His name was Michael, that charismatic cook at a rescue mission. His theological language never matched my own, but I could never help but smile around him. He always had his volunteers sing at the end of our time together, re-writing songs most of them had never heard with Christian lyrics. I always giggled inwardly, wondering what these beloved but self-sheltering people would do if they knew how much profanity was in the original lyrics.
As we circled up at the close of the evening, he pulled a black, well-weathered Bible from somewhere and would hand it to one of us to look up a Bible verse or two. At least twice, he had us read the story of the rich young ruler. The adjectives are taken from a multiple Gospels, but the story is the basically the same. Someone comes to Jesus asking what he should do to enter the kingdom of heaven. When Jesus tells him, "Keep the commandments," he answers, "I've done this since my youth." Then, the more difficult response comes, "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor." In at least one Gospel account, the man goes away very sad, for he had great wealth.
Michael would always add, "This is not a commandment, but a prescription for this particular man's ailment." I don't know if that's actually what he believed or if it was his way of letting off the hook the people who came to his kitchen to volunteer. After all, most were overwhelmingly wealthy by the standards of the people who ate from his kitchen every day. Living comfortably in the US, by global standards, means everyone there was rich.
For what it's worth, I'm pretty the real answer was somewhere in between. The man standing there with us knew better than most do about how difficult it is to bridge the world between people who are firmly middle class--able to pay all their bills and have some disposable income--and the people who are the poorest around. He was the one gently telling our teenage girls to not walk between the tables. He was the one who had called the police more times than he could count. He was the one who had spent many years hearing the same stories of addiction and illness coming out of so many mouths.
I'm more sympathetic that that rich young ruler than I would have been a few years ago. Yes, he probably was too attached to his wealth. But as someone who has now regularly turned away the poor for a few years, I don't think he was a bad guy so much as he knew the difficulty of loving the poor, which yes, includes giving them your money.
Last week, a man I recognized came to the church mid-week. I was in a part of the building where he saw me, and I sent him to the secretary. I knew his story, or at least the one he would offer. He lives in his car and needs some help with a hotel. I first heard this story over a year ago, the first time I told him we had no funds for that sort of thing. Back then we had a conversation about where he could go for help, where he could find a program that would help him get a home and not have to live in his car. He wasn't interested in it. He was just fine where he was, if I could just put him up in a hotel for the night. The secretary had run into him at one of the other churches where she works as well. He offered the same story there.
Two weeks ago, a woman came asking for help with money to get her into Section 8 housing. I found a couple holes in her story pretty quickly. I know she lied to me about at least one thing. She used every guilt-tactic possible to get me to give her something else. While we were talking, one of her kids jumped the fence into the church courtyard where the playground is. The others let themselves into the building and found their way through the classrooms out to the courtyard, too.
Ask your pastor, or your church secretary, or anyone who regularly works with the poor. All of them will have stories of being yelled at, of vandalism, of scam artists, of calling police. All of them will have stories about how very, very difficult it is to love the poor.
Back to Michael's interpretation of the rich young ruler. Actually, I don't think Jesus' words were a specific prescription to that one person in that one place. I think they were words for us all. "Sell everything you have and give the money to the poor." I also know they're crazy hard words to hear, much less live. I think that's why we've had to read and hear them over and over and over again for a couple millennia. Let's start with confessing what we often refuse to admit: loving the poor is hard. Jesus reminds us we have to do it any way.
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