Text: Psalm 130

From the depths I cry to you, O God.

Last Sunday I served as evening host for Families Moving Forward; and last Friday as overnight host. I have been volunteering for this kind of work from time to time for several years now, ever since Lyndale first began talking about the possibility of more actively serving the homeless – was it way back in 1998? I’ve been overnight volunteer many times at St. Stephen’s Shelter; I’ve volunteered with other Lyndalians at Simpson’s Shelter; I’ve participated in Families Moving Forward at University Baptist Church, at St. Luke’s Episcopal, and now, finally, here at Lyndale. I have to say, it feels good to me, it feels really right, that I can finally, after all these years of exploration and discussion, volunteer for these kinds of activities right here in my own congregation. I’m glad that we do this; I’m glad that we have made this commitment. And I’m really glad to see how we as a community are embracing this; glad to see the sign up sheets fill up on Sunday morning. It does my heart good, and I hope it does yours. We should feel good about this.

But now I also have a confession to make. After all these years, I would have thought it got easier. But it doesn’t. It’s still hard for me. Every time I volunteer for these homeless shelter gigs, every time I come and see their faces, talk with them, eat with them; be available for them; it is a fresh reminder not just of their vulnerability but of my own; of the vulnerability of the human condition. I can’t and I don’t think any of us can pull ourselves apart from “them,” to see “the homeless” as something different from us, as a kind of breed of human that we could never be. Each time I am reminded that they are not “the homeless,” they are people who happen to be homeless at this time in their lives. They are people just like me, with a sense of humor, with hopes and anxieties; with frustration and pain; who love and laugh and argue with each other; just like me. They are just like me but in a different situation from me. And if that is so, I could be in their situation too.

Each time I do this I am reminded how dependent we human beings are on the simplest of things. A little bit of decent food; soap and water to wash our bodies and feel refreshed; fresh clothes and shoes to keep us warm and make us comfortable; a place to sit and relax; a place to sleep undisturbed for a few hours each night; a place to be warm from those frigid Minnesota winters; to be sheltered from the snow and the wind and the rain; and a place to run and play outdoors when the weather is warm and the grass is green. And each other. We need other people to talk to, to be friends with, to work with, to sleep with, to live our lives with. We need human companionship; we need not to be alone. And we require a sense of dignity in those relationships. Those are the simple things we really need, not much more, certainly no less, every day of our lives from the time we are born until the day we die.

And I’m reminded how vulnerable we are when we are deprived of those simple things! And I’m reminded of my own fear of losing those simple things. When I was working for Lyndale as church secretary, I was poorer. I was “one paycheck away.” Now I’m working at a law firm, I’m richer. Now I’m at least two or three paychecks away. But it doesn’t matter how many paychecks, it’s still only paychecks. Only paychecks away from a kind of misery no human being should have to endure; from a loss and a lack and a vulnerability that it should be our priority as a society, as a church, as a people and a nation to ensure that no one must endure – certainly not endure alone. What is the cost in paychecks of human dignity?

If you kept a record of our sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you is forgiveness.

Indeed, if God kept a record of our sins, which of us could stand? But God does not need to keep a record of our sin. The sin is right there, just outside the doors. Take a walk down Lake Street, down Chicago, down Franklin, down Hennepin Avenue, it is right there for God and everyone else to see. The poverty, the misery, the vulnerability is there. And we are part of the system that makes it, and that does nothing about it. The people are there, being turned away from the homeless shelters; tramping from one shelter to the next, each one worse than the last; being kicked off the steps of stores downtown; sleeping in cardboard boxes on the river flats; being harassed by police enforcing laws that make it impossible to be human and homeless in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We beg the Lord for forgiveness, but is there forgiveness with us? Who will we not forgive? The poor. We will not forgive the poor, for being poor. For being there, for being a reminder to us how vulnerable we are. And so as a society we deny them what we ourselves humanly need, we deny them as a way of telling ourselves they are different from us, they are not us, they are a different breed of humanity, something we are not.

When we first began discussing this whole homeless shelter gig years ago, I remember one of the questions that came up went something like this: Aren’t homeless shelters just a bandage on a deeper problem? Don’t homeless shelters just enable us as a society to continue to ignore the real problem, which is lack of economic justice? Shouldn’t we, instead of building more homeless shelters, be striving for a society and economy where there is no need for homeless shelters because there are no homeless?

And as I recall at the time, the answer to that question was: Yes, homeless shelters are just a bandage. Economic justice is the only real solution. But in the meantime there are homeless who need to be sheltered, so we need to work on both. And I think that was an answer to that question that made sense to us all, me included. But there is a much deeper spiritual dimension to all of this, that has to do with human vulnerability, acknowledging our own vulnerability and the human condition. Acknowledging that we’re all in the same boat together; acknowledging that we are the same flesh and blood, that we are children of the same God; acknowledging that the same people who own and maintain this big, drafty, old, clunky church building are part of the same family as the people we welcome in here because they need a better place to sleep than the streets.

My whole being, O God, relies on your promise, my whole being hopes in you, more than watchers for the daybreak.

I felt like a watcher for the daybreak the first night I ever spent in a homeless shelter. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t all night. I was waiting for something. Waiting for angels to appear.

I often can’t sleep in homeless shelters. I had a tough time sleeping last time I volunteered for Families Moving Forward at Lyndale, because that god awful cot hurt my back. I finally had to pull the mattress off the cot and onto the floor, fold the cot up, push it into the corner, and then sleep on the mattress on the floor. Last Sunday, when I showed up to serve as “host” for the evening, Mary Vanderford took me up to the bed room and showed me the new bed for the overnight hosts: it was a nice, comfy futon. She said, “Check this out. We don’t want to lose our overnight host volunteers!” Remembering my last battle with the cot, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The other thing I noticed when I arrived last Sunday was that the building felt awfully chilly. One of the guests was worried about her baby sleeping in the cold. We put out a phone call to Christian Mordh, to see if he had any wisdom for us about the boilers. I remember alternately freezing and being roasted in this building – at all times of the day and night, during services on Sunday morning, working her as a secretary during the day, and attending committee meetings here in the evening. I thought, “This just won’t do.”

I’m pretty sure our guests were grateful. As I ate with them, talked to them, stood by while mothers prepared sack lunches for the next day for their families, there were smiles, laughter, good-spirited banter. But I felt the usual amount of tension too; conditions weren’t ideal; sometimes you don’t feel like smiling or laughing, sometimes you’re just too tired. If you’re in the privacy of your own home, you don’t need to put on a good front, but it’s different if you’re staying in someone else’s home. And Lyndale church is a big, drafty, clunky old home with unpredictable temperatures, and lots of strange people trying hard to play “host,” and not very comfortable cots to sleep on. At least, that’s how it might seem to me if I were a guest coming in from outside of this community.

We’re really nice if you get to know us. I’m extremely grateful for every single one of you. You make me feel loved and wanted, even when I don’t feel deserving of love. Most of all I am grateful that we are in this spiritual journey together as a community. I am so grateful to be a part of a community that has committed to put its faith into action. I am grateful to be a part of a people for whom religion is more than what we believe in or some motions we go through in our pews on Sunday morning, it is something we live and act out, it is something that we live. I’m grateful to be part of this community of people who are watching for the dawn and relying and waiting on the promises of God.

I pray that those promises will be fulfilled soon, that we will see a dawn of God’s justice, and a world where we vulnerable human beings can all, every one of us, live in the dignity and peace which is our birthright, giving worship and praise to God.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.