Bethlehem, Galilee, Gethsemane--he walked there. But today Christ walks the concrete sidewalks of Times Square, 47th Street, and Broadway, and as he walks his feet are soiled, not with the sand of the seashore or the reddish dust of the Emmaus Road, but with the soot and filth of the city.
He walks the "great white way", and his face is lit by the gaudy neon signboards of materialism. He walks in the shadows of the dark alleyways, where faces are not lit at all.
He walks with children and goes where they are taken, when they are enticed and bartered, to gratify some sick perversion. He walks the steaming hallways of welfare hotels where mothers cry themselves to sleep in worry and despair.
He does not sleep but lies beside the broken in their vermin-infested shelters and hears the homeless groan in their delirium; he walks between the bodies as they wake, touching heads of matted hair, offering a hand to lift the men and women who are stiff from lying on the drafty floor.
He walks the streets of Harlem and Chinatown, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and stops to stand with those whose buildings smolder, whose sons are lost to drugs, whose mothers are evicted, whose daughters sell their bodies for a meal.
He walks the subway aisles offering his seat to the old, the weary, the pregnant. He is jostled with the throngs at rush hour and reads the signs that offer satisfaction from Jack Daniels or a hot line to call to rid one's body of a growing life.
He is pushed and shoved through Grand Central Station, elbowed and ignored, yet in the crowd he feels a measure of virtue flow from his being and searches through the faces for an honest seeker passing by.
Christ walks the city. I've seen him there. I've seen his blistered, broken feet, galled by the shoes without the socks. He walks the city on children's feet that grow too fast to stay in shoes at all. He walks the street in high-heeled shoes that pinch the toes but attract the client.
He walks the city. He stands behind a table serving breakfast, drives a truck that carries sandwiches to the grates where homeless sleep to garrison themselves against the cold. He climbs the narrow staircases to purge the burned-out buildings and restore them into homes again. He paints and disinfects and hauls out trash.
I've seen Christ stand by a dental chair fixing worn-out teeth; I've seen him tutoring a drop-out and heard him say, "Keep reaching for the sky." Christ holds a baby whose mother is a child herself, so needing to be mothered--and holds that mother's mother in his arms at night when prayers become such groanings that they cannot be uttered. He groans with them all, a mother to three generations of motherless.
Christ walks the city and carves saints in stone for some cathedral, the cherubim and seraphim with faces of the street. He weaves the cloth that transforms rags into a lovely tapestry. Christ dances when he himself can find no other way to say, "I love you", to a world in which there is left no word for "Love". He acts the part that tells the story of how that Love invaded humankind, for only story tells the Story. Christ incarnate. Christ the living, walking parable, takes to the stage to be the Story.
Christ the advocate walks the city. "You have an advocate with the Father," he said. That is done. But now the powerless need an advocate to the government, to the red tape, to the powers-that-be. Christ walks there. Jesus, "our lawyer in heaven", walks the city to become a lawyer in the streets, filling out welfare forms, phoning case workers, petitioning agencies, drafting legislation to protect the poor. Christ the advocate walks the city.
Christ walks the city's Ivy Halls where students debate his existence. He holds out his nail-scarred hands to the agnostics and invites them to "touch and see". He is there at the "gay caucus" and the "feminist rally" and the meeting for the "anti-war demonstration". He, who is question and answer, he who sets brother against brother yet whispers "peace, be still" to the turbulent waves, walks here.
Christ walks the halls of government and in his presence, statesmen hammer out the laws. The just and the unjust, the honest and the ruthless, those who struggle for truth and those who live the lie convene in his presence, for Christ walks the marble halls of government, sifting the "wheat from the chaff".
Christ walks the corridors of justice. He is in night court and stands with the accused and the accuser. He who is truth and mercy and justice weighs them both and walks both to the judge's chamber and the prisoner's cell. Christ is no stranger to locks and bars. He paces with the convicted her narrow space and hears the curses of despair. Yes, Christ is present in the prisons where fear has built walls around the heart thicker than the walls that guard against escape and higher than the barbed wire that makes an ugly frame for the grey skies. He walks the empty corridors and offers the key of freedom to whosoever would become citizens of a new country, a different kingdom. It is the very key he offers to the judge who is also a captive, a key that makes both the sentencer and the condemned free men and women--family.
Christ calls all to communion. The table of the Eucharist is spread. He takes the bread. He is the Bread. He breaks it, breaks himself and offers this brokenness to us explaining that if we take it, we ourselves must be broken and consumed. He takes the cup. It is the pouring out of himself. He says, "Won't you, too, be poured out with me?"
The table is long and spans centuries. Some leave the table to go in search of silver. Some chairs were empty from the start, for though many were invited, some had wives to marry, parents to bury, houses to build, empires to manage. Those who have come are a motley blend of ages and nationalities, races, and genders, privileged and disenfranchised. But they are all poor and hungry and needy. Slowly, they break the bread--again and again--and lift their morsels to their mouths. It does not go down easily. Sometimes it sticks in the throat until the wine is passed. The pressed and poured-out fruit washes away the dryness.
The bread--"my flesh"--and the wine--"my life's blood"--together make a sacrament of joy, and the rite becomes a celebration of paradox. In the breaking we have become whole. In the pouring out, we have been filled. In bringing our poverty and hunger and need, we have been made rich. In daring to sit with seekers whose differences we did not understand, we have been made one.
Christ the paradox walks the city. He is the broken, and he is the healer. He is the hungry and he is the Bread of Life. He is the homeless, yet it is he who says, "Come to me all you who are overloaded, and I will be your resting place." He is the loser who makes losing the only way to win. He is the omnipotent who calls all who follow to choose powerlessness, and teaches us how, by laying down all power in heaven and in earth. He is the sick, and he is the wholeness. He who said, "I thirst," is himself the Living Water that promises we will never thirst again.
Just as the disciples in the Emmaus house recognized their Lord through the broken bread and the shared cup, so our blindness turns to sight in Holy communion, and we see him for who he truly is.
