Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Acts 17:16-23 and Luke 10:25-29

This weekend we are continuing our spring series of messages on the theme of Christ and culture.  Starting with Easter we have been exploring how followers of Jesus relate to various aspects of the culture.

Kate and I began our ministry in a small Alaskan Indian village.  There we quickly learned that for nearly a hundred years the missionaries had preached a Christ that was against the Indian culture.  In order to be baptized and become a Christian in the nineteenth century the Indian people were expected to give up their own culture and become white.  They needed to give up their Native tongue and speak English. They were expected to leave behind their drum beats and dancing in order to sing hymns with an organ.  They were to give up their Native clothing and dress in American clothing.

I recall a nineteenth century photo of an Eskimo family in the Sheldon Jackson museum in Sitka.  The same family appeared in two identical poses.  The first pose showed them with their traditional mukluks and seal skin parkas.  The second picture showed them dressed in American clothing.  The man had on a tie and suit coat, the women wore a dress and nice shoes.  Under the two pictures was the caption.  The first said, “Pagan Eskimo family.”  The second said, “Christian Eskimo family.”  The message was clear.  To become a Christian one must totally reject your own culture and become like white Americans.

As we wrap up this series on Christ and culture we are aware that in many ways Christians are still perceived as being against much of today’s popular culture.  You used to enjoy heavy metal music, but becoming a Christian means you have to listen to Bach?  You used to ride a motorcycle but becoming a Christian means you have to drive a minivan? 

This series has reminded us that followers of Jesus can have a more positive connection with culture.  We are moving from those days of Christ being against the culture, wanting the church to remain isolated away from the culture, to a more thoughtful approach of looking for ways to engage the culture.  We’ve used three questions to help us as Christians find God in our culture.  The first question asks us to consider what part of God’s truth is revealed in this aspect of culture.  The second invites to consider how this part of culture falls short of God’s truth.  Finally, we have wondered what this part of culture inspires us to do or be.

The Apostle Paul used this kind of approach when he took the gospel into the Greek marketplaces.  He affirmed those parts of the culture that were in agreement with God’s truth.  He challenged the parts that were inconsistent with God’s truth.  And he proclaimed Jesus as relevant to inspire people while they remained in the marketplace.  His message was not one of abandoning the market place to follow Jesus. He wanted to help people learn to walk with Jesus in every day life.

Unfortunately, too often the modern church has seemed to imply that real Christians need to leave their every day jobs and become professionals at church.  Statistics tell us that the majority of people, who encounter Jesus and join a church, disconnect from their non-religious friends within a year.  Most new Christians assume that they are to stop enjoying their daily connections and instead spend all their spare time at church.  In other words, we are still giving off a faulty message that you have to stop wearing your native clothing Monday through Friday in order to wear church clothing.  This disconnect is why so many non-religious people avoid Christianity.  Let’s explore a healthier more positive way to connect with our culture in the work space.

Read Luke 10: 25-29.

I love Dave Berry’s humorous books.  The other day I picked up one of his old books where he was talking about getting his son involved in little league.  He reflected how he assumed that catching a ball was instinctual.  He discovered that his six year old son could not automatically catch the ball when he threw it to him.  Instead, the ball simply bonked off his son’s body.  So he kicked into parent coaching mode. 

Like most of us, Dave Berry’s coaching his son to catch the ball consists of shouting, “Catch the ball!” and “Don’t just let it bonk off your body.”  After working in the backyard with these coaching techniques he succeeded in being able to throw the ball to his son and eliciting a new response.  Now, just before it bonks off his son’s body, his son flinches.

Let me state my assumption for this sermon.  I am very aware that for most of us who are in the work space Monday through Friday, it can often feel like the preacher considers us second class citizens.  We who work out in the market place feel like the heroes of sermons are always missionaries and full time Christian workers.  The not so subtle hint is that if you were a real Christian you would quit your job in the market place and go to Africa.  Thus, we flinch even as the preacher starts the message.  “Oh, oh here comes the guilt.”

