Intentionally Offensive

I was preparing prayer stations for a worship service the other night. It was an impromptu worship service and everything came together very nicely.

As I was preparing one of the stations, I had the idea of using an untied shoe as a prop to help everyone visualize the point.

Now, Ukrainians have strict rules about shoes. In many Asian countries you are forever removing and replacing your shoes. Even in some stores and restaurants it is impolite to keep your shoes on. In Ukraine it's not such a big deal - we just always take our shoes off in people's apartments and homes. It's a wet and snowy climate and dirty even in the summer in the city. No one touches the ground, sits down on the ground, or places items on the ground. Shoe's are always left in the hallway.

I went back and forth about placing a dirty, untied shoe as part of a prayer station. Eventually I decided to do it.

In college we would have an annual service in which the President of the College would wash some of the students' feet. It was always titled something like "servant leadership chapel". It was a nice thought. Of course we did it because Jesus had done it - but Jesus did it because it was the lowest and most humiliating of all the task a servant could perform. If our president had cared deeply about modeling servant leadership he should have spent a weekend cleaning all of the toilets on campus or pulling hair out of the shower drains. Coming into the dorm bathroom and finding the president of the college plunging the toilet would have left far more of an impression than watching him take off his exspensive watch before dipping someone's feet in water and drying them off.

This is part f being a missionary. We don't do things because that is how they were done for us or because the Bible portrayed a scene - we try to do things to make a point that fits the culture we are working in. I feel like I often take that to mean that I am working hard not to offend anyone. But sometimes we have to be offensive.

Jesus was sometimes terribly offensive. He would draw in huge crowds to hear him speak and just as soon as the church growth gurus shine the spotlight on him as a shining example of how to really grow a church he opens his mouth and tells his predominately Jewish crowd to eat his flesh and drink his blood. These people who would never dare commit the sin of drinking blood are challenged to even drink human blood.

That's intentionally offensive. Jesus breaks the social norms and steps over boundaries all the time in the way he relates to women, people of different ethnic backgrounds, and those known to be guilty of sexual sins found repulsive by the culture.

Sometimes we play it too safe. We work hard to find the medium that will upset the fewest people. We vote democratically instead of prophetically.

The students who attended worship were shocked and disgusted by the untied shoe - but they got the point, discussed it openly after the service, and found a stronger connection to the idea of humility and grace.

The Gospel we believe in is challenging and difficult. It calls us to come and die, to give up everything we own, and to love those that society informs us we shouldn't love. Anything less is simply not the Gospel.

As Landa Cope once said, " If I offended you today ... Good! if I didn't... Come back tomorrow and I'll try again!"