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January 24, 2012
by John Stoll
I gave this guy a buck the other day – a buck and some change, actually- but call it a buck because a buck means something. Loose change bugs me, so you’re kind of doing me a favor by taking it off my hands. But a buck is pretty physical, pretty substantial.
I gave this guy a buck because he came into the bakery where I had been having breakfast with a source. He came in looking for a coffee for free and the bakery kicked him out. I don’t blame the bakery – you can’t have people asking for free stuff. I walked out a few minutes after this coffee seeker left and was surprised to see him sitting smack dab outside the door of the bakery. You couldn’t walk out of the door without brushing his poofy black coat and smelling whatever he had to drink last night — or this morning. “You got any loose change?”
I knew there was at least a buck snuggled in my wallet, but I said nothing as I walked to my car. I got in, sat down and turned the beast on. The wipers started marching across the windshield, squeaking against the cold glass. It reminded me how miserable Detroit can be in the winter. Streets bleached white by salt, buildings wrecked by neglect and theft, streets largely vacant. Might as well be hell on a cold streak. So, I took the buck, the change and buried in this guy’s hand. Not the most benevolent action I’ve taken in my life, but more than I usually for gents in this condition.
“This should buy you a coffee in there.” “I was actually looking for a brownie. Could you give me a little more” Huh? “Well, that’s enough to get you pretty close to what you need for a brownie.” ” A buck won’t buy anything.” I waved my hand in dismissal, like I do at my wife when I don’t get my way, and started walking to the car. I was amazed that this man had the nerve to tarnish my gift by doubting its sufficiency.
I know how much a coffee costs at Avalon bakery and I just gave you more than enough to buy one, I thought. Suit yourself, enjoy the buck, go to hell.
I’ve seen that man two times since that encounter and both times he’s asked me for spare change.
Day one I said “I got you yesterday, broseph.” I was angry at him that day. Day two – today – I gave him my last buck. I’m still disappointed in him, but really, should I expect this bum on the street to understand the economics of grace? Should I withhold charity because this guy doesn’t play by the rules of the transaction? Strike some deal with him an agreement that I’ll pay him a buck if he says the magic words? It doesn’t work that way. But I sure seem to think it does. We all know that grace is unmerited – this has been augured into our brains since our days in short pants going to super church (Sunday school for charismatics). But we do typically think that a response to grace is merited. So while I do nothing to get the buck, I damn well at least say thank you when I get it. If we apply this to the story above: I liked the bum when I gave him the buck but hated him when he didn’t reciprocate.
How can that equal grace?
It took me about a week to come to grips with this. Last Tuesday night, about 12 hours after I handed over that first buck, I was shoving my clothes in a locker at the gym and thinking about this man. The sun had set on my anger and I wasn’t going to let go of it. Ungratefulness bothers me, much like a pocket of loose change. It’s a clumsy, fractured way to live life. Maybe if the guy would show gratitude, he wouldn’t be stuck out in the rain, I thought.
But the next few days told a different story as I started to see glimpses of this bum in me. It was like spotting a scratch in a freshly polished wood floor and, the closer I looked, the more blemishes I saw – so that when I was finally down on my hands and knees completely investigating the surface I came to find the floor was bruised and scarred and gouged.
Like that shiny, varnished, bludgeoned hardwood sitting on a bench outside the bakery – upon further investigation, I’m ungrateful as well. Not on the scale of a lousy buck, but on the scale of a house and children and cars and vacations. I receive this stuff beyond my own merit, for if these prizes were handed out based on value to the kingdom or on human potential, I’d have a smaller house, a ten-speed instead of a Buick, kids who were unpleasant and a staycation at the Woodward Gardens roadside motel with an all-you-can-eat pass at the Mountain King Cafe. The blue house on a gilded street, the cushy minivan with automatic sliding doors, the trips to New York and the ocean and to golf courses and ski lodges, Jack, Evelyne, Kimberly — it would all be in a book about someone else’s life. If merit were involved, I would far better resemble Cousin Eddie, or the bum on the bench.
And yet, my response, is so like the one that set me off. I ask God for this stuff and he more than provides. Then I tell him I was more in the mood for a brownie and that the big house and the swanky wheels and the talented kids and the loving wife and the lazy vacations are just not enough.
‘Tis an outstanding grace whose giver is deaf to my response.
I grew up in a faith where meritocracy was everything. Deep faith scored you deep riches, and the louder the response the more likely the hits would keep coming. I dislike that bum because he turns that philosophy on its head. He just sits there with a hand out and people sometimes put stuff in it. And he doesn’t say thank you enough. And he asks for more more more too much much much.
Funny thing? So. Do. I.
In the great sins of my life, a cunning and sneaky covetousness sits near the top of the pyramid. Ungratefulness fuels its prominence in my heart.
I recently sat in this little white building on Grant Road and just soaked in a brand of jealously I feel in a church. Guy gets up, gives a killer sermon and my first reaction is “I can do that…God, why can’t you let me get up there and put on the ritz, solicit tears, make people think?” His response?
“Look down the row of this pew, broseph…right there, the one with the shaggy blonde mop and the one with the curly blond yarn…that’s all the preaching you need to do. Guard them with the gratefulness of a shepherd whose been given the city’s top flock and don’t let covetousness render you impotent in this task. Take the energy you’re pouring into wishing I gave you another quarter and pour it into the gift you already have in your hands.”
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