Black nor White
We all have to admit, if we are honest about it, that culture has heavily influenced our lives, especially in our choices of things like the church we are going to, the friends we make and the clothes we wear.
The crucial question in our time is
“how much authority is culture to have in my life?”
It is a misnomer to call someone a
White Christian and someone else a Black Christian. It is impossible
terminology.
Today many people cannot relate to one
because you are of one culture, and sometimes cannot relate to another because
they are of another culture.
Jesus Christ however found something
to which both cultures could relate!
Jesus himself gives us the answer to
this vital question. The problem is beautifully cleared up in John 4.
The Pharisees realised that Jesus was
baptising more converts than John the Baptist and that meant He was going to
cause more trouble than John. They had to do something about this man Jesus
Christ. But Jesus knew what was going on, so He decided to return to Galilee.
But then something startling happened.
John writes that Jesus Christ had to pass through Samaria. If you understand
Jewish culture, you will realise that Jesus Christ did not have to pass through
Samaria at all. No Jew had to pass through Samaria.
It is so that travellers going from
Jerusalem to Galilee went through Samaria, but definitely not if they were
Jews. They would not touch “Samaritan dogs”.
They would go around Samaria and
through Transjordan, through Perea, and then to Galilee.
But Jesus had to go through Samaria.
He had to fulfil a spiritual need there. Herein lies the first lesson: Our
cultural differences must always be subservient to other people’s spiritual
needs.
It was as if Jesus reasoned, “Jews, I don’t
mind being Jewish, but there is a woman in Samaria who needs my personal
help. There is a woman who at noon will come to a well with a bucket of water,
but what she really needs, is water for her soul.”
So, without further argument or
hesitation, Jesus went to Samaria.
Afterall, he was only doing the will of His Father.
In John 4:6 Jesus gets to Jacob’s
well. He could have tried to meet that woman on her way to the well, or on her
way back home. But He chose the well because He needed common ground to relate
to her. She would not have found it too strange finding Him at the well, for He
could also have wanted water.
The Samaritans and the Jews could not
stand each other – but they both loved Jacob for Jacob was the father of both
the Jews and the Samaritans. Jesus made a point not to stop at cultural
differences – He looked for common ground.
Today we find that people are having
great difficulty relating to one another because of their different
backgrounds. Jesus Christ however found something to which both cultures could
relate.
When your culture interferes with God,
your culture has to go. Culture is valid until it gives out wrong information
about God.
Notice how Jesus begins this important
and delicate conversation. He begins where she is. She was occupied with
drawing water, so that is where He begins. He did not keep to His cultural
background, asking as if over a fence “are you saved?” he might have scared the
woman to death then.
Jesus Christ humbled himself before
this woman (not belittled, but humbled). To ask a favour of someone else is to
humble oneself, and this was especially true when a male Jew asked a female
Samaritan for help. This is master-psychology!
Such an action immediately removed her
suspicions. Notice also that He did not change the subject abruptly. He was on
the same subject of “water” when He said: “if you knew the gift of God … He
would have given you living water.”
In John 4:9 the Samaritan woman said
to him: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a
drink?”
But how on earth did this woman know
that this man was a Jew? Maybe He looked like one. Or else His clothes or His
dialect or hairstyle gave Him away.
Jesus never told her that He was a Jew.
What does this mean? Purely that Jesus
did not give up His culture when passing through Samaria.
But what is also significant, is that
he did not allow culture to stop Him from meeting a spiritual need!
The woman was surprised at this Jew
wanting to drink from the same cup with her, whilst Samaritans and Jews don’t
even drink water from the same well.
But Jesus cared so much for her, that
He was willing to drink from the same cup. He would not let culture stand in
His way. He knew for a fact that He would never get to her sin problem unless
He first communicated to her cross-culturally!
So firstly, Jesus made sure that
culture did not stand in His way, but secondly, He also made sure that culture
did not stand in the way of spiritual Truth!
How do we know this? Because Jesus
then hits right at the target. He says that she must go and call her husband.
He made her understood He wants to make this a family affair.
When Jesus said to her to call her
husband, it was a conviction of sin. She must have thought to herself that
Jesus has stopped preaching and gone to meddling in her private affairs. So she
tried to side-track Him by saying:
“Sir, I perceive that your are a prophet.”
But Jesus was not talking about
anybody being a prophet.
Then she said that her culture teaches
that they were to worship “on this mountain, but your forefathers told you to
worship in Jerusalem. So who’s right, my culture or your culture?”
