The mailbox was empty ...

In the middle of summer in rural Oklahoma, one thing you don't want to be doing is roofing a house in 100 degree heat, but that's where me and eight of my friends from Charis Ministries found ourselves a couple of years ago. We had committed to spending three days painting, roofing, and cleaning the weathered home of a man named Herbert from Idabel who we had met through the local Glenmary priest.

It obviously was hard work, but what was apparent to all of us was that this house we were working on would easily be considered a "tear-down" back in the Chicago neighborhoods we lived in. So what were we doing? We we honoring this man by giving him a couple more useful years of shelter in this old home? Were we just doing it for the sake of doing good, or satisfying our own pride? Or was this really just a waste of time?

I pondered this question over the three days we were working. I had done Habitat-like projects in Chicago over the years, but this was the first time I'd done a similar project in another state or country. I think my friend Dave talked me into making the road trip with him, and I think the road trip from Chicago was what initially captured my interest.

As we worked, it became apparent to me that this frail house filled with many possessions (both in the house and strewn about the yard) was a symbol of the man who lived inside it. When we first drove up and introduced ourselves to Herbert, he barely cracked the door to say hello. He was a quiet, solitary man. As the days progressed, however, we got to know and see more and more of Herbert. Little by little, he learned our names, watched us work, and ultimately invited us in.

With every nail we drove into the roof, and with every brush-stroke of paint we covered the house with, we were ministering to Herbert. We were being drawn into intimacy with him. As we carefully mended the whole in his roof, we were mending Herbert and putting our hands into his wounds. As we cleared the broken machinery and trash from his yard, we were clearing out the old, lost dreams and making room for new ones. And ultimately when he invited us into his hot, cluttered, cockroach-infested home, he was being entirely vulnerable with us about who he was and asking us to accept him on those terms without fear or judgment.

On a personal level I was able to connect with Herbert on two occasions. One day, as I was getting ready to haul a load of trash to the county dump, I paused to watch Herbert go to his mailbox. He walked across his lawn to the road, opened the hinged door to the mailbox and peered inside, only to find the mailbox empty. I'm sure this kind of situation happens every day, but I was struck by the look of loneliness on Herbert's face that he longed to be in relationship with someone who knew him and cared enough to send him a letter to say hello. "Boy the kids sure are getting big these days, you should come pay us a visit soon," or "Your cousin Joanne is getting married this fall, and we hope you can make it." Some kind of hope that his life mattered to someone besides himself as the hours turned into days, and the days grew into weeks, and the weeks marched into years.

The second connection I had with Herbert was one day he asked me to go fishing with him. Wow, I thought, that would be fun, but the reason we're here is to repair your house. I can't just ditch my co-workers to go fishing. So this struck me as a Mary vs. Martha moment. This man wanted to hang out with me and go fishing, but my preoccupation was with the repairs and being a team player. So I brushed off his invitation and kept working.

On the last day of our visit, we hastily finished painting and roofing Herbert's house in advance of the long drive home the next day. We were all exhausted, dirty, and sunburned, but we were also exhilarated to have accomplished such a difficult task and to have given this tender, caring gift of our time and friendship to Herbert. I won't say that we were buddy-buddy with Herbert when we left that day, but we felt like we had truely ministered to this man, not just cleaned his yard and repaired his house, and the appreciation was mutual.

"I Came that You Might Have Life and Have it More Abundantly."

I've been reflecting on John 10:10 in advance of our iCompass event tomorrow and wanted to share a couple of thoughts. I think we can look at our lives through the lens of this scripture passage and get different answers and perspectives, depending on our life situation.

1. We Are Beloved
First this passage says to me that we are Beloved by God. He wants to give us the gift of abundance if we are open to receiving it. We don't have to earn it. He wants to give it to us freely.

2. Abundance vs. Scarcity
Second, the passage is counter-cultural in telling us that God will satisfy our every need if we remain in relationship with him - - in a relationship where we acknowledge that everything we have is a gift from God and there is abundance all around us every day. This is counter-cultural to the thinking today that the economy is bad, terrorism is bad, and the financial markets are bad so we better hunker down and take any job we can get and not take any risks and live with a mindset of scarcity until the whole thing blows over.

3. Following the Narrow Gate Gives Us Abundance
While God's love is not conditional, he rewards those who are obedient in following the narrow gate and do not listen to "thieves and robbers." I take this to mean, God rewards those who choose to live Christ-centered lives. This reward is always there if we choose to receive it. Those who get sucked into the culture of death in America and around the world, are unfortunately listening to the lies of the devil. This culture says that you should work to earn an abundant life of possessions here on earth, while Jesus promises us an abundance of treasures from his Father in heaven.

4. We Don't Need to Achieve it Ourselves
So the fine line here is that if we live a life in obedience to Jesus, he provides the abundance. In contrast, our culture tells us to work to earn and save our own abundance and look our for ourselves.

Obviously there is no sin in living an abundant life, but the question is did we earn the abundance or was it a gift from God? Of course we need to participate in the world and share our talents with others, but the end of the day, who gets the glory: us or God. That's where sin comes in, the same self-seeking sin Adam & Eve struggled with in the Garden.

Books like The Secret will tell you that if you just have an abundant, positive mindset every day then good things will come your way. So does that mean that families dying of HIV in Africa, or people in refugee camps in Palestine don't have the right mindset? I don't think so.

