HOW JESUS CONTEXTUALIZED THE TRUTH THROUGH CHALLENGING PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR VIEWS OF GOD, CHRIST, AND THEIR OWN HUMANITY - A Case Study in contextualization from Mark 12.
The goal of Jesus in every communication encounter was to challenge the people to their highest potential in the will of God. His infinite wisdom allowed Him to do what no finite mind could comprehend in entirety. However, His ideal contextualization process gives us something to aim for in our own efforts to bring the incarnation into people’s lives today. Jesus showed expertise in making his message relevant, appropriate, and need meeting by portraying Himself as one who knew how to deal with rejection from His own people. In this framework, He characterizes God the Father as one who is:
1. Trustworthy - The owner went away, entrusting His fields into the care of the cultivators. The Lord gives us the freedom and the responsibility to make something of what He has invested. To fail to create a harvest is a serious breach of trust. The cornerstone of effective contextualization is trusting relationships. This rapport bridges numerous gaps between people in ways that only the Holy Spirit can understand. Without trust in our communication, the contextualization process becomes virtually impossible.
2. Generous - The landlord gave the tenants a wealthy vineyard equipped with all the necessary implements in order to produce a harvest. Just as the Lord furnishes us with the necessary provisions in order to return to Him many souls, fruits of the Spirit, and expansions of His kingdom. Contextualizers are people who are willing to give with expecting much in return for their know that their rewards in heaven are great.
3. Patient - The master gave the people several chances to pay the debt they owed, but they tried to shirk their responsibilities. When we deserve judgment God is patient towards man not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It is the kindness of God that nurtures us to maturity. It takes great patience to contextualize the truth to people across cultures. The numerous barriers, filters, and obstacles to cross-cultural communications necessitates patient endurance.
4. Just - The owner made it clear that someday God would extract justice to the violators of His rules and standards of righteousness. No one shall escape from being accountable on the final judgment day. Some people may take advantage of God’s patience, but eventually we will all be faced squarely with our motives and deeds to be reckoned accordingly. Contextualizers need to practice justice in the administration of their tasks without partiality.
Jesus also tells us something about Himself in these accounts:
1. He is equipped to transcend any topic at any level depth of understanding. He shows equal facility in talking about agriculture as He does with politics. Contextualizers need to be able to show a capacity to deal articulately with the Bible in light of the truths of historical, practical, systematic, biblical, African Christian perspectives, as well as with the hard and soft sciences. These presupposes an ability to make the academic practical as well.
2. He removes Himself from being in succession with the prophets. He presents Himself as a servant and not as one who deserves all the rights and privileges of a first son. He was challenging the Jewish authorities in casting Himself as the true Messiah. Contextualizers resist the temptations to be seen as those deserving special treatment, privileges, or rights.
3. He contrasts Himself with a political, social, or military Messiah in the fashion of David, which the Jews were looking for. Instead, He pictures Himself mainly as one who came to serve and give His life as a ransom for many. Contextualizers are primarily servants above other identities.
4. He had resigned Himself to die a disgraceful death in order to become the Savior of the world. He never carried any illusions that He could somehow escaped from the greatest responsibility for coming to earth. He knew the way that He would take would mean suffering, but He fixed His eyes on the completion of His goal. Contextualizers need to be cognizant of the factor of the cross in denying themselves, carrying the cross of Christ’s identity, roles, and sufferings.
5. He expressed a confidence that He would ultimately triumph over the forces of evil, misunderstanding, traditions, and religious bigotry. He never doubted the promises of God that He would glorify the Son through the process of His death, burial, and resurrection. He knew that the grave was not the end, but the beginning for Him and the eternal life for billions. Contextualizers are assured that their efforts in the Lord, despite set backs, are not in vain in the Lord.
Jesus also teaches us a great deal about Humans through this twelfth chapter of Mark:
1. He shows that men try to re-interpret the affairs of history for their own advantage. By reframing the historical in the light of eternity, He shows men the futility of their finite perceptions. Contextualizers attempt to show ways to reinterpret the affairs of history in the light of greater supracultural truths.
2. He shows men their hypocrisy. He exposes their motives, by explaining that we should render to the government their due taxes, while giving to God the devotion, honor, and obedience due Him. Men were looking for ways to justify themselves in the eyes of other men, Jesus was looking for ways to point them to the only true justifier. A contextualizer looks for ways to bring out the ideals of culture and scripture that can bring to light the hidden inadequacies of people before the Lord.
3. He shows men that if they fail in their privileges and responsibilities, these will be given to others. God is not partial as to who He uses for His purposes. No one ever attains a level of tenure where they are exempt from disqualification in the ministry. As long as we are employed by God we are to make the most of our roles and responsibilities or the Lord will find others more willing to utilize His resources. A contextualizer uses this truth to motivate his listeners to make the most of every opportunity.
4. He shows that some men, like the Sadducees tried to make heaven out of the image of earth. While most of us like to move from what we know to what it unknown, this can be dangerous. It presupposes that what we know is sufficient to aid our understanding of future ideals. Faith allows us to see what God wants us to see without imposing our own imaginations of what our future will be like. The Islamic faith, for example, was born in a desert context where the people lived with few luxuries or western ways of thinking. Therefore, they conceived heaven as a oasis where people will live a life complete with every bodily and sensual pleasures. The Jews hated the ocean and thought heaven would be a place absent of the torments of the sea. American Indians who loved to hunt wild game, thought of heaven as a happy hunting ground. All men want heaven to be a place where they can escape from pain, suffering, and want. This is a natural tendency of all men to create heaven in something that will give them hope in their present state. A contextualizer is aware of the vain attempts of man to carve out his own heavenly reality from his insufficient views of his earthly reality.
5. Jesus showed that man’s attempt to expand the law limitlessly was futile. Man always has sought to be able to lay down standards and then try to live up to them. However, Jesus pointed out that God’s standard of righteousness exceeds the capabilities of men. It reminds me of two young boys that I heard were fighting recently. Finally, when the bigger boy had the smaller boy under his body, he pointed at the defeated boy and said, ``You see, you are now under my capacity!’’ All men what to use whatever they can get to put others under their capacity - even using the law of God if that is what it takes. Jesus makes it clear, that no one under the law is justified before the eyes of God. We are only justified by a faith in Christ’s substitutionary payment for our sins found in His atonement. A contextualizer resists the temptation to carve out man made standards that substitute for God’s terms of righteousness in Christ.
6. Jesus shows that man’s greatest responsibility is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and one’s neighbor as one’s self. Religion to Jesus was loving God and loving man. No one before Him could ever think that doing both was possible. Jesus showed man that caring for God would result in greater love for humanity. The divine and the human aspects of Jesus showed the perfect completion of the two dimensions that before would looked at in competition with one another. Before this man was willing to perform these duties separately, but not together. Jesus showed them that the two are inextricably linked together. I John 4:20 reminds us of such a fact, ``If anyone says He loves God, but fails to love His brother, he is a liar. For the one who does love his brother who he can see cannot say he loves God whom he does not see.’’ A contextualizer takes these two dimensions of the great commandment integratively into every effort.
