What is Christianity?

Jesus Makes Sense of the World.

I was driving a Nissan Patrol along the Beira Corridor from Harare, Zimbabwe to Tete Province, Mozambique. If I were driving in the panhandle of my home state of Texas, I would be watching out for armadillos on the road. Now I had to keep my eyes open for vervet monkeys who might dart out from the tall grasses on either side. My windows were rolled up, my air conditioning was on and I was listening to the BBC Radiophonic Network’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” During my hours-long journey, I was trying to make sense out of life on this planet. Here I was driving out to work with survivors in a war-torn Southern African country, with people who had never heard of Texas. At the same time, at this very moment, there were people in Amarillo, and Austin and Houston who were living their lives with little knowledge of cities like Maputo, Xai-Xai, or Tete. One group is struggling for survival while the other has enough peace, security and technological know-how to write witty and hilarious science fiction stories like the one I am listening to. These were two incredibly different experiences of life yet we inhabit the same planet. I couldn’t get my head around the two co-existing realities and make them fit together.

It was my spiritual journey that led me to this land more than 9,000 miles away from the city of my birth. I was way beyond my comfort zone. I’d been warned to check with the US embassy in Harare before embarking on this journey. The peace plan implemented in Mozambique by the United Nations had neglected to provide “skills training” to thousands of demobilized soldiers. As a result, some of these veterans of the country’s long and bloody civil war had been known to make ends meet by hijacking cars, taking anything of value, and sometimes burning everything else, including the drivers. The embassy functionary had told me that my stretch of road had been calm this week. The village of Furancungo was expecting me and I had packed all of the provisions I would need for the week ahead. Nevertheless, this drive was a spiritual stretch for me.

What could I do for the people awaiting my arrival? I’d lived in other countries. I had a master's degree. But I had no experience helping people reconstruct their post-war lives in Southern Africa. I passed yet another landmine sign, warning me that to drive off the road to the right or to the left could lead to death by explosion. But my mind was elsewhere. I had just figured out that the average Mozambican would have to work 425 years, saving every metical they could earn, to purchase the vehicle I was now driving. I had a mild hunger pain, out of habit more than necessity, at the same time as I saw a village on my left where parents were rumored to using tree bark to fill their children’s distended bellies. This whole situation was confusing, wild, and whacky, just like the world described in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I couldn’t make sense of either one. It felt like I was just along for the ride.

But then I arrive in the village of Furancungo. All of the people had gathered to welcome me. After a greeting and a brief introduction, they help me to get situated in a small thatched hut next to the church. About an hour later, we gathered in that grass sanctuary and focused on the one thing we all share; a deeply held belief that a man who lived thousands of miles away from all of us, who had died almost two thousand years earlier than us, was alive and working in our midst. Because of Jesus we shared a meal, read the Bible and talked about applying what we read to our very different yet very human lives.

Every Easter millions of people, leading very different lives, from very different parts of the globe, gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. In him we all find forgiveness, we all learn how to be reconciled to one another, and we all find a love that overwhelms any hostility or injustice or division between us.

I can’t make sense of everything that’s happened on this planet. But Jesus makes sense of the world.