Scooch Over, Please

Here I am with another theme that has popped up several times in my media recently, although this one has been a slower burn if you will - the most recent sighting called back to me some things over the last 4-5 months that have been present around me. Bear with me, all of my examples come from the religious sector of my life, but the principle, the heart of the topic applies - I think- to us all.

First, a few months back in Bible study at my church I made a comment to the extent of “I know plenty of ‘non-religious’ people who act a heck of a lot more Christian than some Christian people I know”. The pastor challenged me, “what do you mean by that?”, which made me pause… what did I mean by that specifically? After a pondering thought I said something to the effect of that I have plenty of agnostic or atheist friends and acquaintances that live out the “greatest commandment” better, or more to the way I see it, than some religious folk I know who attend church every Sunday.

The Greatest Command, if you are unfamiliar is a reference from Mark 12 in which some people were trying to trick Jesus and ask him a bunch of loop-holey type questions to try and get him to miss-say something so they could yell “ah-hah! Gotcha! You must be lying about who you are!”. Some examples include - if a lady strikes terrible luck and marries a string of brothers in attempts to produce a male heir but none of them can follow through on the plan before they die, who is her husband on resurrection day? or , should we pay taxes? You know, easy stuff. So lastly they ask him “which commandment is the most important [greatest] of all?” and Jesus says: [from the ESV translation] “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

So basically, Love God and Love His People. Simple, right? Sure, in theory, but somehow in practice we get to a place in which disagreements are a life-long grudge, or we wish a man dead for cutting us off in traffic. We’re uncomfortable because people look different than us for a number of reasons, and we forget to empathize with those who are less fortunate than us. I know plenty of people who extend their hands, their homes, their resources, their knowledge to their neighbors. And not just the people who live next door to them, but anyone they encounter in their daily life, or those whom they choose to serve or reach out to in some way. They make time and room in their busy lives and schedules to go out of their way for others, because it’s the “decent thing to do”.

I wish I could say these people who do these things regularly, and gracefully are all Christians, and some are, but not all. So to answer my pastor’s question I said something along that line. That many people I know who don’t believe in God or a god at all do these things out of the desire to simply serve and spread kindness to others. They choose to extend grace and love into the world because they either know how hard things can get, or because that is what they hope to receive back in this world. And yet sometimes, as Christians, people are supposed to be dedicated to following Christ and his example of touching the lepers, and eating with sinners, scoff at those who are different, and argue with people about the nuances of scripture when the greater picture and message is not affected by the minutia. I digress.

Several weeks later at church, advent, or the season leading to Christmas began. The first week was about “making room”. The concept in summary: When you invite people into your home for the holidays or for a meal, or party and you find the final number of guests more than you might have accounted for, you make room. You clear out furniture, set up more chairs, clean off the old end tables to add to the table if needed, so that everyone will fit into the space in which you have invited them to. You make sacrifices. Maybe the story of the innkeeper who is typically painted as turning Mary and Joseph away is instead doing his best to make extra space. He sees all the folks who are staying in his place and realizes Mary and Joe still need a place despite having any rooms left. So, he clears out a corner of the stable, piles up some extra hay, and apologizes for the bleakness of it, but still invites them to stay because he has intentionally made room. He does his best in the moment to provide for people asking for help.

Then, in an audiobook while driving to work, the author in speaking about the divine nature of humans since the beginning of time, and “fall” and these types of topics, irrelevant maybe to this post, she describes creation as this:

“Before creation, all there was was God, so in order to bring the world into being, God had to kinda scoot over. To bring the world into being, God chose to take up less space, you know, to make room. So before God spoke the world into being, God scooted over, God wanted to share; like the kind-faced woman on the subway who takes her hand bag onto her lap, so there’s room for you to sit next to her.”

And how beautiful is this thought for anyone who believes in any sort of higher level creation. That a god of the universe who could have done anything and everything; choose to “scoot over” and make room for something besides himself. He decided to in essence, take up less space, so that other things could exist with him. Without expectation of what they could provide back to him, and without posting a selfie on social media: “scooted over in the void to make room for this today!” *picture of god and a seagull attached.

Now, I’m not implying I’m anything close to “like God” in terms of love, compassion, mercy, understanding, patience, the list could go on all day BUT! Can we all just try to be a little more empathetic to each other? Can we intentionally try to take up less space - not compromising safety and healthy boundaries - for someone else to coexist with us. For us to intentionally make space for others, even if it doesn’t look like a grand gesture, so that others feel welcomed, loved, and seen. Can we do it just because it’s the right thing to do? Can we do it without expecting anything in return or for someone to see us doing it? Can we do it without fear of having to talk to someone who doesn’t look like us, or do life like we do. Because, why is that so bad? If we all just did this some of the time to start with, would the world be a little more kind, a little less combative, and a little more easygoing? I would like to think so. I would like to think we would begin to realize everything is not about us. I would like to think we would start to see more of the ways in which we are similar instead of the ways in which we differ. And I would like to think we may find it within ourselves to see that small gestures and kind words go a lot farther than arguing your point to restore someone else’s faith, as well as your own.

I pray you find a way to scoot over a little this week. Even an inch. To take up a little less space. To love your neighbor through an act of kindness or service. To make room, and let someone else occupy space with you so that we may all see that we are worthy, we are all someone worth seeing, and we are all capable of kindness.