“Filling the Holes in the Holy Bible”

A sermon by Lanny Peters (concluded with a story from Leah Lonsbury)

Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church, Decatur, GA.

December 4, 2005 (Second Sunday of Advent)

Luke 1: 39- 2: 16

This summer while I was in Bethlehem, I stayed in a hotel with a view out my window over the valley called the Shepherds Fields, so named because this is most likely where shepherds would have lived during the time of Jesus’ birth. Winding through the middle of the Shepherd’s Field is the controversial security wall being built throughout Israel. Near the populated areas of Bethlehem, a menacing nearly thirty-foot high concrete wall with guard towers snakes its way alongside homes and refugee camps. In the Shepherd’s Valley, it consists of a series electrical fences with complete camera security. If you approach it, within seconds soldiers will respond. Signs warn you to stay away or your life will be in danger. Besides surrounding the city of Bethlehem, the wall divides outlying villages from Bethlehem from each other and the city. To the Palestinians, this smacks of apartheid. To the Israelis, it is a necessary protection from suicide bombers, and it has led to a definite decline in acts of terror. Regardless, it is a sad emblem of a deeply divided land. As I looked out at the stars shining over the field where the shepherds watched their flocks by night and received the news of Jesus’ birth, it occurred to me that nowadays shepherds would not be able to go and find a babe lying in a manger. Instead, a security wall would block their way.

Ironically, though, the hot topic the week I was in Bethlehem was the devastating reports on the news about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. My Palestinian hosts were shocked by the images of poverty and asked questions like: Why is your country so divided racially and between classes? How is so much poverty possible in a land so wealthy? Indeed, how is it possible that one of every six children in America is poor? How is that 36 million people are living below the poverty line? And even that masks the problem, since the poverty line is $18,810 for a family of four. Try living on that! How is it possible that more people than ever are without health insurance and increasing numbers of people cannot find affordable housing? How is it possible that the minimum wage that has not been raised from $5.15 since 1997, while at the same time the amount of tax breaks for the rich have increased dramatically? Katrina swept through and exposed our own country’s dirty little secret about the poor in our nation. 

This summer, my niece and her family became homeless. My life was full with sabbatical travels and other plans. We ended up with my niece’s seven-year-old daughter living with us while her parents looked for work and a place to live. At times, we feel they make bad choices but then we do not live on the precipice of poverty like they do. Along with others in my family, they keep me from ignoring the plight of the poor in our land.  Yet my temptation is always to look away.

The Katrina crisis has not been the wake-up call we needed as we continue to respond to the symptoms and not the causes of poverty. Nothing has been more cynical and full of untruth than the so-called “No Child Left Behind” legislation. The outrageous costs of the unnecessary, illegal, and immoral war in Iraq combined with tax cuts for the wealthy have all but pushed the crisis of the poor off our nation’s agenda. But not off God’s agenda according to the Bible.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the subject of the poor and God’s response to injustice is the second most prominent theme, behind idolatry, and the two are often related. “One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or the subject of money (Mammon as the gospels often call it.)” When he travels, Jim Wallis often carries a Bible with all the texts about justice for the poor literally cut out. It looks as if it is falling apart. Wallis holds it up and says, “Brothers and Sister, this is our American bible; it is full of holes.” Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It., (Harper Collins, San Francisco: 2005) p. 212, 214.

 In Luke’s gospel, the poor and downtrodden are at the heart of the God’s agenda in the incarnation. Mary is the first to understand this.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” She realizes that indeed, she is blessed. In a culture where women were regarded as inferior creatures, God has chosen her to be a partner in this new creation. Mary also sees the implications of this for others. God has turned things upside down. The proud and the mighty have been scattered and brought down from their thrones, relieved of their swollen heads and power. In their place, God has lifted up the lowly. The rich have been sent away empty, perhaps so that they have room in them for more than money can buy. God has filled the hungry with good things. “It was all happening inside of Mary, and she was so sure of it that she was singing about it ahead of time-not in the future tense but in the past, as if the promise had already come true.” (Barbara Brown Taylor.)

Today is the Sunday in Advent we focus on “Hope” as our theme. Jim Wallis wrote a book last year that became a New York Times Bestseller called God’s Politics and subtitled; Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. The book follows the style of the Biblical prophets in that it offers a fairly scathing social critique of the status quo in our culture and world. But the last chapter is entitled, “The Critical Choice: Hope Versus Cynicism.” Wallis concludes, “More than just a moral issue, hope is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels- what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds- all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naïve wish, but as a choice, with your eyes open to the reality of the world….”

