Sermon for the Lord’s Day

September 20, 2009

Rev. Lorelei Hillman

“Homeless in the House of God”

I took a quick trip to Ganado on Friday for the Presbytery meeting.  To get to Ganado, you go north to Flagstaff and turn right.  Then you drive past Winslow and Holbrook, past the Petrified Forest, and sometime before you get to the New Mexico border, you turn left.  You drive down that road for another long way until you come to Ganado.  The church was established in 1901 as a mission to the Navajo people; there the Presbyterian Church built a school, and eventually a hospital, on land donated by Lorenzo Hubbell and named after Ganado Mucho (Many Horses), a good friend of Hubbell’s.

Presbytery of Grand Canyon is intentional about holding Presbytery meetings in a variety of locations, in order to honor the diversity of congregations which we embrace in our region, and to emphasize our connectional nature – in Christ, the church is one.  But this particular meeting was especially significant, for on Saturday we ended the Presbytery meeting in time to attend the grand celebration of Sage Memorial Hospital’s dedication as a National Historic Site.

Only a couple of years ago, the hospital was in danger of being closed.  At one time, it had been a major innovator in training women of non-white descent as nurses.  We were honored to have women from some of the earlier graduating classes there to host this historic event.  It was well worth the long bus ride to witness that Sage Memorial Hospital’s long and important history is not over, but actually beginning anew, with recent improvements to facilities, new accreditations, and thoughtful plans for its future.  Some very good work has been going on there, and it was good to be there with our sisters and brothers in Christ from Ganado (and their new CLP Audrey Jefferson) to recognize and celebrate the current vitality of that historic place.

Well, as you can imagine, a bus ride of almost five hours; a group of Presbyterians; we talked and talked and talked (okay, on the way back we also sang, but no one is bragging about that!).  Over the course of the meeting, we heard many wonderful stories.  I’d like to lead from our topic of last week – how enough is enough, how God has given enough for all if we will simply take what we need instead of what we want – to our topic for this week, which is homelessness.

The story goes something like this.  There once was a rich man.  Oh, he had worked hard in his life to make his fortune, but he gave God the glory for all he had accomplished.  At his 80^th birthday, family and friends gathered around; once more the man told the story of how God had blessed him…  “Many years ago,” he said, “when I was a teenager and had little knowledge of the ways of the world, or the workings of business, I got my first job.  My parents were poor, and the first pay I received meant a lot to me, so I put it carefully in my pocket on that Friday, thinking how I would spend it.  All day Saturday I checked to see that it was still there.  What would I buy with this, my very own money?  I couldn’t decide.  On Sunday, I went to church, thinking prayer might help me figure out what wonderful thing I could buy with my money.  Well, the choir sang, and the preacher preached, and before I knew what I was up to, I took all that money out and put it in the collection plate!  Then the plate went on down the row, and my money was gone.  I thought about going to the minister to explain, and asking for my money back, but it was too late.  You may think the moral of my story is ‘Don’t put your money in the plate’ but it’s not.  I left church that day with a lighter step, realizing I had done the right thing.  From that time on, the Lord has blessed me with greater and greater wealth.  I have several houses, fine cars, travel the world, eat the finest foods, and it’s all because I gave everything I had to God.”

When the rich man finished there were agreeable nods all around.  Folks just naturally understood that God had blessed this man for his selfless donation to the house of God in his youth.  Then the voice of an elderly woman rose from behind a group of people.  As they shifted in their seats to let her speak, the rich man could see her wrinkled face and grey hair.  “That’s a fine story,” she said, “very moving!  I have only one thing to say – I dare you to do it again!”

It was interesting to me that this story was told, not with the intention of condemning the man for being rich, but to illustrate how difficult it is for us to separate ourselves from what we consider to be rightfully ours, things we sometimes consider to be God-given.  Going back to last week, we can say with certainty that there is more than enough in the world to make sure each person is fed, given health care, has a roof over their head and a bed to sleep in at night.  This issue is not with what God has provided, but with the way we use it, or rather with the way we refuse to use it because we want to keep it for ourselves.

There are many people in this congregation who know a great deal more than I do about homelessness.  The list is exhaustive and I know you will eventually want lunch, so I’ll mention the programs themselves.  There’s Family Promise, which gives families with children a safe place to sleep each night while they work to find employment and housing; I-Help, which helps fill the desperate need for a place for homeless men to stay, who are often passed over due to the deep needs for women and children’s shelters; Paz de Cristo, which feeds the hungry, many of whom walk there because they do not have transportation; UMOM, which provides clothing, services and support for people struggling to get jobs and find homes; Tumbleweeds, which works on behalf of homeless youth, often the most ‘invisible’ part of the homeless world.

Physical homelessness is no joke.  We are not talking about the railroad ‘hobo’ caricature of the past.  People from all walks of life experience homelessness today – 3.5 million each year, according to our best estimates.  Nearly half of those are children, either living on the streets with one or both of their parents, or youth who have left their homes and many of those because home life was abusive.  Following the service today, Theresa James, the Tempe Fair Housing Coordinator will be speaking in the Meeting Room.  She is the expert, so I encourage you to hear from her what the real situation is in our own neighborhoods.

