Jesus goes to Walmart

It has been a rough past few days. Have I mentioned Ben before? Yah, that’s right – my high school friend who is working with street kids down in “City of God” land in Rio de Janeiro. I got an email from him a few days ago saying that Jeferson, his best young Portuguese friend there, had been shot and killed. The last words on his web log (www.beninrio.blogspot.com) that day were “welcome to the worst three days of my life”.

Ben’s a capital fellow – grade A beef – and a real true friend. He’s been in gut-punch anguish, and there is nothing I have been able to do about it. Worse, though, is the whole situation – with the Brazilian street kids, I mean. I have been thinking a lot about all the injustice down there, and how nobody thinks about it or cares.

It leads me to think about the suffering in other places, about the genocides and religious persecution and natural disasters and the ridiculous poverty in which most of the world is living. It makes me think about how I try and try to get people (including myself) to care, and yet again and again I get reminders of the obsession we all have with stuff and nonsense. It all comes back to the latest flick we’ve GOT to see in theatre and that shirt we got for such a deal (half-price from a hundy) and I keep going back to that scene at the end of Schindler’s list where Schindler’s looking at his gold cuff links and crying and saying, “this was one more person I could have saved”.

The night I heard about Jeferson’s death all this stuff was tumbling and rumbling about in my head. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and wrote the following poem.

Jesus in America

Jesus went to Walmart to see what he could see
but prices all were dropping so the savings there were free.

Jesus went to theatres to free the world from sin.
He didn’t have a ticket so they wouldn’t let him in.

Jesus went into a mall cause all the folks were there
but it was Christmas season so they didn’t really care.

Jesus went to NBC to try to have a say
but someone from the silver screen had banged a whore that day.

Jesus went into a church and walked right out again
‘cause something I’m afraid to name had made him mad just then.

Jesus trudged across this land from sea to shining sea
and kept on walking on the waves, away from you and me.

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Not the most florid poetic statement ever made, but it gets the message across. You can apply it to whatever first world country in which you happen to live. You can even apply it to yourself.