On this Christmas day, something caused me to think about the
circumstances of the time when John the Baptist was in Herod’s prison (Mark 6:1-44). Swept by doubt, he sent his disciples to inquire if Jesus was truly
the Messiah (see my sermon 12/15/2013, Day 370). Jesus so affirmed this reality of his Messiahship and praised John the
Baptist as the one who prepared the way.
Jesus sent his disciples on their first mission, to go out with
only the clothes on their back and their sandals and proclaim the Good News.
Herod heard of this proclamation and imprisoned John the Baptist fearing he was
Jesus. John had been a gadfly to Herod criticizing him for marrying his
brother’s wife.
The disciples returned after their mission with good news of their
success but apparently, according to Mark, also informing Jesus that Herod had
John the Baptizer beheaded.
Jesus and the disciples commenced preaching and ministering to the
crowds incessantly. Finally, even Jesus remarked that they had to go away for a rest as
they did not even have leisure to eat. In grief over John and
exhaustion over their work they set sail across the Sea of Galilee to the
wilderness on the other side.
Yet the crowds followed on foot around the sea and were there
to greet Jesus upon his arrival. Surely you can imagine the clamor of the sick, the parents or other family carrying or helping sick children or relatives to find the healing
power of Jesus, the lame, the spiritually hungry, the blind and deaf, all the destitute people of
the countryside in search of this promise of God looking for faith as well as
When he arrived the Gospel says he looked out over the crowd
about 5,000 strong and was struck with extreme, heart-wrenching compassion. Perhaps he
felt the intensity of emotion we describe as the grief we feel upon seeing our
own child helpless and in dire straights pleading for aid. He said they seemed
like sheep without a shepherd.
God came to earth for this very reason: to give succor to God’s
children who are hungry and thirsty for living water and bread as the Gospel of John tells
us. Jesus the man understood and felt the grief of the crowd, something Jesus
the Creator already understood.
The disciples were concerned also, but only to a point. They told
Jesus to send them away because it was late and they need to find something to buy
to eat. Jesus replied, “You give them something to eat.” But, they could not
and Jesus ended up feeding the crowd of five thousand with five loaves of bread
and two fish.
Every Christian must find in the heart this heart-rending compassion
of Jesus for humanity. If you do not, you do not truly understand the nature of
our own predicament as lost people in search of grace.
I will tell you a certain recipe to find this compassion. Volunteer or begin full time work with the people Jesus described, the people
Jesus said he had come to minister in Luke 4: 4-21, the poor, hungry, blind and
captives. Do it ceaselessly and put it before all your other wants.
Today, Christmas Day, 2013, that compassion pierced my own heart and thoroughly as it did when I was working on recovery in Mississippi after Katrina.
I have been working with a fellow who has a long prison record. It is not a pretty record. It can be
explained or understood by poor legal advice in the judicial system that took
advantage of a naive and confused person, by bad choices, by not thinking but
acting out in emotion. We can blame it on living in a family that took care of
him when he grieved by supplying drugs and alcohol. He said to me at age 51
that he could not remember a day in his life from being a teenager on when he was not involved on one or the other.
Why it happened does matter to him, but not to us. He is the
one who must understand the choices he made, the ones to avoid and to make now, but he cannot do it
alone. He does not know how to do it alone.
He has been in our shelter for homeless men as we work with him to
focus on concrete personal objectives that make for a
Christian vocation. If he can do that, he has a path forward.
When I first met him he was a broken man, with a world view
consisting of nothing but despair.
He lost his only anchors, first his mother then his wife. Because
of his record, no matter how hard he tries, no one will hire him and no one
will rent to him. His parole officer gives him supportive tolerance that my friend earns but another parole officer tells
him that he is looking and will get my friend back in jail.
He lost his mother to a familiar illness and it almost destroyed
him. Thank goodness for his wife. He had known his wife since they were
children. They shared the same families and homes. He married her and she, as
he says, was his rock. He got a job and was putting her through school. He went to prison for a crazy circumstance. After he got out, she
became very ill due to a chronic disease. She had an adverse reaction to
medication at the hospital and died.
His entire stable world collapsed when he lost his mother and his wife. He is still struggling with the anger and grief over those losses. It went with him to prison where he suffered violence and brought
those losses plus that experience back home with him. It is like he has PTSD.
Over the last few months he has had the benefit
of some good medical treatment for his despair and has been on the longest
stretch of focused positive behavior. He is making positive steps towards regaining his place. We told him we are his brothers. We told
him we would stick with him and help him as long as he struggled to help
himself. We would be there if he stumbled and will help him stand up again if he desires it. We
told him he faced a choice, to identify and pursue the vocation God called him
for, or to walk away from it.
