Fifteen

How to Be an Esther and
Break a Thousand Gates

Christians who understand biblical truth and have the courage to live it out can indeed redeem a culture, or even create one.

CHUCK COLSON

If you only knew what fire every person is facing, there isn’t one fire you wouldn’t help fight with the heat of a greater love.

The day the homeless man moved into our loft, a heat wave broke over us.

Gordon literally had nothing the day he showed up, nothing to his name but the sun-faded T-shirt sticking to his back, emblazoned with the words, “Normal people scare me.” A mingling of alcohol and tobacco seeps from his burning pores. My brother and a buddy, they’d found him wandering down an empty back road after a court date, the tongues of his boots panting open, longing for relief. Now he stands in the shade at our back door, asking for water.

“You got anything to drink?” he asks me.

My brother wonders if we have some work for Gordon. Wondered if we may have a place for him, and maybe—just to start—a glass of water?

Gordon uses the tattered edge of his T-shirt to mop this mask of sweat puddling in the etched lines of his face. A silver cross hangs around his neck on this heavy chain. Before I even think, I touch my wrist to find the small black cross I penned first thing this morning. We both have our crosses. We all have our crosses. “To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss,” writes Elisabeth Elliot.¹

The sun’s losing light as it edges across the floor.

I can feel the world tilting a bit, its truth slipping right out and onto the floor between Gordon and me: Why do we rush to defend God to a broken world, and not race to defend the image of God in the world’s broken? Gordon’s eyes search mine. The light’s caught in his hair. Yeah, I’ve got no idea if he’s packing something, dealing something, trafficking something, but something holy’s caught in my throat. We’ve all got our crosses.

Maybe the struggle for good isn’t waged as much around us as it’s waged inside of us. I could get Gordon a glass of water. Could I offer him a place to stay? Why in the world do we spend more time defending God to the critical around us than defending God to the doubting, critical voices within us? What if it is not God who needs us to rush to His defense in the world as much as we need to rush to the distress of the broken who carry the image of God into the world?

I think of Queen Esther, the young Jewish girl who found herself a Persian queen when her people faced genocide—Esther, right where she was, for such a time as this, to give a glass of cold water, a desperate hand to another, to open a door, a hand, a heart, and give her life away.

This man is standing penniless and parched in my kitchen and I’ve stood in a kitchen of sorts in a dump in Guatemala City and looked into the whites of kids’ eyes eating whatever they could find in piles of rotting refuse, the vultures circling overhead. I’ve knelt beside a little girl in Uganda who held a bowl in her two hands, held it up for me to see what she’d caught for dinner, those dozens of crawling bugs. In Iraq, I’ve sat in a cold shipping container with refugee women whose brothers and fathers were shot in front of them by terrorists, women who had to make a split-minute decision which child they could take with them and which would be left behind, women who had nothing, yet offered me their rationed tea and we sat on the floor and wept because shared tears are multiplied healing. And I’ve stood at a chain-link fence in Haiti when a small boy appeared out of nowhere, the barren foothills bloating malnourished up behind him as he rattled the fence with one dirty hand and pointed to his cracked lips, begging for food—even a sip of water.

And they come again to me now in my kitchen, Esther’s cousin’s words: “Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die.”² You can look into eyes and hear the whisper from those outside your door, outside the gate: You’ve got to risk your position inside for those on the outside or you risk losing everything, even your own soul. You’ve got to give your gifts or they may become your idols, your identity, and you become the walking dead. If your living isn’t about giving, then you’re already dying. You’ve got to use the life you’ve been given to give others life. If your life isn’t about giving relief—you don’t get real life. Give relief or you find none. For what does it profit a woman to gain the whole world, but lose her own soul?³

You are where you are for such a time as this. Not to gain anything, but to risk everything.

Gordon doesn’t need me to beckon more than once and he’s in the cool of the house, yanking off those boots. I’m in the kitchen finding a cup. My brother’s standing in the doorway, waiting to see whatever’s coming. The water streams from the faucet like it can’t wait to give itself away and I hold out all our cups for the filling.

I turn, hand Gordon his, one to my brother, and I swallow my own right down. We’re all more than a bit parched.

We could all be the ones outside the gate. We all could have been Gordon, fallen on hard times into hard ways; we could have been the one fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army slitting our child’s throat in the middle of the night; we could be the one born into a slum, violently raped and left for dead, the one born into AIDS, into starvation, into lives of Christ-less desperation. The reason you are inside the gate for such a time as this—is to risk your life for those outside the gate.

If I perish, I perish.

