WDJW

One of these days I am going to get myself a bracelet made with WDJW on. And before you ask, no, I haven’t spelled that wrong – if I wanted a “What Would Jesus Do”bracelet, I could just go and buy one. I wonder if anyone would notice the difference? And if they did, what would they think anyway? Probably that I must be a bit dyslexic, something of that ilk.

Never mind WWJD, I am more interested in WDJW: “What Did Jesus Write”. I don’t mean books. I know he never wrote a book, not that we know of anyway; anything he did write has long since bitten the dust. But speaking of dust, he did write on the floor, and that’s what I want to know. Just what did Jesus write on the ground that day? Whatever he wrote, it was pretty powerful stuff. John tells us the story:

Early the next morning Jesus went back to the Temple. All the people gathered around him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought in a woman who had been caught committing adultery, and they made her stand before them all. “Teacher”, they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. In our Law Moses commanded that such a woman must be stoned to death. Now, what do you say?”

They said this to trap Jesus, so that they could accuse him. But he bent over and wrote on the ground with his finger. As they stood there asking him questions, he straightened up and said to them, “Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her.” Then he bent over again and wrote on the ground. When they heard this, they all left, one by one, the older ones first. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there. He straightened up and said to her, “Where are they? Is there no one left to condemn you?” “No one, sir”, she answered. “Well, then”, Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go, but do not sin again.” (John 8:2-11, GNB)

Wow. What Did Jesus Write? I have some ideas, but just ideas. I won’t find out for sure till I get to ask him in person; I look forward to that, and have a few other questions lined up for that moment too.

Imagine the scene. They drag the woman in, pushing their way through the crowd to the front, interrupt Jesus in mid sermon – that’s another of my questions: “What were you talking about right at that moment?”, for I cannot imagine that this caught him unawares and suspect rather that he was already preparing the crowd for what was to follow. Maybe something along the lines of: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Anyway, back to the temple… They push the woman out into the arena, and deliver their carefully contrived trick question.

Trick questions. Jesus asked his fair share of those too. Try this one, also delivered in the temple: “John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?” That sent the chief priests and elders into a tail-spin. “If we answer this way… no, we can’t do that, but there again if we answer that way… no, no, no, no, no, that won’t do either. Best say we don’t know.”

Jesus could have found himself in the same mess. “Moses did say an adulteress should die, and I can’t really just go and contradict Moses. But then if I agree, I’ll deny the Father’s love and compassion. Oh, help…” What are you supposed to do you do when neither of the two available options is acceptable? Well, like Alexander and the Gordian knot, there was a much better way.

Apparently ignoring the question, Jesus bent over and started writing on the ground with his finger. I can’t think that he was just passing the time of day or practicing his calligraphy; he wanted the crowd to get something without being told up front. But he wasn’t on a beach with fresh wet sand to inscribe a message in or writing on a steamed up window; it was the temple courts, according to Josephus “laid with stones of all sorts” throughout. It’s not easy to write something that can be read on a cold stone floor like that – try it some time – though perhaps a little easier than the youth-group game where you have to spell out a word to your team by writing letters in the air with your rear end…

So What Did Jesus Write? My top guess is that he quoted Leviticus 20:10. Not most Christians’ favourite book of the Bible, but Jesus seemed to appreciate it. The verse would have steadily emerged, together with a running commentary no doubt, as the onlookers gradually deciphered letter upon letter:

“I… F… If, A… If a… M… A… N… If a man… C… O… M… M… I… T… S… If a man commits…

“If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife —with the wife of his neighbor—…”

Time for another barrage of questions: “Yes, that’s the one, that’s what Moses said. So, do we stone her? Any other suggestions on how to kill her? What are you waiting for? Lead the way teacher! Want us to get some stones for you?”

Jesus looked up from the floor, delivered his now infamous “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”, and then went back to writing:

“… both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death”. Let’s have that again in big letters, bold font, point size 160 please. “Both the adulterer and the adulteress.” Italics and underlined. “Both the adulterer… the adulterer… the adulterer… Both. Both. Both! BOTH!!!”

There was the woman, frightened and shamed, but where was the man? By definition it takes two to commit adultery, and one of them is a man. If she had been caught in the very act, she certainly wasn’t by herself. Where was the man? More to the point, why hadn’t he been dragged out with her to share her shame and intended punishment? What were her accusers playing at? Their well thought-out plot to trap Jesus suddenly didn’t look so well thought out and they found their own hypocrisy laid as bare as the anonymous woman’s sin for all to see.

The most surprising part of the account is still to come. In their dealings with Jesus, the temple authorities rarely seem to have been moved by conscience or an acute sense of right and wrong. Self-preservation and political astuteness were more the order of the day. But it seems that Jesus’ method wrought something deep. The older ones were the first to bow out, and one by one the rest followed suit. You see, Jesus didn’t just love that woman, and want to give her a chance to find forgiveness and life; he loved the men too, and his final words to her could just as well have been his words to them.

Jesus’ words live on, just as relevant today to all of us who have ever experienced that “aha” moment, the sudden realization of our own sin. When Jesus stoops to write on the hard stone of our lives and God’s perfect strategy brings us undeniably face to face with who we are, we do well to hear for ourselves: “I do not condemn you. Get on with life… but do not sin again.”

The Pentecost Plot

Today is the day of Pentecost, the date in the Christian calendar that celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on that first group of disciples who met together in prayer in the upper room. Pentecost speaks about the “birth” of the church and the stage-entrance of the third person of the Trinity into the world. Although He had been present with the disciples (Jn.14:17), as he had been with the saints of Israel (Ju.14:6; Ps.51:11), he now takes on the role of protagonist. He fills their lives to overflowing and the effects are seen in the evangelistic activity of the apostles in the power of the Spirit throughout the whole book of Acts.

In honour of that day, I want to look briefly at the events recorded in the first two chapters. What is the central emphasis which God wants to transmit to His church? Is it the necessity of a second, personal experience after conversion of baptism in the Holy Spirit? Is it the fact that power is received when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives? Is it the importance of witnessing, or the power of the Spirit to be witnesses? And where does “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth” fit in?

