Justice is never easy and it is always complicated. In the past few weeks around town I have encountered a homeless man who frankly scares me. Last Sunday Joan and I returned from a visit and when I saw him in the parking lot I drove past. I do not know what about him I find disturbing. His laugh is one part Will Smith and one part Hannibal Lector. His demeanor can change from confrontational to combative in a heartbeat. I later found out that he has been institutionalized. He is schizophrenic and my caution around him is well founded.
In another church I encountered Anne as one of the waves of homeless and dispossessed coming to the church for help. Anne probably had an IQ of 80. From a large family in rural West Virginia she was abused as a child by alcoholic parents. By the time I encountered her she had given up ten children to the state. All of them had different fathers. Anne slept in abandoned buildings. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement had gutted this manufacturing town of 40,000 manufacturing jobs, there were plenty of buildings to choose from. When she could not get food from a church, she ate from dumpsters.
I helped her with some Section 8 housing guiding her through some of the labyrinth of social service agency red tape. One time when I picked her up, she had been sleeping in an abandoned garage. She told me she woke up early that morning face to face with a snake. The garage where she was sleeping was condemned by the city and was in immediate danger of collapse. I figured the snake story was not that of a delusional homeless person.
Bit by bit Anne was incorporated into the life of this parish. She would show up on Saturdays and the altar guild would find things for her to help with. Her presence in the church and my connection with her was sometimes difficult for people. One person flew into a rage at me about the presence of this dirty person sitting in church on Sundays. I was asked why she couldn’t think well enough to get a job or at least get a shower.
As pastorally as I could muster, I let my angry parishioner know more about her life than her apparent lack of bathing. I ended by saying “If you spent restless nights sleeping in cold buildings with rats and snakes and if the last protein you had was part of a cheeseburger you found in a dumpster three days ago, you would have difficulty making rational decisions too.”
Many of us work for justice in our daily jobs and in our work at church. Almost all of us participate in doing injustice by virtue of our income level. I will not belabor the point here but like it or not, if you are middle class or above, then you benefit in many ways at the expense of the poor. At the same time the poor in our country are not clear cut victims either. Many are combative, aggressive or even criminal. As a priest I have been scammed and conned by more stories of woe than you can imagine.
Our situation differs from that of Amos in the 8th century BC. Unlike the merchants and leaders of ancient Israel, most of us do not intentionally try to cheat and steal from the poor. If anything we tend to be ignorant of the ways in which we benefit by unjust laws and social systems. At the same time when you really get to know the poor you will find that some (not all) of them will resort to anything to improve their condition. This can be drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal behavior or just plain orneriness.
Does our condition of ignorance of how our everyday lives often cause harm to the poor let us off the hook? Does the difficult behavior of some of the poor mean that they deserve to eat from dumpsters?
When we think about issues of social justice we often focus on the condition of other people. We are made in God’s image and God wants us to have Christ-like compassion for the poor. This means that the change God wants is first and foremost in OUR hearts.
How can we change in order to grow our compassion for the vulnerable? The number one way to do this is with mission projects. Whether we engage with a mission project three blocks from here or in another country, we will change. Based upon my experience taking a group of teenagers into desperately poor mountain village in Guatemala I know that when those of us with privileged lives develop relationships with those who are poor and when we get to know how they live, WE are changed forever.
We get involved doing mission work because we want to follow Jesus and become more like him. In addition we get involved in mission work because we recognize all the amazing gifts God has given us and we are grateful for what God has done in our lives. I pray that our pursuit of a comfortable life does not blind us to the needs of others.
Please, put your time and your wealth in prayer before God. Ask God to give you the heart of Christ and to guide your decisions about your time and the wealth you have been given.