Someone’s knocking at the door. Is it an undocumented immigrant? a drug addict? a chain-smoking prostitute?

Enslaved workers in the U.S. sang, “SOMEBODY’S KNOCKING AT YOUR DOOR.” They sang, “Knocks like Jesus! …. Can’t you hear him?”

WHEN DID WE SEE THEE?

It is easy to romanticize the outcasts of Jesus’ day: the despised Samaritans, the wanton woman at the well, the ubiquitous lepers.

Our outcasts are hard to glamorize. We trip over them in the streets, dodge their curses, pay for them with our taxes. We build walls to keep them out, fill detention centers and prisons to keep them away.

But then we hear Jesus say, you did this to me. What? With the baffled biblical crowd described in Matthew 25, we plead, “Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?” The answer Jesus gave has not gotten any easier to hear.

Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz has learned that many of us are uncomfortable when confronted with images of the stranger-Jesus. His bronze sculpture, “Homeless Jesus,” depicts a frail figure wrapped in a blanket and curled up on a park bench, crucifixion wounds visible on his bare feet.

Far from the virile, broad-shouldered Jesus often depicted preaching on a hillside or striding confidently over the water, this vulnerable figure was inspired by what Jesus said in Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me… “

The “Homeless Jesus” sculpture has been turned down by decision-makers at a number of prominent cathedrals who deem the depiction offensive. Increasingly, however, churches from Detroit to Vatican City are welcoming the provocative sculpture, helping passersby open their hearts and minds to the marginalized who crouch in the shadows.

RECLAIMING CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY

According to historian Diana Butler Bass, early Christians understood the Great Commandment of Jesus — to love God and to love one another — as a call to radical welcome. Early church father John Chrysostom (347-407) instructed Christians to put their hearts into welcoming the stranger, “as if one were receiving Christ himself.” Bass put it more bluntly for today’s faithful: “Hospitality is the practice that keeps the church from becoming a club, a members only society.”

How do we keep our hearts open to the marginalized Jesus who looks threatening or smells bad or needs too much or doesn’t speak our language? Do we have to?

There are those who can close the door of their hearts to the stranger-Jesus, but not those of us who bear his name. We have promised to recognize him in the face of the hungry, imprisoned, broken, sick, needy, the outcast, the refugee. We have promised to see his face in the stranger.

Who’s knocking at the door? Better check the hands and feet.

TO GO DEEPER:

Lyrics and Music on Hymnary.org website

Book: A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass, HarperCollins, 2010, GoodReads website

“Sculptor’s ‘Jesus the Homeless’ Challenges Christians to Follow Gospel of Matthew” from The Christian Post, April 18, 2013

 

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