When Jesus goes by 'Butch'

I can't sleep.

My mind is slipping in and out and then drips right through my tired fingers and I'm not sure I can save it this time.

It's that sort of night, though. The kind where the rain on the window is telling a story you forgot you heard as a child. The kind of night that slows the clock- as real as when you're sitting in the dentist chair and that fifteen minutes may as well have been fifteen dreadful hours. That sort of magic happens on these nights. And it appears so commonplace. You should have noticed it there yesterday like the smudge on the bathroom mirror, right between the eyes.

Drops keep falling. Falling and falling and speaking a language of deeper truths. Truths about how things should be. How they were meant to be.

I saw him last Thursday, down by the lake shore. I was picking up my ruggedly handsome and sunburned husband and middle son and friends from their canoe adventure up the Mississippi River. They were back, survivors of the wild twisting and turning 67 miles by canoe. And it was Matt's birthday. The pies were waiting fresh on my kitchen counter.

He staggered a bit as he walked, head down and eyes quiet. 

All the littles were running around, joy-filled shrieks and windblown hair. There were seven of them altogether. Our two families tend to combine, and we relish those moments.

I saw him. And then I did it.

I whispered to my friend that he was walking toward us and we should really gather the kids. You know, someone was mugged down there just the other day. 

The words slipped out. Slipped just like my mind did tonight. 

I gathered the littles and still looked him in the eye and smiled as he passed. Said 'Hi there' and thought I meant it. 

We scurried along. We sang Happy Birthday. We ate pie. We listened to stories of fishing and storms on the river and campsites and wildlife from excited and tired little boys. 

: : :

The next morning I saw the headlines. A body had been found washed up on that same beach. A homeless man.

My gut knew before I even looked at the man's picture. It was the same eyes, the same long ragged hair. Except he had a name this time. On the streets and with his friends at the church where he often stayed and ate he was known as Butch.

: : :

I've been shouting from the rooftops for awhile now that Jesus is found in the outcast. I've studied this. I've thought and prayed and read and talked a lot about this. I've stepped outside an inner-circle church community to focus on living this. And now here I am, reading the news, seeing his face, learning his name, and all I hear is my judgment. Better safe than sorry, especially with kids. I can easily justify my concerns. And hey, I did smile and say hello. What more could I have done? I mean, really, what could I have done?

I'm naive. Admittedly. But slightly less than I used to be. I know it wasn't a moment where I could have prevented a tragedy. Maybe. Maybe the tragedy wasn't even that I judged someone I knew nothing about out of unfounded fear. Maybe the tragedy wasn't that it happened.

Maybe the real tragedy is that it happens.

We talk a lot about love. Especially loving the unlovely. And in a moment, old habits return and fear rules our hearts once again. We miss the miracle in the common or ugly or unknown. We miss Jesus.

I did. I missed him. And I mean it. I'm grieving a complete stranger, wishing I would have looked a little deeper in those eyes, asked him if he was enjoying the summer sunshine at least, connected. I missed something there and I feel it now, that loss, that groan for a life, for God to come fix all this mess and my fearful heart and turn it into something useable. Something closer to the way things were meant to be.

People are meant for knowing one another and for knowing their Maker. Sometimes you find that you meet Jesus in the grocery store line, on the street corner, or walking down the beach. Often he or she doesn't look a thing like the blond-haired blue-eyed painting we've bought and sold as gospel. We're meant to share life with one another, inter-connected instead of independent. Tearing down walls and labels and stereotypes and injustice and poverty one day at a time by inviting people over or in conversation instead of building fences and installing security systems and keeping our children safe from strangers.

We were meant for so much more than this. And I am sorry.

: : :

The rain is still falling, still saturating the earth, still scattering across the glass like ants whose hill was barbarically stepped on. It is this story of Life and the groaning and suffering and longing for our world to be made whole again, a return to Eden. I am pulled back to my childhood, back when I knew everything was alright in the world. When stories were true.

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.

Whenever you did one of these things to someone 

overlooked or ignored, that was me— you did it to me. - Jesus

: : :

I hear that Butch had many friends, that he was a kind and gentle man, that he had lived here for many years. He is loved and missed.

     ***Due to the response of this post, and after going to  Butch's memorial service, I wrote a follow-up post here:  http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/07/when-homeless-guy-gave-me-voice.html

The Theology of Soup

I am making soup tonight.

The process is an art form (channel your inner VanGogh with me for a minute). Saute onions and fresh-chopped garlic in rich, yellow butter...

