King of the Universe?

In my home church they are celebrating Eternity Sunday, similar to All Saints Day a few weeks ago here at GBC. Here it is “Christ the King Sunday”. We read three passages of Scripture. Our Old Testament passage from 2 Samuel 23 gives David’s last words as king, as his son Solomon waited to assume the throne. David reminds us that righteous rule leads to joy and evil rule leads to destruction. “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God!”

He continues, “Is not my house like this with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.” In Psalm One, the psalmist contrasts the fate of the righteous with the fate of the unrighteous: The righteous are like a tree planted by rivers of water, which bears fruit in every season and prospers in every circumstance; the unrighteous are “like the chaff that the wind drives away.” We have the same kind of contrast here. David and his house are the righteous; those who would fight against him are the unrighteous. David and his house will live forever; the unrighteous will be consumed and vanish.

The second passage, from Revelation 1, turns to another king, the King of the Universe (Melech Ha Olam). John the Revelator greets the seven churches of Asia [representing the whole church in Asia – and by extension representing the whole church throughout space and time], wishing them grace and peace from “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” We call Jesus “King of kings and Lord of lords.” Jesus is the ruler of all from eternity to eternity. Jesus has loved us and set us free from the power of sin to be God’s people, a kingdom of priests serving God the Father.

This greeting comes with the reminder that Jesus will return in power and great glory: “Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.” From this verse we get the wonderful Advent hymn,

Lo He comes with clouds descending, once the Lamb for sinners slain.

Thousand, thousand saints attending swell the triumph of his train.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God appears on earth to reign.

Every eye shall now behold him, robed in awesome majesty.

Those who set at naught and scorned him, pierced and nailed him to the tree

Deeply wailing, deeply wailing shall the true Messiah see.

We see David the king, dying and ending his life on earth. And we see Jesus the eternal king, coming to bring in the ultimate reign of God. Which brings us to the gospel reading.

In John 18, Jesus is on trial before Pilate. Jesus has appeared before the High priest, and clearly the Jewish leaders want him executed. They have no authority to condemn him to death, so they send him to Pilate. Pilate tries to hand Jesus back, but the Jewish leaders make it clear they want Jesus dead – and Pilate is the only one who can pass the death sentence. For this sentence, Pilate needs more than a religious disagreement, so he explores the possibility of political insurrection: “Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’” Jesus first deflects the question and then observes that his reign is with God, not on this earth. Pilate persists, “So you are a king?” Jesus replies: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

There is more going on here than we can consider – especially that truth is both propositional and relational. For this morning, we note that John’s gospel links together David’s last words in 2 Samuel and John’s words in Revelation. David is more right than he knows: His line will rule forever, but his line rules through the son of God, Jesus. Jesus is the King of the Jews from the line of David. Jesus is the eternal king, Melech Ha Olam. Jesus is the ruler of the universe, sent by God to humankind. The trial before Pilate reminds us that Jesus is the link between the earthly rule of David and the eternal rule of David’s Son.

Christ the King, the King of the Universe

What does it mean to acknowledge the reign of Jesus in our lives and in our world? At one level, we are saying clearly that you and I are not the ruler of the world. We are not even the ruler of our own lives. This is a simple truth, but it is one we forget in our individualistic culture. We want to rule ourselves, and we find that instead we must give up our very selves to be part of God’s world.

In his last novel, C.S. Lewis retells an old Greek myth, the story of Psyche, who was married to a God whose face she was not allowed to see. The Greek version is interesting and provocative, but Lewis turns it around and tells the story instead from the viewpoint of Psyche’s sister, Orual, who Psyche left behind when she married the God. It is in many ways the deepest and most complex of Lewis’ books, but there is one simple line in it that speaks also to us. Orual is nearing the end of her life, bitter against the world, and bitter against God, when she hears a voice, God’s voice: “Die before you die. There is no chance after.”

Giving up the false idea that we can rule our lives is hard. It is indeed a death. It is also the death that everyone of us must die if we would live with God. There is room for only one ruler in your life and mine. Either I am in charge of my life, or God is. It can’t be both.