Whilst conscious of the vital need for an individual encounter with the person of the Holy Spirit for our well-being as believers and our effectiveness in personal witness, there is more than that on Luke’s mind. In Acts 1.8, he offers an “outline” for the development of his account of the growth of the early church, a foretaste of the unfolding of the story of how the gospel was preached throughout the Roman Empire. It serves as an “index” or “contents page” for the rest of the book. Luke shows us God’s desire for the message of salvation in Jesus not to be restricted to one people or one geographical area, but to reach all of humanity, to the furthest points on this earth, even touching the Samaritans, traditional enemies of its guardians at that time. Neither does it permit the disciples, a handful of Galileans, to bypass the capital of their nation, Jerusalem, or the surrounding area of Judea, despite feeling looked down upon and rejected by their inhabitants. Nathan’s question to Philip on hearing about Jesus for the first time: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (Jn.1:46) was applied by the Judeans equally to the whole region of Galilee. Personal agendas have no place in the kingdom of God.

This is why the field of operation of the disciples, once filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, begins in Jerusalem. In contradiction to what we hear and teach, Jerusalem was not the home of the disciples; that would have been Tiberias, Capernaum or Caesarea Philippi. With the probable exception of Judas Iscariot, Jesus’ disciples were all from Galilee and the majority of Jesus’ ministry took place in that region. After the resurrection he met with them there (Matt 28:7,10,16; Jn.21:1) and those who witnessed his ascension into heaven were Galileans (Acts 1:11). Wisely Jesus had begun his ministry with people from one ethnic group or sub-culture, training them in intense evangelistic activity around what really was their home territory, whilst at the same time preparing them for their future cross-cultural ministry. Jerusalem was not home for the disciples; rather, it was the first strategic point in the campaign to take their faith to the world. To speak today of “our Jerusalem” as if it were the city we live in is to ignore Jesus’ clear missionary intentions.

The book of Acts demonstrates careful selection in the data which has been included, and only relates that which is essential, exclusively what contributes to the central purpose, which is to demonstrate the growth of the church and its extension throughout the Roman Empire. Acts is not a history of the church; it is the history of the expansion of Christianity. It shows no interest in the numerical growth of established churches but rather hones in on the opening of new fields of action, the flow of the gospel into new cultural arenas.

So, Acts begins with the Pentecost “bomb” in Jerusalem. Who was affected by this explosion of divine power? The priests and inhabitants of the holy city? No! God chose the festival of Pentecost, a date on which Jerusalem would be packed wall to wall with pilgrims from all parts of the Mediterranean world, to start His church. He pours out his Spirit and the disciples begin to speak in other languages, as the Spirit enables them. Luke relates the effect of this event: “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. [...] each one heard them speaking in his own language. [...] how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?” (Acts 2:5-8).

12th century mosaic depicting Pentecost in S. Marcos Basilica, Venice

This would be enough, but no. Luke wants to go in for the kill: “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs – we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (2:9-11).

It’s quite a list. What detail! He makes specific mentions of each of these nations so that we can see that the gift of the Holy Spirit was for the benefit of the peoples of the world. The first impact of the gift of tongues was not for personal blessing, but to give testimony to the nations of the earth, a sign of God’s immense desire for every creature to hear the Gospel. The Holy Spirit comes to the people of God, who are blessed to be a blessing, and the peoples of the world are the intended recipients.

God is starting as he means to go on – please don’t lose the plot.

Blessed are the poor…

The day before yesterday I found out that my children live below the poverty line. And their parents too for that matter, but the news report focused on children. Let me qualify that before anyone gets too worried. They actually meant “relative poverty”, not “extreme poverty”, even though that’s not what was said. Simple “poverty” must make for better news.

A report published by UNICEF, based on figures released by the Spanish statistics agency, highlights the growing number of children in Spain who live in families whose income places them in a situation of risk; the number has grown by 10% in the last two years, with 2.2 million children, that is 26.2% of those under 18, now living in families whose income places them below the poverty line. Over half of these live in families that are classified as “extreme poverty”, placing Spain third in the list out of the 27 member states of the European Union; only Rumania and Bulgaria have worse figures.

The financial crisis is real, and is being felt by many, particularly those families with both adults out of work. Of this there is no doubt. It can be seen all over Spain. Many have suffered in the aftermath of the crazy house-price bubble and banking debacle – and it is far from over yet. But a quarter of kids living in poverty? Sometimes I wonder what planet we in the West think we are on.

Yes, back to statistics. Yippee… But the use (or misuse) of statistics lies behind so much of what we do today, we do need to understand more than the newspaper headlines. Just what is this all about.

The key is the phrase “relative poverty”. Relative to what? Certainly not relative to global income or per capita GDP. Around half the world lives below the internationally defined poverty line of $2 a day (why don’t you try it?), but that is not what is being talked about here. Relative poverty is relative to the average national household income. (In reality it is relative to household “consumer unit” income, but I will save you the details.) To live in relative poverty is to have less than 60% of this figure.

Now this is quite curious. It means that the richer a country gets, the higher the poverty line is set. People may be quite wealthy in absolute terms, but still fall below the poverty threshold. In fact, “poverty” actually becomes impossible to eradicate – in a free economy, that is; in a “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” planned economy, a whole different dynamic operates. In Spain, the percentage of “poor” changes very little year by year, hovering around the 20% mark; it is just the figure at which one becomes poor that changes. I am sure this is not what Jesus was referring to when he said, “You will always have the poor with you” (Mk.14:7), but it seems he was right!

[Another interesting detail – interesting for me at least, though please feel free to skip this paragraph if you do not feel the same way :-). It is alright to talk about “average household income”, but precisely which average – mean, mode or median? As you are aware, the results we want to show often determine which we choose to use... The poverty line used to be calculated at 50% of mean household income. Mean income, which is obtained by adding up everyone’s income and then dividing by the number of people, is perhaps the most natural to use. But it was felt that in an egalitarian society, to do this would be to give greater value to one than to another. So, the median is used instead. Essentially this means lining everyone up in a (virtual) long line and finding the middle point. The only problem with that is that median income is always lower than mean income. (Makes sense, if you think about it: there are lots of people who earn little, but not very many who earn loads.) That means there are fewer poor people, and that won’t do. So the figure was raised to 60% of median household income instead.]

