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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

"I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity ... This is the way I'm going. If it means suffering a little bit, I'm going that way.... If it means dying for them, I'm going that way."Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

When you or I see them, they are simply the homeless. Maybe panhandlers. Maybe addicted to drugs or alcohol. Possibly smelly. Often invisible, or at least we're able to to render them so. But to Pete Gathje, 50, and Kathleen Kruczek, 42, and the volunteers who operate Manna House, these men and women are Jesus in the flesh. And three mornings a week, in a one-story house on Jefferson near Downtown, Gathje and Kruczek and the volunteers get the opportunity to serve Christ.

Manna House is radical hospitality in action and the fulfillment of a biblical mandate. Jesus directed his followers to clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, give drink to the thirsty. "Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me," reads Matthew 25:40. So, Gathje says, "If our guests are Christ present, how would we treat Christ if he came in and wanted a shirt?" A person of Christian faith would likely give him the best he had. And the volunteers at Manna House do. If you had to reduce what they do to a sentence, it'd be this: They give out showers and socks. Except it can't be reduced so simply, because they also hand out dignity and respect. And free coffee and conversation. And coats, shoes and a full set of clothes, when they have it to give.

The routine is simple -- most mornings, it's Gathje (pronounced GET-KEY) with the clipboard, signing up guests for their turn in the shower. Volunteers stand behind a makeshift counter in what was probably a bedroom and hand out neatly balled pairs of socks. A washer and dryer sit behind them. The closet is full of Band-Aids and extra soap and travel-sized toiletries. A stack of donated shirts is folded on shelves nearby, and on a cold January morning, a man asks for a long-sleeved one. But not that one. And definitely not the pink one -- do they want him to get beaten up? The volunteer pulls another shirt out of the stack, but the guest doesn't care for that one either. After several tries, the volunteer finds one that meets with the guest's approval. Who said beggars can't be choosy? That attitude -- that people who are poor don't have the right to a clothing preference -- is anathema at Manna House.

What Manna House does is compassionate, but it's not charity, Gathje says. He referenced words of the prophet Isaiah: "If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness." Most Christianity is "baptized paganism," says Gathje, who gives a dismissive wave when asked if he really wants to be quoted saying this. Most Christianity, he continues, is nationalism and consumerism, devoid of the connection between God and justice. Not so at Manna House. "This," Gathje says, "is religion." The house on Jefferson was Kruczek's 40th birthday present from her then-husband. That's what Kruczek (pronounced CREW-CHECK) wanted, a house to offer hospitality to those who needed it most. And if she got this house, she suspects her ex-husband figured, then she wouldn't keep picking up homeless people and taking them to IHOP or Captain D's for a meal. Kruczek, a single mom of four, and Gathje, who is married to an attorney, met at their church, Sacred Heart.

When he lived in Atlanta, Gathje worked with another hospitality ministry, but had become more involved in peace and justice issues, from the public policy end. "I didn't feel like that was enough," says Gathje, who moved to Memphis in 1996. "It was too abstract. If you're going to be an activist, you need to be involved in the streets." And he has been since Manna House opened 21/2 years ago. "We don't go in to save or cure anyone," Kruczek tells Gathje's class at Memphis Theological Seminary, where he is an associate professor of Christian ethics. Gathje requires students in his class on the church's call to radical hospitality to volunteer at Manna House, and many stay past their required mini internship there. Other volunteers come from Temple Israel, Germantown United Methodist, Church of the Holy Spirit and other congregations. The guests come from all around, by the dozens.

Not all of the people who come into Manna House act as if they appreciate what Kruczek -- known as "Miss Kathleen" -- and Gathje do, says James Britt, a Manna House regular. Britt, 50, is a military veteran who has been homeless on-and-off for 20 years. He said, "People come in here and cuss them out, and they let it go in one ear and out the other." But Kruczek and Gathje are adamant that they don't deserve gratitude for what they do. They do not see themselves as special. They see themselves as the unworthy recipients of the amazing blessings that their guests bring them three times a week. "They humble me by continuing to come back," Gathje says. Says Kruczek: "They're coming back for a desperate need for respect and dignity, and they must be getting that, or else they wouldn't be coming back."

