Feeling a bit like Joan of Arcadia…
On the first night of “Jesus, Justice, and Poverty” while talking and praying with my dialogue group, I asked God for a very real image of Him, a concrete picture of Jesus in the context of urban poverty. To be honest, I was asking for a lot and not expecting very much. Coming in feeling already tired and broken, I wanted a hope that was big enough to hold the despair that I knew I would encounter in the Tenderloin and a picture of God’s kingdom that would not fall away in the face of such reality. Like a lot of us there, I wanted a reconciliation of suffering and scripture.
In my short time in the TL, I was blessed by many encounters with people I met on the streets, but one encounter in particular had a profound and resonating impact on my experience and my faith. During the Discovery Walk on Saturday, I sat down next to a man named David. David was very friendly – he wanted to know where I got my blue eyes, if I got my smile from my mom or from my dad – and just as I started wondering if and how I might be able to engage with David in a conversation about God and poverty, he turned and looked me in the eye and asked me if I knew about the Kingdom. I smiled. You know, God’s timing is perfect. “My name means ‘gift from God,’” he told me. He asked me if I believed in God’s kingdom. He told me, as long as the poor are with you, you have love. The Kingdom is for you as well as for me.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand a lot of what David said because, well I’m sure he was a little drunk. But I believe that what I was meant to hear, I heard. He said he could tell that I was looking for something, and he asked me what it was. I had to tell him. “I’m looking for Jesus here.” And here’s what he told me: You found him. You’re looking at him. God said that the poor would be first and that Jesus would return. You believe that?” I said I did. “You know, most people don’t see me,” he said. “They walk right past. And you’re looking at me.” “You said you’re looking for Jesus, well you’re looking at him.”
Granted, David was possibly drunk, as I said, and I couldn’t make out everything he said. And make what you will of his messianic claims. But none of that negates the message God spoke very clearly through him as he looked me directly in the eyes the entire time and started to cry. Maybe we’re uncertain about the character of David, but I believe he was dead-on about the character of Jesus. They say He was the visible image of an invisible God, but are we seeing Him? Like with David, are we walking right past? And as we’re looking for Him, are we looking in the right places?
When I asked God to show me a concrete image of Jesus, I didn’t think I’d actually encounter someone who claimed to embody Him. Sometimes in Christian culture we complain about a Eurocentric image of a blonde-haired blue-eyed plastic Jesus. Well, I now have a little more of a picture of suffering, vulnerability, and love that I can look to in my journey to know Him. And my challenge, then is to learn to love a Jesus that looks perhaps a little more like David, not the Jesus of Renaissance paintings, pop culture, or even Church windows, but a Jesus with dirty feet.
C.S. Lewis once said that Christianity is “a religion you couldn't have guessed." And that’s what keeps me believing. In a world that’s so broken in so many ways, I need something radical. I need something bigger than my own expectations. There are no easy answers. I don’t know what’s going to happen to David. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the systemic problem of homelessness or poverty of all kinds. But I do know this: if Jesus is anywhere, if a true and loving God is anywhere, He has to be here, on the streets and in the reality of a broken society and individual suffering. And as we step out in faith and in fear, He will meet us.