Solicitude
Notes
Transcript
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
There was something almost supernatural about Kristen. When circumstances were the toughest, she was the strongest. When conditions were bleak, she maintained hope. When everyone else was despondent, Kristen brought an aroma of joy to the room.
Anyone who met her thought that she was probably an angel. But Kristen was quite human. She was as real as anyone you’ve ever met. She liked ice cream, disliked taxes, loved animals, and cringed at the sight of spiders or slugs. Kristen was good, clean fun. She never made anyone feel belittled, awkward, or out of place.
If God makes himself visible in the lives of people, then he was visible in Kristen’s. A glimpse of Kristen was a peek at the character of God.
When Kristen finished college she began working for a local youth center helping at-risk kids in the community. At-risk was the label they’d been given by society—a label given to any kid born within a nine-block radius of the community center. Anyone living in the apartment complexes in this area was exposed to violence, drugs, and sexual immorality every day. The average family survived on one welfare check and one parent (usually a mom) and an average of 3.6 kids. Average welfare check in Georgia is right around $1,172 per month.
Kristen worked in a youth center for the last four years. Each day the youth center attracted kids aged three to 18. Kristen loved them all as if they were her own. The center was 4,000 square feet in a strip mall next door to a liquor store. Old, torn carpeting covered the floors. The ceiling featured a pattern of broken and missing ceiling tiles. Hand-me-down couches surrounded an old console TV broadcasting more green than anything else. Old Formica counters and five or six dented metal stools—looking like donations from the local high school wood shop class—stood in one corner.
A rich church member on the upper west side of town funded the center, but volunteers were few and far between, so Kristen ran it mostly by herself. On any given day you’d find her behind the snack bar, on the old sectional couch surrounded by a pile of kids, or at the corner tables helping kids with their homework.
Everyone loved Kristen.
Kristen loved everyone.
But then she met Garth. No one liked Garth.
Garth was one of those kids who was really hard to love. When he walked into the youth center for the first time, Kristen heard an audible moan from all the other kids. They didn’t even bother to whisper. They said, “What’s he doing here?” and “There goes the youth center!”
Kristen quickly learned why.
Garth was loud and repulsive—even more than your average fifth-grader. It’s hard to know where to begin to describe him. Apparently Garth didn’t believe in bathing, and even if you somehow overlooked his greasy, unkempt hair, there’s no way you could miss the putrid smell that floated around him wherever he went—a mix of dirty socks, locker-room stench…and onion ring belches.
His clothes caused some of the smell. They were filthy and worn. Garth always wore the same pair of pants, and usually his shirt was either one of only two T-shirts he owned, or a shoddy light blue button-up so dirty it looked like the car-repair guys in the auto shop across the street used it regularly as a rag.
To make matters worse, Garth always had a runny nose, and he apparently didn’t know about the invention of Kleenex. He always had dried snot crusted around the bottom of his nose, across his upper lip, and trailing across the back of his hand where he always wiped it. Most of Garth’s sentences ended with a deep snort, a second of silence, then a subtle chewing and swallowing.
The kids might’ve forgiven even this much—if not for his personality. Garth took things that didn’t belong to him. He fought with others constantly. He never did his own homework, but he did make sure to disturb others to keep them from doing theirs.
Garth had no social skills. He was impossible to have a conversation with. He was insulting, laughing loudly and awkwardly at his own jokes—if you could call them jokes. “Eeeew! Kristen eats booger sandwiches!”
Kristen had her own battles with Garth. Every day he’d come in and ask for free food from the snack bar. Kristen was one of the most generous people alive. She always provided free snacks at activities and events. But the daily snack bar only featured snacks for sale, and these weren’t movie theater prices, either. Seventy-five cents for a soda. Fifty cents for a candy bar. But every day Garth would beg, “Come on, Kristen, just hook me up with one candy bar. Who’s gonna notice one candy bar?”
Kristen would kindly reply, “Garth, I can’t give you special favors. You know everyone pays for candy.”
Garth would sometimes become unruly. “What a rip! Can’t even give away one candy bar. This place is sooooo lame!”
Kids usually came to Kristen’s defense before she even had a chance to respond. They couldn’t stand the sound of his whining. No one liked Garth. Kristen even found herself wincing at the sound of his voice.
One March, Kristen took the center’s elementary school kids on a field trip to the zoo. The school district provided buses, and local churches provided chaperones.
The trip went beautifully. The kids had a great time, no one got lost or injured, and by 5 p.m. the bus had dropped everyone off at the center.
Almost all the kids had left for home. Kristen stayed and chatted with the handful of students waiting for rides (because most walked home to the surrounding apartments). Finally the last student left with her ride.
Kristen locked up the center and was walking to her car when Garth walked out of the liquor store next door. He was looking down, drinking a soda, and hopping over lines on the sidewalk.
Instinctively, Kristen ducked her head and picked up the pace, hoping Garth wouldn’t see her. He was at least 20 feet behind her. Maybe he wouldn’t see.
“Kristen!”
No such luck.
She heard footsteps running up behind her. Kristen wished she could be anywhere else but on that sidewalk at that very moment. Before she even had a chance to turn around she felt his hand grab hers. “I’ll walk with you,” he said.
And he did, swinging Kristen’s hand as they walked.
Kristen’s first thought was, Oh, no. This is the snotty hand—the one with the dried slime trail on it. She literally cringed for a second.
She looked down at Garth’s dirty little face. He smiled back up at her without even taking the straw from his mouth.
And that’s when she heard it, almost audibly. She felt Jesus crying out, “Kristen, it’s me!”
That morning Kristen had read a passage in Matthew where Jesus talked about how we treat others. He described how someday he would gather everyone together and hold them accountable for what they’d done. He would turn to a certain righteous person and thank him for feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty something to drink, inviting strangers in, clothing the naked, looking after the sick, and visiting those in prison.
The funny thing about this passage is that this righteous person doesn’t even know about these acts of kindness. This person will ask Jesus, “When did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
And Jesus will say, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
As Kristen looked down at Garth—dirty, stinky Garth—she heard Jesus. “It’s me!”
At that moment she saw Garth differently. She actually held his crusty little hand just a little bit tighter, because she wasn’t just showing kindness to a poor fifth-grader named Garth—she was showing kindness to Jesus.
We all have a person like Garth in our lives. They are that person that acts strange in public. They are that person who smells a little strange. They are that person that we really don’t want to be around. They are that person that we need to be around and we need to offer solicitude. I don’t know how many of you have ever heard the word solicitude before but it means care or concern for someone or something.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus showed solicitude to others. He had compassion for those that no one else wanted to love. He walked with those who felt and were oppressed. He healed those who had been marginalized. He freed people from the laws of the Religious Leaders. It is hard for us to understand what it means to do these things because we miss understand the oppressed and marginalized. Our politics even divide us on this matter by saying it is not true or it is be a larger situation than we know. As disicples of Christ we must have solicitude or compassion for all of God’s creation no matter what the media or politicians tell us.