So I was at the clothing bank this morning, waiting in the fluorescent-lit, plywood-walled hallway as some of our newly arrived refugees filled trash bags with a hodge-podge of hand-me-downs. I had taken along a book to read, as is my custom - this time the brand new miscellany by Frederick Buechner. I found it hard to focus on the book, however - as engaging as Buechner’s writing always is - because down the hallway was a single mother with two children, both of them vying for her attention, both of them picking fights with each other.

“Mommy, he poked me in the eye!” the girl screamed, tears streaking down her face.

“Say you’re sorry,” commanded the mother to her son sternly.

“Sorry,” said the eye-poker with a tone that lacked earnestness.

“Say, ‘I forgive you’.”

“No,” retorted the one with the tear-filled eyes as she walked away, sniffling, arms crossed. “I don’t want to!”

It wasn’t long until the family was called into the office to fill out their forms, but it sure seemed like a long time what with the eye-poking and screaming and relentless rebellion from the son each time his mother told him to sit down and shut up - which occured every ten seconds or so.

Once inside the office, they quieted down, and I was just able to make out a question from the youngest of them, the little girl whose tears had mostly stopped flowing.

“Who’s that in the picture?” I heard her ask.

I knew which picture she was referring to because I had just been in the office a few minutes earlier and had given a moment’s attention to the big picture on the wall of the man with the black beard, the white robe, the compassionate yet piercing eyes.

“It’s Jesus,” responded the mother, her tone having suddenly lost its edge.

“Is that really what he looks like?” asked the son.

“Yes,” the mother said.

“How do they know?”

“Because that’s what the Bible says he looks like.”

The absurdity of the statement hit me, but I couldn’t dwell on it too long because the conversation continued.

“Everyone has their own idea of what Jesus looks like,” offered the woman behind the desk, who with a gold crucifix around her neck and fake red fingernails types clients’ information into the computer day after day, week after week, year after year.

What struck me most about this whole fascinating episode was how the scene went from pandemonium one second to something miraculous that bordered on awe and reverence the next. The pandemonium ended (fleetingly, I must add) and awe and reverence took its place (if but for a moment). What made the difference? It was the face of Jesus.

For a split-second I was tempted to put down the book, walk over to them and tell them who Jesus really is, since I am a Christian and in my stream of the Christian faith we are taught to tell everyone we meet everything we know about Jesus, but then it struck me.

This Jesus in the picture on the plywood wall at the clothing bank, along with the pictures all of us have of Jesus on the walls of our hearts and minds, are all in some way representative of the real Jesus who was born in a cave out back, who grew up stubbing his toes and skinning his knees and wetting the bed, who got thirsty and hungry and tired, who healed the sick and raised the dead and told seemingly everyone with words both veiled and explicit that the Kingdom of God was at hand, who ultimately died on the cross and rose from the dead and ascended where he now sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven - this Jesus, the real Jesus, the one we have so much yet to learn about, the one we have only begun to get to know, was the Jesus who said, “Come to me, all who are weary and weighed down, and I will give you rest.” And also, “Let the little children come to me.”

This morning at the clothing bank, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the unremorseful eye-poking big brother and the unforgiving eye-poked little sister and the tired and edgy but trying-her-best single mother were the exact sorts of people to whom Jesus was and is saying, “Come to me.” He’s not calling those who have their act together. He’s calling the messes. He’s calling those with no clue what he looks like, just as he’s calling those who think they have him all figured out. And that is really good news for all of us.

Two facts and a conclusion.

Fact one: half of the world’s population now live in cities, and the percentage is growing.

Fact two: the story of the Bible begins in a garden, but ends in a city.

Conclusion: cities are really, really important.

In Signs of Emergence, Kester Brewin writes that cities clearly embody “all that is wrong and right with humanity, precisely because it is in cities that engagement with ‘the other’ is unavoidable.”

Engagement with “the other” - whether it is someone from a different ethnic background or political affiliation or religion or sexual orientation or economic standing or musical preference - is rarely comfortable (but of course, engagement with “The Other”, that is, God, isn’t always comfortable either).

We speak of going to the mountains to tune out the noise and hear from God, and there is a place for this. Face to face with God’s magnificent, untouched creation, we’re reminded of his power and creativity, not to mention his existence. But, as Brewin says, “If our only answer to the obvious pain, greed, and ugliness that the city presents to us on a daily basis is to remove ourselves, then there is no hope for improvement.”

Rather than escaping the pollution and crime and overcrowding and yes, even the rap music pounding through your bedroom wall from the apartment next door as you try to sleep - as followers of Christ we must go to the cities, learn to listen for God there, begin to see God there. The Incarnation models for us a “moving in” rather than a “getting away,” and to the extent that we follow Christ, our lives and our families and our churches will be marked by the very same principle.

But most of all, we don’t give up hope; we know how the story ends.

I wrote last time in ancitipation of our FLOWING event, which was scheduled for April 5. We were very excited and were bracing ourselves for all the impending logistical issues when 80-90 people show up on one city block on a Saturday morning to pick up trash. When April 4 came along, however, it had been raining for a few days and we were forced to postpone our trash pick-up. A few folks still headed downtown to help serve breakfast at the mission as scheduled, but the rest of us had to wait a week.

The down side is that only about half of those who had originally signed up were able to make it on the rain date, but those who came had a blast (as you can see in our new Flickr album).

We started in front of the mission at 9am as Stan the Man, on staff at WSRM, gave us the run-down. We then spread out around the mission grounds, to the park out back, and into the surrounding neighborhood. Judging by the smiles on faces you’d have thought everyone was happy to be there, millions of cigarette butts aside (seriously, who knew so many people smoked?!).

Also, money for the t-shirts keeps coming in and we hope to cut a check to the Blood:Water Mission within a week or so. At this point, it looks like we’re at $700 or so, with each dollar literally representing one person in Africa who will now have access to clean water for one whole year. We hope to push that number closer to 1000 before it’s all said and done. [UPDATE: we ended up sending in a check for $900. Thanks to all who participated.]

What we’re banking on here is that as a result of FLOWING some, four or five maybe, have caught a fresh glimpse of Jesus and what he’s up to in this world. Maybe they caught it in the smile of a toothless mission resident who helped us sweep up trash and was really excited to get a FLOWING shirt of his own. Maybe it hit them when they realized that all it took was a couple of hours and ten bucks to make this happen, and they began to consider what else could be possible. I heard someone say she had a great time, and now plans on volunteering at the mission, though she never has before.

Please join us in praying that with our lives, together we would say AMEN to everything God wants to do in our world and in our city.

Check out the Flickr album here.