Let’s call him Josh. The first time I met Josh, about 6
months ago, he was in the church courtyard, near but not close to other members
of what we’ve come to know as our “Courtyard Congregation.” They’re a collection of itinerant folks with
no permanent address. As usual Josh was
in conversation with himself, and only included others when they intruded on
his personal space, an area about 9 feet in diameter. Even then the interaction
wasn’t a dialogue, just a blistering rebuke to get away and leave him alone. I
can describe him. Long unkempt hair and beard, military fatigues, worn boots,
fingerless gloves, parka, backpack, stutter-gait; the fact that he began coming
inside the church on Monday and Friday mornings for a free breakfast was a huge
social step forward, for us and for him.
Not that it always went smoothly. Somehow Josh developed a
protective attitude toward the breakfast space. It surfaced when someone who
didn’t know the rules started using questionable language; Josh would be on his
feet, threatening to eject them because “we don’t talk that way in a church.” I
had visions of an old TV western with disruptive cowboys being thrown out of
the bar through the swinging louvered doors. One of our hostesses had to
caution him about not physically assaulting others, ill-mannered as they may
be.The next thing we knew Josh was helping sweep the paved part of the outdoor courtyard and picking up scraps of paper. He said, “Gotta keep this neat out here. One way to serve.”
Looking ahead to the sermons for January I came across a blog by Larry Platten entitled “Two Words.” In it he recounts an early seminary experience when he received a paper with no grade and no comments back from a professor. In that scene there was just the presence of the professor, the unmarked paper on his desk, and Larry’s fear that it was so bad he would fail the class or worse, be dismissed from school.
“This is how the professor begins his sentence, this is how he begins creation, this is how he helps transform a fearful student into a curious pastor and writer and person: “What if . . .”
“Those. Two. Words. … What if . . . the professor suggested, John the Baptist was more than just someone to prepare believers for Jesus’ arrival? What if . . . the Baptizer was Jesus’ rival? What if . . . there’s more to this story than what appears on the surface?[1]
So back to Josh. This morning I had to look twice, because he arrived for breakfast, same outfit, same limp, but the beard and hair were noticeably shorter. When I asked “What’s new?” he said, “I have a shadow.”
“In what way?”
“I have a sociology student from the college who’s following me around for two days. Going to show him the gutter-side of life if he really wants to see it.”
Really. What if … there’s more to a person than appears on the surface?
[1]
Platten, Larry. “Two Words.” December 27, 2007: http://www.larrypatten.com/2011/12/27/two-words/ Retrieved November 14, 2014.
