My Least Brethren
I feel the weight of the purse at my side, heavier than its contents ought to allow. Coin has a way of gathering meaning. Each piece carries the future folded inside it. Bread yet to be bought. Roof yet to be kept. The quiet hope that my children might grow without learning the sharp vocabulary of want. I am a young father, and the road now runs not only forward but ahead of me, into years I am trying, clumsily, to prepare.
I hesitate, and the hesitation itself becomes an accusation.
The reasons arrive easily. They always do. He might waste it. He might use it to deepen the wounds already etched into his body. I might be helping him disappear rather than helping him rise. Prudence speaks with a confident voice, and it sounds very much like responsibility. I tell myself that love must be intelligent, that charity must be careful, that I cannot afford sentiment when mouths wait for me at home.
Yet another voice presses in, unwelcome and unignorable.
I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was a stranger.
The words do not ask what the money becomes after it leaves my hand. They do not ask whether the recipient is capable of gratitude or reform. They do not offer exemptions for fathers with anxious hearts or for men trying to build something stable in a fragile world. They simply insist that Christ has bound Himself to the poor with a closeness that unsettles every clean distinction I try to make.
The beggar does not resemble the Christ I prefer. He does not look radiant or reassuring. He looks like risk. He looks like disorder. He looks like the possibility that my gift might be squandered. And that is precisely what troubles me, because I know how often grace has been squandered on me.
I think of my family. I think of the future I want to secure for them. I want them to be fed, sheltered, protected from the sharpest edges of the world. I want them to inherit more than my fears disguised as wisdom. I want them to learn prudence without learning suspicion, generosity without recklessness, faith without calculation.
Still the question returns. What if the coin buys poison instead of bread? What if it vanishes into the long, grinding machinery of self destruction? What if my kindness becomes complicit?
But another question follows close behind. What if it does not? And even if it does, what exactly is being asked of me in this moment? Am I responsible for the whole of this man’s life, or only for the space where our paths briefly cross? Am I called to fix him, or simply to see him?
The world has no difficulty asking for more. It always has. It finds polished ways to make appetite appear virtuous and accumulation appear necessary. I have learned how readily I answer those requests, how rarely I examine them with the same moral suspicion I reserve for the poor man with open hands.
The road grows quiet. The moment tightens.
I give, not because I am certain, but because I am not. I give because certainty would turn this into a transaction rather than an act of faith. I give because I feel guilty for all the times I have failed to give. I give because I would rather risk mercy than perfect my arguments. I give because I feel shame for all of the frivolities I have given my money to. I give because I hope my family will one day remember a father who tried to love without first demanding proof that love would succeed.
The coin leaves my hand. It is small. It feels inadequate. It probably is.
But Christ has always shown a fondness for inadequate offerings.
I continue on the road, unsettled, still arguing with myself, still unsure whether I have done the right thing. And yet beneath the unease there rests a quieter realization. Whatever future I am building for my family, I do not want it to be one in which I learned how to pass by Christ with excellent reasons.
It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. (Chesterton, The New Jerusalem)
