Eating

I didn’t realize he was asking for food until I was 5 steps into the building. All I’d seen was “black male, poor, asking me for something.” So I assumed he wanted money and, without listening, said what I’d been planning to say a block away when I first saw him, “I’m sorry” and walked in. But as I walked in, it hit me that he’d really asked me to buy him something to eat…not in the soliciting way, but in the desperate, soft way that said, if I had seen him as a person at all, that he was hungry. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel like giving him anything…I was scared of him, of being taken advantage of, of all the urban legends that are probably more true than I even know. I mean, I am a naïve white female, and I don’t think anyone would describe me as being street smart. So I’m sure there’s something to all of that.

Earlier that day, the pastor at my church had been preaching on the Eucharist. When Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” he meant, quite literally that we are to eat him…to take in his life and be filled with it in the same way that food fills us and give us life. He is, in fact, food. When he said “Whoever feeds on this bread will live for ever”, the word he used meant “gnaw, chew”. So Jesus was inviting others to chew on him, to eat him, to devour him and his life. It doesn’t make much sense, he said, but how amazing is it that when God needed a way to get his life in us, he chose to do so through one of the most basic needs of all of creation…eating.

And because hunger is such an elementary need, it shouldn’t have surprised me to have someone asking me for food. I mean, I’ve even been there…the hungry student who just wants to go to a home where there cupboard is stocked and someone made a really good, fresh meal for you. But, like I said, it wasn’t out of stinginess that I didn’t say “Of course…wait here I’ll be right back”. It was because I hadn’t even tired to look at him the way Jesus would have-a fact that struck me pretty hard about halfway through the display of overpriced journals with lined pages and quotes on the cover that mean next to nothing. It was as if every image I’d ever had of Jesus helping the poor came running through my head…Sunday school felt boards, Wheaton chapel services, support letters from missionaries, Bono, one after another. (I tend to think of my life like a music video sometimes). My immediate thought was “Oh CRAP! That was my chance to be show Jesus to someone and I blew it!”

But instead of turning around and finding him, I went straight back to the café and ordered a barbeque sandwich to bring back to him. I still don’t know why I didn’t go get him, although it was probably because I was embarrassed. As I waited for it to be heated up, all I could think was “Please let him still be there, PLEASE let him still be there”. He probably had already gone through 20 or more rejections that day. And who likes being rejected? All these people, who clearly have money because they’re going into Borders, walk by and say no. I didn’t want to be another one of those people in his life. I’ve been there before in a relationship where there just isn’t any grace. And I never want to be that person in someone’s life who might be right and might be fair, but who you can’t make a mistake around. And I’ve been there, too, where someone lets you fail and still loves you, even though it doesn’t make sense. You know they’re only doing that because they see past all your junk and into the life you hope exists in you. And I mean hope not in the wishful thinking way, but in the knowing even though you don’t always feel it way.

And again my life became a music video that was rapidly firing the faces of people I love. I thought of how much I wanted to bring out the life in them, not stifle it.

Jesus wanted to get his life to us and told us to eat his bread. “This bread is my flesh, which I have given for the life of the world.” And there I had been, not even giving someone the very thing that brings life to us at its most basic level. The more I stood there waiting for the sandwich, the more urgent it seemed to me that I get it to him, that I make up for my stupid presumptions, and that, through giving him a meal, I make up for all the times I hadn’t shown grace to everyone else in my life.

I was ready, as I walked quite briskly past the journals again, to be the hero, the one he remembered that made his day. I pictured myself handing him the bag pretty triumphantly and feeling pretty good about myself after I was done because it was exactly what Jesus would have done for him. But he wasn’t there. Maybe he got tired of asking people for food. Or maybe, hopefully, someone else more generous than me came along and bought him a better meal that I did. Maybe I’m not the only person on earth that God can use to show people his grace. But it’s really cool that we get to…even though we mess up.