IVP - Strangely Dim

Just Like Jesus

I'm working my way through the final draft of the forthcoming Likewise book The New Friars, a survey of global movements serving the world's poor by Scott Bessenecker. It's inspiring, challenging, distressing, motivating, and other participles too numerous to name. I came across this story that's three parts funny, two parts poignant.

I had dinner with Jesus earlier this year. He sleeps on the streets around Santa Monica pier and goes by the name Bill. . . . A few of us ended up at a McDonald's where many homeless hang out. While we were waiting for our order, a man with longish hair and a beard, wearing ragged clothes, stepped up next to me. . . . Hmm, I thought, this guy sort of looks like Jesus. . . . Bill sat down with us and told his story of schizophrenia and homelessness. "You know, I'm sort of like Jesus," he said, and then went on to quote Jesus from Matthew 8:20, "The foxes had holes but the Son of Man had no place to rest his head."

"You are kind of like Jesus," I agreed.

"I know I'm not really Jesus," he confessed. "I'm not that far gone yet."

I like the simpleness of this story. It's just a bit scandalous in the picture it paints of Jesus, but just a bit hopeful in the picture it paints of each of us. The people Scott profiles in The New Friars are living in solidarity with the poorest of the poor because Jesus calls us to identify him among us, to serve as though he were receiving our service. Some of these folks are in the Phillipines or Africa or South America, but some of them, like Bill, are at the McDonalds on Santa Monica pier. Who'd have thought you'd find Jesus in such a pedestrian pace.

I'm no new friar; I'm not that far gone yet. But this book is making me wish, just a bit, that I was one. Which I suppose is the point.