Several times a week at the grocery store, I pass a fundraising table for a Christian camp or project I’ve never heard of. The sign invites passersby to “Help Change Lives”.
I always smile benevolently at the middle-aged man behind the table.
“Can you help us?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I reply.
“Okay. Have a blessed day.”
This happens often, though not so often that the guy recognizes me as the smiling old dude who never gives a cent.
But to be perfectly honest, the word “Christian” in the camp’s name raises questions. There’s no time to vet the place while buying bread and milk.
The man standing behind the collection box looks nice enough, and it may well be that the camp serves children of all ethnicities and social classes and encourages them to imitate Jesus’ example of loving and accepting everyone.
On the other hand, the place could be a project of the insanely homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, or a training ground for an evangelical agency that sends missionaries to Ireland to convert the Christians to Christianity.
So doubt paralyzes my impulse to grab my wallet.
Recently I joined Martha and Katie at our favorite restaurant. After we were seated, I excused myself and went to the bathroom to wash my hands.
Inside, I was startled to see a tall man bent over the sink. He was scrubbing his face with an excess of hand soap while crooning Fergie’s “Glamorous” in a fulsome, falsetto voice:
“If you ain’t got no money, take yo’ broke ass home/you say it
If you ain’t got no money, take yo’ broke ass home.”
I turned to leave the room but the man caught sight of me.
“Sir, excuse me,” he said. He gestured grandly toward the sink and stepped aside. “After you,” he said as soapy water drizzled into his beard.
“No,” I said, “Please finish up.”
The man pulled small scraps of paper towel out of a miserly dispenser and dabbed at his face.
“I got time,” he said. “Waiting don’t bother me. I been in prison three years. Just got out.”
I glanced at the bathroom door and stepped to the sink. I let a little water trickle in my hands and quickly shook it off.
“Are you heading home?” I asked.
“I am,” he said. “As soon as I can get the bus.”
“You must be a happy man.”\
“Thinking about getting out is all that kept me going.”
I usually don’t offer benedictions in public restrooms, but the guy seemed so joyful.
“God bless you,” I said. “I hope it all goes well from here on.”
“God bless your kind self,” he said.
He continued in the same genial vein.
“Spent all my money on the bus ticket,” he said. “Haven’t eaten today. Can you help me out?”
I tend to ignore requests like that when I don’t have time to think them over. My hesitation probably stems from conflicting genes I inherited from my paternal grandparents. During the Great Depression, Grandma was famous for doling out samples of her canned meat to starving hobos, while Grandpa was known to defend his larder with a .45 revolver.
I inherited more of Grandpa’s tightness than Grandma’s generosity, but Grandpa never negotiated with an ex-con in a restaurant bathroom.
“Don’t have a lot,” I mumbled, reaching for my wallet. I pulled out three crisp dollar bills and gave them to the man.
His eyes crinkled as he grinned.
“God bless you more,” he said, almost laughing. He clutched the money to his chest. “God bless you, man.”
I smiled and backed slowly out of the bathroom.
Martha and Katie were still waiting for our food when I took my seat. I glanced back at the bathroom and saw the man had also exited and was pressing the three dollar bills on the counter. The waiter nodded and brought him a basket of bread. The man stuffed a bread stick into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully as he packed the rest of the bread into his jacket pocket and walked out of the restaurant.
Soon our food was delivered. I leaned back in my chair and mused how I would tell this interesting story to Martha and Katie. I knew I had time to think about it because Martha was staring intently at her iPhone and Katie was absorbed by a large bowl of macaroni and cheese.
Suddenly I had an epiphany, or thought I did.
“I wonder,” I said, picking up my fork, “if I just talked with Jesus.”
Martha glanced at me quizzically.
The passage from Matthew was running through my head.
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:35-39)
Actually, I was fretting about the more negative passage:
“Just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” (Matthew 25:45)
Jesus, I said to myself. I should have sprung for more than three bucks.
I took some solace in the fact that the man seemed satisfied by my grudging largess.
And of course there’s always a chance the man was just who he said he was – not Jesus but a recently paroled convict looking for a meal as he waited for the bus home.
But it doesn’t make any difference because Jesus made it plain that we should treat convicts and strangers as if they were him.
