Home > About Us > Collaborating Institutions > SCS > Luce Seminars > 2003

Baptizing the Nations
Mission, Culture, and Liturgy in the Gospel of Matthew
[Research/writing project for 2003 Luce Seminar, “Prospects of Historic Liturgies in a Postmodern Age.”]

A work in progress

Laurence C. Sibley, Jr.
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
© 2004

A Song to the Lamb

Dignus es

Revelation 4:11, 5:9-10, 13

Splendor and honor and kingly power *
are yours by right, O Lord our God,

For you created everything that is, *
and by your will they were created and have their being;

And yours by right, O Lamb that was slain, *
for with your blood you have redeemed for God,

From every family, language, people, and nation, *
a kingdom of priests to serve our God.

And so, to him who sits upon the throne, *
and to Christ the Lamb,

Be worship and praise, dominion and splendor, *
for ever and for evermore.
—Book of Common Prayer

Chapter 3.

Go - Into the Cultures of the World

“What is church?” has a different agenda when asked by a house church leader from the Peoples' Republic of China. An African-American student suggests that our white Christologies place too much emphasis on the deity of Christ to be of functional use of the suffering streets of the black ghettos. “That kind of Jesus ain't got no feet,” he argues. “He's a Gnostic Jesus, something for our trophy cases. He won't make out in my neighborhood.”
—Harvie M. Conn ¹

To better appreciate the message of Matthew, we might ask, “What would this Gospel sound like to one whose primary, perhaps sole, contact with the book is in a liturgical setting, where it has been read to an assembly concerned with Word and sacrament?” After a second or third reading, the hearer might notice the overall shape of the book echoing the general shape of the weekly assembly. God, the Son, comes down among his people (1-4), they are gathered at the mountain and into God's presence to hear his teaching/Word (5-7), they eat with him (14,15), Jesus promises to build his church/assembly (16), they are reminded of his death and resurrection (26-28), and he sends them forth from the mountain (28:16) for that work of building (10:1-42; 28:16-20).

In the first century, the hearers would have recognized these elements from their own liturgy: the presence of the Lord, gathering around the Word and table to remember the death and resurrection of Christ, and sending into the world. This might escape some early twenty-first century hearers whose liturgies lack an emphasis on the sending and who hear the commission emphasized at annual or occasional missions conventions, while the original hearers were sent from each weekly assembly to serve the Lord and to bless their friends and neighbors. It matters little whether Matthew, in the structure he gave to his Gospel, wrote this to create a sense of mission in his hearers or simply to reinforce their practice. The effect is the same. The coming of the Messiah king issues in mission.

The Missiological Agenda of Matthew (1:5, 6; 2:1-12; 8:5-13; 10; 15:21-28; 28:19)

The more one pores over the pages of Matthew's Gospel, the more one realizes that, in a sense, he wrote it backwards. In the commissioning on the mount in Galilee, the apostles were sent into all the world. All through the Gospel, their small, Jewish world kept leaking into the outer world, or was being invaded from the outside by needy people; redemptively in every case. In the story of Joseph taking Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt to escape the slaughter of infants, Matthew provides us with a reversal of the slaughter of the Hebrew children in Egypt during the bondage before the Exodus. ²As the apostles (including Matthew) thought about this event, and perhaps discussed it among themselves, it must have dawned on them that, even at this early stage of the story, some profound cultural changes were afoot. Salvation was foretold in that furtive dash to Egypt; salvation that would enfold the nations.

The Eschatological Transition from Exclusion to Inclusion

Mission to the nations involved crossing cultural barriers. In the unfolding revelation of God, Matthew describes a time when the transition from Gentile exclusion to Gentile inclusion is underway. In spite of the hints in the genealogy (Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba) and his choice to concentrate on the visit of the Magi rather than that of the Israelite shepherds at the time of Jesus' birth (cf. Luke 2:8-20), there are also clear reminders that the old barriers are still there in the agenda of Jesus himself.

When a Roman centurion comes asking that his servant be healed by Jesus (8:5-13), the barrier is being stretched from outside. This is typical of how the transition is portrayed by Matthew. Later, it will be a Canaanite woman who comes asking for a similar blessing. It is not Jesus who initiates these encounters and his comment to the centurion in 8:10, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith,” carries the overtones of a mission still focused on Israel. The centurion is unusual in that an outsider has such faith. And yet, he is there in the story and receives mercy, as do the Gadarene demoniacs (8:28-34). The promises of the great feast of the nations (8:11, see Isaiah 25:6) are on the verge of fulfillment and the barrier is beginning to show perforations.

In chapter 10:5-6, as he sends the twelve on their mission, he instructs, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel .” The mission is restricted along Old Testament lines. And yet, these instructions are also relevant for the first hearers of the Matthew and for hearers/readers today. They are “ ‘spoken out of the window.' That means that they are not part of the narrative only, but they transcend the narrative and address the hearers or readers of the Gospel directly.” ³ The restrictions of verses 5 and 23 help to locate this discourse in the developing eschatology of Jesus' ministry, even though, by the time Matthew included them in his Gospel, they were transcended by 28:19.

Matthew 10 “extends...the fundamental proclamation of Jesus” that is summarized in the Sermon on the Mount and “extends...the mission of Jesus in Israel (chaps. 8-9)...into....the life of the future church.” ⁴ The twelve begin to see that the message and mission of Jesus are also to be their message and mission. What he says and does, they will also say and do. Their message and mission, and ours today, grow out of the message and mission of the Messiah to his people, at first ethnically limited but finally to assume Abrahamic proportions in the blessing of all the nations. The kingdom has come and is to be proclaimed to all the nations.

This early commissioning, limited as it is in scope, anticipates the final commissioning by the risen Christ. For hearers and readers in the church down through the centuries, these words provide not only anticipation and background for the Great Commission, they also flesh out the succinct words of 28:19 and provide a balanced, complex missiological agenda. The restrictions imbedded in this chapter also are a reminder that culture and the gospel are inextricably intertwined. ⁵ We will return to the cultural setting of the gospel below.

When confronted by the Canaanite/Syrophenician woman (15:21-28), ⁶ Jesus initially refuses her plea for help. ⁷ These incidents need to be seen against the background of the Old Testament promises to Abraham that he would be a blessing to the nations (Gen. 18:18), the inclusion of Ruth among the ancestors of David (Ruth 4:13-22, note that verses 18-22 form a bridge from Abraham to David), the promises in Isaiah 2 and 25 about the nations coming to the mountain of the L ord to be taught and fed, and the implications of Jonah's mission to Nineveh. Matthew's unfolding eschatology portrays movement from incarnation in the early chapters to the resurrection sending in the final chapter. Even Jesus is seen crossing the threshold by steps and his reluctance to the pleas of the Canaanite woman should be understood within the unfolding of the divine initiative, the gradual fulfilment of Abraham's role as blessing to the nations.

