Soul Graffiti

A fine French champagne is uncorked and poured as more guests arrive, shedding umbrellas and raincoats on a cold and rainy winter night. Some are beckoned to help with preparations for potato latkes while others mingle and nibble on crackers, salad, and noodle kugel. We are clustered in the kitchen between the counter where the bottles of wine are set to breathe and the stove where soups simmer and latkes sizzle in the pan. Excited children run in and out of the room with handfuls of golden plastic dreidel coins. Our host, Michael, collects fascinating friends, and at this party we are all on display: artists, photographers, horticulturists, writers, an attorney, an expert in the classics, a screenwriter and opera singer, an offshore accounts portfolio manager, and the production designer from a major film studio. As I scan the familiar faces in the room I notice: this is a Hanukkah party mostly for and by Jewish atheists who married gentile and relocated from New York to California.
Conversations at Michael’s parties are always interesting, smart, and spirited. It is not long before someone brings up religion, a sore point with many because of the current political administration’s aggressive foreign policies and alliances with religious conservatives The expert in the classics, raised in the Dutch Reformed tradition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, opens the discussion with a merry declaration, “The only religion I’m against is Christianity!” He holds up a tumbler of whiskey and provides a detailed and mocking elucidation of the five points of Calvinism. One woman warns the group to be nice because she is a devout Catholic. With panache the opera singer exclaims, “Just don’t talk to me about intelligent design. I can’t stand to hear that crap,” he says with a teasing smile. “Evolution is a scientific fact.”
Perhaps taking our conversation a little more seriously, I suggest that evolutionary process doesn’t negate the possibility of divine origins. “The greater question,” I add, “is whether life comes from chaos or some benevolent force.”
“Well, the only thing I hate more than Christians is agnostics,” the opera singer retorts with a sly laugh. “I mean, get off the fence. Make a decision. Either God exists or doesn’t.”
I quietly interject, “Some would say that atheists have the most courage—because of the terrorizing implication that life is without meaning or purpose.”
“Well, if there is anything I hate more than Christians or agnostics, it’s nihilists. I can’t stand nihilism and drab talk about how everything is meaningless,” the opera singer says, feigning melancholy. Someone else proposes that it may actually take more courage to believe that God does exist—because of the haunting possibility that how we choose to live really matters. “Even if we try to avoid the tensions and debate about the existence of God, we are still faced with the persistent question: Is there a meaning and purpose to our existence? And if so, what is it?” I add. There is an awkward pause.
“More latkes anyone?” Michael asks.
We drift off to refill soup bowls and wine glasses, mixing into more intimate side conversations. The classics professor continues to monologue about total depravity, unconditional election, and limited atonement, but by now no one is listening.
When I get involved in the same conversation over and over, I start to wonder whether we are having an honest exchange or simply talking past one another to affirm what we already believe or doubt. Early impressions of spiritual beliefs can be enduring, even while they may be simplistic or misinformed, and can serve to vaccinate us from further spiritual curiosity. The limits of childhood understanding often continue to inhibit our adult imaginations—and we frequently resist information that would challenge our embryonic assumptions. Real spiritual investigation sometimes requires overcoming or undoing our earlier impressions, including notions about the message of Jesus.

SCARY JESUS

I can still see my daughter Hailey’s big blue eyes welling up with tears, her soft face grimacing with pain as she began to cry. I was telling her about Jesus and showing her a book of pictures. They were the usual images: Jesus as a baby nestled in a feed trough; Jesus bleeding and hanging on a cross; Jesus lying dead in a tomb; and Jesus sitting on a golden throne. Generally I don’t show pictures of bloody dead people to children—but this was an exception, it was Jesus. The morbidity of these brightly colored pictures did not occur to me—since I had seen them all of my life. As I turned the pages I told her an abbreviated version of the story, finishing with the phrase, “Jesus died on the cross so that someday we can go to a wonderful placed called heaven.” That was when Hailey burst into tears. Sobbing, she murmured, “Daddy, I don’t want to go to heaven! I want to stay here with you and Mommy.” I took her in my arms, attempting to comfort and explain, but my words were no help. For the next few weeks Hailey cried every time she saw the book cover. We hid the book, promising we would not show her any more scary pictures of that man Jesus.