This truth is a reminder of our conversion. When we come to baptism, we give our testimony, we tell our story of encountering God. Each of us has a different story, but the point of each story is the same. When I hear the stories, I want to know if the candidate submits to Jesus the King. If Jesus is Lord of your life, you’re a good candidate! If you submit to God’s control in all that you say and do, then you have died in this life and need not fear “the second death”.

Back to David’s Last Words

At another level, we remind ourselves that justice and peace in our world are only partly a matter of having and following good laws (important though they are); it is more a matter of right relationship with the God from whom justice and order come. There is an eternal reality of right-ness that we can know only in relationship with the Creator who made us. To consider this truth, we take a journey into the nature of the reality of God’s moral law – what we might call (following C.S. Lewis) the Dao (see The Abolition of Man.)

I was trained as a high school teacher in the United States – I never became a HS teacher there, but I remember an important part of my training. One part of that training called “values clarification”. A google search showed me that values clarification remains an important part of training in some areas of education. I found a quote from a course at Weber State University (Ogden, Utah):

Think about the people who we tend to respect the most in our culture. They are usually those who have clearly defined values and live by them. Mahatma Gandhi was a perfect example of a person who was very clear about what was most important to him. Despite going up against impossible odds, living according to his highest values ultimately brought about the freeing of an entire nation. Gandhi was very clear about his values. He knew that his choices and behavior followed them. He was driven by his values instead of being driven by his emotions or the circumstances in his environment.

There is much in this movement that is admirable. It is good to clarify what we value most and to live on the basis of those values. But there is a faulty assumption within the movement, which “Christ the King” challenges. That assumption is that I can choose the values that fit best with me and what I like, regardless of how those values fit with the world around me.

Here is how I see the universe. The reality in which we live is governed by physical laws. If you throw a cup into the air, it will fall to the ground – illustrating the law of gravity as it falls and other physical laws as it breaks. [Physics is not my strong suit! I can’t tell you what laws are involved, but I know that it shows us the reality of the physical world.] If you break the physical laws of the universe, you will suffer the consequences. If we decide to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, our climate will become more erratic and less the way God made it.

There are also moral laws in the universe, placed there by God in creating the world. Nobody knows those laws perfectly, except God (any more than anyone understands all of the physical laws perfectly). Everyone knows something about God’s reality – both because God has planted God’s reality in our hearts and because God has planted God’s reality in cultures.

Some people assume that “values clarification” means there are no moral absolutes. Instead, they think, every one of us makes up our own rules or values. In place of moral absolutes, they have an absolute relativism. Now relativism is good in its place. Every culture sees a different part of God’s full reality. Each person sees something different in God’s full reality. We need all of our insights in order to understand better what it means to say that Christ is King. We read Scripture together; we praise God together; we bring our insights and differences of understanding and interpretation together. In dialogue and submission we discover what God wants us to do and how God wants us to live.

David reminds us that the rulers of this earth “must be just”; submission to God shows us what that justice looks like. The Prime Minister of Canada doesn’t decide what is right. The President of the United States doesn’t decide what is right. Neither do you or I. Not even your pastor can do this! We find it together as we read Scripture, listen to God’s Spirit within us, and seek God’s wisdom for our lives today.

The Dao

I teach a course in world religions, and I observe that different regions have widely differing explanations of reality. At the same time, the moral and ethical principles of life (the moral law) are remarkably consistent across time and space.

In an appendix to The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis collected a set of sayings from various religions and cultures – from the ancient Egyptian to the Babylonian, from the Analects of Confucius to the Torah, from Buddhist and Hindu sayings to the Christian Scriptures. Such values as truth-telling and acting considerately of other people appear to be universal. Lewis called these “the Tao” (using the spelling current in his day); I am using the more modern spelling of “Dao” – the way of God, the order or dharma of God, the Torah, the Law of Love that Jesus taught. We find this moral law in many cultures and across the centuries.

As we noted earlier, teachers in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s promoted “values clarification” – trying to help young people discover their own values without reference to the larger world of values. They discovered that young people grew up without the values that fit the reality of God’s creation. In 1987, Michael Josephson founded the Josephson Institute, which has as its mission, “To improve the ethical quality of society by changing personal and organizational decision making and behavior.” In 1992, the institute brought together youth leaders and educators and asked them what values they thought we should teach young people. The result was the Character Counts program.

