Jeremiah 15:10-21, Phillipians 3: 15-21, John 12-20-26

“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” John 12:26             

When Brendan and Kiki were young, we lived in Tokyo, attending services at the Tokyo Union Church (TUC), a non-denominational Christian church primarily serving the expatriot community.

At this same time, there lived a hidden population of homeless men who would roll out their mats each night and sleep on the cold cement floor of the Shibuya eki (train station).  Touched by this unacknowledged suffering, a group from TUC decided to feed this homeless community.  Each day a small band of volunteers would meet in the basement of the church to laugh, cook rice, and assemble onigiri (dried plums wrapped in rice and seaweed).  The nutritious packages would be placed in bento boxes to be collected by another volunteer in the afternoon.

The following morning, another pair of volunteers would deliver the onigiri by 5 am so the homeless men would be fed before they were pushed out of the station.  Many were the cold, winter mornings when these volunteers would leave their homes as early as 4:15, walk to the train station with their bags of nourishment for the ride to Shibuya.

Silently this team of wingless angels would place their life-sustaining parcels on the corner of each sleeping mat, gliding through the station in living prayer.  Some of the homeless men were old and infirmed; others were young and afraid; many smelled, most were sleeping when their breakfast was delivered.  Occasionally one would open his eyes–the very eyes of Christ, and murmer a grateful, “domo arrigato.”   To which the volunteer would respond, “Do itashimashite,”  traditionally translated as “you are welcome.”  But in this instance it may be more appropriate to imagine its meaning as, “This is what I am here to do–to serve you, nourish you, honor your dignity as a child of God.  Placing this package on your mat is a small gesture in the grand scheme of all that I have been given. Thank you for the opportunity to serve.”

It took a team of people willing to lose their life of comfort and leave their warm beds at 4 in the morning; to be able to overcome their fears of delivering food to smelly strangers in the bowels of a train station; to be interested in the well-being of not only their own families, but also those of the human family, for this moment of communion to be lived out each and every morning.

Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.

-Mary Sullivan