What is love (baby don't hurt me)?

A discussion on an internet forum got me thinking about this topic.  The discussion on the internet forum is between Lutherans, mostly.  It began when one of them, a pastor, began bemoaning some issues they've had with homeless people.  This pastor believes that the homeless were being maliciously sent by people in his church body to mess with him, sort of a gaslighting exercise that he refers to as "mobbing."

In any event, I commented that I thought it was a shame that he let others cause him to treat the homeless poorly (he was asking them to leave the property and then throwing away their property when they were gone).  The responses surprised me.  They started along familiar lines.  Left-leaning people, politically speaking, spoke of the need for more government programs and assistance.  Right-leaning people, politically speaking, took another tack, and one I still haven't quite wrapped my head around.

What the more right-leaning people were arguing is 1) you do not need more public assistance for the homeless, because 2) private charity is sufficient to meet the need, and (here's the interesting part) 3) they shouldn't be expected to cater to the immediate material needs of the homeless because it "creates dependency" and makes them worse off instead of better off.

So if you're keeping score:

1) the government should not help the homeless

2) private charity is sufficient to help the homeless

3) private charity to help the homeless is bad because it creates dependency

This is not intended in any way to be a political post.  Mostly, I want to focus on the discordant views espoused above, not as a partisan statement, but on the merits of the claims themselves. Maybe another day we can discuss how isolated public charity is a Utopian and Pollyanaish panacea floated by people who want to claim they are helping but don't want to get their hands dirty.

Some of the homeless in Grant Park, Atlanta,
at the food barrel collected by
St. John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church

Anyway, my family and I have never been members at St. John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church in
Atlanta, but we have spent quite a lot of time there.  We have friends who were members and clergy there.  Through our attendance at the mission, we got to know their priest, Fr. Gabe, very well.  He is the rector at St. John and the priest-in-charge of our mission.  It is downtown Atlanta, right across from the Atlanta Zoo. It has been, for years, somewhat of a transitional neighborhood.  Homeless people are a constant presence there.

I had visited St. John ages ago, around 2011 or so, when Fr. Jacob Myers was the priest there.  Fr. Jacob was the sort of man who didn't follow conventions, and so he neither waited for government charity nor made excuses for not helping.  Fr. Jacob saw homeless people, so he fed them, invited them to come to liturgy, and prayed for them and asked them to pray for him.  This began by simply going to the local food bank and bringing food back to the parish to distribute.  But this could only be done once a month, so the parish began purchasing food, and the program eventually expanded to a pan-Orthodox effort, and eventually, in 2024, to one administered by a local charity organization.  From the smallest of beginnings, many have been blessed, just because Fr. Jacob and his people wanted to help.  Because they looked at the homeless and instead of seeing vagrants, or dangerous people, or people who had made mistakes and therefore brought it on themselves, they saw Jesus.  The Loaves and Fishes program feeds, clothes and assists countless members of our community today.

I happened to be at St. John the day the comments I reference above were made.  The occasion of my being there was a Mission Council meeting with the Council and Fr. Gabe, to discuss a lot of important details about our mission.  When I arrived, the doors to the parish were locked and there were several homeless men outside.  I spoke to them, asked how they were doing.  They tended to be reserved, not making eye contact, not saying much.  I would assume that long and painful experience taught them that avoidance is the safest path.  But one gentleman looked up at me briefly and said "you gotta knock," and then walked over and banged on the church door until someone came to let me inside.  That's not an isolated experience.  In probably 8 or 10 visits to St. John over the past couple of years, we usually stay for lunch, and we eat with these folks too.  They're damaged.  They're often mentally ill.  They are often drug addicted.  But they are people.  They are beloved of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ.  They are our brethren.

When Fr. Jacob passed away, and Fr. Tom took over for him, he did not stop the Loaves and Fishes program.  He did not stop them from attending services or sharing meals.  When Fr. Tom retired, Fr. Gabe did not stop those things either.  If anything, both of them leaned into the homeless ministry.  Here, people were doing good.  They ensured that continued, and Fr. Gabe continues it to the present day.

During the time where we were visiting St. John pretty frequently, my family and I were members at St. Basil Orthodox Mission in Marietta.  St. Basil helped St. John with the Loaves and Fishes ministry, and we created mercy bags for our people to put in their cars and give to the homeless and destitute.  St. Basil did not have homeless people camped out on the church steps.  Marietta is a suburb, and while she has her own homeless and destitute, the problem is not as dire as it is in the big city.  But her people nonetheless felt the need to minister to them.  Some of that starts with the priest.  Fr. Paul supported these efforts and encouraged them, telling us why it is important to help others who are in need.  Some of it starts before that, because St. Basil is a mission of St. John, and thus her people were formed also under Fr. Jacob.  And surely some of it starts at the diocesan and Archdiocesan levels.  But it isn't just that.

This duty to care for the poor is properly basic Christianity.  It has deep roots in Patristics and Scripture.  It was St. John Chrysostom who said "if you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice."  St. Basil the Great said this:

He who strips a man of his clothes is to be called a thief. Is not he who, when he is able, fails to clothe the naked, worthy of no other title? The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.

We do not care for the poor because we are ordered to, or because God punishes us if we do not. We care for the poor because, as St. Basil said in this same breath:

Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all-this is what the rich do. They first take possession of the common property, and then they keep it as their own because they were the first to take it. But if every man took only what sufficed for his own need, and left the rest to the needy, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need.

St. Basil is not some wild-eyed radical, out of touch with the rest of the Church.  St. Basil is on the exact same page as St. John Chrysostom.  So while the folks at our old parish were certainly following the loving lead of their priest, and the loving lead of their former priest, they were also following their patron.  We don't care for the poor out of obligation or duty, much less to seek reward.  We care for the poor because they are our poor.  These are our people.  Which is to say, they are Jesus's people.

On the website of our mission parish, we have this quote from Fr. Tom Hopko:

Jesus didn't say, "love the image of God in that person." He didn't say "love Me in that person." He said: "Love that person, and you will be loving Me. Because I have identified with every human being on the face of the earth."

This is our calling -- to love every person, because Christ loves every person. This is the lesson of the Sheep and the Goats.  It is the lesson of the Prodigal Son.  It is the lesson of the Rich Ruler.  It is the lesson that litters the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.  Each and every homeless person you meet is an icon of the Lord.  Treat them as such.