These are five of our favourite chapters telling stories across the length of England, from Cornwall to Morecombe
Link to dialogue Poverty and Place – Red Letter Christians UK (our great friends Shame and Ash met to discuss these stories of poverty and place; you’ll find a summary of that conversation on p111-116)
Questions
- Shane spoke of ‘falling forwards’ into action – not arriving with set plans but discerning the Spirit from close proximity within a community. How does this challenge the way you have been working in your community? Why is this a crucial part of how we live for Jesus and justice?
- These stories suggest the importance of ‘unlearning’. What have you had to ‘unlearn’? Are there specific experiences that have helped you in this?
- Ash suggested hope is one of the antidotes to poverty, but it is often in short supply. Reflect on the glimmers of hope you see in situations of injustice around you. Specifically, how can you add to these in your community?
- Shane saw loneliness as the poverty of the privileged. How have you experienced this in communities you have been part of? How might activism invite everyone out of spiritual poverty?
- Sally used the metaphor of a ‘dry stone wall’ – working with wonky things, people and places. Is there anything that scares or encourages you about this reality?
Creative response
Go for a walk and take photos of glimmers of hope in your neighbourhood and make them into a collage. Maybe they could the basis of a conversation or a prayer event with you church or the wider community.
Find out about local initiatives seeking the common good of the neighbourhood and visit one so you get to meet people and can pray for them. It would be good to explore beyond church-run projects and see how the Spirit is at work in surprising places (a good starting place would be the community notice board in your library).
Bible
Psalm 82
1 God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the ‘gods’:
2 ‘How long will you[a] defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?[b]
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
5 ‘The “gods” know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 ‘I said, “You are ‘gods’;
you are all sons of the Most High.”
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.’
8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.
Isaiah 65: 18-19
But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
Luke 4L:14-30
14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’
22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ they asked.
23 Jesus said to them, ‘Surely you will quote this proverb to me: “Physician, heal yourself!” And you will tell me, “Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.”’
24 ‘Truly I tell you, ‘He continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his home town. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed – only Naaman the Syrian.’
28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
How do these passages deepen and expand your understanding of Jesus & Justice in your neighbourhood.
Please use this link to share what you have discovered and created Doxology: Radically Unravelling – Red Letter Christians UK
