A few weeks ago, Galloway United Methodist Church held what they called “Homelessness 101” and invited Pat Morgan, the executive director of Partners for the Homeless, to come and speak about homelessness. Morgan gave her usual talk that promotes all of the wonderful services available for homeless people in Memphis that are part of a continuum of care. Her view is that there are plenty of opportunities for any homeless person to get off the streets.
As I sat listening to her, a fire burned in me, a fire of anger. So, when the time came for questions I began by asking her why she has publicly opposed having a free shelter for homeless persons in Memphis. Her initial response was to lie, saying she did not oppose a free shelter. I said that she was lying, since I know that she has told the Center City Commission that a free shelter is not needed and would only encourage people to remain homeless. She then admitted she has opposed a free shelter and that she doesn’t want anything to be done for homeless persons that would make being homeless easier or comfortable. I also challenged her on her position regarding panhandling. Catherine also asked some hard questions. The facilitator of the meeting, not liking this flow of questions, moved to end the meeting and Morgan fled the scene.
I talked with several people afterwards, including the pastor of the church, urging him to have the church reflect on God’s call to hospitality. I even sent him a two page bibliography about hospitality and offered to come and speak on the topic. I never heard anymore from him. A few days later I heard from one of my colleagues at MTS who attends Galloway that I had disrupted the meeting. People were upset that Morgan had not been treated with more respect. I tried to explain to my colleague that I had been polite but insistent.
This is not the first time I have been chastised for being disruptive. After Robert Coe was executed a few of us held a demonstration downtown that moved from the federal building to 201 Poplar. We carried a symbolic black casket, and our hands were painted red. We marched silently and then stopped in front of 201 Poplar. I was among those who spoke. I felt God’s spirit in me in a way I have never felt before and I loudly denounced the execution as contrary to God’s will, and that those Christians who support executions are heretical, falsely claiming to follow Jesus yet joining in executing him. I was angry, and my words expressed an angry rejection of this and all executions. Afterwards I was criticized for not being polite.
So, Jeremiah’s words about a fire burning him with God’s word that must be spoken is something I feel when I see injustice, when I see people being harmed, exploited, beaten down, and then I hear that they deserve what they are getting.
But I also feel with Jeremiah the tension, the dissonance, between God’s call into the joyful work of serving persons on the streets and in prison, and the hardness of the rejection that comes with that work when I along with others tell the truth to those in power that their actions are hateful, unjust, and murderous. When I point out the violence and destruction of the Center City Commission, of Pat Morgan, of the State of Tennessee when it executes, there is public mocking, ridicule, and rejection.
I did a little research and found that the Hebrew word translated here as “deceived” is pittitani, which literally means “to entice, to deceive, to persuade.” Further, when the Hebrew verb is used with the idea of enticement, the word appears in the context of a seduction or rape (Exodus 22:15). Seduced or raped by God, in either case Jeremiah describes a sense of God doing violence to him. And Jeremiah felt this way because his call had begun with an assurance from God that he would be protected; that God would be with him as he lived out his call. But what has happened to Jeremiah? He spoke out and he was punished, beaten and put in the stocks for public ridicule (Jeremiah 20:1-2).
So, I’m going to continue to live with this hard reality: God’s call into hospitality for homeless and imprisoned persons, and all of the joys and sorrows that come from responding to that call will inevitably also compel me to speak out against the injustices and hatred directed toward those I serve. And when I speak out and denounce the injustices and hatred I can count on being misunderstood, mocked, rejected. But what else can I do?
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Reflection on Hebrews 13:12-16
The suffering of Jesus outside the gate implies a new place of salvation wherein the center of religious activity was moved to the periphery. Salvation lies outside the gates of ideological, political, and socio-economic walls that surround our religious compounds and shape the structure of Christendom. The death of Jesus outside the gate implies also a fuller understanding of mission. Since Jesus died outside the gate, mission has become the crossing of the walls and gates of secured and comfortable compounds, the continuous movement toward him to bear the abuse he endured for the world. Mission is crossing frontiers, geographic, political, social, economical, which lie beyond the center of power. –Orlando Costas, Christ Outside the Gates
A friend of mine spent Holy Week in Rome, attending services at St. Peter’s and visiting other famous churches in that “holy city.” I know the thrill of walking into such magnificent structures and breathing in the rich history they represent; a history that revolves around their central role in religious activity. One such church is called “St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.” It is so named because St. Paul is buried there, not far from where he was executed, and both the place of execution and the church are outside of the walls of Rome as it existed in Paul’s day. So Paul, too, ended up like Jesus, tortured and executed outside the gate, outside the walls of the city, thrown out with the trash.