JESUS THE SADOMASOCHIST

My ill-fated telling of the story to Hailey reminded me of my earliest impressions of Jesus and his message. These recollections play in my mind like film noir, with heightened contrasts between shadows and light—juxtapositions between the warmth I felt when my family held hands and prayed to Jesus at meals and bedtime and the cold mildew of the church basement where we sat in rusty folding chairs listening to old ladies teach us songs and use paper cutouts stuck to flannel boards to tell us stories about Jesus. In the pictures and porcelain figurines, Jesus was a white man with soft brown hair sitting with children like me on his lap, or carrying a lamb on his shoulders, or bleeding on a cross, or knocking on a metaphorical door—the “door” to my heart.
When I was three I heard a man on the radio describe the fiery flames and torment of eternal damnation as we bumped along in the old green Pontiac one summer afternoon. The backs of my preschool legs were sweating against the hot vinyl seats as I heard the preacher say, “Believe or burn! Believe that you have sinned and that Jesus died in your place.” “If this is true,” I thought, “then I would be a fool not to pray ‘the sinner’s prayer.’” And I prayed it: “Jesus, forgive my sins and come into my heart.” And in some soothing strange haunting and intangible way Jesus became my savior and I was going to heaven someday when I died.

In my child-mind the story, as I heard it, had sadomasochistic qualities. The world I enjoyed (ice cream, toys, zoos, and movies) was, unbeknownst to me, a dark wasteland that would ultimately be destroyed. God had me tied down and dangling over the flames of hell, demonstrating his love by offering to release me, but only if I would beg for mercy. Love, pain, and intimacy commingled. God was obviously powerful, but was God truly good? And could this God be trusted? I would have to move from fear to trust and unlearn what I knew in order to embrace a life with God more fully.
I later realized that the story was told to me in such a dire manner and with cataclysmic effect in order to bring me to a point of singular decision. Who wouldn’t want to believe when the stakes were so high? My decision was a matter of life or death, heaven or hell. I had to choose now. Telling the story in terms of eternal destiny might have expedited my decision, but it offered little incentive for me to keep seeking or believing.

High-pressure sales tactics had forced the deal but did not produce a satisfied repeat customer. I had done my business with God and was now glad to have God off my back.
If my early impression of the gospel of Jesus seems distorted or peculiar, you don’t have to look far to hear the same story being told today. It is probably the version of the message familiar to the most people. At home I have a growing collection of gospel tracts that are handed to me by well-meaning Evangelistas when I walk down Mission Street. They all contain a message similar to the one I heard and told Hailey—that the message about Jesus should drive you toward one decision, motivated by fear of punishment that will determine your eternal destiny.
As I grew older it didn’t take me long to begin wondering about whether what I was told was really the whole story. Does someone have to become fixated on death and damnation before the life of Jesus makes any sense? Is the message of Jesus only about a distant God and the future in another world? Is fear of eternal punishment the healthiest or most enduring reason to seek your Maker? And, is choosing the path of life really as simple as saying “the sinner’s prayer”?

