THIS WEEK
This is the week we start our Culture Encounter series, and the first sermon is aptly named “Culture Encounter.” We will look at Paul on Mars Hill in Athens and learn from the story of Naaman, the Syrian Military Commander who has a powerful interaction with Elijah the Prophet of God. I’ll put the sermon in a upcoming post. If you want to take a listen to some of the material that helped me process through these verses, listen to this great sermon called, “A World Full of Idols” by Rev. Tim Keller.
I was thinking about the word “CULTURE” and I find that it is hard to define off-hand. We have a lot of words like this in our language. We all know what WISDOM is, but defining it is hard. In fact, it’s interesting to see how the Book of Proverbs in Scripture deals with this topic in the Hebrew language. Biblical Hebrew has very few words (under 4,000) and it struggles with abstract ideas. So instead of defining “wisdom,” in Chapter 8 the author personifies wisdom (as a woman by the way) and rather than explain what wisdom is, he shows us what Wisdom DOES. Good idea!
So good in fact, I will attempt the same (much more feebly and not at all inspired, of course) with the word “Culture.”
When I think of what culture does, my mind races to airports. In 1987, SRG Partnership, Inc. designed a carpet for the Portland International Airport that looked like this:
Over time, the carpet took on a life of itself, and has even inspired a line of clothing with the same pattern. When it was replaced a number of years ago, it led to period of mourning by some in the Portland community. The carpet was ugly, but somehow it had become a comfortable and recognizable part of the Portland Culture. How did it happen? It’s hard to figure out exactly how, but if we look at how airports use carpets, signs, architecture, and psychology, we can learn a little about what culture does.
If you ever go to an airport, your eyes are being assaulted with signs and clues about which way you are to walk, where you are to turn, where you are to wait in line. If you are thinking, “well duh, of course, I can read the signs everywhere,” understand that I am not talking about signs with words. There is a whole field of design that deals with way-finding. There are elements in the design of airports that help shuttle you along in the right direction, even if you can’t read. The 99% Invisible podcast has a fun episode about this topic called, “Walk this Way.”
The way the ceiling curves, the change of color or design in the carpet, the way the corridors are designed to give you a long range of sight, these all make you want to move along the path without thinking about it.
THIS IS CULTURE! Culture can be any number of things, but what it does is serve as the “design elements” in society that keep us moving in a certain direction often without us even realize we are following a path. This can be helpful… IF that direction is the RIGHT direction for us!
My mind goes to 2010 when I was travelling with my 1+ year old son. We had a LONG layover at Chicago O’Hare (little did we know we’d soon be living by O’Hare!) and I was looking for a place to play with my son and get out of the frenetic movement and commotion of the busy terminal. I couldn’t find ANYWHERE to do this until I made a conscious decision to buck the “signs” all around me that were subconsciously telling me where to go.
I looked up and saw a corridor that looked abandoned, and while everything in me felt a little wrong about going that way, I did. And I am so glad I did. NO ONE was in this hallway, and it had a ton of windows so my boy and I could look out and see buses going by. It had room for us to run and chase, and take turns pushing the stroller while pretending it was a race car. It was amazing! It was the RIGHT place for us.
Sometimes I think of Culture as pushing us down a certain road. It is full of both blatant and subconscious sign posts. Most of us follow along without thinking to some degree or another. But the question is, is the culture always leading me to the RIGHT place? The answer is often – NO!
This week in our sermon, we will explore what it means for Christians to engage our culture in a meaningful way, and a what opportunities can we find in our culture to share the love of Christ, and present a different set of “sign posts.” There are so many ways we can Encounter Culture, but at the root of everything is the love of Christ – Crucified and Risen from the dead – which leads us to WANT to walk a different way at times.
I’m looking forward to this week’s sermon preparation time.
And for the record. I think the old Portland Airport Carpet really is miserably ugly.
RECAPPING LAST WEEKEND
POST SERVICE NOTES: After the church service on Sunday, I spoke with a Navy veteran who was on the Sister-Ship to the USS Forrestal when the 1967 disaster occurred. He said their own ship had a fire in which 19 sailors lost their lives.
When I was getting ready for a wedding on Sunday afternoon, a young man in his Navy uniform and his dad pulled me aside to talk more about the Forrestal. They weren’t members of the church, or even in our church that morning, but they had heard about the sermon already, and were wanting to share their own ideas about the Forrestal and Iowa. It’s amazing how these travesties stick with us, and even if we weren’t there, we need to TALK about them.