I met “Character Counts” in our sons’ schools in Indiana, in the 1990s. There are six pillars of character: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship. Think of them in Christian terms:

·         It is good to tell the truth and to keep your word. Lying is bad.

·         It is good to treat others with respect. Bullying and hurting others is bad.

And so on. We could find Scriptures that address all of these. This is what I mean by God’s reign – the moral law of the universe that fits the way God made us.

You might wonder if I am saying that it doesn’t matter who you worship so long as you follow the Way of God, the moral law of the universe. It is no surprise that God’s Law is found in all religions and cultures, but we see it most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. We find echoes of God’s voice everywhere. It would be odd if we didn’t. But we see God most clearly when we embrace Christ as King, and we hear God most clearly when we embrace Christ as King, and we can follow God best when we embrace Christ as King.

Conclusion

I have a friend who lived a dissolute life before his conversion. I don’t know how many children he has scattered around the world. I wonder if even he knows. By his own testimony, he has lived a very different life since he met Christ, and one of his many sons has told us the same thing. When Jesus became my friend’s Saviour, he also became his Lord, and Christ the King gave him a new way to live. We celebrate Christ the King this Sunday best when we follow him as Lord in all that we think and say and do.

Grace Bible Church

25 November 2018
2 Samuel 23: 1-7
Revelation 1: 4b-8
John 18:33-37

Living humbly in a proud, proud world

When our first son was two or three years old, we had a small basketball hoop, about three feet high, and a ball to match. He would walk up to the hoop and try to put the ball through it. When he succeeded, we exulted, “Well done!” When he missed, we made sure that he wouldn’t feel upset by saying excitedly, “Almost!” Pretty soon, he was trying to miss to get the “almost”, and we had to start over, praising only success.

That little vignette sticks in my memory as an example of our society’s pre-occupation with self-image. We praise our children so that they will know they are unique and special. We want them to feel good about themselves. A good self-image is worthwhile (although, as psychologist Jean Twenge observes, the best self-image is based on self-discipline, not on praise for not succeeding at a task), but it can lead to a basic problem in our society. Canada and the United States have many people who think that they are each one special, almost beyond belief.

[I have overstated the case. Praise is good – what counsellors call “unconditional positive regard”. I’m talking about the obsession we have with making everyone the best at everything.]

I could have started with a different memory, of going to college and discovering that most people were not interested in my Climenhaga family pedigree. They took me down a notch when I would start to talk about my Dad, or my Uncle, or my grandparents or great-grandparents. The flip side of our cultural pride is the sense that the boaster needs to be taken down a notch. Like a friend of mine whose mother would tell other people when she was proud of the sermon he preached, but would never tell him, lest it lead to his own pride.

You would think, then, that our aversion to people boasting about themselves (“don’t toot your own horn!”) means that we are a humble people, but the truth is that we are proud – a proud, proud world. That’s one reason we don’t like other people’s boasting; it detracts from our own sense of self-importance.

What do the Scriptures that we heard this morning say to us, in the context of a world in which each of us elevates himself-herself? What does God call us to be in a proud, proud world?

1 Samuel 2:1-10

You remember Hannah’s story. She was barren and pleaded with God for a child. Hannah sings her song of celebration and praise when God answers her prayer and gives her a son. She names him Samuel – God heard me, and she sings about how God exalts the humble and brings down the proud. This song serves as the model for Mary’s song of celebration in Luke 1, when she sings of her joy as the birth of the Messiah, God’s Chosen One, draws near. This theme – that God exalts the humble and brings down the proud – is basic to the gospel that the Messiah brings to the people of Israel.

Go through the passage with me.

• The Lord delivers me and gives me joy.
• God is unique and strong and holy.
• Our pride turns to nothing in God’s presence.
• The warriors’ weapons are broken, and the fallen are exalted. (Note that the passive tense indicates God’s action, not our own.)
• Everything is reversed – the poor are rich and the rich poor; the barren (like Hannah) have children and those with many children now have none.
• The Lord gives life and death.
• The Lord makes the poor rule the world.
• The world belongs to God.
• We prevail by God’s strength; our own strength is worth nothing.

