Making Friends

This weekend, the futon in our guest room celebrates its tenth birthday with us. I don’t usually remember when we bought furniture, but this was one of those high-charged experiences when a confusing parable suddenly becomes clear—and you suddenly know what you need to do to obey it.

It was the Saturday after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Our daughter had just gotten married on September 1, and her bed became the marriage bed in their matchbox rental unit. We knew we needed to find a replacement bed for our now-empty second bedroom and thought perhaps we’d try a futon. Then 9/11 happened, and like everyone else, we became glued to the TV day and night, asking why, asking who. Within a couple days, our collective national finger was pointed at Afghanistan. Soon reports were surfacing of harassment and even violence against Middle-Eastern looking people living here. And still the incessant 24-hour news reports went on and on. Everyone seemed to be frustrated.

That Saturday afternoon, Janet and I realized we needed to get out of the house and just do something “normal”. There was already a reported slump in consumer purchasing, and we needed to start shopping for a futon, so off we went to check out a few stores and begin the process of doing our homework.

At the very first store, we were helped by a nicely-dressed man in his 40’s, wearing a solid blue dress shirt with a tie. He showed us their merchandise, and we focused on one futon. Between his features and his accent, it was easy to tell he was a native of the Middle East. In light of the charged atmosphere in our nation toward people who looked like him, we simply wanted to interact normally. But as we continued to talk, I noticed that the top of his dress shirt began to get dark and realized that sweat was soaking right down his collar.

Finally I told him that our daughter and her new husband had served in Jordan and asked if he was originally from that region. He said yes. Oh, what part? “I’ve lived here for 20 years, paid my taxes, had a family here… but I’m from Kabul” he blurted out, perhaps hoping I didn’t know where that was.

Our interactions alternated between touching furniture and this touchy subtext. At some point, I eased us into a discussion of the past few days and asked if he had personally experienced any of the harassment mentioned in the press. He warily recited several incidences of name-calling and gestures made from passing car windows, and then said, “Finally, the pressure was so much that last night I told my family we should go out and eat at Burger King, just to get out of the house and do something normal.” I could relate. “But as we were sitting there, a man at the next table began to speak louder and louder to his own family about how all Middle-Easterners should leave America or be thrown out…or worse. The man wouldn’t look at us, but it was clear what he was doing. I wanted to blurt out to him, ‘I’m an American citizen! My children were born here!’ But by that point he was swearing and I didn’t think it would do any good. I tried to distract my kids from hearing him, but it was impossible. We finally got up and left. I felt so ashamed in front of my children; ashamed of America.”

By now, the dark stains of perspiration were covering more than half his collar and working down even farther. I empathized and apologized, reminding him that America wasn’t founded on such xenophobic principles. But it sounded a bit hollow from my safe Anglo perch.

While he was checking on some futon covers or such, Janet and I looked at each other and knew we both wanted to buy a futon from him, today. Forget the shopping around, forget the waiting a few weeks. Our actions just might speak acceptance to him, only in some little way, but in a way that our 'cheap' words never could.

And suddenly I understood that peculiar parable of the “unrighteous steward” (Luke 16:1-9), where Jesus tells of the crooked manager of a rich man’s businesses who is about to be fired, so he makes secret deals with each debtor to lower their debt to his master … abusing the owner’s resources so as to make friends who might give him a job after he loses this one.

The kicker is the ending, where the rich man--and Jesus--actually applaud the crooked steward (v8-9). "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

I believe that I’m to be a “steward” of all of the time, talent and treasure with which God entrusts me, not just the portion I donate. And that day we learned something new about "good stewardship"... as important as it is to spend judiciously, there is ultimately a much more important function for money: using it to make friends for Kingdom purposes. If the owner in Jesus' parable apparently doesn’t suffer from this seemingly major fraud committed against him, how much less will the Lord of the universe, the owner of everything, suffer if we use the resources he entrusts to us in order to gain friends?

For us, purchasing a piece of furniture like this was not a trivial exercise, especially coming on the heels of our daughter's wedding expenses. But that day, we were given a very clear opportunity to dispense with our normal caution and see how God was inviting us to be used in a small way in this man’s life, provided we were willing to abandon our plans and accept the invitation.

