Читать книгу Liturgies from Below - UK Edition - Carvalhaes Claudio - Страница 8

Fullness of life for all creation is how Jesus interpreted his mission in the context of the Roman Empire. This theme of life in fullness actually started with the then World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which at its 2004 General Council in Accra, Ghana, explored its meaning within the context of economic globalization and emerged with the Accra Confession, a confession that has had widespread transformative impact on the way churches and ecumenical organizations have understood and engaged God’s mission since.² At the heart of the Accra Confession is the conviction that God is the “Creator and Sustainer of all life”; and that God “calls us as partners in the creation and redemption of the world.”³

CWM, in response to this confession, observed that life is in danger and hence showed the prophetic courage to declare that the context in which we understand ourselves to be carrying out God’s mission is Empire. And we used as a definition for Empire that which came out of the Globalisation Project—Uniting Reformed Church in South Africa and Evangelical Reformed Church in Germany:

We speak of empire, because we discern a coming together of economic, cultural, political and military power in our world today, that constitutes a reality and a spirit of lordless domination, created by humankind yet enslaving simultaneously; an all-encompassing global reality serving, protecting and defending the interest of powerful corporations, nations, elites and privileged people, while imperiously excluding even sacrificing humanity and exploiting creation; a pervasive spirit of destructive self-interest, even greed—the worship of money, goods and possessions; the gospel of consumerism, proclaimed through powerful propaganda and religiously justified, believed and followed; the colonization of consciousness, values and notions of human life by the imperial logic; a spirit lacking in compassionate justice and showing contemptuous disregard for the gifts of creation and the household of life.⁴

The CMW Theology Statement 2010 provides the theological basis for CWM’s existence today. It identifies Empire as the context in which we are called to be partners with God in God’s mission to transform the face of the earth. Engaging in mission in the midst of the Empire is not a new slogan. God’s mission has always taken place in the midst of the Empire. God became flesh in Jesus Christ in an imperial world. From the time of his birth Jesus’s life was threatened by the Empire. We learn from the Gospel accounts that it is the Empire and its allies who eventually killed Jesus. So we are called to continue this missional engagement in the midst of the Empire. Here we need to understand and name the diverse manifestations of the Empire in our midst. And we need to contextualize the missional trajectory of Jesus in confronting the Empire as we engage in the mission of God.

We understand Empire as that which claims absolute lordship over God’s creation and commodifies God’s people, disabling their agency to amass wealth and exercise control and domination over them. Empire is hence an ungod that rejects God and God’s plan for the world. So it is a faith imperative on all of us to resist all manifestations of Empire in order to protect and affirm life. When we resist the power of Empire, we are reclaiming our agency to liberate our lives and our world. The hope that sustains us in the context of Empire is the possibility to live in opposition to the logic of Empire. When we live out our faith rejecting the claims of Empire on our lives and our world, we witness the God of life. So, mission in the context of Empire is our absolute allegiance to the blossoming of life, exposing and confronting the imperial forces of death and destruction. The politics of Christian witness in the context of Empire is to resist the temptation to be co-opted by the Empire, and to find the nerve to come out of the Empire. In that politics, we experience a profound spirituality. It is the mission of God in which we, the people of God, are invited to partner with God.