Now Jesus becomes direct with her.
“Believe me woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on
the mountain, nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know, we
worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.” John 4:21-22.
What Jesus was actually saying is:
“Woman, if your culture is telling you that this mountain is the place for you
to worship, then your culture is getting you into a lot of trouble.”
When she at first brought up culture,
when it had to do with the drinking of water, Jesus did not have anything to
say. He dropped the subject. But when she brought God (the worshipping issue)
up, and Him a cultural issue, Jesus very diplomatically but also straight to
the point told her that Mount Gerazim had nothing to do with worshipping God.
In other words, when your culture
interferes with God, your culture has to go. Culture is valid until it gives
out wrong information about God.
And that is not what is happening
today: Christians are pushing God out the door to make sure that everybody in
their culture loves them. That is discrimination and non Biblical. Christians
are caring only for themselves, instead of for a hell-bound world out there.
One must bear in mind that Black is
only beautiful when it’s Biblical and White is only right when it conforms to
Scripture!
Actually it is a misnomer to call a
Christian a Black Christian or a White Christian. That is impossible
terminology because, at that point we have made black and white adjectives, and
we have made these adjectives descriptive of the word Christian.
Now listen to this. Whenever you make
the adjectives black or white or yellow descriptive of Christians, it means you
must change Christianity to make sure it fits the adjective!
But that is not what the Bible
teaches. According to Scripture you are a Christian who happens to be white, or
may happen to be black, but if anything changes, it’s the blackness and the
whiteness and not Christianity!
Jesus did not stop at being a Jew. He
did not have to lose his identity. And the Lord God is not asking you like
country or western music, nor is He asking me to love jazz. But He is saying
whenever our two cultures conflict, then we choose God every time.
Jesus builds on absolutes in John 4
when 1) He makes culture subservient to spiritual needs; 2) he makes culture
subservient to spiritual truth and now
3) he makes culture subservient to spiritual unity.
And see what happens in John 4:27 when the disciples return from
the town. They marvelled when they saw that Jesus was talking to a Samaritan
woman.
James asks Peter: “What is the Master
doing? Surely He should know that we don’t talk to Samaritans?”
Now you can also see the reason why
Jesus sent the disciples to buy food. He could never have witnessed to that
woman with them standing around. They would have come in the way of this woman
getting to know Jesus Christ as her Saviour.
Jesus had to rid Himself of His
cultural trappings – the people around Him who were going to hold Him back from
reaching out cross-culturally.
God is not necessarily asking you to
come over to my side of town to go witnessing. But He asks that you share the
Living waters with those you come into contact with everyday.
If we would work on a basis of each
one, reach one, we will have the whole saved in no time.
But this is not the end of the story.
In John 4 verses 28-29 we read: “The woman went back to the town and said to
the people: “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be
the Christ?”
But back at the well we have quite an
explosive situation. Peter would cut your ear off in a split second. If you
were not Jewish, Peter did not like you. Although Peter was a true child of
God, there was still human (fileo) love in his heart. God had to put Peter through
the mill first before Peter’s human love was transformed to Godly (agapé) love.
Jesus however handled the situation
masterly by teaching the disciples an important lesson. They may have had
racial problems and those racial problems may have been real because of the way
in which they were raised.
But Jesus was not going to allow that
to stop Him from teaching them better. So He said: “Peter, more important than
filling your stomach is filling your soul with the Will of God!”
Then Jesus lays the bombshell on them:
“:Do you not say, ‘four months more and then the harvest?’ I tell you, open
your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” John 4:35.
The disciples lifted their heads to
see what on earth Jesus was getting at. And low behold, in front of their eyes
a group of Samaritan men were approaching.
This means nothing more and nothing
less, but that this key-passage in Scripture is talking about winning people
you don’t even like, to Christ!
Jesus Christ taught them, and He is
today also talking to us: “Brethren, the will of God – in this case winning the
lost to Christ – is more important than eating your daily food.
Do you have the desire that you’re
very neighbours you don’t like, go to Heaven? Are you so full of the Will of
God that you see only people’s needs and not their mistakes or colour?
What should be the most important
thing in your life, is to do the Will of the Father. And it is the Will of the
Father that you should help those in need of the love of Christ.
The body of Christ will only flourish
in Africa when we all agree on who Jesus is and when we don’t let our culture,
our worshipping, our traditions, our upbringing, our background, stand in the
way of spiritual Truth!