Christology Part I: The Need for Low Christology For The Urban Conxt

Christology is the study of Jesus’ person and his work. In other words, it is a study of who Jesus is and what he does. Reformed theology emphasizes what is called High Christology. High Christology focuses on Jesus being God and totally other from humankind. In other words, it’s a Christology that starts with Jesus Christ’s Godness.  One could argue that the reformed system depends on High Christology, because we only know grace in the reformed system by knowing God’s supreme transcendence. We tend to view grace through the lens of God existing in his transcendent heaven dealing with human sin from his sense of superiority from mankind. To be sure we do not formally agree with this statement, but we implicitly tend to view grace from this perspective. Consequently, reformed circles tend to shy away from Jesus’ humanness which is a very important part of Christology. Therefore, we have a Christ that tends to be too transcendent to deal with human kind.  In my experience working in the urban context, transcendence tends to be not trusted. Therefore, we have to bridge people in our neighborhoods to Jesus not through the high Christology that makes us comfortable, but through low Christology that connects Jesus’ humanity with their humanity.

High Christology without properly viewing Jesus’ humanity has led to five main portraits of Christ that tend to make Jesus incompatible with the urban context:

1.      Jesus as an authoritarian Lord who reacts in authoritative ways

2.      Jesus as a moralist constantly judging those who do not fit that “moral” code

3.      Jesus as a wrathful adversary

4.      Jesus as an unquestionably obedient son of his Father

5.      Jesus as a God who responds only to “sinful” acts [1]

These things tend to turn people off from the LORD. Let’s briefly examine a few reasons these characteristics might turn people off. In my next essay we will examine why these things tend to turn people off from the LORD as we present him.

 First, while not denying Jesus’ right to exercise his authority in his people’s lives, our view of Christology tends to make Christ not a God exercising proper authority, but a dictator that will punish his people brutally for disobedience.  In the urban context, people tend to distrust authority. In the urban context, one gains authority through building trust and respect through relationships. Honestly, a lot the distrust of authority comes from real encounters of injustice from dealing with police. In addition, the urban context tends to have a lot of fatherless households. I have experienced that as a male people tend to trust you less, because a lot of people in my neighborhood through no fault of their own had their fathers abandon them. For instance, I have experienced a greater sense of leadership and authority over the Harambee kids on my crew. That sense of leadership and authority did not come from the fact that I am tall black and I can talk loud. On the contrary, it came from years of walking with the same group of kids in order to gain a measure of respect and trust. Yet, we tend to paint Jesus in light of his kingship and underemphasized that he gained the right to his kingship through serving people and walking amongst the disenfranchised. We must remember that the disciples followed Jesus the man before they got to the point where they worshipped him as God. We must emphasize Jesus’ right to have authority, because he was willing to get dirty amongst the people as opposed to simply emphasizing his deity. In the same way, we must lead people to the divinity of Christ by helping them respect how he connects with their humanity.   This emphasis will create a sense of respect for Jesus that is required in the urban culture. Respect has an important place in communities that tend to be overlooked by the mainstream or exploited by the mainstream. T.I. once said: “Ion't know what ya do for your respect, but I'ma die for mine”.[2]We want people to recognize his deity, but we do that by building their respect for Jesus through emphasizing his humanity.

Secondly, we make him a moralist that puts in place a moral code that no one can possibly meet and then judging people accordingly with no sense of grace. People in the urban context, just like any person in postmodern America, do not like feeling like Jesus, the Moralist judges them at every turn.  In church culture, we tend to make up rules that define what it means to be a Christian. These rules tend to be extra biblical. For instance, we tend to focus on whether or not people have their pants sagging rather than leading them to the savior. We want to make people talk without cursing. We want people to stop smoking weed, then come to church. We want to make people conform to holiness before they get a chance to meet the savior. This way of thinking contradicts what Reformed Theology holds at it center: holiness based on indicatives not imperatives. We can focus on all the rules that we have set-up and not the people that God has given us. The harvest is ripe in the entire world including the urban context. The savior says that: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." [3] Jesus expects morality from his followers, the Sermon on the Mount, teaches us this fact. Yet, he does not expect those outside of the church to get everything as soon as they come into his presence. Evidence that we tend to present Jesus and ourselves this way comes from my own experience. There have been times when people around me have been cursing, drinking, smoking weed, and they apologize to me, because I am a Christian. They do this apologizing out a sense of respect, but more out of the sense that churches have presented Jesus, the Moralist, and not Jesus that allows people to have flaws.  Jesus did not expect people to scrub up around him and neither should we expect that of other people.

