Hey everyone! Welcome to this week's episode of The AUSA Podcast! This week we begin to wrap up our conversation about culture making with our friend and fellow CAT, Drew Correll! In this episode, we take a look at the life of our favorite Culture Maker, a Middle Eastern Jewish Rabbi/Tradesman named Jesus — or rather, Yeshua Bar-Yosef. That name might seem strange to you, but that's okay. Often, we can think of Jesus as human, but we don't actually connect that truth to anything tangible. Instead, Jesus becomes only theoretically a human, instead of a bronze-skinned carpenter with curly, short hair and calloused hands, laugh lines by his smile and crow's feet by his eyes. Even less often do we recognize that along with Jesus’ humanity came a cultural inheritance — that is, an identity and heritage rooted in making something of the world. That cultural inheritance looks like the specific cultural tradition of a family, a language, a people, a history, a religion, a nation.
We take a look into the life and ministry of Jesus to learn something valuable about "culture making." Jesus was a cultivator of culture, spending most of his time on earth (30 years of his life!) not teaching or healing, but absorbing, practicing, and passing on his Jewish culture's traditions and practices. Jesus was also a creator of culture who, after years of waiting and watching, finally reinterprets his culture's way of making something of the world, and he echoes God’s plan and design for humanity while recasting it in radically new ways that had been shoved aside or ignored by the teachers of the day.
Jesus also shows us that the model for culture making in the image of God is less about power and more about surrender and trust. In and by his death, Jesus surrendered both his human and divine creative power; in and by his resurrection, Jesus declared (and modeled) ultimate dependence of God.
We see that Jesus doesn't abandon the old, setting it aside as dusty and outdated; he transforms it in an act of overflowing love and vulnerable trust. In and by Christ, even the cross — the worst that culture can do and the one thing that symbolizes all that deserves to be pushed to the outskirts of our cultural memory — is celebrated and transformed into a sign of victory, trust, forgiveness, mercy, and love.
We think culture making is very important, so if you enjoyed this episode or anything peaked your interest, we'd love to start a conversation! Do us a favor and share it with your friends, and if you have thoughts or questions you can DM us on Instagram @au411. Thanks for listening!
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Here are some of the resources that were talked about in or used while planning this episode if you’re curious about doing some in-depth exploring on your own!
Books: "Culture Making" by Andy Crouch
