August 23, 2009
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

1 Kings 8:[1, 6,10-11] 22-30, 41-43; Psalm  84; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69 (RCL) 

      Let us pray.  O Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill, but also those of ill will.  But do not only remember the suffering they inflicted on us, remember the fruits we bore – thanks to this suffering; our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this.  Then when they come to judgment let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.  Amen.   

      It was one year ago Tuesday that Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and city-less.  The national response in the aftermath has been both shocking and the amazing. Shocking, because FEMA, the federal agency in charge of disaster response was spectacularly slow and inept in their initial response, and amazing because the American people have been just as spectacularly willing to pitch in and help. 

      In the aftermath of Katrina’s winds, despair was rampant. We all saw it live on our televisions.  Churches, civic centers, hotels, motels, trailer parks, corporations, army bases and private homes throughout the nation opened their doors to these American refugees. And it wasn’t just assistance that Americans gave. There were sweatshirts, bread, bottled aspirin, bus rides, doctoring and a thousand other items and services offered back in those days.  Our diocese has provided a number of work teams and continues to do so. 

      One proposal that as far as I know never got off the ground for those left homeless as a result of Katrina, was the suggestion to erect temporary shelters in the form of dome homes. At this point I want to be truthful rather than kind — said politely, little white dome homes are just plain ugly. They look like eggshell halves stuck in the ground…they do not look like homes. Anybody with an aesthetic eye can see that they don’t fit in — not in New Orleans, not in any cityscape, not among trees, not on hillsides, and not even on the open American range.   Dome on the range. Here’s a discouraging word for you: Domes on the range or domes in the city are just not a good fit. 

      It’s like how we see the homeless, or don’t see them, or don’t want to see them. They don’t fit in. Poverty does that to people. Poverty makes people shabby or unsightly on the outside but that doesn’t mean they are shabby on the inside. Not fitting in is sort of how the homeless feel on our city streets, or how we make them feel, or how some Christians are made to feel when they make the unpopular suggestion that it is our responsibility to aid the homeless.  And yes, we have a lot of homeless people here on the island whether we want to admit it or not. 

      But those dome homes.  The dome homes that I have read about are in the Dome Village in Los Angeles. They look as if they would fit better in a NASA moon base model, or in a futurist fairy tale concerning high-tech New Age Hobbits, or in an undersea city of interconnected pods inhabited by the refugee human remnants of an earth devoured by global warming. The real Dome Village looks like a cluster of gigantic, genetically mutant puffball mushrooms plopped on a little over an acre in California’s City of Angels. (Visit www.DomeVillage.org for pictures.) Clustered together on this mall plot of land, they look like a genetic experiment gone bad, but they’re not supposed to be pretty, and in that aspect they are incredibly successful. What they are supposed to be is practical, and that they are.  They are practical, inexpensive, efficient and effective. In those ways they succeed very well. 

      Supplying cheap shelter to the homeless is exactly what the Dome Village does. Jesus said that we will always have the poor with us (Matthew 26:11). He also made it clear that we are not supposed to sit around and do nothing about it. Instead, he said, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).  

      One person decided to stand up and do something about it: he built the Dome Village.  Located in Loss Angeles, Dome Village is the successful pioneering project of Justiceville/Homeless USA, and is the brainchild of homeless activist, Ted Hayes. You might think that Ted Hayes, being an African-American, dreadlock wearing, Rasta man-looking advocate for the homeless is on the liberal left but he isn’t. Politics don’t matter, he says, it is the heart that matters. What Ted Hayes is, is unexpected. He isn’t just warehousing the homeless. He’s trying to help create new lives from broken lives. He’s providing a supportive community for the formerly marginalized. Since 1993, he has worked to transform a ramshackle Hooverville encampment of homeless women and men into a model neighborhood of productive, responsible and industrious formerly homeless persons. 

      He did and does not do this alone. He has lots of help. It takes many hands to get the job done and Jesus understood this. It’s not immediately clear to us whether his followers understood it or not. But clearly, God calls us to respond to the needy around us. Homelessness, poverty and hunger are simply issues that we Christians cannot ignore. Not every life is saved, not everybody will be housed, but every Christian can take the initiative to help in some way or another. 

      We need shelter for the body. I am acutely aware of this fact as the work has been progressing on the rectory and our time in our temporary quarters is running out.  Not even Jesus was immune to the question of where he was going to spend the night. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). Jesus was in effect a homeless person.   

