“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” —Matthew 25:40
He shows up every Monday while we drink something from Starbucks in the lobby of the Piggly Wiggly. He wears the same clothes all year. It is the uniform of a homeless man—tired sneakers, khaki pants stained and strained from constant wearing. A scruff of beard and a tangle of hair protrude from a sweat-stained hoodie. Head on chest, he scans the floor from hooded eyes. In the basket of his borrowed grocery cart a half-filled plastic bag, the repository of the man’s worldly belongings. He makes his way to a microwave oven on the counter. We watch his weathered hand transfer a bagel remnant from bag to oven.
On this cold, blustery morning we wonder where he spends the nights. Our town has no viaducts, no homeless shelter, only a battered barn where winds blow through the gaps and rats nest in the straw.
We look away, lest his gaze embarrass us. We go back to talking about bargains at Costco, the outrageous rise of co-payments at doctors’ offices, the annoying proliferation of spam calls. We talk IRAs, 401Ks, the Nasdaq’s fluctuations.
We forget the ragged man warming his bagel in the store microwave. He doesn’t bother us; we don’t bother him. Our worlds are so far apart that there seems no bridge long enough.
Do any of us wonder why he shows up every Monday morning during our café latte time? Is it something more than coincidence? We can choose to ignore him, a dirty old man, an “embarrassment” to civility and clean living. It’s not why he came, but his presence here could be seen as providential, to make us uncomfortable and get us to move, for a brief time, from our world of ease and plenty to his world of scraping by and despair. Perhaps he’s the wounded man for whom the Good Samaritan took a chance. Maybe he’s the prophet Micah reminding us that the Lord is less interested in outward shows of piety than in walking humbly, acting justly, and loving mercy.
It's not likely we can do anything much about rehabilitating him, curing his schizophrenia. Maybe he doesn’t want help. But he’s here and we can’t deny his presence. Yet we would prefer to ignore him, to go on talking trivia and forget that trivia for the dirty, homeless man in the room is a crust of bread in a restaurant dumpster, a table in the library on which to rest his head.
He makes us uncomfortable, and that might (should?) be a beginning.
About the Author
Hank Ottens is a retired orthopedic surgeon and an active gardener, photographer, and singer. He attends Second Christian Reformed Church in Grand Haven, Mich.