 You see through the whole passage the theme that God establishes everyone and everything, and that we have no right to compliment ourselves on our good fortune. Praise and honour and glory belong to God alone.

This point is so obvious that we wonder why I would even bother repeating it, but I say it because we do actually take the credit for our good fortune all the time. When someone thanks me for a good sermon, I don’t say, “Actually I didn’t do anything.” I say, “Thank you”, and I remember the time and effort I put into it. But in fact, any good thing that happens here this morning comes from God.

So, we turn to Hebrews 10:11-25

Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish-background believers, who were beginning to doubt their embrace of the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. The writer quotes the prophet Jeremiah, from Jeremiah 31: God has written his law on human hearts, so that we can live according to the hope God has placed in us.

This quotation is given within the description of how the OT Law worked, with priests making sacrifices in the Temple. A basic theme throughout the letter is that Jesus, and his new covenant, are superior to the old covenant represented by the sacrifices described in the Law. Whether the priests knew it or not, they were pointing the way to God’s Law written on the human heart so that each one of us can know the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. This active Spirit in our lives helps us to live well, and to encourage each other to live well. This new covenant is at the centre of our worship this morning.

We put these two passages together: Just as Hannah celebrates God’s great work of exalting the person at the bottom – namely, herself, so the writer to the Hebrews lets us know that God has lifted all of us up and made us God’s children. We can rejoice and celebrate with Hannah as we acknowledge God’s work in our lives.

Mark 13:1-8

In the gospel reading, the disciples are admiring the majesty of the Temple that Herod had built. Jesus responds by prophesying the destruction of the Temple and the end of all things. When they had a chance, Peter, James, John, and Andrew (who seem to have been a sort of inner circle) ask when the End would come. Jesus replies that we are called to live God’s way in the present, knowing that the End is not far away. The climax of the passage comes in verse 11 – that Christians are to be ready to respond to any accusation against them with the words that the Holy Spirit will give them.

Synthesis

The basic idea that comes through these passages is clear enough: The message that the Holy Spirit gives us is the message of God’s love demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus, which results in God’s Law written on our hearts. God’s law is now written within us – God’s command to love and to live according to God’s love, which lifts up those who are hurting and gives to them joy.

Why do I call this “living humbly”? Is not this the way most Canadians want to live, whether they believe in God or not? Don’t most people want to be caring and considerate of other people. We see ourselves as polite and considerate to a fault. Consider the movie, “Canadian Bacon”, which portrays three Americans on a mission, running through a crowd of Canadians gathered around the CN tower in Toronto. They bump into many people in their rush, knocking them flying in different directions. As they do so, you hear the repeated word, “Sorry!” Not of course from those brash Americans, but from all the polite Canadians who just got pushed over.

So, am I simply reminding us to be good Canadians? I don’t think so. I was at the Human Rights Museum this past Wednesday evening to see the Mandela exhibit. We also walked through the levels above the ground floor – all six of them. Near the top, there is a video playing of PierreTrudeau responding to the separatists in Quebec. You remember the events in October 1970. Two members of the FLQ kidnapped the deputy premier of Quebec (Pierre Laporte) and a British diplomat (James Cross). They ended up killing Laporte and negotiating Cross’s release.

Pierre Trudeau responded by implementing the War Power Act, suspending some civil liberties in the process of rooting out the violent revolutionaries within the FLQ. According to Wikipedia (quoting a 1970 Gallup Poll) 89% of English-speaking Canada and 86% of French-speaking Canada supported Trudeau’s action at the time.

Does this make us proud? No. My point is simpler than that. When people run into us, we fight back – whatever the movie “Canadian Bacon” suggests. In this respect we are actually like the Americans, and the British, and the French, and the Chinese, and Japanese, and the various countries of Africa, and Arabs, and any other group of people you wish to name. Human beings are proud in precisely this sense: What we think is good always starts with what benefits or hurts us. We are self-centred, as individuals and as a nation.

This is not an entirely bad thing. A proper sense of pride is necessary for healthy individuals, for healthy groups, and for healthy nations. My father used to quote the lines from Sir Walter Scott, “Breathes there the man with soul so dead,/ who never to himself hath said,/ This is my home, my native land!” Having lived in four different countries, I take pride in each of my homes, and I value the good that is in my home here in Canada.

