“It was a lang time ago, right enough – thoosans and thoosans o years since. There was nuthin whaur the earth is the noo – absolutely nothin at aw. “weel noo,” God says tae himself wan day, “I’ll fix a wee bit dod o land – doon there” (A Glasgow Bible – Jamie Stewart)
As a minister, I have built up a collection of bibles. While I have translations that many would recognise, the NRSV, the NIV and the Good News version, I also have a very treasured version written in the Scots vernacular. Unsurprisingly, I don’t use it much here as I’m guessing it would be like a foreign language to antipodean ears. Were I to use this dialect, you bonzer blokes wouldn’t understand what I was saying and my message would fall on deafer ears than usual.
Our reading this morning looks closely at how we as Christians relate to others. Paul is expanding his theme of love over knowledge and states that when he speaks to Jewish people, he speaks to them as a Jew. When he speaks to non-Jewish people, he speaks to them as a non-Jew. He does so in order to meet people where they are rather than insisting that people change first and become as he wants them to be before he will minister to them. It’s a reflection of the ministry of Jesus who went to people to show them God’s love rather than insist on them becoming who God wanted them to be before He would speak to them. Jesus and Paul accept people as they are and show them God’s love where they are. It is this encounter with the divine that leads to the individual changing. If they never encounter the divine, how can we expect them to change?
The church has taken the inclusive ministry of Jesus and made it exclusive; we won’t speak to people who are different from us. There are churches that will not minister to people because they do not approve of how they live. There are churches that insist on people meeting their standards before they will have anything to do with them. There are churches that seek to exclude people, rather than seeking to include. If we are not careful, churches will appear no different from being a social club with a homogenous membership. How did we become the “bouncers” to God’s grace? I believe we need to adopt a different approach to evangelism and go to meet people where they are. We need to speak their language and behave in a way that they can relate to. We need to stop insisting that people change before we will have anything to do with them. We don’t need to change the message, only how we deliver it. So, if I can learn to use Australian idioms, I’m sure the church can be more open and inclusive in our approach towards others.