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John 6:51-58
The van moved slowly down the street which was filled with the traffic of the pleasant Spring night. My nose pressed against the window as I tried to look into the shadows of each building, into the dark recesses of every ally, behind each partially hidden large green dumpster, or down the steep stairs of every cellar entrance. We knew they were here. They were always here, always just out of view. And sometimes, in plain view, like some discarded bit of litter, tossed carelessly aside adding to the filth of grimy sidewalks. The refuse of a society too busy to care.
Yet, it didn't take long to find them. The promise of food and clothes and a sip of hot coffee soon brought many to the open doors of the van. "I need some shoes, man." "Ya got socks? Need sum socks." They did need socks, and shoes, and food. But mostly, they just wanted to talk, to talk with anyone willing to listen, willing to take the time. Mostly, they just needed the assurance that they still existed, still mattered, at least to someone, at least for the moment.
The conversations were wild, wild and strange and sometimes undecipherable. Much like following Rabbit through Wonderland, never knowing when one might meet smiling Cheshire Cat or Mad-Matter or wicked and soulless Queen of Hearts. Conversations full of black helicopters and conspiracies and government mind control intermixed with proclamations of faith and hope for the future and love for their faceless brothers and sisters, there with them, there on the streets.
We moved from place to place, from building to building, buildings that during the day were sanctuaries of business and government and power, but now, offered scant protection to those who had no shelter, those with no homes. And at each stop, it would be the same. Hands reaching for food, voices asking for clothing, lives being shared from beyond the haze of mental illness, out of the confusion of life in this concrete labyrinth. But always, always, there was the voice of hope.
Finally, our food almost gone, we reached out last stop. Several men shuffled out from the shadows. They stood clustered together, a monument of societal discard. They were the waste materials of economic Darwinism, these who could not make it. Hot water was poured into the last cup of instant soup, one cup of soup for so many mouths. We watched as ever so slowly, ever so delicately as not to spill a drop, the soup was passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth. It was a communion of sorts, the sharing of the body, the drinking of the blood.
And as we watched, as we stood in the midst of the noise and the traffic, suddenly I was aware, deeply aware, that it was he who stood with us, feeding us with his broken body, feeding us through the bodies of these who were his blessed, the body of these in whom he dwells. It was he who now fed us his spilled blood through the blood of those that would be forgotten, the gifts of the poor to the wealthy, the gift of grace to those who believed they had the answers.
It was the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine. It was an act of flesh. It was an act of life - true food and true drink - conversion.
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