That’s a helpful thing to keep in mind, not only because otherwise we’d treat convicts and many strangers with contempt, but also because it’s not always easy to recognize Jesus.
Immediately after his resurrection, Jesus’ closest friends failed to identify him. Mary Magdalene, the first to arrive at his empty tomb, didn’t realize Jesus was the man talking to her until he called her name.
In Luke 24, the resurrected Jesus joins two of his disciples on a walk to Emmaus, but Luke reports “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” (v.16). Mark reports, a bit mysteriously, that Jesus appeared to them “in another form” (Mark 16:12) which, as author Garry Wills writes in What Jesus Meant, is “hard to interpret.”
“Jesus appeared in numinous form (Wills writes) … his body was not the earthly body any more, but one both outside time and space and affecting time and space.”
From our 21st century vantage point, where digital media create incredible virtual realities on Hi-Def screens, the sensationalism of the resurrection begins to dim. Jesus’ strange post-death appearances, which galvanized his contemporaries into the fiery evangelical movement that transformed the world, no longer excites many modern minds. The figure in the Easter stories makes is too much like an exhilarating Elvis sighting or the unexpected reappearance of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
But how will we know him when we see him? Even his contemporaries didn’t know who he was when they encountered their resurrected leader on the road or in their homes. Two millennia later, in an age of secularism and doubt, how can we possibly recognize him?
Fortunately, Jesus made it easy for us. He is present, he declared, whenever we mingle with our fellow humans.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me some clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me … Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:35-36; 40b)
“The least of these” certainly include persons we meet in chance encounters:
The homeless mother and her children, holding out a cup as we pass her as in a grocery store parking lot;
The man pulling a flimsy blanket more tightly around him as he sleeps on a heating vent in the city;
The veteran who needs a few bucks and stands in the cold in the middle of a traffic line at a red light, hoping to attract some driver’s attention;
The thousands of LGBTQ teens and young adults who have been cast out of their homes and struggle day-to-day to survive;
The hundreds who live at the poverty line and below and seek to supplement their diets at church food pantries.
Help for all these folks is within our reach every day.
But nationally and world-wide, the problem extends beyond our reach.
According to the USDA, more than 34 million people, including 9 million children, in the United States, cannot be sure of a meal tonight.
After steadily declining for a decade, world hunger is on the rise, affecting nearly 10 percent of people globally. From 2019 to 2022, the number of undernourished people grew by as many as 150 million, a crisis driven largely by war, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earthquakes are estimated to have directly impacted 26 million people across Turkey and Syria. The focus has now shifted to providing essential support for survivors who have lost their homes, belongings, livelihoods and loved ones.
Millions of people have been uprooted from their homes in Ukraine and are need of humanitarian assistance, in what has become the largest and fastest displacement crisis in Europe since World War II. Of these, over 8 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees and millions more people displaced within Ukraine are also in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
And the beat goes on.
It’s easy to bow our heads in despair because we have no direct means of helping people in these dire situations.
But all is not lost because there are many relief organizations reaching to hungry, displaced, and suffering people in our country and around the world. Saint Paul’s supports the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran World Relief which reaches out to work hand in hand with vulnerable communities to feed them, house them, and help them rebuild after disaster strikes – and to help communities avoid or prepare for future disasters.
These relief efforts are supported by your contributions to this church, and you can also make direct contributions at lwf.org. Other relief organizations include Church World Service and the Red Cross.
No doubt many people perform such deeds of caring with no idea that they were ministering to Christ, writes Dr. Carla Works, professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington.
“Jesus says that whenever they gave food to the hungry, welcomed a stranger, clothed the naked, or visited the sick or imprisoned, they acted in kindness toward Jesus himself,” writes Dr. Works. “Jesus can identify with the least of these because he has walked in their shoes.
“On the other hand, those who have failed to see the needs of the disadvantaged have acted as though they have never seen Jesus. They have not followed in Christ’s footsteps. They have not continued to do the work that the Master has called them to do (24:45-51). They have not displayed who the real King is.”
But the bottom line, Jesus told us, is that he never left us. He is with us when we least suspect it.
Which brings me back to my earlier question: was the ex-con I encountered in the restroom of a local restaurant Jesus?
I have the answer to that on the highest authority.
Of course he was.
This is most certainly true.
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