How is the Church of Jesus Christ to function within the ever-changing context of our respective cultures? History teaches us that believers have always had to grapple with their role in the “emerging culture” of their time. On the one hand, some retreated into deep, dark caves in the wilderness, while on the other hand, some were swallowed up completely by the tides of change, thus losing their identity forever. As usual, the truth remains somewhere in between these two extremes and most Christians have drawn their lines in that middle area, some more to the right, others more to the left. That the Church must interact with culture is plainly Scriptural - our Lord commanded us to be salt and light and stated that we are rendered worthless by our refusal to be what we clearly were called to be - but it is the measure of that interaction that continues to divide us. Deciding what is essential and what is non-essential to the Christian message remains the vexing question.

At the Mass for the election of a new pope, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said: “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” (The New Yorker, May 16, 2005) His comment highlights the current tendency of the Church to ride the waves of society’s fads and fashions, and reading the latest statements from Canterbury regarding same-sex marriages for clergy seems to indicate that he is right in his call for the Church to stand against the urge to move along with the shifting sands of modernity and post-modernity.

In a prayer on Good Friday, he lamented the state of the Church. “In Your field we see more weeds than wheat,” he prayed. “The soiled garments and face of Your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is ourselves who have soiled them!” (The New Yorker) This is no doubt the reason why the current North American hostility to the Gospel is reflected so alarmingly in many mainline churches. It is one thing for the world to hate the teachings of the Christian Church - Jesus clearly taught that this would be the case - but it is quite another thing for the Church to follow suit in rejecting the very foundation upon which Her faith is founded. When the members of Christendom themselves begin to deny the authority of Holy Scripture, then they are no longer interacting with culture, but rather they have surrendered to it and become one with it.

In this case, to hear the same politically correct language used in both Church and Culture should not take us by surprise. But one still has to ask the obvious question. Why do those who constantly criticise the many members of Christ’s Church who do stubbornly stand on orthodoxy - the ancient faith once delivered by Christ and His Apostles and received and believed by the Church for centuries - why do they not simply satisfy their search for self-gratification with the creation of a “church” in their own image? It is perhaps necessary and desirable to change our words and our ways to make the presentation of the age old message of the Gospel relevant, but it quite unacceptable and undesirable to deny and discard that message in its entirety and to preach a completely contradictory message in its place. So, why the cultural clamour for change in the Church? Or, perhaps more importantly, why the compulsive obsession of some in the Church to concede to these changes?

In his first Epistle, St. John indicated that the tension between the Church and the prevailing culture was something to be expected. “Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you.” Now, such a statement presupposes an uneasy co-existence between two conflicting ideologies. It suggests that there is an obvious difference and an unmistakable division between the two…obvious and unmistakable enough to elicit a rather negative response from at least one of them.

Jesus taught that this negative response was a direct result of Him choosing the Church “out of the world” (John 15:19)...and His teaching must surely count for something if we are to truly follow the Christ of the Church and not the “christ” of our culture - which is really no more than a product of our own imagination and invention. So, we may conclude that if Christ has chosen the Church out of the world, then conflict between us and the so-called “emerging culture” is not necessarily an indication of poor communication on our part.

True, if the world is to follow us in our passing from death to life…if they are to abandon their hatred for us and to rather share in our love for the brethren…then we are going to have to find ways to communicate what Christ has done for us in a language and a line of reasoning that they will be able to comprehend. But that does not imply that we must change our message or even our methods simply because they reject it. The capitulation of certain members of the Church to the demands of an emerging culture may very well be their final refusal to attend the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in spite of the many years of anticipation and preparation (cf. also 1 Cor. 9: 24-27 and Heb. 6: 4-8)

Regardless of our excuse, if we refuse to heed His Word, He will seek and bring in those who will heed His Word…the Church will not be submerged even though She may take in water from time to time, but Her crew may very well be replaced with those who are willing to keep Her hull intact.

St. John tells us that Cain killed Abel because his deeds were evil while his brother’s deeds were good. He then used this historical event to explain the hatred the world has for the Church. But if we were to adopt the deeds of Cain, would we not, in turn, be raising our hands against our brethren too? If the message of life is discarded to incorporate the message of death, are we not then guilty of hatred and of murder? Christ came that we might have life…but if Christ is denied because He is an offence to the world, where then will life be found? Is the wholesale embracing of the emerging culture by some in the Church not then akin to a wholesale spiritual slaughter of the very world God loved so much that He gave His only begotten Son to die in their stead, so that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life?

Brethren, we are in the world, but we are not of it. We are the light of the world - but a light hidden in a shroud of the very darkness it is meant to overcome is no light at all…it has become part of the darkness. We are the salt of the earth - but salt that has lost its flavour is no good…in fact it is worthless and will be cast out to be trampled underfoot by men. Those who seek a merger between Church and Culture will eventually find that the former will lose its character and it will lose its identity as it is engulfed by the latter.

Such a loss of character and identity will result in a preoccupation with things not pertaining to the initial invitation issued in the Gospel, and consequently none who excuse themselves, for whatever reason, will taste of His supper.

But the most important thing for us to realise today is that we have not only received invitations, but we, in turn, are also to issue invitations to the Feast of Christ. Now, I am thankful that those servants who invited us did not attempt to change these invitations along the way, but that they remained faithful in their duty to deliver their Master’s request and command as they had originally received them. Why then would we even dream of changing those invitations now?

True, we are to ensure that those who receive our invitations are able to understand them well enough to respond to them in a positive manner - indeed, we must do everything in our power to achieve this goal. But this attempt to make the age old invitation relevant to the culture of our time must not so change the invitation that the guests end up at the wrong address.

Thus, as we come to enjoy the Feast to which we have been invited, let us remember that it is now our solemn duty to take that same invitation which we once received into the highways and hedges of this world, compelling men, women and children to come into God’s house so that it might be filled.

© Johann W. Vanderbijl III 2005