OBSESSED WITH ETERNITY

On my third helping of latkes Kendal sits down next to me. We chat about our kids (my son Isaiah and her son are best buddies) and then about our families and work responsibilities. She is a production designer at a major film studio. I was fascinated to learn more about the intricacies involved in creating big-budget animated movies. When she eventually asked about my work, I found myself hesitating. People have so many preconceived ideas about ministers, churches, and religious organizations. If I sound too excited about what I do will she think I’m proselytizing?
Once I searched for the word pastor in an online thesaurus and found the following synonyms suggested: “Holy Joe, Glory roader, Sin Hound, Harp Polisher, and Sky Pilot.” The definitions assumed that someone with my vocation is singularly interested, even obsessed, with preparing people to die and meet their Maker. God and eternity are often conceived as being far away and disconnected from our current reality. Sometimes people who are deeply interested in eternity have the tendency to dismiss the significance of life in the here and now—as if a person has to choose between concern about their eternal destiny and caring for the immediate needs in our world. If this world is destined for the wrecking ball, as the logic goes, why seek personal or social transformation? The only thing that matters is spreading the apocalyptic message so that others might believe and be airlifted away from the here and now. It is not surprising, then, that so many people who think that the message of Jesus is primarily about another world struggle to find a meaningful and integrated spiritual path in the here and now. If good news is about another time and place, you may be ready for heaven, but feel unprepared for life on Earth.
Our understanding of the time dimension of the message of Jesus can either limit or expand our creativity and imagination for life here and now. Even if we suspect that an extended version of the Jesus story might reveal a more holistic, nuanced, and tangible message, the fact remains that the collapsed version familiar to the most people is biased toward the apocalypse. Perhaps we see the otherworldly ramifications of the story because this is what we were first invited to observe, and we tend to only notice what we are expecting.
In psychology class at my university a professor asked us to count how many times a basketball was passed between players on a video recording. We watched the ball dutifully. At the conclusion of the five-minute video clip he asked how many times the ball had been passed. Our numbers varied just slightly. “And class, how many of you saw a woman walk across the court through the players holding a rainbow-colored umbrella?” Huh? We didn’t see any woman carrying a rainbow-colored umbrella. When the professor replayed the video clip, there she was. Some of the players had to move out of the way to avoid being hit by her large bright umbrella. Most of us hadn’t noticed her because we were looking for something else: basketballs.
If we are invited to look at the significance of Jesus’ message solely in terms of the afterlife, that is all we are likely to find. In groups, when I have asked, “What is the message of the gospel?” most people predictably respond with a statement like, “Jesus died for our sins so we can be forgiven and go to heaven when we die.” I then ask, “Where, exactly, did Jesus state this as his message?” Awkward silence. There is little evidence within the gospel accounts to suggest that Jesus’ message was primarily about another world or the afterlife. We should wonder about the difference between what Jesus proclaimed as “good news” and what is now commonly thought of as “the gospel.”
Is the message of Jesus primarily about another world or about life in the here and now? The Gospel writer Mark wrote that Jesus came to proclaim the “good news of God”—to illuminate or remind us of the fact that there has always been and will always be a source of life who is present, caring, and active in our world. In context, Jesus spoke as an ambassador of hope for the future and for the present. According to Mark’s Gospel, he traveled throughout Galilee announcing, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). When asked by what power he performed miraculous signs he explained that it was because “the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). When people misunderstood and thought that he was only speaking about the future reign of God he clarified, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observations, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).
Maybe there isn’t such a clear distinction between our world and eternity. Jesus described the kingdom of God as a present reality stretching perpetually into the future. He spoke of “eternal life” not as a destination but as an enduring quality of relationship with our Maker. He once prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is the reconciled connection to our source that is made available through the sacrifice of Jesus. God is not far off and eternity is not in another world. If we find a connection to the eternal life of God in the present, the future will take care of itself.
What difference do these clarifications make? I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize the continuity between the immanence of God in our worldand eternity. Rather than simply waiting to be liberated to another time or place, we are being invited to collaborate in the healing and redemption of our world.

EXPLORING THE ESSENCE OF JESUS’ MESSAGE

After we finish the latkes and soup and refill our glasses, it’s time for the lighting of the menorah. Excited children gather around to light the candles. “Remind me again of the historical background for this holiday,” one adult asks. It takes several of us brainstorming together to assemble an answer. Something about the Maccabean wars and an oil lamp that miraculously stayed lit for eight days without fuel. “Really a minor Jewish holiday that took on inflated significance as an alternative to Christmas,” someone adds. The lights in the room are switched off, and with gusto Michael leads us in a Hanukkah song, sung in Hebrew; those of us who know it sing along. In the dark room under the glow of candles Michael says, “Hanukkah, it’s the festival of light” and concludes with a toast: “LeChaim! To Life!”
Light and life were two of the favorite words the disciple John used to describe the message of Jesus. Toward the end of his life John was sequestered on the Island of Patmos. As the last of the original disciples, he made an attempt to summarize the essential message of Jesus—and he did it in three words. In the preface to his first general letter he wrote, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” Here John reminded his readers that he was intimately acquainted with Jesus. He goes on to say, “The life appeared. We have seen it and testify to it. And we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and has appeared to us.” In John’s mind, eternal life was less a destination and more an immediate personal connection. Then John described the essence of Jesus’ teaching: “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, in him there is no darkness at all” (I John 1:1–5). Three words, “God is light.” Light here implies warmth and illumination, and the clarity to move without fear. John is saying that we can walk confidently in the awareness that the source of all life is good, and that everything Jesus said and did simply confirms that our Creator is good and can be trusted.
Imagine someone asking, “John, what was the message of Jesus about?” And John answering, “Well, it’s really simple; God is light.” I can’t help but notice how different John’s summary of the gospel was from what I heard as a child, or what I told Hailey, or the impression many people have. If I could start over to explain the message of Jesus to Hailey, I would begin in a different place, maybe starting with something like, “Hailey, God is light. Jesus came to remind us that our Maker is good and can be fully trusted. Jesus taught people how to trust the ways of their Maker again. Some people didn’t want to remember that God is good, so they had Jesus killed. But love is stronger than hate. And light is brighter than darkness. And Jesus came back from the dead to keep reminding us that God is light.”
The evidence for a good God can seem ambiguous at times. Life doesn’t always feel good. We can easily look out on our world or within ourselves with eyes that see more darkness than light. Perhaps this is why Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22–23). We are invited to have eyes that recognize the essential goodness of the Creator and creation—to read the narrative of history and the narratives of our own lives searching for signs of life and noting the ways that God can be trusted.

