c. 2003 Religion News Service
(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)
(UNDATED) My 22-year-old son returns safely from nine days in Europe.
He regales us with tales of flights and trains, hostels, baguettes and brie in Paris, cheering the Tour de France outside the Louvre, climbing a hill to scan Nice at night, discovering Rome on foot, falling in love with London, chatting with folks at a pub, and wanting to go back for a longer stay.
Our entire family gathers to listen. We have news, too, but this is his moment, his return in triumph. We pepper him with questions. His answers build bridges to our own memories. But we try to avoid the common conversational gambit of pouncing on the speaker’s detail to turn the spotlight back to self. Every adventurer deserves a time of telling.
It would be unthinkable for us to refuse to listen. Or to disparage his adventure as inferior to our own. Or to moan enviously. Or to find fault in his memory of details.
Our part is to know our delight at his return and to give him room to celebrate. Our turn will come. We don’t need to be anxious about losing the spotlight.
The same dynamics would hold true if he had come home in defeat. Perhaps more so. He would need time for telling and room for mourning.
I say “unthinkable,” but in fact we mishandle such moments all too frequently. We seize the spotlight, we refuse to listen, and we criticize. We listen selectively, allowing room for those who can benefit our self-interest _ listening to a boss, for example, or a romantic interest _ and turning a less patient ear to children, underlings and the familiar. We sometimes have no room at all for the annoying, the powerless, the stranger and the needy.
But, then, we are human, trapped in frailties and self-destructive tendencies, only sporadically able to get outside ourselves, likely to see all reality through eyes clouded by fear and self-loathing.
What about God? Does God share our unwillingness to listen, our instinct for rejection, our manic hunger for the spotlight? Does God dominate every conversation for fear of losing control and feeling small? Does God turn a deaf ear to tales of triumph or defeat? Does God never miss an opening to find fault?
Now that would be unthinkable. Who would want a God who has no room for the other, no patience for listening, whose self-esteem was so meager as to require endless reassurances, whose ego was so overblown as to demand control? Who would want a God who sent away all but a few?
If Jesus made nothing else clear, it was that God isn’t like us. In love with us, yes, but with a love that is larger than anything we can muster. Nothing conveys that otherness of God more clearly than Jesus’ attitude toward strangers and outcasts, his unwavering determination to embrace all of humanity, and to do so without the conditions that we impose, including those conditions that we call “God’s will.”
Believers spend lifetimes debating who is allowed to come close, who is worthy to receive, who must be made to change. We are masters at devising litmus tests, barriers, questions that must be answered correctly, merit badges that must be earned. Whether we close the door with overt “standards” or the raised eyebrow of scorn, we don’t hesitate to send people away unheard, unseen, unloved.
In erecting barriers, we say we are defending God, when in fact we are defending ourselves. We say we are “loving the sinner,” as if one could feel loved by being rejected and made to feel dirty. We say we are honoring Scripture, as if our grasp of God’s word were the only grasp.
In fact, driving people away makes us feel safe and large. But Jesus had a different word: “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”
DEA END EHRICH
