Living Together — Plucking and Planting

"To the prophet, knowledge of God was fellowship with him, not obtained by syllogism, analysis or induction but by living together." -Abraham Joshua Heschel

I sit in a coffee shop this morning with some idea of what I want to say but no clear path of how to start. We start a new week after the tragedy of this weekend in Orlando, Florida, changed a little bit, on edge a bit more, questioning existence and the fragility of life yet again. Thankfully, the person I am sharing this table with this morning, shares a story with me that puts the final pieces together. You see, a friend of his came out this weekend. His friend had been living a secret life, with a fear that in some ways was realized with the events of this weekend and yet with a resolve to not live in that fear anymore. And his friends, for the most part I am sure, loved him for it. They saw the bravery that it must have taken to share the things he had been feeling for years. There was liberty in letting all of his friends and even his acquaintances know this part of him as well. For the person sharing a table with me this morning at the coffee shop, he was able to see his friend in a new light. He can now see the quiet, withdrawn, maybe even depressed aspects of his friend and it makes sense. He doesn't love his friend less, he loves him more.

The news reports from this weekend say that the young man responsible for the shooting had seen a gay couple kissing recently and it sent him into a rage. He saw this couple as so unequivocally "other" than himself that he felt the only possible reaction would be to end the innocent lives of so many others. I couldn't help but wonder, what if he had had a close friendship like the one I described in the opening paragraph? A friendship where he didn't know that this friend had been experiencing the fear of the way that society would react. A friendship where they had shared common fears of school and dating, peer pressure and what it feels like to be an outsider and misunderstood. If he had known someone like that who then showed the courage that it must take to come out. If that had happened before he then witnessed a gay couple kiss one another in public, would his reaction have been one of such hatred?

Growing up, I think I was one of the most reactionary people in the history of the world. If someone asked my opinion on something I had an answer that was clear, concise and loud. I wish I could say that I thought deeply and considerately on a topic before I blurted out an answer but it isn't so. I think many of us are quite reactionary, even into later life. We consider the "knowledge" we have on a topic to be above reproach. It is true, more than we care to admit, that much of our knowledge comes with little to no proximity. In the past, if I had an opinion about one of the "mainline denominations" who thought differently from my tribe, it didn't stop me from having a loud opinion. It certainly didn't drive me to speak with one of the people I was about to make a judgement against. Knowing someone that we don't understand or that we disagree with doesn't necessarily cause us to change our position but it certainly makes it more complicated. The clear line that we once saw of in and out, right and wrong, saved and condemned, is now crooked and blurry. Knowing a person changes things. I should say, knowing a person should change things. The only way to truly know a person is through honest proximity.

I love the Heschel quote at the beginning of this piece. A prophet knows God through fellowship with him. You can't know God through reading scripture, reading a list of attributes, finding the historical Jesus, proof texting and exegesis, atleast not only those things. The true way that we know and are known by God is by living with him and that is something that takes time. It means asking God the really tough questions, it means screaming out to God when this world doesn't make sense. Living with God means inviting him into the messy sinful stuff that the world "won't understand", and looking up at the night sky glorifying the creator of such ever expanding beauty. You won't find that in a book. Jeremiah is my favorite prophet to read because he is young and troubled yet bold and courageous. You see all of the messy emotions and fears and they are all laying out for everyone to see. He questions God, he yells at God, he pleads with God and he ultimately trusts in God. In all of this work he truly comes to know and live with God, as much as is humanly possible. I think this desire of God, to have us live together with Him, is laid out in the first and greatest commandment. Love the Lord your God. This can only come from proximity, we must live together with God in fellowship. And scripture tells us that the second is like the first, we must love our neighbor as ourselves. I believe that this too, can only come through proximity. You can not love what you make no effort to know. In fact, we have this horrible tendency to judge, condemn, cast out and as we saw this weekend, exterminate, what we don't know.

Is there a people group that you are having a hard time seeing with the love of Christ? I beg you, this week make an effort to meet someone from that people group. I'm not even asking you to immediately change your opinion of them. I'm just asking you to put a face to this general emotion that you are experiencing. So that when you say, "those ______" you will now see the face of the person you are about to judge. You will no longer hear statistics and see the effects of 9/11. You won't hear the voice of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton but the voice of Jesus calling you to the stranger. What I pray that you might find is that it is much easier to love the particularity of a person than a group of people you have lumped together. What I think you might find is that when you go to a group of people that you see as wholly "other" than yourself, Jesus is there too and that is where the love and healing you have been searching for rests. Just as our process of coming to live together in fellowship with God doesn't happen overnight, so too our entry into fellowship with the stranger is a journey. Our commitment to start can happen right now. Lord have mercy.