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Settling In ˜ 19
to famine-stricken folk who are starving on our streets. We provide, by God’s
love and your support, more than three hundred showers and changes of clothes
every thirty days. Most of the fifteen thousand homeless men and women, boys
and girls who are dying on the streets of Atlanta, Decatur, Sandy Springs, East
Point, College Park, Stone Mountain, Tucker, and Roswell have no access to
showers, shoes, toilets, razors, hot water, towels, or toilet paper. Because of your
love and compassion we have now completed tiling and renovating our public
bathroom, where many come every day to pee for free with dignity.
We visit in the prisons and build caring friendships with folks under the
sentence of death. Each month we provide transportation for one hundred people
to visit loved ones in the most racist of American institutions: prisons
(houses for the homeless; jobs for the African American male). Let us all remain
faithful to this fundamental fact of faith: “I was in prison and you visited me.”
Third, we struggle not against flesh and blood but with the powers and
principalities in high places. Dan Berrigan is correct. He says that the church is
the church when the people of God are at worship and in conflict with the state.
Often we follow our Prince of Peace into the streets to demonstrate against policies
and practices that reward the greedy and maim the marginalized. There are
powers willing to pay for a professional basketball franchise, but that scream,
“No taxes!” when it comes to building homes for families living in station wagons.
They would build more prisons rather than bring restitution and reconciliation
among the perpetrators of crime and their victims. Loudly cries our Lord
against such vile and hideous thievery. So with the gift of boldness straight out
of the Book of Acts we present our bodies as a living sacrifice and cry, “No! No!
No!” to death-dealing economic structures and political folly.
Most often we fail. The shadow of Christ’s cross falls into the streets, and
every twenty-four hours there are more homeless people (why), more unemployed
people (why), more people in prison (why), and more men and women
under the sentence of death (why). We must, oh people of faith and justice,
stand together in the Lord’s love to structure the mission of the church into the
lives of the poor and onto the side of the oppressed.
Finally, and most important, we worship together. Every day of every year
we gather together. Every day of every year we gather to worship our God. We
are grateful folk, so we are people of doxology. We are trustful folk, so we depend
entirely on donations from friends and churches for our support. We are
broken folk, so we ask our God for healing and salvation. We are selfish, blind,
and judgmental folk, so we live by the new covenant, which is the forgiveness of
sins wrought by the cross of Christ. We are servant folk, so we wash one another’s
feet. We are Christian folk, so hungry and hurt we come again and again
to the Lord’s table for God’s broken body and shed blood. From this feeding,
this Eucharist, which is our daily bread, we are given the love and the power to
live together, to serve together, and to worship together.