The Episcopal

Diocese of Lexington

From the Bishop: Jesus the Shoe shine Man

It’s funny where you run into Jesus if you’re paying attention. I met him the other day in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. On this particular day, Jesus was shining shoes, and mine needed shining. Isn’t that just like Jesus? On the night before he died, he washed the disciples’ feet.

“You live near here?” he asked.

“In Lexington.” “Just down the street.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Have you always lived here?”

“All my life.”

“We’ve lived in Lexington five years and we really like coming to Cincinnati. There’s a lot here and it isn’t so big that it’s unmanageable.”

“Yes, Cincinnati’s a nice town.” Then, abruptly in a shift of his train of thought, he continued, “I’m one of eight. My wife is one of 11.” I was strangely not disturbed by that bit of information I’d never heard about Jesus before.

“Wow,” I responded, reflecting for a moment on the complications that go with having two children and thinking about how his parents and his wife’s parents did it.

“Yes, Cincinnati’s got a lot of nice memories, happy times, brothers and sisters, and all of them have children and grandchildren.”

“Y’all get together a lot?” I inquired, my introvert’s mind sort of spinning at the thought of it. “All the time.

All the time. That’s what it’s all about. Anybody who doesn’t get that just doesn’t have their head straight. If you can’t get along with your brothers and sisters, well then, you can’t get along with me. Someone tells me they haven’t spoken to their brother in six years or they don’t get a long with their sister, I say, ‘get away from me.’ If you can’t get along with your own brothers and sisters, well then, you can’t get along with me.”

I got down, paid for the shoe shine, and tipped Jesus $2. And I said, “Thank you, Jesus, for speaking to me this morning and reminding me of what I need to know.” I didn’t say that part out loud. I knew Jesus could hear me.

“If you can’t get along with your brothers and sisters, well then, you can’t get along with me.” You can’t get along with me, the shoe shine man, and you can’t get along with me, Jesus, either. I think I remember having heard something like that once before. “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brother and sister also” (1 John 4:20-21). It was John who said that, not Jesus, but I think John probably heard it from Jesus, maybe while Jesus was shining his shoes.

The church is a place where brothers and sisters sometimes have a hard time getting along with each other. Frankly, as a dear friend of mine is fond of saying, “ain’t no big deal.” That’s what brothers and sisters do. What brothers and sisters do not do, at least not in healthy families, is cut off from each other even when they are having a hard time getting along. Cut offs, in truth, aren’t really caused by conviction or righteousness or faithfulness, at least not faithfulness to God according to St. John. They are caused by immaturity. Nothing would break my heart more as a parent than for my boys to separate from each other as if they had no relationship at all. Nothing breaks my heart more as a bishop than for my brothers and sisters to separate from me and from each other as if we had no relationship at all. I doubt that holds a candle next to how much it distresses Jesus the shoe shine man, especially when Jesus gets used as the excuse for it.

The reason that brothers and sisters love each other, after all, is not that they agree on the issues of the day. It is not, for that matter, that they are particularly good or virtuous. It is that they are brothers and sisters, plain and simple. One of the ultimate ironies of cut offs is that, try as we might, nothing changes that. Brothers and sisters remain brothers and sisters, whether they want to or not. That is more true, and not less true, when we have been made brothers and sisters through Christ in Holy Baptism. Brothers and sisters in Christ are bound together with bonds that cannot be broken by hell itself.

Cut offs in families invariably lead to more cut offs. If it is OK to cut off over this today, well then, it is just as OK to cut off over something else tomorrow. And the same immature pattern continues from generation to generation. I hope I’ve passed on greater maturity than that to my boys. And I hope I got some of it myself — from my parents and from the shoe shine man. “If you can’t get along with your brothers and sisters, well then, you can’t get along with me.”

Agape,