People Walk Right Over Him

 
People Walk Right Over Him

(“’Is it right to heal anyone on the Sabbath day?’ they asked him—hoping to bring a charge against him.” Matthew 12:10b)

While you colloquy and cant about
Sunday Mornings
there is someone who is housing impaired
ditched behind the house of worship
and grasping whisps of dying grass just
trying to get to street level again.

But who would want him; clothes smelling worse
than a cat box,
noxious fumes would fill the room.
Who would want him; so much surgery to stitch his
soul,
unroll the gurneys and send him to urgent care.
The Lord’s business happens in
this
building,
and we must not be interrupted by a case of
idleness gone to seed.

“oh no one says that. no one talks like that at all.”

Then why don’t you make a few calls,
search the tall grass,
take your offerings,
bake your good breads,
and find the leaking trailer where
despair and anger have damaged a mere man
in pain who never planned to forsake baths for
weeks at a time. He never imagined soggy socks
midwinter, and never asked for the isolation that
stumbling in the snow brings. People walk right
over you and
notice nothing until spring.

“oh but how should we know. we could not know about the hidden ones.”

Haven’t I just spoke to you in this short tome?
Haven’t I described him, (half of you know his name.)
Don’t you remember how he comes for coffee and donuts
and leaves before anyone can shake his hand?
Don’t you see that sheep limping and lost
are the mission statement of the Shepherd’s own?