Under a bridge in Austin

Monday, August 5, 2024

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Under a bridge in Austin

Jesus said to his disciples, “There is no need for the people to leave for food; give them some food yourselves.” They had five loaves and two fish, so Jesus blessed them, broke them and the disciples gave them to the crowds.

Ron Rolheiser quotes a favorite author in the following piece he wrote three years ago. When we approach the throne of grace we will be asked one question, “Where are the others?”

Personally, I have a different assurance of God’s presence when I’m with others, and especially when we are blessing each other. We keep $5 bills in the car to give to people on Austin street corners when they ask. Sometimes. Andi and Aki kept two sleeping bags in their van as the tepid Texas winter approached, to give away. We pray for our neighbors, sometimes with an app which includes their names and other times, anonymously. We give to our church, which gives to many others.

Of course, that is not enough. It is never enough. We have more than enough and somehow, it would be best if we gave it all away.

God’s presence does not demand that I do that. It’s just the right thing to do. But instead we keep what we have to pay bills we do not always need to incur, and pay for insurances we rarely use. But … you never know.

Of course, we can also say, we DO know. God is in charge of those unexpected moments, whether a hurricane or a heart attack.

Gratitude depends on generosity, ours and others. We are all in this together.

Here is Ron Rolheiser:

A woman shared her anxiety about the death of her brother. Her older brother had died from the Covid virus because he had dangerously exposed himself. However, he had a worthy reason. A military veteran, living alone, he used much of his salary and savings to cook meals and take them to feed homeless people living under a bridge in his hometown, Austin, Texas. A noble, Christian death, except that in his adult life he had lost any explicit faith in God and in Jesus. He simply didn’t believe in God or go to church anymore.

His sister loved him deeply, admired his feeding the homeless, but worried about his dying outside of an explicit faith and the church.

At a gut-level, his sister knew that this could not be true.

What does one say in the face of that?  A number of things might be said. Jesus assures us that God reads the heart in all its existential complexity – not a written rubric but the goodness of a heart. As well, scripture describes God as ‘a jealous God’. This doesn’t mean God gets jealous and angry when we are preoccupied with our own things or when we betray God through weakness and sin. Rather, it means that God, like a solicitous parent, never wants to lose us and seeks every possible means to keep us for slipping away and hurting ourselves. Moreover, God has a universal will for salvation, and that means for everyone, including agnostics and atheists.

Jesus gives us a parable of a man who has two sons and he asks them both to work in his field. The first son says that he will not do it, but in fact ends up doing it; the second son says he will do the work, but ends up not doing it. Which is the true son? The answer is obvious, but Jesus reinforces the parable with this comment: It is not necessarily those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of God on earth.

As well, we have Jesus’ shocking warning in Matthew 25 about how we ultimately will be judged for heaven or hell, namely, on whether or not we served the poor. This warning does not suggest that explicit faith and church attendance are of no consequence; they have their importance, but it is warning that there are things that are more important.

Finally, and perhaps most far-reaching in this regard, Jesus gives us the power to bind and loose. As parts of the Body of Christ, our love, like Jesus’ love, keeps a loved one connected to the community of salvation. As Gabriel Marcel puts it, to love someone is to say, you can never be lost. This woman’s love for her brother assures that he is not in hell.

All of this I might have said to her, but instead I simply referred to a wonderful quote from Charles Peguy the noted French poet and essayist. Peguy once suggested that when we die and appear before God, each of us will be asked this one question: “Where are the others?” (“Ou sont les autres?”) When her brother stood before God and was asked the question (Where are the others?) he had a very good answer: They are under a bridge in Austin.

(Jeremiah 28, Psalm 119, Matthew 4, Matthew 14)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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