“My back hurts.”

We had just spent a night on the floor of a basketball court during an in town missions trip.  One of the guys I was with chimed in again, “My back really hurts.  But why do I feel more connected to Jesus because my back hurts from sleeping on the hardwood last night?  Like I am suffering for Jesus or something.”  This was a fascinating question.  Why did a tweaked back make him (us) feel more connected to Jesus?

During this trip, we had been serving the homeless at a downtown shelter run by the beautiful folks at Trinity Episcopal Church.  People would come in off of the streets for a hot meal, and we had the privilege to hang out with them and serve them breakfast.  I believe that my friend having an ailing back connected him (us) to Jesus by helping him to identify with the homeless people that we were serving.  Sleeping on the hardwood floors somehow helped him (us) to understand and be able to relate to those who had to sleep on the pavement the night before.  In a very small way, we could identify with the pain of being homeless, and that helped us to connect with the folks we were serving.  In do so, it also connected us with the person of Jesus.

I once heard Tony Campolo say, “We can’t just look at the Bible through middle-class American eyes, and try to fit it into our lives.  We have to identify with the poor in order to understand the message of the Bible.”

We need to identify and relate with the poor and the hurting.  We need to begin to put a face to pain–a face to suffering–a face to a statistic.  In doing so, does it also help us to better understand the gospel message of Jesus Christ?

“Compassion grows with the inner recognition that your neighbor shares your humanity with you.  This partnership cuts through all walls, which might have kept you separate.  Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end.  With this compassion you can say, ‘In the face of the oppressed I recognized my own face and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hand.  Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, and their smile is my smile.  Their ability to torture is in me, too; their capacity to forgive I find also in myself.  There is nothing in me that does not belong to them too; nothing in them that does not belong to me’…In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share love and have life and death.”  Henri Nouwen; With Open Hands