One of my favorite authors is Tony Campolo. About 30 years ago, he published a book called The Kingdom of God is a Party, and in that book, he told this story:
Tony had traveled to Hawaii for a speaking engagement, and on his first night he was suffering from jet lag. So, he went out about 3:00 in the morning looking for a place to get something to eat. He finally found a greasy spoon diner open for business. He went in, sat down at the counter, and ordered a donut and coffee. While has sitting there eating, a group of about eight or nine prostitutes came in. Since it was such a small place, they sat on either side of Tony at the counter. They were talking very loudly and were dressed in very provocative outfits, and he felt completely out of place.
One of the hookers said, “Hey, tomorrow is my birthday. I’m going to be thirty-nine.” Another of the women said, in a nasty tone of voice, “So what do you want from me? A birthday party? You want me to get you a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’?” “Come on,” said the first woman. “Why do you have to be so mean? I was just telling you, that’s all. Why do you always have to put me down? I don’t want anything from you. I mean, why should you throw me a birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?” A little later, the group of women left the diner.
Tony asked the guy behind the counter, “Hey, do they come in here every night?” “Yeah,” he answered. “What about the woman that was sitting next to me? Does she come in every night?” “Oh, you mean Agnes,” the guy said. “Yeah, she comes in here every night? So what? Why do you want to know?” Tony said, “I heard her say that tomorrow is her birthday. What do you say you and I throw her a birthday party, right here, tomorrow night?” The guy smiled and said, “That’s a great idea!” He called to his wife, who did the cooking, “Come out here! This guy’s got a great idea! Tomorrow is Agnes’ birthday. This guy wants us to go in with him and throw her a party.” His wife got excited, too. “You know, Agnes is one of those people who’s really nice and kind, but nobody ever does anything nice or kind for her.” Tony said he would pick up some decorations, and the wife offered to bake a birthday cake.
At 2:30 the next morning, Tony went back to the diner with his decorations. The woman who did the cooking must have gotten the word out on the street, because by 3:15, it seemed like every hooker in Honolulu was in the diner waiting to surprise Agnes. At 3:30 on the dot, the door of the diner opened, and in walked Agnes and her friend. Everybody yelled, “Happy Birthday!” Agnes was absolutely stunned. Her jaw fell, and as her friend led her to a stool at the counter, the group sang “Happy Birthday to you!” When the cake was brought out with all the candles on it, Agnes started crying. The guy behind the counter told her to blow out the candles, and she did, and then he gave her a knife to cut the cake. But Agnes just kept looking at the cake, and said, “Look, is it okay with you if I keep the cake for a while? I mean, is it okay if we don’t eat it right away?” The guy said, “Sure, Agnes. It’s your cake. Take it home if you want to.” “Can I? I just live a few doors down the street. I want to take it home. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” So she picked up the cake and carried it gently out the door.
When the door closed, there was just silence. Not knowing what else to do, Tony asked, “What do you say we pray?” And he prayed for Agnes, for her salvation, and that God would be good to her. When he finished, the guy behind the counter leaned over and said, “Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?” Tony answered, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for hookers at 3:30 in the morning.” The guy paused a moment and said, “No, you don’t. There’s no church like that. If there was, I’d join it. I’d join a church like that.”
The truth is, that’s the kind of church that Jesus came to create. Anybody who reads the New Testament can see that Jesus hung around with prostitutes, and other people that polite society looked down on. He was with tax collectors, lepers, and all kinds of sinners. The religious people, by and large, didn’t get what Jesus was about. But the down and out, the people on the margins, the people considered unclean, they understood that Jesus was there for them. And they followed him with passion and excitement and gratitude.
In this passage from Luke, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees and religious law, who were offended by the company he was keeping. They couldn’t believe that he spent time with such despicable people! So Jesus told them two stories to explain why he was hanging out with those people. The first was a story about a shepherd who left his flock of ninety-nine sheep to go and look for one who had gotten lost. And the second was a story about a woman who had lost one of her ten silver coins, and turned her home upside down looking for it until she found it. And Jesus concluded that, in the same way, there was more joy in heaven over the saving of one lost soul than over the ninety-nine souls who were faithful all along.
Jesus didn’t need to spend time with people who were already on the right track, people who were already obedient to God, people who were in right relationship with God and with each other. Jesus came to spend time with the people who were living far away from God and from God’s will for their lives. Jesus came to spend time with the people who were broken, the people who were in despair, the people who were victims of circumstance, the people who had made mistakes. They were the ones who needed him the most. And, by extension, those who follow Jesus should be spending their time with the same kind of people. So the question I would ask this morning is, “Who do you hang with? Are you spending all your time with the ‘good’ people, the church people, the people just like you? Or are you spending time with the least, the last, and the lost? Are you spending time in places where the people who need our help the most are located?”
I had a church member in Warwick who knew how to represent Jesus in the places were the people who most needed him hang out. She had what I called her “bar ministry.” She and her husband liked to go to the bar at the Governor Francis Inn several nights a week to be with some friends. But Marilyn had gotten a reputation for being the “prayer lady.” People knew she was a Christian and a church-goer, and they would frequently come up to her with prayer requests that she would write down on bar napkins and then pass on to the ladies’ prayer group at the church. Sometimes she didn’t know these people, and they wouldn’t even give her their names. But they knew that she cared, that she would pray for them, and that meant a lot to them. They were willing to approach her, because she was hanging out with them. She wasn’t there to judge or criticize. She was there as a compassionate and kind friend. I don’t know how many lives Marilyn has touched with this simple prayer ministry. But I do know that she is following in the footsteps of Jesus by putting herself in the places where people hang out who wouldn’t ever come to a church service for fear of being condemned.
What kind of church are we? What kind of church do we want to be? I’d kind of like to be the kind of church that throws birthday parties for hookers in the middle of the night. What about you?