Hope.
Sometimes, I feel my biggest job out here is that of a cheerleader. I encourage, lift up and praise people who make baby steps toward recovering their lives. I listen and empathize with those who need a friend to talk to. I urge the church to move toward action and get off their pews and start loving people who have less than they do.
Some days, it is easy. The guy you give $10 and a ride to the DMV to get his photo ID and he gets a job the next day and a month later, you are eating food he cooked you in his new place. The gang banger who decides he wants to follow Jesus, not because of the persuasiveness of my argument (mainly because I did not have one), but because he noticed the people loving him all followed Jesus and he wanted to be able to love people too. The church that accepted me with open arms, listened to my story and asked ‘What can we do?” and then did it.
Some days, hope is hard.
Every Sunday, the street preachers show up. Last Sunday, some of my homeless friends and I are sitting in the audience, waiting for the preaching to stop so we could eat together. (They will only feed you after the preaching…not sure where in the Gospels that came from…”feed the hungry after you tell them they are going to hell”…anyway, I digress). One of my friends is a transsexual (born male, identifies as female) and she faithfully attends these street preachings because she feels very uncomfortable in traditional churches. She is there nearly every Sunday, and several times it has lead to she and I having deep discussions afterward.
This Sunday, her partner and her were there, in the front row, listening to such a sermon that can only be done in a vacant lot, complete with shouts, screams, bad praise music and at least one woman breaking into speaking in tongues. Honestly, it is NOT a very good representation of the church, sound doctrine or even good Pentecostal preaching. The lady with the microphone has a sudden word from the Lord, who tells her ‘There is a Devil in our midst”. Then she started pointing at my friend and said “Begone, Satan!” Over and over she said it causing my friend to, uhhm, revert to street manners and tell the ‘preacher’ lady which particular body part she was gonna kick if the lady did not shut up. This then further convinced the lady that she was correct, and she increased her volume. Begone, Satan! Begone, Satan!
In the interest of maintaining my witness as a pacifist, I got my friend out of there, asap. She came to the church for Hope, but got called Satan. Yes, you and I know that lady did not represent the true message of Jesus. How do you tell the audience that? How do you undo the damage that was done that day? How do you convince them that they are loved unconditionally? How do you give them hope?
Betrayal by girlfriends. People who hire them for day labor and then don’t pay them because they know they will not complain to the cops. Muslims who get thrown out of the (Christian) soup kitchen when they ask (politely, I was there) if they can wait until there is something to eat that does not contain pork. Church people who promise to do something, but don’t show up because of a football game. Spouses who ran off with other women and left them here with 3 kids and no money. ‘Friends’ who know they struggle with addiction, yet shoot up in front of them.
Yet, for the most part, they manage to hang on. So, I figure the least I can do is hang on with them. After all, when I had no reason to hope anymore, Jesus never gave up on me. Can he expect any less from us?