Just how much is 60% of the current median household income? Well, at €7,533.30 per consumer unit, that amounts to €15,820 for a family with two children under 14, or in our case, €18,833.25 per year. In Spain, our family could have €1,500 a month, the equivalent of $15 a day per person, putting us in the top 15% in the world, and yet still find ourselves below the poverty line. (See where you fit in the global poverty stakes at globalrichlist.com.) Yes, I do declare, we are officially “poor”.

What does this mean? Well, as the term suggests it’s all relative. On the news report they highlighted the fact that “poor children” are unable to do everything their friends do, or own the same things. So no, our children do not engage in “retail therapy” in the same way that others do. They “only” have a Wii, no PlayStation or Xbox. We have not bought our kids an iPhone each, but they do both have smartphones with an internet contract and have saved up for their own iPods. Nor do we spend €100 on a pair of trainers, though they are free to do that from their clothes allowance if they prefer one pair of shoes to two pairs of jeans, three tops, a couple of t-shirts and last year’s model of designer shoes they can get from the outlet shops all for the same price.

The Gates Foundation

More than that, we have tried to point them in the direction of understanding global poverty, our huge relative wealth, and the responsibility we carry as Christians towards the poor. We might fret at not being able to buy another €11.99 piece of clothing this month, but maybe we should give more thought to the worker in the Phnom Penh garment factory who takes home a mere $60 a month, if that. The consequences of the crisis and speculation in the food stuff market may well have made our weekly shop dearer, but when food accounts for 50%, 70%, or even 90% of your expenditure, food price rises become critical. (Note that the figures in this chart are averages – if Kenyans spend an average of 45% of income on food, there are many who will spend much more than this. And Kenya is by no means the poorest of the poor.)

I do not doubt UNICEF’s sincerity in highlighting an alarming trend in the economic face of Spain or the reality of financial difficulty encountered by many. But this navel-gazing approach to poverty is not destined to help readdress the huge global imbalances that perpetuate poverty, nor bring the investment that is needed to continue agricultural innovation, build education and primary health care, alleviate malaria and AIDS or eradicate water-borne diseases, all killers of the most poor.

Yes, we are in a global financial crisis. Yes, the markets are in disarray. But in the West we have never had it so good. If it is true that I am poor, verily, verily, blessed are the poor.

Beat until stiff and stand in the fridge

Words do not carry immutable meaning as defined by an entry in a dictionary. Certainly, they bring core meaning with them, but words are moulded both by the words that accompany them and the stage on which they are placed. The whole is irremediably more than the sum of its parts.

This is true of every single piece of communication, the Bible included. Meaning must be deduced from the context in which communication is constructed and the way words combine together, as much as from what any one word itself may be said to “mean”. Context is everything in interpreting language.

In biblical interpretation, the literary context is one level that needs to be explored: genre of language, the paragraph as a unit of thought, the flow of the author’s argument, grammar and syntax, and the meaning of individual words as used by that writer, in the rest of Scripture, or in contemporary writings. In that sense, the Bible is literature, and behaves like any other piece of writing. We ignore that to our detriment.

Beyond the level of literary context, historical and cultural context provide the keys for correct understanding. A couple of examples I trust will help us when we – eventually! – get back to 1 Timothy.

Numbers 5:11-31 contains an example of what is known as “trial by ordeal”, a means of appealing to the supernatural for confirmation of guilt or innocence. Jealous husbands pay close attention. (Nothing here about husbands straying from the marital bed, but that’s another story…)

If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband [...] and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure – or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure – then he is to take his wife to the priest. […] After the priest has made the woman stand before the LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the [offerings] for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has slept with you [...] may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have [...] defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband [...] May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away.” He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering.

Outside its immediate historical context, this procedure is quite simply beyond comprehension, and may even strike us as barbaric and sexist. When considering a passage such as this, pretty much everyone can see the need to take the historical background into consideration. All Scripture has its own historical and cultural context, however, which conditions how a passage was written, even if on a surface level the text appears to be more immediately understandable. We cannot just assume that they thought as we think today. What would the text have meant to them, in their world, at their time, with their cultural norms?

One more. Beyond general historical-cultural context, much of the Bible was written with specific circumstances in mind, and nowhere is this more marked than in the epistles. Known as “occasional” documents, most were written to concrete people to address specific needs or questions; they were provoked by “occasions” of concern to the writers, most often situations of heresy or conflict that needed correction. It is rarely possible to unearth every detail of the circumstances behind a portion of an epistle – reading them can at times feel like listening to one side of a telephone conversation – but we must at least try. Let’s take a passage from 1 Corinthians:

Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him […] Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are. […] Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. […] From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none. […] So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better. (1 Corinthians 7:20-38)

Without telling us exactly what difficulties the Christian community of Corinth was facing, Paul does at least let us know that his instructions are not permanent but relate to the needs of the moment. Imagine the theological gymnastics needed if we were to attempt obedience to Paul’s words in all places and times… The epistles do not always reveal to us the circumstances that motivated the apostle to write, but again, those circumstances were nevertheless there, and influence how the text is to be read. To interpret without attempting to see the underlying situation is to invite misunderstanding; doing this with 1 Timothy 2 has had drastic consequences throughout church history.

Sound like hard work? Mmm… maybe it is, but that does not make it any the less necessary. In our interaction with Scripture we can get motivation for the “harder” stuff by the “easier” things. Some gems sit John-Three-Sixteen-like on the surface; others require a “search for wisdom as for buried treasure” attitude to find them. Collecting a few surface gems can give motivation to dig a little more deeply, but dig we must.

Because, as you no doubt already know, a text without a context is often said to be a mere pretext. I would go a little further than that: a text without a context becomes a con-text, a word with the authority of Scripture which can be used to say absolutely anything, in order to impose already decided meaning and manipulate those who listen to us. We owe it to God, to his Word and to his people to aim to do better than that.

So, respect the literary context. Find out as much as you can about the general historical and cultural background to a passage. And discover the immediate “occasion” that underlies it. Read the text with all that in mind, particularly if reading a cookery book. Otherwise “beat until stiff and stand in the fridge” might get you into more trouble than you bargained for.