THE CHOICES WE MAKE

At the break during a lecture a young man approached me and asked a familiar question: “Do you think gay people can go to heaven?”
I replied, “I didn’t know I was in charge of deciding who goes to heaven.”
It is commonly assumed that it is our responsibility to assess who is “in” and who is “out” of God’s plan. One day a friend asked my wife Lisa a similar but more personal question: “I need to know if you think our family is going to hell—since we are not Christian. Because if you believe we are going to hell then I don’t think we can stay friends.” Historically, emphasis on a singular spiritual decision has been motivated by an attempt by an institution or community to judge who is “saved” and who is not. Jesus described the way to life as a metaphorical road that we may travel down (Matthew 7:14). Perhaps we should be more concerned about our own pace and direction on that road than someone else’s. Certainly we will each end up at the destination in the direction we are heading toward: either life or death.
I’ve notice that people suddenly become more generous in their assessments about eternal destiny when someone is experiencing loss. My friend Brad was fifteen when he and some friends got drunk and drove a car up a hill on the wrong side of the road and smashed into an oncoming truck at 80 miles an hour. His parents rushed to the scene and held his hand as he took his last breaths trapped in the back seat of the mangled vehicle. I recall standing with his parents in front of the casket, his body patched with embalmer’s putty and heavy makeup, searching for words to console them. At the funeral the minister comforted the family with the hope that Brad had said “the sinner’s prayer” earlier in life. The family clung to any evidence that Brad had chosen the road to life.
At the Hanukkah dinner, the first pangs of flu come over me just as I finish the strudel we have for dessert. I am talking with a professional photographer I just met when my stomach began to rumble violently. “Excuse me for a moment,” I said as I rushed to the upstairs bathroom. When I was finished, I quickly collected our coats and weakly said “Good-bye” and “Thanks for the nice evening.” We walked out the door into the darkness of a winter night to begin the mile and a half walk home over the hill in the rain.
It is later than I thought, and we have to walk slowly because of the trembling aftershocks in my intestines. We follow the path of streetlights past the dim doorways where groups of men lurk in the shadows to conduct nocturnal business. We are usually asleep before this cast of characters appears on the streets. “What series of choices would lead a person out into this cold darkness?” I wondered. My mother-in-law always says that nothing good ever happens after midnight, and I believe she was mostly right. The disciple John concluded that in contrast to the fact that “God is light,” we tend to choose darkness when our deeds are evil. Every choice we make seems to be either a step into darkness or a step toward the light. John concluded that our greatest choice is between remaining in the darkness and learning to walk in the light of God’s love (I John 1:5–7).
Is belief in God one epic decision or a series of choices in the same direction? As a child I was pressed to make a singular decision to believe. The assumption was that this epic decision, once made, endures for all time. Practically we know this is not the case with the other decisions we make. When two people, for instance, decide to get married, they must confirm their choice in daily care and fidelity. Marriage is a persistent series of choices in the same direction.
Spiritual belief functions similarly. Each day we decide whether or not to trust that our Maker is good and has our best interests in mind. We see this in the ancient contracts of the Tanakh: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Each day and each moment we are choosing a path toward life or death. All of our choices matter and function cumulatively to express faith or doubt in the goodness of our Maker.
For three days after the Hanukkah party I lay sick in bed, hoping that I hadn’t given anyone else the flu. For some reason when I’m sick I think more about God. Maybe it’s the altered state brought on by nausea and dehydration or the feeling I have that I am dying. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing, on occasion, to consider one’s mortality. There is a certain reverence that comes by contemplating this finality. Lying on my bed with the blinds drawn, I am the little boy again in the back seat of the green Pontiac with sweating legs, except that now I am less afraid and more entranced by the chance to seek a God that can be found, to find my place in the greater scheme of a good creation. I find comfort in the whisper of words I once memorized: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Jesus declared, “The time has come.”
The time has come for us to see the thin space between our lives and eternity.
The time has come for us to imagine again that God is light and that we are cared for by a Maker who is good.
The time has come for us to seek light over darkness and to perpetually choose life over death.

