Twenty years ago, I lived in London and worked teaching music with churches and further education colleges. Most of my work was with underprivileged young people living in areas of deprivation and poverty. Wealthy, salubrious neighbourhoods bordered these city areas, yet for most of the teens and young adults I worked with, this lifestyle was out of reach. They had become accustomed to accepting that their career path would be crime. Shootings and violent attacks in the area happened with alarming regularity, gangs and drugs became an easy option for a living.
As I reflected on this culture, I wondered how I would express the Gospel to young people who had never heard of Jesus. How would I explain the cross and resurrection to them? As I discussed this with my church youth group, the breakthrough moment came when one of the young people said that the highest honour in gang culture was to take a bullet for a friend. That was the way in for me to explain to an unchurched community what Jesus did for us through his death on the cross and the resurrection: he took the bullet for us, so that we can live with him forever.
Sometimes we need to understand the culture we are living in so that we can explain the Gospel using a vernacular that our community can relate to; a contemporary example that connects people with the divine. As we go about our week, perhaps we should ask ourselves, in what ways do my community need to hear about Jesus?
At thirty years old there were words in his head
He didn’t know where they would lead to
The burning words, well they all signalled red
But somehow he had to see it through
He took the bullet for me, He took the bullet for me
At thirty years old he took a trip out of town
He knew he had to speak the truth
The scholars and vagrants, they branded him a clown
They didn’t want to see the living proof
He took the bullet for me, He took the bullet for me
At thirty-three years they put a gun to his head
They knew they had to end his reign
What they didn’t know when they left him for dead
Is that he’d come to reign again
He took the bullet for me, He took the bullet for me
Copyright 2007 words & music by Helen Sanderson White
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