Uncomfortable Pew

Texts: Deuteronomy 30: 15-20; Luke 14: 25-34

Along with building up a quality library, Aleksa has gathered up some very fine on-line soulful resources and posted those links on our website ...
which led me, one night this past week, to listening to a recent episode of Tapestry. Maybe you heard it on CBC radio last Sunday afternoon. [1] 
It featured an interview with Timothy Schmalz … who unlike his name, is anything but schmaltzy! He’s an artist … a sculptor, and more recently has become known for his “Homeless Jesus” --a life-size bronze figure, lying on a bench, sleeping, covered with a blanket, only his feet exposed. When you look closely, you can see the wounds in his feet.

The inspiration for this sculpture came one afternoon on his way home, when Timothy spotted a homeless person wrapped in a sleeping bag, sleeping. It occurred to him in an instant: “that was Jesus … I just saw Jesus,” he says (recalling that passage in Matthew’s Gospel: when did we see you naked, hungry, sick, a stranger). “Under that sleeping bag was something absolutely sacred,” Timothy realizes. And so I went home to see if I could create a sculpture that would help people to see Jesus in the least of our brothers and sisters … remind us that all human life is sacred.”

There are 36 of these sculptures installed around the world … mainly but not only in front of churches. In some cases, there’s been an eager response: “Yes! We’ll give this sculpture a home.” It’s also been firmly rejected … called tasteless; how dare you represent Jesus as a beggar … or in the case of one well-known church who seemed so close to saying yes but finally refused, confessing we don’t allow people to sleep on the premises … so we’d be setting ourselves up to be ridiculed if we made room for the sculpture.

Full marks for seeing the disconnect and anticipating the consequences … the cries of “hypocrites” and what have you.

Be aware of the cost, we hear Jesus say in that deeply challenging passage from Luke’s Gospel. Know what you’re getting into, just as you would if you were building a tower or heading into war. So it is with coming with me along this way of love. Be clear on what‘s required, what it asks of you. And then he lays it out … “whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, won’t be able to be my disciple.”

We think of “hate” as meaning to despise or wishing ill on someone. But here Jesus is using a figure of speech from his day that means to turn away from, detach oneself; it’s about not being bound. So what Jesus is saying isn’t as alarming as we might have thought … but that’s not to say it’s any less challenging! To serve God and horrify your mother, obey your calling and not your father, turn from your beloved to the Beloved … to turn from the tug and tangle of family, from our own hooks and havens toward another Home, another Will, another Love [2] -- it could mean all of this and more! Jesus says.

So there it is … don’t be fooled … just so you know, going with him -- it’s not an extra-curricular activity … it’s about the whole of our life. And it’s hard … it’s messy. It’s inconvenient. It demands much of you --all of you. It will likely undo you, over and over AND yet somehow it’s the way to abundant life! That’s the wonder. And that’s the choice that is always before us … to choose, or not, this way of deep freedom, where we are prepared to let go of all we hold dear … our things, our relationships, our reputation, our comfort, our life, for the sake of our commitment to stand up for life, for the well-being and dignity of another. It’s this commitment to loving our neighbour that sits at the heart of what it is to belong to the way of Jesus, that won’t budge, that’s not negotiable.

It’s hard … it’s messy … it’s inconvenient, costly. You might well not want to do it -- and nobody says you have to! But if you’re hungry for a life that satisfies … longing to be part of something truly life-giving … Jesus says, come and see, learn from me. Notice: the invitation is to stay close. The promise is “I will be with you …even to the end of the age.”

How do we grow in our life of faith? How do we go deeper?
I remember Peter Short putting it this way: Faith is taking the risk of following Jesus, with Jesus somehow present … so that there’s some kind of call and response going on everyday. In the absence of taking the risk of following, in the absence of that encounter, faith becomes an ideology, a program, and Jesus, our honorary patron. Then it’s the program that becomes sacred instead of the life!

I want to come back to the Homeless Jesus … I do and I don‘t! -- we with our “no camping, no loitering” signs around the property. I can identify with those churches who say “it won’t work to have that sculpture here … to have Jesus here.” Wow!

Is that really our final answer? our last word?
What if we remembered that of course keeping company with Jesus will be difficult, demanding, and we let the challenge work a-way in us.
What if instead of putting the challenge behind us, we faced into it, faced up to it, allowed ourselves to struggle with it?
What would happen if we sat awhile in that uncomfortable pew and listened … to the voice of our soul … to Love’s voice?
That would be living our faith! … growing in faith!

Before the interview with Timothy is over, he tells of having a chaplain come up to him to tell him about the first time he saw the sculpture in Toronto -- how it occurred to him: ‘leave it to the Jesuits to have a life-sized sculpture of a homeless person in front of their school!’ Then he goes on to describe how he walked up and sat down on that little space at the end of the bench, and was about to rest his hand on the feet, and then “Oh my God … this is Jesus”. In great detail he described that experience to Timothy, and the rush that came over him.

Sometimes the uncomfortable pew turns out to be the best seat in the house! A place of encounter … where we hear that call and are confronted with the choice … and the depth of our commitment to standing for life.

Today, I can’t help but hear Jesus speaking through that sculpture and our scripture, asking “so what about you? To what are you giving your life?”

If following in Jesus’ way is inevitably costly -- not because of some masochistic bent, but because that’s just how it is in a world that’s resistant, even hostile to Jesus’ way – if following in Jesus’ way is inevitably costly, I have to ask myself so, how have I known the cost? How committed really am I to standing for life?

How timely as we get rolling this Fall, that Jesus would bring us to this dis-quieting check-point. What if we let him ask us “how committed are you really to standing for life? for the dignity and well-being of others?

Sometimes the uncomfortable pew turns out to be the best seat in the house … so why don’t we let ourselves be there for a time right now.

[1]  Mary Hines' interview with Timothy Schmalz, Homeless Jesus, on Tapestry, August 28, 2016,

[2] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, The Turning, August 31, 2016