Yes, she’s alive. The guest I had heard was dead, is living. Thanks be to God! And I am grateful to the St. Vincent De Paul Food Mission for letting me know that she was seen there a day ago.
This isn’t the first time a guest was said to be dead, who wasn’t. In the early days of Manna House, we received word that a guest was severely beaten, loaded into an ambulance, and driven away to a hospital. We called around to the various hospitals. None had a patient with this guest’s name. We couldn’t get any further information, and a number of guests confirmed the person was dead.
We had a very nice memorial service at Manna House for this dead guest. Guests and volunteers alike expressed their love for the deceased with stories and heartfelt testimonies. Then, she turned out to be alive! She had been in a coma. No one at the hospitals had known who she was. When she awakened, she asked for visitors and we were contacted. That’s how we learned she was alive. When we visited with her, she was delighted to hear about the memorial service. As with Mark Twain, rumors of her death had been greatly exaggerated.
Since that event, I have tried to be careful about sharing the news that a guest has died. There have been several more times when the word on the street was grim. Death had come to so and so. Then the dead guest showed up at Manna House for coffee and a shower. Always a bit disconcerting, though joyous.
With this most recent guest, I received confirmation about her death from a number of sources. And the guest was nowhere to be found in her usual haunts. Nothing from hospitals, either. The holidays made getting word from the morgue difficult. It all added up to her being dead. Then she was seen at the St. Vincent de Paul Food Mission. Where had she been? A new place to live too far away from where she used to hang out had kept her from her panhandling corner and from Manna House. So, not dead; just relocated.
What to make of these events? When I shared with another volunteer the news about this guest being alive, he responded, “Resurrection!” Which would be wonderful, except the guest was not dead. Not even resuscitation, like Lazarus, since unlike Lazarus, this guest had not died. Maybe this experience was more like the Gospel story in which Jesus said of a girl thought to be dead, “She’s not dead, she’s just asleep.” Though I’m guessing this guest didn’t sleep through the three weeks we thought she was dead.
Still the Holy Spirit moved me to keep mulling over that volunteer’s initial response of “Resurrection!” And so, I came to see there was something of a theology of resurrection that I was missing. When I offer hospitality to people on the streets and others in poverty, death is never very far away. The nearness of death makes it plausible that a guest who suddenly disappears is likely to be dead. So many times, the rumor of a guest’s death is true. A call to the morgue provides the awful confirmation. The memorial service goes on. The guest’s humor and stories or grumpiness and surliness are no longer in the mix. The community at Manna House grieves. We lose guests to death on an almost monthly basis. Life on the streets is deadly. Homelessness kills people, either slowly due to disease and poor health care, or rapidly through accidents, or overdoses, or freezing to death.
Hospitality is a small attempt at resurrection in this field of death. Hospitality lives through the Living One who said, “I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! (Revelation 1:18). Hospitality rejoices to hear that a guest who was thought to be dead, lives. And hospitality continues in the face of death, to offer resistance to death through a place to be alive, to be welcomed, to be with others, to be respected and affirmed in the dignity of human life.
In the practice of hospitality, I am joyous that resurrection is stronger than death, and that a sign of resurrection is that death was cheated this time. With this guest, death was denied. “Alleluia!”
