Mother's Feet

I don't know how your life of faith works, but mine is all about the rabbit trails. Every once in a while something catches my attention -- in Scripture, in culture, from an experience, or from a speaker I've heard -- and I find myself engaged in the subject wanting to know more and more about it, trying to get underneath it to really understand what God is teaching me from another point of view. I've done this with authors (Brennan Manning), music (U2 and Rich Mullins), churches (I studied the Catholic Church for over a year to try and understand its teachings), Saints (St. Francis -one cool dude) and monastacism. I find that the more I try and understand these Christians, or these different expressions of the Christian faith, the more my own faith grows. Plus, you can become really interesting at dinner parties (just kidding).

Anyways, my current rabbit trail has to do with what it means for us to identify with the poor. This is a tough one for me, someone who has grown up in the upper middle-class, privaleged USA. I love the poor and "the least of these" and I'm sure all of us who profess Christ say we do. But how do I love them with my life?

In about September, the magazine Christianity Today had a cover story on a guy named Shane Claiborne, who is the co-founder of The Simple Way, which is a group of Christians who have chosen to live together in the poorest section of Philadelphia, to unite with the poor, the homeless and the oppressed, in an effort to live out their Christian faith in the radical way that Jesus did. A few months later I heard Shane speak (on-line, not in person) on a book he has just written about his convictions and the genesis of The Simple Way. The book is called The Irresistable Revolution and if you want a book that will rock your world, pick it up. I guarantee you will be offended in your sensibilities, but also convicted in your spirit.

In a nutshell, Claiborne is about 30 years old (I'm guessing), grew up in East Tennessee living the quintessential Christian life. He had a nice big church, was popular at youth group, went to lots of camps and church activities, and stayed pretty well sheltered in his Christian life. But after reading more and more about Jesus, he came to see that he was believing in Jesus, but wasn't doing too much to follow him. At college in Philadelphia, he and his friends started hanging out with the people that Jesus hung out with -- the left-outs of society, the homeless, the poor, the disadvantaged. Eventually the call was so strong that he started a community living among these people (who were now his people), and encouraging sheltered, privileged white folks like me to come and experience community, love, and Jesus amidst the one's Jesus called "blessed" (the least of these).

One summer, Shane went to Calcutta to work with Mother Theresa. He tells this story (p.167).
"Mother Theresa was one of those people who sacrificed great privilege because sheencountered such great need. People often ask me what Mother Theresa was like. Sometimes it's like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery, like a beautiful, wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never forget -- her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn't going to ask, of course. "Hey Mother, what's wrong with your feet?" One day a sister said to us, "Have you noticed her feet?" We nodded, curious. She said, "Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck wiht the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feat." Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet."

Mother Theresa's challenge is Claiborne's challenge in this book. Loving our neighbors makes our feet deformed. And our hands, and mouths, and legs, and everything that we hold, say and go do. For Claiborne this is the Irresistible Revolution -- loving each other in our brokenness with the love of Jesus Christ. It is contageous.

Have you ever read a book that is so powerful, but you don't know quite what to do with it? This is proving to be one of those books for me. My prayer is that I might know what it means for me and my family (and our church) to have our hearts broken (and our feet deformed) with the brokenhearted who Jesus loves. I hope you wrestle with that too.

Jeff