I was in a situation a number of years ago where I was setting up for a church function. I was busy running around getting things ready with a couple other people. I had a friend with me who was visiting the church for the first time, a friend who grew up in a different socio-economic group, a friend who had been extremely poor most of their life. This friend was sitting on the side-lines while I flitted about taking care of things, trying to get ready.
As I worked hard to get ready for the upcoming event, I found myself really irritated by my friend's inactivity. Why were they just sitting on the sidelines rather than helping? I thought. Is my friend just that kind of person who expects to be waited on and served by others but won't lift a finger to help? What kind of entitlement thinking and lack of caring are being demonstrated here? This went on for some time before, in exasperagation, I finally snapped at my friend, "You know, I could really use your help here."
My friend looked surprised. No, it was more than surprise. I think it might even have been a bit of shock. They got up and did help, though the whole time my friend sort of floundered around, looking uneasy, and more, unsure of how to help or what to do.
Later, we had an opportunity to talk about what had happened. My friend shared with me that, until I had snapped at them, they had not felt it was their right to help. My friend was surprised at my snapping because they had thought they were being respectful by allowing me to do what needed to be done without my friend's interference or clumsy attempts at aid. They had felt they needed to be invited to help in this way and that until they were invited, they had better just stay out of the way.
Then, I was in a situation in which our congregation (at my last church) was serving a meal for those staying at our church through our Family Promise program (this is a program where 3-4 families are temporarily housed in churches for a week at a time per church until they can get back on their feet). After the meal was served, the children are organized into an activity and while the parents are present in the space, the children are really engaged in the activity with the helpers from the congregation where the families are staying. These families are all suffering from chronic homelessness, deep poverty and lack of resources. One of the people serving with us told me that they were baffled and concerned by the fact that the parents of these children never offered to help - either with serving their kids or helping with the kid's activities. The parents hung back, looking uneasy, and just watched as their kids were fed and cared for in this place. It bothered the person to whom I was speaking, who is a person used to jumping in and offering their services and help in any situation, especially when their kids are being given something for free. But I recognized the looks on these parents' faces. It was the same look I had seen on my friend's face when they didn't feel invited to help.
I believe these are both examples of something we rarely acknowledge. It is a privilege to be able to serve others. It is a privilege to be able to help in a situation and to be seen and acknowledged as a person who gives their time and energy to help others.
I think at some level we know this. When I am over at someone's house for a meal, I always offer to help clean up. Most of the time, that help is refused. But when it is accepted, I feel that I have been "let in" to a closer place in that person's heart, that person's home, that person's life. We don't let guests help us. But we do let family help us. So at the point at which someone allows us to help them clean up, we have moved from a place of distant guest to friend, at the very least. Our older or infirm friends also recognize this at some level. When one of my parishioners is hurt or in the hospital, the thing they always have the most trouble accepting is help from others, especially if there is no chance of returning that help. Those who are on the serving side of the equation feel a sense of honor, privilege and purpose in their efforts to care for the one down. But it is hard to accept that help. We forget that we give people a gift by allowing them to serve us: we give them the gift of feeling useful, of having activities that are meaningful, of giving something really needed to us.
We see the truth in these things, but still, it can be hard to remember that service is a privilege. It can be even harder to understand that those who have very little, the underprivileged, the marginalized, the ostracized, the disempowered - that many of these people do not know they have the right to help, to serve others, to give back. They have been told by our society in so many ways that they have nothing to contribute, that their very existence is suspect. They are treated as an "under-class" - as lesser than. And one of the surest signs that they have internalized that is that they do not know they have the right to give, to serve, or to help, even when those receiving aid are their own children.
We believe that when we are giving something to another person, whether it be goods or services, that their response should be one of gratitude. But the reality is that it can be really disempowering to serve people without letting them give something back in return. When I was volunteering with a homeless chaplaincy in Berkeley during my college years, one of the local soup kitchens understood this so fully that they charged those coming to the soup kitchen a quarter per meal. A quarter was not hard to come by (and the reality was that if someone really couldn't come up with a quarter, they would still be fed!), but the difference in how it made people feel was extraordinary. The guests went from feeling that they were "charity cases" (that very term and the way we use it says a great deal about how people experience both sides of our one-sided acts of charity!!!) to feeling that they were people contributing to their own well-being. They were purchasing their meals. They KNEW that they were purchasing their own meals. They were not helpless, hopeless charity cases. They were empowered people who were buying their own food. And as a result of that, they also felt empowered to act on their own behalves in other ways. Many began to volunteer themselves serving food at the soup kitchen. It became a community of people working and serving one another.
I believe we would do well to offer more invitations to people to be able to work with us in serving one another. We should invite those being served to be on the boards of the programs that serve them. We should invite those being served to stand with us and help us to serve. We should invite their thoughts, their opinions, but also their hands and their abilities in our joint missions of service to one another.
But perhaps more to the point in this blog, I hope that we can strive, all of us, to remember when someone is NOT helping or not serving alongside us that this may say more about their lack of a sense of being worthy to serve. They may not be helping because they don't realize they are worth enough to be able to help. Sometimes charity, and especially the charity that leaves no room for those receiving it to give back, leaves those receiving feeling worse about themselves than they already did. This may be a different approach, a different understanding for us to try to remember. But it is one more time when we are summoned to put ourselves in another person's shoes. We who have been born into privileged places in society, where we have enough, where we can be what and who we want to be - we sometimes forget that we are privileged in more ways than we often know, recognize, or remember. Being able to serve and give to others is a gift of privilege. We would do well to remember that. So I say it once more:
It is a privilege to serve. It is a gift to be able to give. We honor the other by inviting their service and their giving as well.
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