Happy Birthday as Lament

Happy Birthday as Lament

Today was a guest’s birthday. As is our tradition at Manna House, we sang “Happy Birthday” very loudly and as off key as possible. Another guest had tipped us off to this guest’s birthday. The tipster knew that this rather curmudgeonly guest would be both delighted and consternated by the attention. And he was. He could not help himself. By the end of the song he was smiling.

            Shortly after the song, I was standing in the backyard near where both of these guests were seated, and the tipster asked for “the Word of the day.”

            Since we had just sung “Happy Birthday,” I selected Luke 2:8-14, “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!’”

            “I’m no Jesus,” the curmudgeonly guest observed at the end of the reading. “No angels announced my birth.”

            “I bet your parents were happy though,” responded another sitting nearby. “You weren’t so crabby right from the start.”

            “Maybe so,” the curmudgeon reluctantly conceded, “Maybe so.”

            “Even Jesus’ birth was terrifying, at least at first” another added. “Those angels had to calm everyone down.”

            “He sure came with a lot of hope,” said another, “And that’s what I’m taking from this Word today.”

            I often wonder about the way in which each of our guests entered the world. Were they welcomed with love and celebration, or was there rejection and despair? Were they born into poverty or somewhat better circumstances? Did they grow up with hope and promise? Or did they grow up with shattered dreams? Over the years I have gleaned from guests that most started in poverty. Many were raised in surroundings that offered little support, and many experienced neglect and abuse. For most, any joy there might have been at their birth quickly gave way to harsh impoverishment.

            I learned today the story of a young guest. He was given crack when he was just a child of eight by his mother’s “clients” as she prostituted herself to feed her own crack addiction. His upbringing was more “slaughter of the innocents” (Matthew 2:16-18) than the initial joy of Jesus’ birth. What hope can he ever have? He has been on the streets since he was a teen. He is a difficult person to be around, and we struggle to offer him welcome.

            Later in the morning, Kirk pointed me to an article by Soong-Chan Rah in Sojourners on lamentation. “Lament is not the passive acceptance of tragedy. Lament is not weakly assenting to the status quo. Lament is not simply the expression of sorrow in order to assuage feelings of guilt and the burden of responsibility.” Lament involves listening, sitting with the reality of suffering, refusing easy answers, but also not giving in to injustice. Lament resists by its very cry of complaint. - See more at: https://sojo.net/magazine/septemberoctober-2015/no-easy-road-freedom#sthash.NqQV7NJI.dpuf

            In the Gospels, from the birth story of Jesus to the slaughter of the innocents, “Happy Birthday” becomes lamentation. Angelic song gives way to “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children.” In the backyard at Manna House both joy and lamentation are present. And maybe our off-key and loud singing bring together the angels and Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled.

Seeing the Light

Seeing the Light

When I was in fourth grade I got my first pair of glasses. They were black plastic frames and clunky. I endured teasing from classmates who called me “Four Eyes.” And of course I broke them. Duct tape held them together at the bridge and the temples. In junior high I got a pair of glasses that were made of some indestructible plastic and were perhaps the most hideous glasses ever made. I still have that frame. It never broke despite my best efforts.

I should have been more grateful to even have glasses. Without glasses I certainly could not see very well. In fact, the world was a blur without them. I wondered sometimes what it must have been like for people with bad eyesight who had lived in a time without eyeglasses. I was always fascinated by the stories in the Gospel when Jesus would heal a blind person. Seems like a mighty fine thing for Jesus to do given how difficult it is to go through life with impaired vision if you’ve don’t have glasses.

A few weeks ago at Manna House an organization called VSP offered a mobile eye clinic for our guests. A local eye doctor (Dr. Schaeffer) partnered with VSP to do eye exams. For some of the guests, they got glasses that very day. Many others, however, had to wait for their glasses since their prescriptions were more complicated, typically bifocals or trifocals.

