I Thirst

As I arrived at Manna House a guest said, “Could you get me some water? I’m really thirsty.” He along with a few others were waiting for me to open the gate to the front yard. They are the early arrivers, hoping to get on the shower list.  

The heat and humidity have been unrelenting the past few weeks. Guests arrive exhausted, drenched in sweat, thirsty. The numbers of guests who come early is increasing.

 

Though it’s well over an hour before the morning hospitality will begin, I go into the house and get a pitcher of cold water and some cups. When I return to the porch everyone is delighted to get a drink. Several ask for and receive refills. It only takes a few minutes, but the relief on the faces of the guests is obvious. A drink of cold water will make their wait a bit more tolerable.

 

Once Manna House is open, we have a water cooler in the backyard. It empties quickly as thirsty guests drink cup after cup of water. We will refill this five-gallon cooler three or four times before the morning is over. 

 

Water. The Bible is filled with references to water. For the biblical writers living in semi-arid lands, water is precious. Water for them, as for us, is life. 

 

In Psalm 23, the Bible speaks of water as signifying God’s presence. 

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

    He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

    he refreshes my soul.

 

The Bible sees the provision of water as a provision made by God. When Hagar and Ishmael are near death in the desert, God provides water (Genesis 21:8-21). In the Exodus story as the people of Israel move through the desert, they thirst, and God provides water (Exodus 17). Isaiah the prophet often uses water to symbolize the care God has for God’s people, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants” (Isaiah 44:3, see also 49:10, 58:11). In the prophet Amos, water symbolizes the full coming of God’s justice, “Instead, let justice flow like a stream, and righteousness like a river that never goes dry” (Amos 5:4).

 

When Jesus on the cross says, “I thirst,” the violence of his execution is intensified by his need for life giving water (John 19:28). Those who stood by and mocked him did not bring him water to drink. They give him vinegar. Earlier in his life Jesus taught, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me,” and he identified with those who need water, “I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink” (Matthew 25:31-46). 

 

Our guests thirst because water is hard to come by on the streets. Like Jesus’ executioners mocking him as he thirsts, businesses respond to those crucified on the streets by posting, “Restrooms for customers only.” Water in our society is a commodity reserved for those who can pay. As a city we have very few public water fountains, and they typically do not work. Memphis, like most major cities, is not hospitable to people on the streets. 

 

In the Book of Revelation, a vision is shared in which water fulfills God’s healing of the whole creation. Water is redemptive. 

 

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1-2).

 

In contrast to this joyous vision of life-giving water, there is the angry and hateful rhetoric of today’s rulers who reject the joy of God’s reign. Their politics of scarcity and fear cannot imagine a world in which we share basic goods like water. Instead, for them everything has a price. The cash nexus determines all human relationships. 

 

After I had served water to the guests on the front porch, I went back into the house to set up for the morning’s hospitality. I was thankful. The thirsty guests had invited me into the joy of God’s reign. As I shared cold water with them on a hot morning, I sensed the loving, liberating, and life-giving presence of God. God had brought me to the water.

Start Small, Stay Small

Therese of Lisieux and Dorothy Day emphasized “the little way” or what Shannon K. Evans terms “the worthiness of the small.” The little way endorses being modest and not running after grandeur and the grandiose. About twenty years ago, those of us gathering to discuss a vision for hospitality for Manna House sought to be faithful to the little way. We committed to starting small and staying small. Hospitality, we believed, required welcoming our guests as individual persons with names, stories, dignity. We did not set as goals “ending homelessness”, or “saving” people.” Rather, we sought to offer hospitality, to meet a few modest needs in a little way that would respect our guests as human beings made in the image of God.

    I have found over the years that I sometimes fall into three temptations to abandon hospitality animated by this little way. 

In the first temptation, I seek control over those we welcome. This is evident whenever I focus on being more efficient. In offering showers, I try to do more and more showers in less and less time. In offering “socks and hygiene” I just hand over what we have instead of taking the time have each guest say what they want. When I seek control, I forget that “efficiency is the work of the devil.” Instead, I fall into the oxymoron of “efficient hospitality.” When I seek to be in control, I offer hospitality according to my convenience and desires. I rush guests rather than respect them as persons.