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”

Back to 1 Timothy. Or maybe not just yet. Some further understanding of the communications process as a whole may help us to assimilate the sheer impossibility of a “literal” interpretation, whilst pointing us in the right direction to begin to grasp what the text may actually mean. Might help with the rest of the Bible too…

Communication never occurs in a vacuum. All communication involves  the construction of a message by a communicator for an intended recipient or audience within a particular context or situation – the process of codification. The recipient then decodifies the message to understand its content. If that communication is intercepted by a different, unintended recipient, in a different context, the original message will rarely be preserved.

I realise that in one sense all humanity is the intended recipient of God’s communication in Scripture. But rather than attempt to design a document that would always be relevant to all whilst speaking directly to none, God chose to work in and through human cultures, revealing and grounding eternal truth in the specifics of a particular people in one place and moment in time. The Bible is not the Qur’an, which is accepted by Muslims as an earthly replica of the eternal heavenly “mother book”, dictated to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. In a “Back-to-the-Future” style immortalization of seventh century Arabian society, the Qu’ran brings humanity immovable instructions for living, to be rigidly obeyed always, everywhere and by all, not interpreted or discussed. This the Bible does not do. Just as the Word became flesh in Jesus, fully human in one place and time, so God’s word has consistently found expression in and through human agents who, moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke to the world they inhabited, in terms familiar to their contemporaries. We are eavesdroppers on that conversation, intruders in a world not our own.

Recognizing this is fundamental to understanding any communication. Unless we are the intended recipients of a message delivered within our own context, we are liable to miss the point. Let’s face it, we experience enough miscommunication with people whose language and culture we share, even with those individuals we know inside-out. If everyday communication can be anything but straightforward, we should not be so surprised that understanding Scripture adequately presents challenges.

We will consider the place of “context” itself later – first I want to unpack the concept of shared knowledge which is fundamental to the communication process.

Communication takes place on the basis of the presumption of shared knowledge of a shared world – we assume that a person not only speaks our language and thus understands our words, but also that they understand them in the same way that we do. If I ask my kids, “Fancy a McDonalds?”, I not only assume that they know what a McDonalds is, but also that “fancy” does not, in this context, carry the same meaning as, “He fancies the new girl in year 11” or even “Well, fancy that!”. This shared knowledge enables me to make myself understood without having to say, “Would you like to go to a restaurant, part of an American food chain called McDonalds, that sells things like hamburgers and chips and fizzy, sugary drinks and me buy you something to eat and drink there?”.

(Astute readers will notice that even the long-winded version in fact also depends a good deal on shared knowledge. Without many common reference points, the ensuing conversation might sound a little like this:

“What’s a McDonalds?”

“A hamburger”

“What’s a hamburger?”

“Well, it’s something we eat, made of minced beef…”

“What’s beef?”

“Beef, it’s meat from a cow.”

“What’s a cow?”

“It’s a large animal…

“Like a pig?”

“No, bigger than a pig…”

“Like an elephant?”

“No, not as big as an elephant, more like a huge pig, but with horns…”

“What are horns?”

“Horns. Forget the horns, like a huge pig.”

“As big as a tiger?”

“Bigger!”

“Aren’t you afraid of it? And how do you catch it then?”

“Never mind about that, we just do. Then we take the meat, cook it and put it in a bread bun…”

“What’s bread?”

“Bread. Well, we make it with wheat flour…”

“What’s wheat?”

“It’s grain, seeds from a plant… Oh, so you got that bit.”

“Er, yes, of course. Carry on”

“OK, so we get the meat, and put it in the bread, with ketchup, no wait, ignore that, with other stuff…”

“What other stuff?”

“Oh, just stuff, whatever you want really.”

“Oh, OK.”

“And then eat it with chips and a Coke.”

“What’s a…?”

“Just shut up and eat!”

And so we could continue, though I imagine this is enough to illustrate the point.)

So, communication – both spoken and written – is constructed with the assumption of shared knowledge; without this, conversation would become quite simply tedious, endless detail being needed to clarify meaning. The process of enculturation, by which we become functioning members of our society, builds a body of shared knowledge into us which is then taken for granted in communication between members of that society. Sub-cultures also have their own particular “sub-sets” of shared knowledge that facilitate communication between its members whilst simultaneously setting them apart them from outsiders. Where this shared knowledge is absent, for example between people of different cultures, the potential for misunderstanding is endless, amplified by any increase in cultural distance.

So far, so good. Now let’s see what this has to do with the Bible.

As we have seen, Scripture is in the first instance a record of communication between people in one specific time and place. Its message was for them, not for us, people bound together by the same shared knowledge. There are occasional glimpses that the authors were aware of the difficulty that potential readers who did not share their own background may have encountered. In narrating Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan women, for example, John adds a sentence to explain her surprise that Jesus, a Jewish man, would address her, a Samaritan (Jn.4:9). Mark was probably thinking of Roman Gentiles when trying to shed some light on the Pharisees’ ceremonial washings (Mk.7:3-4), an obscure subject for the unenlightened. But most of the time, like any other communicator, they were unaware of the invisible boundaries of the world within which they lived – and wrote.

Thankfully, the task of linguistic translation has been done for us and we can read Scripture in our own languages. But comprehension of the words themselves does not in and of itself ensure understanding of meaning. Designed with its immediate audience in mind, and constructed using the shared knowledge that connected them with their surroundings, we will only hear Scripture’s heart to the degree that we are able to enter that world and become party to what they knew. And that applies to 1 Timothy too.

(This post is a follow-on from the previous one. Title quote attributed to Robert McCloskey.)

“The audience are literally electrified and glued to their seats”

Having just watched A.N. Jacobs’ TED talk on “The Year of Living Biblically”, in which he tried to live out – literally – every one of the Bible’s commands, I thought it a good moment to fire off a couple of thoughts on biblical interpretation. You see, a couple of Sundays ago we hit 1 Timothy 2 in our small group Bible study… certainly got people talking — thankfully with respect and much grace, albeit not always with a whole lot of understanding — and it’s been going round in my head since then.

