Radical Compassion
While not loving the rest of the article, I was challenged and encouraged by this:
"By Tom Krattenmaker Mon Dec 18, 8:08 AM ET
PORTLAND, Ore. - Something radical is happening every Friday night where homeless people congregate downtown under the Burnside Bridge.Car- and vanloads of Christian volunteers swoop in with sleeping bags and coats to protect their dispossessed friends against the raw, wet weather that has moved in. They dispense hot meals and set up stations for shaves and haircuts. While a few pull out guitars and strike up their Jesus-themed songs, a small number of the volunteers commit one of the more audacious acts of compassion and humility I have ever witnessed: They wash the homeless people's feet.Four folding chairs are set up in a row, each occupied by a downtrodden human being, his or her bare feet immersed in a tub of warm water. In front of each, kneeling on a pad, a volunteer gently scrubs away. Drying and powdering follow before the recipients are sent on their way, their feet clean and dry and swathed in a fresh pair of socks.The spirit of the season? This is it."I can't find the words to describe how good that felt," one beneficiary says as he moves off, smiling broadly.The night I observed this ritual, perhaps 100 homeless women and men were on hand, as well as a similar number of volunteers, deployed by an inter-denominational evangelical organization called Bridgetown Ministries. For more than three years, the group has been performing "Night Strike," in addition to other programs aimed at serving disadvantaged youth and Portland's less fortunate. Their motto, as printed on the T-shirt worn by ministry leader Marshall Snider, captures the ministry's philosophy in five simple words: "Get out of the box."A biblical actWashing the feet of society's outcasts might be as far out of the box as you can get. This work has practical importance, of course; people who can't keep their feet clean and dry end up suffering extreme discomfort or worse. But there's more to it than that. What Bridgetown Ministries does on Friday nights is highly biblical.Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, talks about "the least of these," as in, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for (God)." Ministry leader Snider had invoked that very passage while preparing the volunteers back at ministry headquarters earlier in the evening. "When you go out there tonight," Snider told them, "I want you to look for Jesus. You might see him in the eyes of a drunk person, a homeless person."Feet-washing has resonance with a revealing New Testament passage. In Luke, a woman "who had lived a sinful life" washes Jesus' feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair and pours perfume on them, upsetting the self-righteous Pharisee who is hosting Jesus and who finds the woman unworthy of Jesus' company. Jesus praises the woman for her faith and forgives her sins.Then there are the sheer logistics: Washing someone's feet is an act best performed while kneeling. Given the washer's position, and the unpleasant appearance and odor of a homeless person's feet, it's hard to imagine an act more humbling.Looking for Jesus in the eyes of a homeless person."