Good Shepherd

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The Good Shepherd

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:11-15)

An image comes to mind. You know it too. It’s ubiquitous; stained glass windows in our chapels or a cheap framed picture of the Good Shepherd cuddling a sweet lamb in a background where everything is peaceful and harmonious. There are no wolves, no careless hirelings, no death. You almost wonder why they need a shepherd. Jesus paints a different picture. He tells of a good Shepherd that leads the sheep through unsavory places where cowards and killers dwell. It is into this world which the Good Shepherd inserts Himself. Chaos and Death is always lurking around waiting for the right moment to devour the sheep. We find the same image in the famous Psalm 23;

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. “

Often read at funerals, in reality this Psalm addresses living in the real world. In such a world, it is more comfortable to stay put where we are, especially when we feel safe and secure. On the other hand, the Good Shepherd is always thinking about places where the pasture is green and the waters are refreshing. He is opening new doors that lead to all kinds of complications. He upsets our comfortable lives just because He wants us to have better spiritual food. Won’t it be easier if He makes the place we are to flourish and be abundant, then we won’t have to leave our comfort zone. Alas, the Good Shepherd has a mind of His own. He can be quite disagreeable. I have never seen an artistic portrayal of Him as such. I was quite comfortable with the way things are but I heard His voice. It is hard to resist His voice even though I know that we are going to walk in unknown territories. If I insist in remaining where I am, then eventually His voice will become faint and one day vanish altogether.

We obeyed the Shepherd’s voice this week. Consequently, it was a busy week. Unfortunately, we achieved absolutely nothing.

One by one they came up to us. Young adults who have spent their entire childhood in the streets and now, they want something to change for the better. They have been comfortable in the streets most of their lives. Suddenly, they felt something prompting them. They realized that there must be a green pasture out there because where they are presently seems like a desert. Wallace articulated it perfectly. He said that there was no peace in the streets. All the conversations and activities are concerned with violence and crime. He knows that there is something better. Wallace, Dreyson and Felipe were the first to express a desire for change. The first step was getting all their civil documents. Getting documents for any regular person is a dreaded and complicated process. It requires of hours of waiting and waiting until we realize that we have been waiting for the wrong thing at the wrong places. However, it has to be done. It is an important step for our children and teens. They will become like everyone else in society. Having your name registered means that society recognizes that you are an individual. Now, they want to be recognized. It sounds wonderful but it is also very unnerving. They are not like everyone. They are disadvantaged. They lived their whole lives in the streets. There are many in the world who look at them with disdain and prejudice. They have no schooling. They have no skills. They are going to face rejections. They are going to be disappointed. They are going into a world where wolves abide. They want us to walk with them. They are going to look to us for our guidance. It is a time of decision for us. We can be like hirelings or shepherds. However, I am comfortable being a shepherd where I am but the Good Shepherd is calling us to move to greener pastures.

Dreyson was the only one who got all his documents. For Wallace and Felipe, after hours of waiting and sometimes enduring humiliating situations and questionings, we learned that we lacked more documents to get what we needed. No one informed us of this when we started the process. We prayed that these young men would not give up. We tried to encourage them but they surprised us. They were smiling and happy that something was happening in their lives even though we seem to hit an obstacle every time. They said that they were going to go forward. However, they wanted us to go with them.

Dreyson got all his documents. Unfortunately, it means absolutely nothing. This is a wolf that stands in our way to the green pasture. He still does not have any prospect of getting a job. However, our eyes should not be on the wolf even though it brandishes the sword of death threateningly at us. He asked about getting a job. I did not have an answer for him. Then I realized that we don’t have to worry about it now. The Good Shepherd has brought us here. His voice will guide us to the next step. I told Dreyson that we will figure out what the next step should be. He smiled. It was the answer he wanted to hear. He said that he wants to take one step at a time towards life. It seems like he heard the Shepherd’s voice as well.

We heard the Shepherd’s voice. It was a busy week and we got a lot done.

I was a little uncomfortable about going to these offices and facing the arrogant and sometimes unhelpful bureaucrats. I would prefer to stay in the streets and teach them how to read and write and talk about God. I did not like to plead with the people to help these teens and young adults because they were homeless. I found the whole process very humiliating for our young people. I did not want to expose their lowly state to everyone. However, the Good Shepherd is calling us to move on to greener pastures. He wants to bring these young men and women to a different place. These young people have heard the voice but they are afraid to proceed alone. They are like sheep. They want an older sheep to walk with them as we follow the Shepherd. It has changed something in our relationship with them. Perhaps, this is in itself the place of green pasture and fresh waters.

