I reread this sermon as I began work this week and thought it deserved posting, largely because in it I share some of my earlier experiences of ministry with the homeless, from the vantage point of a suburban parish.

Proper 5_YrC

St. James

June 10, 2007

When I was growing up, our rural Mennonite Church had as one of its outreach projects, providing a monthly service at the Cherry Street Mission in downtown Toledo, Ohio. I don’t remember now how many times our family went, but to the best of my recollections it must have been several times a year when I was a preteen. It was an old style mission, where those who wanted something to eat and a bed for the night, first had to sit through whatever kind of worship service we put on. It was of course a cultural conflict of enormous proportions. We were well-off, white, Mennonite, small town and rural folk; the people at the mission were urban, overwhelmingly African-American, predominantly alcoholic and homeless. We didn’t provide the meal, we didn’t help out with the soup kitchen; we simply gave our hour-long worship service, and got back in our cars and drove the forty-five miles home.

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