CONVERSATION

The Present? The Future? Or Both? What effect do you think it has that so many people believe the message of Jesus is primarily or exclusively about the future? How would a here and now orientation affect your perception of the message of Jesus?

Good News about What? If heaven or eternity were not the primary concerns of first-century people who heard the message of Jesus, what else was compelling to them about his message? Why was his message so controversial?
God as Light. Does the suggestion that the message of Jesus can be summarized with the statement “God is light” seem attractively simple or fuzzily disturbing?

EXPERIMENTS

Reminiscing. Write a journal entry exploring how your view of God has evolved and changed as you have grown and experienced more of life. Include a few interesting anecdotes that illustrate the shifts in your perceptions. What are the critical decisions, to seek, ignore or reject God, that have shaped your current reality and direction?

Choosing Life Today. If eternal life is something we access now and in the future, this implies that we are continually choosing whether or not to walk in the light of God’s presence. Consider what tangible trust in God implies for you today. Try spending the day in conscious awareness of the maker’s presence. Some people find it helpful to use a method called breath prayer as an aid in doing this. As you go about the day, whisper a phrase (such as “Lord Jesus have mercy on me.” Or “your love endures forever.” Repeat the phrase under your breath as you go about daily tasks. See if this helps you stay more aware of God’s care and presence.

SOUL GRAFFITI
Chapter Four: Experiments in Truth
By Mark Scandrette

It is bittersweet to recall the first few years that our family lived in San Francisco. We had moved to the city with a dream: to form a community of people who would take Jesus seriously as the teacher and revolutionary he intended to be. Our new neighbors and acquaintances were quick to point out that people who called themselves “Christians” were responsible for the inquisitions, religious wars, and homophobia—not to mention the historic use of scripture to justify slavery, the massacre of native peoples, aggressive foreign policy, and the destruction of the Earth’s resources. I had to agree that there was tremendous dissonance between the dominant reputation of Christianity and the life of Christ and the early church. We desperately wanted to be people who embodied the revolution of the kingdom of love—offering an apologetic for the authenticity of the Way of Jesus as an alternative to mainstream Christianity.

A small group of us began meeting together to study the gospel accounts and the documents of the early church. We were drawn to the communal nature of the primitive church and the power, solidarity, and compassion followers of Jesus exhibited under persecution during the Roman Empire. Our faith community, which at the time we called a house church, attracted zealous idealists as well as people who had been hurt or marginalized through their experiences with organized religion. For a while we felt criticized and misunderstood, both by the culture and by the mainstream church. It took some time to move beyond critical deconstruction—to define ourselves more by what we were for than what we were against.

Gradually we learned to channel our group energy toward experimenting with how to imitate the path of Jesus and the early disciples. Some things we took quite literally. We tried fasting and praying for forty days. I grew a beard and long hair. We began living communally. And we hosted parties for neighbors and offered hospitality and friendship to people battling addictions, personality disorders, and depression. It was, in retrospect, a fertile and chaotic period for our family. We were being formed through these experiences with great intensity. One thing we try to preserve from that time is a sense of humility and risk taking.

We found that one of the best ways for our group to learn the Way of Jesus was by trying to imitate his example through some tangible exercise or activity. Mahatma Gandhi described this kind of intentional pursuit as an “experiment in truth.” Experiments are always successful on some level, because by taking a risk you learn both from your failures and accomplishments. And there is a depth of understanding that can only be achieved through conscious activity.

It is my hope with this book not only to explore ideas about making a life in the Way of Jesus, but also to share some of our family and community “experiments in truth.”

Emperor Arcadia

After reading about the kind of companion Jesus was, and knowing what he taught about love for neighbors, my friend Joseph and I decided to try some experiments in radical openness to people. We began by making a daily practice of picking up trash on our block. In the evenings, along with my kids, we walked around the block with trash sticks and plastic bags greeting neighbors and collecting debris. The sidewalks in our neighborhood were notoriously dirty, strewn with household garbage, old couches, bed frames, and broken TVs. People’s reactions to our nightly trash walks varied. One person offered us cold beers. Another asked us to pray for his family. One neighbor thanked us for our kindness and another cussed us out because he thought our clean-up was a manifestation of privilege and gentrification. What we hoped would be a sign of neighborly affection was interpreted ambiguously.