The reluctance of Jesus is easy to misunderstand, particularly in these days of political correctness. Was Jesus ethnically hostile? Was he a male chauvinist? What prejudice hampered him here? Reading today's ethnic and gender sensitivities back into this incident is not uncommon, especially in circles where there is a relatively low Christology. It can be difficult to balance a high Christology with what appears at first to be cultural and/or gender insensitivity or even sin.

Rather, it would seem that Jesus knew the change that was in the wind and chose to act within his culture, leading his disciples by steps to the moment of sending to the nations. ⁸ This is not to deny that Jesus also grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52) and obedience (Heb. 5:8). He himself went through the unfolding eschatology of his time, but without the fallenness and sinful prejudice that some twenty-first century reflection may imply. Now, in the light of Matthew 28:16-20, it would be sinful to turn people away from grace because of cultural or racial background. But when Jesus met the Canaanite woman, the events were emerging from the Old Testament economy and his reluctance was fitting. Indeed, his relenting under her repeated pleas is a gracious harbinger of things about to come. ⁹

When we come to chapter 18:15-20 we find another jarring note. As Jesus sketches an escalating controversy (first two persons, then two plus one or two others, and finally the assembly are involved), he says, “If the member refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (17). ¹⁰ He seems still to be using the old rhetoric, even after including a tax collector, Levi, among the twelve (10:13). Again, we are in the transition, a kind of early “already and not yet,” and the eschatology is still unfolding. By chapter 21:23-30, the eschatology unfolds further and tax collectors who believe go into the kingdom ahead of the chief priests and elders of the people. All through the Gospel there is tension between the ages, as the new emerges, fulfilling the old (Matt 9:14-17). ¹¹

The Nations Bring Their Cultures

On a recent visit to a multicultural congregation in Philadelphia (Spirit and Truth Fellowship—Christian Reformed), I was fascinated by the blending of several cultures in the worship: Hispanic, Korean, Chinese, African-American and Anglo (Euro-American). One sometimes hears the term cross cultural used to describe situations like Spirit and Truth. But that is more the impression of a visitor, experiencing other cultures on an occasional basis. For those who are there week by week, it is more intercultural, a five-point intersection.

When missiologists and liturgical scholars began to think seriously about culture in the 1970s, they searched for a vocabulary to describe what they saw in Scripture and the world around them. They tried enculturation and inculturation (Anscar J. Chupungco, ¹² and other post-Vatican II writers), contextualization (Harvie M. Conn and several evangelical missiologists) and interculturation (Aylward Shorter ¹³). The latter term captured what Shorter thought to be the ideal and we will adopt it as the term for the model we develop. In this model, no one culture imperializes others, what Paulo Freire calls “cultural invasion.” ¹⁴ Rather, when they come together they affect each other. The sending church's message and liturgy is affected by the receiving culture and the result, whether a liturgy or a theology, shows the result of that mutual interchange. Peter Phan similarly calls for a dialog between cultures. ¹⁵Harvie Conn, ¹⁶ using the term contextualization, comes to much the same conclusion. The worship at Spirit and Truth seems to be the result of such a dialogue or mutual interchange. Perhaps that is partly because the congregation was planted indigenously within the cultural mix of that section of Philadelphia, rather than as a project initiated from an Anglo, suburban congregation.

Interculturation in Reformed and Roman Catholic Writing

As background for understanding interculturation, it may be helpful to look at the pattern that interculturation seeks to correct. One description is Paulo Freire's concept of cultural invasion: “...the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another group, in disrespect of the latter's potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression.” ¹⁷ One can visualize the importation of both the gospel and liturgy in Western cultural dress, imposing them without respect for the local receiving cultures. In spite of the good news brought by the missionaries, it does not grow in local soil. ¹⁸ This certainly has happened in the past. “Under Christendom the basis and rationale for transmitting the gospel were colonial annexation and subjugation, with the church as an afterthought.” ¹⁹ The South American continent was divided up by Portugese and Spanish conquerors and the church followed the soldiers to build gothic cathedrals in the tropics. Churches in Korea still sing mostly translations of Western Presbyterian and Methodist hymns while shunning indigenous music and verse forms.

Lest we think this only happened in the past, Aylward Shorter writes, “The Western world continues to exert an immense economic and technological pressure on countries like those of Africa, and such pressure carries with it an overwhelming mass of cultural traits.” ²⁰ This pressure often goes by the name of globalization with multi-national corporations leading the way. Christian missions have often uncritically joined this process, championing the day of the global church. However, at this point it would be more helpful to speak of world Christianity as distinguished from global Christianity. Globalization resists localizing and indigenizing the product or service; MacDonalds sells hamburgers and fries everywhere, not local foods with fast-food convenience/methods. “World Christianity is not one thing, but a variety of indigenous responses through more or less effective local responses....‘Global Christianity,' on the other hand, is the faithful replication of Christian forms and patterns developed in Europe.” ²¹ All to often, the nineteenth-century imperial missions strategies are being continued under the rubric of globalization.

It is against this background of imperial missiology that Harvie Conn did his work as missionary, scholar, and missiologist. In his essay on hermeneutics, “Normativity, Relevance, and Relativism” he discussed the interaction of cultures in the process of understanding the Scriptures. There are, as it were, two horizons involved, that of the text and that of the reader/hearer. “We are involved in looking for the place where the horizons...intersect or engage. Drawn into this search for fusion, then, has come a new sensitivity to human cultures....Both horizons are embedded in different cultures...” ²²

This realization brings with it three questions: (1) “If cultural factors constantly interact to shape the message of Scripture, does not the authority of the text die the death of a thousand qualifications?” (2) “Given the cultural, social, and worldview dispositions of the interpreter, how can we ever penetrate to a true understanding of either the text or of its significance in the here and now?” (3) “What interpretive clues will help us to cross legitimately from what is culturally specific in the Bible to what is culturally specific in our world?” ²³ A further complication for this bicultural approach is “a third set of perceptions when we begin to communicate to others.” ²⁴

Conn proposes the model of a hermeneutical spiral, an improvement on Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical circle. ²⁵ “Within the spiral, two complementary processes are taking place. As our cultural setting is matched with the text and the text with our setting, the text progressively reshapes the questions we bring to it, and in turn, our questions force us to look at the text in a fresh way.” ²⁶ The process spirals upward into better understanding of the text and better awareness of the path of obedience and transformation. “The biblical horizon remains the norm of the twentieth-century setting.” ²⁷

Let us now compare Conn's formulations with those of Anscar Chupungco, Aylward Shorter, and Peter Phan, who worked in the midst of Roman Catholic efforts towards inculturating the liturgy after Vatican II, particularly the conciliar document Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), and used the terms inculturation, interculturation, and cultural dialogue to express concepts similar to Conn's. Whereas Conn 's focus is on contextualizing the message with an emphasis on word and deed, the Catholic scholars focused on inculturating the gospel as it is expressed in the liturgy. The rigorous hierarchicalism of the Roman Catholic polity issues in a sometimes rigid and detailed attempt to control the practice of the liturgy in all cultures of the world. ²⁸ For these liturgical scholars writing from the perspectives of the Asian and African churches, the question was how can the Roman Mass be faithfully celebrated in non-European cultures?

