Adventures with Jesus in distressing disguise

Yesterday morning proved to be quite an adventure. I was heading to Farmington Hills for a Meeting at the district office. As I came to the one stop light in Sebewaing, I spotted a man holding a cardboard sign with a back pack and paper bag full of clothes on the icy ground next to him. This was, of course, Jesus, though he insisted on being called Kevin. He was a nice talkative fellow, with a closely trimmed beard, a knit hat and rosy sunglasses ready for a ski slope. His sign indicated that he needed a lift to Bay City. I could certainly take him there. He threw his things in the sliding van door and climbed in the passenger side.

He told me his Mom had committed suicide only half a year ago right in front of his eyes and he was still working that out, but his faith was getting him through. His faith helped him out on the road. He figured he'd make it to Bay City alright by the time his bus left. For my part I enjoyed the company (I always love hanging out with Jesus), and felt better about consuming the gassoline to get to bay city for two people rather than one.

When we got into town I took him to Brewtopia. His bus didn't leave until four, so he planed to meander around down town until then. He offered to buy me a drink. "Or," I said, "I could buy you a drink." After all how often do I get a chance to get Jesus a cup of coffee?

That done, we went back out to the van. He went to get his stuff out of the van, and I armed with a short quadshot americano was about to head on my way to my meeting when another man got my attention. Oddly enough this was Jesus too.

He had been talking to the other Jesus - Kevin asking him for some money to get a cup of coffee. Jesus-Kevin told him that he was Jesus too (that he was also in a position of need and that I had bought his cup.) So this new Jesus, his hood drawn tightly around his weathered face, saliva flecked on his lips and coating his teeth asked me for some change. He explained that he had only 29 cents and needed just a little more to get a cup of coffee. I reached in and turned the van back off. "Come on in with me and I'll buy you a cup," I said cheerfully.

"I am having such a fun morning," I told Aaron as he rang me up for Second Jesus' coffee.
"You're being altruistic today," he replied. "And you even get him the premium stuff!"
Of course! What else would I get for my friend Jesus. I love to share the best with my friends. It is a dream of mine, if I ever have the opportunity to find Jesus in the poor working the coffee harvests, to make them the best of the coffee they have produced. They should enjoy it, rather than the café con sangre they are allowed now. Jesus is worth the best!

Contemplating the poor.

Christ is in the poor. Even when we recognize that the poor are not in the least Christ-like He is there in their suffering. If God stands in profound solidarity with the poor as the scriptures affirm shouldn’t we as well?

“Solidarity is the social meaning of humility,” writes Dean Brackley. He applies the ancient rules of St. Ignatius to social justice today. “Just as humility leads individuals to all other virtues, humility as solidarity is the foundation of a just society.”

Henri Nouwen wrote of Christ’s “way of downward mobility.” To follow Him we must reject the council of yuppie culture to climb the ladder of success. The witness of Christ and the challenge offered by Nouwen and Brackley lead us to ask questions. “How much should we have? Better to reframe the question,” writes Brackley, “Do we feel at home among the poor? Do they feel comfortable in our homes? Or do our furnishings and possessions make them feel like unimportant people?” (100)

The solution to our global social crisis is not that the poor become rich, which is neither feasible nor desirable, but that the rich join with the poor. The only solution is communities of equals, resisting pyramids of inequity (see Luke 22:25-26). While some economic differences are legitimate, discrimination and misery are not. In communities of equals, personal talents, instead of advancing some at others’ expense, are stewarded for the benefit of all. Authority is a service for the common good (101).

In my graduate work I have been studying spiritual direction. The director meets with people desiring spiritual direction in an attitude of contemplation. He contemplates God and at the same time the directee, and the directee’s relationship with God. One book, The Practice of Spiritual Direction concludes with an observation of where direction and social action meet.

We need to know how God is experienced by the very poor and destitute. A few directors have begun to work with the destitute. The work is still in its very early stages, but where the director’s contemplative attitude is well developed, it seems promising (196).

I dream of one day studying as a cultural anthropologist the ways faith is formed and transmitted from one generation to the next across culture. I imagine joining with the poor working in the world’s coffee plantations and doing the work of contemplation with them, while also finding ways to get them living wages for their crops.

What is God dreaming for the poor? What is he dreaming for you and I to do with Him about poverty?

Finding Christ in the Poor

Christ of the Bread Line

9/11 reflection

These are times of global social crisis in which many people feel insecure and alone. Our reflections lead to the conclusion that we find security in community. if we seek first the Reign of God and its justice, ours security needs will be met (cf. Matt. 6:23). Both security and community arise from faith and from the praxis of solidarity that replaces unjust relations and institutions with just ones. To be genuine and avoid condescension, solidarity must be humility-in-practice. Like the gospel, Ignatius assigns humility a central role in our lives. For only in its soil can love take root, grow and bear fruit. To be authentic, however, humility must be solidarity.

-Dean Brackley, The Call to Discernment

Distressing Disguise

Several months ago I was wrestling with the idea that Jesus could be found in the hurting around me when I wrote:

I can’t understand the image of Christ as stranger. How could he come to those beloved disciples on the road to Emmaus unrecognized? How could he be naked, poor, imprisoned, and we not see him there? How could he, my dear heart, be the stinking, cursing, drunk and homeless? Could he be my neighbor John who riding is bicycle home from the bar, at two AM, went over the handlebars and broke his nose? Could it have been Jesus I drove home with tears in his eyes and pain in his body? It is hard for me to see Jesus there, not because I don’t think he would stoop so low, but because I love him and don’t want to see blood pour from his nose or tears from his eyes. What would it mean to see my Jesus in all those around me? Is he there in people I know, and who don’t even know him, or just in strangers? Does he visit in the familiar as well as the strange? Perhaps he does, perhaps his incarnation is both in us as his hands and feet and in the fleshly suffering of those around us. Perhaps his paschal mystery continues in all who are hurting, naked and abandoned, just as his advent happens in us as we engage them in service and hospitality.

Seeing our neighbors and strangers as Jesus can be difficult precisely because we cannot see Jesus as coming to us in the form of a sinner.

Now as I encounter Mother Teresa's conviction that we find Jesus in "Distressing disguise" around us, I rejoice in confirmation of the idea. It isn't some wild fantasy I was entertaining when I asked "could it be?" but rather a truth revealed to saints through the ages - a truth I have come to embrace and is shaping me.