Mark 1:21-28
Last Sunday, I mentioned to our Housing Justice team that I had issues with the Soup Kitchen hosted at the church I served on Long Island over a decade ago.
First, there was the classic problem of building users forgetting who owned the building, also an issue with the pre-school coop that used church space.
But the bigger problem was that the long-established soup kitchen and pre-school both had been impacted by the changing demographics on the South Shore. Sayville had been radically gentrified, the last large apartment complex turned into luxury condos my first year there. By 2011, the church was subsidizing childcare for folks who drove brand new Range Rovers, while the impoverished had to travel to Sayville from other communities to get their free meal, usually on an inadequate public transportation system. This was such a hassle that there were often more volunteers than there were guests.
The Soup Kitchen was politically untouchable, so I helped the church establish a second hunger ministry, one that was more appropriate to our community. There actually were families that struggled financially at times in Sayville, despite gentrification, but they weren’t going to take handouts in front of their neighbors. Instead, we established a food purchasing program where everyone could participate, regardless of income or need, removing humiliation and shame from the equation.
What I didn’t mention to that group last week was the disdain of other good liberal pastors over my desire to create a program that was more effective, disdain that turned into disgust when I mentioned that maybe the feces and discarded needles we found on church grounds were an issue when you were also hosting a preschool. I received that disdain and disgust in ALL CAPS on social media, reminding me not only of social media’s toxicity, but also of liberal self-righteousness, because nothing says party better than our circular firing squad. At one point we literally had a Narcotic Anonymous group and a drug dealer operating on the property at the same time.
I’ve seen a little of that sort of smug toxicity flare up on social media in the last couple of weeks, as it does routinely, though it is atheist self-righteousness this time around, and atheists would never use that term, of course, righteousness being a religious word.
A number of social media posters have created content showing urban churches taking action to control the impact of the unsheltered on their property. Comments are just about what you would expect, calling Christians hypocrites, asking sarcastically, often in ALL CAPS, What would Jesus do?
Now, I know many of those folks are lashing out because they suffered harm at the hands of churches, so I try to be measured when I am stupid enough to engage. But seriously, What would Jesus do? Jesus would cure the mentally ill and the addicted. He’d cast out the unclean spirits, just like he did for the Gerasene demoniac, for the man in the synagogue in today’s reading.
We can’t do that.
It is all well and good for folks from the suburbs who have no experience of urban church to assume that we’re all a bunch of privileged prosperity gospel wanna-bes, but seriously, give me a break. We’re just out here doing our best, a boat full of sinners or an island of misfits toys or maybe just a holy mess trying to love the world.
Addiction and mental illness impact those good suburban communities too, but the chronically un-sheltered are largely an urban phenomenon.
Mental health is complicated. Mike King, a M?ori comedian and mental health advocate, puts it like this:
Everyone thinks that the biggest problem in mental health’s depression, anxiety, suicide. Biggest problem in mental health is we’re all pretending we’ve got our shit together. First rule of mental health, no one’s got their shit together, and if everyone knew that no one’s got their shit together, we’d all be in a better place.
All I can say is AMEN! In all caps.
Not that I am wringing my hands in despair. Having it all together isn’t the way the universe is wired, and is wildly over-rated. Having it all together means control, and people who have control cannot love and do not have adventures, and where would we be without love and adventure?
But maybe the adventure doesn’t have to be demoniacs in the cemetery or synagogue and treatment-resistant people who are a danger to themselves and others wandering the streets and riding in subway cars. I prefer choose-your-own adventure over “oh crap! I guess we’re having an adventure.”
Spikes in the masonry to prevent rough sleeping might not be the answer, but maybe it is okay to have social boundaries, albeit boundaries padded with grace.
Jesus would heal people, poof!, and we can’t do that, but we sure could do a better job providing healthcare, and not just healthcare for the mentally ill and those addicted to drugs, both pharmaceuticals and illegal narcotics. Far too many Americans do not receive the healthcare they need because life is not a free market good. Late stage neo-liberal capitalism will never be compatible with good health outcomes, because you can’t fix a value on a life! There is no correct price point for the priceless.
But Jesus didn’t just heal people and feed people and walk on water. He taught. He challenged.
We may have difficulty teasing out exactly why the authors of the gospels were in conflict with the Pharisees and whether Jesus himself was in conflict with the Pharisees, but there can be zero doubt that Jesus was in conflict with those who were profiting from a corrupt system. Like the prophets that came before him, he called for economic justice. And as far as I can tell, only once did he do so in ALL CAPS, when he drove the hedge fund managers from the Temple.
If anyone in the gospel story had reason to be self-righteous, it was that man who would be found to be righteous, the man who healed and fed and taught, who was legally executed by empire at the request of the religious.
He didn’t give the man who had spent years trying to get into the healing waters a few coins. He made him whole. He didn’t berate the woman accused of adultery. He just offered salvation, quite literally, for the mob was ready to murder her.
When you pray, do not pray in public as the hypocrites do, seeking attention, but instead, go somewhere private. When you feed the hungry, feed them where they are, where your gift to them is not hassle and humiliation, but is love and presence.
In a world where people are chasing after Stanley Cups, and I’m talking leaky tumblers, not hockey’s great prize, a world where the latest Tik-Tok craze in probably killing people, where people are freaking out that Taylor Swift is watching football, crazy is kind of negotiable. Let us quietly and effectively serve those who need healing justice and love, ALL CAPS not required. And for the love of all that is holy, never read the comments.
Amen.