The Man Who Knocked On My Open Door

Yesterday, a man came into the building of the church where I work and knocked on my open door. He spoke in rapid phrases that never quite formed into complete sentences. He immediately took to calling me "Bowen," I suppose because he spied my last name on the nameplate next to the door. He sat down without being asked (not that I wouldn't have offered) and proceeded to tell me about his prison time, how he did not deserve the manslaughter rap or sentence, and many more things that all came out garbled and rushed despite his friendly, talkative demeanor. For the life of me, I cannot remember what he said his name was.

I think it is depressing that I knew almost immediately why he was there - money. He told me several times that he had talked to the pastor, whom he called "the rev." However, a few times before he could get in to see anybody, security had escorted him off the premises (please remember, this is also a school). I think it is even more depressing that often while he spoke, I was thinking about how I was going to get out of giving him money. Now, this was not necessarily because I did not want to give him money. In reality, I had no money on me (unless you count the forty or so euro I have leftover from the honeymoon in a envelope in my desk). Also, since the main church offices have been relocated during a remodeling project, I had no idea where the safe is even if that was the procedure when people come asking for money.

He circled the point several times, that he was asking me to place my trust in him and give him something so he could go get some food. He smelled distinctly of alcohol - at first I thought I was imagining it, but there was no mistaking the odor as he talked on and on. Finally, after bouncing back and forth between his incarceration, receiving some sort of help from Jeff Bagwell and Ken Caminiti (before he died), and the stingy ways of people in River Oaks, he finally laid it all out and asked for money. I shrugged regretfully (only halfway an act) and told him I had no money to give and that, when the pastor returned from the trip he is currently on, he might come back and speak with him. However, I mentioned that I did have some snack food, being a youth minister and all, and I led him out of my office and to the youth room refrigerator, where I gave him a root beer, and then to a closet where I found - it's lame, I know - an unopened jar of peanut butter. I apologized to him that I had no bread or crackers, but, though he seemed annoyed, he thanked me nonetheless, and I followed him to the door. After noticing some of the Hispanic remodeling workers, he made some crack about immigration and how he needs a job too, then left.

I returned to my office and to the e-mail I had been composing, and I felt like a failure. For several reasons, I guess. I know, obviously, what I could have done and what I couldn't have, but I work in a place that, simultaneously, people try to take advantage of (inside and out), and people look to for help when no one else wants to provide.

What do you do when you can't tell the difference for sure? How far do you reach out? How close can someone come to actually doing the things Jesus did?