Jesus Wept

Jesus Wept                   8-4-2014

There have only been a few times that I’ve wept after a day at Manna House.  Most days I am far from weeping because the morning is filled with good people, our guests.  They come with such patience and joy and ready laughter that I typically leave with a feeling of blessing from them.

            But there are days at Manna House when the suffering surfaces with intensity and death comes to the door, and after such days, I have wept.   

            I wept after the day we served a man who came in a wheelchair seeking a shower.  His backside was so filthy that when we helped him remove his shirt and trousers so that he could take a shower, his skin came off.  Maggots dropped to the floor in a pool of blood and shit.  I wept for him and for the state of our humanity.  What kind of society are we in which people are so neglected they end up like he did?

            I wept when a guest arrived one morning battered and beaten with blood caked on his shirt.  He had been jumped by unknown assailants.  He came to us and said he knew we could take care of him.  We did our best, but sent him along to the Med afterwards.

            I wept after one morning when a guest went down with a seizure right after we had sung him happy birthday.  It wasn’t the awful singing that sent him down; it was his brain injury that results in seizures.  And when he had recovered from the seizure, he told me those seizures will eventually kill him.

            And I wept this Monday, from being overwhelmed with death and grief.  Not only had Semaj died this past weekend, but Radio too.  And then I started to talk with Kathleen, and Ashley, and June and it didn’t take too long to come up with a list of twenty-one names of guests who have died over the past year and half:  Semaj (James Gray), Radio (David Remus), Sarah Simmons, Tony Bone, Frank, Rick, Mark R., Aaron Levy, Daddio, Earl Baines, Michael Human, Leroy Scott, Roosevelt, Carol Pennington, Willie Moore, Charles/Dusty, Elania, Tommy, Nannette, Herman Trice, Karen.  We also lost Eddie Cantler this past January.  Eddie was a long time supporter of Manna House and the husband of Jenina, who is a faithful Thursday morning volunteer.

            Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt 5:4).  I find this a hard teaching, though I guess that’s true of most of what Jesus taught.  How are we who mourn blessed?  Maybe it is in weeping like Jesus did that he blesses us. He wept for his friend Lazarus who had died. He wept over Jerusalem for its violence and killing of the prophets.  And he wept in the Garden of Gethsemane as he faced his own death. 

And as we weep like Jesus did we might find the comfort of the Kingdom of God of which he spoke.  This is the Kingdom comfort of sharing with each other our vulnerability and our need for each other and for God.  This is the Kingdom comfort of not believing the hype, of not being seduced by a society that denies death even as it imposes death on so many.  And there is the Kingdom comfort of standing together in God’s love and God’s powerful affirmation that love is stronger than hate, and that life is stronger than death.

            There’s an old promise God has made and I’m going to rely upon that promise in the midst of weeping:  “See the home of God is among mortals.  God will dwell with them; they will be God’s people, and God will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).