Last night I spoke about how our suburb is changing, but not our church. In the Afrikaans South-African story churches became the last place of safety and comfort. Apart from our high-tech security that changed our streets into base camps and our houses into prisons, the church became that one place where everything must be familiar and predictable.
We do this with language and cultural theology.
The idea is (although we don’t admit it) that when outsiders stumble in, only those that look, think and talk like us will come again. The rest must keep on looking for a church with people of their kind.
But Jesus took his little band of travelling Jews on a different journey. Instead of visiting the familiar, safe and predictable Jewish towns, he took them to the Samaritans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Africans, the lepers, the prostitutes, the poor and the vulnerable. He took them out of their place of comfort and safety, on a dangerous and tricky road.
Imagine Jesus as a Dutch Reformed pastor today in an all white suburban utopia.
I wonder how long till the church counsel kicks him out?
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