Just how are we supposed to view this text?

Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1Timothy 2:8-15)

Whilst some called for a “literal” interpretation, we soon got into deep water with that one. It went a bit like this:

What is modesty, decency and propriety in dress sense? In India it is perfectly acceptable for a woman to show her midriff under a sari, but in Spain? If topless is OK for Kalahari Bushman women, why is it frowned upon for good Christians at the beach? Is decency, then, in fact a cultural construct with no absolutes at all? And if so, how do we assign absolute value to anything in Scripture? Who decides what is cultural and what is not, what is to be taken “literally” and what needs cultural unpacking?

But back to Paul’s list for now. When it comes to hairstyles, just how elaborate is elaborate? Curlers OK? What about highlights? Perms? Gel must be acceptable, though we have no agreement on how much hairspray we can use before reckoning that it really must be classed as elaborate if it needs that much to keep it in place…

No gold? What, none at all? What about my wedding ring, that’s hardly bling is it? And pearls — are cultured pearls OK? Imitation pearls? What if you can’t tell, is it OK to ask someone if their string of pearls is genuine? We’d better stick to silver, emeralds and rubies then, at least they are not banned! We could even start a new line in 1 Timothy 2 compliant luxury jewelry…

Back to clothes. At what price does a shirt become expensive? What if I got a $129.99 pair of Levis in a sale for $14.99, or last year’s model as a hand-me-down from my must-have-the-latest-fashion more-money-than-sense neighbours, do they still count as “expensive clothes”? Anyway, isn’t price a relative concept? What is expensive in Bangladesh might be cheap in Brick Lane. And if that is relative and cultural, maybe the whole text is. Where does that leave us? Whatever, one thing is clear if we are after literal interpretations – there is no mention of make-up, so don’t worry ladies, at least you can keep the lipstick, foundation and “I’m worth it” mascara.

And that’s all before we get to the thornier issue of women teaching and holding authority, or even speaking at all. “If they could just keep quiet, that would save us all a lot of headaches, ha ha”. LOL… not; jokes from stereotypes don’t help achieve consensus in understanding. Maybe we should allow women to take on roles where they don’t have to be telling men what to do? That does away with leading worship then — “Please stand to sing the next hymn…” But there again, the Greek word used — αὐθεντεῖν, authentein — seems to mean “to usurp authority” more than just to hold authority. Maybe a woman can do anything as long as a man has told her she can. Or maybe it’s just about wives and husbands, not all women and all men; as long as her husband is happy, it’s OK. Not sure where that leaves single women though. Maybe they are exempt and can do what they like. Or maybe they are the ones that should just keep quiet…

Whatever, let’s not forget that all this isn’t Paul’s big idea — he draws it from Scripture. The biblical underpinnings of our theology are vital. So, yes, Adam was formed first. But if creative order is that important, wasn’t the donkey formed before Adam? And for that matter, even if Eve was the first to take a bite out of the proverbial apple, Paul — who elsewhere lays the blame fairly and squarely with Adam — does appear overly harsh in suggesting that all women share her undiscerning taste in fruit peddlers.

What’s all this about Eve anyway? Well, maybe Paul really does mean that all women are gullible and easily deceived, so it’s best not to let them teach. It’s not all bad news, though. We are only going to ban women from teaching men; they can still teach heresy to our children in Sunday school if they like. And it only applies to church too — teaching, even adult literacy, is still an ideal career for the good Christian woman wanting to make a positive impact on her society.

Then, just when we think we might be making some progress against a strong headwind, we hit verse 15 — not very good news for the single ladies in our midst. The theological overtones of “saved” are strong and resist any other translation — but am I really to think that salvation for men is by faith, and for women, by having kids? Could it not be instead that Paul means that women will be kept safe through childbirth? Given the number that die in giving life to another, that would hardly seem likely. Unless, that is, we are going to accuse those that do die of “lack of faith” (plus, in this case, love and holiness with propriety), the universal get-out clause for every case of non-recovery at the hands of a faith-healer. The dead don’t argue, so perhaps we will just have to take their word for it… Whatever, this verse cannot be separated from the rest; we cannot sanction a “literal” interpretation of verse 12 unless ready to to the same with verse 15. The two form part of one unified thought in Paul”s mind and must be understood together. The necessary flight from dogmatism that accompanies a humble reading of verse 15 is not a bolt-on extra to categorical statements about the role of women in church but has to characterize our reading of the whole passage.

So much for a “literal interpretation”.

In reality, a “literal interpretation” of Scripture is as unreal as an unbiased opinion. An opinion, of necessity, carries the individual’s bias. Likewise, as soon as we use the word “interpretation”, we leave “literal” behind. Whilst we may be deceived by some “easier” texts into thinking that we take Scripture literally, we do not. Everything we read is understood through the interpretive filter that connects us with the world around us. So the question is not whether we interpret Scripture or take it literally, but whether we interpret it well.

What does that mean for 1 Timothy 2? That will have to wait for another day.

PS. For those mystified by the title, the BBC television commentator Ted Lowe made that statement during a particularly exciting (!) snooker match. His other classic comment was from the 1970s, aiming to help viewers who were not privileged to own one of the new colour televisions: “Steve is going for the pink ball – and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green.”

On Ilkley Moor bar t’hat…

Yesterday morning Lynn and I participated in the first Carrera del Donante (“Donors’ Race”) in Zafra. Organized by the local organizations of blood and organ donors together, it aimed to raise their profile and convince people to sign up. (Lynn came third in her category, way to go! I ran with her – all I lacked was the “personal trainer” t-shirt – so where I came in my category doesn’t count…)

After several years as a blood donor here I was blocked from any further donation a decade ago after they found out that I had lived for more than a year in the UK between 1980 and 1989, the height of mad cow disease time. The same happened on a beach in France once when I tried to give blood when we were on holiday there… Makes one wonder about blood transfusions in the UK, but that’s another story.