And this is what I am called to focus on first in relation to the reading from Hebrews 13:12-16 and the quotation from Costas: it is not St. Peter’s in Rome or St. Paul’s Outside the Walls that is the center of religious activity. Instead, if we are disciples of Jesus then the center of religious activity is Manna House and the intersection of Jefferson and Claybrook; the center of religious activity is not the Vatican or Jerusalem, but wherever people are being marginalized, oppressed, exploited, pushed aside, kept down, and we as disciples of Jesus are responding with hospitality and resistance, compassion and struggle for justice. Our salvation, our being made whole through the love of God, comes not through famous churches, but through our loving relations with people who are infamous, our standing with and for people who are rejected, neglected, despised.
Second, I want to focus not only on Jesus being executed outside the gates, outside the city walls (and Paul too), but on how Jesus’ life and death and resurrection opens to us a way to break down those walls. I was led in my reflection to Ephesians 2:14-19, another place in Scripture where Jesus is spoke of in relation to a wall. Paul writes that Jesus takes down “the dividing wall of hostility,” that is the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles, through the cross, that is, through Jesus’ life of self-giving love and resistance to the powers that led to his execution and that was overturned by the resurrection.
Here is the path we are called to with “fear and trembling”—we too, like Jesus and with Paul are called outside the walls to the cross in order to take down the walls. The walls cannot be taken down by remaining safely inside of them, where our privilege is protected, where our way of life is secured, where the usual order of business is maintained. The walls can only be taken down by having our lives defined by God’s loving, life-giving, liberating power and that means by having our lives defined by loving relationships with others, especially those outside the walls, instead of by walls and by those who make and maintain walls.
Once identification, solidarity, with persons already outside the walls is made, we start to share in the denigration and rejection they so brutally experience. Our hearts are broken not only by the barbs of little insults from family and friends or others who do not understand why we even want to be with “those people,” but also from knowing deeply how the lives of those with whom we seek to serve and be in solidarity are broken by violence, addiction, mental illness, loss of family, police harassment, and more.
But this is Jesus’ way that takes him and us outside the walls and takes down the walls: he left the pearly gated community of heaven, and entered fully into identification with those outside the gates. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a slave, being made in human likeness. And in this state, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-11). How to overcome walls built by hatred and exclusion? Those walls are overcome only by lives that intentionally go outside the walls to be with, to serve and to struggle with those outside the walls.
I think, finally, of Paul’s words in Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” If we are to overcome walls we must love as God loves, we must overcome evil as God overcomes evil, not by violence, not by more control and domination, but through love. We must go to those abandoned places of empire, like Jefferson and Claybrook, and faithfully remain in loving relationship with everyone who shows up: homeless, poor, prostitutes, persons who are mentally ill, addicts and dealers, other people coming to volunteer, and even the police. And in doing this faithfully offer welcome through hospitality and faithfully offer resistance to anything that denigrates and despises human dignity. In those two practices the cross will come, and in those two practices are the seeds of resurrection.
A friend of mine spent Holy Week in Rome, attending services at St. Peter’s and visiting other famous churches in that “holy city.” I know the thrill of walking into such magnificent structures and breathing in the rich history they represent; a history that revolves around their central role in religious activity. One such church is called “St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.” It is so named because St. Paul is buried there, not far from where he was executed, and both the place of execution and the church are outside of the walls of Rome as it existed in Paul’s day. So Paul, too, ended up like Jesus, tortured and executed outside the gate, outside the walls of the city, thrown out with the trash.
And this is what I am called to focus on first in relation to the reading from Hebrews 13:12-16 and the quotation from Costas: it is not St. Peter’s in Rome or St. Paul’s Outside the Walls that is the center of religious activity. Instead, if we are disciples of Jesus then the center of religious activity is Manna House and the intersection of Jefferson and Claybrook; the center of religious activity is not the Vatican or Jerusalem, but wherever people are being marginalized, oppressed, exploited, pushed aside, kept down, and we as disciples of Jesus are responding with hospitality and resistance, compassion and struggle for justice. Our salvation, our being made whole through the love of God, comes not through famous churches, but through our loving relations with people who are infamous, our standing with and for people who are rejected, neglected, despised.
