I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food

(N.B. – A few years ago, I was involved with an organization called Kairos, which is an international prison ministry with a significant US presence that consists of a national umbrella group and state chapters across the country, including here in Maine. While Kairos offers a number of activities focused on ministering to prisoners – or “residents,” as they’re called within the organization – the primary program consists of multi-day “conferences” in the prisons with residents who have expressed an interest in hearing and talking about religion in general, and Christianity more specifically. A team of Kairos volunteers goes into a prison every day over a three day period prepared with a slate of activities, discussions, and prayer sessions. There are one day reunions of all the participants in the weeks following the conference, and the year I attended I was asked, as a first-time participant, to offer my impressions. Five years later, my impressions seem as vital as when I first encountered them, and it seemed appropriate to share them again this Christmas.)

Kairos 34 was my first Kairos weekend, and I’ve been asked to offer some of my impressions as a newcomer, what I took away from that experience. No description of my coming to Kairos would be complete without a quick mention of what I’d call, “The day I didn’t get out of church fast enough.” I’d spoken to Reggie (a parishioner at my church and a Kairos volunteer) once before, briefly, but it was a couple weeks after that first encounter when I found myself listening to him asking me how much time I had, and within a few short seconds I thought, “Is he actually asking me to go to prison?” The problem was, I couldn’t find a way of saying “No.”

So I went to my first Kairos meeting, and early on a gentleman stood up and told the story about how, when he was a resident here he heard about the murder of a good friend of his on the outside, and he also heard that the person who’d killed his friend was coming to prison. Despite the fact he was approaching the end of his time here, he decided he had to set things right, even though it would cost him dearly. To make a long story short, it was Kairos that kept that from happening, and it was Kairos that changed that man’s life forever that very same weekend.

At that same first meeting, Peter M. (a Kairos volunteer) spoke. I only had the opportunity to chat briefly a couple times with Peter before he passed away, but I will tell you that my first and lasting impression was that he was the kind of man that, when he spoke, you sort of straightened your collar, squared your shoulders a bit, and checked your buttons to make sure everything was in the proper order. He just had that air about him. Peter’s story was that he’d had a career in the World Bank and had worked in something like 72 countries, but he made it clear that Kairos was what he was going to do for the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to rub elbows with the muckety mucks trying to save the world. He was going to come to prison and try to save some souls. And he did.

Well, I kept going to meetings, largely because the stories I kept hearing made me want to come back and hear more. It took me a while to get in here – one weekend was cancelled, the next I had to be out of town – but finally Kairos 34 was coming and I was able to commit. In the days leading up to the weekend I made a point of not speculating what it might be like. The fact is I had no idea what it would be like, and I didn’t see the sense of wondering. So I came, and heard more stories from residents attending the weekend and from the men who’d come in with me from outside. Many were surprising, even stunning, at times because the speaker had endured events I couldn’t imagine surviving, at times because the speaker spoke with a vulnerability I couldn’t imagine risking.

One thing that struck me, or maybe it’s better to say that it crept up on me as the weekend went on, was the servants (previous resident attendees, who are called “servants” when they staff future meetings) quietly attending to those of us at the tables. While we were talking about this and that, the servants were going about their business demonstrating the humility, even the love, that most of what we were talking about boils down to.

And then the weekend was over. That first night home I slept like the dead, and when I woke up I was happy. I was happy that I was in my bed and not on one of the cots our hosts down the road supply, apparently so we can perform an act of penance. I was happy because when I woke up I didn’t immediately feel guilty knowing that while I still slept, Brother Martin (a Kairos religious brother from Uganda) was already on his knees praying for me and all the world. But I was also happy because now I knew something I hadn’t known before; that wherever he was, while I still slept, Brother Henry was already on his knees praying for me and all the world.

Even after a good night’s sleep it took longer than I expected to feel back in my routine. Through Monday, Tuesday, even Wednesday, I had the sense that I was working through something I couldn’t quite put a finger on. And then around mid-day Thursday it hit me, clear as day: If Christ died for me, then he died for all of us.

Now if you hang around church enough, and if you read a lot of churchy things as I’m inclined to do, that’s not an uncommon thought. But it’s one thing to consider that thought in the normal course of your life, when your days consist of being with people you’ve more or less chosen to be with, doing things you’ve more or less chosen to do.

It’s another thing entirely, however, when you’ve stepped outside, or been pulled outside, your normal routine. Then you realize that if he died for all, he did it regardless of the lives we’ve led. Regardless of the mistakes we’ve made, of whether the debts we owe are to our friends, our families, to people we’ve never met, to the bank, the government, society itself. It doesn’t matter. He died for us while we were yet sinners, as St. Paul wrote.

But there was more.

The Gospel inspiration for Kairos comes from the Gospel of Matthew 25: verses 35-36: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” More often than not, that passage is viewed as a call to charity, perhaps an extended version of the commandment to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” But as I was thinking about my Kairos experience, it occurred to me that there may have been another reason why the Lord laid down that marker. It may be that he wanted to give us the opportunity to get out of our own heads, so to speak. To reach out, and, by reaching out, to encounter our fellow man and woman in a way that makes us realize, not the differences between us, but the similarities we share.

For who among us has not been hungry? Perhaps not for food, but for truth, for guidance, for love. Who among us has not felt himself a stranger or naked? Perhaps not physically naked, but certainly exposed to a world that often threatens us and makes us feel utterly alone. And who among us has not been a prisoner? Again not always physically, behind electronic or metal bars, but behind the bars of our fears, our doubts, the inner weaknesses that can lead us to succumb to temptation.

He knew, and he knows, that we who have accepted him are brothers, but he also knows that because we are still human and still weak, he has to show us what that brotherhood really looks like.

Now if I had read something along those lines without coming to Kairos I think I would have gotten it. I would have said, “Yeah, sure, that makes sense.” But there’s something about seeing first-hand. There’s something about being shown walks of life – easy walks, tough walks, pleasant walks, walks you wouldn’t wish on anyone – that you probably never would have encountered on your own. Only then, I now see, can you begin to understand what being a brother or sister in Christ really means.

Early in the Gospel of John, Christ extends an invitation. He walks by John, who is standing with a couple of what are described as John’s disciples, and the disciples call out to Christ, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Not where are you going, but where are you staying? Later on, in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ will explain that, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with you.” Which seems a pretty good indication of where he’s always staying, where he’s always alive and always working. But in that moment all he says is, “Come and see.”

Well, one of the Lord’s servants invited me to come and see what Kairos is. So I came. And I am sure that what I’ve seen, what I have been shown, I would not have seen any other way. So if you ask me for one simple thing that I’ve learned from my short time in Kairos, I’d say, it’s that if I’m smart and know what’s good for me, and that’s usually a big if, but if . . . . I’ll wake up each day, get out of bed, and say, “Well, here I am again, Lord. Here I am again. What are you going to show me today?”