The Lutheran Hour

"Outstanding Universal Value"

#93-20
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on January 18, 2026
Speaker: Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler
Copyright 2026 Lutheran Hour Ministries

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-19

“Outstanding Universal Value” is the criteria for making the World Heritage List.ⁱ You’d recognize many of the 1,200 or so sites on the list. They are places of great natural beauty, like the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the Galapagos Islands just off the coast of Ecuador, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Or they’re places of exceptional human accomplishment: the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Parthenon in Athens.

Even the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem is on the list.ⁱⁱ

To make the list, you have to persuade UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) that the property has outstanding universal value. First, that it’s “universal,” that its value is not just for some people, but all people. And that it’s not just interesting, but “outstanding,” that having the opportunity to visit these stand-out places or simply knowing that they exist will somehow make us better humans.

But better in what sense? Better humans, how? Let me answer that question with an analogy I read in a book once. Let’s say that humanity is like a fleet of ships sailing together in formation.ⁱⁱⁱ What makes them better or worse? There are at least two criteria. First, they can’t crash into each other. They have to sail together. Second, each ship on its own, as an individual, has to be in “ship shape.” It must function well: no leaks, an engine room in order, responsive steering. Now, if you haven’t met both criteria—all the individuals functioning well and not crashing into or ramming into each other, there’s room for improvement. It could be better.

So also with human beings. And that’s how the UNESCO World Heritage List wants to help us. It’s trying to inspire us, individually and collectively, to be better, neither crashing into each other, nor simply drifting apart.

The World Heritage List does this mostly by positive examples, sites of significant human accomplishment, when the ships were sailing together rather well: building medieval cathedrals in Europe, setting up trade routes on the Silk Road across Asia, welcoming the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free under the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

But there are a handful of sites on the list that teach by negative example. And if you’re listening with children, this part may not be appropriate for them. One of these sites on the World Heritage List is a large, red, brick building nestled among lush, green hillsides, a building once built to be a church. Today, its walls and wood panels are perforated with holes from bullets and exploded grenades. Inside, piled on the wooden pews are stacks and stacks of soiled, blood-stained clothes which once belonged to the 10,000 men, women, and children who came to hide here during the genocide. In a shed nearby are piles of objects people brought with them for what they hoped would be a short stay: plates, shoes, baskets, water jugs, and many crucifixes.

On one of the walls, there hangs a banner. It carries the lament of an anonymous victim: “If you knew me,” it says, “and if you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.” One visitor to the site reported the feeling: “The mind surrenders to scenes like this.” In the guest book, visitors from many countries try to give voice to their emotions. None writes more than a few words. “Never again,” is the most common phrase, but also, “Unbelievable. Speechless. God have mercy on us all.”^iv

This former church is in Rwanda in East Africa. It’s just one of hundreds of sites across Rwanda where the unthinkable happened. Over the course of 100 days, one million mostly unarmed civilians were murdered. They were cut down with machetes, bludgeoned to death with clubs. The murderers were murdering their neighbors, colleagues, co-workers. Doctors killed their patients. Husbands killed their wives. Teachers killed their students. A dean at the National University killed five professors.^v And the powerful nations of the United Nations that could have stopped it looked away while it happened. One former United Nations general called it a “failure of humanity.”^vi

It’s hard to comprehend how these sites and stories have Outstanding Universal Value. It is especially hard for me as a Christian. See, Rwanda, where this genocide took place in 1994, was and is predominately a nation of Christians. Most all its citizens still identify themselves as Christian. And churches were a common site of mass killings during the genocide. Christians, including priests and pastors, were accomplices and murderers.

Now, that’s not to say this was a religiously-motivated genocide. It wasn’t. It was motivated by political divisions and factions, and the sad story stretches back a hundred years or so to when Europe was colonizing Africa.^vii Those details aside, what’s especially sad about this, for me, as a Christian, is not that Christianity caused this genocide, but that so many people who claimed to be Christian failed to prevent it, just as so many who claimed to be Christian failed to prevent slavery in the Americas, so many Christians looked away as Nazis marched their neighbors to Auschwitz, so many Christians created the racially divisive categories that led to the Rwandan genocide, and so many did nothing when members of their churches were cut down.