There are so many of us sucking down lattes and dying of thirst, dying for something more, for something abundant. There are so many in need, and so many Esthers who thirst for more than vanilla services, sweetened programs, and watered-down lives, hungry for some real meat for their starved souls, some dirt under the fingernails, some real sacrifice in the veins. I know why I keep writing a cross on my wrist.

There are those who are saved, but only by the skin of their teeth because they cared most about the comfort of their own skin and only minimally about anyone else’s. They will have a hardly abundant entrance awaiting them in heaven. But those will not be the Esthers. There are those who would rather turn a blind eye to the needy than turn to the needy and be like Christ. Those who would love playing at being Christian more than actually being one and loving giving. But those will not be the Esthers.

There’s a whole generation of Esthers who want to be the gift, want to give it forward, whatever’s in our hands, who want holy more than hollow. There’s a whole Esther Generation, and it is we who want the abundant life of going lower to love the least, the lonely, and the lost. The world needs people who will defy cynical indifference by making a critical difference.

Every one of us can start changing headlines when we start reaching out our hands.

We can be concerned for the poor—but be no less concerned for us rich who claim not to be rich so we can excuse ourselves from giving. Go ahead and show concern for the poor—but be no less concerned if we’ve merely done enough to assuage our consciences, just enough to pat ourselves on the back, but not enough that we’ve ever felt true sacrifice, that we’ve ever actually broken and given. Go ahead and live concerned for the poor—but be no less concerned for avoiding suffering because someday we will face Christ. What if caring for the poor was more than just caring about easing our consciences? What if caring for the poor may mean sacrifice, and what if this is the way to be satisfied and know abundant living?

I’d read it once—how one in four people in a small town was deaf. And every one of them felt like an outsider. Until everyone in town learned sign language. The non-deaf disadvantaged themselves, inconvenienced themselves, to learn sign language. And it was the non-deaf whose lives were enhanced in unexpected ways. Not only did they gain rich relationships with deaf neighbors they would have missed out on otherwise, but they also discovered the convenience of signing across the street to one another, of sign language communicating from atop hills to folks below, of the sick signing what they needed when voices failed, of children signing to avoid being loud. Disadvantaging themselves—turned out to be their advantage. Brokenness was made into abundance.

“To ‘do justice,’ ” writes Tim Keller, “means to go to places where the fabric of shalom has broken down, where the weaker members of societies are falling through the fabric, and to repair it.”⁴

We are each singular threads in the world. We all get to decide what we will tie our lives to. If I tie my resources, my time, my Esther-power, only to the thin thread of my own life—my life’s a hopelessly knotted mess.

The thread of your life becomes a tapestry of abundant colors only if it ties itself to other lives. The only way to strengthen the fabric of society is to let threads of your life break away to let Christ, who is in us, weave around other threads. “Reweaving shalom means to sacrificially thread, lace, and press our time, power, goods, and resources into the lives and needs of others . . . The strong must disadvantage themselves for the weak, the majority for the minority, or the community frays and the fabric breaks.”⁵

The only way to care for the disadvantaged is to disadvantage yourself, which is guaranteed to turn out to your advantage.

What if we gave up charity for solidarity? What if we gave up giving from the top down and gave ourselves in reaching out, less the vertical and more like the horizontal beam of the cross? All on the same beam, all of us in need of the cross, all with our own crosses. We each have our own pack of addictions and predilections, and we’re dying for a cold drink to soothe the burning edges of our wounds. For all our masks and pearly smiles, we’re a whole world of Gordons.

We’ve all been the ones outside the gate pleading for Someone to risk everything to rescue us. This could break a million little self-righteous pulpits: the brokenness in the world is but the brokenness in our own busted hearts.

My own busted heart’s got nothing to give. But I don’t need to have things together before I can offer a cup of water, open the door, my hand, or reach out to help those outside. I don’t need to not be thirsty myself; I only need to know I thirst too.

Because grace is a beam that begs us to let it run on and support everything.

And it isn’t having that makes us rich; it’s giving. Give sacrificially, live richly. Maybe all we really want is more of God. Abundance of Him.

Gordon’s sitting here with no place to lay his head: “Despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised.”⁶ “When you bring a cup of cold water to the least of these, you bring it to Me.”⁷ I fill his glass again with deep-well water and he drains the cup dry, slams it on the counter, and grins a country-mile wide.

“I was a stranger and you welcomed Me,” I hear.⁸ Oh, my God. I could have missed You.

How many times have I missed Him? You miss Him when you question who’s needy enough to give to, who warrants the risk. He comes as the homeless guy, the refugee, the child drinking filthy water—and you get to decide. Are you going to fill your life with more stuff, more safety, or more God? What the world says is weak and small may be where Christ is offering Himself to you most of all—and why do we want to be big people when God shows up as the little people nobody’s got time for? You miss Jesus when you aren’t looking for His two disguises: the smallest and the servant.

