A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of running into a man by the name of Matthew Works. With Christ as our common ground we shared stories of old and new. We celebrated where we found common occurrences of Christ-Followers leaving this world behind and seeking the Kingdom first and shared healthy frustrations on the need for the Church in America to resist the "spectacular" and embrace the ordinary.
If you read Chapter 21 of Jim Wallis' : God's Politics, you will discover the same Matthew that I spent a week or so with in sharing meals and tears and frustrations and joys as we built each other up for the sake of honoring our King.
Matthew has been homeless for ten years in Boston. He is currently on a "tour" going across America by whatever means that carries him and he is sharing the Gospel and questioning, with love, the western ways of the church in America at churches and universities and any where else that would dare to let him speak... these truths.
I interviewed Matthew during our Church service as the main part of our service. He is an amazing artist and an eloquent speaker of the ways of Jesus and of the most well remembered saints. He is unescapable in his kindnesses and brings truly heart-wrenching convictions on what it means to care for the least of these.
Here is something that Matthew recites with great heart and gentle composure wherever he goes. Here is Matthew's psalm/poem:
JESUS WAS HOMELESS
by Matthew Works
by Matthew Works
(c.)1999, matthewworks@yahoo.com
Jesus was homeless,
and so were Peter and Paul.
How can the churches, then, lock their doors
on the least among us all ?
What you do to the least of His brothers-and-sisters
you do to the Son of God;
and, should one of these least ones freeze to death,
it's because your heart has grown hard.
If Store 24 can be open
for twenty-four hours a day,
then how can the Body of Christ on Earth
turn any body away ?
In truth, there are no excuses
for the poor to be treated this way.
If only the churches would open their doors
homelessness could be ended today.
God wants us to respond with compassion
to the plight of the homeless and poor.
So, come on, all you bishops, and all of you priests,
first your hearts, and, then, open those doors !
Jesus was homeless,
and so were Peter and Paul.
How can the churches, then, lock their doors
on the least among us all ?
What you do to the least of His brothers-and-sisters
you do to the Son of God;
and, should one of these least ones freeze to death,
it's because your heart has grown hard.
If Store 24 can be open
for twenty-four hours a day,
then how can the Body of Christ on Earth
turn any body away ?
In truth, there are no excuses
for the poor to be treated this way.
If only the churches would open their doors
homelessness could be ended today.
God wants us to respond with compassion
to the plight of the homeless and poor.
So, come on, all you bishops, and all of you priests,
first your hearts, and, then, open those doors !
2 comments:
It's no surprise to me that he is finding hard hearts in the church and hoping to change them. It has been my experience to find that a lot of pastors are the first to "blame" for this coldness (in no way I am saying that you are one of these). They try to spiritualize everything, in effect, in such a way, to rationalize why your "poverty problem" is really just a "spiritual issue" you need to overcome by having enough faith, by praying through, and of course by repenting (because being poor is always your own fault). Now I say all this not in bitterness, but to bring it to light in the hopes of seeing changed hearts. How did the church and its leadership get so off track? yikes. And where am I pulling this shocking information from? personal experience, unfortunately.
My story in short- my husband and I graduated from a Bible college with grand visions of becoming full time ministers and eventually missionaries overseas. After graduating, we took volunteer church positions and worked full time secularly. We were earning about $55k annually and living moderately, but well, and living generously by trying to always bless others as much as possible. 3 years ago I became pregnant and it was a high risk pregnancy. In my 7th month, I needed to quit my job and felt it necessary to move closer to my parents because of the high risk pregnancy. We relocated to do that, only to find the economy was terrible up here and my husband had a very difficult time finding a decent job to support us. In the mean time, we had to file bankruptcy and were one of those lucky people who lost their condo due to foreclosure because I chose not to abort the baby and we didn't really have any other options. Due to the lack of decent jobs here, we were forced to move from our apartment into my parents' basement or be homeless 2 months after my baby was born. My husband made $11 an hour and for a family of 3 that was too much money to make in order to receive any help other than medical for my son. Though my husband worked full time day in and day out, $11 an hour was not enough for us to be self-sufficient with the cost of living here. We moved in with my parents as a last resort.
I say all that to say that we have many Christian friends, close friends, and colleagues, people who graduated Bible college with us, people in full-time ministry positions. We never asked for a penny from them for help. We did ask for their prayers. What we received was an immense amount of judgment and advice from them about our "spiritual issues" and how we needed to get our lives together since this was our fault and we needed more faith and we needed to repent because of our mismanagement of funds, etc... We had even applied for ministerial credentials with our denomination (not Vineyard) in order to become full time ministers in the midst of this- we were denied because we had filed bankruptcy. The leadership who denied us pulled this scripture on us "The wicked borrow and do not repay" (Psalm 37.21) and they said some horrible things to us. They were calling us wicked for something we had no control over! (They apparently hadn't read about the year of Jubilee and the forgiveness of debts in the Old Testament that our current bankruptcy system is actually based upon). We felt a lot like Job when his friends gave him advice. No one looked at our hearts to serve, they only cared about the green in our wallets.
And I fear that many people outside the church feel this same scorning that we have been shown... that the church is only interested in those with money. And I wish I could say this was merely a discipleship issue that we need to teach our congregations, but I have found it to be more of an issue that often begins at the heart of church leadership and pastors than in parishioners. The pastoral leadership are more eager to judge and give pat spiritual answers than to actually invest in solutions, relationships, and time and energy to clothe and feed the needy... I wonder often if we compared the lifestyles of those in pastoral positions today to the ministry lifestyle of Jesus, would their activities look similar or very different? How much time would be spent preaching compared to laying hands on the lame or multiplying bread for the hungry? How much time spent telling someone else what not to wear to church, and instead how much time spent taking someone else shopping for the "right" clothes and paying for it with our own tabs? How much time spent telling someone how to get their financial/spiritual lives right so they can earn housing and food, instead of inviting them into your house and helping them get on their feet proactively? Just wondering... so there's my two cents, for what it's worth.
"Melissa"
Melissa -
Thank you so much for sharing! Your last paragraph here is right on and needs to be heard. I grow weary of the North American way of "doing" church. It is disheartening to see that this happens at such an overwhelming rate. We've been asking these very questions too and for a long time.
I know there are folks out there that would read this and call it bitterness but bitterness keeps you from doing anything and there is definitely something happening here.
Keep prying and pushing. Invite folks to your home and love on them. Walk with the wounded and weary. We don't have to have solutions just some time to give away to those in great need.
peace to you.
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