I am not sure where we are going. I am sure that it is going to be an uncomfortable journey. There are wolves in every corner. We don’t have to fight them. The Shepherd will take care of them. He is not going to fight them as well. He doesn’t succumb to their ways and means. He will overcome them. We don’t want to imagine a fictitious reality in our minds where all young people will have good jobs and nice homes. It would be great if it was true. However, we don’t know. The Good Shepherd has a different way of looking at life. For now, we just listen to His voice and He will continue to guide us. Perhaps in these offices where people work for a system that is unkind and uncaring we might meet some sheep of the Good Shepherd. Hopefully, together we will discover that the sheep are more prominent in this world than the wolves. Perhaps this is what the Good Shepherd wants to reveal to us. We don’t know but for now, it is enough to know that we have a Good Shepherd leading the way.

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My Brother’s Keeper

“Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”-Genesis 4:9

Ruan is a terror. This is the general consensus among those who work in the streets and perhaps even the children might agree. He is always involved in some altercation. It is not uncommon to see him in a physical fight with some teen. He does not seem to respect anyone, not even us. Once he grabbed our deck of Uno cards and ran away with it. As form of discipline, we decided to suspend activities with him for a short period. Unfortunately, it did not seem to bother him at all.

Ruan is only twelve years old. It is possible that he is just going through a phase right now. He might change in a few years time. Nevertheless, we cannot help but sometimes wish that he would just go away and let us do our work in peace. However, Ruan is really not a hindrance to our work. He just reminds us that we are inadequate and limited in our ability to help people. This makes us uncomfortable. In the same way, Cain was uncomfortable with the presence of Abel. Abel reminded Cain that he did not meet the standard. Our human tendency is to remove or distance ourselves from anything makes us feel inadequate. However, our inadequacy should not contaminate our sense of responsibility. It is the calling of the church to care for the forgotten and despised. Despite his difficulty personality, Ruan belongs to this neglected family of God.

When God asked Cain about Abel, He gave the answer that I find myself giving to God sometimes when I deal with difficult people in my life, “ Am I my brother’s keeper?” This is an important question to ask, although in the case of Cain, he was asking this question to avoid facing a serious crime. Perhaps we tend to ask this question to avoid caring for difficult people as well. Leaving all ulterior motives aside, it is a good question to ask God. Do we really have the responsibility to deal with all the difficult people in our lives, especially those who make us feel small and insignificant? It is a question asked several times in the Bible. Who is my neighbor? How many times must I forgive my brother? These are some of the variations of the same question. All of them asked in hopes of finding a loophole to despise unlikable people.

The answer is given in various shapes and form in the New Testament.

It is given in three famous parables; the parable of the sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son. The parables themselves are a progressive argument that Jesus makes. In the first one, there is not much controversy. The sheep is an innocent animal who got lost and it is the property of the shepherd. His search for it seems to be a rational thing. Nothing out of the ordinary. It is same case with the coin. An inanimate object that got lost and it is of value to the owner. The response is something anyone would do. However, the last parable is controversial. We are dealing with a rational being here. The son is a self-conceited young man demanding his inheritance to indulge in his own personal orgy of self-gratification. Finally, when things don’t work out, he comes running home to his father. If we are willing to be honest, we would agree that the older son was right. The younger son was an irresponsible opportunist and he did not deserve a welcome home party. Apparently this is not the version that Jesus wants us to understand. The story is not about the son but it is about the Father. It is not about the merits of the Son, but the joy of the Father in having His son home. The older son was thinking about himself and not about the Father. In this way, he is not much different from his brother. He failed to see that the younger son, despite being a selfish person, was important to the Father.

Ruan is important to God and so is every annoying and callous person that we know. However, in practice we cannot handle all the people in the world. We can handle the ones God sends to us. He brings certain people in our lives so that we can become their keepers. In the world, rejection is the answer to difficult people. The gospel teaches that God does not reject people, but people reject him. If we want to represent God then we should remove the vocabulary of rejection from our language. However, honesty is important here. God does not want us to pretend a difficult person is a saint when they are behaving like the devil. We cannot pretend that they are good and lovely people. We need to learn to see them the way God perceives them.

