Outside the Camp

The most imposing sight you will see driving down the Outer Banks of North Carolina is the Wright Brother's memorial in Kitty Hawk. The monument is dedicated to Orville and Wilbur Wright, the two men who launched the modern age of flight. But if you would have read about the Wright’s in the papers of their day, you would have gotten the idea that they were rather strange eccentrics who were out of touch with the real world. They lived in a day and age when people said that it was physically impossible for a heavier than air vehicle to ever get off the ground. If God would have meant for man to fly, He would have given him wings!

But the Wrights would not listen to the conventional reasoning. They had a vision of flight, and they were dedicated to its pursuit. They paid a heavy personal price at times, but they seemed to be on to something. Today there is a monument to their courage in Kitty Hawk… and there are other monuments at LAX and DFW and LaGuardia and even Newport News-Williamsburg International. The critics have been silenced, drowned out by the roar of vehicles that have taken man to the moon and back.

The Hebrew writer points his Jewish readership to what happened to Old Testament sacrifices after they were offered. The blood was offered at the Tabernacle, but “the bodies are burned outside the camp" (Heb 13:10). Ultimately the sacrifice was taken outside the walls of the camp. His point is about what it means to follow our sacrifice Jesus (Hebrews 13:11-14)

12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

If we are to live out the Christian faith in our postmodern, post-Christian world, then we must be willing to leave the camp of our culture. Through Christ, we have a vision of what man’s destiny can be and will be. But we must understand that this is a vision that differs greatly from the vision of our world. The conventional wisdom of the world must be left behind as we follow the Christ where He leads us. And where He leads us is outside the camp of respectability and acceptance by our culture. It is never easy to run counter to the prevailing culture; just ask Wilbur and Orville. But it is only when we leave the camp that we can soar to the heavens.