Context and the Gospel

We went on a bike ride the other day, and I was thinking and wondering… If you deny that the Gospel needs to be contextualized today (some are even going so far as to compare the contextualization of the Gospel to syncretism), then, aren’t you also implying that the context of the Gospel story when it occurred is somewhat irrelevant? And that the time, place and people of the story are somewhat arbitrary? But if the context of the story isn’t arbitrary, and the time, place and people within it do matter, then as the Gospel story continues to unfold throughout history, why all of the sudden would the time, place and people cease to matter in the living and telling of this story?