The other night, I was on a MUNI bus with a bunch of other people and one angry, drunk homeless man. He smelled. He was visibly drinking a lot. He was insulting other passengers and yelling racial slurs of all kinds. No one knew how to react to him.
Some passengers walked to the other side of the bus. Some chose to ignore him. Some yelled back at him before exiting the bus. I ignored him as best I could.
Instead of being annoyed by him, though, and walking to the other side of the bus, I just started thinking about what love is. Is it possible to love this man? How would I do it? In theoretical discussions, it always seems easy to love people. Be nice to them. Talk to them. Let them know they exist. Let them know they're cared about.
In real life, though, did I care for this man? If I talked to him, would he just continue yelling at me? If I told him Jesus loves him, would I come off as condescending? What does it mean to love him? To take him out to dinner? Try to hold a meaningful and deep conversation with him in the ten minutes before I get off the bus?
It's hard to love people sometimes, and it's not always a matter of willpower. Sometimes we just don't know how to love. There were plenty of times Jesus extended a hand to the widows, the lepers, and the poor, but none of the stories recorded in the Bible have those people yelling ethnic slurs at Jesus. When people finally spit on him and beat him, he said nothing. When pressed, he said: "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." Later, he asked God to forgive them, for they knew not what they did. He said he was thirsty. And he said it is finished. Somehow those phrases wouldn't have seemed appropriate in my bus situation.
Did Jesus love the Pharisees he so often lambasted? He probably did. How did he show it? I don't know. I'm not calling this drunk, homeless man a Pharisee. If anything, Jesus probably would have called this man "one of the least of these."
I guess the issue for me isn't a matter of whom we love. In theory, I can love anyone. I don't bear too many people ill will, even those with whom I don't get along. But how do we love? What are acts of love?
It's entirely possible that God intended for me to befriend this angry man and treat him to a warm meal. It's entirely possible it was a missed opportunity. In my human weakness, though, I just thought, "This is a scary man." I prayed for him, and I didn't know what to pray for him except that God would be with him, whatever that means.
There are many great challenges when it comes to love. We are challenged in whom we love. We are challenged in how to love. We are challenged in how we receive love. We are challenged in how we acknowledge love. We are challenged in how we sustain love.
I guess the best we can do is to pray to God to teach us how to love. We are only human, after all.
today's meditation was written by Alan Siu.
Comments