            In the second temptation I engage in the opposite of control. I practice a grandiose generosity in which “anything goes.” I violate boundaries. I give without concern for consistency. If a guest asks for it, I give it. Like control, anything goes is more about my desires than hospitality. I desire to be lauded as generous, as kind-hearted. Anything goes feeds my desire to be a savior who can do everything for everyone.

            The third temptation is also grounded in my expansive ego and reflects the oxymoron of “successful hospitality.” In this temptation, the hope I have for every guest, that they will have good lives, gets distorted into my desire to remake guests in my image. In this temptation, I measure my “success” in hospitality by how many people I get off the streets. I use my white middle class standards to define what our guests should aspire to. I want them to conform to my social standards of respectability. I deny their agency, their hopes, dreams, desires, and woundedness—their personhood. They become means to my ends. 

            In contrast, hospitality offered in the “little way” asks me to simply welcome people as they are. As Michael Sean Winters writes, “Success is not a Gospel category.” Rather than pushing others to conform to my expectations, I must drop my ego, and allow the guests to change me. In hospitality it is much more likely that the guests save me rather than the other way around. This was Jesus’ point when he said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46), and when Paul said, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7).

            So, the hospitality offered at Manna House in the little way is not much. Two mornings each week for showers, socks and hygiene, coffee, sanctuary. One Monday meal each week. Each morning, six to eight volunteers, 100 or so guests. We do not pretend to be efficient, to provide a “solution” to homelessness, or to meet every need or to successfully remake people on the streets into productive citizens. 

Our purpose is hospitality, not charity doled out from above nor social services to get people back into the system. We do not get people off the streets or out of poverty. We provide a place for people to be welcomed as people. It is a small thing. It doesn’t amount to much. Like a mustard seed. And we hope, in the words of the prophet Zechariah, we will “not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10).

“Have You Ever Lost Hope?” Easter Arrives at Manna House

“Have you ever lost hope and tried to commit suicide or homicide?” The question startled me.

At the end of the morning’s hospitality at Manna House, I had sat down on a couch in the living room. A few photocopied leaflets had been left on the couch, apparently to be shared with our guests. The leaflets were handwritten. At the top were the words, “Homelessness Incorporated” with the question just below. “Have you ever lost hope and tried to commit suicide or homicide?” 

 

Sometimes I forget the amount of despair our guests carry. As Kathleen says, “They bring us their best.” And for most of our guests, most of the time, that is true. Despite being on the streets, our guests are typically kind, gentle, courteous. The ones who come with an edge, sullenness, or a sour disposition are so few that they are memorable.

 

Yet, the question surfaced the reality below the manners and sociability. Life on the streets is hard, deadly hard. 

 

Even though we try to offer hospitality with respect and graciousness, it is inherently humiliating to ask for a shower or clothing, or some other need to be met. St. Vincent de Paul got this when he wrote many years ago, “It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.” What we offer can so easily denigrate and dehumanize those we seek to serve. We can be agents of despair. We offer goods everyone ought to have; goods that are basic to human dignity. Yet those goods are shared by getting on a list and then waiting for one’s name to be called.

 

“Have you ever lost hope?” How hopeful can one be when the next meal, the next shower, the place to safely sleep, the security of a home—are all in question?

 

Finding this note on the Monday after Easter, I had to wonder about hope in the midst of suffering, humiliation, and injustice, and the way hospitality both resists and is implicated in those. 

 

Resurrection hope is not an easy hope. Such hope only comes through the cross, as Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He took those words from Psalm 22:1, which carries both despair and hope, together. Immediately following forsakenness come words of hope, “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame” (Psalm 22:3-5).

 

“Have you ever lost hope?” Acknowledging the loss of hope means I once had hope. I know what hope is, a trust in the goodness of life, that there is meaning to my life and the lives of others. Resurrection affirms loss is real, death is powerful, and so are those who impose death. But resurrection also affirms something more real and more powerful, life, love, and liberation. Those keep blossoming up despite all odds, like the dandelions emerging from the cracks of cement each spring, or hospitality offered with love. 

 

“Practicing resurrection,” Tex Sample writes, “involves a radical reorientation that places us in proximity with people who are poor, oppressed, marginalized, excluded, and silenced.” Why? Because if I believe in resurrection, in the power of hope and love, I have to practice resurrection with people being crucified, who wonder if God is forsaking them. I have to love, to offer hospitality and seek justice, in the face of the question, “Have you ever lost hope?”

