Half Mast
I think we should cut the flag poles in half.
That way, we can mourn but still have some sense of
Normalcy.
We haven’t used the top halves in years anyway.
What with so many cyclones, and earthquakes,
Tsunamis, wars, famines, and
High gas prices
Going on all the time.
I don’t know why
I watched a show on the history channel tonight about locusts. It was absolutely horrifying. I wanted to stop watching, but I couldn’t. It blew my mind to see clouds of locusts, bringing instant famine wherever they decide to land by whatever random hand sets them down. Did you know that in 1874, a cloud of locusts covered 198,000 square miles of the western United States? That’s an estimated 12.5 trillion locusts. They blacked out the sun for days. That has to be the scariest thing I’ve ever heard of.
And they had all of this home video footage of locusts swarming fields in Africa and India and I got really tense watching all of this, worrying about food supplies and just how many people would die because of these stupid bugs. People for bugs. It’s maddening to think about.
Then I watched this show about earthquakes. They talked about this phenomenon called “earthquake lights” that occurs in the sky before, during, and/or after an earthquake. Lots of scientists doubted that it actually occurs until recently when they caught it on video. I looked it up on youtube and sure enough, there’s footage of these lights above Peru last year. The video is one of the eeriest things I’ve ever seen. People are huddled around in the street, marveling at the beautiful blue lights in the sky. Tranquilo, tranquilo. Calm down, calm down. There’s nervous laughter and oohs and ahhs. I can’t understand the spanish enough to know if the video is from before or after the quake. But imagine standing in the street staring at those lights. And then the earth begins to shake. It shook for 3 minutes, a magnitude 8.0 quake, killing over 500 people that night. And then there were the tsunami warnings. I can’t wrap my mind around those three minutes of terror followed by hours of waiting for a giant wave to wipe me and my town off the map. All the while, there are beautiful lights dancing on the sky above the suffering. The blue lights flash for a moment, just long enough to light up the roads, revealing the terrible scene all around: bodies and debris. And then the lights disappear again and there’s just darkness and fear.
I’ve don’t think I’ve ever been in a real situation of fear before (fear for my life). I’ve had plenty of moments when I knew I should be afraid but for whatever reason, it just didn’t click in. But I’ve never had a moment of complete vulnerability like being at the mercy of an earthquake in the darkness, or like being covered by a cloud of famine.
But it’s happening everyday. There’s the cyclone in Myanmar and just yesterday an earthquake killed 13,000+ people in China! It’s these kinds of things that make no sense to me. With man-made problems, I at least feel like I can identify a culprit (usually myself) and do something to address the root of the problem and make sure it happens less often in the future (theoretically anyway, efficacy and hope are completely different conversations). I can theoretically scratch problems of extreme wealth inequality, for example, by supporting things like micro-loans, debt forgiveness, fair trade policies, etc. But I can’t stop earthquakes and I can’t figure out who to blame.
And I suppose the point of this is that I just feel like a locust, waiting to be stepped on.
feasts
I went to the UMIN leaders end of the year banquet tonight. It’s essentially a giant feast, held downtown at this place called FoodLife (basically an enormous all you can eat food court with enormous portions). I have a number of friends who look forward to this all year, so I decided to go.
There was much to celebrate tonight because I believe in North Park’s University Ministries department and the people who work there. The Christian community I’ve experienced there has been challenging and wholistic, accepting and formational. It is a community that I am proud of and it was a good thing to celebrate the year with so many good people.
But when I was there something just didn’t sit right. There were a number of times when I just felt a great weight on me, something pressing down on my back as I walked and my legs as I sat. It wasn’t so much the gluttony of the party because I’m all for a good celebratory feast now and then. Nor was it even the huge amounts of wasted food.
But I walked in circles around the dimly lit cafeteria floor beneath spotlighted restaurants, cooks simmering stir fry, steam rushing up and teryaki in my nose. I paced the floor, undecided and wandering. Thai food or pasta? Baked potatoes, recommended to me, or the pizza? The more I walked, the more unsettled I got and the more it hurt.
And as the speakers stood up to give their thanks to the leaders for their year of work, I was thankful when Judy finally asked us to bow our heads to pray so that I could hide my knotted face behind my hands and take a deep breath, slowly letting out emotion that I hated feeling. People are starving in this very city while we feast. People will be struggling to scrape together bus fare while I ride my shiny new bike across America this summer, all expenses paid. Children are gunned down and mothers have no consolation while I park my car under security cameras.
There is disparity and there is a gap that I’ve fallen into and can’t get out of. There are the rich and the comfortable and the feasting and the jubilant. And there is the chasm and there are the people who hassle me on the way back to the subway and those asleep on the subway who have given up asking and resigned to a hard plastic chair as a mattress. And I feel this gap more and more. No longer is it just something that I see and that angers me but I feel it and its a painful gash and it’s a wound that stings.
Luke 14:12-24
Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
The Parable of the Great Banquet
When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”
Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’
“But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’
“Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’
“Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’
“The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
” ‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’
“Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’ “
The parable kept bouncing around in my head as I looked around the room of college kids. Where are the poor? Where are the outcast? Where are the hungry? I found out that there were extra wristbands to the event, so I called a homeless friend. Bob came over a little after that and he joined the feast with us. We laughed together and old friends were reunited in that room. We joked and ate and celebrated a table where we were equal for a moment and where we were the same and where we could celebrate with one another. And I could breathe and I could relax and rest because for the first time I found something at the party that I believed i
People told me that I did a wonderful thing by inviting him over. People tell me I’m such an example. But they’re wrong. It was nothing extraordinary but simply something that I needed. It was something that felt right. It was the only thing that felt right.
I long for a day when inviting a homeless man to a feast is not noteworthy, but simply normal.
The point I’m trying to make has very little to do with tonight’s party. I’m not advocating some kind of homeless quota every time two or more are gathered. But tonight did get me thinking about how we do ministry, because I don’t want to live in a world where we have charity and then we have our normal lives. Friday Night Homeless Ministries has been a wonderful presence in my life these past three years, and it was there that I met Bob. But if I’m serious about loving the people I meet on these streets, I cannot in good conscience celebrate something in my life without their presence. I cannot feast while they starve. Because when I begin to know and love Bob, I need to know that he is not a partitioned-off section of my life but a companion in my life. Sure, there are a thousand parts of our relationship that I wish were different and sure, our relationship may simply be me listening and laughing to the same repeated stories. But I want those stories to be told next to mine. I want the names of the poor to be on my lips and not unknown, sleeping on trains
Because parties are so much better when there’s something truly beautiful to celebrate. See, there’s a kingdom to celebrate and it’s a kingdom that is infinitely more inclusive than I can imagine. Invite the poor, because they’re beautiful. Invite the rich, because they have so much to give and so much to learn. Invite the black. Invite the white. Invite the gay and invite the straight. Invite the slave and the free, the Republican and the Democrat. Because there’s a kingdom to celebrate, and I want to get to it. Because it’s really painful to mourn this gap and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to do it, for I am tired. And because the kingdom is worth celebrating.