Thirdly, we tend to make Jesus out as a constant adversary to those not in the church. Jesus himself says: “I have not come to save the righteous, but sinners”[4] This reason does not need much explanation. In the gospels, Jesus’ harshest critiques are not to the gentiles that needed to get into line. His harshest critiques were usually against the church folks. In today’s church, we tend to have a hyper critical attitude toward those outside the church and against each other. We usually go into these neighborhoods in the ghetto with an attitude that every facet of the neighborhood needs to be fixed. We (I say we because I am guilty too) can tend to think we need to redeem people of every facet of their lives that do not line up with middle class values. Yet, we miss that these neighborhoods' have people in them made in God’s image. For instance, I have learned about true community from my time living in my neighborhood. People in my neighborhood tend to share resources a lot easier than people I have ever seen before. They do not mind inviting you into their house to hang out. They do not mind sharing their food with you and making you feel welcome. Every person’s house I have been in has gone out of their way to make my wife and I feel welcome and a part of their family. This attitude lines up with how Jesus interacted with those outside of the church. Our LORD invited himself into “sinners” homes. He got accused of being a party boy, because he hung out with the “sinners”. Scriptures say: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'” [5]A Jesus like this communicates better than the Jesus that just is an adversary to everything.

Lastly, we tend to make Jesus into a perfect person that did not defy the social norms of his time. We tend to make the lion of Judah a choir boy. Jesus may have been sinless, but he was definitely no choir boy.  He called the rulers of his day “brood of vipers”. Hood culture does not line up with many of the things we call decency in middle class church culture. We must come to terms with the fact that if we do ministry in an urban context and do not expect our culture to change we have a mistaken notion of doing ministry. Doing ministry in the urban context means that we might have to forsake or adapt our culture to meet the norms. Hood culture seems more adversarial, angry, and controversial. In some ways, that can have validity. In other ways, we can see it as more direct and honest. I appreciate that in working with the kids at Harambee I never have to wonder how they really feel about me. Honestly, we need more truth tellers in our churches who “tell it like it is”. Jesus’ bucking of social norms in his day will connect with those in the urban context who buck against mainstream social norms. They do not want a Jesus that stands for the status quo, but a Jesus that will tell leaders when they have messed up. They want a Jesus that does not fit neatly into the “meek” and “humble” push over. Jesus was “meek” and “humble”, but no push over. He went against social norms for the sake of truth. The Sermon on the Mount was not a pretty speech, but challenged everything the religious institution held dear. When people from the urban context come into our  churches, our norms will be challenged. Jesus did the same thing. These aspects of our LORD’s character if emphasized can have a chance at communicating to the culture in the urban context.

These four reasons generally tend to turn people in the urban context off to Jesus, because we made him too transcendent and not someone they can relate to.  Urban culture is much more here and now and tangible. Therefore, people look for a Jesus to relate to in the here and now rather than a transcendent being that seems to have nothing to do with their here and now. Calvin, while still focusing on High Christology, speaks to the necessity of his humanity:

 …setting the Son of God familiarly before us as one of ourselves. That no one, therefore, may feel perplexed where to seek the Mediator, or by what means to reach him, the Spirit, by calling him man, reminds us that he is near, nay, contiguous to us, inasmuch as he is our flesh. And, indeed, he intimates the same thing in another place, where he explains at greater length that he is not a high priest who “cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb_4:15).[6]

In light of Calvin’s quote,  how will we make Jesus recognizable in the urban context? Stay tuned my next blog will try to answer this question.

             

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[1] Hodge, Daniel White. The Soul of Hip Hop: Rims, Timbs and a Cultural Theology. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2010. Print., (126) Adapted from Carter Heyward’s four theological portraits of Jesus (Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999], pp. 18-20).

[2] “A.S.A.P”. Song by T.I.  From the album Urban Legend.  Released 11/30/2004 by Atlantic Recording Corporation for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. 

[3] ESV Mat 9:37-38

[4]ESV Luke 5:32

[5] ESV, Mat 11:19

[6] John Calvin. The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Book 2, Chapter 12, Section 1. Electronically Accessed on E-Sword 8/11/2013.