Harundale Presbyterian Church

August 12, 2007

Isaiah 1: 10-20 ¬ Matthew 25: 31-46

How Do We Respond?

Elder Charles Clauss

Isaiah proclaims that God is angry with the people of Israel; their offerings are meaningless, their worship empty. He equals them to the sinful people of Sodom and Gomorrah. He asks them to change their evil ways and “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow”. Serve the less fortunate members of society and you will receive salvation; do not and you will suffer.

Seven hundred years after Isaiah we hear the same message from Jesus in Matthew; the people are divided into two groups, He says to one ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom….; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” The righteous ask, “When did we find you in these conditions and minister unto you?” He answers, “…just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” On the other hand, those who did not were accursed. Note that there is no middle position in either passage. Do good and receive salvation. Not doing good is the same as being evil.

Seven hundred years and God was still asking the same from his people. Another two thousand years and He is still asking the same from us. Shortly after the resurrection, Jesus addresses Simon Peter, “Do you love me?” three times. Each time Peter says yes and Jesus says, “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.” The same message again to Peter.

We know that anything in the Bible that is repeated three times is IMPORTANT. We can also be sure that the messages of the Bible, whether directed to saint or sinner, apply to us as well. When Jesus disperses the crowd about to stone a woman accused of adultery, he tells her to “Go and sin no more.” He is speaking to us.

In the story of the Good Samaritan which Gretchen preached about last month, the charge to “Go and do likewise.” is directed to us just as much as it is to the person who asked, “Who is my neighbour?”

So, where do we go with these charges? How do we help those less fortunate than us? This church has had a long history of involvement with homeless people in this area. The Free Lunch Program, now in its twentieth year, was started with the idea of providing a hot meal to anyone who came, many of them homeless. The Winter relief Shelter was started to keep the homeless men in the area from freezing to death during the cold months of November to early April. Both of these programs reach out to some of the people that Jesus wants us to serve. However, the homeless problem is far larger. Sometimes we cannot see the forest for the trees. If we only see the homeless as the handful of men who come here for lunch on Mondays and Thursdays, or begging on street corners, or in the shelter here for one week in the winter we are missing a much larger picture of a problem that spreads across the whole world.

The homeless now include, in expanding numbers, women and children and the working poor. The winter shelter recognized this just three years ago and asked the participating churches to also make arrangements to accept women as well as men. As the winter shelter churches worked to provide more services to the homeless the Arundel House of Hope was created as an umbrella organization which now has several branches. In addition to the Winter Relief Shelter, the Fouse Center opened in 2000 to help men make the transition back into the mainstream of living in a house or apartment and gaining employment. The Homeless Resource and Day Center, opened just last April, is providing an ever-expanding array of programs including housing for disabled and chronically homeless. Under the name Safe Haven Program, they use a “housing first” approach to get people off the street and on their way to independent living. It started last year for men and will be available to women this fall.

While visiting the day center, I talked to Phil Bailey, the director. I mentioned the increasing number of families coming to the Free Lunch and he said that they have not had any families come in yet but they were expected. He had a pile of toys in the corner just waiting for the children to play with while their parents are talking to the counselors. We came face to face with family homelessness right here on the Sunday before the Fourth of July. After the service was over and only a few of us were still in the building, we were visited by a young family, a man and his pregnant wife and five children. They needed help. They had lost their home to a fire and had been living in a motel with assistance from the Red Cross, but had to leave because they had put what money they had towards another house but could not move in until the following Friday. What did we do? Working quickly, someone went to the kitchen and made sandwiches, a couple of bags of groceries were produced from the food closet, and a collection was hastily taken. After thanking everyone here several times they moved on to the bus stop.

Another face of homelessness, perhaps the worst, is that caused by a natural or manmade disaster. How do we respond to an event like hurricane Katrina or the invasion of southern Lebanon by Israel?

When hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005, thousands of people where suddenly made homeless. The media focused on New Orleans and that’s where most of country’s attention and contributions went. Here at Harundale, the mission committee was presented with the idea of seeking out another area that did not get as much attention but could still use some help. We could even contact a Presbyterian church in the area. As it turned out, a former church of the Whitney family, The First Presbyterian Church of Biloxi, Miss., was very active in the recovery effort. We were able to send what dollars we could and they have kept us informed of just what they are doing. They are currently buying materials, because those donated have run out, and housing volunteer groups coming to help with the rebuilding of homes.

Last July when Israel attacked Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon, a million people were “displaced”, read made homeless. My first concern and I am sure that others here may have had the same concern was about the safety of Najla and Joseph Kassab. Najla was a Lebanese student at Princeton Seminary and interned here for two summers in the 80’s. She had never seen a camel until we took her to the Baltimore zoo. She was active with the youth group and Dave Roquemore, our associate pastor, took a group of the youth to Princeton to visit her. Mark Thomson went along on this trip and the visit to Princeton may have influenced his decision to there.

She and Joseph were married here during their last year in seminary. After graduation they returned to Lebanon where Joseph is now the General Secretary of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon. Najla is the director of the Christian Education Department of the same Presbyterian Church.

I was able to get an e-mail address for Joseph from the General Assembly in Louisville and someone was able to get one for Najla from Dave Roquemore. I was able to establish contact with them both. Although they were safe in the north, they faced the problem of massive homelessness as innocent people flooded north to escape the fighting; many seeking help turned to the churches in the area and were taken in by Presbyterian churches. Others were housed at a conference center and in schools. Najla’s letter described some of the conditions there. In her words, “Imagine in one day one has to live with three families in one room, and share the bathroom with hundreds of people. Some of the families had to leave their homes in five minutes and hardly brought anything with them. All that they have is canned food, a mattress on the ground, no showers, shortage of water and electricity, and the worst of all no sense of how long this would last.”

She also told of taking food to a school being use to shelter Shiite families and, although they had prepared a traditional meal, they had to pour everything into bucket like bowls for women to take to their families where around ten people would share it. “We went to lessen their pain, but our pain was increased. How can people go through such situations and the world stands watching?”

Shortly after receiving this, I renewed my passport. But common sense says you can’t run off to Lebanon, or the Gulf Coast, without being part of a plan. Things must be done in order. Depending on one’s skills, they may be adding to the problem and not the solution if their talents are not needed at that time. Carpenters must go first to do the framing, then electricians and plumbers must do their work before the drywalls can go up. And none of this can happen until order has been re-established and roads repaired to make the areas accessible.

So what do we do? We have sent money to both Biloxi and Beirut. In both places the work goes on and we receive reports of what is being done. However, still more money is needed to keep things on schedule. A letter from Bob Bolitho, a volunteer coordinator for First Presbyterian Church of Biloxi says a million dollars would not be enough. In another letter, he asks for volunteers. In Joseph’s latest message from Lebanon, he details how funds have been spent so far, but still more is needed. He assures us that the money is spent on the right people and in the right places. This is often a concern here.

Near the end of her letter, Najla says, “We are fine and lucky, we still have a bed, hot water, and plates, toothbrushes, and relative human dignity.” May we too be thankful for such small blessings?

Our efforts have made a difference for a lot of homeless people; here in Glen Burnie, in Mississippi, and in Lebanon. A few weeks ago a man arrived late for the Free Lunch. All the other guests had gone and I sat and talked with him as he ate. He asked about the Homeless shelter; “Was it still at the Salvation Army?” I told him that the intake had been moved to the new Resource and Day Center north of town. He had been homeless a couple of years ago, but was now living with someone who befriended him and was working, doing home improvements. Before he left he said, “They are good people. They do not know how they affect people’s lives.” This reminded me of a Bible quotation the once hung in the kitchen: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.”