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At a storytelling event I recently attended in New York City, one of the speakers was beginning to drone on a bit. The format left room for ten people to share a personal story, which meant that each speaker would need to keep their offering to five minutes or less. But this man, an aging rock musician with a long white beard, meandered through that deadline with neither a substantive plot nor an end in sight. He was clearly oblivious to the fact that the audience was getting increasingly restless.
Interestingly, as the room looked to the organizers of the event to give him the hook, or to at least start some obvious playoff music, they continued to listen patiently and respectfully. From the very outset, they had made it clear that this was a time for people to tell their stories, whatever they might be, and right now this man had the microphone. Our job was to honor that, and to listen to his story.
Around minute seven or eight, seemingly out of nowhere, the storyteller began to get choked up. As a performer, he said he was used to being on stage to offer his music, but he was not at all used to being listened to simply for his words. The chance to share important moments in his life, good and bad, with people who were willing to listen was a precious gift that surprised him, overwhelmed him, and moved him to tears.
These are the kinds of moments that are missing in our lives today. We are all so impatient to move on to the next thing. We all have own story, our own narrative, and our own view of the world, and, regrettably, we are leaving very little if any room to try to hear the stories, narratives, and world views of others. Even more dangerous and toxic are the current efforts to silence, or even erase, stories that are not like our own.
Tomorrow we will observe the Juneteenth holiday, which tells a story from our nation’s past. It is a story about freedom and emancipation, but also about persistent prejudice and injustice. While it is not an easy or comfortable story to tell, it is one that all of us should create time and room to hear. The same is true for Paul’s teaching in Galatians that, in the freedom of Christ, “there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female.” This passage, which will form the center of our worship service on Sunday, has long been lifted up by people of faith in the LGBTQ community as an affirmation that their stories are just as legitimate and just as precious as anyone else’s.
All of this reminds us that it is wrong to silence another person’s story. It is wrong to dismiss, ignore, or try to erase another person’s story. The wide diversity of humanity is something that God intended and created. Every person is God’s person, which means that every story is, in some ways, God’s story. Our job is to honor that, and to listen to those stories with patience and respect.
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