In one of our regular days in the streets, we were doing an activity with Ruan when a social worker walked by the square and noticed him. Later on, the social worker approached me and asked me how long Ruan has been in the streets. It was less than a year at that time. He said that he had known him and his family for some time. Ruan used to accompany his stepfather who is paraplegic to a project for physical disabled people. The social worker said that everyone was impressed by the way Ruan would help his step-father and care for him. However, about a year ago, his mother left him for another man. Ruan’s stepfather had to leave the household and this was about the time Ruan ran away to the streets. The child he described was very different from the one we have encountered in the streets. It helped me to notice different things about Ruan from then on. On the day when an insane person tried to hurt me, Ruan was the first person to run up to me and ask me if I was alright. I also noticed that he was trying to console another homeless person who had lost a loved one. I began to perceive that the caring sensitive child was still alive and present in him. Most importantly, I was able to get a glimpse of how God looks at Ruan. He is still a terror, but I realized that he is our brother and God has send us here to be his keeper. This does not mean we overlook his negative attitudes and actions. It would be unwise and unhelpful to do this. Instead we pray that God would help us see Ruan as a complete person, a person who struggles to overcome the odds to be loved in a difficult and lonely world. We are here because God loved us and consequently, this means we become the keepers of those whom God loves as well.

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The Gospel in a Time of Turmoil Part 2

For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks a foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.- 1 Corinthians 1:21-22

Since my last post, the protests have gone from a weekly phenomenon to a daily event. The protest are organized by diverse groups. There are liberals, conservatives, the landless laborers, university students, teachers, and even architects. However, the homeless children and teens are absent from all these protests. In a way, they are just like us. They are outsiders. We are outsiders because of the gospel. They are outsiders because they have lost hope. The people who engage in the protests still believe in a better tomorrow. The homeless children don’t even think about tomorrow. I am not sure if they know what to do with their lives in the present. They watch the protests go by like us but they are oblivious to the fact that they are not part of anything happening in this city. They are here but their presence does not make an impact in society. They live in this city and yet they do not belong to it in a real way. These children and teens are lost in the midst of this turmoil.

I sympathize with the protesters in the city. I think that it is good that they are exercising their citizenship. They believe that they are doing something. I don’t know all their demands. There are too many groups frustrated and angry with the government. They share one thing in common. They believe that political reform will bring positive changes to society.

Jesus lived in a time of frustration and anguish. People wanted a political leader who would change everything. They hoped that Jesus was this leader. They wanted a change. Jesus brought change to this world. However, it was not the change the people were expecting. It was the change to which only the lost or the little ones in His society responded positively. It was a change welcomed by those who lived in the margins, which is the meaning of the gospel term for little ones. They had no impact in society similar to little children.

The question is why did only these little ones respond to the person of Jesus and not the rest of society?

Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”- Mark 2:17

The little ones in the Bible were the tax collectors, prostitutes, the sick, the lame, the very poor, the prisoners and the lepers. They were outsiders. They did not expect much from the established authorities because they had lost hope in the system. They did not believe in the established religion. They did not believe that political change would benefit them. Perhaps they exploited the situation to survive which made them more despicable to society and irrelevant. Nevertheless, the little ones were not expecting anything positive from political or social reforms. Perhaps this was why they were ready for the gospel. They did not have any illusionary hope that the government would help them.

In São Paulo, people predominately from the poor and middle class are marching in the streets because they believe that their happiness in some shape or form will come through political and social reforms. The homeless or the poorest of the poor do not entertain such illusions. They have lost faith in the idols of society. Not because they are wiser than the rest. It is just that they don’t have the resources to believe in these idols. Idols don’t come cheap and they are not accessible to everyone. The middle class still holds on these idols. The middle and upper class are religious, but in the conventional sense. God is one of the ingredients of life. He is not the only One. They believe that a happy life includes having God and…… You fill in the blanks. It could be wealth, family or power. None of these are accessible to the homeless. These are things beyond their reach. It does not make them more virtuous but it makes them open to believing that perhaps having just God alone can help them walk towards a happy and complete life.

