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4 ˜ Introduction
that lead people into criminal life. The Open Door’s willingness to learn from
and to stand in faith with those in prison and on death row makes clear the cost
of discipleship and the grace needed to embrace that cost.
Part Four, “The Sacraments of Hospitality,” brings further focus to the
Open Door’s embrace of Christ, who comes to us as the homeless and imprisoned.
Those on the streets and in prison are a sacrament of Christ, and in the
celebration of the Church’s sacraments the community’s commitment to receive
and serve the wounded and crucified Christ is renewed. The Open Door’s worship
reflects both traditional Christian practices such as Eucharist and baptism,
along with new forms of worship such as foot washing, and liturgies of solidarity
and protest conducted in the streets and parks of Atlanta. The public implications
of worship are made clear as the Open Door continually connects its
worship with its work among the homeless and imprisoned. This is evident, for
example, in how the Open Door spends Holy Week on the streets, experiencing
the crucifixion of Christ in the homeless. Likewise, in the fall, the Open Door
again goes to the streets during its Festival of Shelters, which parallels the Jewish
Festival of Booths, recalling the Israelites’ desert wanderings before entering
the Promised Land.
One of the important themes that emerges in this section on worship is the
need to hold together liturgy and justice. As the prophets and Jesus proclaimed,
worship that does not shape us in the practice of justice is idolatry. The God of
the prophets and of Jesus tells us that God desires mercy, not sacrifice, and that
the Sabbath is for human liberation, not human enslavement (Matt. 12:1–14;
Mark 2:23–3:6). Worship as practiced by the Open Door offers the grace and
challenge to enter into life with the poor, which is life with Christ. This worship
stands opposed to therapeutic worship that reduces faith to individual affirmation,
or worship as mere entertainment, which offers an escape from moral responsibility.
The succor in the Open Door’s worship enables service. The respite
from the day’s tasks that worship creates is for a renewed spirit in the justice
struggle.
Part Five, “Saints and Martyrs,” contains stories of the community’s guides.
In other sections, too, there are references to those who have shaped the community’s
life—see, for example, Murphy Davis’s reflections on Jerome Bowden
in “Dorothy Day: The Only Solution Is Love,” or Elizabeth Dede’s article,
“Jeannette Lewis: A Debt Which I Can Never Repay”—but in this section there
is more fleshing out of certain individuals’ importance. The stories here show
the complexity of the persons the Open Door Community has embraced and
been embraced by over the years. The mystery and dignity of each person and
the challenge to reach out to those from different circumstances are prominent
themes.
That some of the persons are the community’s saints will be readily apparent.
But that some of the stories are about martyrs may be less evident. A mar-