A Privilege and A Duty

Growing up in the Northwest suburbs of Dallas, you see a homeless man walking through the green grass of the cul de sacs as often as you’re exposed to a brutal and blustery snow storm. The one exception is when advertisement companies pay the underprivileged to hang those annoying fliers on the front doors. I didn’t see them loitering outside the grocery store, they never panhandled the busy cobblestoned intersections, and I certainly didn’t fear being pestered by one on my way to school.

Going to church was a little different. It was located about fifteen miles south in a city that sold beer and had people on welfare. A gracious and compassionate minister had volunteered to pick me up every Sunday morning, and on our way out we traded views of golf courses and redbrick stores for used car lots and potholed roads. The location was not a bad one, but it certainly didn’t look like home.

I was a fledgling teenager when I started going to church there. I was born Roman Catholic, and the switch to the Protestant way of doing things was akin to learning how to play defensive end after being a center your whole life. Sure there are similarities like keeping a hand on the ground, but you’re on a completely different side of the ball. It took me a full two years to finally stop calling the worship service “mass.” That was bizarre to a bunch of Baptists.

I had on many occasions seen my grandfather, a devout Catholic, give money and food to the poor as I rode around Dallas with him. He is the youngest of eleven children, one of his brothers entered the priesthood and ultimately became a bishop and two of his sisters entered the convent as nuns. While my experiences as a Catholic never brought me before a sermon on tithing, Grandpa gave regularly to the church and regularly to the poor.

Once in a Sunday School class I asked about the tithe and its importance in Christian ministry. My teacher told me that giving to the church enabled us to pay the staff, upkeep the church, do missions, and feed the poor. I thought that was pretty special, so the next week I took my $75.00 check from working at Subway and gave the church $7.50. I really liked the idea of the tithe, I liked that it went to good things like feeding hungry people and giving the pastor a place to sleep. During this time, however, and through the next few years I picked up a subtle implication, culminating with a concept that I find troublesome. The same wonderful people who were putting their money in the bucket, and sadly many more who were not, shunned the idea of giving resources outside the perimeter of the church.

It would start with a drive by, a thoughtless glance in the direction of a beggar. Pity for sure, perhaps an acknowledgment or a smile, but reaching for the wallet to spare some change was uncommon and often even unacceptable. “They’ll probably just go buy some drugs with it,” the driver would say. “Anyone who wants to can get a job at McDonald’s” was another rationale for our negligence. This is America, work hard and play hard. The soil is fertile, just muster the strength and couple it with some elbow-grease, the rest will take care of itself.

I admit, I bought into it for a long time. I would chime in to the conversation lowering my voice as much as possible because it still squeaked of puberty, “there is a shelter where they can go right down the road if they want to.”

All of our policy and prescriptions aside, the beggars remained, usually reminding us via permanent marker on cardboard that God is love.

Now it is naive to think that our charity is as genuinely received as it is dispensed. Every urban intersection in these United States has inevitably been the venue for a moocher to flash his pity card. We have all invariably seen the vagabond who looks better dressed than some of our own family members, and seems fit to serve in any working environment. However, I look sadly upon the assumption that all those desirous of our loose change are exploiters, as many are caught in the purest medley of despair and embarrassment, hoping for anything to move their hearts.

Christ charges us that if we desire perfection we should sell everything we own and give it to the needy. As radical and daunting a task like this might be, it surely puts slipping a wad of George Washingtons into the dirty and calloused hands of the helpless in perspective. If you still have problem with loose currency exchange, I believe a cheeseburger, tater tots, and genuine conversation might look something like the compassion to which we are called.

Everyday we pay the dry cleaner to launder and starch our shirts so we don’t have to pull out the iron ourselves. I ask the butcher to neatly encapsulate 9 oz. of sirloin with shrink-wrap so I don’t have to go near the slaughter. My prayer is that I don’t look upon the tithe in the same way. I’m not called to give away a tenth so that others can take my place; attending to the misfortunate-washing their wounds, providing nourishment, and instilling hope while I watch from the luxury box.

In the end, I picture the sandals of Christ and the apostles as the most telling archetype to mimic and aspire. Gritty with sand, marred in mud, and flattened at the heel, indicative of miles walked of quiet love, power displayed in might. I imagine the crows feet on Jesus’ temples becoming ever-more permanent with each smile towards those who perhaps had never seen one. I envision Christ’s overwhelming commitment to the poor, not just random acts of kindness, but an integral part of his daily routine.

In the final analysis, it has always been an issue of stewardship. I quickly subdue an impulse of contribution because I convince myself that the potential recipient will squander whatever I handoff to them, as though I myself am the beacon of doing the right thing with money. There are, in my life, meals that should be eaten at home, trips that shouldn’t be taken, DVDs that need to stay on the shelves at Best Buy and off mine at home. I’ve been told to drive the richest streets of my town and know that at least one stately estate would be foreclosed on if its owner happened to miss just one bi-weekly paycheck. This is not an indictment on those who Christ has blessed, it is simply a reminder that we too may struggle with doing God’s work in our own finances in a place saturated in consumerism.

So too, have they, huddling under the bridge that we drive over on our way to work. Perhaps they’ve amassed a fortune and lost it in stupidity, or more likely, maybe they never had anything to begin with. Doesn’t matter. Two thousand years ago, today, and everyday, Christ says, “love them. “Feed them.” He doesn’t tell us to drive by. There is no clause in the Gospel that says outsourcing compassion to the shelters is an alternative to working the streets ourselves. In fact, a perusal of the Holy pages will illuminate the simple virtues of love and kindness, forgiveness and hope. This is His command, and this is our profound privilege and duty.