After a few months of picking up garbage we prayed that God would bring someone into our path that we could care for more deeply. Riding the bus home from work one night, Joseph met an elderly man who seemed lonely and in need of a friend. He invited Joseph to visit and the next day Joseph took me along to see him.

“Come on in, boys. Will you smoke a joint with me?” the old man said as Joseph and I climbed the steps of the rusty old school bus, searching for a place to sit. The bus, parked in a vacant lot on Portrero Hill, was painted in bold letters that read: “I HAVE BEEN CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS ON MYSELF FOR 30 YEARS—EXPLORING THE MYSTERIES OF CHEMISTRY AND HEALTH. MY PRESCRIPTION: EAT A CLOVE OF GARLIC AND DRINK YOUR OWN URINE AND SEMEN TWICE A DAY.” Joseph and I glanced at each other and wondered what we were getting ourselves into. Shaking my hand, the small old man, wearing a black evening gown, took a bow saying, “You may call me Emperor Arcadia.” Seated again, his arthritic hands struggled to roll a joint while he spoke. “I’ve been taking speed for thirty years, medicating myself. The combination of speed and special topical chemicals is curing me of all human diseases.” As he continued we stole glances around the crowded old bus containing soiled clothes, salvaged computer monitors, and buckets of urine. A mix of curious smells strained my nose for recognition.

“The government has lied to us! It’s a conspiracy to exterminate the planet! If I were in charge I would burn all the money and declare the planet monetary and class free. We will all be equal and wealthy.”

I attempted to break into his monologue with a question: “Emperor, how long have you lived in San Francisco?”
He quickly replied, “Too long. Do you have an estate in the country where you would like me to be the caretaker?”
I tried again: “How old are you?”
He quickly answered, “I’m not old, I’m as young as they come.”
I persisted, “Where did you grow up?”
“Grow up? I haven’t grown up. . . .” He then returned to his speech, “Boys, I advise you to drink your own urine twice a day, those golden showers will cure what ails ya.” When he could sense that we were only listening to be polite, he became defensive, “I can see you don’t believe me. But you had better. I am a messenger from God.”
Joseph spoke up, “What a coincidence. We are also followers of God’s messenger, Jesus.” That was the wrong thing to say, for the emperor grew agitated and exclaimed, “I’m #$%! Jesus Christ, the G——n messiah, Jesus isn’t coming back so you had better listen to me! If you don’t believe me, then get out my bus!”

We groped for a diplomatic way to end our visit. “It was good to meet you, Emperor!” I said, as we exited the bus, befuddled by this strange encounter.
I turned to Joseph. “Well, I guess that attempt to be intentional about having relationships with people on the margins failed,” I said.
“We can’t make someone be our friend,” Joseph said,  “if they don’t want a relationship.”

A few months later I ran into the emperor at the plaza downtown. Slumped over, sunburned and haggard and sitting in a wheelchair, he was hardly recognizable. Yet he was dressed impeccably, decked out in a costume crown and bright gold jewelry, wielding a royal amulet in his jittering hand. When I greeted him, he smiled, saying, “I’m doing better than ever, can’t you see? I was just going to get something to eat, would you like to join me?” Recalling our first encounter, I was taken aback by his friendliness. He insisted on buying me a strawberry shake. As he went up to pay, several tablets of methamphetamines fell out of his wallet onto the counter. Sitting in a booth across from me, he repeated, verbatim, the monologue from our first visit. I looked at him intently—his hands brown with filth, dirt caught in the creases of his worn skin. That mouth!—grotesque, toothless, and rotting, wildly chomping chicken sandwich. My stomach turned. Sputtering incoherently now, he was desperately trying to get through to me, as his spit and chicken sandwich landed on my face. I stared into his hazel green eyes, wondering what he was thinking and feeling inside. “Emperor Arcadia, what has it been like living by yourself in that bus all these years?”
He paused dramatically. “It feels . . . lonely sometimes.”
I pressed for more. “What do you do when you are lonely?”
Subdued for a moment, he answered, “I lock myself in my bus for three or four days, or come down to this corner.” And then he quickly changed the subject. “I need to get a shower. . . Hey! Look at him, I’d like to have him on a chain to dominate. . . .”
I racked my conflicted brain and heart to understand. I wondered, “Am I wasting my time with this man, or is he teaching me something about the compassion of Jesus?” When I told Joseph about my encounter with the emperor, we debated about engaging him further. We had previously written him off because we didn’t see much hope for change in his life. He also didn’t make us feel rewarded for our efforts. “Is an act of love only significant because of the change it produces? Or, can the meaning be in the act itself?” I pondered aloud. It seemed like God had brought the emperor back into our lives. While Joseph and I were discussing what to do, we thought of Jesus’ teachings about giving to others without expecting anything in return and the fact that God is kind, even to the ungrateful (Luke 6:35). We realized that, as followers of the Way, we were being invited to love the emperor despite his prickly hostility and highly unusual personal habits.

