Teaming up to end homelessness

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An interesting piece on The New York Times Opinionator about an innovative program to end homelessness (targeted specifically at homeless vets).

A couple of key stats from the article: nationwide, there are 67,000 homeless vets; it costs society approximately $40,000/yr per homeless person (for temporary shelter, er, jail, etc).

Here’s some of what was attempted:

The challenge has largely succeeded. Four cities housed more than 100 homeless veterans in 100 days.  Others came close, and nearly all reported that they had found new ways of working that would speed things up in the future. Some of the changes were improvements to the process:  Atlanta, for example, had previously counted on the chronically homeless to go out and find apartments on their own.  Unsurprisingly, this strategy was not working. So the city hired a third-party provider to help the veterans find a place to live and to act as a fiscal agent for moving costs and security deposits. Veterans Affairs in Atlanta divided caseworkers into teams, which competed to house the most veterans.

But key to the success of the program were the relationships among agencies and homeless service providers:

“Relationships count from the very first touch with a veteran on the street, all the way through the system,” said Patricia Leslie, who is the chairwoman of a broad community group that focuses on ending homelessness in San Diego. “The more we know each other, the better troops we make.”

More on the 100,000 homes campaign here.

I wonder if something like this would work in Madison?

Geography Matters! Lectionary Reflections on Proper 19, Year B

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This week’s readings are here.

A map of Northern Palestine in the time of Jesus is here.

In last week’s gospel, Jesus traveled from Galilee to Tyre. He then traveled north to Sidon, before heading back toward the Sea of Galilee. But he went beyond the Jordan to the region of the Decapolis. He then seems to head north for Bethsaida on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee is mention in Mark 8, before moving further to Caesarea Philippi. While Galilee continues to be the base of his activity, he is moving beyond it in three directions, west, east, and north.

Caesarea Philippi is the location of today’s gospel. A city that was founded by the Herods, it was named in honor of their patron, Caesar Augustus. It was a Roman city, dedicated to the emperor, to Rome’s gods, and to Roman power.

For Jesus to come to this region under the looming shadow of the Roman Imperium, and ask here, “Who do people say that I am?” was to set up a sharp contrast between himself, Rome, and the sort of political Messianism that was dominant among Palestinian Jews of the day.

“Who do people say that I am?” The answers came easily off the disciples’ lips–Elijah, John the Baptist, a prophet. Then Jesus asked those who had been following him for the past months, “But who do you say that I am?”

Peter responded with his famous confession, “You are the Messiah.” It’s a word we’ve not seen in Mark since the first verses of the gospel and it’s not at all clear what Peter meant by his confession. Certainly Jesus had not acted in conformity to contemporary messianic expectations. And what comes next further shatters those expectations. Jesus predicts his suffering and death, a statement which Peter contradicts and for which Jesus rebukes him.

Then comes another symbol of Imperial Rome. Jesus tells his followers that if they would be his disciples, they must take up their cross and follow him. The cross was a symbol of Roman power and ruthlessness. The cross was reserved for the worst offenders, for revolutionaries and the like. Crosses loomed on the outskirts of towns and cities to show everyone what the consequences of resisting Rome’s power would be.

The community for whom Mark was writing probably knew all too well what the consequences for following Jesus were: Persecution, execution. They didn’t belong to a group that had access to the corridors of power. Their struggles didn’t have to do with whether they could pray in public. Following Jesus was life or death.

It’s hard for us to imagine, hard for us to conceive of what it might mean to follow Jesus in the ways that Mark understood discipleship. For us, it’s enough to come to church when it’s convenient, to throw a few dollars in the collection plate, to volunteer to help in a food pantry or homeless shelter. But if we confess Jesus to be the Christ, Mark’s challenge should stand before us as a symbol of what discipleship means. To follow Christ means accepting his lordship, following his way to the cross, and rejecting the power and the powers of this world.

9.11.2012: What have we wrought?