Aren’t Christians supposed to be better? Isn’t Christianity supposed to make us better?

A reflex response might be, “Well, no true Christian would ever do such things.” Which is correct, but how many of us are true Christians in that sense? To quote Jesus, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Or, as St Paul said, “Let him who thinks he stands, watch out so that he does not fall.”

In other words, just because you feel like a true Christian in this moment doesn’t mean you won’t turn your back on Christ and commit some unthinkable sin in the next. There’s some truth to that response, that no true Christian would ever do such things. The trouble is—none of us are true Christians in that sense. We may not be currently leaking or crashing into each other, but that does not mean that we’ve arrived at our destination.

Let’s go back to our ships-sailing-in-formation analogy: we mentioned two criteria for what makes these ships good. One, that they’re neither ramming each other nor simply drifting apart; and two, that they’re functioning well as individuals. But there’s a third criterion we didn’t mention, which is, where are the ships trying to get to? Which raises other questions, like, what’s the goal of this voyage? And who decides that? Who bought them and paid for them? Who owns this fleet? These are the questions the Christian faith is primarily concerned with.

Now, Christianity, just like every other religion, culture, and political system, is also concerned about the first two criteria, to keep individuals from sinking in a mental health crisis, to keep them from drifting into an epidemic of loneliness, to keep them from cutting down their neighbors. But it’s this third criterion that sets Christianity apart, because it does no good if all the ships are sailing well, if they’re sailing in the wrong direction.

But who gets to say what the right direction is? Who gets to decide when we arrive? The Guy who made Mount Kilimanjaro gets to.

Let me put it in another way that’s going to sound wrong at first: Christianity is not about making better humans. Now, that’s not to say that the Christian faith hasn’t produced some outstanding humans. It has—people led by their faith in Christ have helped heal genocides and stabilize war-torn towns. They’ve lobbied to end slavery, secured civil rights, built roads and bridges and businesses, founded hospitals, cared for widows and orphans. But, the outstanding universal value of the Christian faith is not that it helps us get along a little bit better, but that it turns us in the right direction, toward the right Person. God, according to the Bible, doesn’t want better humans. God wants new humans. Not by eliminating the old ones. No, God didn’t make us disposable. God made us to live forever. But living forever in the wrong direction is eternal hell. So, God turns us toward Him, and the Christian faith offers this course correction to everyone. But the course it charts is narrow. It leads through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Over the next few weeks on this program, we’re going to be listening to some excerpts from an ancient Christian letter to followers of Jesus who resided in the city of Corinth. The city of Corinth was a great port of the ancient world—a hub in a vast shipping network. But the Christians in Corinth, as we learn from the letter, were not sailing together very well. They were either ramming into each other or else drifting apart. They weren’t physically killing each other, not yet, but they were probably, at times, murdering each other in their hearts. They had divided themselves into cliques, little stone-casting factions. And Paul, one of the primary messengers of Jesus, writes a letter to them. He addresses their issues.

But his goal isn’t simply to make them act better. No, his goal is redirection. His goal is death and resurrection—death to their old selves, so that they might rise again with Jesus, set on a new course with Him, under His command and care. And that’s the goal for us, today: to remember who we are and Whose we are, because of what Christ has done. And so, before Paul gives any ground rules about how to get along, first he points us back to the cross of Christ. And he confesses up front that this word of the cross “is foolishness to those who are perishing.” It’s offensive! “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God. [As God said], ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’”

In the last couple of weeks, I spent a lot of time studying the Rwandan genocide. I read books and articles, watched videos, listened to podcasts. I even interviewed a survivor, a woman named Denise, whom you’ll get to hear from at the end of the program. I experienced what that visitor to the church where all those people were killed described: “the mind surrenders” to such scenes. Contemplating this real-life horror, this massive failure of humanity, it strips you of the tools that you normally use to make sense of the world. It’s like contemplating the murder of the innocent Son of God, the sort of thing that destroys the wisdom of the wise.

