lifeasmission

San Francisco, Strangers, and Stories: Part 2

June 22, 2010

I ended my previous post about Amy’s and my trip to San Francisco by saying that one of the highlights for me was seeing Wicked for the first time on account of its similarity to my favorite recent TV series, LOST.

The connection I want to make is well articulated in the quote,

Strangers and enemies are merely people whose stories we haven’t heard yet.

We saw this at play in LOST inasmuch as our assumptions and assessments about the nature of the main characters were subverted over the course of getting to know their history and background.  Let’s face it, it’s just way harder to be so critical of Sawyer once you learn that someone was responsible for conning his mother out of money resulting in his father killing her and then himself right in front of him.

Similarly, in Wicked, we are given a story behind the relationship between the “good” witch and the “bad” witch from the Wizard of Oz.  We learn that the “good” witch was actually a fairly empty-headed, spoiled brat who always got her way and was extremely judgmental.  At the same time, we learn that the “bad” witch was a product of years of scorn and ridicule from her father and peers.  Not only did she blame herself for her mother’s death, but she was extremely mindful and caring toward her invalid sister.

Let’s be honest, life is easier when we pretend that we can engage it in black and white.  Truth be told, our need to control life in this way is probably directly related to our own fears and inadequacies.

It is when we lack contentment in who we are in Christ, that we default to judging others so that we can feel better about who we are.

… I am more valuable than him because I work hard and he’s a lazy bum.

… I am nicer than her because I saw how rude she was to the bank teller.

… We are a more devoted family than them because they are constantly missing church services.

Little do we know that…

… he was born addicted to crack and never had the sort of love and support it takes to help someone to recover from that sort of disability.

… she just found out that her 2 year old son was diagnosed with Lukemia and their family is uninsured.

… as a family, they are trying to spend time with their neighbors who think Jesus is a joke.

Stories change everything.

Identifying with others by entering into their stories is risky because we almost always discover that we have more in common with the people that we would just assume distance ourselves from as strangers and enemies that we’d like to admit.

So here’s the challenge before you you and I today (and for the rest of our lives!) – to risk entering into the pain and uncertainly of the stories of the people we consider strangers and enemies that we might identify with them as Christ entered into the story of humanity and identified with it – such is the nature and meaning of incarnational ministry and witness.

I will never be able to watch The Wizard of Oz with as much innocence as I once did. And regardless of what you and I thought about the conclusion of LOST as a television series, there is something profound about this notion of our salvation being bound up with our willingness to truly know and be known by others, especially those we are most unlike us.

Stories change everything.

Posted in: salvation, stories, travles, urban