Who saves whom?

I’ve spent the last two days with Chris and Phileena Heuertz and their team from Word Made Flesh, an Omaha-based religious community … they call themselves ‘contemplative activists’.  And I am completely inspired.

I first ran into Word Made Flesh two years ago while on a trip to Bolivia with International Justice Mission, to review progress on a project we had partnered on.  As we explored the context where IJM does its work - legal advocacy on behalf of the poor and oppressed - we visited the WMF community in El Alto, led by Andy and Andrea Baker.  

WMF communities are located in the most demanding poor barrios, favelas, and shantytowns of the world.  The one in El Alto, for example, operated a community centre designed to serve mainly Bolivian women who had needed to prostitute themselves for survival.  The WMF communities are multinational, relational, social practitioners who are rooted in the disciplines of prayer and hospitality.  And they are great writers and thinkers also - I was immediately capitivated as I read The Cry - their quarterly journal (…another tears on a plane story).  And one of the questions that echoed in our conversations this week is “Who saves whom?”

So often when we relate to marginalized communities, our Messiah-complex attitude is that we are helping these poor people out.  We are the givers, they are the receivers.  They need us to save them, to set things right.  This is a particularly common attitude amongst philanthropists. 

But could it be that they are saving us?

We are saved: from our egos, from our shallowness, from our comfortable bubbles, from our isolation, from our airtight theologies.  Yes, we are saved from all of this, and more, when we move to the margins and enter into relationship with those who live on the edge of death each day.