Ms. James will be able to tell you much more than I can about the causes of homelessness.  She meets people every day with profound and sometimes frightening stories about the time they have spent living in the spare room of a relative’s house, or their car, or in a park.  At the Presbytery meeting I met two elder commissioners from the church in Payson – they told me about the nearly 400 people who are camping in their area, many at national parks.  They are trying to help.  At this moment, they are traveling from Payson to Florence to meet a man, a husband and father, who was arrested for illegal camping and is now serving a sentence while his family continues homeless and now without the protection and support of their husband and dad.  These elders said that the estimate of homeless living in state and national parks throughout Arizona is 3,500 people.  Some have small campers or cars, some have plastic sheets for shelter.  It’s dangerous for them, and it’s dangerous for the parks.  Local people and churches offer what they can, but it’s far less than the need.

Physical homelessness is one aspect of these people’s suffering.  Safety, comfort, education, health, are all at risk for people who have no place to call home.  Another aspect is what we might describe as emotional homelessness.  Often people who live from day to day have no self-confidence.  They lose their sense of ability.  They are under tremendous stress from minute to minute – not only because the homeless are so vulnerable to crimes ranging from robbery to rape to murder, but because they don’t know from day to day if they will be able to put food in their children’s mouths, or get enough warm clothes to protect them, or find a place to sleep where they won’t be arrested.  In Arizona, of course, the danger is compounded by the heat; where will they get water, how can they get out of the sun, how can they cool an overheated baby?  If you read the article in the Arizona Republic on September 11, you will have gotten some sense of the complications and difficulties that these very real people deal with all the time.

Numbers of homeless persons come out of dysfunctional or abusive situations.  They trust no one, and that’s a good thing, it’s how they survive.  One of the first things I learned about volunteering with the homeless was to NOT speak to their children without getting their permission.  A homeless child’s situation is so vulnerable that they have to learn early on not to trust or deal with strangers.  If you’ve ever been in a place where you didn’t feel safe, try to imagine feeling like that all day, day after day, and you might get some sense of the experience. 

Beyond this practical emotional homelessness, there are homeless who struggle with mental disorders, or chemical addiction, or both.  They cannot relate in any healthy way with others, and although they are rarely a danger to anyone but themselves, they are the ones most likely to be picked on or attacked.  Abused youth hit the streets with no interpersonal skills and a lot of emotional baggage.  It’s not surprising to find that the situation is self-perpetuating; not knowing what a healthy relationship or a healthy life-style even looks like, they bring their own children into the world with all the same challenges and issues.

There is one more aspect to homelessness which rarely gets coverage.  The Republic article did not mention it.  I found a little bit about it in a paper written by Rev. Jean Kim, a retired Presbyterian pastor whose website has a wealth of information about the homeless, society and the church.  Pastor Kim calls it spiritual homelessness.  I’ve only touched briefly on some of the difficulties people face when they have no home to sleep in at night, all of the physical and emotional issues involved.  Perhaps you can imagine, then, some of the spiritual problems that can arise. 

To be blunt, many of the homeless do not know the love of God because they have not experienced it.  They have been at least overlooked, ignored or rejected; at most, they may well have been attacked by ‘decent citizens’ or even people affiliated with a church.  That kind of broken relationship is very hard to mend.  What the church looks like is what they might think God looks like: harsh, rejecting, judging, punishing. 

For those who were raised in faith, it’s hard to imagine that their faith would not be severely challenged by their situation.  If you’ve read the Bible, you know the overwhelming emphasis God puts on caring for ‘the widow and the orphan.’  Try to think what some of your favorite Bible stories would look like from the perspective of a homeless person – how differently would you read the story of the prodigal son; the good Samaritan; the feeding of the multitudes; the sharing of the believers in Jerusalem; the admonition of Jesus to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’?

Time after time, Jesus says, “If you will not have compassion on others, at least as much as you are compassionate toward yourself, you are not living up to my expectations for you.”  You and I both know that the most profound, the most life-changing way we can experience the love of Christ is by receiving the love of Christ through the love of another human being.  It’s why Christ had to be a human.  It’s why we are called to serve one another, to serve ‘the least of these.’  If we are not, in some aspect of our lives, laying down our own wealth – and I don’t mean only money, I mean all of our wealth: our skills and abilities, our means, and our most precious possession, time – in the service of others, then we ourselves are the ones who become ‘homeless in the house of God.’ 

Did the rich man really know God, as one would know someone you lived with?  God would not promote the wealth of one person over the wealth of another.  God’s real blessing to the rich man was to give him brains, and ability.  It was up to the man to use it well.  The wise old woman knew God, had lived in God’s house; she knew that the rich man was missing the point.  We have enough to share.  If you are here this morning, you have enough to share.  It might be $500 from your paycheck.  It might be five hours of your time.  It might be five minutes to call your local political representative and let them know that homelessness is not invisible, and that homeless people matter – to God and to you, and therefore should matter to them.

Whose home do you live in?  Is it big enough to share?  In this church, most could say, Yes, and I have.  It’s a great story, and it is very moving.  I have only one thing to say: I dare you to do it again!