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“I was hungry and you fed Me,
thirsty and you gave Me a drink,
a stranger and you invited Me in, naked and you clothed Me,
sick and you visited Me, in prison and you came to Me.”
(Matthew 25:35-36)
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His
Distressing Disguise
Mother
Teresa had no doubt. “[We] are touching Christ in His distressing
disguise whenever [we] are helping and touching the poor.”
Her
words echoed the plea of 17th century Jesuit priest,
Peter Claver, who ministered to the wounded, broken, and brutalized
African slaves as their sea-borne hell-holes arrived in Colombia, South
America. “It is Christ.”
Our
view of the poor, the homeless, the marginalized, the abused, the
beaten, and the crushed is often paternalistic. “If they would just ….”
“Don’t they know that ….” “Why don’t they ….” Our condescension and
complacency distances us from their need and we respond with increasing
indifference, disinterest, or disgust.
Overwhelmed
by the magnitude of the need around us, we toss ten dollars here and
there, and then complain about corruption, laziness, irresponsible life
choices, and failures—theirs.
And
from time to time—very occasionally—just enough to assuage an
irritating pang of conscience—we support a charitable cause and ride
high on our generosity for a season.
Of
course, not all of us are so callused or so hardened.
Some
softer hearts and more sensitive spirits find themselves deeply moved
by the injustice and brokenness of our world. They pour themselves out
with varying degrees of abandon. They serve and sacrifice for the
forgotten and the sidelined. They reach out with love and hope. After
all Jesus died for the afflicted and the neglected.
But
how might we all change, how might we all respond if we
saw the down-and-out, the disheveled, the disheartened, the
dispossessed, and the dishonored through the lens of the Gospel;
Matthew’s gospel?
It
is Christ … in distressing disguise. “For as much as you have done it
to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to
Me." (Matt 25:40)
Not
for Me, but to Me.
Perhaps
when we want to see Jesus, we’d do well to look where we usually close
our eyes … and our hearts. He sits in the slums and skid-rows of
this world. He lives in the hovels and the halfway houses. May He heal
our blindness.
In
HOPE –
David
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