micahadmin on February 19, 2007 12:22 PM
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