Anscar J. Chupungco has expressed his views on the subject in several writings. ²⁹ He provides a helpful survey of the various terms that have been used, i.e. indigenization, contextualization, adaptation, inculturation. Contextualization has a Protestant provenance and³⁰ inculturation appears to have been first used by a Jesuit ³¹ and later by Pope Paul II. ³²

Chupungco mentions three methods of inculturation: dynamic equivalence, creative assimilation, and organic progression. In each case, the control on the content is the typical editions of the Mass and other rites. ³³ “Dynamic equivalence consists in replacing an element of the Roman liturgy with something in the local culture that has an equal meaning or value...[so that] the linguistic, ritual, and symbolic elements of the Roman liturgy are re-expressed following a particular pattern of thought, speech, and ritual. The result is a liturgy whose language, rites, and symbols admirably relate to the community of worship.” ³⁴ Organic progression is “progressive because of the new shape it gives to liturgy. At the same time it is organic its result complies with the basic intention of the liturgical documents and, on a wider breadth, with the nature and tradition of the liturgy.” ³⁵ His desire is to move beyond dynamic equivalence, even creative assimilation, and into organic progression, where liturgical creativity can be released from the letter of the typical editions of the Roman books.

In terms of Conn's use of the horizons-and-spiraling-hermeneutical model, Chupungco seems to be advocating a kind of spiraling interaction between Rome and an indigenous culture, where the essence of the Roman rite influences local worship and the local culture asks its questions of Rome, filling in what should have been in the typical editions all along. ³⁶ To anticipate what we will write below, the Geneva Liturgy of 1542 should not function rigidly as the Roman typical editions sometimes have, but provide the opening model for developing indigenous worship that expresses the content and echoes the shape of Geneva in its own cultural dress.

Calvin as a Contextualizer: the Concept of Accommodation

Harvie Conn writes from within the Calvinistic tradition and finds an example in John Calvin's theological method. “[Calvin's] battle cry of sola Scriptura was not simply the demand that we approach the Bible with an empty slate. As a pastor, he approached the Bible from his contemporary situation, as we approach it from ours.” ³⁷ Let us now look at Calvin's methodology more carefully, especially his concept of accommodation, which provides an interesting foretaste of contemporary discussions of inculturation.

In 1977, Ford Lewis Battles published a pivotal essay, “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity,” about John Calvin's concept of accommodation. ³⁸ Focusing on the Institutes, he summarized Calvin's thought in terms of God's accommodating self-revelation as Father, Teacher, and Healer. Calvin introduces the concept of accommodation early in the Institutes, in 1.13.1:

For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” (balbutire) in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking [that God has a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet] do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate (accommodant) the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend (descendere necesse est) far beneath his loftiness. ³⁹

Battles finds accommodation to be “at the center of Calvin's thought.” ⁴⁰ The entire physical creation is a bridge across the gulf between God and humans. “God clothes, so to speak, his invisible, inaccessible nature with the visible, palpable raiment of the universe in which we live, (Inst. 1.5.1).” ⁴¹ The human body, associated as it is with the imago dei, is further accommodation to our limited understanding. And the civil order is yet another avenue of accommodation. Battles goes on to enumerate Calvin's treatment of Scripture, the Lord's Prayer, and the sacraments, plus the incarnation at the apex, as means where God crosses the gap, accommodating his truth to our senses and hearts. ⁴² Calvin's own pastoral and ecumenical strategies were a reflection of God's accommodation. His correspondence with the leaders of the English Reformation, for instance, shows repeated instances of refusing to impose his own liturgy and church government in a different situation and culture, being content that general biblical principles be followed. ⁴³

We have been noticing the developing eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew and in Scripture generally. Calvin also addressed the redemptive-historical character of Scripture in a section of the Institutes devoted to the difference between the two testaments. After reviewing five aspects of these differences, he then explains that God was accommodating his revelation to the situations of his hearers:

Some persons hold up to ridicule this variableness in governing the church, this diverse manner of teaching, these great changes of rites and ceremonies. . . . I reply that God ought not to be considered changeable merely because he accommodated diverse forms to different ages, as he knew it would be expedient for each. . . . In the fact that he has changed the outward form and manner, he does not show himself subject to change. Rather, he has accommodated himself to men's capacity, which is varied and changeable. ⁴⁴

It is Calvin's understanding of “God accommodating himself” to human limitations of nature (finite to God's infinitude), character (fallen and rebellious), and situation (the changing worlds of Conn 's book title) that provides later scholars like Conn with a model for doing theology interculturally or contextually. It also can guide liturgists and liturgical theologians in the work of adapting, enculturating, and enacting biblical and historic liturgy in the many cultures where God is blessed and beseeched each Lord's Day.

Contextualization within the Biblical Horizon

Underlying the writing of Calvin, Conn, Chupungco, and others, is the biblical record of God accommodating himself to human capacity in his works and Word. Contextualization, in the end, is not the invention of a new approach in the sixteenth or twentieth centuries. It is the way God acts and speaks. Humans in their theology and liturgy are only thinking and speaking God's thoughts after him.

