July 2nd, 2006 Sunday Service - Helping the Marginalized

Pastor Dayle laid out the issue in her sermon today. I quote her at length because she captures everything candidly and succinctly:

If you were here last Sunday you may have noticed a woman who visited worship at Creator for the first time. She was dressed warmly, with winter hat and coat on a morning that crept to the mid 80’s by worship’s end. Sadly she had lost her way in the world and was without a place to lay her head, or clean herself up. She had been to other churches who tried to help her by paying for one more night in a cheap motel. A few of us tried to bring her aid following worship, but to no avail. This was distressing to me and to the rest of the small group who tried so hard to find some solution for this woman. She was unstable and unable to cope with life in the ways most of us are able. There was likely some mental illness, too. So how were we, the church, the ones called to care for all who are marginalized, going to help this woman whose only acceptable solution to her predicament was to live with a Christian couple? Would any of you have taken a stranger home with you last Sunday? I don’t think any of us would given the circumstances.

We live in strange times. I don’t know about you, but I’ve become jaded when it comes to helping people. I’ve been scammed too many times. I’ve used my own money to buy motel rooms too many times. There are people who ride the buses to churches asking for handouts at every church. Churches, including Creator make contributions to other institutions like the Clackamas Women’s Center, because we want to help and we know that we don’t have the ability to do a good intake on a homeless person or to know what it is they need. So most churches will give the one in need, who stops by money or buy them a room at a cheap motel to get the problem out the door.

St. Paul talked to the Corinthians about fairness and balance, abundance and need. There is abundance in this place. I could have taken the homeless woman back to the motel and bought another night for her. But I didn’t. And since we didn’t have what she wanted this story does not have a happy ending. She wanted no part of the authorities and in the end, asked to be taken to New Hope church where she hoped they were more Christian than we, than I. So I took her to New Hope and then I called New Hope… who already had their security people with her. They too have no resources for homeless… they too give resources to agencies who are better able than churches to connect the homeless, mentally ill with what they need (which is usually not what they want or ask for).

I tell you this with candor so that you will hear the good news with new ears. This homeless woman sat in our sanctuary, was welcomed by many of us, heard me preach a sermon and talk about the seas of life that toss us about and how we need one another to steady ourselves and chart a new course. I couldn’t help the woman chart a new course… I plainly and simply am not equipped to make it happen. Creator can’t do it alone, either. What I took away from last Sunday was that we can’t do this alone. It’s not about Creator or New Hope or any church or agency doing everything for everyone. We network and are connected to the bigger picture.

My reaction was just as Pastor Dayle described. What that small group did was what I would do. It was sensible, reasonable and distressing.

I thought what would Jesus do and essentially moved nowhere in my thoughts and prayers.

What are the alternatives to being jaded because of the scamming everyone seems to encounter at some time when trying to help? We may agree the person in need is not in the best position to request the help they may most need. Is bringing in an agent with experience the best way to help? What if the person in need refuses that help?

No passage came to my mind that detailed physically how Jesus would have us act to help the disenfranchised. He did not help the disenfranchised by giving them money, or a home to stay in. He did not help by singling them out to give food or assistance to. The passages I read seem to point to a spiritual state to be in.

The questions about how to help I have struggled with most of my life and this sermon presses all the hot buttons. What would a good Samaritan look like today? Would today's Samaritan be a person who contributes through a networked world that would help those in need, rather than doing it directly? If I don’t feel I am in the spiritual state when I give help is there still value to doing it?

There is a certain reality that appears to complicate and frustrate our Christian desire to help or gives us reasons not to provide direct help. Distrust insulates and isolates us with reasons not to help. It binds up our help to fit within the work ethic that drives us. There was a beautiful moment in a Terrence Mallick's film The New World where the main character, Captain Smith, rhapsodizes about the opportunites in the American new world they are discovering; for men to share in the fruits of their own labor and not be bound to landowners. A short time later, as leader of a colony, he chides people he deems as not working. "Those who do not work will not eat". The division of the fruits of labor on earth is nothing like the parable of the workers in the vineyards.

There is this other side of the question that also remains unanswered because it scares us as well. Is there a point when there is over-compensation for life's work or efforts that works against our spiritual lives? Can you be paid too much of a salary that changes your viewpoint in order to justify an inequity?

Mary helped me with another way of looking at this issue as well. I focused on what Jesus would do or have us do. Mary thought another focus could be on the parable or story Jesus would tell.

Perhaps we should not ask what's right or wrong or what would Jesus say or do, as time changes how we see all of that. Perhaps we should ask 'what does love require?’ I am still searching my heart for that answer and I yearn for the Holy Spirit to give me the words to pray correctly about all this.