Manna House is a sanctuary, a "Cheers" bar without the alcohol, where everyone knows your name. That settled feeling is in the worn couches and the arm chair that Gathje complains has no back support. If you've never spent time with the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised, this will be difficult to see, at first. It's like a thrice-weekly family reunion, with all the good-natured ribbing that relatives give each other and all of the care and concern. A thin man dressed in black comes in, and plops into a corner armchair, clearly tired. His black boots are better suited for mounting Harleys than spending the day walking the city's streets. He estimates they must weigh 5 pounds each.

Gathje tells the guest he thinks he can do better, and heads to a back room where donated shoes are stored. He comes out with a pair of sneakers, and the man unlaces his boots. His sigh of relief when those big heavy boots come off his feet is so deep, it has to be the release of more than just cramped toes. The guest tries on the brown tennis shoes, and Gathje asks him to stand up. A former shoe salesman, he presses on the toe box. Too tight. It's back to the back room for Gathje, who reappears with a pair of white tennis shoes. These fit. On a couch across the room, a woman sleeps soundly. Kruczek leans over her and tucks a piece of mail that's come for her into her coat pocket. The woman awakes, startled, but sees Kruczek's face, smiles, and goes back to sleep.

Just before Manna House closes one March afternoon, other guests bring in a woman in a wheelchair. Kruczek greets her warmly, as she does everyone who comes in, and goes and gets a bandage. The woman eases herself into a chair and Kruczek plops into the wheelchair. The woman's leg goes in Kruczek's lap, exposing a big scar that's healing. In the understatement of the day, Britt, the regular visitor says, "It takes a special kind of person to do this." Britt remembers the morning a man with no legs showed up in a wheelchair. The list for showers was full, but the other guests insisted Gathje make an exception -- not to break the rules, but "transcend" them.

"After I brought him into the shower room, it quickly became evident that he needed more than a shower; he needed medical attention," Gathje wrote in an article published earlier this year in "The Living Pulpit" magazine. "His backside was covered with a foul combination of excrement, urine, blood, and maggots." The paramedics said a hospital wouldn't take him in this condition. So Gathje, Kruczek and Ashley Moore, who had been homeless but was working as a volunteer then, and the paramedics helped him into a shower. "With their help we removed the rest of his clothing, and he was eased onto a small plastic chair in the shower stall. This left him shaking from pain, as his skin broke open further from the maggots eating him. The smell was so intense even one of the paramedics struggled to keep her composure." When the paramedics eventually put this man on a stretcher, the guests thanked him for coming, promised to pray for him and visit him in the hospital.

That day, Gathje saw a bit of God's redemptive work, and he wrote: "To enter that work, I must confront the evil of a society that crucifies its poor and leaves them broken and bleeding and covered in filth, while also condemning them as unworthy of help. I will have to smell death, but believe in resurrection. "I will have to both reach out to heal, and shout out about the injustice that neglects the poor and then punishes them when they are sick. I will have to recognize Jesus as the crucified poor man that he was and remains." With this sort of spiritual calling behind Manna House, the atmosphere feels, well, sacred. It's oddly peaceful, despite the animated banter that ranges from the NCAA brackets to the likelihood of Sen. Barack Obama's presidency bid to a shared grief over the deaths of six people on Lester Street.

This is a safe space, even though the door opens again and again and there's no telling who is coming through or whether that person is having a great day or a difficult one. No one is asked for ID, as often happens at other homeless agencies. To Manna House, they just come. "All we're doing, really, is a very small attempt at making right some of the injustice," Gathje says. "There's a presence of God here," says Kruczek. "This is holy ground."

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron