Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;I have called you by name, you are mine.--Isaiah 43:1 NRSV
In his book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Father Gregory Boyle tells stories of his ministry with former gang members in one of the poorest parts of Los Angeles. Politicians and police describe these gang members as animals, but Boyle discovered most of them were teenagers who had suffered horrible physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the adults in their lives. Having been treated as worthless, they lived as if they were worthless. Boyle says a young person joins a violent gang not because he or she wants to live a certain kind of life but rather because they want to die.
At Homeboy Industries, the ministry started by Boyle and the church he serves, Dolores Mission, gang members are given a chance to discover what they never knew before: self worth. Teenagers who were formerly hardened and violent discover the childhood they never knew. They discover safety, people who care for them and freedom to laugh and have fun. They also discover they are not the useless objects they were told they were. Sometimes, these realizations come simply because someone know their name.
Before coming to Dolores Mission, Boyle taught at a Catholic high school serving inner city youth. On his first day he asked a veteran teacher for advice. He describes the conversation this way:
She’s at her desk, reading the morning Times.
“It’s my first day of teaching, “I say to her, “Give me some advice.”
She doesn’t turn from her paper but holds out her right hand, displaying two fingers.
“Two things,” she says, “one: know all their names by tomorrow. Two: it’s more important that they know you than that they know what ya know.”
Boyle remembered this advice when he came to Dolores Mission. At first when he approached the gang members standing around in groups on every corner, he received a cold reception. Yet, over time as he visited the gang members when they were locked up or wounded in the hospital, things began to change. Yet one young man nicknamed Cricket never warmed up to him. Cricket would walk away whenever Boyle showed up and only return to the huddle of guys once the priest left. So Boyle investigated Cricket’s background and learned his real name was William.
One day I walk up to this group of gang members, with Cricket among them, and he doesn’t disappear on me. I shake hands with all of them, and when I get to Cricket, he actually lets me shake his hand.
“William,” I say to him, “How you doin’? It’s good to see ya.”
William says nothing. But as I walk away (I always made a point of not staying very long), I can hear William in a very breathy age-appropriate voice, say to the others, “Hey, the priest knows my name.”
Boyle goes on to describe what this encounter says about God:
“I have called you by your name. You are mine,” is how Isaiah gets God to articulate this truth. Who doesn’t want to be called by name, “known.” The “knowing” and the “naming” seem to get at what Anne Lamott calls our “inner sense of disfigurement.’
As misshapen as we feel ourselves to be, attention from another reminds us of our true shape in God.
I believe one of the most important things churches can do is acting as a place where people are known. A church should be a community where God’s “knowing” love is made real. People who have been abused, belittled and objectified can find in a healthy church a place where, as the song goes, “everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” The power of feeling welcomed and being seen can heal the deep hidden wounds of our souls.
Everyone who walks into a healthy church should leave with the experience that the people they encountered saw them and knew them as having worth. Unhealthy churches are ones who have forgotten, if they ever knew, the life-changing power they have been given by God to bless those whom God has led their way.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
Chase
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