Here's a typical scene. A church in a neighborhood opens its doors to serve free food to those who are hungry. They do so because they know, deep down in their interior spiritual DNA, that every person is sacred, a carrier of Christ, worthy of hospitality, worthy to be a recipient of grace. As the faith community through the gift of food enters into conversation with the hungry, a friendship is formed. The hungry are transformed from being an object of pity into a person with whom one can share the bond of affection. The church discovers that, despite the rough lifestyle, and despite the uncleanliness, almost all who gather for food are grateful, cooperative, and capable of basic human civility. This in itself is astonishing, given how mean the streets can be for those who live on them, and how stressful life can be for those who need the meal. The Church, in attempting to simply practice what it preaches, discovers a deeper world of hope and possibility, they begin to see the vision of a world healed and transformed.
Here's another typical scene. The neighbors who live close to the church building are increasingly angry and resentful towards those who receive the food. The neighbors are becoming frightened because their own security has become at risk in our current economic upheavals; they are frightened that the affluent way of life they are accustomed to is at an end. When they see the hungry in their neighborhoods, when they see long lines forming outside food banks, they are seized with pity but also with fear, and most often the fear becomes hostility. In a city of limited resources, those at the bottom become a target of that resentment. They become a scapegoat upon which to pour out blame.
How do we build a bridge between the faith of the church and the fear of the community? How might the church welcome its neighbors to participate in the bond of affection that can grow from the seed of conversation? One way is for the local church to gather neighbors together to discern the root causes of hunger and, its sidekicks, poverty and homelessness.
The church can help organize conversations about what constitutes community, what values are to be promoted, what stereotypes are to be confronted. The church can offer an opportunity for the neighbors to meet the hungry, and vice versa. Through conversation the fears of the housed can become transformed into neighborliness towards those who are hungry. Through conversation the hungry can become transformed into trusted friends who add value to the neighborhood.
There will be, of course, some who say such thinking is foolish and na