Jesus of the Stockroom

I used to work in a clothes shop.  It sold overpriced shirts and the sizing didn’t go above a UK 14 for women.  I used to resent the pretence you had to put on for every customer.  The mantra went: the nicer you were the more you sold.  You still had to be nice even if a purple-faced customer told you between clenched teeth that it was unacceptable that you’d run out of gift cards. Or when you’re angrily told that “it’s the most embarrassing that’s ever happened to me” when they set the security alarm off because you accidently left a tag on one of their purchases. For all the masks that were worn upstairs however, there was a rawness and a realness that happened in the basement stockroom.  Amid the graffiti-strewn walls, the bi-monthly infestation of clothes moths and the damp air was where Jesus hung out in conversations, questions and tears. 
 
During one busy Christmas period me and a couple of other women were unpacking new stock down in the basement.  Standing around a large table we ripped open the thin plastic bags which encased each fresh item, folded them up and stacked them in neat piles ready to be stored away on shelves before they were needed on the shop floor.  We’d been chatting a bit about Christmas parties and boyfriends and reaching a soft lull in the conversation, one of the girls asked ‘how did you become religious Bea?’.  Slightly stunned, I knew I had a few options with which to answer.  Do I correct her use of the word ‘religious’ because I like to think I follow a man rather than a religion (decided that this would not be helpful).  Or do I tell her that I was once a sinner but Jesus came as an atoning sacrifice for my sins and now I get to go to heaven (I thought about this for a bit longer than the first option, but decided that it would be equally as unhelpful).  I looked at the girls around me as I unpacked a particularly silky t-shirt from its plastic wrap.  Girls with dysfunctional families, girls who hated being the dress size they were, girls who had been mistreated by boys, all whom are beautifully made in the image of God.  “Erm” I said, “well I kind of accidently started going to church when a university friend brought me along to a service one afternoon at the church she attended. I guess that I just always knew that God was real.”  A bit flustered by the pressure of the moment I blurted out “I used to be anorexic you know, because I hated so much about myself.  But God has been helping me to love myself.  A relationship with him is pretty healing”.  Feeling awkward and exposed I grabbed another item, this time a heavy woollen coat and busied myself with pulling bits of protective paper off the buttons.  One of the girls picked up the train of conversation “wow, I wish I could experience something like that”.  “You can” I added before the conversation landed on another topic.
 
As I thought about this small interchange later on in the day, I felt annoyed with myself that I hadn’t been more explicit, more doctrinal, or asked more questions.  It felt like an opportunity missed.  Reflecting since that stockroom conversation however, I have come to realise that Jesus rarely turns up in neatly, plastic-wrapped answers.  When we offer well-rehearsed platitudes I think it is often because we are scared of the messy reality of life.  I think Christians are hesitant to agree and say ‘life is crap’.  As if by admitting it, you are doubting God’s power and goodness. 
 
 
Paul said that “to the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). Like Paul, I think it’s more about agreeing with the ‘life is difficult/unfair/a struggle’ statements that people make and then holding out our own healing wounds as an offering to others.  Sharing Jesus becomes a communal ‘me too’ rather than a power-play between ‘saved’ and ‘unsaved’.  At the end of the day, Jesus became all things to all people by becoming a person.  God doesn’t offer shrink-wrapped theological answers via a booming voice from heaven, he dirtied the hem of his robes by stepping down into the world.  He hung out with sinners, broke religious and gender taboos, used dirt to heal a man’s eyes, sweated, cried, bleed and felt pain. He wasn’t scared to speak out loud the harshness of life to those around him.  He demonstrated the biggest ‘me too’ the world has ever seen.  His wounds become the source of our ultimate healing. And just as he stepped down into the dusty streets of first-century Israel, I’m pretty certain he also walks into the filthy shop stockrooms through quiet conversations.  
 
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” 
― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life