Jesus In All Cultures

"Sighting Jesus in Every Culture First, Jesus the Christ remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. But our experiences of Christ depend on our personal and cultural coordinates. Jesus is not an alien force, a nonnative source, or an import that comes into a culture. Jesus is an indigenous illumination of what is already there.

Some years ago, the distinguished southern churchman and theologian Albert Mollegen was lecturing to a group of laypeople in Virginia on the topic of “Revelation.” It was loaded with technical distinctions and sophisticated analysis. At the end, the professor entertained questions from the audience, and a bewildered and slightly defeated woman arose and said, “Dr. Mollegen, how does God speak to you?” The great man thought about that for a moment, and then abandoned his professorial demeanor. “In English, ma’am. With a Tidewater accent.”

Jesus transcends every known culture. God comes to the Chinese in a Chinese accent. Jesus appears to the African in a Swahili cadence. Jesus appears to the American Indian in a Shoshone beat. Jesus appears to a West Virginian in an Appalachian accent. All cultures share in the pre-Incarnation mystery. Even the culture of first-century Palestine couldn’t contain but one look at Jesus—there is not a single story of Jesus, but four basic stories, with multiple stories within those stories. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended, he became the exalted Christ, a universalized presence and power. He did not take his Jewishness with him into heaven. In the garden with Mary, Jesus says “touch me not” or “do not hold on to me” (John 20:17). In other words, Mary, I’m not what I used to be. Things are different now."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

When God Seems NOT Near

"Mother Teresa once wrote to the Rev. Michael van der Peet:

"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.""

Tony Kriz. Aloof 

God Isn't Really Everywhere?

"Conservatives tend to understand this much better than liberals do. Guilt-based religion, strong boundary markers, and shame work well to keep the troops in line...

I remember being trained in the Baltimore Catechism as a little catholic boy. One of the first questions (#16) was "Where is God?" The correct answer is "God is everywhere." And then the whole rest of the book proceeds to teach that such ambiguity is not really true! God was really only with Catholics, in our churches, in fact, really only in the tabernacle, and then only if the priest said a valid Mass, and then only available to "good" people who followed the rules. We have been much better at binding up" God than "loosening" divine availability, even though Jesus gave us both powers (Matthew 16:19). For some reason, we really do not want God to be everywhere, just here, and we of course end up losing God even for ourselves."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

Church Employees Don't Like This

"Jesus is in effect saying that if God is everywhere, then God is not anywhere exclusively. We Church employees tend not to like that."

-Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

Humbling Organized Religion

"Jesus humbles much of organized religions capacity to control the God-human relationship, because in effect, Jesus is saying that God is both now and always, here and there, and be on any attempt to be controlled, to be bought and sold in any Temple. He is protecting the utter freedom of God to be where God wants and when God wants and who God wants. Good theology always protects God's total freedom, and does not demand that God follow our rules."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.