The biblical account of worship begins at Mt. Sinai, in the assembly of God's people in his presence, around his Word. Although there was worship before this, it is here that God speaks definitively, constituting these people as his in the context of his great redemptive work. ⁴⁵ “In the assembly at Sinai we have the basic elements for all future worship. The people gather to meet with God, to hear his Word, to eat (in the person of their elders) with God. And they have been baptized in the cloud and in the sea (1 Cor. 10:2). The Word, meal, and bath are the building blocks for worship.” ⁴⁶ The first written words are the ten words God spoke from the mountain and then wrote those words on the two tablets of stone. The redemptive-historical account of salvation, with its liturgical celebration, proceeds from this point. What came before (Gen. 1:1 through Ex. 19:25) is historical prologue, summarized in Exodus 20:2. ⁴⁷

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). The slavery in view was not only political slavery, but service to the gods of Egypt (Josh. 24:14). The Israelites were not enslaved to some abstract gods, but rather to specific forms of nature worship. They had become immersed in the idol practices of the Egyptians; had become enculturated. God's redemptive action in judging the gods of Egypt (Ex. 12:12) was also culturally conditioned. In the ten plagues, Jehovah caused the idolized forces of nature to harm their worshipers. ⁴⁸

The Passover meal, which was instituted in the midst of the escape from Egypt, together with the rite of circumcision begun earlier to seal God's promises to Abraham are perhaps related to existing customs and festivals, but in both cases turned to new use. ⁴⁹ Geerhardus Vos's pioneering work in biblical theology is sensitive to the context in which redemptive history occurs. Whether later studies of the particular feasts and rites may yield clearer understanding than he was able to achieve is not as important as his attention to the cultural setting. What interests us is the pattern he discerned of culturally conditioned bondage, culturally targeted conflict and conquest, and the appropriation and transformation of cultural elements as aspects of covenant-governed life in ancient Israel.

The covenant established at Sinai follows the pattern of Hittite suzerainty treaties, but is different in several respects, transformed by a new context. Although sovereignly imposed by God's redemptive victory over the Egyptian armies, it is also two-sided, providing for voluntary acceptance by the people (Ex. 19-24). ⁵⁰ The provision for placing the two copies of the covenant together in the ark of the covenant is an alteration of the usual placement in the different sanctuaries of the sovereign and the vassal, showing that God dwells among his people, is not a distant sovereign. The first three stipulations of the covenant are directed “against the three typical and fundamental sins of paganism, the sin of polylatry, that of idolatry, that of magic.” ⁵¹

One of the features of these covenants was the stipulation for their public reading from time to time; so also the written document of the covenant was to be read out on certain occasions. The law was to be recited in the hearing of all Israel in the sabbatical year, during the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles; at the sanctuary entrance—note the liturgical connection—where the tablets and written law (Deut. 31:9) were to be kept. ⁵²

Likewise, much of the architecture and symbolism of the tabernacle, and later temple, echoes the surrounding culture, but it is turned and transformed for the worship of Yahweh. This illustrates Calvin's concept of accommodation developed above. Alward Shorter mentions the uses of Canaanite motifs in Psalms 104 and 29, along with the borrowing of Syro-Phoenician temple architecture and local harvest rituals, plus Hosea's transformation of Canaanite ritual prostitution as examples of Old Testament interculturation. ⁵³ Missing, however, in his insightful description is a clear note of God's impetus in the process; it reads as a case of two human cultures interculturating—the one local and pagan, the other Israelite and covenant-bound to Yaweh. While it is true that what we observe is two human cultures interacting, then and now, we need also to factor in God's sovereign action.

It is when we understand that interculturation involves God's accommodation, as Calvin pointed out, that we see that the intercultural process is triangular rather than merely dual (God, the covenant community, and the unevangelized community). Both sides of the dialog between the human communities should be seen as multilayered. On the one side, there is the gospel as enculturated (the divine Word and the cultural dress it wears at its point of origin along the redemptive-historical continuum), plus the culture of the covenant community. On the other side is the unevangelized community, itself multilayered, consisting of a worldview resting on a religious framework and dressed in a local culture.

This is what happened in the case of Psalm 104: God inspired his poet to carry the message of God's sovereignty over creation while using the cultural capital of the surrounding culture and turning that capital on its head. Psalm 104 posits a worldview that is contrary to the worldview of its ancient neighboring culture. And it does so using the symbols and language of that surrounding culture, subverting those symbols and turning them to new service. Often in Scripture the symbols used by the people of God are taken from their captors or from their enemies turned neighbors, and then transformed in ways that critique and remake these symbols into symbols of God's kingdom. ⁵⁴

Liturgical and Missiological Hermeneutics

What we are proposing here is that the text of Matthew, and by extension the rest of the Bible, be read liturgically and missiologically. The liturgical reading proceeds, at least in part, from the fact that all of the Bible was written initially to be read aloud in assemblies of God's people. This is, of course, because there could be few, if any, personal copies in those pre-Gutenberg days. but it is deeper than that. The assembly is important on its own, not merely as a convenience for reaching more people at a time. The assembly tells the assembled that they together are God's people. In a less individualistic age, this would be obvious. Today, we strive for community rather than assuming it. So, the biblical books were designed for reading in assembly, echoing the first assembly at Sinai and anticipating the final assembly in the new Jerusalem. When we read them, then, we should always ask, how would this sound first of all as a message in the liturgy of this assembly? This does not so much contradict the results of a scholar's reading in the study as enrich and recontextualize it. This is not truth in the abstract, but the same truth between two persons, God and his people understood as a collective person. The betweenness is what matters.

And, as we have seen from the shape of Matthew, this reading issues in a sending. But this was not the first place that sending occurred. It began at Sinai when Israel did not stay there, but went on to the place where God would place his name, eventually Jerusalem. In Nehemiah 8, the people did not stay in the assembly, but were sent with portions of the feast for those who had none. These sendings are the foundation for what we find at the end of each of the gospels and also find in the imperatives of the letters. The indicative of God's salvation in Christ, recounted in the Gospels and in Paul's letters issues in the imperative, “Go, do this.” So, the reading in assembly issues in action beyond the assembly. We listen for the imperative, our marching orders on the way from Sinai to Jerusalem; missiological hermeneutics.

The missiological hermeneutic is also implied in the polemical character of Psalms like 29 and 104, where the symbols of a culture are appropriated for apologetic purposes and turned in ways that affirm a new worldview, that of the kingdom of God. Likewise, the building and manner of the Old Testament liturgy is taken from the surrounding culture and turned on its head to affirm the Lordship of Jahweh. Unless we listen for this dynamic and hear it throughout Scripture, the task of mission seems to be only a New Testament imperative centered in a few texts like the commissions at the ends of the Gospels and in the example of the Apostle Paul; perhaps something only for specialists. When it is seen to pervade Scripture and when it is heard at the close of every Christian assembly, clearly it has become the task of all; we are all sent from the Word and meal to engage in mission.

This imperative and its coordinate interculturation with the cultures of the world begins in the Divine initiative. It is God, ⁵⁵ as we have seen in Calvin and Vos, who initiated interculturation when he began to speak to his creation, accommodating his speech to the ears and understanding of his creatures. He also aided the process of understanding by the action of his Spirit, who illuminated this Word so that the first hearers understood, believed, and obeyed. The same Spirit works when a third horizon is breached, adding to the Divine horizon and the first hearers' horizons that of new receptors. Lest we think that interculturation is a purely human process where we try our best to be interculturally sensitive and wise, even now no communication can take place without the aid of the Spirit. Our eyes are blind, our ears deaf, our tongues tied from the consequences of the fall, and only the regenerating, illuminating Spirit can open, unstop, and loosen them to the redeeming Word and bridge all cultural gaps.