Anyway… I was surprised to find out yesterday that, although they still don’t want my blood, they will have my organs. A proverbial pound of flesh comes to mind. But whatever, that is their problem, not mine; I won’t be around to show due remorse if some poor organ recipient were to develop Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease as a result. So, I duly signed up, took my free pen (what an incentive! – look closely at the photo and you might even spot it) and ran the race. I have no plans to be donating organs in the near future, but hey, if I were to suffer a deadly accident that left most of my body intact, I would prefer to give life to others through my death than have the remaining good bits gradually rot in a Spanish cemetery niche, or more likely be turned to ashes and strewn in creation somewhere. Never would 2 Corinthians 4:12 be truer!

So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

In talking to other Christians here, though, I am surprised at how many are aghast at the thought of being an organ donor. It’s not so much the concept itself (as if we are tempting fate by carrying a donor card, being more likely to bring an accident on ourselves than if we don’t); rather, it seems to be rooted in theological qualms over resurrection. I mean, if your body is distributed between a number of individuals around the country, what will happen at the resurrection? In a variation of the Sadducees’ “Whose wife will she be” question, who will get my kidneys?!

Under this scheme, cremation –  or indeed anything other than burial –  is a “non-Christian” way of disposing of a corpse. Often supported by rapid overviews of Scripture and a recital of Jewish and traditional Christian practices, I have been offered studies that show that burial is the only option for the faithful Christian. Is it? Does it matter?

Well, for many in the secularized West, it really doesn’t matter. In our thoroughly materialistic and dichotomistic thinking, body is body and soul is soul, and what happens to one certainly will not affect what happens to the other. (What about spirit, you ask? Are we not a tripartite being? That, I’m afraid, will have to wait for another day…) Do what you like with your body, so it is said – once it’s dead, I mean; let’s not revisit the errors of the Corinthian believers – it certainly will not affect how God deals with you at the resurrection.

For others, however, what we do with our dead is hugely important. I learned that lesson keenly in Kenya, when dancing at a memorial service round the grave of one of the founders of the Holy Spirit Church of East Africa. I was not used to seeing people buried in their children’s garden, and asked if that was normal. So far, so good. The problems started when my turn came to answer the question of what we usually do with our dead. Burying them round – or even in – the church building was deemed most strange, though not met with the same horror as the idea of burning them and keeping the ashes in a jar on the mantlepiece. Never, ever say that in Africa, unless you want to be seen as the perpetrator of some very strong magic indeed…

Burial certainly was the norm in Israel, and as such references in Scripture are common. Burial is essentially taken for granted, though no theological weight is attached to this; it is just what you do. Amongst other clues to Diaspora Israelite practices (look for the bit about the fish liver and the demon, if you are interested…), the deuterocanonical book of Tobit shows how the hero of the same name risked his life to bury the dead amongst his people killed by Sennacherib:

Whenever I saw that the dead body of one of my people had been thrown outside the city wall, I gave it a decent burial.

But how does Jewish practice become normative for us? Are we required to follow such customs? And if so, would this apply to other customs too?

Nowhere in Scripture are we told that burial is the only “right” way of dealing with dead bodies. Nowhere are other means condemned. Theologically, there is also no reason to believe that resurrection needs the original body to be intact. Whether eaten by worms and bacteria on land or consumed by fish in the sea, the organic matter of a body eventually rejoins creation. In the end, all flesh returns to the dust from which it was created; some means, such as cremation, simply accelerate the process. And ultimately, as Peter tells us, whether when the sun turns supernova and expands to beyond the orbit of Mars or before, the whole lot will “be destroyed by fire” (2 Peter 3:7). To suggest that God is unable to provide resurrection bodies for those who were not placed whole into the earth is simply short-sighted.

So, what should we do with our dead? Once again we find ourselves at that subtle place of the meeting of faith and culture. In some places the ground is frozen too hard to dig graves. Others do not have enough wood to burn bodies. Some do not wish to contaminate the ground with death and prefer to feed the vultures. Burial at sea, joining those already in “Davy Jones’ locker”, is most natural for some maritime peoples. A funeral is a communal rite of passage that marks transition for those that are left; it does not determine the eternal future of the one who has departed. A burial site may serve to perpetuate the memory of the person in the community, but there are plenty of other ways of achieving the same aim that work in different societies around the world. As Christ enters a culture, the hope that we have in him can be conveyed alongside all of these culturally appropriate means of celebrating a person’s life and remembering them in their death.

So yes, please do sign up to become an organ donor. It won’t kill you, but if something else does, you will make someone else’s life a whole lot better.

PS. For those not familiar with Ilkley Moor (where the ducks fly backwards / play football / wear trousers), please do visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Ilkla_Moor_Baht_’at to understand what otherwise must seem a very peculiar title for this post :-)




“You can observe a lot by just watching” (Yogi Berra)

Last week I was back in Llanelli, South Wales, but this time only via a webcam from home in Spain, teaching a short course on “Tools for Anthropological Research” to the fantastic trainees on the World Horizons Equipping for Service programme. Another reason for a gap in blogs… (What a bunch of willing guinea pigs… it was the first time I had taught the course, and they all did just great.)

“Tools for Anthropological Research”… sounds mighty fancy, but it is about simply learning to observe people and their culture, to see what is really there but remains hidden behind our own assumptions, to view the world in the way they do. It’s about having practical means that enable us to discover what is important for them, not for us, tools to help us go beyond the “wow, this culture is really different” to understanding what makes it different and take the first steps in our own adaptation to those differences. Direct involvement in and observation of the culture itself, interviews with cultural informants and learning from others’ research form the backbone of this methodology.

Without a practical and systematic approach, cultural learning becomes a bit hit and miss, not to mention a minefield of potentially awkward moments waiting to ambush us when we least expect it. However, even if the carrot of better understanding and integration is attractive, it can also seem like a whole lot of hard work. Why even bother? Can’t we “just preach the gospel” without all this cultural adaptation stuff? Get in there, give ‘em the gospel, and be done with it!

¡Ojalá!, as we say here (“I would that it were so”). But no. Just as the gospel cannot be separated from the language used to communicate our message, in the same way the cultural world in which communication happens becomes part of the message itself. And if we do not understand how our intended audience see the world, we have no hope of knowing how they will understand us, much less being in a place to construct a message in such a way as to make sense for them and which responds to their needs and concerns. There are no short cuts to effective cross-cultural communication, which is perhaps the greatest reason why so many have yet to really hear the gospel in a way they can understand and respond to.

