She stood there with her head hung low and a scarf over her head as she held a sign in her hand. At first I couldn’t quite make out the words but then, almost instantly, they became clear: “Sick with cancer, no health insurance. Selling crafts for treatment.” She didn’t look homeless, in fact she was recently showered and clothed in a sun dress, but the frailness of her body showed the signs of a long bout with chemotherapy and a disease that was ravaging her life.

I walked on by.

I walked by trying not to make eye contact (an easy feat considering she was looking down at the ground), unsure of what to do, trying desperately to blend into the rest of the crowd that was walking along with me to get inside the church building for Sunday worship. Together we stood, we sang and we prayed, watched some baptisms and listened about the upcoming Compassion Sunday, we listened to a sermon and were challenged by the concept of Sabbath rest and prayed again for the poor and destitute in our society, sang another song and were dismissed. We walked out the doors and again, there she stood holding a basket, head hung low, looking even more frail than she did the first time I saw her. As we got a little bit closer, Tracy prodded me to take notice, seemingly asking me to do something… but what? I didn’t know.

I walked on by.

I walked by trying not to make eye contact, unsure of what to do, trying desperately to blend into the rest of the crowd as we walked away from church…

As I hang my head low and ponder my lack of action I can’t help but find it interesting that this woman came to the church for help. She may have stood at a distance, but she knew what she was doing–coming to the church for compassion, for mercy, for love, grace, help… and we walked by. (I didn’t see a single person stop.) She came to the people, not the structure, not the organization but to the people… but the people were unprepared to help.

(I could take this as an argument for why national health care is such an important issue, this woman who was sick and potentially dying from cancer couldn’t get the treatment necessary because she didn’t have health insurance.)

What can the church do in a situation like this? What can people do? How do you attempt to tackle a problem like this?

Immediately I think about small groups–inviting her into a community that can love and care for her, offer up financial help and opportunity to pay for her care by literally adopting her into their community. I see the potential of the small group to be an emotional support to her, walking her and guiding her, praying for her and loving on her during the difficult times of treatment. Such thoughts literally brings tears to my eyes because I see that as a beautiful expression of the gospel.

A small group, however, is unable to tackle a challenge like this unless they are prepared to act–and by act I mean taking the first step. How do you not only prepare a leader for something like this, but empower them and empower a member of a small group to take such a big leap of faith, compassion and love? How do you acknowledge their step of faith and encourage them along in the process… not to mention encouraging them to do it again?

I walked on by… and I’m left with nothing but questions…

The picture above is the Abdul Kabbia Group, a group of young entrepreneurs in Sierra Leone working to pull themselves and their family from poverty by creating a clothing business. They call their group “God is with us.” I have the privilege through Kiva.org to partner with a number of other individuals from around the world to provide this group with a micro-loan to help enhance their business.

My first loan through Kiva was in December of 2006 and I’ve seen the site grow with more an more new lenders joining the ranks. In fact, some of the stats this week: nearly 14,000 lenders made a loan with over $897,000 dispersed… there was a loan made every 23 seconds! With each passing loan I am more and more excited about what can happen around the world when a few band together to help others change their lives economically.

I’ve written about Kiva in the past and have even seen a few of you join in to “change the world one loan at a time.” I can’t think of a better way to help people I’ll never meet rise up out of poverty and hopefully connect in someway to the Kingdom of God.

I stepped on the bus and worked my way through the crowd at the front nearly getting knocked over as I tried to find a single opening to stand when out of nowhere a massive opening emerged and not only was I able to stand but there were several empty seats right in front of me. (This isn’t a normal occurrence during the morning rush hour on the 10-bus to the Financial District.) I paused for a moment, looked around and took a seat. It wasn’t until I settled in that I realized why these seats around me were nearly vacant.

To my left sat a man hidden behind a newspaper. As he lowered the paper in a jerky, almost spastic fashion he revealed his unshaven, unkempt appearance, complete with a slight odor. The spastic nature of his movements continued on as he began to mumble, speaking to himself, laughing, grunting, moving from side to side in a random, twitchy sort of way. This is why no one was sitting down, this is why everyone else chose to stand and be randomly tossed about as the MUNI driver made his sudden stops, starts and bus tipping turns.

