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Friends United Meeting |
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May 1998
Discovering Christ in Strangers
By Anthony Manousos
Opening our hearts to strangers can be very difficult. The old saying goes, "Charity begins at home." Sad to say, our charity often ends there. We are sometimes reluctant to give of our time and money to strangers, to "ferriners." Many Americans gripe about giving "foreign aid," even though we are the richest country in the world and give the smallest percent of our gross national product to foreign aid of any other industrial nation. Many Americans are even resentful about giving food stamps to needy American citizens in our own country just because they happened to be born somewhere else. Most of us want to share with people like ourselves, not with strangers.
Even Jesus almost fell into that trap. When a Gentile woman came to him asking for help, he said, in effect, "Don't bother me. I'm here to help my own people, the children of Israel" (Mark 7:26-30 and Matthew 15:22-28). This is one of the harshest statements that Jesus ever made, and I can imagine how the woman must have felt. Imagine if you, as an American, had a sick child and went to Mexico to a healer and was told, "Forget it, gringo. I'm here to help my own people." Most of us would probably go off in a huff. But this Gentile woman was desperate, her child was dying, and she knew that only Jesus, a Jewish healer, could help her. So she swallowed her pride and said, "Even the dogs are entitled to the crumbs from the table." Her humility, and her faith, touched Jesus' heart, as they have touched the hearts of Christ's followers for two thousand years. The lesson I learn from this story is that we are called not only to help those in our church and in our families, we are also called to help the stranger.
That's what I did last summer when I took a group of thirty people to Mexico to help in a poor community near Tijuana called Maclovio Rojas. Going to this community was a painful reminder of the "savage inequality" that exists between rich and poor in Third World countries, and all too often here in the United States. The community that we helped consisted of 1200 families-most of whom are forced to work in factories for $3 per day. They had no running water, no electricity, and no paved roads. Most of the homes are made of scrap, the favorite building material being used garage doors. Even though we were less than an hour's drive from San Diego, one of our teens said that going to this community was like going to an alien planet.
Over the course of the week, we worked side-by-side with the people of Maclovio Rojas. We put up sheet rock in a day care center. We dug holes and mixed cement to put up playground equipment. We purchased books and helped to set up their library. We painted murals. As we worked and sweated alongside the Mexicans, they came to seem less than aliens, and more like amigos.
At the end of the week, our Mexican amigos threw a party for us. We told them that it wasn't necessary, that we had brought our own food, but they insisted, so we had a potluck. One of the participants in our group, a grad student, wrote about this experience:
"One of the things that struck me most deeply on this trip was the feast that the people of Maclovio Rojas had prepared for us and the way it was prepared-with much love and much care-and the appreciation that this was meant to express. In fact, this moved me to tears because I understood what a whole day spent preparing this meal, and the cost of the meal, meant. Yesterday Mark and I drove a man to Tecate so that he could interview for another job. In his current job, he works 6 days, 12 hours each day, every week, and earns only $20 per week, for himself, his wife, and his four kids. We can't easily understand the sacrifice these people made to show their appreciation for our work and our presence."
When I saw the rich Americanos and the poor Mexicanos
working and sharing food and dancing together, I said to myself, "This
is what Jesus meant when he said that God's kingdom is like a party where
everyone is invited-rich and poor, holy ones and outcasts. When Jesus
was on earth, he partied with the poor. He shared in their joys and their
sorrows. Jesus was serious when he said that heaven is within us, and
among us. We don't have to wait until we die to see heaven. It's right
here, if we just practice what Jesus preached."
Many of us who live in the United States don't realize how much we have been given, just by virtue of having been born in the richest country in the world. Many of us think that we are just getting by, whereas by the standards of much of the rest of the world we are incredibly rich.
One of our teen participants was a boy from Whittier First Friends Church named Trevor who comes from what many in the United States would consider a disadvantaged home.
"I thought I was poor until I spent time in Mexico," Trevor told me, "but now I realize that compared to these people, I'm rich."
Most importantly, he realized that he has something to give. No one worked harder than Trevor digging post holes and mixing cement in the blazing Mexican sun. The more he worked, the more also he came to appreciate the people of the community, and especially the kids.
After he left Mexico, he got sick with a nasty intestinal virus that laid him up in bed for several days with a temperature of a hundred and two. When I visited him, Trevor was undaunted. "I don't care if I got sick," he told me with great enthusiasm. "If I had it to do over again, I would. It was the best week of my life!"
At that moment, I realize that there is something deep within Trevor, and in all of us, that could change the world. Thomas Kelley described it best:
"Each of us has the Seed of Christ within. In each of us the amazing and the dangerous Seed of Christ is present. It is only a seed. It is very small, like the grain of mustard seed. The Christ that is formed in us is small indeed, but great with eternity. But if we dare to take this awakened Seed of Christ into the midst of the world's suffering, it will grow. That's why the Quaker work camps are important. Take a young man or young woman in whom Christ is only dimly formed. Put him into a distressed area, into a refugee camp, into a poverty region. Let him go into the world's suffering, bearing the Seed with him, and in suffering it will grow, and Christ will be more and more fully formed in him. As the grain of mustard seed grew so large that the birds found shelters in it, so the man who bears an awakened Seed into the world's suffering will grow until he becomes a refuge of many."
-Thomas Kelly
The Eternal Promise, pages 42-43
Even if we do not know who planted the seed, or what it is called, if we water it faithfully, it will grow. This faith-filled service is what Quakerism at its best is all about.
Anthony Manousos is the coordinator for a youth service project sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and Southern California Quarterly Meeting. He attends Whittier First Friends Church and Whitleaf Meeting. This article is based on a talk given at Bellflower United Methodist Church, where the author's wife is a pastor.
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