
The incarnation of Jesus shows us two very important things. The first movement of the incarnation is a movement of solidarity. Christ entered (and enters) our world in solidarity with our humanity. He embraced (and embraces) our broken humanity, affirmed our humanity, and accepted (and accepts) us as we are. Christ enters human cultures. He works in human cultures. God uses language, style, social mores, climate, etc.
Tim Keel says, "We cannot approach God acontextually. We always experience and know God provisionally within a context. We always use the resources, tools, and imaginative frameworks of our times to engage God and one another."
We must recognize that all communication (religious or otherwise) is culturally conditioned. There is no such thing as a form of communication that is outside of culture. Even when we say, "Jesus is Lord," we are dependent on the English language, a product of a culture, to convey that message. The word "Lord" can mean a lot of things. We are dependent on a certain set of cultural presuppositions for that communication. Our Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages. Our God has chosen to work through human cultures and through relationships to move His Kingdom forward. Culture is not a bad thing.
But, there is also a second movement of the incarnation. Christ transcends, critiques, and transforms our humanity. Jesus is always pushing human culture beyond itself. The way of Jesus is not dependent of human culture, but uses it and us to further the Kingdom. The world is broken. Humanity is broken. Therefore, culture is broken. We cannot become dependent on culture alone. Our cultures (all cultures) must be challenged and must come to a place of recognizing our dependence on God.
Both movements are movements of love. Love is both embrace and a call to go beyond.Often, where we miss the mark is when we recognize one movement without the other.
Alan and Deb Hirsch say, "As missionaries following the traces of God, we must affirm that which is genuinely good and present in any and every human culture, for many aspects are indeed wholesome and true and affirmed by the gospel. But the opposite is also true. There is a lot that is dehumanizing, degrading, and evil, and the disciple is called to somehow discern the difference between it and what is good."
Sometimes, we focus on the movement of solidarity and forget about the movement of transformation. When we do this, life and ministry can become about accommodating to the culture. We can tend to make Jesus into our own images. For example, we might cater to the desires of the consumerism that is rampant in our culture.
On the other hand, we can focus on the movement of transformation and forget about the movement of solidarity. For those of us who come from evangelical traditions, this may come in the form of moral legalism. "Just, get your act together!" In these traditions, sinners are not embraced "as they are," process is not acknowledged. But, evangelicals are not the only ones who neglect solidarity Some mainline churches hold to a certain set of practices from a particular time period, whether it be dress, structure, or even language. The time period that these things came from can be held up as the ideal. This was the time of the perfect culture. Is there anything wrong with these things? No! Many people find them helpful. But, we cannot say, "God only works this way."
Our hope is to be a people of solidarity and transformation, a people who embrace a broken world, but are not content with the current state of things.
I want to discuss what it means to be a "people of a place." In what ways are we tied to and in conversation with the culture of this particular place? What is our role as the church in this place?
Gen. 2:8-15
Here we see the call to create culture. The word "culture" actually comes from the same root as the word "cultivate". Adam and Eve are invited to create culture, to cultivate the world. Adam and Eve are given a place, a garden to tend
Notice, that their call is not to create life. God creates life. Also, their call is not to "make grow." The plants grow and are sustained by God. Instead, they are call to tend the space. We then see in the scriptural story that sin enters the world. Adam and Eve overstep their responsibility as cultivators and desire to "be like God" on their own terms. This break not only has an effect on them, but on the earth, on the culture, on all societies that will come after them
Gen. 12:1-3
Abraham is promised a place. His descendants are called to be a "people of a place." Their story is rooted in space. They are not called as a disembodied people, but a rooted people. Even though they are not always in their place, it is their reference point.
But, the place of their rootedness is not the last word. It is not simply a destination, but a jumping off point. They are called to be a people who bless all peoples, the Promised Land is a place to bless all places. All of the nations will be blessed by them
The Children of Israel find themselves in trouble whenever they forget this. Any time that the place becomes the end game, when they believe that they are to hoard God's blessing, they lose it. As the story goes, once the children of Israel reach the Promised Land, they establish an empire and they go against the very things that made them who they were. They began to obtain wealth, to acquire military strength, and to own slaves. They then find themselves as a people of a place who, because of their unfaithfulness are displaced. They are under an oppressive regime in Babylon.
Psalm 137:1-5
They are a people in a foreign land, remembering their place, where they were rooted. They say that they don't even know how to sing their songs in a foreign land. Their captors are saying, "Sing us one of your Zion songs!" And they don't even know how...their context does not allow it. Their whole time in captivity (in Babylon, but later under the thumb of Persia, and Rome) can be defined by this question, "How do we sing our songs in a foreign land?"
There have been many people who have drawn the parallel between the state of the Children of the Israel at this time and the state of Christianity in the Western World. Personally, I do not believe that we are fully there. Christianity is still the primary religion in the United States. We look around most of the people who were encounter (especially in Tulsa) identify themselves as Christian. Yet, this is not the case in Europe and in many places in the United States
However, even here, the church is finding itself having to grapple with this question, "How do we sing our songs in a changing culture?" The questions that are being asked are not the same. Do our songs make sense here? Do our stories make sense here? I believe that they do, but we must allow our story to challenge us, and to see the story of God's people as it moves in this newly forming culture. So, how do the Children of Israel respond to the new culture that surrounds them?
Jer. 29:1-7
So, their command from God is not to isolate from the culture, not to curse the darkness, and also not to create a "Israel subculture." The command was not that they try to conquer the culture and turn it into their own culture. No, it was to participate in the culture, to seek peace and prosperity, and to pray for the culture. Is this our response to the world around us? This response is both solidarity and transformation.
