A Walking Shame Part 1

Once a month I have the opportunity to preach at a local Rescue Mission. Honestly, it is my favorite piece of "formal ministry" that I get to do, and I walk away humbled and grateful for the example of the men in the program.  Most of these dudes aren't just looking for their best life now, they are seeking God like starving men looking for bread.  They are parched and dying and seeking water.  And when they get a crumb or a drop they receive it just like a treasure, in gratitude and rejoicing.  I leave every time praying for the same desperation, and find myself uncomfortable with my place in a spiritual palace filled with fine foods and the richest wines available.  I have a leather bound study bible that cost nearly $100. I have access to any podcast by people with names like Keller, Piper, Driscoll, Merrick, Chan.  I have commentaries, both contemporary and vintage.  Spurgeon's sermons, Bonhoeffer's books, the distilled best theologizing of Calvin and Luther. I have a literal feast before me: and in some ways I, in my spiritual gluttony, have come to feel contempt for the table.  The beggar at the feast is a far more appropriate guest than the glutton.  These guys, with their torn up paperback bibles, lack of access to anything outside their daily classes and tasks, feast off every tasty morsel that comes their way.  I am always humbled and inspired by these men who are committing themselves to the discovery of God and His work in the world.

But that wasn't the case when I first started.  I walked in the first day a year ago, nervous because preaching is scary, but super excited to drop all kinds of awesomeness on these guys.  Like most western missionaries, I assumed I was doing them a huge favor by being there. What happened next was truly a gift from God:

I am sitting on a bench in the foyer of the mission, doing my very best to look "street" while maintaining a hipster air (I had non-skinny jeans but still had a plaid shirt on).  This guy rolls up to me, looks at my shoes and asks me, "Hey, are those Wazzco's?" Well, I just happened to be wearing my newly purchased pair of black Tom's, so I took this as an opportunity to dive into the charitable business model of this particular shoe company.  [For those of you who don't know, Tom's shoes donates a pair of a shoes to someone in need for every pair that you purchase.  I love the heart behind it, I love that they have found a way to provide a service while enabling people to participate in caring for the poor and needy.  It is an all-around good idea and I think it has huge implications for the future of both business and charity. It is not a perfect program but I totally recommend it, and finding other venues to copy it.]  So I was feeling particularly good about my answer: here I was preaching the Gospel to the "least of these" while wearing shoes that had provided for even more of the "least of these."  But this tattooed gentleman just gave me an uncertain, slightly condescending, look and said, "Oh... well they look just like the ones we got issued at Wasco." He had said Wasco.... as in Wasco State Penitentiary. And then he walked off, along with the opportunity to discover anything about him (I never saw him at the mission after).  Here was a man trying to relate to me on a very human level, and in my spiritual cloud of holy self-righteousness I had completely missed it... and that is a shame.

This is Tom's shoe.... not mine... he gets all the credit...

The sadness is this: I had been more concerned with what my shoes revealed about me than what the God of the Universe might want to reveal to this man.  Somewhere in my sobriety, ministry, Christian walk, and coming out of brokenness, I had lost the actual ability to speak the language of brokenness.  That is like a western missionary going to foreign country and demanding that the people he meets speak only English. God totally checked my heart in that moment.

The humor is this: I was wearing a pair of shoes that I thought, on some level, broadcasted me as a "good Christian," but the only implication it gave to this other person was that I was a convict that had done hard time.  And honestly, had I been arrested for some of the other illegal activities I has been a part of that would have been absolutely true! Here I was thinking my shoes were special and made me look like something grand, when in reality they were exactly the same ones they give to criminals.  AND THIS IS THE TRUTH OF HUMANITY! No matter how gussied up we are on the outside, no matter what good works we think we are doing, no matter what impression we are trying to broadcast to the world around us, and even to God, we are all just wearing prison shoes...

Part 2 to come...