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The beautiful September Tuesday in Wisconsin today was eerily like the one I remember eleven years ago in South Carolina–brilliant blue skies, bright sun, a hint of fall in the air. Everything changed, we all said, as we watched the planes go into the twin towers and heard about the Pentagon, as we watched, glued to the TV for days. Eleven years later, it’s worth pondering what changed.

We are diminished as a people and as a nation. As I worked out in the gym this morning, I listened to Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising, those powerful songs of sadness, hope, and resilience that he wrote in the weeks and months after 9-11. I saw on the televisions scenes of our president against a backdrop of American flags, saying something. Fortunately, my earbuds drowned it out.

I thought of how we came together as a nation and as a world, united in grief and in wanting to help the victims. I thought of how we also sought vengeance in small and large ways, of the two wars, the countless dead in addition to the victims of 9-11. I also thought of how we as a nation, as a people have let our freedoms slip away, our consciences, our better selves.

Last week, the Democratic Convention did everything but parade Osama bin Laden’s body through the convention center, glorying in his assassination. A president who was elected on promises to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, to end torture, to bring our troops home, campaigns on bellicosity and assassinates people in far-off lands with drone aircraft while his administration quietly lets the torturers go without judicial accountability. Just after the convention, we learned that another detainee had died in Guantanamo. Apparently, death is the only way out of that prison. But to criticize the president is as unpatriotic for Democrats today as it was to criticize Bush eight or six years ago.

This summer we have witnessed more outbreaks of Islamophobia and the attack on the Sikh temple.

Who are we? What have we become? Fortunately there are voices that challenge the conventional–voices like Glenn Greenwald and Al McCoy who tell the story of torture, rendition, and targeted assassination.

There are others who speak out, too. Tim Kreider has a powerful piece on the way we have allowed fear to govern our lives and our foreign policy:

I believe that we collectively decided, without quite admitting it to ourselves, that somebody, somewhere in the world, had to die for 9/11, and we didn’t really care whether they’d had anything to do with it or who they were, so long as they were brown-skinned and worshipped Allah and lived in the Middle East. We imagined that killing thousands of strangers on the other side of the world might somehow assuage our fear, in the same way that someone who’s been assaulted might buy a gun as a security blanket, a prop to accompany his fantasies of protection and revenge. Our invasion of Iraq was an act of human sacrifice, undertaken for pretty much the same reasons the Aztecs slaughtered prisoners by the tens of thousands: to propitiate the gods. If George W. Bush had slit the throat of a single lamb on live TV it would’ve had much the same net effect on national security, at considerably less cost.

This charge is also a confesssion. I reacted to 9/11 the same way as a lot of my compatriots: by going completely berserk.

And Will Willimon’s sermon from the first Sunday after 9-11, calls us to remember that the God in whom we put our faith is the God who created light in the formless and dark void:

I would have thought the first word might be vengeance, or cowering fear, or at least bitterness. But no, the first word the exiles heard God say to formless void was, “Light!”

It is a word that we cannot say to ourselves. It must be spoken to us, overheard in God’s conversation with the formless void. No word, not mine, or the president’s, or some grief counselor, or therapist can help us when the chips are down, and the mountains tremble and the earth shakes, no word can help except one spoken from the outside. And just at full midnight we hear that word, and it is a sovereign command, a promise, a creative act, “Light!”

The trouble between us and the resilient formless void is serious. If there is not a God who delights at bringing light out of night, who likes nothing better than to go one-on-one with the void, then we are quite frankly without hope and my little words of comfort in the face of your despair are pointless.

The All-you-can-eat buffet, megachurch, and contemporary politics

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Ed Winstead makes the connection:

If the South, which is so central to modern Republicanism, can be defined in some sense by its food and its religion, then lines can be drawn between the buffet and the mega-church, the pig pickin’ and the tent revival, home cooking and the old-fashioned community congregation (though in the buffet it is the grease, and not the Holy Spirit, that sends you writhing to the floor). The mega-church, marketing as slick as the preacher’s hair, is a pale and commercialized approximation of a traditional church (which, whatever you think of Southern Protestantism theologically, draws a great deal from and contributes a great deal to its communities). In much the same way, a buffet fails, deliberately fails, necessarily fails, to recreate a home-cooked meal.

