A True Story

This is a true story. 

Last saturday I went to one of the local mega-food grocery stores for the week’s shopping. As I drove down one of the parking lanes I noticed a young man standing next to the front door. He looked like he was dressed for a long journey hitchhiking with a backpack, a sleeping bag and several sweaters tied around his waist. He was holding a cardboard sign with one word marked out in simple, handwritten black lettering: Hungry. 

Later, on that same trip, I stood in the checkout line behind a family. There was grandmother, pushing the cart, there was the father (old enough to shave?) standing nervously around the cart. There was the mother, cradling a sleeping newborn in her arms and holding a WIC check in her hands. Their cart had a lot less in it then mine.

Later, when it was my time to check through, I met the store manager who was working the cash register. We talked about how he wanted to hire and schedule more workers but couldn’t. Corporate was down hard on him to keep the overhead down. He said that twenty people came in that day asking for work. And twenty more the day before. He said that he sends them over to a computer terminal to fill out an electronic application but he knows it’s a waste of their time. They probably know it too. 

In seminary I starting picking up on a phrase that folks say whenever they hear a story with great sermon potential: “That’ll preach.”  I was advised to keep a notebook on me where ever I go because sermon illustrations happen all the time and I needed to be prepared to catch them when they go by. 

While I was parking my car and looking at the Hungry Young Man, I found myself wishing that not only had I kept my little book with me, I had also brought a camera. What a incredible image. The Hungry Young Man stands in front of the Rich Man’s grocery store - a perfect modern day illustration of Lazarus and the Rich Man in the story Jesus tells in Luke 16. It would make a great image for this blog and maybe I could get Andrew to use it in some Hunger Action Alert material or something. 

Only The Hungry Young Man wasn’t a sermon illustration but a flesh and blood human being that I was going to have to walk past in order to get into that store. 

And the parable of the Rich Man really bites in this situation. 

This wasn’t a nice safe abstract pulpit at 10:20 a.m. on Sunday morning - you know, the time after the children have been dismissed and before the collection of the offering. This was rubber meeting the road. Practical theology at its most practical. Hey Preacher  - how are you going to walk your talk in the next thirty steps?

The Rich Man kept stepping over Lazarus who had collapsed in front of the Rich Man’s door. Who knows why the Rich Man kept choosing to do so? There are actual several plausible reasons to keep moving and at least one or two valid reasons occurred to me as I walked from my car and toward The Hungry Young Man and then - yes - I walked past him. 

I don’t like to give money to street people. I worry that if I do then it will only go to support life-destruction ends rather than life-supporting goods. So as I walked by, I looked The Hungry Young Man over closely for signs of alcohol or drug abuse. I Looked carefully because I was asking, “Does he deserve my attention, my money?”

Is grace earned?

Once I was safely by him, I stopped just inside the door. On my immediate left was the bakery department with beautiful, gleaming display cases filled with cakes, doughnuts, muffins, and bread. Exotic cheeses were temptingly displayed on a bathtub-like container. Straight ahead was a big table of candy thoughtfully displayed at a small child’s line of sight and reach of hand. To my right stretched out vast acres of shelves and refrigerators and freezers filled with all kinds of food from all over the world. I looked at all of this and then back at the Hungry Young Man and wondered what the hell I was doing there. I wondered what kind of a society I was living in when someone stands outside the door to all this extravagance with a one word sign, “Hungry.”  

I kept standing just inside the doorway, and thought about how society should fix all of this right now. I thought about how I was looking at something very wrong and broken. Usually I don’t have to see it. Usually the hungry are polite enough to go hang out somewhere else then the front door of a mega-grocery store. Or perhaps the management just runs them off quickly. Believe me, walking past a beggar can really bring down the mood for impulsive consumption.

But my standing there and feeling righteously and prophetically angry about the world in general really wasn’t going to do anything for the particular and specific Hungry Young Man standing in front of the door of that particular and specific mega-grocery store. 

As I said before, knowing the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus really gets in the way of one’s day to day errands. 

Stepping over, stepping past really isn’t an option. 

I started to think about buying the Hungry Young Man a sandwich. That would be Good Samaritan like and also get me past the potential drug and alcohol abuse question.  But then I realized that I was still trying to control the outcome and maybe it wasn’t suposed to be about my being in control. The Hungry Young Man was proposing a solution, he was also holding a box that was a good size for dollar bills but not big enough for a sandwich and a soft-drink. 

