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the people of walmart in case you are blessedly unaware is a website that has photos, photos taken surreptitiously of people shopping at the superstore. I see some of you nodding your head. Some of you are

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aware of this phenomenon. Now, let's be clear these photos are not flattering ones. They are pictures of various body parts that are partially exposed. They are close ups of awkwardly fitting clothing. They are

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pictures of people in outrageous outfits. There are 2,252 pages of these embarrassing images. Each captioned for an additional voyeuristic laugh. There's a submit tab so that anyone, anywhere, so long as they have a

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cell phone camera, can upload the latest sighting. Oh! And guess what? We can rate these pictures too, because, you know, our opinion is really the one that counts right now. I

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confess to you that from time to time, I have chuckled at some of these photos. Somebody has posted one on my facebook feed and I've seen the man walking along the island walmart with his goat.

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And there's the caption that says the people of walmart , Oh ha ha, I roll. What's the harm? And laughing? I mean, he didn't know his picture was even being taken and that it

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was uploaded into cyberspace and then shared thousands of times that we presumably not people of walmart who were in walmart by the way to take the picture. Mhm . Well, we can get a good laugh,

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whatever. I thought, no big deal until one evening. Not too many months ago when I found myself, you guessed it in walmart. It was late on a friday night, about 10 or 10

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30 walmart was one of the few places open and my family and I, we were visiting my mother and when it came time to turn in for the night, my youngest discovered that she had failed to

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pack and he sleepwear And she's 13. So it was unacceptable to borrow sleepwear from anyone else. Well , no big deal. There's a walmart up the road and there's a sign of our privilege. We

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could just go and buy her another pair. So my husband and I headed to the much maligned big box store. It was late, august. I might not have remembered that detail except for what I

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discovered When I walked inside the store, the automatic doors swooped open and the place was hopping this late on a friday night and just feet from the door was bin after bin after bin of school supplies and

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gathered around those bins were families. It was, I suddenly realized the friday before school started on the following monday and people get paid on Fridays. Many of those parents were still wearing their work clothing they

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had on uniforms from the fast food restaurants and the local hotels. There were painters there who were splattered in all the colors of the rainbow. There was a young man in steel toed boots. There was

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a woman in scrubs. As a step closer. I heard a multitude of languages, every few of people was represented and my bubble popped and I realized if I had not gone to walmart on that fall

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friday night, I would not have known that my mother's neighborhood was this eclectic or interesting or frankly beautiful . These were the real people of walmart and there was nothing laughable about them. My husband and I

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, we picked out some pajamas for our daughter. We got in line to check out and behind us was a family speaking spanish. In front of us was a woman in a hijab. She juggled an

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infant as she admonished her toddler to put the candy away that he picked up while waiting. The father carefully counted out some money to give to the cashier and then he required some help figuring out how to

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insert his card for the balance of the purchase. I was impressed with the woman behind the register. She looked well past retirement age and there she was on her feet late on a friday night, likely

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making minimum wage and she's pleasant and she shows no irritation at having to explain a process that I frankly thought everybody knew she too is among the real people of walmart, a great multitude from all judea and

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Jerusalem and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. We head out to our car and I see a cab out front with a customer loaded down with bags getting in the back. The bus stop is crowded as

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we turn the corner towards my mom's subdivision, a few miles, but a whole world away from the real people of walmart. I feel chastened. I feel ridiculous. I had read the big sort and

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all about living in our homogeneous bubbles. I had even done that handy PBS quiz. Do you live in a bubble? If you're taking the PBS quiz , you probably live in a bubble. I took

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it though. You know, it asked things like have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day since leaving high school? Have you ever worn a uniform? According

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to that quiz, my bubble was pretty thin and I felt proud. But according to my late friday night trip to walmart, yeah, my bubble was close to Impenetrable. I had no idea who my

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neighbors were or are and too often when I bumped up against them on my rare trips to places like walmart, I, like so many, was inclined to look and laugh rather than see and have compassion

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. And maybe that's why we are where we are In early 2017 because for too long too many of us have not regarded our neighbors. We have not like jesus stood on a level place and known them

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to be blessed and beloved, jesus in this famous text in luke's version is in the midst of the crowd, the ones from the ends of the earth , the ones in need of food and shelter,

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healing and wholeness, Refuge and safety. Is he speaking to them? Is he telling them they are blessed even as they ache after a day's work? Or wonder if their Children will have school supplies?