This is the new American Dream: the buffet, the mega-church. Both purport to embody how it should be, how it always was, that the deep-fried tomatoes and the arena-league sermonizers hearken back to better times. This is nonsense.

He argues that the buffet trivializes and commercializes Southern cuisine, that a cuisine founded on necessity and want has become the promise of never running out.

We talk in our churches about product, church-shopping, and marketing, responding to the needs of our congregations, and to that degree what he says about mega-churches may extend to most congregations. And for us Anglicans, there’s especially the appeal to nostalgia.

Worth thinking about

Table Crumbs: A Sermon for Proper 18, Year B

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September 9, 2012

I’m going to read part of today’s Gospel again. I want you to listen carefully and reflect on the following two questions:

  1. What does this story tell us about Jesus?
  2. How is the woman a model of discipleship?

Then, I want you to turn to your neighbor and talk for a few minutes about what you’ve heard and how you might respond to these questions.

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go– the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Jesus has travelled way outside his comfort zone. He’s in Tyre, on the Mediterranean coast, for some reason. Mark doesn’t exactly tell us what he’s doing there, but the first verse of our reading suggests that he might have come here to get a break, to take a little vacation. It’s clear from what follows that he is not on a mission trip. He has no plans to minister in the place he now finds himself. We’ve seen already in Mark times when Jesus has sought to escape the crowds, when he wanted to go away by himself and pray or simply rest.

It never works. It never lasts. And even here, when he has traveled a long distance to escape the pressures of the world, entered a house to be alone and rest, the world breaks in the door, the world of pain and hurt. Jesus can’t escape or avoid it. But he tries.

A woman, a Syro-Phoenician woman, breaks in on his solitude and rest. She needs help. Her little daughter has been possessed by a demon. She’s tried everything, and now she’s learned about this miracle worker who has come from a distance, and desperate, she pushes in the house and asks his help. Again, this isn’t so different from earlier occasions in Mark—the woman with the hemorrhage of blood who grasped at Jesus’ garment; the synagogue leader who pleaded with Jesus on behalf of his dying daughter. What’s different this time is Jesus’ response.

insider/outsider: Jesus is the outsider here, the woman may be the insider—she’s at home in this town, as a “Syro-Phoenician” she belongs ethnically while Jesus doesn’t. So, to understand the depth of the offensive statement Jesus makes, imagine making an ethnic slur while visiting Mexico, or China, or Italy.

And put yourself in the place of the woman. She’s desperate, has come to Jesus for help, and is called a dog. What would you do if that happened to you? Would you back away, try to escape without further notice, give up? Would you get into a shouting match, return a slur with a slur of your own? Or would you, like this woman, keep pushing Jesus to help?

She does the latter, and in the end, she gets what she came for.

For those of us who are long time members of Grace, we need to think about what this episode tells us about ourselves. How do we perceive and understand our mission and ministry? How do we go about welcoming the stranger and newcomer. Oh, I know, we all say we are friendly and eager to embrace visitors. But are we really? To welcome the stranger, to practice hospitality, does not mean simply inviting people to come in, to encourage them to join. We need to welcome them completely, to embrace their experiences and perspectives. We need to welcome the change they bring. We need to hear from them where our blind spots are, where we fall short of proclaiming the gospel faithfully and where we fall short of embracing and living God’s reign as Jesus’ disciples.

If you’re a visitor or newcomer, ask yourself how your presence here will change us. We often assume that churches, really, any organization that we join requires us to adapt and change to fit the norms of that group. And so it does. But it works the other way as well. Just as the Syro-Phoenician woman demanded that Jesus rethink his assumptions, rethink the very nature of his mission and ministry, so too does your coming among us challenge us to change and adapt. Whether you are here for one Sunday or thirty years, how can you open us to new horizons and new possibilities?

