“Being Homeless Has Its Perks”

This past Sunday, forty people and yours truly from Metro experienced a foretaste of heaven.  It was an evening that I will hold dear to my heart.  Each year, Metro Church throws a banquet for homeless people in the Bergen County area.  And when I say banquet, I mean a serious partay!  We go all out.  Our purpose and goal is to treat the homeless like Donald Trump.   Why you say?  Because the first thing a homeless person loses is not their money, but their dignity.  It is a painful experience, and yet when you think about it, they are no different from you and me.  If truth be told many of us would be a few paychecks away from being homeless.

We call this banquet event Livin it Up.  We had two chefs from our church cook a three course meal for 200 homeless people.  The food was delicious and although I would have loved to eat it, this five star meal was not for me, or the people at Metro, but for our special guests.  We ate Papa John’s Pizza before the event.  Our servers were dressed up in black slacks and a white-collar shirts waiting on each person and meeting their every need and request.  The highlight of the evening was the dancing.  Each year, we have a band called Total Soul who performs.  Total Soul performs at weddings and big parties.  They do not come cheap.  To hire them for an event like ours would cost in the ballpark of $10,000, but they do it at no cost because they believe in what we are doing.  The food and the entertainment were incredible.  I even busted out a few moves on the dance floor.  It was completely humiliating, but well worth it to be dancing with people who I feel is Jesus to me.

When the evening was over, I drove some of the folks back to their shelters.  Their comments about the evening brought tears to my eyes.  Comments like: that was the best night I ever had,  the food was great, the music was great, but the best part was being treated like a human being, my favorite comment was from a woman who said: being homeless has its perks.  I drove back home humbled and thankful for this wonderful experience.

What made the evening even more special were the people who served.  Many shared with me how they experienced God’s love through the homeless.  In fact, more than the homeless being blessed that evening, the servers confessed that they received the greater blessing.

We teach a few things at Metro that I hope as Christians we will never forget.  The first thing is that we do not receive God’s blessings until we are willing to first release it to other people.   Our blessing of other people, especially the poor and oppressed should not be continent upon the blessings we receive from God.  In fact, the Bible teaches us that we are to release God’s blessings before He blesses our life.

The second thing we teach is that Jesus is among the poor and oppressed.  We should never approach the poor out of a sense of noble obligation, but out of reverence because we are in the presence of Jesus Christ.  In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus teaches us that whatever we do to the least of these, we actually do it unto him.  How arrogant of us to think that we are bringing Jesus to the poor and vulnerable.  Jesus is already there and doing something beautiful.  So the next time you decide to minister to hurting people, please be aware that Jesus is already there, so prepare to meet and worship Him through the poor and oppressed.

This banquet idea came from Luke 14:15-24.  Metro has been doing this for the past five years as an annual event.  We also do something on a monthly basis but on a smaller scale.

I hope as Christians we would have a heart for God’s hurting people in this world.  It is sad when non-Christians have a greater concern for the least, the last, and the lost than Christians.  Let’s challenge each other to look deep within our life so that we realize: financial success, a nice home, kids going to a good school is not what we should be living for.  Nothing wrong with that, but that is not God’s dream, it is the American dream.  God’s dream is for each of us to dedicate our lives to growing in our relationship with God through serving the people the world has given up on.  And when we do this, then I believe God will transform us and our faith will be something more than just a belief, but a lifestyle that is radically lived out.