Second, I want to focus not only on Jesus being executed outside the gates, outside the city walls (and Paul too), but on how Jesus’ life and death and resurrection opens to us a way to break down those walls. I was led in my reflection to Ephesians 2:14-19, another place in Scripture where Jesus is spoke of in relation to a wall. Paul writes that Jesus takes down “the dividing wall of hostility,” that is the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles, through the cross, that is, through Jesus’ life of self-giving love and resistance to the powers that led to his execution and that was overturned by the resurrection.
Here is the path we are called to with “fear and trembling”—we too, like Jesus and with Paul are called outside the walls to the cross in order to take down the walls. The walls cannot be taken down by remaining safely inside of them, where our privilege is protected, where our way of life is secured, where the usual order of business is maintained. The walls can only be taken down by having our lives defined by God’s loving, life-giving, liberating power and that means by having our lives defined by loving relationships with others, especially those outside the walls, instead of by walls and by those who make and maintain walls.
Once identification, solidarity, with persons already outside the walls is made, we start to share in the denigration and rejection they so brutally experience. Our hearts are broken not only by the barbs of little insults from family and friends or others who do not understand why we even want to be with “those people,” but also from knowing deeply how the lives of those with whom we seek to serve and be in solidarity are broken by violence, addiction, mental illness, loss of family, police harassment, and more.
But this is Jesus’ way that takes him and us outside the walls and takes down the walls: he left the pearly gated community of heaven, and entered fully into identification with those outside the gates. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a slave, being made in human likeness. And in this state, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-11). How to overcome walls built by hatred and exclusion? Those walls are overcome only by lives that intentionally go outside the walls to be with, to serve and to struggle with those outside the walls.
I think, finally, of Paul’s words in Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” If we are to overcome walls we must love as God loves, we must overcome evil as God overcomes evil, not by violence, not by more control and domination, but through love. We must go to those abandoned places of empire, like Jefferson and Claybrook, and faithfully remain in loving relationship with everyone who shows up: homeless, poor, prostitutes, persons who are mentally ill, addicts and dealers, other people coming to volunteer, and even the police. And in doing this faithfully offer welcome through hospitality and faithfully offer resistance to anything that denigrates and despises human dignity. In those two practices the cross will come, and in those two practices are the seeds of resurrection.
Reflection on Ephesians 6:10-18
The last two weeks have been especially challenging at Manna House. The tension and fights that led to us closing for part of a morning, the conflict with a drug dealer which led us to close for an entire morning, other small time drug dealers hanging around using the phone until we took the phone away, and on a few mornings such large numbers of guests that our practice of hospitality in which we seek to greet and respect each guest as Christ was severely challenged.
All of these challenges grow out of a system of neglect and oppression directed at the poor and especially at homeless persons. There are many ways that that system is manifested, the ongoing police harassment of homeless persons, the vicious anti-panhandling campaign manufactured by the Center City Commission and endorsed by the Partners for the Homeless (better named “Partners Against the Homeless”), the lack of jobs, the lack of treatment for addictions and for mental illness, the lack of medical care, the lack of housing, the lack even of shelter.
And that system infects the poor by continuing to pump the myth that if you work hard, or if you scheme hard, or both, you can get rich, you can get your problems solved, you can be a success. And so some of the poor turn to the dream of riches through dealing drugs, while others turn to the dream of getting rich quick through the lottery, or writing a letter to an old high school friend and asking for $10,000, or hitting up volunteers for money, or selling CD’s. It is all part of the “hustle” that mimics the larger hustle of consumer capitalism.
I am also infected by that system and its myth. I have my vision of the good life and on the day I was threatened by Mike one of my responses was “I don’t need this. I just wanted to help the poor and here I am having my life threatened and being insulted, and I feel like just walking away. Why do I bust my ass to be here and put up with all the crap that comes at me each day?”
The devil does have wiles. My struggle, and I think the struggle for us at Manna House, is a struggle against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). After the fights that led to our closing for part of a morning one guest said it was like an evil spirit was going from one group to another and it latched on to whoever could not resist it. I believe that guest was right.
