Walk on by

I’d walked right by.

I hadn’t given him the slightest notice, standing there sheltered in the doorway, not until Mary, walking right beside me, stopped, turned and spoke to him by name. I stood there, two or three paces past, suspended in that awkward moment of indecision, looking for a cue to my next move while they chatted, briefly. With a quick farewell, she turned back to me. As we walked through the night’s misty chill she mentioned his name and that he was a regular guest at the warming center where she is a volunteer. He was waiting, she said, for the doors to open in an hour or so. He said he’d be fine until then.

So we went on with our lives.

The poor, Jesus said, would always be with us.

And sure enough, they are.

We’d rather not be reminded of that, though. Here we are, living in a country with more stuff than we rightly know what to do with; more food than we ought to eat, every house that goes up a room or two bigger than the last and still we rent space to store the stuff we don’t need, don’t use but have convinced ourselves we can’t live without.

That’s the most of us, anyway.

And that most-of-us would rather not be reminded of folks like that almost unknown man standing quietly in a darkened doorway.

Especially at this time of year. And for a lot of reasons.

For one thing, it’s cold outside and seeing him there, bundled in whatever he can find against a penetrating Minnesota December sends an involuntary shudder as we’re reminded of how our own lease, mortgage or other living arrangement is quite tenuously dependent on the tender mercies of far-off corporate policy-makers, faceless funding agencies, and economic vagaries that keep us one, maybe two paychecks away from the poorhouse.

Yeah, poor people scare us … because, in truth, the-most-of-us are poor people who momentarily have a little extra money. So easily they can be us.

And with that fear comes no small measure of guilt. It’s hard not to sense a sort of irony in finding Christmas candy at a food shelf and the homeless shelter decorated for the holidays. We’re all Christian enough to be familiar with the story and to be acutely aware that when we turn people away there is plenty of room in the inn. Or would be, if that were our choice.

It’s true, you know, people are poor by choice … it’s just not their choice.

Somewhere along the line we – that amorphous collective we that ratifies and prolongs whatever it is that we choose not to change – decided that some folks could be left behind. That some folks, for whatever reason – never a very good one – didn’t need, didn’t deserve as much food to eat as we do, as warm and secure a place to sleep as we have, and therefore, a paycheck adequate to provide those things and the other things we seem to need, but don’t feel to be so important for some others.

That’s the choice we’ve made … and keep on making. And we’re comfortable enough with it. At least until someone steps out of the shadows and suddenly there is a face and a name and it looks like us.

Yes, Jesus hit it when he said “the poor will be always with you.” Strip away that thin film of affluence and there we are.

Reason enough to finally choose to make more room in the inn. For us. For everybody.