c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) Noon came last Sunday, and I tried to find a radio station broadcasting the Indianapolis 500.

I wanted to hear the national anthem sung by 300,000, “Back Home Again in Indiana” and the command, “Gentlemen and lady, start your engines!” I wanted to hear the roar of 33 powerful engines, the chatter of trackside announcers, and the rush of open-wheeled race cars diving for the first turn at the green flag.

But I couldn’t find a radio station, not even on the Internet. The best I could do was a Web site that kept score on who was leading the race. I got the facts, but not the flavor.

I could have found a television somewhere, but I like radio sports. Radio is the perfect medium for the languorous summertime pace of a baseball game, for example.

Nothing equals being there on Race Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But radio comes close. The race itself is a blur. Many spectators listen to radios during the race to learn what is happening. One year, sitting at the finish line, I couldn’t even distinguish the cars speeding by at over 200 miles per hour.

Radio announcers explain the race, not only who is leading, but engine and chassis development, racing strategy, pit row maneuvers, and the drama of a restart after a yellow flag.

Announcers ring the track, each one charged with explaining activity within his view. The race takes on a oneness as the 2.5-mile oval becomes a single venue and the race a complex drama. As announcers chart a race’s ebbs and flows, the leader becomes more than one hero driving fast, more than a “Survivor” or “Idol” on wheels, as it were.

TV lionizes the winner, but radio populates the stage. As any driver knows, it is mechanics and pit crews who win the race. Radio presents the tense drama of the final laps, as every announcer watches for a craftily timed pit stop or a puff of smoke indicating a blown engine.

TV makes the race viewable by making it simple. Radio makes the race exciting by presenting its complexity and by assuming listeners are capable of comprehending the intricacies of modern race cars.

It’s like faith. It is possible to make faith simple by focusing on the winner and the lofty view from the Goodyear Blimp, as it were. But faith requires many voices, many vantage points, each one saying what it sees, so that a oneness emerges from the complexity at trackside, not from a single announcer or from a single camera mounted high in the sky.

As with listening to the 500, faith requires effort _ imagination, above all else. Faith requires seeing what isn’t immediately visible, imagining the drama, appreciating the teamwork.

TV is too literal. A television camera mounted inside a race car shows part of what a driver sees, but not nearly enough. The driver is looking in all directions, listening to radio instructions, watching gauges, feeling the track, sensing his engine. If the driver did only what the TV camera is able to do, he would crash.

I suppose that biblical literalism is the inevitable expression of a television age. It offers a relatively passive activity, grounded in the illusion that all reality can be seen through a single lens.

Jesus, it seems to me, was more like radio, a teller of word-stories who invited his listeners to imagine. His disciples were like the 500’s cadre of radio announcers, each one seeing a piece of the whole, each one aware of other announcers seeing differently, all of them honoring the complexity of a seemingly simple activity like driving a car through four turns.

From their coordinated efforts, a whole does emerge, but it comes from diversity and complexity, not from stacking 10 announcers at the finish line and seeing narrowly, and certainly not from trying to call the race from, say, Turn One, disparaging any other vantage points, and punishing those who insist on seeing the different realities racing by.

When Jesus prayed for his disciples’ protection, there were many dangers looming, from persecution to their own frailty. But no danger has proved greater than narrow vision.

DEA END EHRICH