      To haveno place to sleep. Nowhere to go. No one to turn to. Those are frightening thoughts. For many people in our nation, it’s a daily reality based in poverty. Homeless shelters, soup kitchens, outreach groups, job training, all try to assist the chronically homeless. To whom shall we go? That was the big question among the Katrina refugees. It is the same question among the many homeless in L.A. and elsewhere. Who will care for us? Who will feed us? Who will help us? 

      The answer which should be obvious is that the church should help, care for and feed those in need. This has been our tradition since Jesus set the example and since the deacons in the first-century church looked out for the widows and the orphans, and since Paul took up offerings for the poor in Jerusalem.  

      As people of faith, we are called by God to respond to those who are in need. To whom shall the needy go? They come to us as people of God. They come to us because there is nowhere else to go. They come to us because God sends us out into the world to be servants of each other. When they come to us, and when we serve their needs, we are serving God directly. It is not easy to serve in this way. It is difficult and trying but we do it nonetheless because we must, because if we do not, then who will? 

      We need shelter for the soul. The body may be healthy, but the soul diseased. Jesus provided comfort and healing for both. John 6 is a remarkable summary of the wide range of Jesus’ ministry. He teaches the multitudes; he feeds the multitude with five barley loaves and two fish. He walks on water and thus becomes known to the disciples as the one who casts out fear. He describes himself as the Bread of Life. He identifies his own purposes with those of God. He suggests that his own flesh and blood will become the source of life for others. 

      This is some pretty heavy stuff: and “Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (6:66). These so-called disciples were not those whom Jesus himself had invited to walk with him in his own wandering school of philosophy, like the Jewish rabbis or the Greek masters like Zeno or Aristotle. Instead they were the curious, not the committed, who had entertained notions of following Jesus, but, upon finding out what Jesus was really all about, they left.  We can see these two divisions, the curious and the committed in our own community.   

      Even among the twelve that Jesus had hand-picked, one would leave. “‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’ He was speaking of Judas, Son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him” (6:70-71). One betrayed, 11 stayed. When so many left him, Jesus asked the twelve, including his betrayer: “Do you also wish to go away?” (6:67). 

      This is a good question, a hard question to ask of ourselves.  “Do you also wish to go away?” 

      Do we wish to go away? Have we had enough? Have we been with Jesus long enough to know that the personal stewardship that he requires demands giving out of our abundance to the poor? That he calls us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him? That he offers peace and forgiveness, rather than revenge and the sword? That a journey with Jesus is inevitably going to bring us to a cross — an unwelcome place of death and utter rejection?  

      Do we wish to go away? If we do, we should just go. There’s no record that Jesus tried to get a single one of them to stay. The go-awayers. The betrayers. The stayers. There are only the three options, but everyone has a chance and a choice. 

      The disciples were ready with their answer. As usual, Peter speaks for the group:  “Lord, to whom can we go?” 

      That is another great question. If we wish to go away, to whom are we going to go? Where will we go? What destination offers more hope than the place we are at? What person offers answers that are more meaningful than those we get right here from Jesus?  So Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (6:68).  

      Sometimes it’s hard to know when we’ve got it so good. Peter understood. He wasn’t going — not yet, anyway. Later he would lose his nerve. But for the time being, he was staying the course. 

      Jesus has the words of eternal life. In him we have shelter for the soul. 

      For the past 40 years, the record of the American church has been mixed on the issues of both providing shelter for the body and providing shelter for the soul.  In general, the mainline churches curing this time have been enormously energetic in providing assistance and political clout on behalf of shelter for the body. But, it is probably fair to say that this same part of the church has been less enthusiastic about providing shelter for the soul. 

      Meanwhile the evangelical wing of the church has been busy providing shelter for the soul by urging people to seek personal transformation through personal encounters with Christ and following this emphasis up with strong education and worship programming. They have been typically less than enthusiastic about issues that deal with providing shelter for the body. 

      Today those stereotypes are less true.  Mainline churches are recovering their spiritual center.  They are saying with Peter, “Lord to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  And evangelicals are speaking up on issues ranging from homelessness to global warming.  All of this is very encouraging.  Yet, the issues are intensely personal. Jesus blessed the bread and the fishes, but it was the disciples who fed the crowd.  

      We are the hands and the feet of Jesus. We have nowhere else to go. 

      Let us stay, not betray. 

      Let us stay, not go away. 

      Let us all be about the Lord’s work.  Amen.