There’s something else of considerable importance in this text. The exchange between Jesus and the woman is a form of word play. He calls her a dog. She accepts his term but points out that even dogs eat table scraps; they share in the banquet, if only the leftovers. Her words convert Jesus. He changes his mind and tells her, “For saying that you may go, the demon has left your daughter.” In fact, the Greek word used is logos. Jesus is praising her logic, her reasoning.

And that too should surprise us, because elsewhere in Mark Jesus responds to the pleas of those who would be healed, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Now I don’t want to overstate what’s happening here but I do think it’s important that the woman’s daughter is healed because of her persistence and tenacity. Her desperation has brought her to this point. Faith is not always, and certainly not in Mark, faith is not a confession or proposition. Faith is not assent to a doctrine. Faith is following Jesus in the midst of a difficult path, in the face of persecution and trouble. Faith is persistence and tenacity, clinging to Jesus, coming to him for healing, when there seems to be no other possible solution. Faith is demanding that Jesus do what he promises us to do, to bring about God’s reign in the midst of a world that doesn’t know him.

An Anglican Pope?

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Well, not quite.

The Telegraph has an interview with Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he says something like this:

The outgoing leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans suggested a form of job share after admitting that he had failed to do enough to prevent a split over homosexuality.

Dr Williams said a new role should be created to oversee the day to day running of the global Anglican communion, leaving future Archbishops of Canterbury free to focus on spiritual leadership and leading the Church of England.

Denials came quickly, beginning with Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Office.

I doubt very much that such an office is under consideration or would ever be instituted. After all, the relatively minor effort to strengthen the power at the top evidenced by the Anglican Covenant demonstrates how little interest there is in such power grabs. Still, the very fact that such an office could be proposed reflects something of the overall tendency toward centralization and increasing hierarchy that seems to dominate thinking about the Anglican Communion in many quarters.

Thinking Anglicans links to the Telegraph’s articles and the audio interview.

 

What is church membership?

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It seems no one knows.

A new study from Grey Matter Research indicates that 33 percent of worshipers surveyed believe their church does not offer any sort of membership, while 19 percent said they were not sure. This means that less than half of respondents know about membership offerings in their church. More here.

Given our focus on membership and attendance statistics in tracking congregational vitality and growth, this statistic is worrisome. But then again, in the Episcopal Church, we’re not quite clear on membership–is it baptism, confirmation, communicant in good standing?

My guess is that most members of health and fitness clubs are certain both of their membership and of what benefits they get from membership. Is it a clear message or is it because they have to pay in order to become a member?

In any case, here’s what we say at Grace about membership:

How do I become a member of Grace Church? Grace is a parish of the Diocese of Milwaukee, of the Episcopal Church. Becoming a member is both very easy and relatively difficult. Easy, in that your baptism, regular attendance at worship, and financial contributions will make you a member in our eyes, at least for the official records. You may become a member simply by letting the office know that you would like to join; if you know the date and place of your baptism we will record it. If you have been a member of another Episcopal congregation, it is helpful both for them and us to request a letter of transfer. Just let us know the name and location of the church, and we will do the paperwork.

That’s the technical side of membership but membership is much more than a certificate, a letter, or a line in a church register. It is a commitment to be a part of the body of Christ in this place, to share with one another in worship, prayer, study, and service to others, to seek to incarnate Christ’s love here and in the world. It also involves a commitment to support the work of Grace with your prayers and your financial gifts. There are no litmus tests or doctrinal tests to be a member of Grace. We welcome everyone, wherever you are on your spiritual journey, to walk with us for a few months, a few years, or the rest of your lives.

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Oh, and if you’re interested in membership, or learning more about Grace and the Episcopal Church, we’ll be having classes in October.

A Gentile dog nips at Jesus’ heels: Lectionary Reflections for Proper 18, Year B

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This week’s readings are here.

This is one of my favorite stories in the gospel of Mark because it is so jarring. We are exposed to a side of Jesus we can’t imagine, an aspect of him that doesn’t at all conform to our notions of him as being compassionate and merciful. It’s hard to fit this story into our image of Jesus as the perfect Son of God.