And disoriented, I find myself facing an old problem. Maybe you’ve faced it, too. I find that the more I try to learn, the more I try to be a better, wiser human, the more I try to do good, the more it leads me either to arrogance or despair. It usually starts with arrogance, setting my own course, finding my own factions, throwing stones at those we think are less than us. But in time, this arrogance turns to disillusionment and then despair, when I realize that all my self-righteousness is a mask, and yours is too, because we’re all inclined to turn in the wrong direction.

Maybe that’s the outstanding universal value of these sites and stories. They lead us to that confession, back to the cross of Christ. I look up at Him there—the most outstanding human there ever was or will be. And I see what we did to Him—good, religious, intelligent people murdered God’s Son. Part of me wants to turn away. But then I hear Him, from the cross, pleading for us, for our forgiveness, promising safe passage. But that means I have to scuttle my own ship. I have to die with Him.

Denise Uwimana survived the genocide in Rwanda, but some days she wished that she had died. Those 100 days, and many of the ones that followed, were hell on earth. Over one hundred members of her family and extended family were murdered, including her husband.^viii After it was over, when she returned to her hometown, every day she met neighbors on the street, many of them Christians, some of them members of her own church, people who had killed her family, looted her home, or looked the other way and let it happen.

One day she saw a woman in town wearing her best dress, which had been stolen out of her closet. Denise felt a flash of rage. She begged God to help her respond wisely, but the wisdom of the wise had perished. And forgiving felt impossible. “How could You let this happen?” she cried to God, “How am I supposed to carry on, surrounded by these hypocrites?” In her prayers, she hurled complaints at God and stones at her neighbors, “God, why did You send me back to live here? How can I live with these fiends, these devils, these killers?”

She sensed God speaking to her with words echoing from Scripture, “Denise, give these people a chance to know who I am, so they can repent. I am the God of all people!”

“But Lord,” she cried, “these are not people. They are demons, they are scorpions, they are worse than animals.”

Again, God answered, “Denise, you survived only by [My] grace. Give that grace to others.”

Slowly, understanding dawned on her: “I am no different than anyone else.”

She knew that if she refused passage on this voyage that Jesus had opened to everyone, she knew that she would be just like those who had killed and stolen. But also, she knew that God understood her inner battles and still welcomed her as His child. God’s love overwhelmed her. “Jesus does not want anyone to miss out on His mercy,” she thought.^ix She asked for His forgiveness for her hatred. And she knew that she had died, not in the genocide, but with Jesus on the cross. And she was being re-made in His resurrection, not just better, but new.

Stories like Denise’s are told all over Rwanda today, 30 years after the genocide. Once the site of this most dismal Christian and human failure, Rwanda has been called “a global lab for testing … Christian forgiveness.”^x Historian and journalist, Stephen Kinzer, who has documented Rwanda’s horrific death and miraculous resurrection as a nation in his book titled A Thousand Hills, reported that many Rwandans have come to reconcile with the murderers, to forgive those who trespassed so terribly against them. How is this possible?

Most Rwandans he interviewed gave the same answer: “This is what God wants.”^xi

What God wants is not just that we act better. God wants people directed to Him in faith—
people who know who they are under the cross of Christ, and that their fellow humans are no different.

At that World Heritage site in Rwanda, where 10,000 people were murdered in a church, one visitor remembered the banner hanging on the wall, which gave the victims a voice: If you knew me, and you really knew yourself, you wouldn’t act like this. The Christian faith does have the power to make us act better. But that’s not the goal. The goal is that we would die to our old selves daily, in Christ, so that we would be made new forever in the resurrection when Jesus returns. The goal is that we would know who we are to God. The cross of Jesus makes it known that our failure is universal. There is no distinction. We’re all on the same side. Before God, no one is better or worse.

