It's Too Cold to Eat in Here

I meet a staff member from the campus ministry at GT (CCF) at the Shamrock Kitchen in Tyrone most Tuesday mornings. The Shamrock – meat and two vegetables kind of place – opens at 7 a.m. and he and I were the first two people there this morning. It was pretty cold here this morning – my outdoor thermometer had 26 degrees on it when I left home – and we both commented on how cold it was in the Shamrock. I assumed that whoever turns on the heat earlier in the mornings had forgotten to do that and the heat was trying to “catch up.”

Wrong. The furnace was out – since yesterday – and it was really cold in there. Some part to the furnace was apparently hard to fine and they company fixing it (the owner eats in there often as well) still didn’t have the part. Did I say it was cold inside the Shamrock???

A couple of ladies who come in together most mornings came in, all wrapped up in their coats and scarves, etc.  They sat down and the server brought them coffee (one has her own Christmas coffee cup she leaves in there during the season!).  After a few minutes they got up and told the server “it’s too cold to eat” we can’t stay. They got their coffee in to-go cups and left.

It was cold in there. But that whole experience has had me thinking all morning.

• Have I been thankful in recent days that I live in a warm, dry house and I don’t have to eat in the cold?

• Have I been thankful that, even when it is cold and I have to be outside, I have lots of clothes – sweaters, jackets, gloves, hats, etc. – to keep me warm?

• When is the last time I actually had to eat where it was “too cold to eat” – not because the furnace was out, but because I couldn’t afford a place where there was heat?

• If I think it was too cold to eat in the Shamrock, I wonder about the people who struggle daily with a place to live - decent shelter, decent food, decent clothes – and can’t help but think, “what would Jesus do about this?”

This past Sunday’s gospel text in the Lectionary was Luke 3:1-6 – the John the Baptist text for Advent. This is where John quotes Isaiah saying “every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crocked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” I do understand that the coming of Jesus into the world was about “salvation” – but wonder if sometimes, to borrow N.T.  Wright language, we don’t get so wrapped up in “dying and going to heaven” that we fail to “make the rough places level” in the lives of people who struggle – who have to eat where it is too cold to eat.

Then, in my own personal Bible reading, I am getting near the end of Isaiah – chapter 61 was a part of today’s three chapters. That’s were Isaiah writes the words that Jesus quotes in the synagogue in Nazareth in Luke 4 – “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Sometimes God can get a bit intrusive!

At the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama (run by the Equal Justice Initiative) a week ago, I bought a magnet with a quote from Bryan Stevenson to hang on my office door. It says, “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated and the condemned.” Apparently Bryan Stevenson has read Matthew 25!

I’m grateful that we have moved beyond the age where massive grave markers/tombstones were erected in cemeteries. But, if we lived in that age and my family put one of those up, I’d only want one word to be on it. That word would be “generous.” Generosity isn’t a word to be reserved for the rich and well-to-do among us. As Paul suggests in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, even those in “deep poverty” can be generous. Generosity has far more to do with how we use what we have than it does how much we give because we have so much!

None of us has enough in the way of resources to fix all the problems we see. But we can help fix some! The season of Advent leading up to Christmas is a great time of the year to begin a journey of generosity that recognizes such a character trait needs to survive the holidays and be found in our lives on regular days.

As followers of Jesus, to what extent do we care about and help provide for the poor? Do we abuse Paul's "if a man doesn't work he doesn't eat" statement in 2 Thessalonians as an excuse for not hleping?

What about the "disfavored"? If you read Scot McKnight's A Fellowship of Differents, you will quickly discovered that many of the kinds of people we deem "disfavored" are the very people who made up the members of all those first-century kingdom outposts founded by people like Paul!

Do we have the courage to insist that our justice system treat the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned with some reasonably semblance of grace and mercy? Or, are we more like people who call themselves Christians but think God is far more interested in punishment than redemption? 

Poverty, mental illness, lack of education, failure of people like me to make Jesus more inviting, district attorneys on steroids to get another conviction on the record, prison systems filled to overflowing and inadequately funded . . . and lots of other troubling realities - means that it is past time for followers of Jesus to show character.

After all, what value is there to a religious freedom bill if it protects a religion without the courage to help change what we see all around us?