Throw-Away People

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Throw-Away People

“You have got to be kidding?” I said to my wife when she told me that Cindy and Ruth Ann had decided to get married. 

“We are invited to participate with Cindy’s family at the wedding and they want us to attend in Boston this June” she said. 

My mind went back to our days in seminary when all three of us were friends.    I thought about how a few years later Cindy told my wife about her intentions to “come out of the closet.”  We were not nice to Cindy.  From time to time as we began to mature in our faith, we would talk about our actions and now, years later, regretted those actions toward her.  However, we never made any attempt to reconcile with Cindy.  Our relationship had reached a different level and surprisingly was a cordial one.  It was more one sided than we would admit but we stayed in contact through Christmas cards, Cindy’s visits and calls, and amazingly, after 25 years, she wanted us to attend her wedding and participate with her family.     

We both decided that one of the ways we could heal the relationship would be to travel to Boston and attend the wedding.  We said some things back then that were not kind, and certainly as we reflected upon them, not how Christ would have handled the situation.  The more we thought about our actions, the sorrier we were that as ministers of the Gospel we had not done as Jesus would have desired.    Maybe attending the wedding would help us get back on track with a more mature friendship than before.

We made the journey to Boston last summer and it was awkward for me in particular. I was one of just a few men at the wedding and probably the only Baptist minister in the group.  Something happened as we sat and talked to different girls who would venture to our table to inquire about who we were.  We began to hear a theme, sadly, from each person.  Each person would tell us a tragic story about how family and church family had rejected them.  Stories of mothers and fathers disowning children.  Churches voting or casting members away.  Jobs being lost due to sexual orientation.    People throwing away other people!  Somehow in this setting I began to see a sad reality.  I began to remember Jesus asking “which sin is greater?”  Another truth I had learned is to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  When I matched these verses to actions I had taken and was hearing from the wedding participants, something seemed a bit wrong with my Christianity.

I had never been around many gay people in my life and must confess I had never put a face or a name with a particular person.  They were just the brunt of jokes and the people that I had been admonished in my Christian education to avoid.  I don’t know why but I guess on some level I thought I would get HIV or AIDS if I spoke to someone gay.    Now, I was sitting in a room of people who were not like me and I began to hear in their voices and see in their faces the pain that rejection had caused.  Flying home from the wedding we both discovered that those gay jokes that caused us to snicker were not funny anymore.  A particular TV show we enjoyed just wasn’t funny.  We began to think about the faces and the voices we experienced; throw-away people!

About six weeks later I began to experience “throw-away people” again in my life.  It had been a particularly busy summer for me with my work.  I was the second in command of a national youth ministry.  When I returned from my travels I discovered that, unknown to me, the ministry had been sold, management changed, and I, effective immediately, was not a part of the new organization.  My immediate superior, a man I had admired and had called a friend for over twenty years indicated to me that I should surrender my office key, credit cards, phone, and clean out my office immediately.  I was told that this was a hard decision to make but one that had been prayerfully made.  As I picked up my coffee cup, stapler, and name plate, I began to wonder how people who are Christian can “prayerfully” make a decision that would affect another person’s livelihood, family, and general health.  Was God in such a decision?  How could it be that I would give up being a pastor of a successful church, give three years of my life to a ministry, and in a flash become a throw-away person?    Was prayer really a part of that decision? 

I remember a verse of scripture from the Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will direct your paths.”  I have always found that verse true in my life and I have lived by it even to this day.  After all it was that trust in God that led me to follow the opportunity to join the youth ministry organization.  Being thrown away in this way by Christians hurt deeply but I knew that my trust was in God and I didn’t have to understand what was happening to me. 

After a few weeks I discovered a new direction for my life.  I decided to go to the local homeless shelter to volunteer.  Somehow I thought giving to others would be a way to keeping my mind off of my troubles.    It turned out that within a few days from my visit I was helping out in a different way.  I had been invited to work at the homeless shelter teaching the Bible and counseling homeless men….throw-away people!    I began to minister to men who found themselves at the shelter and began to develop a program of Bible Study, counseling, work, and worship to assist  homeless men who had made the  commitment to change their lives. 

As I reflect on my work at the shelter I am reminded of Douglas and of Tony.  Douglas came to us from a prison and had been the victim of abuse his entire life.  He began to study the Bible and to participate fully.    Tony did the same.  Both men had been thrown away by families and rejected by the Christian community for the mistakes they had made in life. 

I have discovered that people arriving at the shelter’s door step have been rejected by family, friends, and even agencies of our government assistance programs.  I hear in their voices and see in their faces the familiar pain that I had experienced earlier that summer in Boston.  I reflect upon my own feelings of rejection and frustration as I tried to find a job.    As I work closely with people from the street, who come for a meal or food box, Jesus’ words “as you have done it to the least of these; you have done it unto me…” seems to bring alive the Christian faith that I have been taught. 

A new experience happened to me in March of this year.    As I lay in the hospital awaiting triple by-pass heart surgery there was a knock at my hospital room door.    It was Douglas from the homeless shelter.    Douglas had come to encourage me.    He had no gift, no particular wise words to offer. All he had was himself and his prayers.  Cindy and Ruth Ann, from Boston, happened to be visiting family in the area and dropped into the hospital to make a visit. They wanted to pray with me before my surgery.  The next day following my surgery I awoke to see my wife in the recovery room.  In her hand was a beautifully hand-made card with a magnificent sketch of Christ.  The artist was Tony from the homeless shelter.  Inside the card were encouraging words from all the men at the shelter.  That verse: “As you have done it to the least of these; you have done it unto me…” took new shape in my mind, this time from the hospital bed.    These people I have encountered over the past year; people who have been thrown-away by others were including me!  They came to minister to me when I most needed it.   

My journey over the year has taught me some of the simple lessons that I had learned as a child in Sunday School.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…;” “love one another;”  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” May it be so!