Now if this was a sermon, I’d be very strongly tempted to tie it all up in a neat little moral lesson right at this point. I’d tell you what I decided to do and urge you to go out and do likewise. I’d probably not tell the story in the first person though - don’t want to come off as a holier-then-thou kind of preacher. There are standards here, tricks of the trade you know. So I’d be busy washing the humanity out of The Hungry Young Man and… well… the Suburban Housewife. I could pull out one of the advanced preaching tricks and leave off the moral lesson and end the sermon with a hanging question. I’d stop here and say, “What would you do?” and then go sit down. 

But this is a blog, not a sermon, and the rules are different. This is a true story and I am a real person and these are my fingers pushing on these keys and those are your eyes scanning the line from left to right converting pixels of light into this story and most important of all is this:  Last Saturday, a real human being stood in front of a real store holding a real sign with the single word: “Hungry.” 

So I will tell you want I decided to do. Please do not mistake this for any suggestion of a proper moral, Christian, example to others.

I said, “Screw it.”  I opened up my wallet and found a twenty dollar bill and four singles. I went back outside and called him “Sir” and looked him in the eye and gave him four dollars. And then I finished shopping for my family.

Maybe if I was a better person I’d have given him the twenty. Or maybe I should have given him it all. Or even, asked how he was, what he needs were, go over to the ATM and even clean out the bank account. What is the obligation of the Rich Man to Lazarus? How much was enough to keep the Rich Man out of hell, begging for a drop of water from the one he had spent too many days and nights stepping over?  

How much was enough to preserve the Rich Man’s humanity?

Later in Luke, a Rich Ruler comes to Jesus to ask what must be done to preserve eternal life. How much was enough? Jesus tells him to sell everything and give it to the poor which both Jesus and the Rich Ruler knew could not happen. It wasn’t so much about greed as we’d like to think, because if it was about greed then we could imagine ourselves better then greedy Rich Rulers. It was because the Rich Ruler had obligations to family and servants and his choice to go into poverty would take the entire lot with him. I could not go and empty out my bank account because I have obligations to my daughters and step-sons and husband and mother and brother - and myself. 

We all have obligations. Perhaps the store manager needs to go confront Corporate and demand the opportunity to hire more workers. But the store manager has his own family and he knows how quickly he could find himself standing in line for the electronic application form in some other store. How do we decided between our obligations? How do we keep ahold of our humanity?

In Luke’s version of this encounter, found in chapter 18, Jesus is asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus replies, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”

I smiled at the family in line in front of me. I love making faces at babies, even when they are asleep. I wish this family, and their relationships of love and obligation to each other, well. I hope someday soon they will put a lot more food in their cart. 

And when I left the store, the Hungry Young Man was gone. 

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Anitra Kitts is a writer and occasional preacher in Northern California. 

Comments

[Andrew Kang Bartlett]

Wow....

thanks for this profound challenge, dear anitra

[Becki]

WOW! I struggle with this same question all the time -- should I give them money? a gift card? ignore them? Thanks for being real and not settling for the "churchy" answer.

[Micheal McEvoy]

This quote was on Bruce Schneier's blog today. Schneier works in the Computer Security world. It is amazing how the various parts of my life are so tied together.

Part of the debtor mentality is a constant, frantically suppressed undercurrent of terror. We have one of the highest debt-to-income ratios in the world, and apparently most of us are two paychecks from the street. Those in power -- governments, employers -- exploit this, to great effect. Frightened people are obedient -- not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally. If your employer tells you to work overtime, and you know that refusing could jeopardize everything you have, then not only do you work the overtime, but you convince yourself that you're doing it voluntarily, out of loyalty to the company; because the alternative is to acknowledge that you are living in terror. Before you know it, you've persuaded yourself that you have a profound emotional attachment to some vast multinational corporation: you've indentured not just your working hours, but your entire thought process. The only people who are capable of either unfettered action or unfettered thought are those who -- either because they're heroically brave, or because they're insane, or because they know themselves to be safe -- are free from fear.

Quote is from The Likeness, a novel set in Ireland, by Tana French.

[John]

I always struggle with the decision to give money. I prefer to buy a meal or snacks, but if I am not near food I will give money. I would want someone to do that for me if I were in the same situation.