Everybody Has Noticed, Nobody Has Knocked

Tonight we are making a pot of beef and vegetable stew, and we are making twice as much as we need, and that is the whole instruction.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Cut a pound of stewing beef into pieces, dry them well with a towel, and brown them hard in oil in a heavy pot in two batches so the pot stays hot. Take them out. Cook two chopped onions, three carrots and two sticks of celery in the same pot for eight minutes with salt. Add three cloves of chopped garlic and two spoons of tomato paste for a minute. Put the beef back with six cups of water or broth, a bay leaf, and plenty of salt. Bring it up, then down to the lowest simmer with the lid ajar for two hours, until the beef falls apart and is cooked all the way through. Add four chopped potatoes for the last thirty minutes. Salt again at the end, black pepper, vinegar to finish. It feeds eight, it costs a few dollars, and half of it is going somewhere else tonight.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the stew.

It is the house two doors down.

Something happened there. A death, or an illness, or somebody left, or an ambulance came at four in the morning about eleven days ago. Everybody on that street noticed. It was discussed, kindly, in two or three conversations over a fence.

And nobody has taken anything over.

Not because anybody is cold. Because everybody is waiting for the person who knows them better. There is always somebody more suitable: the one who has lived here longest, the one who is related to them, the woman at the end who organizes things. And all of those people are also waiting for somebody more suitable.

The verse that will not let a wish count as an action

There is a line in James that is uncomfortable on purpose and has one word in it that pins the whole thing.

And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? (James 2:16, King James Version)

Notice that the person in that verse is not unkind. They say be warmed and filled, which is a genuine wish, sincerely meant. There is nothing hostile in it anywhere.

James is not going after cruelty. He is going after a real, warm, felt concern that produced nothing, and he asks the flattest possible question about it: what does it profit.

And it is worth saying that he does not answer the question. He leaves it sitting there, because everybody already knows.

You are being asked to move something rather than feel something, and God has never once accepted a warm feeling as delivery. James 2:16 puts a sincere wish and an empty hand in one sentence and asks what it accomplished, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen on an ordinary evening.

You have not been indifferent for one minute, and heaven has never once mistaken hesitation for coldness. It is written that ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the beef is browning.

The suitable person is not coming

Now let me deal with the reason, because it is a good reason and it is wrong.

The thinking goes: I do not know them well. Somebody closer should go. If I turn up with food it will be strange, because we have only ever talked about the trash schedule.

And every one of those is true, and every neighbor on that street is thinking a version of it, and that is exactly why nobody has gone in eleven days.

You are the one who is standing here with a pot, and God has never once dispatched a more suitable person instead. James 2:16 judges the empty hand rather than the qualifications of the one holding it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves somebody past the question of whether they are the right one.

The suitable person is not coming. There is no such person. There is a street full of people who all noticed and all deferred, and the only thing that breaks a stalemate like that is one person deciding that being slightly awkward is a smaller problem than a family eating nothing for two weeks.

Being an unlikely visitor is not a verdict on whether you should go.

You are the one who is standing here with a pot, and God has never once sent a more suitable person instead. The passage judges the outcome rather than the qualifications of the person who failed to act, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves somebody past the question of whether they are the right one.

You have been the person for eleven days and did not know it. James 2 is written to people who genuinely cared and produced nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who converts a warm feeling into a walk across a lawn.

Take it, do not ask first

Here is the practical part, and there are two rules, and both of them matter.

The first is that you do not text ahead to ask if it would help. Asking creates a decision for a person who has no decisions left, and the answer to are you sure you would not rather I did not is always no, do not worry, we are fine.

Take it. Knock once. If somebody opens the door, hand it over and say you made too much. If nobody opens the door, leave it on the step and text three words.

You are able to do this without asking permission first, and God has never once required an invitation before a person could be fed. The same Spirit who breathed James 2:16 is in this kitchen, and the written word there asks flatly what a warm wish accomplished and leaves the question standing.

The second rule is that nobody stays unless the invitation is obvious. Eleven days into something terrible, a person's capacity for conversation is very small, and the single greatest gift is a hot pot that requires nothing.

And take it in a container you do not need back. That removes the last small obligation, which is the returning of a dish, and obligations are the thing to strip out entirely.

You are able to do this without asking permission, and God has never once required an invitation before a person could be fed. James 2:16 asks what the wish accomplished, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes twenty steps across a lawn into an answer to that question.