It’s fairly common that about the time I’m starting to think I’m something, the world, my faith, or my children conspire to make sure I know how unimportant I truly am in the cosmic scheme of things. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been traveling the country speaking and teaching, copy-editing manuscripts of books about to be published, and conspiring with publicists on how those books are going to launch me into bookstores and across the airwaves.
It would be heady stuff–and is, I think, for many people. But I’m reminded over and over again, as I said, how all of that is simply in service of what really matters–
And folks, be assured I know, it ain’t me.
My son Chandler has a phrase he likes to insert into prayers, a request that God bless “those who have none.” I know it’s not grammatical. But it also expresses a child’s understanding of what Jesus, in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew called “the least of these.” There are a lot of people in the world who have real needs, a lot of people who suffer, a lot of people to whom we are called to offer a cool glass of water or a helping hand.
And none of this has anything to do with any kind of earthly success, as the world understands it, if everything to do with the life of faith.
The night before I set off on my recent swing across the American South, my girlfriend Martha and I were coming up the stairs to my apartment at the Seminary of the Southwest, and there, waiting on my front porch, was Jimmy. Jimmy is my adopted one of “those,” a man with some serious problems, not the least of which are financial. (I might say, more accurately, that I am Jimmy’s adopted one, for I don’t know where he lives, exactly, or how, exactly, and if he were to drop off the face of my earth, I would be sorry but likewise clueless).
Jimmy is not like some of the homeless or needy I encounter–he has a sense of good manners, and of the importance of privacy, and he prides himself on not asking me for help often. (This is also a good thing pragmatically, since I don’t have the resources to help him often.) He is well-mannered and good-natured, if sad–his demeanor is something like a dog who’s been abused, and he’s constantly fearful that something he says or does might offend.
Our meetings, like the one the other night, typically begin in this way: Jimmy will greet me, warmly, and shake my hand, and make some comments about my appearance or how long it’s been since we met, or ask about my recent travels. And then, eventually, he’ll get to the purpose for his visit: “I know you don’t have to help me, I’m not looking to you to solve my problems, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Jimmy’s needs are simple. Sometimes it’s money for the meds that keep him stable and mostly functional; sometimes it’s food, or some money for food. On this particular evening, he needed money for a haircut. A Texaco station in South Austin had given him some kind of a job cleaning up and taking out trash (he proudly showed me his new Texaco shirt), but had asked him to trim his unruly locks.
So these visits always proceed in this way: I listen to Jimmy’s wish list, and listen to him talk about all the people he’s gone to looking for help, and listen to him talk about his faith, and I help him if I can, in whatever way I can.
Then, at the end of our time together, I pray for him, a practice we fell into years ago. Sometimes I’ve had nothing more to offer him than my prayers, and he has always seemed grateful to depart with some sort of blessing.
I disabused Jimmy some time ago of his notion that I am a pastor (”I’m a teacher,” I have told him, repeatedly, although he still catches himself sometimes thinking of me as a man of the cloth). I want him to understand that I don’t represent God officially; I am not helping him because I have to. I help him because I believe God loves him, and because we are supposed to help each other.
And in none of this do I think of myself as heroic, or even good, because I am not; I sometimes think of Jimmy with as much annoyance as agape.But the truth is, when I read Jesus calling us to help the least of these–those who have little, or none–I find little or no wiggle room. As Scot McKnight says in his new book on reading the Bible, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible,
If you are doing good works, you are reading the Bible aright. If you are not doing good works you are not reading the Bible aright.
So, in this last visit, I gave Jimmy some money toward his haircut, and managed to get him focused on the idea that I was getting ready to go in and pack for my trip, and, as always, I told him I wanted to pray with him.He took my hand across my patio table, and then just as I was about to start praying, he spoke.
Although Jimmy had prayed quietly before as I prayed for him, he had never prayed out loud, and certainly never taken the initiative like this: Jimmy thanked God for watching over him and for giving him a job. He asked God to protect me as I traveled, to bless me for the things I had done for him, and to help me do the work I was called to do.
I am familiar with all the arguments that we shouldn’t help the homeless financially, that they’re all drunks or addicts, and I have seen my own hard-earned money poured down some homeless guy’s throat more than once.
But I have also seen the gifts that I made, sometimes suspiciously, sometimes grudgingly, turn into blessings.
I have been copy-editing my book on U2 this week, and that makes me suspect that Bono would tell you that his fame and fortune allow him to do the things that truly matter–and that those things are not all about castles in France and vacations in Tahiti. Likewise, my resources, earned from teaching and writing and speaking, while they don’t amount to a fraction of U2’s money, strike me as wasted if they’re spent merely on and for myself.
I sat down with Jimmy expecting to be the one giving; I got up, having been the one who received a blessing.
As my dear friend the Rev. Bill Adams would say, Isn’t that just like God?
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