“Down deep in our souls, we do know the poor are there: in the heart of God, in the compassion of God, and in our own communities-if we would just open our eyes. Revealing the poor in scriptures and in our own world is always the prophetic task of faith. To discover the forgotten poor in the Scriptures and in our own world is more than the work of ‘social action’ as some would call it. It is rather to put our Bibles back together again. Indeed, it is nothing less than to restore the integrity of the Word of God-- in our lives, our congregations, our communities, and our world—what could be more important?” (Pp. 347, 214)

Dorothy Soelle has written: “Do we not all want to become shepherds and catch sight to the angel? I think so. Without the perspective of the poor, we see nothing, not even an angel. When we approach the poor, our values and goals change. The child appears in many other children. (The Holy Family) also seek sanctuary among us.” (From “The Christmas Gospel,” in the collection of essays, Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas.)

As I was thinking about all this earlier in the week, I called up Leah Lonsbury to ask her if she would be liturgist today. I told her that the Spirit led me to her because she is spending lots of time with the poor these days. I wondered if she had met Jesus lately and this is what she had to say:

I bustled into work this morning, tired because Aiden got up at 4:30 this morning, stressed because I haven't started Christmas shopping yet, torn because Christmas presents seem so frivolous in the midst of the incredible poverty and chaos I experience each day at Crossroads. How can I buy Legos for my nephews when I don't have tokens to give Crossroads' guests to get to doctor's appointments or shoes to protect their feet that must walk and walk the streets of downtown Atlanta from when they're turned out of their shelter at 5am to when they're allowed back in at 6:30pm?  My co-workers, all six of them, some of them former homeless folks themselves, all managed to tell me in the first two minutes I was in the building that there "were some people" waiting on me in "my office," the overcrowded holding room where I can sometimes manage to use the phone in between clients and occasionally find a quiet moment to pray with people trying to grasp a little hope for their lives.  When I finally made my way there, smiling at all too familiar faces in the mailroom line, passing out several "I'll get to you as soon as I cans," and getting the morning hurumph squeezed out of me by Lopez, our security guru, I opened the door only to see Jesus and his family.  They were beautiful, and tired, and tender with each other.  Joseph stroked the back of Jesus’ head as he pretended to answer a toy telephone and tell his little one that it was Elmo calling.  Mary grinned at their sweet foolishness as she rested her head on the arm of the chair in which she sat.  I introduced myself and sat down to hear their story.  It was so familiar I could have told you the basics of their tale without hearing it first.  I hear it everyday at Crossroads.  No place to live, no extra clothes, no money for prescriptions, no diapers in the diaper bag.  No Georgia ID, much hassle from the authorities.  No rest, no peace, no safety, no options.  Great love, struggling faith, enormous strength, and flickering hope.  I must have made 25 phonecalls trying to find them shelter. 

“No room at the inn,” I heard over and over again. 

“We can take a single mother with three children.  That’s all we have,” the woman at the helpline said. 

“How about an intact family that very much wants to stay together?” I countered.

“Well, we could possibly take a mother and two children.  Are there two children?”

“Do inner children count?” I tried, thinking I could loosen her up with humor.

SILENCE… Then, “We’ve got nothing for you.  No room.”

When I asked for other ideas, she listed all the agencies I had heard tell me no before I called her hotline. 

After much frustration and several hours, I finally found them a spot at Taskforce for the Homeless where Mary and Jesus would sleep in the locked lobby and Joseph would be sent to the sometimes questionable men’s dormitory.  Nothing nearly as sweet as the smell of hay or the lowing of cattle would meet their senses that night.  I excused myself and headed off to make copies for food, ID, and employment assistance referrals for the family.  I bumped headlong into a co-worker coming through the copyroom/office/storage and break room door. 

“You doing all right, Leah?”

“Yeah.  Just tired and a bit frazzled.  I’m frustrated that I have nothing more to offer this family.”

“You able to walk away from this at night?”

“No.  But, I haven’t taken anybody home with me or given them my ATM pin number yet, so I guess I’m still maintaining ‘healthy boundaries,” whatever that means.”

“Let me ask you something.  You think we oughta stop people we can’t help at the door?  We got nothing for some of these folks.  Most of these folks.”

I paused.  “No.  We’ve still got human contact to offer.  We’ve got ministry in our name, right?  I guess we can still pray, still hope.”

“How are you managing to hang onto hope in the midst of this?  Our interns this summer had your same frustrations.  Whatcha doing for self-care?” he asked.

“Well, Jesus just gave me a hug and smeared wet Cheerios all over my shirt.  That’s what I’m hanging onto today.”