O God, I complained rather than prayed, there is Jimmy.
Jimmy, a street person, sat in a corner of our tired church basement. Unshaven, polluting the room with his pungent body odor, he pulled his moth-eaten (but nonetheless impressive) Harris Tweed jacket around his shoulders.
With a sigh, I issued a polite hello.
Jimmy was the last person I wanted to meet this early Monday morning. I had come to my office to grab a few quiet moments, but I had been greeted by light leaking from beneath our poorly insulated basement door. Exorbitant light bills demanded I investigate.
I found Jimmy, who had managed, somehow, to enter the church last night.
Jimmy was the kind of person who would disappoint you every time you trusted him. “I need two bucks,” he would plead. “Pay you back next week,” he would lie.
It was not the money or the lying that bothered me; it was his persistent, unembarrassed gall. While the rest of us lived with limits, Jimmy, by lying, stealing, and conning, managed to exceed the limits.
Like the time he lived in a hotel by telling the Red Cross his house had burned down. The truth was, for almost thirty years now, he had never lived in a house, only doorways, abandoned buildings, and shelters. But Jimmy had enjoyed his hotel accommodations while they lasted.
Jimmy had never joined our church, but he had not missed a service in more than a year. He worked the north door before Sunday school, the basement door between services, and the front door after church. When he was seriously conning, he could make $40 an hour! While preparing our budget, we had jokingly thought of making him a separate line item.
Now he had decided to camp in our church basement. He wheezed, and as he moved, a urine bag peeked from beneath his Harris Tweed. Then it hit me: Jimmy’s not here to sleep, eat, or con anyone. His colon cancer has finally caught up with him. He’s come here to die.
After being in urban ministry for more than seven years, I am no longer a sentimentalist. I have had to learn, usually the hard way, to think quickly, to act decisively. My world is merciless. And right now, despite Jimmy’s predicament, I had had enough of lingering death and problems and Jimmys. I wondered why he couldn’t die in somebody else’s church.
“Did you hear the Pirates take the Expos last night?” Jimmy asked me. He knew I was caught. He had never read Matthew 25, but he still knew I had to help him. What else could I do? If I could not help a man die in dignity, what meaning did any of this ministry stuff have?
Jimmy would stay.
Jimmy did live in our church basement; day after day he was there. And then we were able to purchase an eleven-dwelling apartment building. We bought it so that if we found any more Jimmys in our basement, we would be able to help them. We named our new building Isaiah 58 House.
Buying it meant venturing into an entirely new area for us, but we had to show compassion. If Scripture and a love of God and his people meant anything, we had to show compassion whether or not we felt it at every turn.
Unfeeling compassion. I had never thought those words would go together, but sometimes they do in ministry. More than half my day, I suspect, is consumed with knotty, unresolvable issues and people. The addicted, the unchanging counselees, the homeless-all need more than I can give, and they need it now. All are both perpetrators and victims of their problems. Jimmy, for example, did change some after he moved into Isaiah 58; the other residents pressured him to. But he still rarely paid on time his token rent.
When I lose my patience and my feelings of kindness toward people, is ministry ended?
I’ve learned I don’t need to invest a great deal of time analyzing people’s motives or working up emotions toward them. Often I feel pity, but sometimes, honestly, I don’t. But what counts is not that I always feel compassion. Only that I show it.
-James P. Stobaugh
Fourth Presbyterian Church
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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