A few days later Joseph and I stopped by the emperor’s bus. More sedated, he expressed that he was glad to see us, and explained that he had just completed one of his “cycles of treatment,” which involved covering his entire body with menthol vapor rub followed by petroleum jelly, then taking a hit of methamphetamines. “We all have these bugs living in our bodies that are killing us. I’m slowly sweating them out,” he said. “This treatment forces the bugs from deep within the body to surface where they drown.” He explained how he then washes in a solution of vinegar, bleach, dish soap, and urine. “The whole process takes three days. Look at how young and fresh my skin looks now. Pretty good for being sixty-three years old.”
“Emperor, is there anything we can do for you?” I asked.
“Well, I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten for days. My legs aren’t working too good so I can’t get to the store.” Handing us some money, he asked us to buy him an Italian sausage sandwich. “Make sure you get it with mayonnaise and provolone cheese—and buy yourselves sandwiches with my money too. They are very delicious.”

As we ate the sandwiches together, two young men approached the bus. Dressed in leather pants and jackets, with their faces covered in sores and their hands black with grease, they looked like survivors of a nuclear holocaust. He handed these men, his drug suppliers, a wad of cash. “Keep the change, honey, for a personal favor I might ask of you later,” he said with a wink.

Along with other friends from our community we began visiting the emperor several times a week, bringing groceries, helping cut his hair or clip his toe nails, and cleaning up around his camp. Gradually he began to trust our friendship and revealed more about himself. His real name was Robert. Estranged from his family after years in mental institutions, he had moved west from Wisconsin. During the sexual revolution of the 1970s he was something of a celebrity in San Francisco’s gay club scene, hosting “naked pool” on Sunday afternoons at a popular bar South of Market where he would prance nude around the pool table exchanging fiery jabs with patrons. The club owner let him live in the basement of the building for many years. We learned that Emperor Arcadia was locally famous for crashing society balls, civic celebrations and parades, announcing himself, swathed in a velvet cape and crown, accompanied by his matching miniature poodles on leashes. As he got older and more peculiar, he lost his social currency and became more isolated.

The emperor’s health continued to deteriorate and by December he was confined to a wheelchair. In addition to this trouble, the owner of the property where he was squatting was taking legal action to have him removed. We advocated for the emperor with the health department and social services and pleaded with him to move into an assisted living facility. He pessimistically predicted that the apocalypse would come by the first of the year. “I’m going to kill myself on New Year’s Eve,” he told us, by mixing vodka with a fatal dose of Phenobarbital.
“I would be really sad if you chose to kill yourself,” I told him.
“Why should you care if I live or die?” he asked indignantly.
“Emperor, you are valuable to God and to the people who love you. We would miss you.”
“Nobody has ever cared about me,” he replied bitterly.
“I’m really sorry you feel that way. After all the time we’ve spent together the past few months, I hoped that you might consider Joseph and me your friends.”
.   .   .

At Christmas we decided to throw a party for the emperor, including his favorite foods and a birthday cake. I told him that I was going to bring my family along, so he would need to be on his best behavior. We could never predict what the emperor would say or do.
There was a full moon on that December evening when I knocked at the door to the emperor’s bus. He came out wearing an elegant purple bonnet, with freshly painted fingernails. A thin young woman, who we knew worked as a prostitute, lived in a trailer on the street nearby, joined us, along with one of her “clients.” We ate by candlelight serenaded by music from a transistor radio. The emperor declared that the food was delicious, a collection of favorite dishes he requested. After dinner my wife Lisa put candles on a cake. “Let’s sing happy birthday to someone who hasn’t celebrated their birthday in awhile,” I said. “Who could we sing happy birthday to?”
Just then, beaming, our three-year-old son Noah blurted, “It’s Christmas, lets sing happy birthday to Jesus!”
I panicked. The name Jesus was the worst thing I could imagine mentioning in front of the emperor, and I waited to see how he would react. Slowly, with a big toothless grin, he said, “Yes, let’s sing happy birthday to Jesus.” Under a clear and starry night the eight of us sang together—Lisa and me, a streetwalker and her john, a sixty-three-year-old transvestite, and three small blond children with red cheeks. As I helped the emperor back into his bus, he turned to me and said, “This was the best night of my life. Thank you!”
.   .   .