So how do I resist those powers and principalities? Ephesians names the armor needed (using imagery that subverted the Roman Empire’s armor): truth, justice, peacemaking, faith, salvation, the Holy Spirit, prayer. “Tell the truth and shame the devil” a line I learned at the Open Door and since the devil is the great confuser it makes sense; tell the truth, be truthful, speak truth to power.
Justice, live with God’s vision for the world, live for that vision, treat others with the love that God has shown to me, to us.
Peacemaking, refuse to use the police insofar as that is possible. “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Through God’s loving power, keep on loving the drug dealers; keep praying for those who persecute our guests and us.
Faith, keep that other world in view, keep my eyes on the prize, hold on. Live as if the kingdom of God is THE reality and all this other stuff will fade away. Believe in the resurrection, the triumph of love over hatred, life over death. Believe that everyone is of God and therefore everyone does in some way reflect God’s presence, everyone is redeemable, even me.
Live the salvation offered by God through Jesus Christ. Be healed. Be made whole and live into that wholeness rather than holding on to my wounds, and my hurts.
Be grounded in the Spirit. Pray, pray, pray so that I practice being in the presence of God and that I let God do God’s work and that I cooperate with God’s work.
None of this suggests anything less than a battle, an intense struggle, a serious engagement with evil which demands a serious engagement with God. I think our mission group is a crucial component in this battle; we need each other, we need each other’s prayers, each other’s presence at Manna House, each other’s insights and wisdom and laughter and tears and hopes. Only together and with God will we make it through and continue to offer others what we have experienced, the very love of God.
All of these challenges grow out of a system of neglect and oppression directed at the poor and especially at homeless persons. There are many ways that that system is manifested, the ongoing police harassment of homeless persons, the vicious anti-panhandling campaign manufactured by the Center City Commission and endorsed by the Partners for the Homeless (better named “Partners Against the Homeless”), the lack of jobs, the lack of treatment for addictions and for mental illness, the lack of medical care, the lack of housing, the lack even of shelter.
And that system infects the poor by continuing to pump the myth that if you work hard, or if you scheme hard, or both, you can get rich, you can get your problems solved, you can be a success. And so some of the poor turn to the dream of riches through dealing drugs, while others turn to the dream of getting rich quick through the lottery, or writing a letter to an old high school friend and asking for $10,000, or hitting up volunteers for money, or selling CD’s. It is all part of the “hustle” that mimics the larger hustle of consumer capitalism.
I am also infected by that system and its myth. I have my vision of the good life and on the day I was threatened by Mike one of my responses was “I don’t need this. I just wanted to help the poor and here I am having my life threatened and being insulted, and I feel like just walking away. Why do I bust my ass to be here and put up with all the crap that comes at me each day?”
The devil does have wiles. My struggle, and I think the struggle for us at Manna House, is a struggle against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). After the fights that led to our closing for part of a morning one guest said it was like an evil spirit was going from one group to another and it latched on to whoever could not resist it. I believe that guest was right.
So how do I resist those powers and principalities? Ephesians names the armor needed (using imagery that subverted the Roman Empire’s armor): truth, justice, peacemaking, faith, salvation, the Holy Spirit, prayer. “Tell the truth and shame the devil” a line I learned at the Open Door and since the devil is the great confuser it makes sense; tell the truth, be truthful, speak truth to power.
Justice, live with God’s vision for the world, live for that vision, treat others with the love that God has shown to me, to us.
Peacemaking, refuse to use the police insofar as that is possible. “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Through God’s loving power, keep on loving the drug dealers; keep praying for those who persecute our guests and us.
Faith, keep that other world in view, keep my eyes on the prize, hold on. Live as if the kingdom of God is THE reality and all this other stuff will fade away. Believe in the resurrection, the triumph of love over hatred, life over death. Believe that everyone is of God and therefore everyone does in some way reflect God’s presence, everyone is redeemable, even me.
Live the salvation offered by God through Jesus Christ. Be healed. Be made whole and live into that wholeness rather than holding on to my wounds, and my hurts.
Be grounded in the Spirit. Pray, pray, pray so that I practice being in the presence of God and that I let God do God’s work and that I cooperate with God’s work.
None of this suggests anything less than a battle, an intense struggle, a serious engagement with evil which demands a serious engagement with God. I think our mission group is a crucial component in this battle; we need each other, we need each other’s prayers, each other’s presence at Manna House, each other’s insights and wisdom and laughter and tears and hopes. Only together and with God will we make it through and continue to offer others what we have experienced, the very love of God.
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