When you care for the least of these…
Three times this week, I’ve seen him. The first time, he was sitting in the middle of the square, just about 100ft from my front door. He is usually sitting on a little hand-made cart that helps him get around since both of his legs are missing from mid-thigh down, but the cart was nowhere to be seen. He was beating on an old guitar, yelling out some sort of song. There were several teenage boys, acting out the results of an afternoon spent in the local pivaren (pub), standing around him and teasing him. The man would periodically trade his guitar for a large stick that he would wave at the boys’ feet to keep them from kicking him too hard. The boys were laughing loudly, drowning out the man’s infandous song …
The second time I saw him, he was rolling on his cart up the sidewalk near my friends house. We were on our way somewhere, in a hurry… I felt sick to my stomach as I went past him and continued on my way.
The third time was just yesterday. I was on my way to church for Easter service, and he was again without his cart. This time, he was walking on his stubs up the middle of the road.
As we sang worship songs, the words from Isaiah 53 were displayed on a screen…”he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not”. Was I rejecting Jesus by walking past that man? Was I hiding my face from Jesus when I looked away from the painful reality of that man’s life? Later, the sermon message was about being the salt of the earth and that salt which has lost its saltiness should be thrown out. We talked about what it means to be salt…salt is something that preserves, brings healing, adds flavor, and is greatly missed when it is absent. We asked ourselves what this means for the church.
This whole week, I’ve been very busy. I’ve been planning our summer camp program and how we are going to strategically impact several cities with the gospel of Christ. I’ve been having conversations about the relevancy of church and how to structure our new leadership team in such a way that it follows scripture and also changes with the needs of our post-modern culture. I’ve been writing emails and meeting with students and teaching English. I’ve been laughing with friends, eating good meals, and gathering for fun things like watching an American TV program on someone’s computer. And while I’ve been doing these things, there is a man in this city who is dragging himself around town on a homemade cart, sleeping who knows where, and eating who knows what.
Am I being salt? Am I preserving what is precious and holy? Am I bringing healing? Am I adding flavor? And what does it mean that I walked past that man on my way to church where I sat and talked about these things? What do we do about the discrepancy between church culture and the call for disciples to be radically commited to sacrifice and service? Jesus said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Mathew 25:40). What do we do with this??? How can I live a life that is authentically about loving God and serving Him and not just giving lip service to a cool concept?
I don’t know what it is that I’m supposed to do the next time I see that man, but I know I can’t walk past him again without asking God and listening carefully. I am writing about this because I want to live authentically. I confess I’m afraid of this man. I’m afraid I don’t have anything to offer him that will help him. I’m afraid his needs are greater than my resources. It’s so much easier to stay in church services and Christian leadership meetings than it is to walk the streets and look people in the eyes and seriously consider the weight of their needs and burdens.
One of my favorite speakers and writers, Richard Rohr, wrote in The Great Themes of Scripture, “Humans do not want a God of love because love always makes demands. That is the very nature of love and humanity doesn’t want it. We seek to hide from it and destroy it. So people sought to destroy Jesus…they did not want relationship; they wanted religion. Should that seem so unreal to us? It is the same for us today. It is the same for the Church for the last 2000 years. Humans do not want love relationships; we want religion and all its trappings because that is much more comfortable. A love relationship continues to challenge and make demands. It also offers a joy that we cannot tolerate: too near, too lavish, too spacious. What might we do with such freedom? It’s easier just to go to church.”
I want to live in the midst of the great challenge and the extravagant love of relationship. If you are someone who prays for me, please pray that I learn more about this and that I have the courage to stop listening to the loud cries of religion and instead start listening more carefully to the whispers of relationship.
