Who Am I? Part 2

Text: Phil 3:1-17

Watch on YouTube HERE

Intro: How Was Your Identity Formed? Multiple Answers and Many Stories

• Last week, we studied Moses and discovered that developing self-understanding is a lifelong project.
• This week we will consider more carefully Tradition as one of the standard options for understanding identity formation. I hope to show:
  • A fundamental aspect of identity formation.
  • An inadequate strategy by itself.

Identity Formed from the Outside-In

• The Traditional Way of Defining the Self
  • Strong, stable social institutions name and define you.
    • These institutions teach you: who you are, how to behave, and the roles available to you in a stable social world.
  • If you go back 500 years or just a few generations in traditional cultures, you would find that social structures played a primary role in people’s lives and left little room to maneuver.
  • Rigid social classes & punitive ways of dealing with social deviance.
• Key social forming institutions in my life.
  • Family (few divorces and more time with family), Schools, Churches, the Business World, & the US before the 60’s.
    • Family, the initiating institution of identity.
  • Increasingly during last 100 years in American culture, the role of public institutions has been challenged and modified.
• Tradition and Change: Even Traditional Institutions Adapt
  • The rate of change varies: managed, evolutionary change (gradual) or active, revolutionary change (rapid).
    • MLK, Race and social change in America.
  • Note: Even with the more modern strategy for identity formation, there is still a dependence on groups and institutions outside of us to validate & support our authentic identity. The institutions are now more fluid and plastic: Universities as sources of key ideas, media & social media, strong advocacy groups, modern socially conscious corporations, and the emergence of a political world that is both more global and tribal, connected and fragmented.

If you take this strategy seriously, you may notice things in the NT that you missed before

• Jesus, His Father’s Son & Judaism as a Traditional Religious System
  • Jesus and Institutional Insiders: A Threat to Tradition & Stability
  • Jesus and Institutional Outsiders: those who live at the boundary.
  • Jesus and women. (Jn. 4 and 8; Mary and Martha)
  • Jesus and leadership as humble service rather than status & power.
  • Was Jesus building an institution or communities of disciples?
• Acts: The Story of Emerging Christianity and Social Tensions.
  • Persecution of the Disciples in Jerusalem Acts 1-9.
  • Peter goes outside the boundary to reach Gentiles. Acts 10-11
    • The struggle to accept the changes without forcing conformity to Jewish social identity norms.
    • A Council to Negotiate Expectations. Acts 15
• Paul: A Revolutionary Missionary & the Writer of Letters
  • Missionary to the Gentiles: Life between cultures.
  • His letters encourage people & address problems that arise in young churches that are in hostile environments.
• Working out a flexible cross-cultural strategy.
  • Paul’s solution to the problem described in Philippians 3:1-17 his new identity is now in Christ.
  • Jesus taught on New Wine and New Wineskins; Paul formed New Wineskins.
    • Spiritual freedom and the claims of the weaker members as important.
    • Commitment to the poor & the marginal rejected by a larger society.
    • Addressing organizational roles.
  • Paul’s Christ-centered reconceptualization of standard social roles. You may have trouble seeing what he is doing because of cultural bias & because of traditional interpretations of Paul.

Madison Church: Our church as a story of tradition and change

• Churches of Christ as a Strong Institutional Tradition
  • Congruent Institutions: Church, Family, School, and Society
  • Moral Order
    • Sexual codes included modesty, mixed swimming, & dancing.
  • Authority and Honor
  • Problem: Some People were rejected & hurt because they didn’t fit.
• An Innovative Leader Open to Change and Growth
  • Ira was a thoughtful change agent: innovative and committed to many changes.
  • A different model for church organization and innovation.
  • Carefully framed change (he challenged racial discrimination).
  • He had harsh critics.
• A Resistant Leader: Responding to Perceived Dangers
  • Ira’s strong criticism of changes that he saw as threats.
  • Don Finto as problematic for our tradition: he did not fit.
    • Holy Spirit & Small Groups as problems of control.
• Later Resistance to Change Accelerated and Tensions Increased:
  • Rapid cultural changes, agendas for rapid church change
  • Ruble Shelly as problematic.
  • Escalating Shifts in Youth Culture the Loss of Young People
  • Contemporary Christian Music and Worship

Conclusion: Tradition vs. the Formation of Mature, Christ-centered Character & Community

• A Church must play an important role in pointing us beyond itself to Jesus.
• When church as an institutional identity becomes idolatrous.
  • A church-centered definition of being a Christian? The church as a defining institution in your life can become problematic if it becomes more important than knowing and following Jesus.
  • Congregational pride cuts us off from other Christians.
  • Branding and Competition: Growing a church at the expense of other churches.
  • When institutional maintenance becomes more important than reaching the people that Jesus loves and for whom he died.
• The Spirit, Scripture, & New Experiences can open your mind & heart.
  • Is protection of a tradition more important than following Jesus?
  • Institutional leaders & individuals, be aware of pride.
    • Change is not always progress! Staying the same does not always honor Jesus!
    • Blindness to personal mistakes and bad turns!
  • Seeing God at work in unexpected places, even in places that do not fit my identity.