It is quite uncomfortable to think this way; mainly because many will accuse me of being simplistic saying that I am spiritualizing the problems of the poor and society in general. However, I think it is very simplistic to think that political reforms can change society. It is even more simplistic and arrogant to think that this generation is going to be the one to do it. It is simplistic to think that we can solve the problems of humanity when a casual look in the mirror will make us realize that we are indeed very complex beings. I don’t claim to know the answer to society’s problems because I don’t think that there is an answer. However, we can point to the One who looks for those who are lost in this world. We don’t have a formula to solve the world’s problems but we know a person that can change the way we understand reality. He helps us see hope in a hopeless reality. This is the message of the gospel, a person and not reforms or theories, but a person.

The rest of society is marching and protesting and hoping that their false gods will answer them. They might not think that the gospel can bring the happiness that they seek. They might think that we are simpletons. However, for those who are lost in this society, they might be ready to receive and experience the healing touch of the Good Shepherd. The gospel is foolish to those who think that they are wise but it is power to those who receive it. We are outsiders because of the power of the gospel. I don’t disagree with the protesters and what they are doing. However, I think the Church in this time of turmoil has something more powerful to offer, not to mention more enduring.

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Waiting for a Vacancy

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.-John 10:11-15

A teenager came up to us and said that he wanted our help to find a halfway house. We were a little hesitant at first because it was quite random. We thought perhaps he was just saying this because this is what we want to hear. It is quite common for the children to say things like that to get our attention. However, this boy was serious. He said that he just ran away from a shelter where he stayed for a week and he regrets his decision. Now he wants to return. This is not an easy task. We cannot just bring him to the nearest shelter and hope that they will take him. This boy is seventeen and legally he is still a minor. We have to follow the proper protocol for a minor. It is a walk through the labyrinth of bureaucracy.

Our first stop was at the Counsel for the Rights of Minors. This is the body which helps minors find a shelter and the Law states that whenever a homeless minor wants to leave the streets, they have to provide a shelter immediately. This is on paper, but the reality is completely different.

We entered the office and there was a balcony with three staff behind it sitting at their desks. No one wanted to attend to us even though there were five of us standing there waiting. Finally, one convinced the other that it was her turn. She came up reluctantly and asked what we wanted. The boy had his head down and was feeling intimidated. The staff did not help to make the situation better. She treated him with almost disdain and asked if he had a home or family in the city. The boy responded meekly that his parents died when he was two and he has been living in and out of shelters ever since. Then the staff turned to us and told us about the procedures to find shelter. She never once after this acknowledged the boy’s presence. She informed us that there was a slim chance that they might find a shelter today. However, while they try to find a vacancy, the boy had to wait in another agency which was about half hour away.

We walked together with the teenager to this other place. When we got there, no one had been informed that we were going there. However, the staff here were more cordial and they spoke with the teenager and tried to make him feel comfortable. There were at least five people in the office, but only one was in the streets working with the homeless people. We waited until six and there was no call from anyone. The teenager was told that he should return tomorrow. He had to spend the night in the street. He was used to it and he did not mind. We had our doubts that he would return the next day. We were surprised: he did.

The next day he spent the whole day waiting. Finally they received a call from another agency that was responsible for finding him a shelter and they claimed that in their system he was already living in another shelter. Therefore they could not find him a new place to stay. Well, this was the final straw and this boy gave up and went back to the streets. We called the agency and they told us that they made a mistake and the teenager in their system was another one with the same name. However, there was really very little chance that there would be a vacancy in any shelter for the next few days. They said that they would call us and then we can look for the boy and take him there if he still wants to go.

The teenager’s name is Kaique. This has been his reality his whole life. He moved from one shelter to another. We have visited these shelters and we understand why he would want to run away. They look like detention centers without locks and gates. Kaique wants a better life but he is trapped in two worlds. When he is in the shelter, he is thinks that life in the streets is better and when he is the streets, he gets disillusioned. The bureaucracy and the lack of compassion among some the staff makes it hard for a young boy to do the right thing. This is why we don’t want to receive any funding from the local government. We don’t want to be trapped in this world of bureaucracy.

Is there hope for someone like Kaique? Well, we don’t have the answers for his housing problem right now. We don’t know how to help him right now. However, there is an answer. It is not waiting for the government or the bureaucrats to do something for him. These agencies are the hirelings that Jesus talked about. They are not interested in Kaique. Only the Good Shepherd lays down His life for Kaique. It is best not to depend on hirelings. We hope to walk with Kaique and find ways to help him find his autonomy. The Good Shepherd is opening the way but we need to discern His voice. He is real and present. Most importantly, He has compassion for Kaique. I cannot say this for the government agencies that claim to be fighting for the rights of the minors.

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