Honor, to the Shame of ... Part One

Honor, to the Shame of… Part One 

^“On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” John 2:1-5 (ESV) 

Working in an environment that has such a diversity of culture can leave a lot lost in translation. Yes you can get the basic of the daily duties across, even find out how folks are doing at times but when the meat of a problem has to be dealt with, things can and will get misunderstood. I work alongside a younger man from the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica and a man, about my age, who is a Puerto Rican but, hails from Vineland, New Jersey. Albert and Pablo are two men who not only keep me on my theological toes but there are times where they challenge me in the cultural fine art of communication. 

Both of these men have approached me on several occasions to fill me in on how the production crew feel about how I run the crew. Because I have to stick to certain policies and procedures sometimes I can come across as an uncaring boss who doesn’t understand the heart of the crew. Pablo sees things from a labor union stand point where Albert sees things from a “man coming into this country to make a reasonable living only to have found that it seems America only cares about business and making money” standpoint…that’s it!!!  

I thought that I tend to look at this with my Biblical eye to the grindstone and we live in the greatest country in the world until I heard Dr. Norman Goos ask, “We here in America read the Bible with our western eye’s don’t we?” I am taking his course on Tuesday nights titled “New Testament Survey in Antiquity” and Dr. Goos’ approach to it is quite different than I thought. “We need to change the lens in our minds so we can filter out our culture of profit and loss while we read the Bible.” His point in this is that we need to look our Bible reading in terms of how life is in the Middle East. It is an “Honor and Shame” culture and within that framework we can see what really ticked off the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. 

When I first looked at what has been written in John 2:1-5, I almost got the feeling that not only is the mother of Jesus seeking a miracle from her Son but that Jesus may have been putting His mother in her place by saying, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” All that is really going on here is that a wedding is going on and His mother is in charge of the kitchen. She knows her Son can help but the kitchen is her ministry what does that have to do with Jesus’ ministry? But in order to save the family honor Jesus gives us His first miracle at Cana and that it sounds like the wine was pretty good. 

Now the family honor here just happens to be from the lineage of David when it comes to Mary. It is the starting point for an honor that is ascribed to Jesus as well but ultimately we know the true honor here comes from The Father Himself. Over the next few Freedom Fighters I am going to try and hit on the need to read our Bible with those honor/shame lenses rather than those profit/loss lenses. I would like to leave you with this thought…if we were to stop wrestling with finding our self-worth or with self-esteem we wouldn’t have to feel the pushing and pulling of what other people think. Would it be in that we would find honor and feel no shame?  Just a thought?  -- Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and a member of the Freedom Fighter Team

Team YOU: Exodus 27-28; Proverbs 1; Matthew 21:1-22

Motivations: “Jesus brought humility from heaven to us. It was humility that brought Him to earth, or He would never have come.”-Andrew Murray

Practice to Remember: Level 1: Ephesians 2:10; Level 2: Ephesians 2:11-18

Powered Up:  To this day the prayer level is the power level of the church. Our prayer meetings give us away. When the knees are not often bent the feet soon slide! – Armin Gesswein