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The Politics of Cleanliness, by Mark Harper
J u l y / A u g u s t 1 9 8 7
Hospitality to the Homeless ˜ 87
The poor must wait. Because our culture has embraced a political and economic
system that overfills the pockets of the rich while denying poor people access
to the goods and services that would meet their most basic needs; because
our society’s moral behavior is dictated by corporate Goliaths who proclaim that
the earth is theirs and not the Lord’s; and because we define our humanity using
the standards of those who have accumulated the most and not by how we are
treating the least, the poor must wait.
In our city, the poor are forced to wait for scant low-cost housing to become
available. The poorest are forced to wait for police vans to take them to crowded
night shelters, only to be forced out at 5:30 a.m. to wait some more for low-pay,
low-dignity jobs in day-labor pools. Despite the clear biblical teaching that the
fruits of creation be made available to the entire human family, God’s poorest
children are forced to wait in long soup lines, hoping to receive the leftover fruit
that Goliath could not digest. And, three mornings a week, as commuter traffic
rushes by the front yard of the Open Door, the poor must wait for a chance to
take a hot shower, to put on clean clothes, and to wash away the dirt that dehumanizes
them and causes doors to be closed in their faces.
As is the case for most people who live in the Third World, water for
bathing, drinking, clothes-washing, and flushing human waste is scarcely available
for the homeless poor of Atlanta. Like parched fields in a season of drought,
the streets of our city do not offer life for the people who must call them home.
Rather, they crack open and swallow our sisters and brothers whose spirits become
dry and broken as they search for work and affirmation day after day
after day.
If a homeless woman or man is able to find space at a night shelter that has
showers; or if the one city day-labor center happens to have clean towels; or if
that person is among the thirty-five people that the Open Door is able to welcome
for a shower and change of clothes on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday
morning, then becoming clean—even for a few short hours—is cause for hope:
hope for a renewed sense of dignity, hope for better health, hope for a job. While
the maxim that “cleanliness is next to godliness” is debatable, the hard reality in
our culture is that only when people are clean and neatly dressed will Goliath
permit them to sit at table and enjoy some of our country’s economic pie. Thus,
when we open our door for folk to come in and wash themselves, it is more than
a simple act of mercy or charity; it is, in fact, a political act.
It seems significant, then, that one of the most powerful proclamations
about justice in the Bible should use water imagery: “Let justice flow like a