jesus in the breadline

Jesus in the Breadline by Fritz Eichenberg

When I ran across this image today I couldn't stop looking at it.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I'm not sure how to engage with it, because a part of me doesn't want to look inward long enough to explore my discomfort.  In other words, it is good art.

Now...what to do with it?  My twenty-something self would have gotten angry with everyone else for the injustice of the world and thought briefly about joining the Peace Corps before settling in with a latte at Barnes and Noble.  My thirty-something incarnation would have felt dreadfully guilty for not being born into poverty, the outcome of which would be some angsty art that never felt satisfactory.  How does my nearly forty-year-old heart respond?

Rather than feeling angry over my latte or letting my unholy guilt guide my paintbrush, I think a better approach, certainly a more authentic approach, would be inspired by this:

"Prayer is one way we are actively engaged in changing the world....Thus, we do not stop prayer or worship, even though justice is not accomplished and our compassion is incomplete and all relationships are not healed."  (from Space For God:  The Study and Practice of Prayer and Spirituality by Don Postema)

...and lest I think that my work is done with a little comfortable "quiet time," Postema goes on to say:

"So we dare pray even when the social task remains incomplete and fragmented.  For prayer can help us hear the cries more distinctly, can help us see the task more clearly, can help us relate to divine justice more challengingly....Prayer needs to carry with it the commitment of your whole being to bring about just conditions; prayer must have the inner intentionality of being more firmly related to the divine and more reflective of the divine desire for justice in our relationships with others." 

                         

So what do I do when I see Jesus in the breadline?  

Well, first I must get into the breadline myself.  I'll never notice him there if I stand a ways away and shake my fist at injustice or crawl into a corner and cry.  No, I must walk directly into the breadline and look around in prayer for what I witness there.  I really believe that it will only be then that I can truly see, get out of myself, and become the conduit for justice and healing that my best self longs to be.

Seriously scary stuff, because I like my latte and it is easier to hold humanity at paintbrush-length where the only grime under my nails is from turpentine and Payne's Grey.

And yet, Fritz Eichenberg haunts me with his inconvenient woodcut.  I can't stop thinking about the Holy One divesting himself of his deity and taking the bread when all the while he is the Bread of Life in disguise.