Although such pride is not necessarily bad, it is in tension with the humility God calls us to. In 1 Samuel, Hannah reminds us that God gives us all that we have, and that we rely on God for all that we are and do. The reading from Hebrews reminds us that we depend on God for our knowledge of how to live, and that we depend on each other for the encouragement to live that way. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that the Holy Spirit within us speaks and acts through us.

What does Humility look like?

So, what does this kind of humility look like in practice? I referred earlier to my friend whose mother didn’t want to compliment him directly lest he become too “full of himself”. He found out what she really thought when another friend of his told him that his mother really liked the sermon he preached in our church. Isn’t this what humility looks like? Well … no.

Remember, pride is not thinking you’re good at something. I like to play chess. I am a reasonably good player, what they call a “good club player”. I could go down to the chess club and enjoy playing in their weekly gatherings. (I see from the Web that the Rudolf Rocker Chess Club meets in the Winnipeg Millennium Library on the first Saturday of the month from noon to 4 pm, with casual meetings at the same time and place on other Saturdays of the month.) Chess discourages people from overstating their ability. You win or lose pretty much by what you do over the board. Paul’s words apply: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment.”

If you are good at something, proper self-awareness acknowledges that. If you are bad at something, proper self-awareness says that too. So, pride is not saying that you’re good at something. Pride isn’t even saying you’re good at something when you’re really not. That’s just lack of self-awareness, and most of us have blind spots about our own abilities. Pride is something else again.

Pride is a focus on oneself to the exclusion of others. Another word for pride is “egocentrism”, or more simply “egotism”. In a baby, this self-centeredness is natural and good. In an adult, self-centeredness can become destructive and bad. At its worst, we say that the proud person is a narcissist, unable to see what is good for the larger group and aware only of what he/she experiences at the centre of their consciousness.

Humility, in turn, is a focus on others. We focus on ourselves appropriately – as Jesus put it, we love each other the way that we love ourselves, but we do not focus on ourselves to the exclusion of others. We see, as Nelson Mandela (and many others) put it, that my freedom and the other person’s freedom are bound up together. What is good for you is also, in the long run, good for me. Our world says, “Look out for number one.” God says, “Look out for each other.”

Concluding Thoughts

This is a lot harder than it sounds. We can agree without difficulty to look out for each other, but when it comes to daily life, we find that self-interest and others-interest run up against each other. The solution is not to give up, but to refocus on the people around us. It takes practice. You notice the needs of a neighbour and try to help. You realise that our personal habits in Canada may hurt people in another part of the world, and we try to find alternatives.

Embracing humility turns out to be a kind of spiritual self-discipline. Our automatic reaction in every situation is to think of how it affects us – and may hurt us. In place of this automatic reaction, we learn step by baby step to think of how the situation affects the people around us. As the learned response becomes habitual, we become what I have been describing as “humble” – focussed on each other, on other people’s needs in general.

We can see this point through two illustrations: one is a preacher’s story, and the other is a quote from C.S. Lewis. The preacher’s story. A man had a dream in which he found himself in a hallway with two doors, one labelled Hell and the other labelled Heaven. An angel standing there asked, “Would you like to see what’s behind the doors?” “Sure”, he replied. The angel opened the door to Hell, and he saw a group of people sitting around a table piled high with wonderful food and drink, a rich banquet of delight for anyone who would eat. Each person was confined to his/her chair, with a long spoon chained to their wrist – too long to eat with. They were trapped in an eternity of delight that they could never savour. The angel took him to the second door and opened it. A similar scene met his sight – the wonderful banquet, the restriction of the spoon too long to feed themselves with, but here each person was feeding someone else. An eternity of joy and delight in serving each other.

C.S. Lewis describes it this way in Mere Christianity:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

The “really humble man” is not thinking about himself, because he is really interested in you. The truly humble woman is not thinking about herself, because she is thinking about and listening to God. How do we live humbly in a proud, proud world? We give ourselves to God, and we take fare of each other. Simple really, and harder than it sounds.

