Getting Close to God...and One Another

Do I hold God politely at arm's length?  Or do I get in close with God and risk a painful encounter?

The Old Testament character, Job, chooses the first option--at least in the first chapters of his story.  He has a polite, civil, business-like relationship with God.  Job makes every sacrifice prescribed in the ritual regulations.  He makes extra sacrifices in case his children wander off the path of propriety.  Job does his part.  And for a while, God does God's part.  Job is blessed with material prosperity, good public repute, and a serene personal existence.  Job stays on his side of the street and expects God to stay on God's side of the street.

Alert readers (in Hebrew, anyway) notice that Job's name really means "enemy."  I don't ever quite know what to make of that, but I know that it matters.  Who is the enemy here?  As I read Parker Palmer's book, Healing the Heart of Democracy, I think of one of his lines.  "As long as we equate the stranger with the enemy," Palmer writes, "there can be no civil society, let alone a democracy where much depends on holding the tension of our differences without fearing or demonizing the other" (page 96).

Can the God we hold at a polite distance turn into anything other than the ultimate Stranger and Demon?  This is, I think, fundamental to Job's wrestling.  "If this is how God treats [God's] friends," noted Mother Theresa with a bit of acid," it's no wonder [God] has so few of them."

The New Testament character, that unnamed widow in Luke 18:1-8, chooses the second option.  "Chooses" is not the right description.  She is down to her last option.  The unjust judge won't even give her the time of day.  She is, after all, of no real account to him.  So she makes it clear that either she gets a settlement or he gets a smack in the face just below the eyeballs.  Not only would the judge suffer physical pain, but he also would be rendered a laughingstock among his peers.

While the relationship between the widow and the judge is not cordial, it is certainly close.  There is none of the careful civility we find with Job, none of the dignified decorum, none of the nodding acquaintance that leaves everyone comfortable and no one fully engaged in life.  This widow forces a rough and tumble, full contact, in your face (literally) relationship.

And that is the kind of relationship Jesus commends to his followers--passionate, muscular, turbulent, in God's face, and fully engaged--with God and with one another.

What we Christians proclaim is that we know the God who refuses--repeatedly, resolutely, and radically--to be the Stranger and the Enemy.  The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus is Immanuel--God with us.  The Book of Revelation reaches its high point with these words: "Now is the dwelling place of God among human beings..."  The Apostle Paul builds our relationship with God in the midst of an enmity to be overcome--"while we were still enemies [of God], Christ died for us..."

The God who refuses to remain at a distance enters fully into our lives and into the human experience--even to the point of death on a cross.  Our God is desperate to be with us and to lead us to be with one another.

Now we will find ourselves once again afraid of the Other, the Stranger--the Anonymous enemy.  I don't know much about the shooting in Colorado.  I do know, however, that we will be tempted to withdraw further from one another.  We will long to lock the doors, draw the shades, arm the alarms and watch our movies in private.

And if we do, then we will have surrendered to the real enemies of fear, isolation, and despair.  Please, dear Lord, give us the courage to be friends with the Stranger, to risk the relationship that brings healing to the world.