“Fitting In”
John 17:11-19
I read the prologue to a story called Girl in the Middle. The girl is Kim Satinsky who is in eighth grade. She says, “You would think that being in a clique is fun but take my word for it: It’s not. They make me wear expensive things when I’m not really rich and tell me if something’s really out. On the first day I wore expensive clothing and eye makeup and hung out with a clique, just ’cause it was the first day. Actually, I hung out with just one girl called Maddi Ryan and she introduced me to her friends. Now I’m "popular" and "in". I thought I would be grateful. But it’s really hateful. I have to be real quiet with them or else they’d know I’m a geek at heart in disguise and throw me to the table near Austin F., the world’s most annoying kid. But now they’re pushing me to do things that I shouldn’t, and it’s getting serious. I don’t know what’s worse, getting involved with police or sitting near Austin.” It’s tough fitting in.
One doesn’t often expect to receive a jolting wake-up-call from a comedian. However, comedian Lenny Bruce gives our Christian psychology a metaphorical cattle prod shock when he said, “Everyday people are straying away from the church and going back to God.’” I suspect it has a lot to do with fitting in.
If we turn this scenario inside out or the other way around, a lot of us in the Church have a tough time fitting in as well – fitting in with society. …The odd one out at work or the only one at the party not into drugs and alcohol. …Considered ‘odd’ or a ‘geek’ because you want to avoid sex or living together before you get married. To quote Dan Yarnell, Lecturer in Theology and Community at Birmingham Christian College, we have to figure out what the “appropriate clothing of the gospel” is so we and the world can adapt to one another because people are not fitting in with the church and we’re struggling to fit in. Yet as we learn to adapt so that the gospel works in our very promiscuous world, we have to figure out how not to compromise the core of the message and doctrine of Christ (I.e. the physical reality of God in the flesh, crucified and raised from death).
Regrettably we are struggling to make that happen. Leonard Sweet, historian, futurist and author speaks to our struggle in his book “Aqua Church”. The title represents how we need to be a first century Church in our 21st century world. If you don’t know what a first century Church is, you can read about it in the book of Acts.
“Aqua” represents water or liquid state. While water can take on different forms – liquid, steam or ice – the molecule structure that makes water, water, is not compromised.
Aqua church is church that adapts to the environment but does not compromise the integrity of its “molecule” components that make it church, meaning what I mentioned moments ago – we are not to compromise the essence of Church and the place of Christ in it and his redemption of the world through his death and resurrection. But how do we get that message to people without being offensive? Can we always hope not to be offensive? How do we make church palatable so that people feel they can fit in; that there’s a place for them in the life and community of Church, without that becoming a religious institution of rules, expectations and orders?
We’ll take some time today to explore the challenges we’re facing in the Church to be in, but not of, the world, as Jesus teaches in the text of John 17. Sweet inspires four principles in “Aqua Church” that will help us in this discovery.
If we are going to deal with this problem of fitting in on both fronts and grow the Church, grow God’s Kingdom, we have to face some things. There are three problems. The first problem is, there are those who
1. REJECT CULTURE
If we’re to be successful in sharing Christ we cannot be against culture. Sweet says, “It is virtually impossible to be a successful anticulturalist. You have to live in the world somewhere. The gospel must be “enfleshed” in some culture.”
Jesus teaches in John 17:11 that we are “in the world”. Again, in verse 15 he prays to the Father, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” Our being here is God’s design.
The problem we’re facing is that we over-compensate for John 17:16, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.” We have the idea that to embrace culture is to be unfaithful and somehow we’ve become a part of the world. We have to come to understand that separation from the world does not mean isolation but insulation. We’re not to reject people and cut ourselves off from them because their way of thinking and behaving is unfamiliar to us. We must find the balance that leads us to an attitude of separation and insulation from the world’s evil but avoids an attitude of isolation. The solution to bridging the divide in relationship between Church and Community is not avoidance – “you in your small corner and I in mine”, to put a spin on the Sunday school chorus.
Rejecting culture is not the teaching of Christ and it ought not to be the attitude and way of the Church. We cannot reach the community with the news about Jesus if we reject its culture.