It turned out to be a great purchase. After all, we’ve had ten years of reminders from that faithful futon of how things work in God’s economy.

Cory
September 2011

Clues in the Rubble -- Reflection on 9/11/11

I was privileged to be at Ground Zero in New York City on the first anniversary of 9/11. I looked down on that empty place where the Twin Towers had last stood so proudly one year earlier. And now as I looked at the bare hole, that ground truly was zero, nothing but a gaping cavity caused by a knockdown punch to the lower jaw of Manhattan.

But maybe in the rubble of that tragedy there were some clues of learning for us, evidence, as it were, that was inadvertently carted off.

It’s a vast oversimplification to compare death tolls as the measure of 9/11’s impact. For instance, some 2750 people died at the Twin Towers, while approximately ten times* that many innocent children die needlessly every day in developing nations due to poverty. We might be tempted to wonder why so much trauma (not to mention maybe trillions in increased military spending) was created by the deaths of 2750 when the deaths of 27,500 today and 27,500 tomorrow and 27,500 every new day barely evokes a yawn, not to mention recent calls to cut our national aid for those in poverty.

But clearly this ignores the deeper meaning behind 9/11... and the trauma we felt that day and will feel again as we see the reruns today, in our memories if not on our TV screens, of the planes hitting those towers.

First of all, its impact on us: our initial cluelessness as we watched hour after frustrating hour, trying desperately to piece together who did this, why they did it, and how did they get away with it... the visceral, personal helplessness we each felt wherever we were as we watched the unfolding drama of those buildings burning and then, suddenly and impossibly, collapsing in slow motion into a graveyard heap of twisted, burning metal and glass. Helplessness is a terrible feeling that we adults have spent a lifetime attempting to escape.

Second, a simplistic casualty comparison perhaps misses the power in the messages and meaning communicated by the event itself:
- the incendiary political act that it was
- the underlying religious passions that could evoke an act such as this
- the declaration of war between worldviews that the act represented

In America, we have spent a great deal of time and energy since 9/11 defending our worldview against that onslaught of underlying messages and meanings. So much so that maybe we've forgotten to ask: What was it about our nation that was so hate-provoking? And what part do I play personally in what was so hateful?

Maybe up ‘til now we've missed a real opportunity for soul-searching and learning. Had we done more of that, perhaps we might have addressed earlier some of the rampant speculation and plain old greed in our commodities markets and in the financial sector which first led to the global food crisis of a few years ago [we didn't feel that one so much, but it drove an additional 100 million people below the poverty line worldwide], and then led us to the global financial crisis -- where America was again Ground Zero.

Maybe. While it's normal to defend oneself when feeling judged by others, in that defensive response little is learned. An opportunity can be missed; perhaps it has been.

And perhaps we're at risk of missing some lessons and meanings behind the daily horror of 27,500 children dying, as well...
- What political priorities are evidenced in the level of our collective response, and non-response?
- What does our tolerance of those deaths show about our own religious commitments and understanding?
- And here too there's a clash of worldviews which is brought home every day in that staccato drumroll of deaths: The worldview which is evident in my actions, versus the one evident in Jesus' actions. He lived out what has always been God's worldview, because long before Jesus came on the scene, the God of Israel was making it very clear with his words that he sided with the poor, the orphan, the widow, the powerless. Then, in Jesus, his very words became Flesh.

Maybe we struggle with those same feelings of helplessness contemplating these daily deaths, too. And we find it simpler to throw up our hands than put them to the plow to furrow our one measly row against that onslaught.

Truly, 2750 deaths by terrible violence is a tragedy worthy of our solemn remembrance, today and on every 9/11. Although I'm not sure yet that future historians will be able to say that it seriously "changed" America in substantive ways, certainly it deeply impacted all of us Americans old enough to remember it, and there may yet be lessons we will glean from it.

And if the tragedy also reminds us that God mourns every new day with its fresh body count, and if that reminder causes us to ask for more of the heart of God -- and to be the hands of Jesus in response, then maybe there still are valuable treasures we can find in the rubble.

Cory
September 2011

* The latest estimate is that globally about 21,000 children die of preventable, poverty-related causes each day (the number is gradually shrinking!), but this only includes children up to age five.