Lessons from the Poor

I was completely overwhelmed!  To be transported from the comfort of middle class Emmaus into the inner city of Athens in less than 24 short hours provides a classic case of what has been called culture shock!  For two weeks, I would have the privilege to sit and be taught at the feet of the poor – men, women and children who have lost everything to the ravages of war and politics and now live on the streets with nothing, not even a country.

 

Jesus proclaimed his mission statement early in His ministry when He announced:

 

   “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to tell the good

    news to the poor.”

 

Ron Sider’s books influenced me in the early years of my marriage.  Lanette and I instantly became involved in church planting on the inner city streets of Chattanooga during college.   Then for several years we were house parents for children who were destitute because their parents were in prison.  Before those days, I never understood the James 2 passage about the church’s favoritism of the rich and distain for the poor. 

 

I still can remember the contempt on the faces of people when we would bring our children from the inner-city church to our home on Lookout Mt.  The lofty stares spoke loud and clear that these kids were not welcome.  Even worse were the looks we got when we attempted to worship with our kids at a prestigious Chattanooga church.  That is when the James passage began to burn in my heart:

 

Suppose a man wearing gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor man in dirty clothes also comes in.  If you give special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Please take this seat,” but you say to the poor man, “Stand over there” or “Sit on the floor at my feet,” you have made false distinctions among yourselves and have become judges with evil motives, haven’t you?  Listen, my dear brothers!  God has chosen the poor in the world to become rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him, has he not?  But you have humiliated the man who is poor.

 

Those days are far behind me and I needed a refresher course after many years of living in middle class suburbia.  I just returned from Jesus’ boot camp!

 

I don’t know what impressed me most: 

 

Perhaps it was the joy on the face of David who always came to the ARC* laughing.   I looked forward to seeing him – he always lifted my spirits.  I can hardly believe that his wife is dead, he does not know if his children are alive or dead back in his home country and he now lives on the streets of Athens without a country, family or home. 

 

Perhaps it was the tears in the eyes of one of my team members when he told me that a man who just received his sack lunch (consisting of two hard-boiled eggs, a cucumber and one pita bread) just offered to share it with him.

 

Perhaps it was the painful look in the eyes of the woman who was the 423^rd person in line when we only had 422 lunches.  It would be the first time I would have to use the dreaded phrase we were taught on our first day of orientation: “I’m sorry; there is nothing else we can do for you today”. 

 

Perhaps it was when I had no words to comfort a team member when he, a grown man, sobbed uncontrollably in the hallway.  I felt the very same emotions and envied him because he had found a release as he wept on my shoulder.

 

Perhaps it was the tears on the cheeks of a pregnant woman with a child just one year old whose stroller was stolen right there in the ARC* .   Maybe it was the immediate response of the team to collect monies to purchase her another stroller with two seats that would accommodate both her baby and her expected child.

 

Perhaps it was the seven houses of prostitution on the block where we lived.  Here behind shuttered windows young teen girls from Eastern Europe and Africa, who were promised the “good life” in Athens, only found the stench and filth of man after man using their bodies for sexual favors. 

 

I don’t have the time to tell of the daily drug deals on the steps of the ARC*, the men and women just down the street sleeping on the open ground, the constant line of beggars (many w/o legs or arms) asking for just a few cents or the thousands of middle class city dwellers who don’t even notice or care what is happening just under their feet.  

 

I went to Athens to give and I returned to Emmaus having received so very much.  I came home with a renewed heart – a heart that had lost its way over the long years of suburban middle class life. 

 

Just yesterday, I noticed a man in a restaurant where I was eating breakfast.  He was counting and recounting his change in order to make sure he had enough money to pay for his single egg and two slices of white toast.  I quietly asked the waitress to give him a large orange juice and I paid his bill. 

 

She said, “What shall I tell him?”

 

“Tell him he reminds me of someone” I replied.

 

“Your father?”  She inquired.

 

“Yes, I guess you could say that.”  “Tell him he reminds me of Jesus,” I said as His words tumbled in my mind: 

 

Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink?  Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing?  When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’And the King will tell them, ‘I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

 

*ARC Athens Refugee Center.  This is a ministry where BFC missionaries Efthemes and Irene Sioukiouroglou minister.  Twenty BFC’ers spent the month of September in teams of ten in two week shifts at the ARC doing humanitarian ministry in the name of Jesus.