Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46
Last winter, while we were in the process of acquiring and moving in to a church home, other congregations around Charlottesville were opening their doors to provide shelter for homeless men in the Charlottesville area. The program, new at the time, was called P.A.C.E.M.—People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry. We were in no position to participate last year, even in a supporting role, but there were conversations to the effect that this was certainly something we would want to consider being a part of once we were settled in a facility of our own that we could offer for such a purpose.
I’m not sure that too many of us, or any of us, feel quite settled or that this house of ours has yet become a home, but we are settled enough to have said yes to PACEM, and we have committed ourselves—after hearing from Dave Norris, PACEM’s director, both in worship and in Service and Missions Committee, and having further conversation amongst ourselves—council agreed to our being a host church for PACEM this winter. For one week, beginning on Saturday, December 3, and then again for another week later in the winter, we will have a number of overnight guests staying in the lower level of the building.
It’s an ambitious project. And when we were talking in committee about how to get organized for this, I suggested bringing this into the center of our worship time, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the committee I know feels strongly that if we are going to do this well, it will need to be a project not of the Service and Missions Committee, or even of the church council, but of the whole congregation, and giving it a central place in a worship service emphasizes the idea that this project needs to be embraced by the whole congregation, not just added to the menu of things one might choose to do at Sojourners. But in addition to that, I think it’s important to have this at the heart of a worship service because this is a project that lies in an important way at the heart of the spiritual life of this community as well. I don’t want to get too preachy about this, but I do have a few things on my mind that I want to say along these lines, and I guess if they end up sounding a bit preachy, I’ll have to live with it.
I’ve been hearing the phrase “compassion fatigue” quite a bit recently. And there have been and are and will be, we all know, extraordinary events we are still trying to absorb, to say nothing of figuring out how to respond to. Just to speak in terms of people left homeless…three and a half million as a result of the earthquake in Pakistan, two and a half million as a result of the violence in the Sudan, millions more in places not currently in the spotlight. In the United States, I read that 500,000 people are currently being housed in hotels and motels—people who are not homeless in the sense of being without shelter but who are homeless in the sense of not having a home…a difficulty with definition that affects statistics on the local level as well. The statistics locally are much more modest. Last January a survey was taken in Charlottesville that found the following:
There were 175 people who met the federal government definition of being homeless whose whereabouts could be accounted for. That does not include people living in cars or abandoned buildings who made no contact with service providers. It does not include people living in motels or temporarily with relatives. Of the 175 people known to be homeless, about 140 were being housed in one of the shelters in the community. And of those 175…
58% were male
The average age was 39
75% had a high school education or equivalent
20% were veterans
37% were employed, and 57% had been employed in last 60 days
57% had been homeless less than 6 months, 15% less than 30 days
40% said Charlottesville was their hometown. 70% said their hometown was somewhere in the six county area.Statistics help to give a profile of the homeless population, a sense of who the people are, but really only a little bit more of a sense than we have, for instance, of the millions of Pakistani people we pray for in a clump. Because of course statistics are not people. And one reason being a host church for PACEM is a spiritual act is that it gives the statistics a face, or rather many faces. People become people again. And it gives our prayers, those prayers we do say sincerely for people who are little more than numbers for us, it gives our prayers a certain substance. It makes the concerns concrete and the people real. And of course, because we would be acting locally as well as thinking globally, doing what we can do, it keeps our prayers grounded and gives them, as I say, a little more weightiness. The action does not take the place of prayer but gives it an extra dimension.
And speaking of prayer, because I see this project as being part of and at the heart of our spiritual life as a congregation, I think it is important to approach the project prayerfully. Or maybe it’s the other way around, that if we approach it prayerfully it becomes embedded in our spiritual life, something more than a good thing to do. I should say quickly that by approaching this prayerfully I do not mean “piously”. Maybe I mean just the opposite of piously, but in any case something quite different. Certainly I mean the opposite of proudly. By prayerfully, I think I mean with an awareness of the smallness of the action, which is not to deny the importance or the worthwhileness of the effort, but to keep an awareness of its smallness nevertheless, which is maybe to say an awareness of the larger context, which is one way of thinking about prayer…but that’s another sermon.
As I’m thinking about being prayerful this morning, it means doing PACEM while remembering in prayer also all the many others in our own community and millions of others in other places whose faces we do not see and whose voices are mostly not heard.
As I’m thinking about being prayerful this morning, it means doing PACEM while acknowledging that there are large questions of social structure and public policy that also need to be addressed, that providing shelter for 30 people in our church building is not separate from being concerned about poverty and racism and affordable housing and health care, including support and awareness of mental health concerns, and so forth. PACEM represents an absolute need, but also only a small part of the issues that need to be kept in mind and in prayer.
As I’m thinking about being prayerful this morning, it means doing PACEM knowing that a person is not defined by being in need of shelter. We are, all of us, more than our circumstances at any given time. And our needs, all of us, our needs are many and many-layered. They are physical and emotional and spiritual. And although our circumstances may differ, essentially our needs are not all that different from each other. Our prayers for the guests we will have here are not all that different from the prayers we offer for each other and for ourselves.
I am remembering this morning an often read passage from the gospel of Matthew. It says:
“When the messiah comes in glory…all the nations will be gathered and people will be separated one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and the sheep will be on the right and the goats on the left. Then the messiah will say to those on the right, “Come, you that are blessed by the Holy One, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the people will respond, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the messiah will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are my sisters and brothers, you did it to me.”
Now I have heard this passage read and referred to when the point being made was that those who are “more fortunate” should go out and help those who are “less fortunate”. I always hear the passage in a different way from that. I hear it as identifying Christ with those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, or in prison, and so it is not a matter of offering the wonderful gifts we have to offer in a condescending way to people in need. It is a matter of how I relate to people who, like me, bear the image of God. It is a matter of recognizing Christ in others. It is a matter of recognizing myself in others. In this sense too it is important to do PACEM prayerfully.
Which leads me to a last thought. Sojourners has from the beginning seen itself as being a safe place for people who have been wounded by the world or by church. We have I think always wanted to be a place where it is safe to be who you are and not to have to pretend to be someone else or pretend to certainties we don’t possess. Our bulletin says at the top: “A safe place to begin. A safe place to begin again.” It is very much part of who we are to be a place that provides shelter, a safe place spiritually as well as physically. In that sense PACEM is just one more way for us to act out that sense of who we are. It is more than a program that sounds good. It is part of our core values. Because we are all people who need shelter of some kind. We have in the past. Maybe we do right now. We will again in the future. PACEM is a new venture for Sojourners, but in a way it is not a new venture at all. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 16, 2005