Towards Reformed Liturgy at Home in Every Culture

Applying these insights to our project, when we discover liturgical material in the Bible, whether descriptive or prescriptive, we need to remember that it is always contexualized or inculturated; embedded in a host culture. As such, it is still fully normative for our practice. But, the transfer is not simple. We need to be culturally self-conscious, aware that our pre-understandings color the way we read the text and the ways we seek to bring the gospel and liturgy into another contemporary culture. And we need to beseech the help of the illuminating Spirit as the sovereign enabler of interculturation.

Baptism comes to us culturally conditioned by the world in which it arose. ⁵⁶ As the practice developed in the church, more layers of cultural clothing have accumulated. When this liturgical bath is introduced into a culture for the first time, local understandings of washing and ritual use of water need to be taken into account. These understandings will be transformed, broken open by the ritual Christian bath, ⁵⁷ but they should also affect the way baptism is practiced and understood; the dialogue of interculturation will yield an old-new washing. The biblical norm is baptism in water and in the triune name (Matt 28:19), but recontextualization may alter many of the details in the new culture. ⁵⁸

At this point we might ask, what is or would be a successful interculturation? What would identify it? We might answer this with three questions. Does the resulting liturgy look (sound, feel, smell, taste) like the culture in which it is practiced? Does the resulting liturgy look (sound, feel, smell, taste) like the gospel? What remnants of the look (sound, feel, smell, taste) of the sending/missionary culture adhere to the liturgical practices of the receiving culture and are they helpful or harmful to the inculturation?

To be realistic, in a globalized society, there is a tendency towards homogenization; every restaurant resembles MacDonalds. ⁵⁹ So, most receiving cultures are to some degree compromised before the conscious process of interculturation begins. I propose that the ideal would be an integration of the gospel as expressed in the classical and biblical liturgical ordo ⁶⁰ with the practicing culture, its indigenous character preserved, welcomed, and critiqued by the gospel (Rev. 21:26-27). ⁶¹ The contributions of the sending culture would then be welcomed as gifts to other parts of the worldwide church (Acts 11:27-29), to the extent that they enrich the receiving assembly without compromising its indigenous culture.

The goal, then, is for the church to be truly local, ⁶² having the characteristics of its own culture, not being merely a transplant of another culture. Lamin Sanneh puts it this way, explaining the explosive growth of Christianity in Africa:

The old religions provided the rules, rewarding good conduct and punishing wrong, but they had only a limited ethical range....Christianity answered this historical challenge by a reorientation of the worldview....People sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred nor their clamor for an invincible Savior, and so they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. After that dance, the stars weren't little anymore. Christianity helped Africans to become renewed Africans, not re-made Europeans. ⁶³

Similarly, Peter Phan writes, “...inculturation, liturgical or otherwise, is not something to be pursued for its own sake, or to make worship palatable to Asian aesthetic and religious tastes. Rather, it must be subordinated to the task of becoming an Asian Church ...” ⁶⁴ Full contextualization or interculturation results in the church being local and yet clearly recognizable as church, the assembly gathered around the Word, celebrating the meal, and sent to live out the gospel.

Bibliography

Baker, Susan S. “Lessons Learned in Multi-Ethnic Ministry.” Urban Mission, 13.4 (1996): 57-8.

Balserak, Jon, “ ‘The Accommodating Act par excellence?': An Inquiry into the Incarnation and Calvin's Understanding of Accommodation.” Scottish Journal of Theology 55.4 (2002): 408-23.

Basden, Paul., ed. Exploring the Worship Spectrum: Six Views. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.

Battles, Ford Lewis. “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity.” Interpretation 31 (1977): 19-38, reprinted in Donald K. McKim, ed., Readings in Calvin's Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984.

Beaudoin, Tom. Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998.

Bedingfield, M. Bradford. The Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell, 2002.

Benin, Stephen D. The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought. Albany: State University of New York, 1993.

Borgmann, Albert. Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003.

Bradshaw, Paul F., Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips. The Apostolic Tradition, Hermenea Commentary, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002.

Bradshaw, Paul F. "Redacting the Apostolic Tradition: Some Preliminary Steps.” Pages 3-17 in Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith: Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh. Edited by Nathan Michel and John Baldovin. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996: 3-17.

______. The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford 2002.

Brent, Allen. Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century: Communities in Tension before the Emergence of a Monarch Bishop. Leiden: Brill, 1995.

Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977.

Bucer, Martin, John Calvin, and others. La forme des prières et chants ecclésiastiques, 1542. Genève: Kassel Bärenreiter, 1959.

Calvin, John. Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists. 3 vols. Translated by William Pringle. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845.

______. Institutes of the Christian Religion (Library of Christian Classics, 20-21). Edited by John R. McNeill and translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Liguori, Missouri: Liguori, 1994.

Chupungco, Anscar J. “Baptism, Marriage, Healing, and Funerals: Principles and Criteria for Inculturation,” in Baptism, Rites of Passage, and Culture (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1999), 47-69.

______. Cultural Adaptation of the Liturgy, New York: Paulist, 1982.

______. “Inculturation and Organic Progression of the Liturgy,” Ecclesia orans 7 (1990/1): 7-21.

______. Liturgical Inculturation: Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis. Collegeville: Pueblo, 1992.

______, “Liturgy and the Components of Culture,” in Worship and Culture in Dialogue (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994), 153-66.

Church of England. Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England. London: Church House Publishing, 2000.

Church of Scotland. The Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland. 1994. Edinburgh: St. Andrew, 1994.

Clowney, Edmund P. "The Biblical Theology of the Church," Pages 13-87 in The Church in the Bible and the Worl. Edited by D.A. Carson. Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1987.

Conn, Harvie M. Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

______. “A Historical Prologue: Inerrancy, Hermeneutic, and Westminster.” Pages 15-34 in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic: a Tradition, a Challenge, a Debate. Edited by Harvie M. Conn. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988.

______. “Mission, Missions, Theology, and Theological Education.” Pages 1-26 in The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel in a Diverse and Changing World. Edited by Manuel Ortiz and Susan S. Baker. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002.

______. Normativity, Relevance, and Relativism.” Pages 185-210 in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic: a Tradition, a Challenge, a Debate. Edited by Harvie M. Conn. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988.

