Turn the world upside down
with small acts of love

We so rarely get to glimpse the world Jesus describes in the gospels. It’s not that we never get to experience what the Kingdom of God is like in the here and now, it’s just that it keeps popping up in the unlikeliest places in the oddest ways.

In 1994 I went to Brazil. It wasn’t exactly a short-term mission trip. I went with a friend who was producing a documentary film on the martial art dance called Capoeira. I tagged along as the still photographer for the project.

Capoeira is a uniquely Brazilian blend of gymnastics, dance, music, and fighting, which also places a strong emphasis on community. One cannot do Capoeira alone. You play Capoeira in a group. Everyone stands in a circle and two go in and perform a stylized fighting dance and then others tag in and the fighters change as the music goes on.      

Capoeira developed as slaves working in the Brazilian sugar cane fields found they could practice their fighting techniques if they masked it in dance. The stylized fighting dance carried the hopes of revolt against slaveowners.

We were specifically documenting the work of a group of Capoeira teachers who gave free lessons in a deadly slum. In Brazil, you take Capoeira lessons the way one might learn Tae Kwon Do here. It cost a fair bit of money and is therefore out of reach of the poor.

The slum was so known for its violence that everyone called it Poca Olho, which means “the place where they gouge your eyes.” To take part in the Capoeira group, you had to stay away from drugs (running drugs for dealers as well as taking them) and you also had to go to school. The teachers emphasized the communal aspect of Capoeira to build up a community of hope in a place with no hope to spare. They brought in homeless kids who lived in tin and cardboard shacks huddled together on the edge of a garbage dump. The Capoeira teachers hooked the kids up with sources for food, clothes, jobs, and a place to stay. These teachers gave kids self respect in a place that taught them they were worthless.

Mind you, this was not a Christian ministry. It was not connected to any faith at all. It was just some martial arts instructors reaching out in love to needy kids. From my way of looking at things though, any time you reach out in love to some one in need, God is part of it.

During my three weeks in Brazil, I learned a bit of Capoeira. Not much, and I did not do it well. But I did learn just enough to really make a fool out of myself in front of the kids on a regular basis.

The day before I flew back home, I went to Poca Olho one last time with Raimundo, the instructor who started the program. We went back to the roots of the story. He had told me how the whole project began eight years earlier. Raimundo’s uncle had fallen on hard times and ended up in Poca Olho. Raimundo’s Mom asked him to go see his uncle.

As Raimundo found the street eight years earlier, he saw two boys playing Capoeira near his uncle’s house. They did not know the moves, but they were trying. Raimundo could not help but feel for the boys. Raimundo showed the two some basic Capoeira moves. He began their training right there in the street. Then he told them that if they would be there the next Saturday, he would come back and keep up the lessons. The next Saturday, the boys were there with a few friends. Raimundo taught them and then kept coming back and even got his Capoeira school in on the project.

Raimundo and I rode into Poca Olho on his motorcycle to the same street where it all began, we found boys from the program playing in the street. Raimundo worked with them on their moves. Then it was my turn. The kids laughed at my awkward attempts at Capoeira. Soon we were playing Capoeira with abandon in the sweltering heat.

After a while, the mid-day heat got to us. We stopped to catch our breath. A boy with whom I had just been fighting ran off and came back quickly with a tin cup of cold water. The sun was beating down. I was covered in sweat. Yet, the water was untreated and it was known to sometimes contain a cocktail of bacteria and viruses.

There stood the boy beaming as he offered me a cold drink of untreated water. I knew that he would be devastated if I turned down his offer. How could I get him to understand?

I did not pause. I couldn’t. I drank down the whole cup in one long satisfying drink. The boy was elated. I can still see that his smile as I drank down the tin cup of cool water.

Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel, “if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”

What was going on here? The roles were reversed. I was the disciple of Jesus. He was the kid from the slums who knew nothing of God’s love, right? I was the American who had flown down to Brazil with all my expensive photography equipment. He was a boy with nothing to offer anyone. And yet, it was he who was reached out to me. He was the host and I was the guest right there in the street of a notorious slum. That boy took the world and turned it on its head.

This is the world as God sees it. To God, the person who others look over is the one with the gift, if we can stop and pay attention long enough to receive it. The person who seems to have it all together may be the one with the greatest need.

The boy is the hero of the story. For even a small thing done out of love is a big thing in God’s eyes.

Mother Teresa, who worked in the slums of Calcutta and came closer than many people to making a real difference in the world, put it this way, “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”

None of us can change the world. However, each of us can reach out to others with small acts of love. It is in these small acts of love that we glimpse the Kingdom of God.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.) 

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