John 20:19-23
People are different.
- God created us that way.
- It is in our genetic code.
- Some of us are emotional.
- Some of us are cerebral.
- God speaks to engineers differently than he speaks to artists.
- Engineers need all the nuts and bolts of faith.
- Artists sense a larger canvas.
- God speaks our language.
- God speaks to us according to our own needs.
- God uses different means to speak to us according to those needs.
In worship…some respond to scripture…others to the liturgy…others to the music…others to the proclamation of the Word.
- People are different.
- Christ came to St. Paul in a different way than he did to Simon Peter.
- God comes to us…at Pentecost…where we are.
Let me illustrate what I mean: I will read a section of the Prodigal Son story from Luke 15.
- “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So, he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So, he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his field to feed the pigs. He would have gladly filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating but no one gave him anything.”
My friend read that story to seminary students and gave them a pop quiz: One question.
Why does this young man end up hungry…in a pig pen?
Now…let me share the answers that he got:
- You need to know that he did this three times in three different places:
- First…in the United States of America.
- Everyone answered: “the boy ends up hungry…in a pig pen…because he squandered his inheritance.
- He took the money he received from his father and spent it all. On wild parties and who knows what…anyway…he spent it. And now here he is.”
- This is a story about an irresponsible kid who in a few months manages to blow what his father had spent years saving for him.
He also asked this question in East Africa and he got this answer:
- Everyone there said: “The boy ends up hungry in a pig pen…because no one would give him anything to eat.
- It is a story about a society that does not care for the poor and especially does not care for the alien.
- The fact that the boy lost all his money is a small matter.
- Emigrants often don’t know how to live in a foreign land. They don’t know what to do and they lose everything.
- But the Bible tells us we are to care for the stranger and the alien among us.
- This is not so much a story about a sinful boy as it is about a sinful society that allows such a boy to end up like this with no one but God to help him.”
Well…notice the Bible does say both things:
- It does say that the boy squandered his inheritance…and it says that no one would give him anything.
- Interesting…Americans always notice the one part and Africans notice the other part.
In America squandering one’s inheritance is a very bad thing.
- In a capitalist country that’s one of the worst things that you can do.
- In East Africa…such things happen but people are supposed to look out for each other.
- This is a culture where hospitality to strangers is a primary virtue.
Then my teacher friend went to Russia.
- And he asked seminary students…in St. Petersburg…the same question:
- Why does this young man end up hungry in a pigpen?
- Almost everyone he asked…84%…said the same thing.
- “Because there was a famine.”
- After the boy squandered his inheritance…the story says…a severe famine came upon the land and he began to be in want.
American readers might notice that…but they do not think it’s the main point.
- Why? Most American readers have never experienced a famine.
- In 1941…the German army surrounded St. Petersburg and held it under siege for over two- and one-half years.
- During that time 700,000 people starved to death.
- It was not because they had squandered their money.
- It was because there was no food.
- “So…what if the boy squandered his inheritance” the Russian students told my friend “That’s no big deal.
- You can always live off the land.
- You can always plant potatoes.
- If the boy wasted his father’s money…that just meant he was going to be poor…
- Like most people who do not have an inheritance in the first place.
Poor people get by.
- But then a famine came upon the land and that’s why he ended up hungry in the pig pen.”
- The story those Russian students told him is not about a sinful boy who needs to repent.
- It is not about a sinful society that should take care of strangers.
- It is about a sinful world where nature itself behaves in terrible ways.
People from differing nations understand the Gospel message differently.
- Why? Because…the message was meant for all nations and all peoples.
Like all the people on earth…we in this land are somewhat ethnocentric.
- Meaning…we think everybody on earth ought to be like us…look like us…talk like us…think like us.
- And we think God ought to favor us.
God is a universal God.
- Intellectually we understand that it is true…but at a more basic level we want a God who is like us.
- Surely God speaks English.
- Surely God has western values.
- And then we meet a Christian from Africa…or Asia…or Europe who has very different ideas about God.
- B. Phillips said to us a few decades back that Our God is Too Small.
There are wonderful Christian people in every nation in the world.
- Naturally they see the world through the lens of their own culture.
- And they think their way is best as well.
- We give God a good laugh at our provincialism.
God is a universal God.
- God is the God of the Chinese and the Congolese…of the Iraqis and the Afghans…as well as the Canadians and the Americans.
- God has no favorites.
- What God favors is mercy and justice and righteousness and compassion and graciousness and civility and love…
- Wherever those characteristics are found.
- What God is seeking is the day when all the world’s people will know God’s love and God’s peace.
- And will know themselves to be brothers and sisters in Christ.