“The mystery of ministry is that the Lord is to be found where we minister,” writes Henri Nouwen. “That is what Jesus tells us when He says: ‘Insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40). Our care for people thus becomes the way to meet the Lord. The more we give, support, guide, counsel and visit, the more we receive, not just similar gifts, but the Lord Himself. To go to the poor is to go to the Lord.”⁹

I get back from Iraq, where I sat with women who witnessed genocide, and at church somebody tells me, “It’s nice that you care about those people over there.” And I stop. Turn. How do I translate it? We aren’t where we are to care about those on the margins—some nice gesture or token concern. I look across the kitchen at Gordon. The reason we are here is to risk everything for those oppressed people over there outside the gate. You are where you are to help others where they are. This isn’t a Christian’s sideline hobby; compassion is our complete vocation. We do not just care about people; caring is our calling. That’s it.

God forbid, you don’t get a roof over your head and food on your table because you deserve more, but so you can serve more. God forbid, you believe you’re a little better than others instead of making another’s life a little better. Gordon’s voice crackles like it’s been scorched: “So, I know that your brother, you and he have talked?” My brother had texted me before they arrived. “You think I could crash here for a bit?”

“Yeah, Gordon.” The words spill out before I’m really thinking, trying to get the invitation out before reservations. “We’ve got an extra bed up in the loft . . .”

THE ONLY WAY
TO CARE FOR THE DISADVANTAGED
IS TO DISADVANTAGE YOURSELF,
WHICH IS GUARANTEED
TO TURN OUT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

I could hear the cautions in my head: Is this safe? But what is love if not this? Real love is never safe. When it comes to real love, there is safety in danger. How many times have I thought it was safety that mattered, when Jesus already died to save us? No one ever got saved unless someone else was willing to be unsafe. Some notion of safety isn’t what ultimately matters; what matters is: If we see someone in need and don’t help in some way, isn’t that in some way sin? Love of strangers—wasn’t that the direct, exact translation of the word for hospitality in Scripture, philoxenia? Philos—brotherly love; xenia—the stranger. Love the stranger like a brother. Biblical hospitality is about inviting strangers in, not just the neighbors.

Jesus feels loud in the space between Gordon and me and so easily unheard at the same time:

“When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid. On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, maimed, lame, or blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.”¹⁰

Give the gift forward to the stranger who cannot repay you, to those outside the gate, so the only repayment is the abundance of God. The sun’s spilling down the old wooden barn ladder I’d placed by the kitchen table. Grace is always a movement of downward mobility.

The world changes when we don’t categorize, polarize, and demonize people with broad brushstrokes—but when we apologize, empathize, evangelize, and prioritize people with these quiet brushes of grace.

Gordon pushes back the stool, stands, leans into the counter. “Think you might have work for me? Cause I’m hard up for cash like you wouldn’t believe.” His appeal falls into the dusk’s quiet. Can the one who appeals—always look the most appealing? Isn’t this the broken heart of Christ? Some questions you can’t answer theologically, but only with your life.

“Sure, Gordon.” I catch his eye. “Pretty sure we’ve got some work for you.”

Faces are mirrors that prove all our separateness is mirage.

All there is to see is Jesus. All there is to see is the face of Jesus in others—and for them to see the face of Jesus in you. Wasn’t that it? Seeing Jesus’ presence in others is the secret to becoming like His presence to others. Maybe you can only be Christ in the world to the extent that you see Christ’s presence in the world. And we only refuse to be like Christ to each other—when we refuse to see Christ in each other.

In my periphery, I can see my brother nodding. And when Gordon turns just the least in the dying light, you can see God through brokenness. It strikes me that sight is only possible if light can break into us. Refuse light to break into you, and you will walk blind. Refuse to let oxygen break into your lungs, and you will die. Refuse to let Him break into you, and you will die. Koinonia is the breaking in, the willing participation, the fellowship of all things—and indwelling can’t help but weave its way through all of the atoms of the world. The whole earth is full of His indwelling. The broken way illuminates the whole material world, everything breaking into everything else.

This is what love means: we live within each other, we inhabit each other, our love for each other becoming stego, a sheltering roof. Maybe we don’t live abundantly until we let the Gordons break into us—the foster child who needs a break, the angry teenager, the guy we can’t stand, the neighbor who is always complaining, the people on the other side of the gate, till everyone who crosses your path breaks a bit into your heart. Their vulnerabilities become ours, their prayers become ours, their hopes become ours. Love bears all things and we are the Esthers who bear whatever it takes for those outside the gate.

