"They Took My Clothes and God Saw It"

“They took my clothes and God saw it!” 
“They took my clothes and God saw it!” was the anguished cry of a guest I’ll call “Charlie,” who came into the clothing room at Manna House this morning. Charlie had arrived in ill-fitting long underwear (no pants), shoes with no socks, a very light long sleeve shirt, no hat and no gloves. The temperature was 26 degrees. 
We had not seen Charlie at Manna House for the past several weeks.
He told us where he had been and what had happened. The police had picked him up and taken him to the Memphis Mental Health Institute (MMHI). From there, for the past few weeks he had been under the “care” of two more different organizations, both supposedly to help him with his mental illness. Yesterday it was determined that he was stable enough to be let go.
So, this morning he was discharged and put out onto the streets. But without the clothes Charlie had owned. He had protested but he was told they didn’t know or care what had happened to his “trash.” And this finally culminated in Charlie’s cry, “They took my clothes and God saw it!” He wanted them to know that if no one else saw what they had done, God at least had, and there would be an accounting.
Who else is there to bear witness against those who would cast a man out into the streets on a cold winter’s morning without proper dress? Who else would care? Charlie’s cry was one of frustration, desperation, and prophetic judgment. “They took my clothes and God saw it!”
Yesterday’s reading in the Christian lectionary (the list of Scriptures for each Sunday of the year) included words from another prophet, one named “Isaiah.” Isaiah took the Israelite nation to task for its religious hypocrisy. The Israelite nation had nice religious services, but it also had horrible injustice in which the poor were despised and exploited. Isaiah told them, “Look you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike one another with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high” (Is 58:4).
Isaiah spoke to the people of what God wants. “Is not this the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? It is not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isaiah 58:6-7)
The volunteers in the clothing room at Manna House made sure Charlie was given the clothes he needed to make it on the streets in this cold weather: socks, some long underwear that fit properly, pants, an undershirt, a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, a coat, a hat, and gloves. He was able to leave with clothes that fit and that would keep him warm.
But Charlie’s cry still echoes, “They took my clothes and God saw it.” We live in a time and place in which the poor are denigrated and denied their dignity as human beings. Witness the cutting of food stamps while the largest military budget in the world goes forward. Witness the Governor of Tennessee refusing federal dollars for healthcare for the poor because he wants to gain political points for opposing “Obamacare.” Witness, Charlie, stripped of his clothes and turned out into the cold. Witness the very few churches willing to open to their doors to welcome homeless people in for the night in the midst of freezing temperatures.
Isaiah was right and he remains right, “See the Lord’s hand is not too short to save, nor God’s ear too dull to hear. Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden God’s face from you so that God does not hear… We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us” (Isaiah 59:1-2, 11). “They took my clothes and God saw it!”