Supermarket Jesus

I forgot what C.S. Lewis warned us, that there are no ordinary people, that we have never talked to a mere mortal. Everyone we meet carries the weight of eternal destiny. 

I was in the holiday-crazed ShopRite supermarket in Stratford, Connecticut, with my younger daughter, Julie. We had come from her post-surgical procedure at Yale-New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Center and stopped at the supermarket to pick up just a few pantry items.

We were looking for the “10 Items or Less” checkout lane, but, of course, there was none.

So we chose to join the shortest line. But we soon saw that the queue was at a standstill because of an elderly man slowly and meticulously counting out coins to pay for his purchases. He was obviously flustered and confused, repeatedly laying his coins on the counter, stooped over, his mouth agape.

Then he stopped to peer into his sack of groceries to see which items he might remove in order to lower the price.

I instinctively made a snarky comment to my daughter. 

But the guy second in line, immediately in front of us, did something else. He spoke to the clerk who had been patiently standing there watching the old man trying to count up enough money to pay the total. 

He told her he would cover the guy’s groceries. To the tune of $76. The old guy thanked him profusely, shook his hand, and left. 

I thought, one of these two men is Christ. But I don’t know which.

It’s in Matthew's Gospel that Christ identifies strongly with the vulnerable: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me . . .” 

Saint Paul reminds us we are "members one of another."

Mother Teresa made this vision her cornerstone, seeing Christ in his most “distressing disguise” – the dying poor whom she lifted from Calcutta's streets.

This is the mystical reality – that each of us bears the image of the divine – not only of Christianity, but other spiritual traditions as well. 

The Zen namaste has the divine in me saluting the divine in you.

Judaism teaches that humans are created in the image of God, a concept from Genesis that signifies human dignity, sacredness, and a responsibility to reflect divine qualities like love and generosity.

Islam holds that we’re endowed with Godly attributes like soul, reason, and free will, enabling us to be God's representatives on Earth. 

I left the supermarket last week with not just some staples, but also with a sackful of shame. Because after a life-long identification as a Catholic Christian, it never crossed my mind to offer a handful of change to help the old man buy food. 

Instead, I ridiculed him before my daughter.

And I still don’t know which of the two men in front of me was the personification of the divine that day – the stooped old man with his meagre handful of coins, or the gentleman who lifted him from his humiliation.

I pray that I learned my lesson.