ON GETTING INTO BED WITH PEOPLE

The story is going around about the unusual way one Dr. Reuben has been attending his psychiatric patients in New York. They are people with communication problems, most of them unable to talk even at the level of a child. Dr. Reuben seemed to be making no progress with them. One day he came into the ward and did something most unusual, to the utter amazement of the nurses. Removing his coat, shirt, tie, and shoes, he climbed up into bed with the patients. Sharing a pillow with them, he began “Mothering” them, as he called it, a form of communication one would expect from a loving Mother. From bed to bed he did this, with the males and females alike. Nurses were aghast, inquiring of each other, “What is Dr. Reuben doing in bed with them?”

Again and again he did this, day after day. It became part of the treatment. Finally some of them began to say their first words in years, “T-h-a-n-k y-o-u, D-o-c-t-o-r.” The stumbling words turned into sentences and continuing improvement was evident.

This incident impresses me as being beautifully Christian. Isn’t this what Jesus did and is not this the mission of the church in every generation? Getting into bed with people!

David Wilkerson did this kind of thing in his ministry with the street gangs of New York. He not only went where they were, but he identified with them, sitting with them and sharing with them, showing them that somebody really cared. To do that kind of thing one must be willing to get his nose blooded. There he was in the midst of the blood and guts of it all, not just with the warts, but with the dope and the switchblades as well. He got into bed with them.

I saw this recently when my son Philip was immersed into Jesus at age 18. Having spent his first six years in an over-crowded orphanage in Germany, he has had some strikes against him in learning to love and to receive love. But he is winning the struggle, especially now that he has the Spirit as his Helper. I watched that night as he was immersed. The “gang” at the youth gathering welcomed him as a new brother with big bear hugs. As I watched I thought of a lonely child in an institution seeking security by sitting on his toys rather than playing with them. Now because of Jesus he was being loved by a gang of new brothers and sisters. It warmed my heart to see them reach out and touch him with tender loving care and for him to respond so openly. They climbed into bed with him. Jesus makes. all the difference in human relations.

Some of our sisters working in the ghettoes of Brooklyn took Jesus’ concern for prostitutes seriously. Waiting up for them into the wee hours, they would be there when the girls came in from off the streets to tell them that they loved them. They were there with them, these poor souls barely hanging on to a miserable existence, not to condemn but to make whole. Like Dr. Reuben, they climbed up in bed in order to communicate more intimately.

Jesus was like that as he moved amidst the human predicament. He sat next to people. He was in their homes. He washed their feet. He was in the presence of sickness, disease and death. Whether a despised publican, an unclean leper or a rejected woman, he was not too good to reach out and become a part of them, even though he was deity itself. What a beautiful and magnificent life he lived among the recreant masses of humanity. How can men miss God when they see Jesus, a sinless man climbing into bed with a sea of sinful flesh?

Maybe this is what the Lord is saying to us in that story in Lk. 14 about giving a feast. “When you give a dinner or a supper, do not invite your friends or your brothers, or the members of your family or your rich neighbors; perhaps they will invite you in turn, and so you will be repaid. No, when you give a feast, invite the poor, the disabled, the lame, the blind; then you will be happy; they cannot repay you; but you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the good.”

This is probably not to be taken literally, for it would have too seldom an application. We just don’t give that many dinners, and going out into the byways to invite the poor and the blind is not all that simple—nor does it really solve any problems. He is saying that we are not to relate ourselves to others in a selfish way. We are not to be polite and generous and kind for the sake of gaining something from others. Our concern is not to be so much for those who have the capacity to reward us, but for those who have no way to repay us but who need us the most.

He is teaching us to get into bed with people even when the bed is dirty. Even when the ones in bed are undesirable. He is telling us to reach out and be intimate with those who would be considered beneath us. To love the unlovely.

Notice that Jesus says then you will be happy. People who seek happiness look in the wrong places. It is not so much by getting or having, but through service to others. The happiest people that I know are of this quality. They are happy without really seeking happiness. They simply stay busy inviting the poor and the lame to the banquet of life.

This is to say that we must become more vulnerable to each other. We must be willing to take chances, to lay ourselves open to others, and dare to love and to give. This was what St. Francis did when he saw a lowly leper along the road. Dismounting from his horse, he went to the diseased man and embraced him, while at the same time despising his own life of luxury. So started the Franciscan order, dedicated to the outcasts of society. Francis made himself vulnerable by climbing into bed with an untouchable.—The Editor