Often we tell ourselves that we can't become Someone New because we're not perfect. But, we don't have to be Perfectly Whole in order to become a blessing for others. We are a people who are loved first, called by, and then taken up by Christ himself! And, when we are inevitably wounded and broken by life's eventual stresses and tragedies, Christ can still and sometimes especially, strengthen us to become a blessing shared with others.
If life has battered us, left holes in our self-esteem, those holes are where we are wide open and vulnerable, humble and receptive to the cascading Living Water that flows from Christ. Then, if we are humble and receptive, Christ our Living Water rejuvenates and replenishes us so that we can share our story, share who we are, and bless someone else's life through our unique perspective. If Christ within us strengthens us, we can take off our masks. Bare our souls. Share who we are because who we are is not that much different from who everyone else is. We have all been battered and broken by life. In Christ, we can all be healed enough to become a blessing.
The miracle is that Christ can use anyone, no matter how broken and battered, to become a blessing for others. And he does! But - how often do we recognize the blessing Christ on the streets of our lives?
In "One Thousand Gifts," Canadian farm wife Ann Voskamp tells the story of accompanying her Church's youth group, composed of innocent, naive country teens, to big city Toronto to serve in Christ's name on the streets at the Yonge Street Mission - and the unlikely vagrant who becomes a blessing for them.
It's evening, and the youth group is walking down Yonge Street towards the Mission, when a stranger, a man with wild, tangled hair, emerges out of the shadows at the Mission's entrance to confront them. Pulling a plastic mask over his face, and wildly gesticulating, he walks into the center of the now-uneasy, ashen-faced group.
"Why do you think I'm wearing this %*$& mask? Hey? Why?....Why would I wear a *$% mask like this?"
Ann comments, " None of us know what to do with this. It's not on the itinerary. One never knows what it will cost to bless.
"Then the man rips the mask from his face and the blade of his howl slashes at us all stiffened to this spot here.
"'I'm wearing the &%$& mask to mask my feelings...I'm masking the real me! Know what I mean?'
"The heart jolts. I have never heard the whole human condition spoken so baldly, and from the unexpected lips, and I want to raise a hand to my own face, see if I can peel off mine....
"It's the exposing of a naked soul.
"He's crying. Sobbing. I catch snatches...'I'm so *&$** up...Jesus...Savior...need...know what I mean?...Just so...Jesus...Lord...know what I mean?'
"Bared, he writhes, storms past me, a flurry of tears, hair, hands. A chaperone from our Youth Group calls softly after: 'Jesus loves you...'"
The man stops, half-turns, searches out who spoke to him, and replies, "Yeah, he does. And he loves you, too, lady." But he hasn't finished. His eyes are pleading with them to listen further.
"Hey, I'm sorry, O.K? I've got issues, know what I mean? I'm like, bipolar.....Look at me!" He steps closer; some look away; he yells "Look at me!"
The man's nose is crooked; his teeth are few and brown. Ann realizes, "His rage shakes us. Shakes the drowsy, shakes the slumbering, shakes us to look at what we really came to see, to look straightway into it and really open the soul wide to see and it terrifies."
Ann looks closer, realizes the man could be her age. He continues,
"'I'm a **%$& retard. Fried my brain on crack, know what I mean? Got a pacemaker in here.' He pounds his chest. 'OD'd just down there,' he waves his hand towards a side street, 'and it took them five hours to find me. Don't do crack, know what I mean?' His eyes are fiery, searching the faces of these country kids. 'Don't get &*%$ messed up like I did. Love your mom and dad cuz they love you, know what I mean?'
"He is choking back emotion," Ann says. "So am I. I wonder where they are, his parents, if they know he's here, like this... What do you do to be a healing grace to a soul mangled in skin with a fried brain? I am the one who feels utterly bankrupt before a homeless man and I give all I really have. I pray. He rummages in his duffel bag, looking for something. What's he trying to do?...."
What this homeless man with a fried brain is doing is drawing out a dog-eared Bible, which he shoves at a girl, Erica. "Read Romans 7 to 8," he tells her. She begins softly, her voice drowned out by the traffic and the rumblings of the city. "Louder. So they hear you."
"Then comes Erica's voice, calmed by these words she knows and the Person in them.
"....I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do..."
And the man who owns the Bible joins in with her, mumbling the words from memory..."But what I hate I do.... I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature...For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out....What a wretched man I am!"
Ann looks at him, at his tearing eyes, at his begging eyes. She knows, "He has torn it off like a rind. The masks. Those words say who he is. Who we are. Here stands the cold bare skin of a soul. Can I, just my eyes, hold him? I know these last four lines of the chapter, for they are mine too, and I speak them with him: 'Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!' Grace."
The mission worker talks to him in a soft voice, and the kids enter the Mission. He holds the door for them. As Ann enters, she turns to look at him, face to face. "His eyes implore and his gravelly voice begs, 'Did I get it right this time?'
She knows what he's asking - "Do I do any of the good I long to do? Did I bless? Am I a blessing?"
And Ann replies softly, "Thank you."
She hopes and prays that he will understand.
"I say the words slowly, hope they soak into his pores, broken man who yearns to bless, and I am him and he is me and behind the masks we are all the same. All, we only find joy in the blessings that are taken, broken, and given.
"I nod and smile and somewhere find the courage to say it slow again, sure, so he knows.
"He is broken and he has given.
"'Thank you.'"
"Our eyes do hold the other. On Yonge Street, we enact eucharisteo."
This is how brokenness becomes a blessing. It drills through our protective, hard covering that separates our souls from others' souls so that we can see the world with the Light of Christ, and be filled with the Living Water of Christ which is grace.
Christ presents each of us with a choice. We can either acknowledge to ourselves all our anxiety attacks, and low self-esteem, our addictions (think of that cell phone), our sins (think of ingratitude, pettiness, and harsh words), or we can mask them, hide them away from ourselves, and PRETEND to be perfect. PRETEND to be better than the homeless man under the bridge, or the man in the Food Pantry who also uses Food Stamps. PRETEND to be better than that refugee, that illegal immigrant, that low-level clerk at a store, that dark-skinned person sitting at the clinic who is on Medicaid. PRETEND to be a different kind of human being entirely. When we PRETEND, we cannot see that anyone, anyone at all, can be both blessed AND be a blessing. All of us have dignity and worth and can be used by God to bless others. "I am him and he is me and behind the masks we are all the same."
Who of us can be as honest as the homeless man, the addict, who has memorized the words of St. Paul, and knows that they apply to him? The words that say what we all know: we do what we don't want to do! We hide away from the brokenness, pretend it isn't there, but it is there. We take refuge in remembering the mistakes or tragedies in our past and tell ourselves that we can't change, and so we continue to do the same things out of habit, even though deep inside we yearn to change! None of us have become all that we could become, none of us have fully become a blessing to others. None of us have fully opened ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit.
But Christ usually only expects us to change slowly, to take baby steps by reaching out to him to hold our hands as we stumble forward. And, he tells us, we don't have to be perfect to be a blessing! We only have to be honest. Only have to remove the mask that hides our brokenness and witness to others how Christ moves like blinding Light and rushing Water in our souls. Only have to take a chance and smile, take a chance and move forward to help someone, take a chance and recognize the humanity of someone we've ignored before. And let Christ do the rest to make us a blessing, a Light to the World in his Name.