Learning to observe is not as easy as it might at first sight appear. What we take for granted from our own cultural milieu can blind us to what is there — or is absent — in another. More obvious behaviour may stand out to us, but we can remain ignorant of the motivation behind actions as well as failing to see beyond these superficial aspects. And what we give importance to in the way we have been taught to relate to the world around us can prevent us from seeing what they prioritize. Although totally subconscious, the process we were subjected to in becoming compliant members of our own culture was extremely effective; we enter another’s world only with a good measure of dedication and focus.

The book of Proverbs (24:32 NIV) says something similar:

I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw

Or as the NLT puts it:

Then, as I looked and thought about it, I learned this lesson

Learning starts with seeing — I use this in the wider sense, involving all of our senses, not just physical sight — and seeing is the product of conscious looking, of patient and deliberate observation. Then comes thinking through, applying our mind and all the abilities that God has given us to understanding what we have seen. Learning finishes with the practical application to our own lives, taking on board what we have learned and allowing the implications to affect the way we relate to those around us and communicate.

This process applies to all of culture, including religion. In building bridges for the gospel we must start from both sides, from where the hearers are too, not just from the perspective of our own understanding of the gospel. A people’s religious views provide much needed context for understanding how to transmit concepts that will inevitably be seen by our hearers as belonging to the realm of religion.

Now the concept of “religion” is much wider than the supernatural and whether people believe in God or not, or how that belief, where it exists, is expressed. “Religion” connects our day-to-day experience to a wider cosmic framework; it relates to a person’s basic understanding of how the universe fits together and our place in it, a position that is the result of deeply held beliefs, not logical deduction. The supernatural may or may not come in to it, and a belief system such as “New Atheism” certainly fits within anthropology’s understanding of religion.

Engraved plaque containing NT text of the apostle Paul's sermon, at the Areopagus, Athens. (Wikipedia)

In his mission to the Gentiles, Paul engaged with unfamiliar religious scenes. During his stay in Athens, learning through observation and enquiry laid the foundation for debate with local philosophers:

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. (Acts 17:23, TNIV)

His careful observation (ἀναθεωρέω, anatheoreo, meaning “to consider attentively, to look closely or repeatedly”) of the Athenians’ religious scene combined with his Greek education to give him the tools he needed to interact with those present in the Areopagus. Understanding of contemporary philosophical currents and familiarity with religious themes found in Greek poetry helped him bring a relevant message and bridge the gap to his proclamation of Jesus and the resurrection. Whilst our ability to participate will always be limited, cultural learning through close observation of other religious practices is a necessary part of the learning that we need for effective cross-cultural communication.

And finally, please do not think that this belongs solely to the realm of “overseas missions”. If the Church in the West is to engage effectively with the wider world it must invest time and effort to understand its culture, a culture which is now foreign to that of most of our churches; evangelical preaching is not destined to unlock the hearts of the majority in the West today. Look. Watch. Observe. Interact. Think. Understand. And adapt accordingly.

Unless the Lord builds the house…

Over Easter, we had the privilege of receiving a team of eight from our home church, Cottage Lane Mission – thanks guys :-), fantastic job! – to help us do some work on our house. Hence the gap in blogs – just too busy between paint and cement to put virtual pen to paper, I’m afraid. Our house is a hundred year or so old Spanish town house, crumbling a little at the edges, in sore need of a little TLC – which it got over ten days of intense work on all fronts.

The at times frenetic work brought at some point the inevitable jocular reference to the first verse of Psalm 127: “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labour in vain.” I am not quite sure what this meant in the context of work on our house, though suspect it is probably some kind of get-out clause – if everything falls down when they have gone, we should blame God, not them! But it did make me think.

Let’s turn that text round a bit. (Yes, I know that reversing syllogisms can produce some interesting fallacies, but bear with me on this one for a moment – this verse is not a syllogism, nor is this a class in Aristotelian rhetoric for that matter…) “Even if the Lord does want to build the house, unless its builders labour, it will all be in vain.” Just as intense human effort divorced of God’s blessing is destined to failure, so also is God’s desire without people prepared to work hard to bring things about. God’s work would appear to always be the product of toil – yes, the Hebrew word ‘amal is that strong – on the part of people who labour under the blessing of God.

Builders labour. Houses simply don’t get built without hard work.

So too God’s house. To believe anything else is to live in a world of magic wands and fairy godmothers, of “with one bound, Jack was free” theology. Deus ex machina finales work well for Rambo films, but belong to the world of fiction; the drama of real life is not the work of Hollywood script writers.

Let’s start with the building of faith in our own lives. Paul is quite clear:

“For we are God’s fellow-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no-one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames” (1 Corinthians 3:9-15).

The foundation of the grace we have received in Christ is in place – what is in question is what and how we build on that. Spiritual disciplines are just that – disciplines – not leisure breaks. Wisdom does not float down from heaven, it is searched for like a buried treasure. We get to know Scripture by engaging directly with the Bible, not merely listening to others’ sermons (though that is a start!); there are no short-cuts to reading, studying, meditating. Sin is resisted, not magicked away. Christian fellowship happens as we forgive and put up with other sinners who God asks us to love as he himself loved us. A mature Christian life does not “just happen”; it is the fruit of a labour of love.

Beyond our individual faith, Christian community is also not built without its own measure of toil. Paul tells the new Ephesian believers that they are:

“built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (2:20-22).

Built together – to which Peter adds, “as living stones” (1Peter 2:5). I have often observed that it is much easier to build with dead bricks than living stones. Dead bricks fit all neatly together, and stay put. A splodge of cement, a couple of taps with the trowel handle, and done, onto the next brick. Living stones are different. With an infinite variety of shapes and sizes it takes a good dose of creativity to fit them together well. But turn your back to get another one and on returning to the building-in-progress, they have moved. Sigh…

Starting, building, developing churches is hard work. Terribly rewarding, it is true, but extremely hard work nonetheless. From its inception in evangelism through the discipleship process to the formation of mature local fellowships, church is created by patient and dedicated toil. One of the most common New Testament terms used in this respect, kopiao and its cognates, refers to feeling fatigued, and by implication, the hard work that leaves us in that state. Whatever our romantic ideals about Christian ministry, let there be no doubt about it – wherever you see healthy church, you can be sure that someone or someones have sweated a great deal over it.

