Friday 30 April 2010

Reblogging an an old article by Sarah Lynne

I've found myself scrolling down the archives of Jesus Manifesto for just that article time and time again. Despite the material being nothing new, I find that that article has had more influence on me than anything I've read online in the last year or so. So for my benefit and yours I'm adding a little link in here:

http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2009/10/repent-for-the-kingdom-of-god-is-near/

Friday 9 April 2010

I'm always the parable's bad guy, part one.

A number of years ago, I was living in Lille. I may have blogged about it before, I can't remember, but it was one of the most challenging things that I have been part of.
I was living on the Parvis St Maurice, right next to a neo-gothic church in the centre of town. I was pretty pleased with myself for landing that great flat, which I was subletting for the summer from a couple of teachers. I thought they were nice to let me inhabit their things, and I liked the feel of their home. I was sharing the place with a delightful young woman who became a great friend, and whom I am still in touch with.
Outside the window was the St Maurice church, a fairly beautiful edifice, despite the fact that it is not really gothic at all. I loved the view from my window, although I was fairly disturbed by the stained glass windows depicting the crucifixion and never looked that way.
One evening, a homeless guy had settled under a door, about five metres from my door. I did not invite him in, but I felt horrible about it. What a universe-shattering failure.
I can't remember if we had any exchanges on that first night, but if we had it would have been along the lines of me enquiring whether he knew of the night shelters in the area, and him saying they would not let him in soiled clothes. I think I came back down with a list of the shelters and drawn maps about how to get there.
It was high summer and fairly warm, but I lay inside feeling completely horrible and not sleeping at all, sort of hoping it wouldn't rain. Mostly I racked my brains about what I could do, thinking my flatmate would kill me if I let him in, thinking I could not take responsibility for the future and that a punctual night inside my flat could be fairly destructive.
Morning came. The guy was still there. In worse shape than the evening before, his pants definitely soiled. I was working on a paper back then but I could not do any work. Mostly racking my brains further. I came back down, said hi, asked if he wanted some food, coffee, or water. He wanted none. He said "If I die here can I have candles in the Church, just for a while". I brought some food and drink down anyway in case he changed his mind.
All I could focus on now was the visible lice on his head. I felt downright Kafkaesque and wanted to drown myself in the river just to drown the reproaches in my head along with me. This is so wrong, this is so wrong, and this is happening literally ten fucking metres from the reserved sacrament.
Night came again. My flatmate and I were increasingly aware of the guy sleeping in his own excrements five metres from our doors and ten metres from Jesus. I was the one to obsess about it and drew her into my obsession. We racked our brains together this time. And then went to bed thinking conveniently that we had done what we could with all the addresses of shelters, the food and drink, that he did not want to be anywhere else.
The next morning the guy was still there. This is France we are talking about, for the record, and nobody else in the centre of Lille, either individual or institutional had done a thing. By now the guy was so badly off that some of his flesh was exposed and he was asleep, still under the same door and I remember thinking don't bother going to church ever again if you do not understand that this is the body of Christ or choose to ignore it. And good fucking luck explaining it to God if he dies five metres from your door.
I had a cup of some fancy French tea, and then decided that by the looks of it, the guy downstairs owned nothing in the world, or, at any rate, nothing he could access right now. So I went to the nearest shopping centre, wrote down a list of what I would like if I was sleeping on the street that night, and proceded to buy a whole kit.
From memory, this included a backpack, clean pants, clean t-shirts, socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, shaving foam, a comb, some styling gel, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a phonecard, a writing pad, a pen, a big bottle of water, a big bottle of juice, a huge loaf of fancy corn bread, some salami, some cheese, a knife and wooden board. I went for the best quality of stuff I could think of, something that would have him look great. None of it was cheap, I went for the most impressive items. I included a whole list of social services that I'd googled up, all accessible on foot from the city centre.
Then I wasn't too sure how to proceed. The guy hated my gut, ever the concerned girl. He had eaten the stuff I'd brought down before, but never when I was around, and I thought he was just going to chuck my stuff in the next bin as an act of defiance.
Another homeless guy that I was friends with happened to be there too. So I asked him for advice. Asked him if he knew about the totally dishevelled guy on the parvis. I told him I didn't know what to do. I told him I'd bought some stuff for him but feared I was going to get told off.
My friend had seen him too. We went to see him together. I said, Hey it's Christmas! I know you didn't ask for it, but I went to the shops and got you some stuff. All that's in there is for you, I even bought cigarettes. When he recognised the other guy along with me he said thank you. Him and the other guy then literally broke the loaf of bread and tucked into the food.
That night, the guy was not sleeping under the door five metres from my flat's and ten metres from the sacrament.
It is my flatmate that noticed as she cheerfully walked in. I said yeah, I'm freaking Jean Valjean, France needs to recover some of its pride.
I've no idea where he went as I left Lille soon afterwards. Fairly likely, he went with the other guy to the garage where the other guy was staying with his girlfriend and newborn baby. The social services would have freaked out because of the lice just like I had.
I know a lot of middle-class Christians would think that what I did was a beautiful act of charity. I'm still ashamed. It's not bad what I did. Lame as it is, it shines right up to the door of Heaven. But I let a baptised man sleep in his own excrements for two nights right next to my flat. I was horribly condescending and only managed to do something positive by teaming up with someone who genuinely had compassion, but not purchasing power. I wish I'd done something more. Maybe just dealt with the lice, that would have helped. I wish I'd done what it takes to bring this guy to wholeness.
And I still walk past quite a number of guys shivering in the cold rain at 1am while I'm on my way to my warm bed after a night at the pub. I'm always the bad guy in the Good Samaritan's parable. But as my experience shows, the good guys are out there too, and they're not who you think. But if you enter into that story just a little bit, you will see bread being broken, love being extended and a baby in a garage. The gospel etched into the life of Lille.