Preachers, including especially my beloved Fundies, like to zero in on one word in a verse of Scripture and build a whole sermon out of it. I have complained about that, but I am going to do it here myself. In Paul's letter to the Galatians he writes There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there
is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Notice he does not say "There is both Jew and Greek," but that there is neither. We do not bring our old cultural identity into the church, we are given a new identity. No one in the NT comes in and says "Wait a minute. We have to recognise the significant Zealot population in our congregation." Or sotto voce "Have you noticed we don't have a lot of Essenes in this church?" Or Pharisee, or Nabatean. The expectation for all is that they are leaving this behind as a primary identifier. Jesus did not come so that Greeks and Romans would get along better. I believe that insofar as they take on the identity of the New Covenant they will get along better, and this is one of the signs that they are growing. But that was never the point. We are to love one another as members, one of another, in the old phrasing.
Therefore I say that the early church was not multicultural in the sense we use that new word now. It was not built of many cultures. It was multi-ethnic, which is not the same thing. People brought their own foods and manner of dress, certainly, and many homely customs. Nothing wrong with that. But the early church was not trying to be a food court. It wasn't Epcot Center. That sort of celebration of differences comes from trade. Loads of fun, really. But not very relevant spiritually.
It may seem subtle at first, yet it is important. In any era we all want the Scriptures to commend what we are already doing. That seldom works out as we hope.
The era we should fear most is our own. The tribe we should fear is the one we want to belong to. Multiculturalism has become a religion of its own. Not to everyone or even most, but a significant presence. It therefore threatens to become another god for some of us.
Update: Retriever has a comment better than my post.
Donald Sensing claimed that Christianity brought a novel approach to belonging--there was something that superseded tribe. I'm not sure what his reference for its novelty was, though.
ReplyDeleteI actually like those one word exegesis sermons...Because of the familiarity breeds contempt of hearing certain phrases and passages year after year as we expect to hear them, as we want to hear them, as we are used to hearing them. I always leave church happier if I feel "I learned something new today. God isn't exactly what I thought Him to be. or What a jerk I am for thinking or doing X for so long...."
ReplyDeleteAs to the unity of believers, I love it. I came back to God as a young person in a Conservative Baptist Home Mission bible study at my godless university, that drew Christians, lapsed Christians ,and all kinds of atheists and others together into fellowship groups and Bible study. Interestingly , their main message was that we should NOT all become Baptists (join their tribe) but should go back to our own frozen or hateful or boring home churches and be salt and light....I remember it felt a bit like having warmed oneself at a fire in a mountain hiking cabin and having to go back into the rain and the cold and the wind along a treacherous path. But the idea was that the priesthood of all believers and that unity we HAD experienced was real even as we scattered...
Muslims believed also in being united, before fracturing into sects. As Christians are fractured now into denominations, and between those more evangelical, more sacramental, more good works oriented, more mystical, etc within the various denominations. Not to mention the peculiar American specialty (exported worldwide) with the cult of personality church where people basically worship some individual minister who rules as a usually benevolent despot...and unite around being part of that exclusive mini tribe of choice (and despise those outside).
I'm being a bit flip here, but I know that at one point when deeply involved in a wonderful evangelical church here, I found myself one day thinking snarkily about my former church and the denomination I was raised in, not with the legitimate criticisms one could make on polity, or theology, or preaching, or faithfulness to love thy neighbor, etc. But simply out of a "we have it here, and they don't...." It's a natural human temptation. In the same way, we have discussed in the past the harmless and not so harmless forms of tribalism everyone is raised with...
Having said all that, the people I have been closest to and learned from and admired are mostly fellow Christians of a more evangelical bent, most of whom grew up in completely different places, circumstances than my own. We literally have next to nothing in common except loving God in a certain way....which is analogous (don't be offended) to the way dog lovers in an anti-dog world have fellow feeling. When a relative with issues vanished some years ago, my fears about what could happen to them nearly overwhelmed me. But I could not talk to anyone about it in my supposed peer group. The people I turned to at work were not my everyday work friends or people like me, but the most fervent Xians there, who literally dropped everything and began praying. Relative was safely found...