Sitting Bull

I am sitting in a hotel room in Napoleon, Ohio on a Sunday evening. This is my first ever post in a blog. I came back to my room after dinner tonight and turned the TV on just to kill a little time, avoiding starting to do some work reviewing some training material that I will be working with this week. The movie that popped up when I flipped it on was HBO's movie Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. This is a story about the Sioux and Sitting Bull from the time of Little Bighorn to Wounded Knee. I don't think that the movie was incredibly accurate, but as a story that showed the breaking of the spirit of people and looking to force a way of life on them it spoke to me.

The story itself isn't the subject of my blog, but the idea of entering into a culture that isn't your own and assuming that your way of life is the best or only way of life really applies to what I have been learning about cross-cultural servanthood. I have read through the 1st 3 chapters of Duane Elmer's Cross-Cultural Servanthood and several members of our Epikos International Vision Team recently finished the SEND training at Elmbrook (I know, I am a little link happy).

Anyway, back to the topic on hand - cross-cultural servanthood. I was really struck as I watched how forcing the ways of the white man onto the Sioux tribe took them from being a free and proud people to a place of broken dependance. Now there were obviously issues of need physically and spiritually with the Sioux and other tribes before they began to be forced from their lands long before the time of Sitting Bull. The idea that white men were being somehow noble in bringing their "civility" to the savage indians brings me around to thinking about what it means when I enter another culture. I don't want to get into a long discussion about the history of Native Americans, as I am definitely not an expert. So I will leave further discussion of the history of the tribes to someone else.

What I do know, is that as a follower of Christ and as a student of missions, I need to learn from history and be aware of the present and struggle to understand my role in sharing Christ's love in a way that blesses when I am an outsider in another culture. Understanding a culture is a first step in sharing Christ. I don't share his love by forcing my culturally biased view of the world on anyone. This is not a simple process and the idea of being a servant goes far beyond labeling yourself as one. A servant doesn't define the role of what a servant does to serve. A servant attitude is understood from the served person's point of view.

As Elmer describes it, first you have to have an openness to people different from yourself and be willing to step outside your comfort zone with a desire to initiate and sustain relationships. As people experience that openness, it begins to develop into acceptance, both by you of them and them of you. Acceptance leads to trust as you accept people for who they are and you truely value them as people. As trust grows in a relationship, you begin to see the deeper stories of a person's life. You learn about who they are and what their life is all about. Understanding who they are and learning about their lives then begins to open the door for truely sharing yourself as a servant.

The idea of washing feet is often held out as the example of servanthood by Jesus. Is this relevant to us today though? Looking at the context of washing of feet gives us a reference. Think about walking around the dusty roads and streets all day long. Think about the last time that you spent a day wandering our relatively clean streets in a pair of flip flops and then think of the dirt on your feet. I would guess that your feet don't even compare with the dust and dirt that the disciples were dragging into the upper room. The lowest of the low servants would typically wash the feet of those who were entering into a home. In this case, the task wasn't performed as they entered the house, and Jesus seized the opportunity to serve the disciples in the most humble of tasks. Read more in John 13:5-20.

So what does it mean for us to take on the tasks of serving in our own culture? What does it mean to you to take on tasks of serving in another culture?