Today I had the honor of handing out glasses that have now arrived. Fourteen guests got glasses and there are more on the way. Guests carefully took their new glasses out of the cases and tried them on. I asked them if I could take their pictures as they put on their glasses (see the post earlier today on Manna House Memphis). Most were excited to get their pictures taken so that they could immediately see how they looked in their new glasses. All were quite happy with their new glasses.

“So that’s what you look like!” one guest said to me as he laughed, “You’re uglier than I thought.”

            “I can read the newspaper and books again,” said another guest, “and I can see far away.”

            “O man, the world’s back in focus! No more headaches!” a guests said with a smile.

            “This is my first pair of glasses in four years,” a guest said, “I never thought I’d get to see clearly.”

            The King James Version of the Bible says in Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Of course this vision is not the literal ability to see, but rather the ability to receive God’s Word. Still the metaphor works because of the importance of literally seeing. Vision is so crucial for living. In the Gospel stories of Jesus’ healing of the blind, those who could not see supported themselves by panhandling near the Temple (John 9) or along the side of the road (Luke 18:25). Blindness was often viewed as a punishment from God; a view Jesus firmly rejected (John 9:3).

            The glasses today, like Jesus’ healing of those who were visually impaired, are signs of God’s graciousness. The world became slightly more lovely in those delightful moments as guests put on their new glasses. Joy broke through as they came to see with renewed clarity.

                Jesus when he healed a man born blind spoke of how he came to be the light of the world (John 9:5). Hank Williams drew on that Gospel image as he sang,

“Just like a blind man I wandered along,
Worries and fears I claimed for my own.
Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight,
Praise the Lord I saw the light.

I saw the light, I saw the light,
No more darkness, no more night.
Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight,
Praise the Lord I saw the light.”

This morning we all got to see a bit of that light.

Hospital Visitation

Hospital Visitation

Kathleen and I went up to visit Freddie this past weekend. He has been at the Med for several weeks now. He remains in intensive care. We’ve been asking and continue to ask for prayers for him as he struggles to recover from a very serious spinal injury sustained in a fall.

When Manna House started, I never imagined that I would be doing hospital visits like the pastor of a small church. But over the nearly ten years we have been open, hospital visits have become an all too regular feature of our work of hospitality. Some guests fall ill, seriously ill, as poverty grinds them down. Some get hit by cars as they negotiate the city streets. Some are done in by violence, swift and brutal. Some, like Freddie, have a horrible accident. Whatever the reason, word comes to Manna House via the news of the streets that a guest is in the hospital and off we go to visit.

I’m grateful that in Kathleen I have a good partner in making these visits. They would be too difficult for me to do alone. The difficulty includes the physical exertions of finding parking and getting up to a room, but more there is the spiritual challenge of being with those who are suffering.

Jesus taught that when we visit the sick we visit him, just as when we offer hospitality to the stranger we are welcoming him (Matthew 25:31-46). But how do we see Jesus in a guest who is terribly broken and barely alive in a hospital bed? How is Christ present in those we visit in the hospital?

When I read Monday morning from Edith Stein (whose feast day it was) I saw another identification between Jesus and the guests we visit in the hospital. “Do you want to be totally united to the Crucified? If you are serious about this, you will be present, by the power of his Cross, at every front, at every place of sorrow, bringing to those who suffer, healing and salvation.”

When I stand next to the hospital bed of a person I love, and I know that person is there because of a life of poverty and suffering, I readily recognize I am at the foot of the Cross of Christ. At this place of sorrow, I pray for healing and salvation for the person who I have come to visit. I certainly cannot bring either healing or salvation. But I deeply hope for both.

To have that hope does not take away my sense of emptiness and helplessness, rather it affirms that it is that very emptiness and helplessness which makes room for God. There is nothing that I can offer except my prayers and my presence. I simply stand at the bedside asking for God’s blessing upon the person who is broken and ill.

Visiting accepts that there are no easy answers in the face of the Cross; just as there are no easy answers in the face of human suffering and death, especially when those are caused by human injustice. There is only the hard response of reaching out with compassion, of standing with those who suffer. To visit is thus a moment of great grace, but not the cheap grace of easy answers. Rather it is, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it, the costly grace shared with us by Christ in the cross.