Craigie, Peter C. The Book of Deuteronomy. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.

De Ridder, Richard. Discipling the Nations. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975.

Episcopal Church, USA. Book of Common Prayer 1979. New York: Oxford, 1990.

Flusser, David. “ ‘I am in the Midst of Them' (Mt. 18:20).” Pages 515-25 in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988.

Forstman, H. Jackson. Word and Spirit: Calvin's Doctrine of Biblical Authority. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1962.

Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.

Gademer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method. Translated by Garrett Barden and John Cumming. New York: Seabury, 1975.

Geerz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

General Instruction of the Roman Missal: Third Typical Edition. Washington: Committee on the Liturgy, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003. http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/current/revmissalisromanien.shtml

Gerrish, Bryan A., Robert Benedetto, eds, Reformatio Perennis: Essays on Calvin and the Reformation in honor of Ford Lewis Battles. Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1981.

Grenz, Stanley. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Guardini, Romano. “A Letter from Romano Guardini,” Herder Correspondence (August, 1964): 237-9.

Hagner, Donald A. Matthew. Word Biblical Commentary 33 a,b. Dallas: Word, 1993-5.

Hayes, Alan L. “Tradition in the Anglican Liturgical Movement 1943-1989.” Anglican and Episcopal History 69 (2000): 22-43.

Hughes, Philip E. “Calvin and the Church of England,” Pages 173-96 in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World (ed. W. Stanford Reid and Paul Woolley; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).

Hyde, Daniel R. “God's Visible Words.”

Jeremias, Joachim, “The Gentile World in the Thought of Jesus.” Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, Bulletin III (1952): 18-28.

______. Jesus' Promise to the Nations. Translated by S. H. Hooke. Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1958.

Johnson, Clare V. “Inculturating the Easter Feast in Southeast Australia,” Worship 78 (2004): 98-117.

Johnson, Maxwell E. “Can We Avoid Relativism in Worship? Liturgical Norms in the Light of Contemporary Liturgical Scholarship.” Worship 74 (2000): 135-55.

Kline, Meredith G. By Oath Consigned. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968.

______. The Structure of Biblical Authority. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Kubicki, Judith M. “Recognizing the Presence of Christ in the Liturgical Assembly.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy, Indianapolis, Ind., January 2003.

Lakeland, Paul. Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997.

Lane, William L. The Gospel According to Mark. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

Lathrop, Gordon W., “Baptism in the New Testament and Its Cultural Setting.” Pages 17-38 in Worship and Culture in Dialogue. Edited by S. Anita Stauffer. Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994.

______. “A Contemporary Lutheran Approach to Worship and Culture: Sorting Out the Critical Principles.” Pages 137-151 in Worship and Culture in Dialogue. Edited by S. Anita Stauffer. Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994.

______. “Holy Ground: Biblical and Liturgical Reorientation in the World.” Worship 77.1 (2003): 2-21.

______. Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.

______. Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999.

______. Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.

______. “ ‘O Taste and See': The Geography of Liturgical Ethics” in Liturgy and the Moral Self: Humanity at Full Stretch before God. Edited by E. Byron Anderson and Bruce T. Morrill. Collegeville: Pueblo, 1998.

______. “Worship: Local Yet Universal.” Pages 46-75 in Christian Worship: Unity in Cultural Diversity. Edited by S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1996.

Leonard, John S. “Jesus' Word to the Canaanite Woman: Another Perspective.” Pages 197-221 in The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel in a Diverse and Changing World.” Edited by Manuel Ortiz and Susan S. Baker. Phillipsburg, NJ : Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002.

Lints, Richard. “The Vinyl Narratives: The Metanarratives of Postmodernity and the Recovery of a Churchly Theology,” Pages 91-110 in A Confessing Theology for Postmodern Times. Edited by Michael S. Horton. Wheaton: Crossway, 2000.

Lundin, Roger, Anthony C. Thistleton, and Clarence Walhout. The Responsibility of Hermeneutics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.

Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 1-7: A Commentary. Translated by Wilhelm C. Linss. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989.

______. Matthew 8-20, Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Edited by Helmut Koester and translated by James E. Crouch. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001.

______. Matthew in History. Sprunt Lectures for 1990. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.

Lyon, David. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Malden, MA: Polity/Blackwell 2000.

MaCullagh, C. Behan. The Truth of History. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Mannion, Francis. “Liturgy and the Present Crisis of Culture,” Worship 62 (1988): 98-123.

Masson, Joseph. “L'Église Ouverte sur le Monde,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 84 (1962): 1032-43.

O'Brien, Jim. “Ford Lewis Battles: 1915-1979: Calvin Scholar and Church Historian Extraordinary.” Calvin Theological Journal 15 (1980): 166-89.

Osborne, Kenan. Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World: A Theology for the Third Millenium. New York: Paulist Press, 1999.

Pecklers, Keith F., ed. Liturgy in a Postmodern World. New York: Continuum, 2003.

______, Worship. London: Continuum, 2003.

Phan, Peter C. "Liturgical Inculturation: Unity in Diversity in the Postmodern Age." Pages 55-85 in Liturgy in a Postmodern World, edited by Keith F. Pecklers. New York: Continuum, 2003.

______. “Popular Religion and Liturgical Inculturation: Perspectives and Challenges from Asia.” Address given at the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy, Reston, Va., January, 2002.

Pickstock, Catherine. After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwells, 1998.

Presbyterian Church, USA. Book of Common Worship. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993.

Prichard, Rebecca Button. “Conflict, Suspicion, and Accommodation: Ricoeur and Calvin on Biblical Interpretation.” Encounter 55 (1994): 221-36.

Reist, Benjamin A. A Reading of Calvin's Institutes. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991.

Roberts, Paul. “Liturgy and Mission in Postmodern Culture: some reflections arising from ‘Alternative' services and communities.” Paper produced as part of a series of background articles for the "Alternative Worship" Day, Lambeth Palace, 1995. http://seaspray.trinity-bris.ac.uk/~robertsp/papers/lambeth.html

______. “Thoroughly modern worship, thoroughly postmodern culture.” Paper given to Gospel and Culture Conference, King's College London, 7th December 1996. http://seaspray.trinity-bris.ac.uk/~robertsp/papers/th_postmod.html

Sanneh, Lamin. Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

Sargeant, Kimon H. Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2000.

Schaeffer. Francis A. The God Who Is There: Speaking Historic Christianity into the Twentieth Century (Chicago: InterVarsity, 1968).

Schillebeeckx, Edward. The Eucharist. Translated by N. D. Smith. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968.

Shorter, Aylward. Toward a Theology of Inculturation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988.

