Lessons in Humility

Listening to: Let it Be...Naked


"To love another person is to see the face of God" - Les Miserables

This is one of those posts where I have a lot of ideas and a unifying theme but no idea how to string them together.  Here goes.

When I wrote that post on Saturday, I could have had absolutely no idea how challenging these next few days would be.  I don't mean "challenging" as in "difficult" - I mean it in the sense that they have challenged my perceptions of who I am and how I relate to people around me.  On Sunday, rather than go to the farmers' market, I went with several of our members to our sister congregation in Pavas.  I had heard a lot about this church, but had yet to see it myself.  They apparently used to be closer, but severed in some sense due to some relational issues a few months ago.  They invited us to their campus to celebrate Reformation Sunday together, and we had a great time (except I left my brand new Spanish Bible there on accident).  It was challenging because, as I told Heather, even a tiny candle looks awfully bright in a dark room.  Pavas is a shanty-town, much like the community next to my apartment, but not long ago a neighboring community which had become mired in a drug culture was forcibly evicted.  Naturally, a portion of them came into Pavas, and I had the privilege on Sunday to see several people sitting on the railroad tracks who didn't seem too sure where they were.  Unfortunately, many were looking in the bottom of a half-liter can (at 10am on a Sunday).  Theirs were the emptiest eyes I have ever seen.

After our worship and fellowship together in Pavas, we came back to San Sebastian for a few hours, then headed out for a sort of Reformation day party at the ILCO (Iglesia Luterana Costarricense).  I think twelve or more churches turned out, most of which were Lutheran.  It was a sort of mini-concert followed by something like a worship service with no sermon.  There were some great musicians and dancers there and I relished the chance to meet some new people.  More on that later, if I have time.  When it was time for the offering, Wendy and I played my jazz arrangement of A Mighty Fortress (yes, you read that correctly) on soprano sax and guitar respectively.  Heidi accompanied us with a little percussion and sang on the last verse.  I forgot to bring my A/V recorder, but if we get it recorded sometime soon I'll put it up.  It went reasonably well except that I got really thrown off when Heidi started singing and sort of lost my place for a minute.

After we finished, the presiding pastor got up to explain why everyone planning this event had decided against a sermon, talking about the Spirit's ability to work in whatever avenue he likes.  A man I had noticed slinking in a few minutes earlier kept chiming in with "I agree" and "Amen"-type comments, which made him a fish out of water at a Lutheran service (this is one of the funny similarities I keep noticing).  The man had obviously come in off the street - his shirt, wool jacket, pants, shoes, and hat were all worn down to rags.  He looked dirty, greasy, and defeated, but he was there.  He was so loud that, eventually, the pastor asked him if he wanted to give a message.  The man seemed confused and embarrassed, but the pastor kept encouraging him to address the rest of us.  He turned to us and thanked the young man who had brought him a cup of coffee and an empañada as he stood outside the church and told us how he just wanted to be a part of the music and the dancing and the celebration.  Then he did something completely unexpected: he reached into his coat and pulled out a bill worth about $10 and said he wanted to give it as an offering.  "Who will take this?" he asked, waving it around.  One of the church workers volunteered and walked toward him, and the man promptly crumpled the bill into a tiny ball in his hand.  "And now?"  The crowd was silent.  "Is it still worth something?  Is it worth any less just because it's crumpled and dirty?"  More silence, his raised fist still clenching the bill.  "Soy yo."  I'm not exactly sure how to translate this - maybe "this is me."  He began to tell us his story - how he had been in a horse riding accident, sustained a brain injury, lost his ability to work, and begun his life on the streets.  He kept reiterating that he wasn't drugged out or asking for money.  He told another story about fine china teapot whose owner put it on the highest shelf of his glass cabinet to show it off.  This made the teapot feel great.  One day, the teapot was knocked down and broke in half.  The owner threw it out into the yard, and the teapot felt worthless, and hopeless.  Then, one day, the owner was startled to find a flower growing in each half of the "useless" teapot.  He told another story, which I won't relay for time's sake, but at the end of it he just up and left - thanked us for the coffee and walked back out to the street when we went on to the next song.

I was thoroughly shaken by the experience.  What had I just seen?  Was it human?  This poor little old man had just walked into our prosperity and delivered three parables like I imagine Jesus would have done had he been there himself.  Had he?  I have no idea what song we sang - I was completely absorbed in contemplation.  Had I just seen the face of God?  The hand?

The pastor broke that contemplation - "had any of you ever seen that man before?"  To my surprise (and, honestly, my dismay), twenty or so hands shot up.  "How many of you have heard of __some name I didn't know__?"  A murmur went through the crowd.  The man, it turns out, is a Costa Rican actor.  He does events like this as a volunteer, and even as a pretty cynical actor I can tell you I was completely had the entire time.  He was unreal, and I felt so let down and embarrassed.  Of course it had been an actor - how could I have been so gullible?  God doesn't show his face in our world - that's biblical stuff.  I tried to put it out of my mind, but failed miserably.

As I kept thinking about this, something dawned on me.  The man had not been God or an angel, true, but I had seen the face of God in what he did.  God doesn't physically appear in this world - he shows himself through us.  Maybe this doesn't seem like a revelation to you.  Maybe you had to be there, but maybe you don't.  Maybe every one of us can find the value in the discarded, dirty, broken, and crumpled up people we see every day.  Maybe we can all do just a little bit more to tap that potential.  Maybe our mission in this world is to love our neighbor.  Maybe.

"To love mercy" and at the same time "to do justly" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is impossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement—"to walk humbly with God," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life. - Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics

Just in case you haven't stopped reading, I have one final tidbit (though I could easily keep writing for another few hours).  Yesterday, I went to teach my class at HP.  It went well enough, but I left my umbrella in the classroom in my rush to get out after we went a few minutes late.  The weather, like usual, noticed and took advantage of the situation.  I only had to walk about half a mile in the rain, but my clothes were saturated in the first ten steps or so.  I must have been quite the sight - a clean cut businessman in a shirt and tie carrying a laptop case but no umbrella, soaked to the bone.  I walked by many people in that half mile from a wide range of backgrounds, but even those carrying a plastic bag and wearing the rest of their possessions had an umbrella.  In that moment, I wasn't the fortunate one.  I was the poor man, poorer in at least one respect than every person I saw.  This probably doesn't sound like much, but it really impacted me.  Fortune can be a very fleeting thing, and while we should be thankful for what we have doing so shouldn't give us a license to look past the have-nots nor to view them as inferior.  They're every bit as human as the rest of us, and we could involuntarily join their ranks at any moment.  I'll close with a quote from Bono, of all people:

All the other religions of the world teach karma. Only Jesus teaches grace.  Unfortunately, in most instances, even Christianity teaches karma. - Bono, Larry King Live

If you're curious to hear a little more of Bono's theology, read this interview, especially the second half.   It's a different interview, but I think it makes his stance a little more clear.