I spoke on a panel discussion two weeks ago before other pastors and church leaders in my denomination. The moderator surprised me with the question, “What do you spend the most time doing that people don’t understand or know about?”
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After the panel someone privately inquired “how do people *find* you?” He knew we don’t advertise like other ministries that serve the poor. I gave my typical answer, ‘we’re on a busy bus route, next to a Goodwill drop-off location where people rifle through donations at night, I’m known among the local Homeless, etc.’ Then I added something else…
“But I think the Lord also just sends the people He knows need to meet us. He knows we can handle their chaos in a way other churches often can’t.”
A few days later, camera alerts woke me the moment a homeless woman arrived on our church property. And oh how great was her mental chaos. She first approached our main entrance but then began walking along the side. I watched her in real-time as she passed by each of our cameras. She found cover under our gym awning and set down her belongings in the shadow. Then she stepped over into the light on our outdoor entry mat, lowered her pants, and urinated. Instead of squatting on the grass, she chose to leave a puddle of urine just feet from where she would fall asleep. All the while, she rambled on in a passionate conversation with no one. Clearly, this woman was too unstable to sleep unsupervised in our building that night. So I trusted her to God, believing He would use our bright parking lights and the surveillance camera above to keep her safe.
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I recently re-read [technically, “listened to”] a biography on Oswald Chambers (of ‘My Utmost for His Highest’ fame). Many know his words from that famous book but few know his life. This man breathed in literature and fine art like air.
His familiarity with the great literary classics convicted me to follow his example. I made a goal to read great historic novels that highlighted the plight of society’s poor and mistreated, especially works from the Three Ds– Dumas, Dostoevksy, and Dickens. But I started with Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
Hugo’s *exhausting* novel frequently interrupts the plot to discuss issues better suited to a political science textbook. [Seriously. It’s exhausting. Almost 58 hours in unabridged audio!] One of Hugo’s many social injustice soapboxes was Public Sewage. He digressed on the topic a couple times throughout Les Mis. Paris’s underground sewer system also becomes the means by which protagonist Jean Valjean carries an unconscious and injured young revolutionary named Marius away to safety.
An 1832 Cholera outbreak killed 20,000 Parisians and over 100,000 throughout France. And, no surprise, Cholera hurt Paris’s Poor the most. Although no one yet understood Cholera was a waterborne illness, many believed it had something to do with the city’s poorly-managed sewers. The 1832 ‘June Rebellion’ (inspiration for the book) partially stemmed from the lower classes’ frustration about the sewage. And, again, it’s no surprise the worst sewers were in the poorest areas.
Hugo wrote, “The sewer is the conscience of the city” and “The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.” He believed dumping human waste was a mistake, that the jobless could be hired to process the waste into fertilizer and drastically improve local crop efficiency, thereby reducing the need for expensive food imports. For Hugo, a sewer wastefully removing waste represented a black spot on a city’s conscience: it revealed the Rich’s desire to remove messy, smelly, and unsightly issues in their life without regard for how it would hurt the poor masses. As long as the rich and powerful could live in a squeaky clean world, who cared about the Poor?!
Most today view sewers differently from Hugo now that we understand waterborne illnesses like Cholera and Dysentery. And though he originally intended a different meaning, I quoted the words still fresh in my mind when I answered that moderator’s question “What do you spend the most time doing that people don’t understand or know about?” Several shared how they appreciated my response. Polite flattery?? Probably. But I still share my words below in case they may help you…
“Serving the poor, hurting, and mentally ill is messy. Victor Hugo wrote “The sewer is the conscience of the city” and “The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.” Our church building’s main sewer line backs up when we have several large events in a month. A plumber scoped our line and found a problem spot where the pipe connects with the city’s main sewer. Yesterday I came home to find two men working around the manhole cover of that sewer connection. I walked over to ask for a second opinion. From their angle, could they verify what the plumber told me? But as I approached the two men, I noticed a third man below. He’d climbed down the manhole with a special suit and worked in there while sewage from our church sewer line continued to pour in. I believe the conscience of the Church is reflected in how well we help people, especially the Poor, deal with the spiritual filth that’s infecting their lives. Do we help them remove it? Or do we ignore them or shoo them away, allowing them to slowly die in their own spiritual filth? So what do I spend a lot of time doing??
Dealing with other people’s spiritual filth that’s poisoning their lives.”
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The homeless woman disappeared by the time I came back from dropping off our oldest at school. But she soon returned during a complete mental breakdown. I overheard her while working inside our gym and stepped outside, still in exercise clothes from my morning walk and definitely not dressed like your average pastor during office hours. Since I’d stepped out of the building, she assumed I had something to do with the church but didn’t know who I was. She rattled on for a couple minutes before I could even respond. I made out that employees from a nearby laundromat just kicked her out for her loud disruptions. She slumped down against our sanctuary wall, right next to stained glass windows. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she screamed.
“I’M SO TIRED OF PEOPLE JUDGING ME! I’M CRAZY AND CAN’T HELP IT SOMETIMES! I’M TIRED OF PEOPLE KICKING ME OUT. I’M HIV. I JUST WANT SOMEWHERE TO REST WHERE NO ONE WILL JUDGE ME OR MAKE ME LEAVE. AND I SLEPT HERE LAST NIGHT BECAUSE I FELT SAFE HERE. AND I’M DAMN PROUD OF MYSELF FOR COMING HERE FOR HELP INSTEAD OF HOEING ON THE STREETS. AND I PEED ON THAT MAT. I’M SORRY I DID THAT. BUT I’LL CLEAN IT UP. I’M JUST SO TIRED OF PEOPLE JUDGING ME AND MAKING ME LEAVE.”
