I was working on a sermon titled Called | A Mission of Justice based on the Luke 4:14-21 where Jesus was giving his first sermon based on Isaiah 61. During the preparation of that sermon, I came across this profound story about a student who had a life-altering experience after having an encounter with Dorothy Day. Here are my notes from that sermon:

One very accomplished man wrote later in life about an experience he had while still a student – he already had an impressive academic resume, he was from a good home, he was well on his way to becoming a doctor… 

• He thought he would bless some others with his knowledge and skill, so he volunteered one day at one of the ‘houses of hospitality’ that Dorothy Day had helped establish…
  
• Dorothy was a well known Catholic and social activist in the last century, and when this young man got to the site that day, he thought he would just go right to the top… he asked to see Dorothy, wanting to let her know that he had arrived…

• He was told that Dorothy was in the kitchen… He went into the kitchen, saw her sitting at a table, talking to someone… so he waited at the door.

• It appeared to him that the man that she was talking to was a client of the facility. He was quite disheveled. By his look and behavior, the volunteer guessed the man was high… likely experiencing homelessness as were many who came to the facility. Dorothy was sitting at a table with this man, giving him her full attention… she didn’t even notice anyone waiting. 

• When she finished the conversation she stood up, and it was then that she noticed someone waiting, and she asked the young, inflated, volunteer…. “Do you want to speak to one of us?”

The student later wrote about how that one comment changed his life… 

• Dorothy Day was famous. This man with her was a nobody. But she asked, “Do you want to speak to one of us?”
  • She made no assumption that she was the more important person, that surely she was the one on whom this student was waiting.

• The student later wrote had never seen anything like this before – humility that could identify with another person so completely as to remove all distinctions between them….
  • … an attitude and posture of the heart that cut through all of the boundaries, all the categories that society sets up to separate us from one another.

• This student had never witnessed a humility that allowed Dorothy – with grace and compassion – to kneel before this beloved child of God in service and love… and consider this other person truly, her equal, as valuable and precious as herself…

This student saw in this one moment what it means to humble oneself, and kneel at the feet of another just like Jesus did…

So here I sit with these questions:
What do you consider to be ‘beneath’ you? WHO do you consider to be ‘beneath’ you?