Kofe With Yesu

If you know me pretty well you know that I like coffee.  Now, I’m not a coffee snob (yes, I put flavored creamer in my coffee) but I like it a lot.  If you happen to be friends with me on facebook you know Mary and I post about drinking coffee or needing to drink coffee all the time.  I blame Mary for this addiction.  Well, Mary and seminary both – too many nights staying up late reading books and writing papers which could not have been finished without the bitter bean – Mary just offered it as a better alternative to Jolt Cola, Red Bull, or NoDoz.

This is my favorite coffee mug.

I picked it up something like five or six years ago at a World Market store in Tallahassee.  What I like about it is how it shows the word for coffee as it’s written all over the world.  And maybe somewhere in that observation is the point the mug is trying to make.  Coffee is one of those drinks popular almost everywhere, unlike say…yak’s milk.  People enjoy coffee the world over even if it isn’t a drink indigenous to their culture.  You can travel the world over and order a cup of coffee and all you need to know is how to say it in their local language.  (In the Twe language of the Akan people of Ghana the word is kofe).

What you get may not be what you expect though and it may not be like American coffee.  They may serve it black or with sugar, it may come as straight espresso, it may be softened with milk or cream, it may have foam - the possibilities are as endless as the people and cultures of the world. 

Much like Jesus and his church.

Jesus and the Good News have been preached in every country on earth.  And as good Methodists we would affirm that God’s prevenient grace has gone before all of our missionary efforts to every people on earth, touching their lives through the power of the Spirit in ways we can’t begin to imagine.  The church has been established in every country on earth in one form or another.  In the year 2000 some 69 percent of the people of Ghana identified as Christian.  And though the body of Christ is present in every country there is, like coffee, much diversity in its various forms.  Christ is called by different names among different peoples.  His name is Jesus (pronounced differently if you are speaking English or Spanish), elsewhere he is Yeshua, or VIhsou/, or one of many, many, other spellings and pronunciations.  In Ghana he is Yesu.  And just as there is worldwide variety in how to speak the name of Jesus, there is more variety in the many ways he is worshiped. 

This is another reason I’m excited about this trip.  I yearn to see, and hear, and experience how Christ is worshiped by our brothers and sisters in Ghana.  I want to be stretched in my understandings of theology and worship.  Most importantly I want to discover more about the global body of Christ and experience his presence in new settings.  I want to learn from the global church and let them challenge my assumptions of what church is and what church can be.  In sharing how we know, understand, and experience Christ’s work in the world perhaps we might come a little closer to becoming that unified body Christ has called us to be and more fully realize there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:8).