CROSSculture 2006

I'm back from CROSSculture 2006, the 16th Ohio (Western PA, WV) IVCF winter conference at which I have had the (exhausting) joy of working. This year I co-led a seminar called "X-Files: What about Other Religions?" looking at one aspect of this year's overall theme of "Kingdom Counter Culture." I pulled from various resources and talks/classes I had done before on comparative religion and on truth, and J, my co-leader, took the group through the Aeropagus passage in Acts 17 to ground us. Most of the students seemed very responsive, and those from Oberlin even asked if I could come up to give a talk that expanded on what we could only do briefly--how cool, my second-favorite college :) Secondhand, I heard that one student wondered if we had even tackled "relativism" (the answer is yes, quite directly), but others loved that they went to a seminar where the leader used "big words." I laughed to hear this (loving the implicit compliment) because I didn't think I had used particularly big words. Then I remembered that I had quoted from Strange Virtues, the book of my old friend Berney Adeney, in which he outlines a stance for Christians to take in any kind of inter-religious conversation: "Ontological certainty but epistemological humility." They're pretty big words, I guess, but good for any college student's vocabulary.

CROSSculture is an opportunity not only to give to students but to receive. For years, worshipping there was my oasis in a very dry (church) dessert. This year the worship style, while welcoming to the wonderful multicultural mix of students, being led by a worship team from the historically black Ohio college, Central State University, stretched me far beyond my comfort zone. Maybe getting older means being less stretchable but such excruciatingly high decible levels interfere with my ability to understand what I am doing. Nevertheless, one piece intrigued and challenged me: a jazz setting of the Amos text of "Let Justice Roll Down" written by a friend of an Oberlin grad (who had overlapped with Jenny there) who had joined the worship team.

More in tune with my "learning style" were Bob Hunter's three expositions on Acts 4 and 5. I have learned so much from Bob over the years--adjunct prof at Earlham College, IVCF staff in Indiana, father of a Wooster alum who wrote a play for her senior I.S. called "Jesus in Harlem," frequent speaker on justice issues. This weekend was no exception. I'd like to tease you a bit with the main thrusts of his messages. He analyzed Peter and John's conflict with the Sanhedrin over the healing of the cripple as a conflict with the principalities and powers, Peter's quoting of Psalm 2 as evidence of this. The Sanhedrin was looking out for its own interests and resisting a challenge to its powers; everything that resists Jesus' claims urges us to look only to our own self interests. "Me first" is writ large in culture. They could not rejoice in the man's healing because he was just a commodity to them, someone at this moment whose healing had put a dent in their own power. Bob went on to talk about how throughout American history, the principalities and powers urge us to do the same. Even the worst sin of slavery was only a symptom of this buying and selling of others for a price, continuing today in overwhelming consumerism and materialism that appeals to our fears, insecurities and lusts.

Looking at the next verses and chapters in Acts, Bob helped us not to romanticize the community of sharing there that often attracts us. If only our communities are like that, we think. However, seeds of its failure were already implicit in their experience, not only personally as the Ananias and Sapphira incident showed, but communally as the divisions between the Greek and Hebrew Jews made apparent. The deacons were chosen to deal with a breakdown in community which was no longer monocultural. Each incident in the next several chapters represents a turning point away from a small homogeneous group existing in the shadow of the principalities and powers (Stephen, one of those deacons, challenged them verbally and was murdered; Paul was converted from within their structures; Peter was moved from his closed position by a dream; Barnabas was able to minister as a bi-cultural man) until finally in Acts 11 a multicultural people who share One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism are (able to be) called Christians.

Lots to chew on ....