Monthly Archives: October 2017

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What the Gospel Says about Decoloniality

Click here to listen to this 24-minute message.

Decolonisation and decoloniality are huge topics in contemporary South Africa, demanding that we engage with the legacy of centuries of oppression of African people by Dutch and British colonial powers and the Apartheid government. The question I explore in this message is what the Gospel has to say for Christians about decoloniality, that is, about living in a post-colonial society.

Matthew 22:15-22 is a well-known passage where Jesus says that we must “give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s”. It has often be used to say we must support the government of the day. It is one of the most political narratives in the Gospel texts, and forces us to engage with political issues.

This narrative took place against the first century backdrop of the Jewish people being under the oppressive colonial rule of Rome. A key part of Rome’s rule was a tax, called Census, that every Jewish person had to pay simply for having the audacity to be born Jewish. It was a deeply humiliating, subjugating and repugnant tax for Jewish people.

The tax was paid with a silver coin that had Tiberius Ceasar’s portrait engraved on it. Such an engraving was idolatrous to many Jewish people at that time, because it conflicted with the second commandment. And the inscription on the coin effectively said that Tiberius was the ‘son of God’ and ‘high priest’. Paying a ‘sin tax’ for being Jewish with such a coin was outrageous.

In this message I break open some important points that Jesus makes to determine what he really thought about how Jews at that time should live under colonial rule. These thoughts are useful for Christians today who live under a colonial government or under the rule of an oppressive or corrupt state, as well as those, like us in South African, who live in a post-colonial society, coming to grips with the present legacy of colonisation and coloniality.

This is a chewy message, requiring a close reading of the Gospel text, and careful application in its original and present day contexts. I hope that you may take the time to listen to this podcast and to engage with these thoughts.

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Depths of Stewardship

Click here to listen to this 16-minute message.

Stewardship or dedicated giving is an important dimension of the life of most churches and most Christians. It is about pledging to invest our time, our abilities, our resources and our finances into the work of God through the local church. Stewardship, however, runs the risk of becoming an administrative process of ticking off some boxes to settle our dues with our church, without really touching us or the world at a deeper level.

In this message, I draw on two verses from the Gospels – Matthew 21:33-34 – and show how this text points us to a far deeper and broader understanding of the importance of stewardship:

“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.”

  • First, this passage echoes the creation narrative in Genesis 1, where we find God creating a world and placing people in it, with the task of taking care of that world, which is an expression of the love and being of God. This suggests that stewardship reaches right back into the very origins of humanity, and is rooted not just in some things we do, but in our identity. Being a steward (or gardener or farmer) is the foundational calling that God makes of all humanity. It means, among other things, that everything we do in life should champion and protect the environment.
  • Second, later in this parable (v43), Jesus reveals that the vineyard is, in fact, the Kingdom of God, which is the world under the loving rule of Christ, who reconciles all things together to himself. We, as his followers, are called to bring out the fruit of the Kingdom of God, or the fruit of the Gospel. This means, among other things, that everything we do should help to bring into being God’s Kingdom values, such as love, justice, mercy, equity, relationships, integrity and grace.

Stewardship, then, is not just about signing up to help make tea or work in a soup kitchen, nor is it just about pledging to donate money to the church on a monthly basis. It is an expression of our identity as people created to take care of creation and as people striving to transform the world into the Kingdom of God, through every breath we take, from rising until sleeping. In so doing, we let God’s will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.