The Buchele Adventure

This is record of the Buchele Adventure, as reported from West Africa.

Monday, November 30, 2015

The “You’ve preached long enough club!”

 

On Sunday, I was invited into an exclusive preacher’s club, the “You’ve preached long enough club” with the invitation coming in the form of a note passed to me in the pulpit.

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[10 Minutes More Please]

“What about the Church?” was the topic for the day, and I had been speaking for about 25 minutes the note invitation came. I was about to introduce the bride analogy St. Paul developed for the church, calling it the bride of Christ in his letter to the Ephesians. Now for many of us guys, this bride analogy makes us a bit uncomfortable, being called the wife of Jesus.  It just doesn’t work for us.

Typically, I have heard this “church as bride analogy” explained as an ideal, where the God-church relationship is like the intimacy between husband and wife. The ideal is for a church to mirror that relationship, with God. Still not helpful.

Them, then ; Us, now. My mentor and pastor, Rev. David Gilliam taught me long ago when something in scripture makes you uncomfortable, seek to understand what it meant to them (who it was written to), to know what it could mean to us, now.

To know what it means to US, NOW

We have to know what it meant to THEM, THEN.

I looked at my invitation, smiled and explained how the people Paul was writing to might have understood a bride to be property, owned by her husband. Production of children was a primary value. If she did not or could not produce children, the bride could be dismissed, or replaced.

Instead of the seeing the church as a romantic love partner with God as his bride, the church could be the property of God, like a first century bride, who’s primary function was to create children of God, (aka new believers). If a church could not, or would not make and disciple new believers, could it too be dismissed I wondered?

Oddly, a few minutes later, it was time for announcements and we heard the third and final “Banns of Marriage”. For three Sundays in a row, we had heard these Banns for our worship leader, who is to be married in a few weeks.

Banns is an old word for proclamation and according to Wikipedia their purpose was to “enable anyone to raise any canonical or civil legal impediment to the marriage, so as to prevent marriages that are invalid.” These banns inform (or warn) the public via advert in the local newspaper, and three times read in their local church(es) saying:

If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, you are to declare it or speak with the pastor, or board of elders.

All according to the 1951 marriage ordinance of Ghana.

Therefore, it was interesting to me that on the last Sunday before Advent, we learned about the bride of Christ, heard the banns for the future bride to Fiifi, and I preached long enough to be asked to stop (in 10 minutes).

 

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[Their Invitation]

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Three Times I Meet Thee – Applied Proverbs I

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One of the situations our Ashesi students discover when studying in the States is a difficulty in making new friends. This complaint is typical:

We sat and talked after class for an hour or more, talking about all sorts of things, but the next time I saw her, she walked right past, like we had never met and I thought we were friends.  Americans can be so rude.

Rude - Is this how I am seen here, I wondered? I think about the people who have befriend us from the village, and admit until I’ve run into them a few times, I have trouble remembering their faces.    Often they come up to me, start talking, and I am wondering who is this?! Then they say something that triggers our previous conversation(s) and I clue in. Sadly, I know this will happen a few more times before I figure out we are friends.

Is this what happens to our Ashesi students in the States?

Is it me, or has the art of making friends in the States become a complicated two-step between chance and circumstance? Do we leave friend making to chance: If chance brings us together three times, and we build on that encounter each time, do we then become friends?

There is a saying here that a friend is someone you share the path with and I like that definition. Maybe new friendship is more complicated than it needs to be when apparently the only requirement here is a shared path. Of course, there is another saying: two footsteps do not make a path and I think this saying highlights more than our cultural differences. Americans just need more footsteps to recognize the path and realize it was not chance that brought us a new friend, but our shared path.