Our discomfort with this text comes from two different details. First of all, Jesus refers to a woman who has come to him seeking help for her child a dog. Can you imagine it? She’s at wit’s end. Her daughter is possessed with a demon. She’s tried everything and now she’s heard about this healer who has come to town. It may be her only opportunity, so she breaks in on his seclusion in someone’s house. He’s annoyed by her. He wants some peace and quiet, some rest and relaxation. He probably wants to sit back, enjoy a good meal and a glass of wine, and this woman comes in asking for help.

He disses her, says basically that her problems are none of his business. His ministry is with Jews, not with Gentile scum (dogs). But he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. She can give as good as she gets and she reminds him that dogs usually get table scraps.

That’s all it takes. Jesus reconsiders. Her daughter is healed and she goes back home.

For Mark, this is a pivotal story, a turning point. It is the first time Jesus ministers to and among Gentiles, and it seems that by besting him in wordplay, the Syro-Phoenician woman convinces him that Gentiles are worthy of his care and compassion. And that makes us uncomfortable too, because it implies she knows better than Jesus what he should be about.

So this story is uncomfortable, jarring, presenting a Jesus who is rude and has limited vision. But I think that it has much to teach us about our own assumptions and limited vision. How often are we blind to the need that stares in our face? How often do we ignore the opportunities for mission that confront us? How often have we been forced to respond to people’s needs, not because we perceived that need but because they got in our face? How often have Gentile dogs been nipping at our heels, forcing us to change direction?

Reading the New Testament with different eyes

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When I taught Intro to NT and Intro to Bible, one of the basic questions I had to address was in what order to teach the NT–in the canonical order (Matthew to Revelation), in historical order (Jesus, Paul, later writings), or in the order of the texts’ writing (Paul, Mark, etc.). As a historian, I always came down on the historical order: Jesus, then Paul.

Marcus Borg has recently posted “A Chronological New Testament” that has generated considerable interest. He argues that reading the NT beginning with I Thessalonians is an important corrective to many strands of contemporary Christianity. Among other issues, he cites:

  • Beginning with seven of Paul’s letters illustrates that there were vibrant Christian communities spread throughout the Roman Empire before there were written Gospels. His letters provide a “window” into the life of very early Christian communities.
  • Placing the Gospels after Paul makes it clear that as written documents they are not the source of early Christianity but its product. The Gospel — the good news — of and about Jesus existed before the Gospels. They are the products of early Christian communities several decades after Jesus’ historical life and tell us how those communities saw his significance in their historical context.

While there is merit in being clear about the historical contexts of the New Testament texts, Borg is primarily concerned with challenging notions of inerrancy. But it seems to me that to focus to narrowly on the historical dating of the texts, and to read them accordingly, is to place to much emphasis on the texts themselves. The writing of New Testament scriptures began at least two decades after the crucifixion and resurrection, after a two-decade long period of reflection on the meaning of Jesus and the events of his death and resurrection, two decades after Jesus’ followers had experienced, and continued to experience, the risen Christ in their lives and in their communities.

In a somewhat similar way, contemporary Christians bring their experiences to the texts of the NT, the historical contexts in which we live, but also our lived experience of Christ and the community of faith. To ground that experience in the tradition of the church, to interact and wrestle with the deposit of faith located in Christian scripture, is crucial to the development of mature faith. It’s too easy to dismiss writings that are “late” as somehow less authentic or less authoritative, than those closest to the events themselves. Reading the texts chronologically may help us better understand the development of the literary traditions of early Christianity, reading this way may not help us understand the mystery of the Christian faith and the full range of Christian experience that lies behind the texts.

And of course the other problem is that “mainstream Biblical scholarship” is more divided on the dating of the texts of the NT than Borg is willing to admit.

To care for orphans and widows in their distress: A sermon for Proper 17, Year B

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September 1, 2012

When Episcopalians gather to worship on Sundays, we expect the familiar. We repeat our liturgy week after week, with relatively little variation. We sing from the same hymnal, and usually hymns that we have sung often before. We sit in the same pews, we greet the same people. Continue reading →