At this point you can choose to just stop and eat, because this is perfection in a pan, right  here, people. My love affair with onions gets a little out of hand, I'll admit. I can't resist.

...otherwise, you can add some other veggies like carrots, mushrooms, peppers, cook and douse with seasonings. Add some homemade chicken stock you cooked the day before (this is a MUST for anyone who cares about flavor, health or their pocketbook- that covers everyone, right?) and simmer. Simmer. Simmer some more. Then you get to lean over the pot, breathe in the deep aromas, feel like you brought world peace and solved the earth's hunger problem all with a handful of vegetables.

There is an element of magic in making something out of nothing. Whatever unused produce is in the fridge. Left-over meat or rice. Turning it into a full and appetizing meal and filling my kids' bellies with nutrients. It's a primal ritual. Satisfying, not only to our stomachs, but right down deep to the soul.

Soup-making and people-feeding has become the core of my faith and every day life. I could recommend more than a handful of amazing books that have helped me put these ideas into words and works- books like Take This Bread by Sara Miles and Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist top the list. I'm apparently not alone in my sentiments. We have dubbed Thursday evenings 'Soup Night', when I make a big pot and welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a simple supper. It is good to practice what you preach. I'm taking baby steps in this department.

Tonight I plan on using up some potatoes and squash, a bunch of cilantro that has lingered a few days in the crisper. My goal is to let nothing go to waste! Why throw it away when you could turn it into a new meal? I aspire to be as passionate about resourcefulness and stewardship as I am about flavor and nutrition. I suppose that requires discipline and practice as well, like any good thing.

When Jesus fed the five thousand, he took the few loaves of bread and fish and distributed to everyone and they were satisfied. As if that weren't miracle enough, afterward he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”  So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the leftover bread.

God always uses the bits and pieces of us that we think are useless, that we would otherwise just throw out. But God is Master Artist and Chef- the Creator of all good things- and nothing, I mean NOTHING is wasted. Not even our flaws. Not even our garbage. Instead, God makes things new. Breathing life into dust. Speaking light into darkness. Beauty from ashes. You get the picture.

Make something simple and beautiful today, share it and be nourished.

* * * * *

God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. --C.S. Lewis

"Alright, then, I'll go to hell." - Huck Finn

I ran across a phenomenally written blog post today. I have to share it.

http://brianzahnd.com/2013/06/when-america-went-to-hell/

Provocative title, eh?

Well, it's got me thinking. About slavery then. About injustices now. About re-reading Huck Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin (bumping them up on the must-read-this-summer-list).

In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck had helped hide a slave, his friend, Jim. Huck knew from Sunday School, however, that hiding slaves is a sin and will send you straight to hell. So Huck writes a letter to Miss Watson telling her where she can find her slave, finally ready to save his soul. Huck doesn't want to go to hell. But he loves his friend even more. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” — and tore it up.

Huckleberry Finn. Giving us a lesson on loving your neighbor. 

"Neighbor" was a messy word back then- certainly it didn't mean slaves! Who are we quick to exclude now? I can think of more than a couple possibilities.

But back to the Civil War.

Zahnd explains the irony of the revivals that swept through churches before the war:

Millions had “accepted Jesus” and shouted hosanna, but they did not know the things that make for peace. They prayed a sinner’s prayer, “got right with God,” and kept their slaves. They had a faith that would justify the sinner while bringing no justice to the slave. They had faith that gave them a ticket to heaven…and a highway to hell.

Probably without even knowing what they were doing these Christians had quite effectively used Jesus and the Bible to validate their racist assumptions and protect their vested interests. They went to church on Sunday. They got saved. They loved Jesus. They waved their palms and shouted hosanna on Palm Sunday. But like the crowd in Jerusalem eighteen centuries earlier they didn’t know the things that make for peace. And Jesus wept over an America headed to hell. The churches were full and slavery continued…until the Civil War. Then 623,000 people died for the sins of America.

This is a heavy bit of history. Have we learned from it? In Luke, Jesus said, “How I wish that you of all people would understand the things that make for peace.”

The things that make for peace. 

Jesus.

How can we better love people? How can we be peacemakers in a war-hungry world?

Zahnd warns:

If we console ourselves with the promise of heaven in the afterlife while creating hell in this present life, we have embraced the tawdry religion of the crusader and forsaken the true faith of our Savior.

Are we more concerned about churches being full, or that 'slavery' has continued?

Dear God, let us learn from our mistakes.