Everyone is looking for you

Ever accidentally say something true? It's easy to do, since what we tend to do is to say things almost in jest, almost offhand, not really taking it too seriously, but we have a nasty habit of saying things that are true.  There's an old Latin phrase that goes along the lines of 'in vino veritas,' which is Latin for 'In wine, there is truth.'  If you get someone a little tipsy, they're going to accidentally say something true. 

Now, it's not as though this is the only time that people accidentally tell the truth.  There are a great many other occasions too.  And every once in a while, with no prompting, you will tell the truth in casual conversation, with no encouragement, just because that's the sort of truth you had on your mind at the time.

Case in point, the disciples talking to Jesus while he had withdrawn to pray.  He had withdrawn by himself to pray, and the disciples came over to him and said something true.  They said to him 'everyone is looking for you.'

Now, the disciples used that statement in the same way that we do, talking about how just the general people around were looking for Jesus.  When they say 'everyone,' they mean everyone in the same way that we do, that a very particular group of people are looking for him.  But they spoke the truth

on that subject, albeit completely by accident.  They told Jesus 'everyone is looking for you,' and it was true.  Everyone is looking for him, whether they know it or not.  If Jesus is what he says he is, if Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that nobody comes to God except through him, then yes, everyone on earth ever would be looking for him.

But there's a snag, isn't there?  Sure there is, and you know what it is.  Jesus came to a very particular milieu, he came to a particular place and time, and he himself was from a very particular place, and from a very particular group of people.  The first century Jews were not exactly known for being the most diverse and inclusive group of people in the world, even for the time.  Have you ever gone through the Old Testament and seriously looked at a number of the rules that they have there?  There's lots of stuff that seems awfully foreign to us, stuff that seems completely unconnected to our world, and to our church.  Seriously, go through the Old Testament, go through the rules that you find in the books of the Law of Moses, and see what the rules are for what you can and can't eat, what you can and can't wear, who you can see and who you can't, how far you can walk in a day, what you can lift, what you can gather, and all that.  Not only will you find all this to be foreign, but something other than that comes up.  You will find that it seems connected to a culture, to a background, to a time and place completely different from your own.

Now, we don't often think about this, but it's true that there's a great gap between where I live (Regina Canada in the 21st Century) and where Jesus lived (1st Century Israel). A lot has changed, and honestly, if I was in first century Israel, it would be completely foreign to me.  Literally.  But we think that Canada, the United States, we're the natural home for the Christian faith, which we for sure aren't.  There's nothing perfectly natural about the Christian faith's home in North America, in Europe, or in South Africa. The only thing that makes it work is the extreme malleability of the message of Christ.

Close to the end of his time on Earth, Jesus spoke to his disciples, and told them that he was expecting them to be his witnesses first of all in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in the ends of the earth.  They were to go out and make disciples of all nations, all nations for all time.  And for this to work, it means that the message of Christ must be equally at home in first century Israel as it is in 21st Century Canada. How does that work?

Well, it works partially because of what Paul says to us in First Corinthians.  He tells us that his role, his job is to present the Gospel, and to present it all people in the best way possible.  And the best way to do that is to, as Paul says, be all things to all people. 

Now, this doesn't mean that you can possibly be all things to all people, nor that you should deceive people and pretend to be something that you're not, but what it does mean is that we, as Christians who are trying to evangelize, need to take ourselves out of the equation as much as possible.  And this is something we're not great at.  What we do, is we think about how God has spoken to us, what we're good at, and so on, and so what we tend to do is what Christians have done since there have been Christians.  That is, we have insisted that in order to join our church, in order to be part of our fellowship, you have to first be like we are.  You have to take on our mantle, be just like us, so you can be part of the fellowship of the faithful. But Paul is all about taking himself out of the equation in this passage.  He's all about saying that Christ is big enough for all people.  He can meet the needs of everyone, no matter of time or space.  And the early disciples had a hard time with this themselves.  They figured that in order to be a Christian, you would have to be a Jew first.  You'd have to keep kosher, to keep the dietary and purity laws, to keep clean according to the laws of Moses, then you could be a Christian. 

But the vision of Peter says something other than that.  The vision of Peter tells us that Jesus has

fulfilled all righteousness.  He fulfilled all the cleanness, all the purity, and all the cultural hangups.  It opened the faith to a much larger world.  And it made it more about what Christ does, than what we do.  It's not about you, where you're from, what laws you have kept, it's about what Jesus has done for you.  He has become all things for all people, he has become sin for us, who have plenty of sin to exchange with him.  He has become sin for us.  He took on flesh for us.  He became a child, lived and died, to be like us in all stages of life.  In other words, he did, in fact, become all things to all people.

One of my all time favourite things was going to St Joseph's oratory, and seeing the display of Nativity sets from around the world.  Looking at those, you got to see that if you're from Vietnam, your Jesus is going to look Vietnamese.  If you're from Sudan, Jesus is going to look Sudanese.  It's the same as our traditional view of Jesus, our traditional image of him, in which he looks like a white guy with blue eyes.  But he's all things to all people.  The most important thing is that he is like us.  He can be all things to all people.  He can reach a lost and devastated world because he doesn't wait for them to find him.  He doesn't say to the world 'to find me, you must be like me.' Instead, in response to the disciples claiming that everyone is looking for him, he replies 'then I must go to them, for that is why I came out.'

Most of our evangelism, then, just ends up being us getting out of the way, and letting Christ speak to the world without hiding him behind ourselves.  It's tough to do, but that's how Jesus found you, isn't it?  By him being all things to all people, by his Gospel reaching you across the centuries, and being as relevant to you now as it was to the first century people then.  Your sins are forgiven, then as now.

PJ.