January 2017
Having a Caesarea Moment
About 2000 years ago, Peter had a Caesarea moment. He was visiting friends on the coast, sitting on the roof, hungrily waiting for lunch. An angel visited him and offered him food that no self-respecting Orthodox Jew would touch, let alone eat. Repeatedly, the angel told him to eat, and repeatedly, he told the angel he would not eat those unclean things. But God had a different plan. God wanted the church to be prepared because it would soon be full of Gentiles.
God kept his promise to send the message of
salvation to His people, the Jews, first.
He promised this with every prophet and fulfilled His promise in the
Book of Acts. He has never abandoned His
people, but He always intended to bring His message to all the world. Peter was just the first that was asked to do
it.
So, what is a Caesarea moment? This is when a person is forced out of his
cultural comfort zone, so God can use him for something greater than he ever
imagined. Peter was comfortable sharing
the gospel with his fellow Jews. But
what about the many other cultures surrounding Israel during his day? Culturally they were very different from his
own culture. They ate differently. They spoke a different language. They dressed different. They talked about different things. They played different sports. They probably smelled differently because
they had different bathing traditions. Peter
didn’t care about them. God did
care. God wanted Peter to share the
gospel with others too, even though they were different. According to church tradition, Peter died far
from home, in the very culturally different city of Rome.
I remember my Caesarea moment. I was a young Christian, on my first mission
trip to Mexico. For a year, I had been
planning on going to Mexico on a mission trip and suddenly I found myself in
Mexico City. My first day there I was in
shock. It was rainy and cold, and smog
filled the air. The traffic was so bad,
we barely moved. During our first church
service, I realized my Spanish was so bad I couldn’t even say hello, let alone
understand the endless church service.
As I went to bed the first night in Mexico, looking out the window on an
endless gray city, I wondered what I had done.
Why was I there? How was I going
to survive the seven days there?
That was Saturday. On Monday, I was assigned to pass out tracts
inviting people to our meeting that night.
I was with Rebeca Ochoa, a dear lady from my church, a local teen-aged
girl, and a local boy about twelve years old.
We walked up and down a dozen streets.
I saw poverty unlike any I could imagine, but also saw beauty I had
never seen before. These houses, that
were smaller than an average American living room, were painted in bright
colors and overflowing with brilliantly colored flowers. What impressed me the most were the number of
people who invited us in for a glass of water or a soda. I fell in love with Mexico that day. The last day there that same twelve-year old boy
bought me some delicious street food after church. He couldn’t afford it, but wanted to say
thank you to me for coming to his city.
At the end of the week I was determined I would be a missionary one day.
Today I was watching a movie about a little
boy in India who got lost from his family and was later adopted by an
Australian family. When I watch a movie
like this I quickly get swept into the cultural differences, wondering about
why they think the way they think, or why they do the things they do. These movies become my favorite movies. That is why I like traveling. I wonder why people live the way they do, eat
what they eat, and enjoy life without the things we take for granted in the
United States.
A Caesarea moment is when we are forced out
of our cultural comfort zone and face the fact that the world is not like
us. Most of us in America think we know
what the rest of the world is like, because we watch TV, movies, and surf the
Internet. The world is not like us. Not being like us does not mean we are right
or good and they are wrong or bad. It
means they are different.
I have had several Caesarea moments. Some made me cry, but all made me grow. Like when Virginia Swartzendruber dropped me
off at Siete Calles, without me knowing I lived a few blocks away. I learned a lot about Santa Cruz that
day. Or when I returned from Bolivia in
1989 and went looking for toothpaste in the grocery store. After five years of no choices in Bolivia, I
understood the enormity of wealth before me as an American, looking at dozens
of choices for a simple item like toothpaste.
Or when I visited Romania, with a suitcase full of two weeks’ worth
of clothes, only to realize my Romanian friend, Marius, had less clothes in his
closet than I had in my suitcase.
A Caesarea moment is a good thing. Are we not commanded to share the good news
of Jesus to people all over the world; in Jerusalem, Judea, and the uttermost
parts of the world? Sharing Jesus is not
the same as sharing our culture. If we
were to be time transported back to the Jerusalem of Jesus, we would be
shocked. Nothing would be familiar to
us. We need to be out of our cultural
comfort zone if we want to reach people.
No comments:
Post a Comment