Fear Not!

The angel of the Lord is encamped around those who revere God to rescue them. Psalm 34:7

 

A concrete angel stands in the backyard of Manna House. For several years, it stood with one of its wings broken off. Now it has been repaired, but the scar from the break remains visible. A guest frequently leans his bike against the angel while he drinks his coffee and visits with other guests. On one occasion there was a guest who engaged in conversations with the angel. I am not sure what they talked about but I’m hoping it was about the hospitality we offer. 

 

More recently, Nancy Weirs and her daughter painted two angels as part of a mural adorning one of the walls of the shed in the backyard. Inside the house there is an angel painting that came from someone as part of a donation. 

 

I guess we are surrounded by angels, not just in sculpture and paintings but also the kind indicated in Hebrews 13:1-2, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels unawares.”

 

In the Bible, angels typically function as messengers from God. When an angel shows up it is apparently startling, if not terrifying, as the first words out of an angel’s mouth is often, “Fear not!!” (Genesis 21:1-21, Luke 2:1-12, Matthew 28:1-10, Acts 27:1-26).

 

I’m guessing there’s some kind of psychological and even theological connection between the Hebrews 13 notion of angels coming to us under the guise of strangers, and the need to be told “Fear not” by angels who show up unexpectedly. 

 

In these strange days I need to hear that angelic message, “Fear not.” Maybe the concrete angel with the scar best speaks that message. She’s wounded but healed. The assurance comes from someone who has been broken, has been hurt, but still stands.

 

I see this, too, in our guests, the strangers who come to Manna House, some of whom must be angels as the Bible testifies. They also often carry an irrepressible spirit. Perhaps this is how they survive under hard conditions. These angels from the streets have a humility connected with humor and hope that gives them a lightness under heavy conditions. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” 

 

I have a lot to learn from these angels encamped around me. God’s messengers come from the streets and gather in the backyard. With their broken wings, they tell me, “Fear not.” They bring the presence of God, as Jesus promised, “whatever I do unto the least of these I do unto him” (Matthew 25:31-46). They tell me in this time to keep hope alive. God isn’t done yet.

Epiphany

Morning prayer begins, “O God, you are my God, I watch for you from the dawn. My soul thirsts for you, by body longs for you” (Psalm 63:1). As I pray, I hear guests arrive on the front porch. The morning is bitterly cold. A north wind cuts through clothing, touching the soul. On this Epiphany morning, no star is visible above, only grey clouds. 

 

The Magi sought the Christ child. What do I seek? What do the guests seek? I dare to think we seek some of the same things. On a dark and cold morning, we seek warmth and light. And we seek welcome, a place where we can be at ease, share stories, laugh, be ourselves. God knows we share a humanity, made in God’s image, but also wounded, broken, that image tarnished. So across divides and differences, we seek wholeness, a healing for our sin sick souls. We seek welcome.

 

In Epiphany, we are to find God in our lives. In Epiphany we are to become conscious of God’s presence. Like the Magi we are to recognize divine presence in something ordinary and yet extraordinarily joyous. For the Magi, that is a newborn baby, the Christ child. That child as a grown up tells us we will find him in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46). 

 

This morning I found Christ in George who needed a new coat. He was fresh out of jail. The coat he had was not returned to him when he was released. When he tried on the coat he said, “This will do me fine; very fine.” At Manna House, in the ordinary offering of a coat to a guest, I suddenly felt an extraordinary joy. 

 

Something coalesced for me this morning that I had not found throughout Advent, nor on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I found Christ in this home. This is not my home, nor the home of the guests. Rather, in this place I find welcome as I also offer welcome. It is Christ’s home. 

 

Maybe this is the spirit of Epiphany. The Magi with their gifts welcomed Christ as they were welcomed into Christ’s home. As Matthew tells the story, this hospitality quickly came to an end. Herod already sought the death of the newborn. And the Magi had to leave by a different route to avoid Herod. But for a moment there was hospitality in this home, the sharing of welcome, offered in joyous resistance to a world hellbent on death.

 

I was asked in a conversation later this same day, “Where do you find home?” Where is a place for me of love, of acceptance, of welcome, of rest, of deep emotional and spiritual ease? I am still pondering that question. But I also know I found home in a moment of Epiphany this morning. Warmth, light, welcome was shared; there was extraordinary joy against the grey and the cold.