As a street minister with Operation Nightwatch, I find myself invited into the most intimate and personal moments of people’s lives. As the world continues to spew hatred and propaganda about the poor, Jesus responds to those in need with the truth of compassion. He tells us that when the lost are found the heavens throw a party. That there is rejoicing and celebrating when the heart turns toward God and finds home. The people that I meet on the street know this to be true. They understand their suffering through the wounds of the crucified Christ. The story of a servant king who shares and participates in humanities suffering, reveals a God who is in solidarity with the marginalized. Jesus is the God who sees. Jesus is the God that doesn’t turn away from our pain. He stops and looks at all of us, bringing wholeness to the abandoned, rejected, and abused. The empire and its quest for power can never see, hear, and know the goodness of this God. Consequently, the powers and principalities of the world require a spirit that is dull and demoralized. Demanding that our attention be focused on their endless stream of lies, sanctifying injustice, justifying greed that creates poverty, desensitizing and numbing us to the reality that Jesus weeps for the city, that Jesus looks with compassion not with drone bombs. The kingdom of God has been called an “upside down kingdom.”  The greatest among us being the least of us. The weak inheriting the earth, receiving double for what was taken away. There is hope with the promise that the glory of our future will be greater than that of our former. With God, being last means being first.

Recently, I attended a new community dinner. There were white tablecloths, baskets of homemade bread, real china plates, silverware, and all kinds of people. It reminded me that God dwells with us when we stop and consider each other as fellow human beings. As all equally created in the image of the living God. I met elementary school aged soccer players, retired military service members, people struggling with addiction, and ate way too much homemade bread! All of my conversations were warm, mutual, and sincere. There is something incredibly healing about being honest and truthful about ourselves while eating with strangers. Very quickly, the truth of our lives becomes the material of relationship. Our stories become relational assurance that were not alone, that we are seen, known, and heard. The harshness of living in a system based on violence and competition is removed and we experience resurrection in the midst of suffering. We get to see and hear the Jesus that connects all of humanity with divine mystery. May the stories of Jesus, wake us all up to his heart of mercy and compassion so we can listen and understand.

“The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.’But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it (Matthew 13:13-17).

Michael Cox