Sacrificing tastebuds for mateship
- or Jesus and difference
Fortunately, Chuck enjoyed a joke. We were at breakfast; toast arrived.
‘Vegemite, please?’ Ah! The simple delights of life in Oz.
‘Hey! What’s that you’ve got there?’ asked Chuck. (Yes, you guessed, a recently arrived Christian from the USA).
Quick as a flash came the laconic reply. ‘It’s jam. Special Australian jam. It’s the best. We love it. Here mate, try some.’
Chuck dug his knife into the Vegie jar. ‘That’s it. Nice and thick,’ he was encouraged.
Chuck sank his teeth into the Vegemite smothered toast.
We all watched eagerly, he politely smiled a little and valiantly just kept going. Chuck survived to tell the tale. A good mate was Chuck!
Speaking of ‘mate’, the Argentine tea I drink is called maté. It is drunk through a metal straw and topped up from a thermos after each person takes a drink. But it is more than a herbal drink, it is a friendship drink.
Mate, maté, friendship: these are vital cultural clues for a wandering Aussie. Thankfully, many Australians go through this cultural experience with the grace of our mate Chuck, and like him respond to a second invitation with a gentle ‘No, thanks’!
Guess what happened on our holidays?
I ran into a buggy! Well, I drove up behind a buggy: doesn’t sound as dramatic! But how can I capture the sheer ‘differentness’ of this experience? This experience of (almost) bumping into another culture: ‘Touring Australians meet traditional Amish’.
The ‘plain people’, as the Amish are known, have adopted simplicity and separateness from worldly temptation, destructive immorality, Godless spirituality, individualism, pride and selfishness.
Simplicity is seen in dress, diet, house design, transport and seating at three-hour worship services on portable un-backed wooden pews.
Separateness is seen in dress, worship held in members’ homes, marriage within the Amish community and no electricity or telephones connected to the house.
How is Amish faith held? It is held theologically and culturally by ‘Gelassenheit– self-surrender, resignation in, and yieldedness to, God’s will’, and in a process of socialisation from cradle to grave.
Living neither in monasteries nor walled exclusion zones, but in farms dispersed among the wider non-Amish community, the Amish focus their energies upon the discipleship of their children, in the context and under the authority of, a defined, dedicated and supportive local church community of about 25-35 families.
Amish community is defined by its clear and guarded boundaries and cultivated by its social life of church, family, home, school, work and recreation.
How do I view Amish culture? Vegemite ‘jam’? Chuck? Argentine maté?
Viewing is one thing: judging a culture by the perceived superiority of my own culture is another. How can I approach difference and similarity?
For myself, it is in knowing that God created all the people of the world, Christ died for all the people of the world and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit burst forth to bring all people to Christ. Christ is good news for all people and for all cultures as it is He who challenges, affirms and transforms them in the power of the Spirit.
Christ is the judge and hope of every culture. Christ stops cultural arrogance because Christ, not culture, is Lord.
‘To affirm the unique decisiveness of God’s action in Jesus Christ is not arrogance; it is the enduring bulwark against the arrogance of every culture to be itself the criterion by which others are judged.’ (L. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1989 p.166)
It is Christ who brings life. It is Christ who will be the Bridegroom of his people gathered from every tribe and tongue at the final Wedding Feast. How do we prepare ourselves?
How do we live?
What does Christ say about Australian jam, Amish buggies or Argentine maté? Is it about ‘better or worse’ cultures or, rather, the Jesus difference seen in sacrificing tastebuds for mateship, separating oneself for holiness and sharing a friendship drink?
How do disciples of Jesus Christ nurture their faith both as individuals and in community in the midst of a world that is hostile to Christ and to them?
In Tasmania, for ourselves both individually and as the Church, what is the shaping between Gospel and culture?
What is Christ saying to our culture?
More stories of our wonderful time with Amish and Mennonite friends at ‘Amish Encounters’