Grace Bible Church

18 November 2018

Texts

1 Samuel 2:1-10

Hebrews 10:11-25

Mark 13:1-8

The Joy of Global Christians

We are focussing today on what we might call international or global Christians – those of our number who come from various countries around the world. In truth, all of us can be global or international Christians, if we draw on each other and learn from each other as sisters and brothers in the church around the world.

What is the benefit of being a global Christian? Let me note several very quickly.

1. Start with the obvious. Being part of the global church is just more fun! We sing with Africans and celebrate with Asians and dance with South Americans (actually, we dance with all of them). Who wouldn’t want to be part of the multi-cultural community that we call “the global church”?

I remember the first time I came to Winnipeg. It was in February 1990 in a planning committee for Mennonite World Conference. I lived in Zimbabwe, where it was the middle of the summer, and we met in Winnipeg, where it wasn’t! It was cold. But by the time we met for World Conference it was June, lovely Manitoba summer weather. I remember watching a choir from the Mennonite Church in the Congo – constant movement and wonderful singing. They were followed by a Mennonite choir from the Ukraine – ramrod straight with no movement, and also with wonderful singing.

My wife teaches English, and she tells me that her class full of Russians becomes more like a party when you add a few Colombians. We have often entertained students in our house for meals. In fact, they are the ones who have entertained us. I remember watching a Cuban student teach a young man from Manitoba how to dance. Being in a church that includes Congolese and Ukrainians and Cubans and Manitobans is just more fun than being with only one group!

2. Being a global Christian is also a wonderful growing experience. When we begin to see what people from other countries see, when we begin to understand the lives of people from around the world, we grow. Our minds get bigger. We begin to understand more about life. I have a friend who lives in the same house near Steinbach in which he grew up. He would have a small life, except that he ahs also travelled to South America and to India. Contact with Christian brothers and sisters from around the world has stretched him and made him also a global Christian, even though he has only lived in one house all his life.

I grew up in Zimbabwe when it was a White-run English colony. I had the mind and heart of a White Rhodesian. We moved to the States when I was 15, and I began to see my home country with new eyes. I became close friends with a Black Zimbabwean, who helped me to see what I couldn’t see about my own upbringing. The more broadly we experience the world, the more fully we can understand life.

3. These bring me to the basic reason I love being global Christian. You begin to see God’s love and grace, the fullness of God’s very being, more clearly when you begin to grasp the way that people from different cultures see God.

North Americans see God, who is our friend. A favourite hymn when I was young was, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” Listen to our worship music today and they sound (to me) like a succession of love songs. I love these love songs! I like knowing that Jesus cares for me and provides for me. I am a good North American!

Africans also sing about God’s love. One of my best friends in Zimbabwe loved to sing, “Uphi umhlobo onjengo Jesu; kakho qha! Kakho qha!” There’s not a friend like [the lowly] Jesus; no not one, no not one. But I remember many more songs about power. Africans sing about the power of God and especially the power of the blood of Jesus because they know that we live in a dangerous world – and we need the power of God to survive.

I wonder what Asians like to sing about? We could ask our Korean and Burmese and Indian friends: What hymns do you like the best? What about South Americans? You can ask your friends from Brazil if they like the same hymns as Paraguayans or Bolivians.

The point behind these examples is that our view of God – what we call “theology” – is too limited if we see only with the eyes of our culture. We value friendships; Africans value spiritual power; Asians value the ancestors; South Americans value power and justice. I am oversimplifying, but if you want a better breakdown, get to know your international friends because I’ll tell you something. God meets all of these needs. The gospel of Jesus Christ meets all of our needs in every culture represented here. When you begin to see how God works in Arab countries, you learn a bit more about the gospel. When you discover how God works in Asia, you discover more about the grace and love and power of God.

If you want to see the fullness of God’s glory, you look to what God is doing in every country and culture around the world. John the Revelator describes what we see in a wonderful passage in Revelation 7: 9 to 12:

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

This morning in our international chapel we get the smallest glimpse of the scene that awaits us in Heaven, when God’s Reign comes in power and glory. All of the blemishes and faults that we experience here will be gone, and we will see each other as those who reflect the glory of God’s salvation. More, we will see the direct glory of God in each other, and we will join the “great multitude that no one could count”, singing God’s praise forever.

Being a global Christian is good! Celebrate the glory of God as we sing together each in our own way.