Sibley, Laurence C., Jr. Come Sunday: The Renewal of the Geneva Liturgy as a Means of Pastoral Care in the Twenty-first Century. S.T.M. thesis, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, 2003.

______. “Singing the Lord's Song: Psalm 104 as Worldview.” Unpublished paper, 2003.

Spinks, Bryan D. “Liturgical Inculturation and Modern Western Liturgical Revision,” in ed. Paul Bradshaw and Bryan Spinks, Liturgy in Dialogue. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995.

Stauffer, S. Anita, ed. Worship and Culture in Dialogue. Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994.

Stewart-Sykes, A. On the Apostolic Tradition: Hippolytus, an English Version with Introduction and Commentary. Crestwood NY: St. Vladimir's, 2001.

Storrar, William. “From Braveheart to Faint-heart: Worship and Culture in Postmodern Scotland.” Edited by Bryan D. Spinks and Iain R. Torrance, To Glorify God: Essays on Modern Reformed Liturgy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999, 69-84.

Stosur, David A. “Liturgy and (Post)Modernity: A Narrative Response to Guardini's Challenge. Worship 77.1: 22-4.

Thistleton, Anthony C. The Two Horizons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

Torevell, David. Losing the Sacred: Ritual, Modernity, and Liturgical Reform. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000.

Vatican II. Sacrosanctum Concilium 1.7 (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html)

Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948.

Wainwright, Geoffrey. Doxology: The Praise of God in Doctrine, Worship, and Life: A Systematic Theology. New York: Oxford, 1980.

Ward, Graham, ed. The Postmodern God: A Theology Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.

Warren, Michael. Seeing Through the Media. Harrisburg: Trinity International, 1997.

Webber, Robert E. Ancient Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999.

______. The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002.

Webster, John. “Eschatology, Anthropology, and Postmodernity.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (2000): 13-28.

White, James F. Introduction to Christian Worship, 3rd ed. Nashville: Abingdon, 2001.

Willis, Paul. Common Culture. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990.

Witvliet, John. “Theological Models for the Relationship between Liturgy and Culture,” in Worship Seeking Understanding. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

Wright, David F. “Calvin's Pentateuchal Criticism: Equity, Hardness of Heart, and Divine Accommodation in the Mosaic Harmony Commentary.” Calvin Theological Journal 21 (1986): 33-50.

Tentative outline for a work in progress:

INTRODUCTION

The situation that calls forth this book - current understanding and practice of mission, contextualization and baptism in the North American Presbyterian world.
The need to explore, clarify, and embody the themes of Matthew in this age
Methodology
     Matthew as a liturgical text; a redemptive-historical text, and a missiological text
Precis, abstract/overview of the book by chapter.

LITURGY AND ESCHATOLOGY

1. In the assembly - Reading Matthew backwards
     The act of reading in the assembly
     Matthew as an occasional/contextual text
     Starting at the end: Mt 28:16-20 is the point of the book
     Anticipating the end: themes of mission, nations/culture, baptism, teaching, presence throughout Matthew
2. In the eschaton - Reading history backwards
     Redemptive history as message and method
     Locating the horizons
     Eschatological hermeneutics
     The kingdom is at hand

LITURGY AND MISSION

3. Go - Into the Cultures of the World
     The Missiological Agenda of Matthew
     The Eschatological Transition from Exclusion to Inclusion
     The Nations Bring Their Cultures
     Interculturation in Reformed and Roman Catholic Writing
     Liturgical and Missiological Hermeneutics
     Towards a Reformed Liturgy at Home in Every Culture
4. Nations - It's about people
     Culture, dialog, interculturation
     Liturgy in culture
     Word and Signs (meal & bath)

LITURGY AND PRESENCE

5. Baptize - Welcoming people
     John the Baptist's invitation to change
     Baptism as welcome, ordeal, cleansing, union with Christ
     Baptism as focal practice in a technological age
     Baptism as appointed sign of Christ's presence
6. Teach - All I have commanded you
     Matthew's five model teaching passages
     Apostolic teaching
     Contemporary teaching in the church
     Towards a Reformed catechuminate
7. Presence - With his people
     Omnipresence
     Coming (1-4); Promise (18, 28); Assembly (18); Service (25); Mission (28)
     Specific densities of presence
     Resistance from technology/postmodernism and charismatic movement
8. The next horizon - The end of the age
     The forward movement of eschatology to and after Pentecost
     Mission, culture, and baptism in the twenty-first century
     Renewal of the church for mission and liturgy
     Final presence

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDICES

Scripture
Authors
Subjects

¹ “ Mission, Missions, Theology, and Theological Education,” in The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel in a Diverse and Changing World (ed. Manuel Ortiz and Susan S. Baker; Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 23.

² John S. Leonard, “Jesus' Word to the Canaanite Woman: Another Perspective,” in The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel in a Diverse and Changing World (ed. by Manuel Ortiz and Susan S. Baker; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002), 200.

³ Ulrich Luz, Matthew in History (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 41.

⁴ Ibid, 42.

⁵ Harvie M. Conn, “Normativity, Relevance, and Relativism,” in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic: a Tradition, a Challenge, a Debate (ed. Harvie M. Conn; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 195-7.

⁶ See also Mark 7:24-30. William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 258-64.

⁷ Joachim Jeremias points out that in each of the cases of the Centurion, the Canaanite woman, and the Gadarenes, there is an element of refusal along with the gift of healing. “The Gentile World in the Thought of Jesus,” Bulletin of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, 3 (1952), 19; Jesus' Promise to the Nations (trans. by S. H. Hooke; Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1958), 28-31.

⁸ See Leonard, “Jesus' Word,” 211-21, for the suggestion that Jesus' approach here is one of teaching the disciples about the place of the Gentiles in the kingdom, using silence, irony, and sarcasm as teaching tools.

⁹ There is, of course, an element of mystery here, as with all events in the life of Jesus. He both took the form of a slave, not knowing all things (Matt. 24:36), and yet also knew all things that were unfolding (John 13:1; 18:4).

¹⁰ Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20 (Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; ed. Helmut Koester and trans. James E. Crouch; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 449, 452-3.

¹¹ For a more complete study of the place of the Gentiles in Matthew, see Leonard, “Jesus' Word,” 198-203; Joachim Jeremias, “The Gentile World,” 18-28; Jesus' Promise, passim.

¹² Liturgical Inculturation: Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis (Collegeville: Pueblo, 1992).

¹³ Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988).

¹⁴ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (trans. Myra Bergman Ramos; New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 150-166. Cited in Susan S. Baker, “Lessons Learned in Multi-Ethnic Ministry,” Urban Mission, 13.4 (1996): 57.

