I kind of “space out” in crowds.  I easily get lost and many times my friends have had to come and find me because I have either lost sight of them and/or wandered off in another direction.  There is something distracting about a “crowd,” something to me that is somewhat depersonalizing and vague.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the excitement experienced in a group, for example, at a music concert, wherein the entertainment seems to be shared by those gathered.  But many times “crowds” seem to gather in a way that can become dispassionate and sometimes even destructive.

We gather sometimes around ideas and people presenting these ideas because we feel we can relate to them.  Many times, “chords” of familiarity and resonance are touched and we “get on board,” so to speak.  My experience is that this can unite people either in a positive or a negative manner.  The potentially destructive “gathering” usually involves “finger pointing” and the us/them scenario.  “They” are the bad guys and are responsible for everything that is “wrong,” or everything that is causing “us” some discomfort, irritation, pain, etc.  A “gathering” that does not promote stubbornness in mindsets seems to have the ability to provide fertile ground for cultivation of diversity and inclusion.  In one case, we have the position of what might be confining and in the other that which lends itself more easily to a sense of “freedom.”

Paul is telling the Galatians today (GAL 4:22-24, 26-27, 31-5:1), something about this distinction, when he uses the story of Abraham’s offspring from two “mothers” as an allegory about relationships that are either based upon what he refers to as “slavery,” or “freedom.”

“Brothers and sisters:
It is written that Abraham had two sons,
one by the slave woman and the other by the freeborn woman.
The son of the slave woman was born naturally,
the son of the freeborn through a promise.
Now this is an allegory.
These women represent two covenants.
One was from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery;
this is Hagar.
But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother”

It occurs to me that Paul is not giving us so much an “either/or” situation, but rather characterizing how we relate to God and to each other.  Inasmuch as we are ALL children of the “freeborn woman,” we choose to confine ourselves, many times unbeknownst to us, and attempt to “enslave” others – quite literally from an historical point of view.  But this is the odd thing about “slavery” – it turns back on itself, and enslaves everyone, and perhaps most diabolically the one who tries to enslave.”  And then the lie told in “enslavement” gets spread outward through lines of fear that disguise themselves as chants of protection, convenience and sometimes “morality.”  We do our best and unfortunately, quite convincingly, to cover over the freedom that we all have as beloved creatures of Love.  As Paul admonishes us: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”

Jesus in the Gospel (LK 11: 29-32), addresses this same scenario in terms of our need to look for “signs.”  You can almost see the “growing crowd,” surrounding Him and demanding something that will validate all that they hold so dearly…

“While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
‘This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.’ “

We look many times for what we expect to see, and, wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what we end up seeing.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.  And this type of confirmation “grows” the crowd.  We blind ourselves to the possibility of being surprised by someone or something that may seem so far removed from that which we are familiar that we not only fail to appreciate it, but don’t see it at all.  The fertile ground of freedom in which we all are standing becomes invisible and so we walk on and over each other. We don the mask of slavery and hide the face of freedom.

Could the “sign of Jonah,” be that unknown and sometimes “dark way” that we must go in order to begin to see the Light – the real Light?  It’s the Christ story of life, death, resurrection, and new life, fraught with inexplicable pain and confusion – there is no way around that for some reason.  Remember that in the story, Jonah did not want to go where God was leading him and ended up being thrown overboard from a ship, swallowed by a whale and spit up on the shore of a world of which he still was not convinced he wanted to be part.  But he went on…into the “crowd” of Nineveh and, of all things, there was Healing!  Healing in the face of stubborn comfortableness and complacency.  And how did this happen?  I believe it is the “covenant” between the God of Love and the “freeborn” –ALL of us – no exceptions!

The “crowds” of complacency that we allow to stupefy us can be transformed when Freedom is recognized.  I say “recognized” because, again, IT is already here, we just fail to see it and try to subvert it by enslaving others and simultaneously ourselves as well.  To be in Christ, means to be in Freedom – and Christ encompasses all!  So can we, instead of “getting on board,” perhaps “jump ship,” i.e., dispel the “crowd” and create the space for the Healing light of Freedom do that it can speak to us of the wonders of responsive diversity?  This is not running away from the crowd, as Jonah tried so desperately but unsuccessfully to do, but staying with the crowd in a way that somehow creates an opening that others can find themselves in.  As difficult as it may seem, I believe it is possible.  Then the “crowd” can become a living relationship flowing in the rhythm of recreative transformation.

“…there is something greater than Jonah here!”

Peace

Thomas