Glitz & Glam

Today was an interesting day. Being my day off, I woke up late, and enjoyed a relaxing morning of making pancakes for breakfast and watching some old episodes of House. My roommate and I started making grand plans to see the sights of LA today, planning to go to the Getty Center & later to Beverly Hills to walk around on Rodeo Drive. Having never gone to Rodeo, I was excited to see how the richest of the rich live. Unfortunately, after a brief check online, we found that the Getty Center was closed on Mondays, so we finished up a few things around the apartment, and we headed out for the glitz & glamour.

After driving the 15 minutes into the heart of Beverly Hills, Dave and I parked and began to walk around. With my trusty camera in hand and my backpack holding my laptop and a collection of books, we began the walk down Rodeo. The first sight, of many sights we saw was a Ferrari parked in front of a store. Bright yellow in color, it screamed, “Look at me!” It really impressed me. Even for a kid that grew up in La Canada, this car was still not entirely commonplace. A few minutes later, we wandered into one of the stores. Of course, it was beautiful. Everything was folded to perfection, the layouts stylish and untouchable. I felt like I was in a museum for clothing. A store salesman came up to us in a perfectly tailored suit and asked us (in a French accent) if we needed anything. We told him we were looking around, and will perfect grace and elegance, he told us to please continue to take our time and if we needed anything to feel free to ask him.

After walking all the way to the north part of Rodeo Drive, we crossed the street and started to walk down to Via Rodeo. That is when we saw Donald Faison. For those of you who don’t recognize that name, shame on you. He plays Turk on the NBC show Scrubs. Standing in the street, I was so surprised to see him that I stood there, mouth hanging open, with camera in hand and watched him walk right past me. I was amazed to see him just walking around on the street, that I forgot where I was.

Later, we walked around Via Rodeo while I kicked myself for not saying, “Hello.” Finally, we ended up at a Starbucks around the corner; where I sat down to write this. Dave is reading one of his books, and I am reflecting on what I have seen this evening. It simply amazes me. Just two days ago, I was driving around skid row and stepping over sleeping homeless men as I was attempting to walk into Midnight Mission to serve breakfast to the poor. Today, these same shoes walk the streets of famous actors and rich consumers. I guess I can’t be overly critical. As I type this message on my 17 inch laptop, and check my email on my iPhone, I am just reminded that Jesus calls us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with wealth and riches, but I cannot even imagine what it would be like if I loaded up a van full of homeless from skid row and had them wander the streets of Rodeo.

Who would feel more uncomfortable? The rich people who are unfamiliar with the state of the poor not more than 15 minutes from here, or the homeless people who clearly are unwanted, undesired, and shunned by society.

Jesus was always found with the poor, but he also was always pleading with the rich to join him. Challenging them to think different about the social structures in place, forcing them to re-evaluate how they lived and what they did with their time. If Jesus was at your house today, what would he say about your possessions? What would he say about how you spend your time? For myself (and for many of us I would imagine), I think he would smile at some of my spending, and he would frown at some of my toys. “Jonathan, I know you bought that laptop as a tool, and you have you have used it for great things including your education, but did you need… that much?” or “What do you need an iPhone for Jonathan?”

One of the last things we say on our prayer tour is simply, “Most of the 100,000 people coming into the city a day never know of how great and how expansive the homeless problems in LA are, because they never see them. It’s not a question of why don’t they do anything, but a simple fact of they don’t know. But now that you know, now that you’ve seen it, what will you do to change it?