¹⁵ "Liturgical Inculturation: Unity in Diversity in the Postmodern Age," in Liturgy in a Postmodern World (ed. Keith F. Pecklers; New York: Continuum, 2003), 55-85.

¹⁶ Eternal Word and Changing Worlds (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984); “Normativity,” 188-94.

¹⁷ Freire, Pedagogy, 150.

¹⁸ St. Saviour's, the Anglican church in Riga, Latvia, is built of “imported English brick and set...on 30 cm. of British soil brought over as ships' ballast.” It remains today a largely expatriate congregation. http://www.telia.lv/~stsaviours/history.htm

¹⁹ Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 24.

²⁰ Shorter, Toward, 9.

²¹ Sanneh, Whose Religion, 22.

²² “Normativity,” 187; see also Roger Lundin, Anthony C. Thistleton, and Clarence Walhout, The Responsibility of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 95; Anthony C. Thistleton, The Two Horizons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

²³ Conn, “Normativity,” 190-1.

²⁴ Ibid, 193.

²⁵ Truth and Method (trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming; New York: Seabury, 1975).

²⁶ Conn, “Normativity,” 194.

²⁷ Ibid, 188.

²⁸ See, General Instruction of the Roman Missal: Third Typical Edition (English trans. Washington: Committee on the Liturgy, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003). http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/current/revmissalisromanien.shtml

²⁹ Cultural Adaptation of the Liturgy (New York: Paulist, 1982); Liturgical Inculturation: Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis (Collegeville: Pueblo, 1992); “Liturgy and the Components of Culture,” in Worship and Culture in Dialogue (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994), 153-66; “Baptism, Marriage, Healing, and Funerals: Principles and Criteria for Inculturation,” in Baptism, Rites of Passage, and Culture (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1999), 47-69.

³⁰ World Council of Churches, 1972. See Chupungco, Liturgical Inculturation, 19, n10.

³¹ Joseph Masson, “L'Église sur le Monde,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 84 (1962): 1038. The first Protestant use of “inculturation”seems to be by G. L. Barney, a professor at Nyack School of Theology in 1973. See Chupungco, Liturgical Inculturation, 25, n20.

³² Ibid, 26. For a survey of post-Vatican II developments in the relationship of worship and culture, see chapter 5 in Keith F. Pecklers, Worship (London: Continuum, 2003).

³³ Ibid, 37-54. For an interesting proposal, applying Chupungco's principles, see Clare V. Johnson, “Inculturating the Easter Feast in Southeast Australia,” Worship 78 (2004): 98-117.

³⁴ Ibid, 38.

³⁵ Ibid, 48; see also Chupungco, “Inculturation and Organic Progression of the Liturgy,” Ecclesia orans 7 (1990/1): 7-21.

³⁶ Liturgical Inculturation, 48.

³⁷ Conn, Eternal Word, 216.

³⁸ Interpretation 31 (1977): 19-38, reprinted in Donald K. McKim, ed., Readings in Calvin's Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984).

³⁹ As cited in Stephen D. Benin, The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought (Albany: State University of New York, 1993), 189, parenthetical material by Benin; Institutes of the Christian Religion (LCC, 20-21, ed. John R. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 20.121.

⁴⁰ Battles, “Accommodating,” 33.

⁴¹ Ibid., 32.

⁴² Ibid., 34-8; see Institutes 3.20.40; 4.14.3; 4.17.11, 36; 4.18.12-18; 1.13.5; 2.6.1. Other useful studies of accommodation are found in David F. Wright, “Calvin's Pentateuchal Criticism: Equity, Hardness of Heart, and Divine Accommodation in the Mosaic Harmony Commentary.” Calvin Theological Journal 21 (1986): 33-50; Rebecca Button Prichard, “Conflict, Suspicion, and Accommodation: Ricoeur and Calvin on Biblical Interpretation.” Encounter 55 (1994): 221-36; Daniel R. Hyde, “God's Visible Words: Calvin's Doctrine of the Sacraments in an MTV Generation.” http://www.oceansideurc.org/sections/articles/visible_words.htm

⁴³ Philip E. Hughes, “Calvin and the Church of England,” in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World (ed. W. Stanford Reid and Paul Woolley; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 173-96.

⁴⁴ Institutes 2.11.13; LCC 20.462-3.

⁴⁵ Edmund P.Clowney, "The Biblical Theology of the Church," in The Church in the Bible and the World (ed. D.A. Carson; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1987), 17. Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 31-2.

⁴⁶ Laurence C. Sibley, Jr, Come Sunday: The Renewal of the Geneva Liturgy as a Means of Pastoral Care in the Twenty-first Century. (S.T.M. thesis, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, 2003), 69.

⁴⁷ Meredith G. Kline lists the following as the parts of the Hittite suzerainty treaties, which formed the pattern for the decalogue: historical prologue (defines the parties and the history of the suzerain's conquest/liberation), stipulations (the vassal's obligations), sanctions, depositing copies in the sanctuary, and procedures for dynastic succession. The Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 113-30.

⁴⁸ Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 126.

⁴⁹ Ibid, 136-7.

⁵⁰ Ibid, 137.

⁵¹ Ibid, 150.

⁵² Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 370, note 5; Kline, Structure 121-3.

⁵³ Shorter, Towards, 109-11.

⁵⁴ Laurence C. Sibley, Jr., “Singing the Lord's Song: Psalm 104 as Worldview.” Unpublished paper, 2003.

⁵⁵ Indeed, the God who is there, as Francis A. Schaeffer described him. The God Who Is There: Speaking Historic Christianity into the Twentieth Century (Chicago: InterVarsity, 1968).

⁵⁶ Gordon W. Lathrop, “Baptism in the New Testament and Its Cultural Setting,” in Worship and Culture in Dialogue (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994), 17-38.

⁵⁷ Ibid, 37. See also, Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 27-31; Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 69, 177 n50; Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 34-45.

⁵⁸ Gordon W. Lathrop, “A Contemporary Lutheran Approach to Worship and Culture: Sorting Out the Critical Principles,” in Worship and Culture in Dialogue (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994), 141.

⁵⁹ See David Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times (Malden, MA: Polity/Blackwell, 2000) for a description of the influence of American corporate and pop culture on world indigenous cultures; also Freire, Pedagogy, 27-56.

⁶⁰ Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Things, chapters 1-3; Sibley, Come Sunday, 11, 47-70.

⁶¹ Lathrop, Holy Ground, 45.

⁶² Gordon W. Lathrop, “Worship: Local Yet Universal,” in Christian Worship: Unity in Cultural Diversity (ed. S. Anita Stauffer; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1996), 47-75.

⁶³ Sanneh, Whose Religion, 43.

⁶⁴ “Liturgical Inculturation,” 83.

Back to Top