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It was my first Sunday in Moldova. My first Sunday in a different country, a different culture. Everything was new and exciting, even figuring out how to use the bathroom (though, perhaps exciting is not the right word here.) My partner and had arrived a week previous at the Home of the Good Shepherd, a children’s home near the Romanian border to spend the next two months in ministry to the kids, the family and community. After getting dressed for church in a pink and brown sleeveless dress, I asked one of the girls, Ana, if the dress was ok. She looked at me like I had snakes crawling out of my ears. You always cover your shoulders when you go to church.
According to the experience of Janice Lemke and her experience in Ukraine, many churches in the Soviet Union had limited access to Bibles. So, as their pastors attempted to lead in the truth, they often clung to the traditions they knew to be true, when there were no Bibles available. She said that in many of the churches she served in, this became an issue as they tried to reach nonbelievers in the community, yet many of the women found they were rejected because of wearing make up or nail polish.
It’s easy see issues in other cultures, yet, is it not also true we have things we don’t realize we’re doing that hinder the Gospel? How do we break away from this?
Randy Gariss, pastor of College Heights Christian Church, Joplin, Missouri, proposed the idea that we, as the American church, can not exist solely by ourselves. We were not meant to. We cannot simply judge ourselves by ourselves. If we do, we become blind guides, unable to see our own short comings and unable to lead in the light of truth.
We see this very issue multiple times in the Biblical text. When David committed adultery and murder with an unrepentant heart (2 Samuel 12), it was not until Nathan confronted him with a story outside himself, that he was convicted of the truth. Where David did not recognize his own sin, he felt very strongly about a simple, fictional story. There is something revealing in seeing ourselves with a different set of eyes.
God worked in the same way in Acts. In chapter 6 we see a somewhat self-contained community. There were major issues between the Hebrew Jews and the Greek Jews, even in the Christian community. The Hebrew Jews saw themselves as “true blue Jew through and through,” and thought of the Greeks as somehow less. Specifically here, there were issues with distributing food to the Jewish and Hellenistic Christian widows. Shortly later, this tension climaxes with the murder of Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew. While both he and Peter were preaching the same message, Peter was viewed as a “true Jew.” Stephen was not, and so he was stoned.
A while later, Barnabas goes to Antioch, where we see Christians from not only a Jewish background, but Greek as well. This community had input from multiple cultures, histories and frames of reference. It was here that Barnabas found “evidence of the grace of God.” The Jewish Christians had a view outside themselves. The Holy Spirit was working powerfully here, His hand was with them; they had a more balanced view, a more thorough and honest look at themselves.
Just as God used Nathan, He used the Gentile Christians. We cannot think that we are beyond this pattern. If we only ever see God through North American eyes, we see Jesus in only a limited, tainted view. My intention is not to say that they have it all together or are better than us; they need us just as much as we need them. I think that is the point.: we need each other.
It is a very dangerous thing if we are influenced solely by people who are like us – who speak the same language, drink the same kind of coffee, and eat the same food. Whether or not we realize it, racism and elitism can slowly creep in, unnoticed and undetected. We must also recognize the very foundations of our faith was laid by those very different from us: the Disciples were Middle Eastern, Luther was German and Augustine was African. Without them there would be no us.
When we also deprive ourselves of a broader spectrum of faith, and “when a church loses sight of the global and even ethnic voices in the conversation, our faith and practice is limited,” (Gregg). We need to be challenged in forgiveness by southern Sudanese brothers, who are willing to go to the north and share the message of hope with the people who hacked their families to death with machetes. We need to hear of the perseverance of sisters who endured for decades under the Iron Curtain. We need to watch in awe of the hope of children of Haiti, with nothing into the world to their name, sing and praise the God who loves them. In the grand scope of things, we know so little. Perhaps we were only meant to. Perhaps that is why we need each other.
-Kelly (kelly@commongroundva.com)
Check out “Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible” By Priscilla Pope-Levison and John R. Levison
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