But in the light of Jesus’ resurrection, the cross also shows you what you’re worth to God.
You’re on God’s World Heritage List. You have Outstanding Universal Value to Him, you and everyone you meet. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

i https://whc.unesco.org/en/list
ii https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1433
iii The analogy comes from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, San Fransico: Harper Collins (2001), 71.
iv As described by Stephen Kinzer, A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley (2008), 289.
v Ibid., 164.
vi Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2003.
vii Stephen Kinzer’s book (listed above) explains how it started as work-related differences between people in Rwanda—like ‘blue-collar’ versus ‘white-collar’ workers (manual laborers versus intellectual laborers). These labor differences were exploited by colonizing European governments and Christian missionaries, who tended to favor the minority group, the intellectual laborers, called “Tutsi.” In time, differences became divisions. Divisions became factions. Factions fueled resentment and rivalry between the two groups. The majority group, called “Hutu,” those who had traditionally been manual laborers, came to power and persecuted the minority Tutsi, driving many of them out of the country, forcing them to live as refugees in neighboring countries. In the early 1990s, the minority Tutsi fought to regain power. A civil war started. As the majority (Hutu) group began to lose power, their extremist leaders incited a killing campaign, while much of the ‘developed’ world looked away. 100 days later, 1 million Tutsi were dead.
viii Listen to some of Denise’s story here: https://www.myfaithradio.com/programs/the-bill-arnold-show/a-rwandan-story-of-healing-and-forgiveness-denise-uwimana-1719440131/
ix Denise Uwimana, From Red Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness. Walden, NY: Plough (2019), 134-135.
x Kinzer, A Thousand Hills, 307.
xi Ibid., 268.

Reflections for January 18, 2026
Title: Outstanding Universal Value

Michael Zeigler:
Thank you, Mark. Today I am visiting with Denise Iwumana, the author of the book From Red Earth, a Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness. Welcome back to the program, Denise.

Denise:
Thank you.

Michael Zeigler:
Denise, in your book you write about the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. You explain how you were part of the minority group in Rwanda at the time called the Tutsi and the majority of the people group was called Hutu. For centuries, these two groups had lived together peacefully, but after European nations colonized Rwanda, a division between the Hutu and the Tutsi was created. Even after Rwanda became independent this division wasn’t abolished but deepened, and it culminated in 1994 when an extremist Hutu regime enacted plans to exterminate all Tutsi and they killed about 1 million Tutsi in only 100 days. Of course, you tell the story in your book, but rather than making the story be about the genocide, you say it’s a story of healing and forgiveness. Why do you believe that?

Denise:
First, I want to tell that I do not want to minimize the horrors of the last mega-genocide in history, but I wanted to show people that it’s possible, that how God helped us to come out from that hell of hate, hell of discrimination, to show people how it’s possible that we change. We could forgive and we could live in peace with our perpetrator, of our killers. And I wanted also to help the world of today, which is full of hate, darkness, walls, even genocide, ideologies in one another way, to help them overcome and to live in peace with each other. That is possible. I did not want to speak only about the genocide, but I want to show them the process, how it was possible for us survivors, not only for survivors, also even on other side, how they were able also to welcome our forgiveness because we offer forgiveness and they accept our forgiveness, and now we are to send the light to the world of today.

Michael Zeigler:
In the book you mentioned that the reconciliation effort wasn’t always received well by fellow victims of the genocide. At one point, you mentioned you were even accused of being a traitor to your people. What helped you stay committed to that vision of Rwanda, that it could be a story of healing and not just of genocide, but reconciliation?

Denise:
After the genocide, I did not want to remain in my heart like someone who always hate. I wanted to help survivors… I show them the love of God, first to tell them that God love them, loves them, never let them alone and has a plan… If I have got this mercy of forgiveness, I must give it to another. If I’m living today, it’s by grace of God… This is the purpose of God, that no one should miss the eternal life.

Michael Zeigler:
Thank you so much, Denise, for your testimony to the mercy of God. If you want to read the whole story, it’s called From Red Earth and it’s by Denise Uwimana. Thank you for joining us, Denise.

Denise:
Thank you.

Music Selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“The Only Son from Heaven” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.