Even in this, however, the complicity with God as “arch-builder” stands. Speaking of his ministry to see Christ made known amongst the Gentiles, Paul confesses: “To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). We labour, we struggle, but the energy which keeps us going – and the work with us – comes from above. We are never unfeeling robotic channels of divine power. We still labour, pushing our frail humanity forward, of necessity using all the time, energy and abilities that we have at our disposal, at times wearing ourselves thin in the process. But somehow, like the burning bush which “though on fire… did not burn up”, grace keeps us going.

Jesus will build his church, and all that hell can come up with cannot prevent that. The Lord will build the house, the Lord is building the house. Labourer, in your fatigue, know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.

The Word became flesh… and spoke Aramaic

“The Word became flesh”, wrote the apostle John, to which Scottish missiologist Andrew Walls added, “and spoke Aramaic, probably with a Galilean accent”. Profound insights lie in this simple comment.

I have just finished two weeks teaching a introductory course on linguistics and language learning skills, part of the World Horizons Equipping for Service programme. I find the whole subject of language fascinating, though I am not convinced that quite all the students shared my fascination! We delved into phonetics, morphology, semantics and pragmatics among other aspects of learning just how language works. We unpacked various language learning methodologies and saw how to take responsibility for our own learning, rather than merely rely on the effectiveness of available language schools. 10 minutes of German a day gave a taste of monolingual learning in context, and students got to try it all out with forays into other language communities around Llanelli. (And yes, simply learning to pronounce Welsh place names was a challenge for most!)

From my perspective, however, whatever the value of the skills and practical understanding gained, language learning for cross-cultural ministry can never consist in the mechanistic application of knowledge in order to acquire competence in the target language. So much more is involved.

Firstly, we must understand that language is a means, not an end. Language serves as the bridge that allows us to connect with others and bring that which God has placed within us to them. Excellence in language may indeed be a key to successfully engaging in cross-cultural ministry — and one of the most important ones –, but it is not our final goal.

Acknowledging this places language in a right perspective, but does not reduce its importance. For whilst not our ultimate aim, language is a necessary means. Language learning is not an optional extra for the cross-cultural worker. As a singular aspect of culture, language becomes the bottleneck through which our knowledge is transmitted. In the end, all ministry must pass through the filter that language capacity places on our ability to impact a community. “The Word… spoke.” The Word became human, we saw him and touched him, God revealed in human form. But the Word did not become silent; we also heard him. Works and words, word and deed. Works devoid of words are as sterile as word without works. Faith comes from hearing, not seeing, even if seeing may make us more willing to listen.

Secondly, language is a means of social interaction, not an academic pursuit. For too long language has figured in our minds as a subject for classroom study. It is not. We do not learn to communicate in another language the same way we learn mathematics or history. Certainly, we may learn something about language that way, and can no doubt commit third conjugation verb tables to memory in the same way as the periodic table of chemical elements. But that is no measure of competence. “The Word… spoke Aramaic.” Aramaic, the language of the people, learned on the streets, in homes, in daily work and life, the heart language of the people he lived amongst. Not Hebrew, the language of religious discussion, taught in school and synagogue, a tool for the preservation of the self-serving superiority of the religious powers-that-be. (In saying that, I have no doubt that Jesus also spoke decent Hebrew, probably both standard and late biblical varieties, not to mention Talmudic Aramaic and adequate Koiné Greek too. But that is another story.)

Jesus learned his language with the people he was called to, and used their oral communication forms to transmit his teaching. Language learning must be rooted in the community. By all means let us use every single means at our disposal to aid our learning — language school, grammar books, interactive electronic methods — but these must never be divorced from involvement with the language community. Study language, but use it too. Do your homework, but then get out of the safety of home and practice what you have learned with real people. Allow them to teach you and coach you in how the language you are learning really sounds. Laugh with them at your mistakes and take their correction to heart. Never let “language learning” separate you from people. Community must become your real language classroom.

Finally, all of this will only be achieved in the context of a commitment to incarnational ministry. The Word did indeed become flesh, take on humanity. God’s solution for human need could not be dispensed at arm’s length. God came to us. He experienced our fragility. He worked from the inside to point us in the direction of true life and freedom. Radical identification with ordinary Galilean citizens provided the backdrop for his learning and subsequent ministry. Becoming preceded speaking.

Jesus was thoroughly embedded in the community, genuinely “one of us”, so much so that it came as a bit of a shock to everyone when he started to say who he really was. (I often wonder what it must have been like to have God incarnate as your next-door-neighbour for thirty years and not notice.) It was sharing in the life of the people that gave him the resources to communicate God’s good news so effectively. For Jesus did not take second-hand material, theological pass-me-downs from a bygone age or a foreign mindset. He drew deeply on local idiom and custom to create an effective context for communication and then delivered that message first-hand, a familiar voice from within, not the strained tones of an uncomfortable outsider.

We will never communicate effectively using others’ words or modes. “Gospel messages” designed in 20th century Western environments are unlikely to cut much ice in 21st century south Asia, even if translated perfectly into the local language. And when delivered by someone identified by all as “not one of us”, or worse still, “not even trying to be one of us”, few will give us the time of day, much less make the effort to understand — not unless there are significant financial or other advantages to be gained from associating with the outsiders, that is, and that is never the best way to build genuine indigenous Christian community.

Language is a fundamental part of our identity; it marks who we are. As such, effective language learning is a key step in incarnational ministry. The perceived “short-cut” of learning just enough to get by and say what we want to can severely hamper our long-term chances of success. Quite simply, it is not worth the risk. If you are considering cross-cultural ministry, commit to excellence in language learning. Root yourself deeply into the community in order to do this. And learn to live out your life and service in that context. Allow the Word to become flesh through you, in their language, and — why not? — even with a strong local accent. You will be in good company.

(If you are interested in materials on language learning, access my webpage of phonetics resources at www.phonetics.co.nr or contact me for materials from the recent course.)