“How ’bout I go get clean sheets for that bed up in the loft for you? And you can hang your hat here for as long as you need to, Gordon.”

My brother leans in to ask Gordon what else he needs right now, and I go look for folded sheets in the linen closet. We all began enfolded, we all swam in an indwelling of communion, us indwelling another human being and her indwelling us—her blood and ours too. Before we were ever visible in community, right from the beginning, we were already present in community. Koinonia is our literal genesis. Loneliness is illusion. “Loneliness is the nucleus of psychiatry”—the “central core of [the patient’s] illness,” Dutch psychiatrist J. H. van den Berg wrote.¹¹ Souls were made to connect to other souls and gates were made to be destroyed—and if we perish, we perish. And to the extent that we find ourselves disconnected, our own souls break into pieces. The whole universe confirms it, rings with it: there is no reality apart from relationship. Reality is exchange, interchange, connection—koinonia. Communion is a cross—a mutual intersection. One person’s trajectory is intersected by another’s journey, and each receives the other’s into their own broken places. Which is to say, we become cruciform.

We become the cross. We incarnate Christ. Reality is the cross where the broken meet. Where the refugee and the elderly, the special needs and the desperately needy, the poor in spirit and the remade in Christ—where all the broken intersect and meet and cross paths. The Father breaks open to make room in Himself for the Son, the Son for the Spirit, the Spirit for the Son and the Father: “None of the persons seeks his own; none seeks to know himself in isolation. Irreducibly different as they are, they are entangled in an eternal knot of perfect communion,” writes Peter Leithart.¹²

And none of us seek our own and there are no other people’s children, no other people’s homeless brother, no other people’s crisis. We belong to each other because we all mutually indwell each other, and there is nothing worth having inside the gate when we’ve got pieces of ourselves outside the gate. When we leave people on the other side of the gate—we lose parts of ourselves. That’s why the Esther Generation risks everything for those outside the gate—because they hold the necessary pieces of our collective soul, which we need for shalom. Wholeness. Unless we rise as the Esther Generation and risk everything for those outside the gate—we will perish. Guaranteed.

There are pancakes for a late dinner. Gordon and the Farmer and I sit, and Malakai brings stacks of his pancakes to our waiting plates. Our theology is best expressed in our hospitality. Hospitality is living broken-wide-open, living like a roof, a door wide open, a gate destroyer. Right theology is ultimately hospitality that lives broken right open—with your time and your space and your heart. Every day you can do one thing that you wish you could do for everyone. We will be known for our actual fruits, not the intentions of our imaginations.

Hope lights candles. The dog sleeps on the porch in the glow of the lights, there by the dining room window.

The way to slowly die is to believe you live in a space of scarcity and not abundance of generosity. The abundant way to life is the paradox of the broken way, to believe we live with enough time, enough resources, enough God. Any fear of giving to God’s kingdom is flawed. It would be like a farmer who feared losing his bucket of seeds so he failed to plant his own field—and thus forfeited the joy of overflowing his barns with the harvest.

From the table, you can see the Mason jar of wheat seeds in the windowsill. There’s always enough abundance and grace to risk everything for those in need, because you have the favor of the King and it’s only by abundant grace that any of us are here—and if there’s abundant grace for us, by God, there’s abundant grace for all of us.

I look at Gordon. Radical love isn’t as much about where you move to as letting Jesus move you wherever you are—to see Him where He is waiting for you to break the gate and let Him in. He may move you to Africa—or across the street—or He may move you to get a glass of water. But if the love of Christ moves you, it will move you out into the world to break down a thousand common gates. He means for you to live the shalom of communion. Living the broken way, it isn’t about where you live; it’s about how you love. It’s who we love.

“So ya think we can work on that barn roof tomorrow?” The Farmer nods toward Gordon. Gordon, head down in his stack of pancakes, gives a thumbs-up.

“You sure make good pancakes, Kai,” I tell the boy. I had no idea what we were having for dinner, hours too late. But Kai has met me, gifted Him forward today, sheltered me in my own uncertain mess of brokenness, with a plate of steaming pancakes, and a warmer presence. He grins, braces gleaming in the candlelight. There are a thousand ways to be welcomed into communion.

A candle in the center of the table flickers out. Hope leans one of the candles to it, relights it. One candle can light a thousand and is in no way diminished—but actually resurrects in a thousand ways.

The only life worth living is the life you lose.

The reflection of candlelight in the window looks like the rising of a thousand flaming Esthers, breaking out of gates and into light.