Forge Intensive Tuesday - Marcus Curnow

I thought I'd post up my raw notes from the intensive ... totally unedited I'm afraid, so please excuse anything wrong, offensive or unintelligible.

Marcus Curnow. The Economy of God.
Resourcing a spirituality of engagement: Living the Word on the Street

Message of Jesus into a bumper sticker.
- finding your life by losing it.
- Jesus is a bloke.
- Jesus, don't leave earth without him.

The economy of God

... is an attempt at capturing for our contemporary context something of the subversive power that 'the Kingdom of God', the central image of Jesus' teachings, had in a world of real kings and kingdoms.

The biblical understanding of "economy" is grounded in the ancient Hebrew spiritual exercise of 'keeping Sabbath'. It is neither solely material nor spiritual, but extends to encompass all aspects of what it means to produce and consume as a living being.

Beyond money, this economy includes elements of time, of energy, of work and of re-creation, of relationship with the spiritual, the created order and other people.

Embracing the economy of God involves a realisation that abundant grace underpins an ethic redistribution that is the only way out of the spiritual and material slavery that is so characteristic of the dominant economy of our world.

how do we view time? it shows us something about our culture.
- time is money
- time management
- time wasting
- passing time

redemption of time - making it sacred, it needs to be pointed and directed towards God

language of business ... we have an abundance of time - all eternity.

Alternative Economic Voices
- Vandana Shiva
- Wendell Berry

What does the dominant market economy fail to factor into its economics?
- Spiritual, Communal, Agricultural, Environmental etc.

Books:
The art of the common place - Wendell Berry

Sabbath Economics 101
Genesis 1: God as Creator who rests, Work that is Good.

Exodus 16:11 manna ... Sabbath first mentioned
- 16-18 Gather only as much as you need
- 19. Don't store any up!! Exodus 1:8-14 Store Cities
- Have a rest Day
- 33. Store it up for what - Worship ... Remember ... Central to their spirituality

Sabbath and Jubilee
- Leviticus 25:35-42 Releasing Community members from debt (Deut 15:1-11)
- Lev 25:13,25-28 Land to original owners
- Lev 25:47-55 Freeing Slaves (Deut. 15:12-18) Lev 25:42 The land is Gods and gods people aren't to be Egypt
- Isaiah 61 Ezekiel 46:17-18

Jesus and Sabbath
- Luke 4:19 Jesus wanted to renew this tradition
- Mark 2 Conflict with the Pharisees: Who you eat with, How you eat, Where and when you eat, Feeding 5000 etc.
- Matthew 6:The Lords Prayer ... again central to their spirituality

Early Church
- Acts Chapter 2, 4-6
- 2 Corinthians 8 : Paul's Ministry of Reconciliation has an economy

Empty throne ... the forgotten worship symbol of modern Christianity ... we have no king other than God.

How does a mother have a Sabbath with kids? So busy, etc.
- Jews did it through ritual, Friday night meal
- there is an ideal and a real ... what is realistic?
- community is essential - a very practical approach to this question

Economy of God is a paradigm - a new way of life

Economy of God and Proclamation
The economic dimensions of the parables of Jesus.
"Earthly Stories with Heavy Meanings:

What you factor into your bottom line.
How do you benchmark success?
What must I do to live a sustainable life?
Renounce your citizenship and change your standard of living
The successful takeover bid ...

What must I do to have eternal life?
- sustainable living? does that factor in?

What is good work?
Good work uses no thing without respect both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not love.

It does not dissociate life and work or pleasure and work, or love and work or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonour God, nature, the thing that is made, whomever it is made for. - Wendell Berry.

Economy of Urban Seed
- Good Work: Residents and Credo
- More than a Job we are a Mob ... but there is no mob without jobs
- Building economic alternatives
- maintaining freedom

Books:
- Pete Ward: Liquid Church and the commodification of religious product

New Monasticism ...

Danger for Forge Interns
- The only communities that work are those of necessity
- The problem of taking developing world mission models and applying them to Western cultures:
- You incarnate into a sub-culture but not an economy. Everybody still shops at the supermarket.
- Our effort at mission can appear successful but easily end up being marketing to increasingly fragmented society in a way which furthers the fragmentation rather than bearing witness to the economy of God.

What's working ...
- economic sharing
- living within walking distance
- shared sabbath
- shared work
- food coop

a taste of slow
www.atasteofslow.com.au
28 August - 10 September

www.fairwear.org.au
- rather no clothes than clothed exploitation

Make Affluence History
www.makeaffluecehistory.org

Some questions
- What are the economics of the community tI am working, amongst and alongside?
- How is what we are doing connecting and contributing to the local economy?
- How is what I'm involved with challenging the local economy and bearing witness to Good Work and the Economy of God.

Who, how, what, where you eat? How is the process of food production and consumption made sacred in your mission work and community life?

lord's prayer
abba (creator and sustain of our household)
Brand recognitiion and loyalty are yours
may your economy come,
may your way be sung on the sacred earth we know
sustain us this day in the simplicity of enough
reconcile our debts with your forgiveness as we seek reconciliation with our debtors
and lead us through the wilderness, away from the seduction of our vocation
that in the face of evil our life may be saved
amen