Jesus, Compassion And JusticeSample

Responding With Love

My neighbors were evicted yesterday. I came home to find their worldly belongings - a couple of dirty sheets, a filthy pink pillow and assorted clothing - piled in a puddle outside my front door.

They had previously been living crammed together in one of the tiny, windowless rooms that line our alleyway. Apparently our landlord (the same tough old lady owns a bunch of the housing around here) decided that their drunken arguments were too much to put up with. So mother, father, and four kids ranging from ages 1 to 12 were thrown out on the street. They were gone before I even realized it.

A bleak existence just became bleaker.

But here’s the dilemma. There’s no doubt that the mother’s relentless drinking and fighting contributed to the situation they now find themselves in. She was hard to like and even harder to help. She neglected her kids in order to sit drinking and playing cards with the neighbors. She would scream at her daughters when they forgot to cook the rice or wash the clothes, while she sat around doing nothing. So, why should I help her?

Have you ever noticed that there’s something in our human nature that seeks to divide people on the margins, into the “deserving poor” and the “undeserving poor”?

On the one hand, a trash-talking alcoholic who neglects her kids in order to play cards all day is easily deemed “undeserving”. While the four innocent children affected by her behavior are clearly “deserving”. I bet I could raise a ton of money to help those kids. But I’d be hard-pressed to get folks to help that woman.

What I want to suggest to you today, is that asking whether people are “deserving” or “undeserving” is the wrong question. And when you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer - every single time.

In Matthew 25, Jesus does not categorize people based on whether they had sinned...or not. Nor did He judge them by whether they had already had multiple chances...or not. His call was simply to reach out to those whose needs are unmet and love them: “I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was unclothed. I was in prison. I was sick.”

So, the question is not, whether this person is “deserving” or “undeserving”. Dig beneath the surface and you quickly realize that no one, including you or me, is really “deserving”. But instead, the question is this:

How can I best extend God’s love to this person today? or… What action will be the most loving and transformational in this person’s life?

These questions invite us to step away from judgment and towards transformation. These questions allow us to respond with the kind of grace Jesus first offered to us.

One night a couple of weeks ago, I heard the sound of sobbing outside my front door. I switched on the lights and opened the door to find my alcoholic neighbor lying shivering on the ground, weeping and moaning. She’d had too much to drink and was nursing a swollen eye.

She’d had another argument with her husband and was settling down to sleep it off outside. To top it off, she was in the advanced stages of her pregnancy. Not a great combination.

I kneeled down beside her, trying to avoid the filth she was lying in: rat’s droppings, trash and mud. And I listened to her talk about her problems for a while. She was at rock bottom and she knew it. But she couldn’t see a way out.

From almost any perspective, people could easily label her “undeserving”. The list of her sins would be almost as long as the list of my own. But I know God doesn’t see her in those mean-spirited categories. He only sees a beloved daughter who desperately needs love, and grace, and forgiveness, and transformation.

My calling in that moment, and in every interaction with her since, is simply to extend love and grace, and try to help her find a better pathway. I know that Jesus can heal her and set her free.

She may not be what most folks would think of as “deserving”. And neither are you or I. 

And that makes us the perfect candidates for grace.