Crestwood UCC, 10/03/99

Marcia Sietstra:  Pastor

When I taught at a local university, it always came as something of a shock to some students to find that a careful reading of the four different gospelsMt., Mk., Lk., Johnreveals them to be different in their accounts of Jesus' life. For example, I had them read the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, which do not agree. We read the gospel accounts of the feeding of the multitude with a few loaves and fishes, and saw that those accounts do not match if you start asking how many times Jesus fed how many people, with how many fishes and how many loaves. When we read the accounts of the resurrection in the different gospels, they were amazed at the differences: in the gospel of Matthew there is an earthquake and 1 angel at the tomb; in the gospel of Mark there's no earthquake, and the stone is blocking the cave when they arrive, but the stone is rolled back in the presence of the 3 women who have come to anoint Jesus' body; in the gospel of Luke, there are more than 3 women, there's no earthquake, there are 2 angels instead of 1, and the rock is already rolled away when they arrive. 

I have them do this careful comparison to demonstrate that in the 4 gospel accounts we are lucky enough to have 4 different pictures of Jesus drawn for us. Now to the literalist, who wants to believe every single detail in the Bible is accurate in a technical sense, this difference in the details is very worrisome. But I try to help them to see that the early church who decided to include four different gospels in the Bible when it was being formed, actually did us a favor. There is strength in the argument of four different gospel writers who, while they differ in detail, agree on all the crucial matters. In a court of law, it's hard to impugn the testimony of 4 witnesses who agree on all the basics of their testimony, even if minor details may be inconsistent. Indeed, if all 4 witness agreed in every detail, the value of their testimony might be questioned, because of the likelihood that their testimony was prearranged. I'm convinced the people who chose what would go into the Bible intentionally picked 4 slightly varying perspectives.

Some students of scripture would prefer to have a single gospel, preferably zapped directly out of heaven by God, so differences in detail would not be a problem. But that's not how God works. God works through people, like the people who sat down at their tables and wrote what they had heard about this man Jesus. From Matthew's perspective he was surely the fulfillment of OT Jewish prophecy, so in his gospel you have him pointing out Jesus' Jewishness at every turn and interpreting everything Jesus did in relationship to Jewish prophecy! Mark, in his gospel, has a different agenda: he pounds away at the idea of salvation through suffering, stressing this point at every opportunity. Luke's emphasis in his gospel is different still. He tells many of the same stories but the meaning he finds is that Jesus cares in a special way for the poor and the powerless.

Now maybe some of you are wondering what in the world this all has to do with us, today. Well, here's an idea for you. Since God chose to reveal the universal message of Jesus through 4 very different perspectives in the gospels, could God also be continuing to reveal a universal message of Jesus through different cultures through different ways of experiencing the Jesus message around the world? The African religious experience differs a great deal from the North American religious experience, and both differ from the Korean experience. Perhaps God is best revealed through more than 1 gospel perspective; similarly perhaps God is best revealed through more than 1 cultural group, namely, one's own! 

Let me ask you this: If you wanted to know what the world was like, could you know that if you never left South Dakota? Well, possibly so, if others informed you, and you read textbooks & travel books. But wouldn't your perception of what the world is like be richer if you actually traveled beyond the borders of South Dakota? Does it help us to see a mountain or to see the ocean? No book can quite express the feelings I have when I spend time at the Oregon coast and hear the crashing waves on the shore, or watch the sunset over the edge of that vast expanse of water. I feel connected to something primordial, vast, ancient, powerful; in those moments of awe on the rugged coast, I feel connected to God.

My point is, experiencing God in new ways and new places expands our understanding. We could sing the same 20 hymns in church year after year. But it’s more meaningful to sing a wide variety, to even add new ones, because the images and metaphors widen our perception of God. In the Dakota hymn we will sing after the sermon, God is called O Star abiding One. The Native American religions have given us marvelous symbols of God in nature. A Jewish hymn in our hymnal calls God the Rock of ages, our Sheltering Tower. To the Pacific Islanders, God is Wind & Water, and the Light that permeates life. I can see the light shining in the clear blue tropical water along a sandy beach when I sing of that image. Elsewhere God is Wisdom, or the Womb of Life, or Grandfather, Great Spirit. This variety from many cultures enlarges our vision. 

Humans have always tended to envision God in terms that reflect their particular experiences. In the church that began to form after Jesus' death, this was already an issue. Should we let non-Jews into the church? they asked each other. Those Gentiles and Greek thinkers have different ideas you know. Who knows what they might call God? Who knows how they'll want to worship and how they'll interpret what Jesus taught! 

But some of those early leaders undoubtedly remembered the story of what happened at Pentecost, when a rushing wind filled the house where the disciples were, and each one spoke in a different tongue, i.e. in a different incomprehensible language. But when the people heard them, each one heard in their own language, what the disciples were saying. Perhaps the story was meant to suggest that no one language is superior, that we each hear and form our religious thinking out of our own culture. No one language or culture has a superior claim to understanding the Jesus message. The early church leaders did decide to let all Jesus' followers in, even those who interpreted things a little differently and were different in nationality.