Words began to slow as her defenses lowered before me. Finally, the words stopped…
“Well, my name’s Chris. And I’m the pastor here. I don’t judge you. And I’m not going to make you leave. I already knew you slept here last night and I knew you peed on that mat. I watched you on camera when you did it. So if I was going to make you leave, I would have done it last night. Would you like to rest inside, and maybe take a shower?”
Later I learned she’d used Meth only hours before meeting me. The withdrawals further exacerbated her mental illness. I wrote about this woman last week after she’d spewed verbal filth from her sick brain for 20 minutes. I silently sat with her until she’d calmed down.
That woman slept outside our gym for 3 nights and spoke with me often during the days. Her 20 minute tirade had already made me late for a meeting. But her conscience seemed to force confessions out of her after that. People I’d never met were waiting on me to accept their donations while I listened to this woman confess her sins.
While she spoke, another scene from Les Misérables stuck firmly in my mind…
Jean Valjean has been released from prison but no one will let him dine or lodge with them once they learn of his past, even though he has money. He finally finds the local Bishop’s home. Upon meeting the old man, Valjean immediately blurted out the shameful past he’d tried to hide from others. But instead of rejection, the former convict receives Christian hospitality, delicious food, and a warm bed. Valjean’s old ways, however, suddenly overpower him in the night. He steals the fine silver and escapes. When he’s later caught by police and escorted back to the Bishop’s home, the Bishop corroborates Valjean’s lie to police: that the Bishop had given the silver as a gift. Then he chides Valjean before the officers for not also taking the silver candlesticks.
As we sat alone on the gym floor, she finally admitted stealing money from women’s purses when attending church with her parents and exclaimed, “Do you know how hard it is to admit that to a pastor?!”
I knew that was my cue. I stood up and said, “I have to leave for a while. You can turn out the lights and take a nap on this cot while I’m gone. There’s a lot of stuff in here you could steal, too. But I know you won’t. I trust you.
Sadly my new friend refused the Rehab and Mental Health treatments she most desperately needed and went back to her side of town.
Our neighborhood is quite far from her normal area, where she’s now staying again. I put $10 on her phone account before she left, but it seems that’s all been used. I know many Chronically Homeless who change their phone number as often as they change their actual phone. So I may never see or hear from this woman again. But, as much as her brain will allow, she will remember a pastor and church that wasn’t afraid of the filth her life has created. And she will remember the simple and small ways we extended cleansing help.
If you’ve read many of my posts, you might think during that panel discussion I had compared myself to the man working down in the sewer– that I’m daily ankle-deep in the world’s spiritual muck.
But I only played myself in the analogy.
No, I am not the one down in the manhole. I’m the simple pastor who’s slow to learn and constantly tempted to insulate myself in a churchy bubble. But then I find Him down in the squalor.
It is Christ, not me, who’s already been working in the sewers for hours. I only walk up in plain clothes, unprepared for the job and surprised to find him below.
It is Christ who suited up in Humanity’s garb (that of a simple servant) to address the sickening spiritual sludge Humanity creates.
And it is Christ, who can use even the very subterranean pathways of our spiritual slime to carry us into Salvation.
Yes, as the famous poem once described, Christ may carry us and leave ‘footprints in the sand.’ But just as often, I see Him carrying hurting people amidst dark tunnels filled with their own toxic lives.
What do I spend my time doing??
I am stumbling upon Christ among putrid situations, trying to keep up as He calls me to follow.
He carried his cross 2000 years ago. Now He carries the hurting to Salvation, wading through our own spiritual putrefaction to bring us Home.
Jesus is at work among the spiritual sewers around you, too. Some of us only look for Him among areas we prefer to live and frequent– squeaky clean middle-class neighborhoods, in churches with good budgets, among people just like us, where we shoo away or avoid any who disrupt our squeeky clean days. We want respectful Bible studies and manicured hair, not screaming prostitutes and disgusting floor mats.
Sure, you and I can meet Jesus in our Bible studies and prayer meetings. But I believe even *more* often we can find Him among the hidden ‘sewers’ in society. He is out of sight, leading a troubled woman to a safe place for the night and encouraging her to follow a different path forward.
Moments ago as I typed the above words, that woman finally returned my call. She’d just contacted an organization that helps treat HIV patients. They were sending an Uber to pick her up for treatment.
“Pray for me, Pastor.”
“I’d be happy to.” 😊
Dear friends,
Jesus works among our Sewers. He works in the dark, with the homeless addict easy to spot, and the hidden addict daily driving her children to school. He is with the Trafficked and those who traffic themselves. He’s next to the bitter widow and widower whom no one visits. He’s ankle-deep with the Narcissist finally receiving decades of negative consequences from selfish actions. He’s with the hardened criminal in a bare cell and the single mother crying herself to sleep.
He’s with those now spiraling after losing a loved one.
No matter where you go, He’s already been working there before you arrived. Join Him in His cleansing and healing work in this world.
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“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
““Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18