As I looked around at the people’s demeanor it was quite obvious that although no one was looking at this man, they certainly felt his presence: clutching their briefcases a little closer, closing their jackets a little tighter and tensing their body a little more. One man stood chuckling to himself as he glanced at the man from time to time. As I sat a mere 12 inches from the man listening to his grunts and mumbles, I held my bag a little closer, tensed my body a little more and looked as straight ahead as possible until my stop came and I quickly exited the bus.

As I walked the few blocks to the coffee shop I would inhabit for the rest of the morning I wondered about my reaction to this man and questioned what love looks like in that situation. Could I have treated him differently, responded to him differently that would have created an in-breaking of the Kingdom?

San Francisco is home to over 15,000 homeless people. It’s not hard to step over them every single day, ignore them as you pass them by and treat them as invisible people. When inundated with such poverty in the midst of such beauty it’s easy to overlook the ugly, the downtrodden, the hopeless and focus our attention on the spectacular and beautiful things of the city. This is a daily situation that takes shape in different forms and yet each day I feel farther and farther away from knowing how to respond. Poverty, homelessness in the urban environment is a systemic problem that requires some sort of revolution in order to change. Until we learn to see the people behind the poverty, change is far away.

How does the Kingdom break into this kind of system and how does an individual affect change one day at a time by learning to see the people behind the poverty?

It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion [one trillion dollars] to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.
~ Bono (source: Sojourners)

“America is an empire. And the Bible has a lot to say about empires… What we see in the Bible is that empires naturally accumulate wealth and resources… America controls nearly 20 percent of the worlds wealth. There are around six billion people in the world, and there are roughly three hundred million people in the U.S. That makes America less than 5 percent of the world’s population. And this 5 percent owns a fifth of the world’s wealth.” (excerpts from page 121-122 of Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell & Don Golden.)

Bell and Golden go on to cite numerous statistics to contrast the vast amount of wealth that we, as Americans, have amassed over only two centuries of existence as a country. One example that stood out more than any to me was this: “More than half of the world lives on less than two dollars a day, while the average American teenager spends nearly $150 a week.”

We are a wealthy nation… we have become an empire. “Human history has never witnessed the abundance that we consider normal. America is the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity. We have more resources than any group of people anywhere at any time has ever had. Ever.” (page 123)

“One leader of the American government announced that “the American life-style is not up for negotiation. (George H.W. Bush at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992) (page 125).” “The US accounts for 48 percent of global military spending. Less than 5 percent of the world’s population purchase nearly half of the world’s weapons. In 2008, the US spent more on defense than the next forty-five countries combined. The US spends more on defense than on all other discretionary parts of the federal budget combined. Human history has never seen a military machine like the American armed forces” (page 127-128).

Earlier this year I wrote in a simiar vein regarding our true poverty as a country. I believe there is an unmistakable connection between our wealth and our military power. The more we accumulate as a country, the more we have to spend to protect that wealth… and the notion that we reduce our military spending is tantamount to heresy in the American Religion.* Every four years in political campaigns, we always hear about increasing the defense budget — which is nothing less than increasing our military yet again. But why do we need to increase our military even more when we’re already leaps and bounds above every other military in the world, and the next 45 countries combined (which includes Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.)? The only answer that I can think to come up with is that we live in fear. We live in fear that we will lose our way of life — and by this I do not mean our liberty or our freedom, I mean our stuff.

Could the perpetual rise in our military spending be equated with our materialism as a country? Could our wars** really be more about protecting our self interest and “the American life-style” rather than defeating terrorism?

The question that I think we fail to ask as a country is “Why are we the targets of terrorism?” What have we done to breed a culture of hatred against us? Is it simple jealousy? Jealousy of our wealth? Or is it what we instead have done with our wealth — not much but spend over half of it to protect the other half instead of distributing it around the world to prop up the poorest of the poor. I wonder if that would be the best line of defense instead of bombs and guns. Sounds a little like Jubilee.

America is an empire… and not a good one… perhaps this is truly why we’re hated. It would be truly interesting to see how we are remembered in the annals of history.

———
* – “American Religion” is, in my opinion, the true religion of our country (as opposed to Christianity). American Religion is the belief in the state, the government and nationalism to the point that it is worshiped above all else.

** – Yes “wars” as in plural. Fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a budding war in Pakistan and Iran. Let’s not think that this is ONE war on terror (a brilliant marketing scheme.)