International Chapel
7 November 2018
Revelation 7: 9 to 12

Culture and the Bible

What is Culture?

Basic Definition: A set of ideas [thoughts, feelings, values] that people in a society carry around in their heads, and which result in social organization and material artifacts. Some images:

• Culture as an iceberg (from Darrell Whiteman's material).
• Culture as a spider web (from Chuck Kraft).
• Culture as an onion (from David Shenk).
• Culture as a map (from Paul Hiebert).

The map image is especially helpful. Maps show us what we need to see in the varied and overwhelming amount of data that we perceive with our senses. A map of Manitoba’s snowmobile trails is similar to, but also quite different from, a road map of Manitoba. Both approximate reality, but they have different concerns. So also with our various cultures.

Stan Nussbaum has described the central set of ideas of American culture in a booklet, The ABCs of American Culture. Here are what he calls the ten commandments of American culture, derived by sifting through a hundred common sayings (proverbs and expressions) in the USA.

• You can’t argue with success (Be a success).
• Live and let live.
• Time flies when you’re having fun (Have lots of fun).
• Shop till you drop.
• Just do it.
• No pain, no gain (Get tough. Don’t whine).
• Enough is enough (Stand up for your rights).
• Time is money (Don’t waste time).
• Rules are made to be broken (Think for yourself).
• God helps those who help themselves (Work hard).

Nussbaum suggests that the first three of these – Be a success; Live and let live [tolerance]; Have fun – act as the core of our cultural mindset, worldview assumptions that guide what we see in the world.

[Paul Hiebert gives a similar, but different, set of worldview assumptions in TransformingWorldviews. My point is not to establish a North American worldview with certainty, but to give a rough idea. It is a truism in cultural studies to observe that we cannot see our own worldview, because we’re using it to see, but when we move to another culture and are faced with the way other people see the world, we begin to be aware of our own assumptions.]

Reading the Bible

We are (I think) well aware that we need to know the cultures of the Bible in order to read the text accurately. The use of Semitic overstatement in Joshua is one of many examples of what we might miss: Not everyone was killed in occupying the land. We need to know their [the Jews’] cultures in order to read their texts. So we have appreciated studies such as Kenneth Bailey’s Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant’s Eyes.

My point here is that we have a similar need to know our own culture in order to read the Bible. As my mentor in my mission studies used to say, “We need to exegete our own cultural context, as well as we exegete the Scriptures.” He meant this especially in terms of application, but I suggest it applies also to hearing the text in the first place.

We need to become aware of our own eyes, our own worldview assumptions, in reading Scripture. Our cultural assumptions act as “confirmation bias” when we read Scripture. We find what we expect to find. The more self-aware we become, the more we are able to hear the Scripture in its own terms.

An Example

I have heard often that in the Letter to the Romans, Paul thinks especially in terms of guilt and innocence as he looks at God’s gift of salvation. For example:

Romans 5: Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

We see the beginning statement, “we are justified by faith”, and we automatically read it using a model of the atonement that views the penalty for sin as something paid by God in Jesus on the cross (what we might call a courtroom model). Our culture deals with “guilt” using a courtroom model, but the Jews of Paul’s day – and Paul himself – dealt with guilt often in terms of shame and honour. We see that model clearly in Paul’s language here: “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory … we also boast in our sufferings …”

My point is not to set aside our Western map for reading these verses, but rather 1) to note Paul’s own mental map and 2) to note how this passage speaks to shame and honour cultures.

Paul continues:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Again, we see the language of justification and of being saved from [the penalty] of death. People in Africa reading these verses might notice something else: The idea of sacrifice is not simply paying a penalty, but also of delivering someone from the power of evil. Many cultures operate on the basis of fear-power. [The three basic orientations around the world are guilt-innocence,shame-honour, and fear-power.] These verses suggest that people (especially Gentiles) in Paul’s day understood that fear, and they could rejoice that God’s power demonstrated on the cross set them free from the power of sin.

We could keep going, but perhaps this is enough to illustrate one aspect of what I am saying. The further part, which I have not worked out here, is to ask: “How do the controlling ideas in our society (mentioned by Nussbaum above) skew the way that I read Scripture in general?”