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This Sunday we continue our Culture Change series with a message I’m calling:
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud
Scripture: Matthew 15:10–28
Someone once said that a gaffe in politics is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. At least, that’s how it used to be.
Sometimes somebody says out loud what everybody knows is there—but nobody is supposed to say.
Jesus does something like that in Matthew 15.
The chapter begins with a confrontation between Jesus and some of the religious leaders. They are upset because His disciples are not following one of their traditions correctly. Jesus’ response is pointed: they have allowed something deeply rooted in their religious culture and tradition to take on an authority it was never supposed to have. In fact, Jesus tells them that their tradition has sometimes gotten in the way of what God actually said.
That ought to make every church—and every Christian—pay attention.
Because it is remarkably easy to do something for so long that eventually we forget why we do it. We can even begin to assume that the way we have always done something is the way God requires it to be done.
Then Matthew takes us into one of the strangest and, frankly, most difficult encounters in the Gospels.
A Canaanite woman comes desperately asking Jesus to help her daughter.
At first Jesus is silent.
She keeps asking.
And then Jesus says:
“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
Wow.
That just doesn’t sound very… Christlike.
So what in the world do we do with that?
I wonder if Jesus is saying the quiet part out loud.
Perhaps He is forcing everyone standing there—and everyone reading the story ever since—to confront assumptions that ordinarily remained safely beneath the surface. Assumptions about who belongs. Who doesn’t. Who deserves a place at the table. Who gets the bread and who gets the crumbs.
Those are precisely the assumptions that are hardest to change, because usually we don’t even know we have them.
And that brings me to something I want to make clear about this whole Culture Change series.
I realize that some people may hear me talking about “culture change” and wonder whether I am preparing us for sweeping changes to our worship, our programs, or other things we hold dear.
I am not.
There is so much that is good here. There are lives being changed through the ministries of this church. Just last week we had a wonderful group of newer people at our newcomers brunch. There is so much happening at Perry Methodist that I want us to celebrate, strengthen, and build upon—not dismantle.
Culture change isn’t about changing things simply for the sake of changing them.
It is about refusing to become complacent.
And I need that challenge as much as anybody.
We all get comfortable. We develop routines. Churches do too. Something may have begun for an incredibly important reason, and years later we are still doing it—but perhaps we have forgotten the reason. The activity remains while some of its meaning slowly disappears.
So I hope you hear my heart in this series. I don’t want to stress anybody out. I don’t want to push so hard that anyone thinks everything is about to change.
But I also don’t want us to become so comfortable that we stop asking uncomfortable questions.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question I know is this:
If Jesus were the pastor of Perry Methodist Church, what would be different?
Think about that.
Not what would Jesus criticize.
Not what would Jesus eliminate.
Not what would Jesus preserve.
Simply:
What would be different?
And if something immediately comes to mind, then perhaps there is another question worth asking:
If we believe Jesus would do it differently, what in the world are we waiting for?
That is the kind of culture change I am talking about.
Not abandoning what is good.
Not chasing what is new.
But having enough humility to hold everything we do up to Jesus and ask:
Is this helping us become the people He is calling us to be?
I’m looking forward to wrestling with this one together Sunday.
Grace and Peace,
Tom
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