So, a parishioner of mine in Knoxville was in intensive care. His condition was precarious, and the family was understandably worried about him. I was hovering with his family outside his room. He was sleeping, however, and we did not want to disturb him. Since there was no waiting room near by, we walked down the hall and went into the Surgical Waiting Room to sit and visit and rest and wait.
The volunteer in the pink smock welcomed us with a big smile. There was only one other family in there, so we got a lot of attention. She invited us to sit down, offered coffee and doughnuts and found a toy for the little granddaughter to play with.
We appreciated the kindness — for the ‘cup of cold water’ — and we sat there, grateful for this small blessing. After a while I headed down the hall to find a signal so I could make a phone call
So apparently, while I was gone, this kind volunteer started talking to a member of the family, asking her who we had in surgery. “Oh, no one,” she replied. “My dad is over in ICU.” Well, the volunteer in the pink smock froze up. Her smile disappeared. She turned her back on our family and went and stood guard by her coffee pot.
You see, we were not supposed to be there. It was a surgical waiting room, after all, and we ICU people had inadvertently eaten the doughnuts and enjoyed the coffee which were intended for someone else.
When I got back, I found the family leaning against the wall outside the waiting room — trying not to cry they were laughing so hard at our mistake and and the volunteer's reaction. The kind cup of cold water had been snatched away because it was not meant for us.
Now, I don’t blame the volunteer in the pink smock. She was only doing her job as she understood it. And while it could've worked out to be hurtful, the family had a generous spirit and couldn't help but laugh.
As I went back to the church, I was still fuming a bit over what the lady did. I was running through my head all those little scenes where I marched over, all filled with righteous indignation. I hadn't done that, of course, but when I got back to my office I remembered another event from the day before.
That morning I sat in on a group at St. James that ran our homeless outreach, and since the church is so near the main homeless campus in Knoxville, it's a pretty big program. Eventually, the group started in on what they almost always started in on:
How do we make sure that the people we give money to actually use it for “good” and not for “bad”? Should we ONLY hand out food vouchers? Do we ask parishioners to refuse to give them a cool ten or twenty? How do we keep people from just going out and buying drugs or booze or wine? Essentially we were asking, “How do we get THOSE people to act more like us?”
Only this time, a young college student piped up with a story about being with friends in the city on a Friday night. A sketchy looking dude came up to them and asked for money. They pooled what they had and gave him enough to help him find a low-rent place indoors to sleep that night.
His face lit up, and she said he literally danced down the street as he made his way towards a good night’s sleep without having to watch his back at a shelter.
Everyone in the group just oohed and ahhed over how nice those students were, but you could tell there was a little hesitation. They didn't want to go to far in their praise because, after all, who's to say that the guy didn't actually...
And before anyone could actually say that out loud, this young woman continued her story. She went on to say that maybe he didn’t use it for housing that night. Maybe he went and spent it on cheap wine. She didn’t care. Either way, she figured he had a good night. “Sometimes,” she said, “when you're homeless and not even knowing if you'll survive the night, maybe a guy needs a drink.”
Now, I've worked with the homeless and homeless organizations since the late 80's, and what she said went against everything I’ve ever been taught about how to ‘give a cup of cold water’ to those who call the street home.
Even so, it was the most refreshing, generous stories I had heard in a long, long time, and it gave me a glimpse into the way Jesus calls us to be today: to give without judgment and without limit because one of God’s own is in need.
And remembering THAT story from then reminded me of what happened in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago. A group of folks, sitting in a parking lot of St. John's Lafayette Square, handing out water, were attacked during a protest over the death of George Floyd. And it wasn't the protestors or the looters or Antifa or Bolsheviks or NeoNazis or gangs or other assorted hoodlums who attacked them.
It was a group of people who, like that hospital volunteer so long ago, cannot understand that not everyone is like them and that those differences are to be feared.
So, people were harassed for handing out water. And for handing out water to other people without checking first if they were worthy of the water to begin with. And yes, that cool bottle of water may have revived a looter enough to continue looting somewhere else.
It may have given an Antifa person the strength to wander somewhere and try to yank a statue down. I have no doubt in my mind that among all the people that received water at St. John's before those souls were beaten back, there were bad people planning bad things.
But Jesus doesn't say we get a reward for doing it right. Our reward comes just from the doing. Jesus says, “Feed my sheep,” not “Screen my sheep.”
Look, y'all, I have a problem with disorder and vandalism and looting and rioting. It's scary and it makes me angry and goes against everything I believe about a just society. But so does abuse by law enforcement and a system that just seems incapable of treating others with dignity, charity, and love.
I want it all to stop so I can get back to the way things used to be. But I'm not really sure the way things used to be were ever the way they used to be, and they certainly weren't all that good for big swaths of our fellow citizens. . . and fellow Christians.
And as I've said before, I'm struggling in all this to find a place to stand. And it's going to take commitment on my part to admit when I'm wrong, to learn from that, and to keep trying, to keep listening, and to keep repenting.
But I do know this. Jesus hung with the sinners, and the crooks, and the drunkards, and the prostitutes and the poor and the sick and the downtrodden and the other. And at the very end of his life, he literally hung between two bandits and still offered love. And to all of them he gave them living water to drink. No questions asked.
Can we do any less?
Amen.