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) Asked what question he would pose to Jesus, one man answers:

“I would shout to Jesus, `Have you seen my father? Is he OK? Please tell me that by the grace of God he’s OK now. Have you seen my father? He suffered here so long.”’

I have no immediate analogy to this man’s question. I haven’t shared his experience of standing alone at graveside, burying a father who “had a rough life,” struggled with addiction, and “died with no true friends and not a penny to his name.”

I haven’t yet buried a parent, although that day will come. I am not estranged from my parents. Nor are they friendless.

Sometimes it is enough to know that someone else has suffered. I don’t have to understand it firsthand. I don’t have to “walk in his shoes.” The words “I know what you mean” might be merely a way to distance myself. “Topping” the other’s story with a story of my own is cruel. Finding satisfaction in not having suffered like that _ as in “There but for the grace of God go I” _ can make me shallow and smug.

Sometimes I just need to see the suffering, hear the story, allow the other to have a unique experience that has nothing to do with me. I am not the center of the universe.

Sometimes it is enough just to listen, to step close to another’s pain, to taste the salt of their tears or the acid of their remorse. It is enough to see eyes that dare not see back, that cannot rise to a hopeful horizon, not yet. It is enough to respect the isolation of one who isn’t ready for a soothing hug.

Sometimes it is enough just to see the other’s exile, even though it exposes my own exile beyond mountains that are too high and desert places that are too rough. Can I just listen and love?

John the Baptist heralded Messiah by naming our human condition as exile and Jesus as the Redeemer who would cross the desert to lead us home. Drawing on Isaiah’s compassionate plea to the Hebrew exiles in Babylon, John said, in effect, This is who we are, this is what Messiah came to do.

That wasn’t a self-understanding that early Christians embraced. They preferred to see themselves as a holy tribe feasting on a new Paschal Lamb, as God’s elect called to rule, as a righteous remnant that would save humanity from sin, as builders of a new Jerusalem.

They largely ignored John’s parallels with Babylon’s captives: defeated in battle by overwhelming forces, led away, feeling alienated from a God whom they saw rooted in land, not journey, forgetting where home was, terrified of the unknown, willing to remain in exile.

Even though the Christmas story makes no sense apart from exile, we prefer to talk of law, institution, righteousness and victory, as if Mary and Joseph were a happy family on vacation, not oppressed people, as if the Messianic moment were the anointing of one tribe to rule all tribes, and the primary aim of faith were correctness.

When the prophet Isaiah sang of exiles returning home, he told how valleys would be “lifted up,” mountains “made low,” and “rough places a plain.” He imagined the desert between Babylon and Jerusalem transformed into a “highway.”

He saw exiles marching home together, the strong caring for the weak, as a shepherd will “gather the lambs in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheep.” He saw the women of Jerusalem shouting for joy at the sight of returning exiles.

Is this reader’s father OK? I believe so. I believe the gates of larger life are open to all, sinner and saint alike, as maddening as that might be for those who bank on earning eternity.

But the point isn’t whether I see the way home accurately, for our doctrines and definitions are like withering grass. The point is that a simple question _ what do you need? _ touched an exile. “Your question made me weep,” he writes. “I didn’t know that this was weighing on me until now.”

We transform the desert when we ask and listen.

DEA END EHRICH