5. Finding Abundant Freedom Through the Narrow Gate
The truth about this passage to me seems to be about praising God each day for the good gifts he does give us. Thanks for my good health, thanks for the new job, thanks for the intimacy of a friend, thanks for easing the pain of a terminal illness.

As you can see, one person's abundance, however, is not the same as your next door neighbor's. God does not care about helping us keep up with the Jones'. He cares that we love him, are in relationship with him, thank him, and praise him for the daily gifts he gives us.

Following the "narrow gate" is hard though. And sometimes it sucks. As St. Paul talks about, "We hope in what we cannot see," and "Hope does not disappoint." We hope in Jesus despite the dry, lonely, desolate, painful times in our lives that we can't control.

In John 10:9, Jesus says, "I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture." He wants us to live in the freedom of relationship with him and his Heavenly Father. I think that freedom is the abundance he is talking about. He's not talking about abundant possessions necessarily. He wants us to "have LIFE and have it more abundantly." Amen.

Give to the One Who Asks of You

I stumbled into mass a little late this morning and missed the readings unfortunately, but when I left the church to go home, there was a homeless guy on the steps with his bicycle waiting for me. He said, "I'm Roosevelt and I just came from Pacific Garden Mission and I was wondering if you could help me out. Last week the priest game me $20 bucks. Whattya say?"

So I looked in my wallet and I knew I had $20, but I also knew I had a lunch appointment today and had to go home to get ready for an 11:00 AM meeting downtown. So I said, "I've got some money on me but I need it for lunch today, can I give you my CTA pass instead?" So I handed him my CTA pass which had $3 on it and he took it, but then he said, "I've got my bike, what do I need a CTA pass for?"I responded by saying, "Well if you don't need the pass, then I'll take it back." To which he responded, "What are you, and Indian giver?"

Life is strange. I think what this guy really needed was a hug to know that he was cared for as a beloved son of God, but the exchange challenged me to think about whether I was really serving his need or being selfish.

In the book of Luke, right after teaching us the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says, "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he won't give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he asks for an egg, he won't give him a scorpion, will he?"

The exchange with this homeless man today showed me that both he and I were sinners operating from a belief in the scarcity of the world's resources. Yes, I could/should have been more generous in giving him the $20 he asked for, but when I "gave him a snake instead of a fish," he clung to it as something of value even though it did not serve his need. That's what struck me as I reflected on the incident later in the day. Maybe he used it to barter with someone else for the food he needed?

As I took the El downtown to my meeting, I pulled out the day's mass readings and was convicted as I read the passage from Luke 5:38-42. "Give to the one who asks of you and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow." Wow. Talk about the Holy Spirit hitting you right between the eyes.

The lesson I'll take from this is that I think God wants us to give from our need, not from our want. I wanted to save my money for lunch, but here was a man who needed it and I gave him a snake instead. I don't feel guilty about what I did or didn't do in this situation, but it feels like a teachable moment God was using to open my eyes to his plan, vs. the one I had for today and for the $20 in my pocket.

"Help the Homeless!"

Often when walking in downtown Chicago I hear someone on the ground with a plastic cup calling out, "Help the Homeless!" This bugs me, not because someone is asking me for money, or that there are so many men and women on the street asking for money, but because they are asking for money in the third person.

What this tells me is that our society has minimized them and looks down on them as homeless. Perhaps they're on the street because they lost their job, lost their home, lost their family, or have lost precious years of their life due to an addiction to drugs or alcohol. But in today's society, all this seems to add up to the idea that the homeless have lost both their identity and their dignity. They are outcasts seeking the means to live day to day. And so when they ask for money, they ask for money in the third person. They are set apart from our society in the same way that lepers were forced to live on the outskirts of town during Jesus' lifetime.

It is doubly sad that the homeless today have accepted the position of second class citizens we have given them. We treat them like they don't have an identity so they have accepted that they don't have an identity. And that's the worse part.

The truth is that inside all of us is someone who is homeless. Someone who is not sure of who he is and where he's going. The most intimate request we can make to God or even to a friend is to admit our weakness and ask for help, but it's hard. It takes courage to be naked and vulnerable and say: "I'm unemployed, can you help me?" "I'm going to lose my house, can you help me?" "I haven't had anything to eat today, can you help me?"

Asking for help from another forces us to be in relationship. We admit that we are powerless to continue living on our own. More than a meal, shelter, or a job, our deepest desire is to be relationship, whether that is with a neighbor or with almighty God.

Viktor Frankl, is his book, Man's Search for Meaning, suggests, "He who has a WHY to live can bear almost any HOW." For Frankl as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps, his WHY was the hope of seeing his wife again and basked in the memory of their loving relationship while in reality, torture, starvation, and death flourished all around him.

So when we see someone on the street calling out and saying, "Help the Homeless," our response needs to be more than to give them a buck or some loose change. We need to challenge ourselves to look them in the eye, shake their hand, ask them their name and tell them yours. We need to challenge ourselves to treat them with dignity and be in relationship with them.

In doing so, we become the WHY that Frankl talks about. We give that man or woman on the street hope not only that they can get something to eat or find a room to sleep in, we give them hope that they are important, significant, and beloved.