* The word “compassion” comes from the Latin cum pati, which means “to suffer with”.

The TQ Bread Company had the strangest hiring policies you’ve ever heard of. On paper they were a bakery that sold all manner of bread loaves, desserts and pastries. But rather than finding students from the local vocational college or those with baking experience, the manager of TQ along with several staff would head down to the city’s red light district every week to recruit people to bake bread for a living rather than sell their bodies.

The red light district was a bustling place at night, more than several city blocks where men and women were being sold and exploited on the open market. It was presented to tourists as a happening and fun place to party all night long, but the day to day reality was miserable and filthy. The streets were caked in sadness and the people were shackled not so much physically, but emotionally, financially, and more importantly, in their minds.

Still the staff went down there and loved those people. They brought gifts and kindness to the girls, the pimps, the johns and the brothel owners. Hardened mafia bosses who had never once in their lives been tenderly loved would sob in the manager’s arms. The girls and the johns were amazed that someone would come to see them or be intentionally loving towards them.

It was all very beautiful and the staff was diligently working to convince the people to leave this place of misery and come bake bread in another, better, part of town.

The work was slow and frustrating. Many were touched, but few were freed. Though it seemed an obvious choice to leave such a dark place, very few decided to go bake bread. There were many reasons for this. One was it was too big of a risk to leave the miserable familiar for a potentially better future elsewhere. And the day to day realities of prostitution – the chaos, the violence, the near constant illness, the trauma – made it impossible to slip away.

And so, the staff worked and worked to convince them to bake bread, but almost no one came.

The entire gospel message can be summarized by the words of Philippians chapter 2

Though he was in the form of God

He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped

But emptied himself by taking the form of a servant

Being born in the likeness of men

And being found in human form he humbled himself

By becoming obedient to the point of death

Even death on a cross

God left the comfort, safety, stability, cleanliness and power of heaven to come be with us. He died many deaths to get here, most notably his death on a Roman cross.

But his birth was also a death, a move from one area code to another. He came to this red-light district we call home – a place where we debase ourselves and others, a place of intense sadness and despair. He sold a bunch of his stuff, and gave the rest of away, then came to Earth as a baby where he willing chose to grow up in the hood.

The life and times of Jesus provide a blueprint for our own lives. He’s showing us how to follow in his footsteps through lives of compassion.

Helping from a distance keeps us safely in control, whereas compassion opens us up to the joys and sorrows of our neighbors and creates true connection.

After years of fighting an uphill battle, TQ Bread Company was on the verge of collapse.

They had funding and volunteers, they had programs, teachers to run those programs, they had partnerships with other bakeries, as well as dedicated donors with deep pockets and a passion to see change in the world. TQ had a beautiful facility and spreadsheets, and business plans.

The only thing they didn’t have was people who wanted to leave the life and come make bread.

It was totally illogical, why wouldn’t anyone come? It became clear that their modus operandi was foundationally flawed.

They faced a choice – either close the company and accept failure or go be with the people they were trying to help.

So, they sold their building, and gave away much of what was no longer needed. They bid farewell to many of the volunteers who would no longer follow them. And they got into a truck and drove to the other side of town to move into the red-light district.

The brothel owners were now their next-door neighbors and the pimps were the people they ran into on the street. They opened their bakery right there in the district, where the scent of fresh bread could float down the street.

But let’s not be dishonest, the new reality for them was not always pretty. There was a total loss of control. All the problems and pains that they were previously trying to help others with became their own. They were there for the chaos, they were present at the violence. No longer were their business meetings so organized, for every time they sat down to meet and plan, one of their neighbors would come by and interrupt them.

It wasn’t safe and it wasn’t stable. Many of the beautiful spreadsheets they’d made were thrown in the trash. Their three- and five-year plans were rewritten and eventually scrapped as well. They lived in grime, right alongside everybody else and were continually at risk of being harmed.

It wasn’t easy, but often painful. Yet the joys of the neighborhood were their now own, the sufferings of their neighbors they shared, and for the first time since the company started there was never any shortage of people wanting to come bake bread for a living.

Cum Pati*