His name is Stanley Gardner. He’s 65 years old and “lives” at the park across the street from our church building. Because of his cognitive impairment, he receives $700 of social security each month. After Stanley’s wife died in a tornado, he became homeless. He spends his days walking our city and his nights sleeping in our park. He has a drinking problem. Most days he smells like cheap beer and his clothes are dirty; he loses his temper often, and honestly, he makes good, wholesome church folk feel uncomfortable. Sometimes he panhandles in our church parking lot between church services. He is wiley, this one. He knows when middle-class suburbanites are most vulnerable.
My acute pastoral diagnosis: Stanley is trouble.
Did I also mention that Stanley is a regular attender at our church? Most Sundays, he shows up early—very early. When our worship leader arrives at our building at 6:30 a.m., it’s not uncommon for Stanley to be patiently waiting on the sidewalk next to our entrance. He’s quirky and jerky that early in the morning. He’s come for the coffee and clean bathrooms. He walks into our foyer like he owns the joint and our Sunday morning routine begins. I walk in at 7 a.m., and Stanley begins to cry. I’m serious. Almost every week he cries. Big alligator tears. But he’s not manufacturing this emotion. It’s real and painful. His dead wife, hard life, broken body, and another day to endure has this man at his wits end. At this point, Stanley gets either a long eye roll or a kind word from me, the difference often being determined by whether or not I’ve had a sip of coffee or a moment of prayer. I’m embarrassed by how often it’s the former and not the latter. I walk into my office, quickly gulp down a cup of coffee, and then we do the dance. Head down and distraught, he gives me his story in technicolor detail. He’s been arrested again or kicked out of another rehab. He cries real tears of hurt and hopelessness. I place my hand on his shoulder, pray my most pastoral prayer, and muster an expectant Amen. And then I stand. Because, you know, that’s his social cue, right? I’m communicating something that is obvious:
My time is valuable. This prayer session is finished. Please leave my office so I get on with my job of pastoring and preaching!
I feel like my social cue was really clear. Any child could discern what was happening. But Stanley doesn’t move. It turns out he’s not done being pastored. I take a deep breath and slump back down into my faux leather chair and paint on a smile and listen again to the same stories of heartbreak. Well into the time when I should be centering my heart and walking through my sermon notes just once more before the first service begins, I’m stuck with Stanley. I’m thinking to myself, I’ve been hijacked!
After church today, I dropped Stanley off at a cheap motel. A bag full of cheeseburgers under his left arm and his cane in his right, he gave me a big smelly hug as I pushed him out of my car. I saw him waving to me in my rearview mirror. I was glad to be going home. And then it happened. I had a moment with God. Not a Sinai or burning bush moment, but a moment in which time slowed and heaven spoke. Unfortunately, these moments don’t happen with the frequency I’d like, but today it happened. Gently, correctively, God took me to school—the kindergarten of Christianity. In fact, three things were impressed on my heart on my ride home. Things that I learned many years ago when I was young and eager in my faith, but have since complicated with religious jargon and American rationalization. 1. Honor Stanley. He’s mine. He’s important to me. Love him well because I died for him and that makes him invaluable. You think your clean, suburban, predictable gathering is what I’m after? Think again. 2. When you honor Stanley, you honor Me. Don’t be fooled. You’re looking for me in a rushing wind, but I’m coming in the eyes of the poor. They don’t have deep pockets, only deep hurts. But love them the way that I love them and you won’t have to worry about your building program. 3. When you push the poor out your doors, you cease being a church. This one felt like a cheap shot. Come on, God! Cease being a church?
None of this was audible, mind you. Deep impressions in my soul will have to suffice for a description. Again, gently and kindly God whispered. This church isn’t a place for the cleaned up, but the messed up. Start acting like it. I haven’t come for the healthy, but the sick. Be the church!
It turns out the poor are a big deal in the narrative of Scripture. There are more than 2000 verses about loving the poor, the refugee, and the alien. We can try to justify our behavior by insisting that there’s not one word about Stanleys there. But don’t fool yourself—he’s in there. With every command to feed and clothe and give, there is a smudged picture of Stanley—someone who has been forgotten or abused or marginalized. Stanleys are all around us. I wonder if when Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few, maybe he also meant that the Stanleys are plentiful and the churches are few. I don’t know anymore. But one thing I am sure of though is this: We’re all Stanleys. Me. You. All of us. Dirty and unpredictable. Panhandlers on our good days. Angry and frustrated that we woke up to this fractured world with no power to change it. We stumble into the courts of our Maker, head down, humiliated and frightened that no one will see beneath the stink. But God does. Our Father sees and smiles and invites us to take a seat and tell our story.