It is a choice we all face.
Then last Saturday as a result of some petty argument the day
before (that I call a “he said, she said” argument) he gets booted out on the
street from our shelter before I find out about it. With his history, everyone concluded he goes out. He has no place to go. The supervisor at
the organization that identifies persons for us says, “He’s got family all over
town he can stay with.” He does, it is true, but 99+% of them are drug dealers or addicts.
The only place he can stay is at a relative who has a new gang in the
neighborhood pushing against the existing one, and a family pushing drugs. That
makes for a dicey, if not insane situation.
This morning, a frosty Christmas Day when the rising temperature
was about 23F, I missed a call from the downtown homeless facility because I
had my cell on “buzz.” I find a message on
my phone. It is from him. “I need help, I have been staying on this friend’s
front porch in the cold. Mr. Henry I have to get out of here. These guys stay
up all night selling drugs and shooting guns. I can’t stay here because I can’t
stay around this stuff for long. And, if there is trouble and the police come
and find me in the same yard, I’m back in jail for sure.”
One of the things you learn in this job is that people often try
to scam you. You hear the same stories over and over. It is like they are
reading from some textbook on how to scam people. I hear stories of being out
of gas with family stranded in a car; Stories of broken serpentine belts and “I
only need $20 for the belt to fix it,” stories of having to get to the VA hospital
and needed a bus ticket.
It is really easy to develop a jaded attitude and assume everyone
is scamming you. It is really easy to do that. The tragedy is when the people
who are supposed to help them start thinking that way. Suddenly every one is judged
a scam artist. What is really hard is to help compassionately knowing it might
be a scam.
That is what has happened to my friend with the staff at the facility.
He has a history of of boozing, drugging and prison that spans almost 4o years.
Even the folks who “help” him have decided that his history is more important
than his actions in the present. But are we ever justified to be judges?
What would be our recourse if we said, “I repent,” and receive
God’s grace and like we always do, sin again? Would Jesus say, “Sorry, I gave
you a chance, now give it back, and it is off to perdition for you?”
You know the answer.
So, I drive down to the facility and we go by the pace he was staying and get his clothes. I take him to a local motel in town for the night until I can get him back in our shelter.
Now, while you are in your cozy, warm homes enjoying a nap after a big Christmas repast, I invite you to come down to a place where you will see real
grief, destitution, failures, lies, organ failure, lung cancer, cardiac problems
and no recourse. A place where despair is the rule of the day. There is one in almost
every community. If you cannot find one, you and some people in your
congregation start one. The people are there.
Go out and listen to the people everyone ignores, the people we
can look at and never see. Listen to them, explore their history and learn who
they are as a person. Within this poor morass of humanity you will find a few
people who thirst for that living water, who need a hand, hope. Desperate
people, lost sheep, who but for a twist of fate are you. You’ll find the people Jesus saw
when he got out of the boat next to the wilderness and understood their
despair. The sheep without a shepherd.
If you do that with the earnestness we Christians are supposed to
have, and truly approach the other with love, as a person who holds hopes and fears as real as
your own, you will never be the same. Your life will change for the better.
Driving back from my conversation with my friend today I was swept
by emotions. I was angry over how he is being treated, over what was done to
him in his past and done only a few days ago. Part of me wants to give up, it is so hard and so dehumanizing. I am angry that he is just another number in a
table that the facility can use to show how many people they have processed through their doors so their next grant
application is funded.
Then I was overwhelmed by grief over his situation. I
may be the only one who is giving him the chance to prove himself, standing
between him and a bottomless abyss. I may be them only person with some wherewithal who cares enough to help. My grief over his almost hopeless
situation, and the overwhelming sense of obligation to him brought me to the point of tears.
The saddest thing is that even if he is not playing me
(I do not think he is), the chances of him making it out of his dark world are
very, very slim. I owe him the chance to do it.
When you realize you may be the last person between life and
death for someone, that is when you realize your life will never be the
same. Money will never be the same, loyalties will never be the same. The
way you look at people will never be the same.
In my flawed and limited human way, I
think I have an infinitesimal glimmer of the compassion Jesus felt when he
looked over that crowd on the far shore of Galilee. I think I have an infinitesimal
glimmer of the compassion Jesus feels today for this crowd we call humanity.
Come on down and join me searching for your vocation. Your life
will never be the same. Perhaps neither will be someone else's.
Grace and Peace and Merry Christmas!
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