It is important to realize that, in the mind of the Jewish people going forward, exile did not end after they returned to Jerusalem. They found themselves in their own land, but under the thumb of various empires. This is the context (the Roman empire) in which Jesus is born, lives, teaches, dies, and rises. Jesus teaches primarily in Galilee. He dies in Jerusalem. Jerusalem becomes the hub of this new church. The events of the Upper Room happen in Jerusalem, perhaps even on the Temple Mount.
The church continues to grow in a Jewish context, meeting in synagogues, causing the Roman authorities to wonder whether this was just a Jewish sect or a new religion. Jews were granted protection from certain laws, but they didn't know if this should apply to followers of Jesus or not. But, the new church would not have an exclusively-Jewish identity for long. The HS was moving among the Gentiles. A Roman centurion was converted. An Ethiopian eunuch was baptized. And, with this change in ethnicity came the same old question, "How to we sing our song in a foreign land?" "What does this mean for non-Jews?"
With this came lots of cultural questions: Do these new Spirit-emempowered Gentiles need to be circumcised (a Jewish cultural practice)? Do they need to observe the festivals of the Jewish people? How about the Sabbath? Can they eat the food that they would normally eat? Well this caused a huge conflict in this early church. These cultural issues were causing crazy tension. It took the powerful transformation of a man named Paul, a radical Jewish rabbi who used to kill Christians and the vision of Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends to turn the tide. Finally, in Acts 15, the church elders in Jerusalem decide that cultural practices should not keep Gentiles from turning to Jesus, the Liberating King.
They instruct the Gentiles Jesus-followers to abstain from things that tear communities apart (specifically sexual immorality and eating stuff that their Jewish friends could not eat), but even these are not identity markers. They are to keep this diverse community together. Antioch, not Jerusalem, soon becomes the center of the Christian world. Paul continues on as a missionary to the Gentiles, proclaiming the Gospel of King Jesus.
Acts 17: 16-21
Paul comes to Athens. Athens is the hotbed of culture. Imagine the entertainment of Hollywood, the authority of Washington DC, and the economic stature of NYC. Paul is distressed by their culture and all of the idols. They think that he is a babbler, but obviously something that he was saying struck a chord with them so much so that they brought him to the Aeropogus so that he could share his ideas.
Acts 17:22-33
Ok, so here, we really see the double-movement that we talked about earlier at work. We can assume that he is speaking Greek. He is using their language and inhabiting their space, the space of ideas and philosophy. Paul begins by complimenting them. They are very religious. They are seeking God. They even leave room to worship a God that they do not know. It is here that Paul jumps in. He is going to proclaim to them who this UNKNOWN GOD is. He talks about God's reaching out for them. He even quotes one of their own poets by saying, "In him we live, and move, and have our being. We are are His offspring." He shows true solidarity with them.
But Paul does not only engage the first movement. Paul is clear that repentance is needed, that God is not like gold, or silver, or stone. He says that God commands all people to repent. Also, Paul is clear about Christ's resurrection. Paul is in true solidarity with the people and the culture of Athens. But, he is also seeking God's transformation, God's healing, and God's liberation. Christianity is the only of the major religion that has a true and deep sense of place, yet is not tied to one particular place as the center of its faith. We always wrestle with this. It is a challenge to be both in solidarity with a given culture, but also to seek it be healed and transformed.
Dr. Richard Halverson said, "Christianity was birthed in Galilee as a relationship. It spread to Greece and became a philosophy. It spread to Rome and became an empire. It spread to Britain and became a culture. It spread to America and became an enterprise."
So, what does it mean for us? We are called as cultivators and culture-makers here in midtown/downtown Tulsa. Our space is important. There is a particular culture and cultures surrounding us. Are we a people who can be faithful to both movements?
Often, when talking to people (specifically other pastors) about Emmaus Road, I get this reaction, "Why would you plant a church there?" You see, if our goal as a church was simply to get a large number of people in the door, we would probably go elsewhere. There are places that are already churched, people looking for a church to go to. I currently live in Glenpool. We actually would like to move from there to move closer here, but the housing market has not allowed that. But, there are churches going up all the time around us. Most people in the Tulsa suburbs are already churched, and might be willing to leave their current church for something more convenient geographically. There is nothing wrong with the suburbs, and there is nothing wrong with living in the suburbs. But, we have always had a heart for the city. At times in our church's short history we have felt that, but have not been able to articulate it.
What is it about "the city" that would make us want to plant a church? The definition of a city is not a densely populated area. The definition of a city is a mixed-use, walkable settlement (I'm dependent on Tim Keller for this). This means that residential, commercial, and public service areas are all close to one another, within walking distance. With this definition, some "towns" might actually be considered cities. There is something about having these things all close to one another that creates a creative dynamic. Throughout history, it is obvious that where the city goes, the region goes.
The word "heathen" actually originates from "those who lived in the heath" because when Christianity caught on, it would catch on in the city first and hadn't quite reached the country. Because of the sense of mixed uses, the cross-over between social classes, occupations, and styles tends to create and develop new culture. This does not mean that culture is not created in the suburbs or in the country. There is simply something unique about the city.
Now, I am not saying when I indicate a culture, that the church is a building. But, we cannot disconnect ourselves from the culture that we inhabit, just like we cannot distance ourselves from the culture that comes from where each of us lives.
In what ways are we part of cultivating here? Those of you who are musicians, you cultivate sound, those of you who work with money and numbers, you are cultivating the proper use of resources. Those of you who are social workers, medical professionals, and teachers, you cultivate a sense of health and growth. Lawyers help to mediate conflict within a culture. Many of you work with words, and you cultivate language. We believe that our job is to be a garden of the resurrection right here and wherever each of us goes throughout the day. In what ways are we being invited to be in solidarity and seek the transformation of culture?