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Or is he talking to his disciples instructing them to never imagine that following him enables them to live in a protected bubble? Is he saying blessed? And this comes when we are close enough to be touched

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by the hunger and the hurting all around us. Being blessed entails being on A level place with a great crowd of disciples and the multitude of people from all judea and Jerusalem, the coast of Tyre and

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Sidon, with those from Yemen and Syria in Iraq in Guatemala and the Sudan and Mexico and all over God's beloved world blessing comes with proximity to the ones who need healing, the ones with troubled spirits,

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no matter what they look like, no matter the slogan on their T shirts or the language on their lips. You see following jesus is not about smug satisfaction. The points to the people of walmart and

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laughs, whoa, oh, to us! When we do that, whoa! Oh! To us ! When we fully take up the space that ought to belong to others and then ridicule them for living

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in the very margins that our life choices have shoved them. We've got our reward, my friends, we have our sense of superiority. We have the ability to give or take away stars or Garner likes

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or retweets for our clever comments and are snarky reviews we have received in full. But what have we sold out in the process, jesus regards the crowds , the real people of walmart, the ones in

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refugee camps, detention centers, waiting rooms, homeless shelters. And yes, all of us in this room tonight. And when he looks at us, our vulnerability are hurts, our weariness, our confusion

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, our fear, our unclean spirits. He doesn't surreptitiously take a photo so the world can get a good laugh at us. He looks and he has compassion. He doesn't seek to humiliate us. Instead

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he takes that humiliation on for us so that we might be forgiven and freed and filled and blessed. He says to the disciples in ear shot of the crowd, the crowd who has come to hear jesus

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, he says to his disciples, look around, what do you see? Who do you see? How do you see them? Jesus says, I see the beloved and the blessed and if you are

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to follow me, that's how you should regard the world too. I'm afraid for too long. We have not seen the real people of walmart or the real people right beside us. We've seen caricature versions

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of others viewed through our opaque bubbles and it's time to pop those bubbles and follow jesus and stand on a level place with the crowds from all judea and Jerusalem the coast of Tyre and side on and all

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over God's beloved world because I don't know about you . But I no longer find anything funny about the current climate in which we are living. And I confess to you that I had a smug sense of

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what was right. So surely others agreed with me . I pointed and I laughed when I should have recognized the hunger and the troubled spirits on all sides . I mocked the crowds when I should have reached

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out in love to the people within them. Whoa ! Oh! To me! For relishing the meaningless consolation of self satisfaction. I cannot undo any of that. But I can confess and I can repent

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and I can pray to see the crowds as jesus sees them. And to that end I have started doing something that I don't tend to do as an introvert. It's a radical new thing. I started

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talking to people. I started talking to people in line at the grocery store in the doctor's office waiting room. I resist the urge to hide behind my phone or God forbid take a picture and instead I

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look up and I look out and I make eye contact and I smile and I say innocuous things about the weather and the traffic and I learned this line from my extrovert husband, I say how's your day

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going so far? People respond, it's amazing. And in all of those encounters I consciously try to imagine everyone in the imago dei I think to myself , I wonder who and what God sees when God

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looks at this person. Can these small acts bring healing? Only God knows, but I do know they put me in proximity close enough to others to be touched by their hunger or their sorrow or their

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laughter and I do know the bible is pretty clear that Jesus ate with people and jesus noticed others that so many people walked right by. And have you noticed Jesus always stops when someone calls out to him

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. I do know that Jesus sees not just crowds but people and I know I am learning so much through these small encounters. I found out that the young man who stands on the corner with a cardboard

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sign and the cup for change, he is trying to overcome a heroin addiction. He's just been reconnected with his family and he is hopeful that soon he won't have to sleep on the street as I leave

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, he said, thank you for the conversation. I found out that the cake decorator at the new fancy Wegmans in our town, She works two jobs to make ends meet, she's a devoted christian and

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she's grateful that even with those two jobs, her schedule allows her to go to worship on sunday. She said, God is good. I learned that Betty who cooks eggs and keeps the breakfast buffet at

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a Hampton inn. She asked for prayers for her grandson. She said he's in bad trouble. She said he shot someone. She told me it was in self defense, but she said, I'm having

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a hard time knowing he took someone else's life. And so we prayed together in that all but deserted hotel lobby. And then just this afternoon I met Jose on Guadeloupe and I can't make this stuff up

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because I'm not just creative. Uh huh. But we had a conversation and he asked for some help . He said, you know what? I'm trying to get enough money to go to walmart. Mhm

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. Yeah. He says it's cheap. You know I said, yeah, I know I shop there too. All of these encounters, blessing upon blessing from real people, many of whom I am regarding

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for the first time. These small acts leave me hungry for more. Not satisfied with captions or ratings or surreptitious cell phone, pictures of the crowd. They make me aware that no matter where people are

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from, they are real. They are beloved. They are blessed. And to think all I needed to do was to stop laughing in order to see them. Woe to me, wow to me,

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if I am ever so full of myself again.