When I moved to Houston, I saw them everywhere.At every stoplight on the frontage roads that run along the hundreds of miles of interstates here. At major intersections. At mall and shopping center parking lots.
Dirty hand-lettered cardboard placards.
HOMELESS VETERAN
NOT ON DRUGS
CAN'T FIND WORK
PLEASE HELP
Legless men slouched in wheelchairs. Women crouched on the concrete sidewalks. Grubby. Grimy. Hopeless.
CAR BROKE DOWN
HAVE KIDS TO FEED
PLEASE HELP
GOD BLESS YOU
Sometimes you see family groups, couples with babies and kids out baking in the pitiless Texas sunshine. Even a scroungy dog once or twice. When the light turns red and the four lanes of traffic stop, they look at the drivers, trying to make eye contact, come over with an open hand or a tin soup can held out. I don't know how they decide which cars are the best bet, who to concentrate on, but I have learned the rules for drivers:
Keep your eyes ahead of you, keep your windows up, don't make eye contact, don't acknowledge what is going on. Wear dark sunglasses to be safe, to make sure you don't have to tell a scraggly beggar "no" straight to his or her face. Better to look busy, study your radio dial like you're trying to tune in a hard-to-find -station.
After a while, I stop noticing them. Houston is a large city, over 6 million, so it has a huge population of hungry and homeless and destitute, the beggars and the desperately poor. Being confronted with beggars every day, at every redlight, causes "sympathy exhaustion".
How can you give to every hand that is opened to you?
How can you make a distinction between those who really are in need and those who are working a system?
How can you give to only those who "deserve" charity?
How can I be so arrogant to think it is my decision as to who deserves charity and who doesn't?
There are some "professional" beggars, I know. I've seen them coming in for a day's work, "clocking in" to work the system. Noticing that I often see the same people at the same intersections, that there seems to be a huge group of constant beggars, is a way to tell myself I'm not being uncharitable and hard-hearted to all those grimy ragged people. If I tell myself that some of them are gaming the system, parking their cars out of sight and then gimping pitifully all the way to today's "jobsite", that makes it easier to deny what I see.
The poor are always with us, past, present, and future. There have always been those who by necessity or by choice or by social class are beggars. Why am I so inclined to callously dismiss as undeserving someone who begs everyday, who makes his or her way in the world by the support of others, and instead favor another who is in a temporary tight spot and just needs minor assistance?
When I sit and really consider it in the light of faith, I have a hard time feeling good about making judgements and decisions about other people. Salvation by God's grace is offered freely to all who ask for it, regardless of merit, and we are all unworthy of it through our own actions . Since I myself have fallen upon God's heavenly mercy, how can I even consider deciding that I can withhold my own earthly mercy from one who asks for it because he or she just doesn't "deserve" it?
Can I? How can I turn my eye, roll up my window, keep on going with no response of love at all? How can I take the love with which I have been redeemed and blessed, just keep it all selfishly inside me rather than loosing a mighty torrent of hope and love and charity to touch the lives of everyone I know, all whom I meet? If I am supposed to be living a transformed life, why can't I even give a dollar or two when asked?
Of all that is said about charity and generosity and transformation in the Bible, a lot is subject to interpretation. Parables, Psalms, Pauline Epistles, all are prone to be seen in one light or another. But you know who is plainspoken and as clear as day? Jesus.
Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. (Matthew 5:42). This comes from the Beatitudes, and says nothing about giving only to those who deserve help. A couple of verses later, as a matter of fact, after the uncomfortable command to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Jesus says the reason is so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.( Matthew 5:45-46).
So just as God makes his sun to rise and his rain to fall on everyone regardless of merit, so are we commanded to give freely to those who beg from us, and love even our enemies.
In other words, on earth as it is in Heaven.
On Earth as it is in Heaven. Has a ring about it, doesn't it? Hmmmm, where have I heard that before?
So every time I pass by one of these beggars with outstretched hands and pleading eyes, I have to treat him or her as another of God's blessings to me, a stark, humbling, and uncomfortable accusation that I am not practicing the radical, uncompromising love and obedience that Christ demands. Every instance is an opportunity for me to repent of my selfishness and willfulness, to break my prideful heart of stone in exchange for a heart of flesh as promised in Ezekiel.
So I pray that I continue to feel ripped apart when I ignore these whom Christ termed "the least of these brothers and sisters of mine". As long as I feel this raw nerve inside, it means I am still trying and still growing.
"They also will answer ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ (Matthew 25 44-45)
When I worked downtown I became an expert at saying "sorry" without making eye contact every time a street person approached me for a handout, which happened every time I left the BellSouth building to go to one of the eateries nearby at lunch time. One day I was entering the Harbert Building when a street person came up to me and as he started to speak I cut him off and said, "Sorry," and kept walking. As I passed the threshold and the door started to close behind me I heard him say, "Wait! I don't want money! I'm hungry and want food!" but by the time that registered I was already 5 steps inside and feeling like dirt. I was with a co-worker or I would have turned around and asked him to come with me to the food court on the second floor. Instead I went with my friend to the food court, feeling worse and worse. I had completely dismissed a hungry person, not a professional panhandler. Instead of getting my food "for here" I went to Milo's and bought two combos to go and went back outside to give one to the hungry street person but he was gone. I went up one street and down another looking for him but never found him. I hope he met someone better than me who invited him to lunch but I don't know. More to alleviate my guilty than anything else I finally approached another street person and asked him if he was hungry. He said he was and I offered him the extra Milo's lunch. He took it and then said, "Do you have any money, too? I need it to buy food." That comment eroded any charitable feelings I'd managed to scrounge up to ease my guilt. I resented him and spent the rest of the day beating myself up. Even today, 8 years later, I feel really shitty about the way I treated that guy. I don't regret shrugging off the professional beggars who are scamming people for a buck, but that truly was one of the "least of my brothers" and I let him down.
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