c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a pastor, writer and software developer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.)

UNDATED _ This flight from Newark to Rome is full and the passengers restless. Rome is merely eight hours away. I anticipate a hot meal and a feature film. What I don’t expect is sleep in this tightly wedged-together crowd.

Travel is draining in a strange way. It isn’t physical, in the sense that running is physical. In fact, I can barely move. I think what drains is the noise _ jet engines outside, constant chatter inside _ and the congestion.

Before our flight, a colleague and I talk about Americans’ need for space, as opposed to southern Europeans’ acceptance of being constantly together, especially in family. Being thrust among this many people saps my energy.

In a similar way, the gospel era is markedly different from ours. It’s difficult to find points of connection. Human nature might be one, but human nature is so often affected by environment, filtered by experiences, shaped by groups, a creature of its times.

The person of Jesus seems distant from the persons one sees today, not just in superficials like attire and language, but in differences that go deeper than we might like to think _ so deep that the gospel account seems a creature of its era, requiring substantial reconfiguring even to be comprehensible today.

I think of travel. Jesus went hardly anywhere, as we might judge anywhere. He ranged farther afield than many of his contemporaries. Even so, his world was a small one compared to ours.

He went slowly and on foot, which could mean he savored each milestone, as only a walker can savor, but might also mean his entire sense of time was different from ours.

Or consider his sense of progress. When he said that all things were being made new, just how radical a newness did he have in mind? We live amid changes that happen faster and go deeper than anything his contemporaries knew. To say that”all things are being made new”elicits a”So what?” Jesus talked of oneness _ to a culture where people were already linked through generations of mingling. He took their oneness deeper, but at least they had some concept of oneness. What could oneness possibly mean to us, who see family four times a year, who spend the vast majority of our time alone or working among strangers? What does oneness mean to a driver on a freeway? Or a teacher waiting for her class to arrive? Does it mean church groups that”get deep”once a year on retreat?

Jesus talked of repentance _ change of mind _ to people whose worldviews were settled. We who know nothing but change, whose daily lives aren’t the same as they were ten years ago and are nothing like those of our parents and grandparents _ what does”change of mind”mean to us? Emotional catharsis? New habits for effective living?

Jesus talked of giving away one’s wealth. We consume a great deal, but own surprisingly little. What do we have to give away? A portion of our credit card limit? A piece of next week’s salary, which is already committed before it’s earned?

I don’t doubt that God cares as much for us as for any previous generation. I don’t doubt that the Spirit lives among us today, or that the love of Christ continues to be the highest expression of God.

But how do we connect with the story told so eloquently in Scripture? Do we just quote it and hope it works? Do we try to make our world fit its worldviews, its science, its psychology and its pathology? Do we re-tell the story in modern imagery and dress Jesus in jeans? Do we continue telling the story in old ways simply because our religious institutions depend on such a telling?

Personally, I think God is telling us a new story, a story that fits a world where 300 people sit wedged together 30,000 feet in the air and will be in Rome by breakfast tomorrow. The story is just as challenging, just as disturbing, just as life-changing and life-giving. But we have to listen for it _ listen in the noise of this congested world.

DEA END EHRICH