We told the emperor that the following Sunday we would stop by with some friends to help move the bus and his belongings off the property to comply with the owner’s injunction. When we arrived Sunday morning Joseph and I knocked at the door of the bus. There was no response, but we heard a faint groaning from inside. We broke down the door and found the emperor collapsed on the floor, lying in a pool of his own waste. He tried to talk, and through his slurred speech, I deciphered that he wanted water. We sat him up, though he was semiconscious and weak, and gave him a drink. As we began to change his clothes and wash his body, what had happened slowly dawned on us—he had taken the Phenobarbital as planned. Searching quickly we found a few of the tablets scattered across the floor by a bottle of vodka. The rest of our group had just arrived when we called for an ambulance.
As the paramedics lifted him onto the gurney he pleaded for me to stay beside him. I rode along to the hospital in the back of the ambulance holding his hand.
At the emergency room after he was stabilized a nurse invited me into the examining room where I stood alone by his side. “Emperor,” I said, “it’s Mark.” With his eyes still shut he murmured, “I wanted to die. Why did you save my life?”
I hesitated for a moment searching for words. “You are my friend and I care about you.”
Agitated, with speech still slurred he asked, “But why do you care about me?” And then louder and more desperately he repeated, “Why do you care about me?”
Slowly I lifted my hand and began to caress his bald head. “Emperor, we are all loved,” I said. Then I heard him snoring and watched his chest rise and fall with each belabored breath.
I stood there for a long time, praying, and thinking about this man who felt so isolated and lonely that it was impossible for him to imagine that anyone would care. Perhaps he was a living caricature of the feelings we all share—doubts about our worth.
When Joseph and I arrived at the hospital the next day he was wide awake and smiling. With hugs he greeted us like long-lost sons. He quickly handed Joseph some money and told him to go out and buy each of us a prime rib dinner to eat together. The hospital psychologist was anxious to meet me and discretely invited me into her office. I held the keys to his bus and kept all his legal and personal papers and gave her as much of his life story as I had pieced together through our conversations. As I shared what I knew I had the strange realization that, although I had only known the emperor for six months, I was closer to him now than anyone else alive.

After the interview the doctor curiously asked, “What exactly is your role in the neighborhood?” I explained that Joseph and I were part of a small church community trying to imitate the example of Jesus by making friends with lonely people. “That sounds like the kind of church I would love to join,” she replied.
.   .   .
Even now as I retell this story I am drawn back into the sights and smells and complicated emotions I felt during that time.  I realize there is unique absurdity to the characters and situation—two idealistic young men and their experiment in friendship with an eccentric old man with a death wish. By telling this story I’m not suggesting that everyone could or should make friends with someone like the emperor. What I do know is that I feel alive when I am testing the limits of my own boundaries– finding a source of love that is greater than my own and discovering beauty in unexpected places.

Conversation
Credibility. What kind of reputation does the Way of Jesus have with the people in your community? How might this be changed or improved by people who take Jesus more seriously as an example and guide?
An Experiment in Friendship. What were your feelings or thoughts as you read about the emperor? What did the details and ambiguities of the story provoke in you?
Experiments
Be open to the peculiar. There is likely someone in the periphery of your relationships who is lonely or peculiar. Quite often the public services and support offered to people living with mental illness are inadequate. In the gospels these kinds of people were often drawn toward encounters with Jesus and his disciples. Go out of your way to cultivate a friendship with such a person—in partnership with a friend who can help you navigate the relationship.

Teach a child to care. You may wonder if it is safe for children to be around unstable or addicted people. If there is adequate guidance and supervision it can be helpful to introduce children to the more sobering realities of our society– and they may be less likely to have an unhealthy fascination with illicit activities if they learn to care about people in those circumstances. Take a child with you to visit a shelter, prison, soup kitchen or assisted living facility. Kids learn to be compassionate by watching their parents and elders care for the needs of others.