Let me confess that I have contributed to this.  I have told too many stories that honored full time Christian service and by implication made it sound like those in the work place are living second-class Christian lives.  As a result we have learned to compartmentalize our lives.  Faith happens on the weekend.  The rest of real life happens during the week.  That is not the way Jesus saw it at all.

The attorney asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”  In other words, he got that he was to love his neighbor.  He just wanted clarification what that meant in real life.  Jesus defined a neighbor as someone we pass on the road.  He broadened the definition from a geographical neighborhood to anyone whose life touches up against mine. 

Let’s admit it… for those of us in the working world, our neighbor, the ones we spend way more time sharing our lives with than with those who live next door to us, are the co-workers at the office.  The test of faith is often not whether I can get along with the person down the street but loving some of the people at the office.  For those of us who don’t go to an office, our week day lives still put us in contact with others through clubs, hobbies, volunteering, etc.  The question remains the same: How do we connect our weekend faith with our week day lives?

How about this?  What if we saw Church on the weekend as the place where we practice how to act the rest of the week?  Instead of compartmentalizing our work-week life and separating it from weekend faith, what if we picture our work as our ministry?  Let me repeat that: What if we picture our work as our ministry?  Thus, we come into the sanctuary carrying questions out of our weekday life.  “I have a friend who….”  “How do I answer my colleague when she says…?”  “My boss says I have to….”  The goal of worship, then, is to prepare us through God’s Word to go back into the work space ready to treat customers like real people, clients like neighbors, friends like family. 

Pastor Neal is away this week in Israel.  He is traveling with a group of highly successful businessmen who have asked him to be their chaplain.  Every so often they ask him to travel with them to some exotic place so they can pick his brain about work situations and business ethics.  They ask him to lead them in Bible study and daily devotions.  But the best stuff happens in the informal conversations. “So, Pastor, how would you handle this situation?”  “What would the Lord want me to do about that employee?”

Neal and I were comparing notes the week he was preparing to leave.  I commented, “Don’t you sometimes feel like our business friends are living on the front lines when it comes to representing Jesus to the world and we are merely offering coaching and support from behind the lines?”  He responded, “I know.  They have the influence and can impact the world way more than we as pastors can.  We can influence a few of them, but they have larger influence through their work lives.”  I responded, “We coach from the side lines while they are the players on the field.”

Then I shared with Neal something about my past that he had not known.  I came from a business family.  My grandfather owned the business and my dad managed it.  I was groomed to take over the business after college.  My grandmother hated that my grandfather tried to recruit me into the family business.  You see our family business was wholesalers of beer, wine and liquor.

I worked in our family business for a couple years after college.  My dad expected me to be competent in the accounting and finance department (don’t let our elders know I am pretending ignorance of those spread sheets).  I worked in the warehouse and delivery systems.  I also worked in the sales department.  My dad and grandfather wanted me to know the business inside out before I made a decision about my future.  I eventually concluded that God was indeed calling me into church ministry. 

I would not change the way my life has gone.  Please understand that I love what I do.  I wake up energized and challenged to be the best minister I can be.  But sometimes, when I am out on a long walk with my wife, we reflect back to those early years when our faith was more connected to the non-church world.  Because we rubbed up against non-religious friends, our prayers were more intense for their salvation; our theology had to be more cutting edge.  I can’t recall the last time I fell asleep praying, pleading for the opportunity to share God’s love and introduce a close friend to Jesus.  My closest friends are already Christians.

So, if I want to get more than a flinch this weekend, what practical advice might I give to help us experience Christ as already connected to our culture?  Here are a couple of suggestions: How about taking time on the commute to work to ask the Lord to open our eyes to what God is already doing?  How about taking a moment before making or answering a phone call at the office to shoot a quick prayer asking for wisdom?   Why not share with a prayer partner ways that you are seeking the Lord’s will in your work life?

Here is what I know: Jesus smiles when our weekend faith integrates with our weekday lives.