The second problem now comes into view. It is the polar opposite to rejecting culture. It is those people who
2. RESEMBLE CULTURE
Sweet writes that some are “so anxious to fit in to the world that it becomes a mere extension of the culture and has lost any distinguishing particularity as a culture of its own.” He talks about “golden retriever” churches. Sweet says, “If the culture throws a stick, “golden retriever” churches go bounding after it, slobbering and eager to please.”
This is a serious problem because in the process of trying to fit in to society we risk compromising everything that defines us as Church. The Bible says in Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by renewing your mind.” This instruction has complex realities. We can spend an hour talking about what it means to conform to the pattern of the world. I will summarize the issue this way. If we are to avoid conforming to culture and be different in our thinking and behaving, we need a Compass. Our Compass is the Bible. “It is a lamp to my feet, a light to my pathway” says Psalm 119:105. Govern your life, your choices, your practices, your morals, your ethics and your priorities by The Book and you’ll never go wrong!
Romans 12:2 tells us not to be like the culture we live in. We’re not to disgrace the name of Jesus by denying our culture as His Church. He was crucified for the life of the Church which he birthed through his resurrection. How dare we treat that with reckless abandon and behave like the world.
Jesus teaches us a very profound lesson in John 17:14 and 16. He says that those who really belong to him are not of the world anymore than he is of the world.
Friends, we do not belong to this world. If we therefore will influence our culture for Christ we must guard against adapting to suit the culture and behaving like the culture and so becoming as the culture is. Jesus said in Matthew 5:13-16, “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it useful again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. 14You are the light of the world – like a city on a mountain, glowing in the night for all to see. 15Don’t hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” We are meant to stand out as uniquely different, unapologetic for Whose we are; providing the flavour of God in a bland world of tasteless pursuits and ambitions; lighting the realities of dark, depressing times with the light of hope, the light of Christ! All of that is lost if we mimic the world and disappear in the crowd.
A further challenge is the attempt of some to
3. REORIENT CULTURE
This is the attempt to make the culture something it is not. The idea is we are in the world but not to be like the world. So, some believe the only solution in view is to tell the world there is a better alternative and I’m not referring to following Christ here okay? But it’s about suggesting that the alternative is to be like us. In the process we tend to leave society feeling that we’re better than they are. We want relationship but we build all these expectations around behaviour and deportment and how we think we’re supposed to interact. We struggle with the challenge of how to be “in the world” but not “of the world” so we figure the best way to make that work is we interpret how things should be. In the end we may need to understand that in some instances it involves evaluating how we need to shift and change.
Jesus speaks to our issue in John 17:15 when he prays, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” We have to revisit what we define as appropriate and inappropriate by asking what is evil and base our decisions only on avoiding the evil influences of culture.
This all brings us to one answer to bridging the divide between Church and Culture. This fourth principle is worth pursuing. We must
4. VALIDATE CULTURE
We have a mission here. Jesus prayed in John 17:18, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” What was the purpose of that sending? Verse 20 reveals it. “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.” Our mission is to lead people to believe in Jesus as God in the flesh; as the Messiah who came to this world to put us right with God. That’s our purpose. It’s God’s work to decide how people come to understand how that’s lived out.
Sweet notes, “When Jesus dressed, he did not dress in a generic, culture-neutral way or put on clothing that set him apart from everyone else of his day. He dressed himself in the customary garb of the day where he lived. He spoke the language of the day in which he lived. He fully inhabited the cultural space of the first century.”
Theologian Emil Brunner (1899-1966) said, “The Church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning”. Or consider the words of David J. Bosch, missiologist (1929-1992), “‘It is not the church which ‘undertakes’ mission; it is the missio Dei which constitutes the church.’” The only purpose of the Church is the Mission of sharing Christ. When we no longer fulfill that Mission we cease to be the Church of Jesus Christ. We become as the religious community of the first century which Jesus opposed and rejected, so much so that they’re only response in dealing with Him was Capital Punishment by execution on the cross.
The apostle Paul said it best in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 as taken from The Message: “19-23Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”
The message today is clear and simple. Be in the world (17:11), not of the world (17:16) but don’t be out of it either (17:15). We have a place in this world as the Church, whose purpose is simple – introduce people to Jesus and what he’s about. He’ll do the rest.
