Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Worth the Risk

A few months ago I bought a turkey and cheese sandwich, a red delicious apple and a piece of chocolate cake for a man standing outside Super Saver with a cardboard sign that read, “Will work for food.”

I drove by him on my way into the store, and as I wheeled my cart past piles of succulent peaches and down aisles stacked floor to ceiling with liters of Coke and bags of Ruffles, I couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the ratty Army jacket with the rumpled duffle bag sitting slack at his feet. Truthfully, I didn’t want to buy food for him, and I didn’t want to approach him on my way out of the parking lot. I was afraid, nervous about what he might say. Would we have to talk? Would he berate me for giving him food instead of money? Would he say something creepy?

Part of me wondered skeptically if the man was for real. Was this some sort of scam? Was he really homeless? Did he really need food? Or was he just out to make a fool out of me?

All these thoughts swam through my head as I pushed my cart up and down the aisles. I actually fought the instinct to help. I tried to talk myself out of it. I tried to convince myself that he would be gone by the time I was done, or that someone else would have offered him money and he would be just fine.

In the end, though, what compelled me to buy the sandwich and the apple and the cake and hand it through my van window to the man on the corner was this: once the idea that I should help skittered through my mind, I couldn’t ignore it. Maybe it was part guilt, maybe it was part obligation, but in the end, I couldn’t say no. Try as I might, I couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist. I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen him.

I remembered that incident this morning when Pastor Sara preached on Matthew 25:31-46, and especially when she said this:

“Once we have seen, we can’t go back and pretend we haven’t.”

And that’s exactly Jesus’ challenge to us when he separates the sheep from the goats in those verses in Matthew. On his right are the blessed: those who saw and acted. And on his left are the cursed: those who saw the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the poor, the sick and the imprisoned and looked the other way. The cursed are the ones who pretended they didn’t see.

After my experience with the homeless man at the grocery store, I wrote about the encounter here, and later, someone kindly chided me for being taken in by his ploy. At first I felt embarrassed, sheepish – after all, who likes to be seen as a fool? The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I didn’t care. It didn’t matter who that man actually was or who he claimed to be, and it wasn't for me to decide.

In the end, I decided I’d rather risk being seen as a fool than risk not seeing at all.

Linking with Jen and the Soli Sisters:

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