https://jakeowensby.com/2017/12/28/love-without-exception/
Here is a portion of the "Love Without Exception" text:
Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana
God’s love
speaks each specific, unrepeatable person—and each hippo and salamander and
brook trout—into being. God calls you and me to recognize, to respect, and to
take joy in the unique beauty and goodness of each creature.
In other words,
God urges us to love what God loves. That’s part of what it means to be created
in the image of God. And if you’re anything like me, loving at this depth is
something you’re still learning to do.
For instance,
some years ago my friend Emile and I were driving back from a monthly clergy
lunch in Athens, Alabama, to our homes in Huntsville. Emile had retired years
earlier from Huntsville’s mother church and would hitch a ride with one priest
or another to wherever we had decided to get together. He seemed to know
everybody in northern Alabama, and my colleagues and I admired and adored him
as our wise and nurturing elder.
When I picked
Emile up at his house to head over to lunch, he had asked me if I minded making
a stop on the way back. He knew a beekeeper and wanted to pick up some honey.
On the return trip we pulled off the main road and wound a short way up a dirt
track until we arrived at a ramshackle trailer sitting alone on a scrubby,
red-clay lot.
The door of the
trailer opened and a tall, lanky man sprang down the steps and strode
energetically toward us. His long, wind-tossed hair brushed his shoulders. His
wiry beard reached to his chest. His broad smile revealed large gaps between
his few remaining teeth.
We shook hands
as Emile briefly introduced me to Jim. I smiled back thinking, “Wow! This is so
Emile! He befriends every sort and condition of person. This poor, uneducated
guy feels as comfortable with Emile as the bank presidents and lawyers and
doctors back in his old congregation do.”
Jim nodded at
me and quickly turned to Emile and said, “You know, I’ve been giving a lot of
thought to that conversation we had about the Oxford Movement and rereading
their tracts. They’ve revolutionized my doctrine of the Church, the Sacraments,
and the relationship between Church and State.”
Um. What?!?
I had seen only
a backwoods hick. But hicks don’t talk like this. Or read Pusey and Newman. Or
talk about sacramental theology.
We see most
people in passing. From habit or for convenience, sometimes from fear or
prejudice, we lump people into one group or another and then assume that we
know all we need to know about them. That’s a Jew or an Arab or a gay person or
a teenaged black male or a redneck.
The philosopher
Martin Buber said that when we size people up in this way we form an I-It
relationship with them. We radically depersonalize them. Condescension,
disrespect, and even hatred become much easier when “Jim” is just one of those
people. An It.
God doesn’t
sort people into groups like Muslim or red-blooded American. God recognizes
this person’s unmistakable scent, feels the unique rhythm of this person’s
pulse, hears the tones and cadences of this person’s voice.
God embraces
our radical particularity. No one can be exchanged for someone else. Martin
Buber calls this an I-Thou relationship. You can’t hate, objectify, exploit,
debase, or ignore the suffering of a Thou.
God does not
love humanity. “Humanity” is an abstraction. God loves Maria and Youssef,
Kalifa and Bubba. God loves the twinkle in those eyes, the rasp of that voice,
the shyness of that smile. No two laughs, no two souls, no two hearts, no two
life-stories are alike.
God loves real
flesh and blood people. Each and every one. And if we seek to love God, the
only way forward is to love real people. Without exception.
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