Keeping God at a Distance: Turning Into Christ and Toward the Poor

Ryan Fasani and Eric Paul-

Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near.

“Now I’m a church going woman, but we have a problem here in Antioch, and it’s the homeless. I work in a service station and these people steal ice…Nashville has a bad reputation for being soft on the homeless. This community is in danger. We don’t want them here.” I (Eric) sat and listened to her demonize God’s children, responding to her new homeless neighbors more in anger and fear than thoughtfulness and love. This woman spoke in one breath of her Christian faith and in the other breath her dissatisfaction toward the temporary relocation of Tent City.

Tent City, under the Hermitage Avenue Bridge, was the home to nearly 150 homeless neighbors until The Flood in May of this year. With most of their assets awash in the rising Cumberland, many found shelter with the Red Cross at Lipscomb University. But emergency shelter is only temporary, and in just a week, these homeless brothers and sisters relocated—this time to a privately owned field in Antioch leased to them by the owner.

A Town Hall Meeting was called to address this ‘problem’ that had now invaded Antioch. A cacophony of voices formed a unified front against those who had nowhere else to go. The same phrase repeated throughout the night: “We love the homeless, but…” We can all finish the sentence, because we all feel the tension. If we’re honest, our Christian faith and our actions toward those that are without home are at odds.

We believe in the value of all of God’s children (Psalm 139:14), but when we pass a man or woman on the street, we pretend they are not there. We believe that status and prestige are turned over in Jesus’ ministry (Luke 14:12-13), but when we sit by them on the bus we turn our noses. We believe scripture calls us to model God’s hospitality (Rom 12:10-13), but when they approach our churches we lock the doors for fear that they might steal, or worse, unsettle our public image.

I (Eric) once met with a pastor of a downtown church who told me that they lock the doors on a Sunday morning because the homeless make the worshippers nervous. What makes these people such a threat? Sometimes I think the church needs a third work of grace, another conversion.

Mark’s Gospel begins with John the Baptist preaching a message of repentance, a call for conversion. Jesus then proclaims this same message once John is in prison (Mark 1:15). To repent, literally means a slow turn. It is not a coincidence then that John’s message came with a call for baptism. Baptism, as the church carries the tradition, is the ritual that dramatizes one’s turning away from the powers and systems that bring death and turning toward new life and hope in Christ’s resurrection (Romans 6). In the early church, this was literally demonstrated when the catechumen (an individual being baptized or confirmed) would turn from facing the West to the East, in anticipation of Christ’s return. After baptism, the catechumen would then join the fellowship of believers for worship in Holy Communion. The whole process narrates a turn (conversion) from isolation toward fellowship in the body of Christ.

In other words, baptism turns us toward and ties us to one another and to Christ. To be converted to Christ also means that we are converted to one another. John puts it this way, “Since God so loved us, so we ought to love one another” (1 John 4:15). Baptism, then, in the words of NT Wright, “is more than merely an image of unity-in-diversity; it’s a way of saying the church is called to do the work of Christ, to be the means of his action in the world.” Baptism teaches that to be Christian is not to think one is Christian. It is not a cognitive assent to predetermined doctrine. To be Christian is to be grafted into the practices that form one as a Christian.

But, what happens when the church neglects certain people based on economic status? It appears that the church as Christ’s body and our actions toward the poor are at odds. In short, we don’t embody Christ well in the world. “The church loves the homeless, but…” The church is in need of a slow turn from practices that are destructive and toward ones that serve life.

If our presupposition from earlier articles stands—namely, that God’s actions in the world generate the mission of the church—neglect of the poor is incongruent with God’s revelation. This is a clear accusation of our unfaithfulness. The church, then, must always be repenting. As we encounter those with little means and without permanent residence, we must perpetually repent of our neglect in loving them well, and turn toward a more hospitable future, God’s future as open to all people.

This type of turning is difficult. We don’t like to be confronted with the reality of poverty. Like the woman in Antioch, we just don’t want to have to deal with it. “We love the homeless, but…”

So we give five dollars to assuage our guilt. But, giving is not necessarily turning. Giving in the form of charity too easily becomes a device to avoid our baptismal call out of isolation and into fellowship. Charity keeps the poor at a distance. In this way, the poor have taught us that the church has not learned how to love as Christ has loved. The poor have become for the church a perpetual reminder of our inability to be a faithful, baptized people—to be God’s presence in the world. In the meantime, we are missing out of the gift of grace that can be found through true relationship with these loved ones. Perhaps the church is due for a conversion.