Of course, we welcome all people of any nationality into the church. But have we traditionally acted as though they had anything to offer us, to add to our knowledge of God? What Europeans & Americans have done, more often, is operate under the assumption that only one interpretation of the Jesus message is valid—that would be theirs! O yes, our missionaries were willing to share Christianity, but only our version, our interpretation, which is somewhat limited by our frame of reference, our culture.

Think back: how much of Christian missionary work was an effort to Europeanize or Americanize everyone? Not only did missionaries want to put natives in proper dresses, or shirts & slacks, but also their worship & their family life had to be shaped by what the missionaries believed proper. An African man I knew in seminary told us of the grief his grandfather, a tribal chief in Cameroon, faced when an American missionary converted him to Christianity and insisted he have only 1 wife. This Cameroonian student was struggling to see how Jesus' message of love could be lived out in a village where polygamy was an important, and he believed at times positive, social system. This meant he had to abandon 3 other wives who had no other means of support. The church in Zambia fought a 20-year battle over whether drums could be used in worship instead of an organ. These people were not allowed to hear the Christian message in their own language, in the sense of hearing it in their cultural milieu. Missionaries, with the best of intentions, taught them out of our Western worldview, and without knowing it, insisted the gospel could be heard only in those terms.

God speaks, has spoken and will speak as God chooses. Why is it so difficult for us to recognize that God has addressed others in their languages, through their culture and experiences? Indeed, the more we share as a worldwide church, the wiser we all become. Not that we try to erase differences or water down our beliefs until we all agree. But in the sense that we respect God's revelation in different ways in addition to our own. I say that partly out of personal experience, because it was the liberation theology that came out of Central America in recent decades that impacted my theology so dramatically in seminary.

In Central America, liberation theology began as a movement in the dusty, dirt-poor lives of the peasants and the Catholic priests and other religious who shared their lives. These are peasants have little education, almost no medical care, and are often deprived of civil rights because of oppressive government officials and powerful foreign business interests. The Church had long taught that their hope for justice would come in the next life, in heaven. But the priests and peasants began to ask, Why is it that Jesus helped the poor in this life? He didn't say to wait for justice—until heaven. He did something to make life better for the powerless right then and there by healing them, eating with them, and teaching others to treat them justly.

As Catholic priests like Jon Sobrino and Archbishop Romero listened to the people who identified with Jesus as a liberator in this life, they began to study the New Testament with new eyes, and to write and publish, and cause the academic, mostly white, Euro-American Christian theologians to look more seriously at this picture of Jesus as one who disrupted the status quo. These priests risked their lives to point out evil societal structures that kept people poor. They emphasized that Jesus not only watched out for the poor and the lame and the outcasts of society; he showed a bias in their favor, suggesting outrageous things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Liberation theology has become one of this century's most important developments, and it came out of the sensitivity of oppressed people who identified with Jesus as their liberator. That perspective couldn't originate with people who enjoy relative power in their lives, the mostly white, Western thinking Christian Church that you and I experience.

We are the receivers here; we are not the givers of right Christian thinking to all the 3rd world countries. In many instances, like with liberation theology, we are the recipients of their sensitivities, their visions of God. 

Pretend for a moment that Life is a play being performed on a huge stage. The play is about God & Life. Everyone can see the stage, but no one can see the whole stage from his or her seat. Where we sit determines what part of the play about God acting in life we get to see. Where we sit also depends on such factors as where we were born, our parents, our culture. But since we can't see every act from our seat, the more times we get up and change seats to see the stage from different perspectives, and the more times we compare notes with others who have seen the play differently, the better we will understand the play the plot of which is God & Life!

There is a painting by an artist from India that shows Abraham standing on the barren plain, gazing into the night sky twinkling with millions of stars. Dressed only in a traditional Indian lungi wrapped around his waist, he stands barefoot with his arms outstretched to embrace the ever-extending galaxy before him. The painting recalls the words Abraham heard from God, (Gen. 15:5) I will give you descendants that number as many as the stars!" And I will establish an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your offspring throughout generations!

That ancient story is intended not for just for the Hebrew descendants of the man Abraham, but is a universal promise to all people: I will be your God and you will be my people. Centuries later, Paul wrote in Galatians: If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. That means that we, the people of the North, of the South, of the East and of the West all belong to the God Jesus described. We are 1 of those millions of stars dotting the dark night in fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham.

When we recognize that we are co-heirs of God's promise, maybe we will honor each other's diverse experience of God. 

Today is World Communion Sunday. God's people all over the world are sharing the promise that God will be our God and we will be God's people, a promise as universal as the stars. Amen. 

Based loosely on an exercise suggested by Dr. Andrew Wall, quoted in Cross Culture, UCC publication of World Ministries in the US, 700 Prospect Ave., Cleveland, OH, p. 90.

From  Co-Heirs of the Promise" by Mary Schaller Blaufuss in Cross Culture.