Fr. Bill Carroll – The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, October 27, 2024

Thus says the LORD:  I am going to…gather them from the farthest parts of the earth. 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This week, I met with our outreach committee.  I shared with them about a coming initiative to organize a more effective response to the needs of our neighbors who are homeless.  I am convinced that Trinity and other churches have a vital role to play here.  

Ultimately, it will be concerned citizens, non-profit agencies, and local government officials who move things forward.  But most of the people involved will be Christians, and so we are planning to gather the churches.  Together, we can raise awareness and create more effective coalitions for change.  We hope to begin with a Bible study this Advent, as we prepare for the birth of Jesus as a homeless child.

There are several root causes of homelessness in our community.  The main ones are lack of access to mental healthcare (including treatment for addiction and services for veterans), as well as wage stagnation; the decline in well-paid, working-class jobs; and the shortage of affordable housing.

As part of my preparations, I’ve been reading Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Evicted, which was published in 2016.  Desmond is the son of a pastor and a Professor of Sociology at Princeton.  His book is a study of families evicted from their homes in Milwaukee in 2008 and 2009.  If anything, the housing crisis has gotten a whole lot worse since then.  Desmond has a gift for telling real human stories in the context of hard data and analysis.  

Between 2009 and 2011, he notes, “one in eight Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move.”  Desmond also observes that “the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half their income on housing, and at least one in four dedicates over 70% to paying the rent and keeping the lights on.” 

The eight families he follows are Black and white, with children and without.  The evictions he tells us about:

…take place throughout the city, embroiling not only landlords and tenants but also kin and friends, lovers and ex-lovers, judges and lawyers, dope suppliers and church elders.  Eviction’s fallout is severe.  Losing a home sends families to shelters, abandoned houses, and the street.

As I prepare for the Bible study I mentioned, I find myself praying about lessons from the Gospel that have to do with the homelessness of Jesus, as well as our obligations to care for the least of these.  

In the Old Testament, I want to look especially at Deuteronomy and the related Book of Jeremiah, from which we get our first lesson today.  Both books concern the fall of Jerusalem.  As Walter Brueggemann has observed, they portray the conquest of the Holy City as the result of disobedience to God’s vision for a just and neighborly society. 

And so for example, in Jeremiah 7, right before he prophesies the destruction of the Temple, the LORD says that  

if you truly amend your ways and your doings, 
if you truly act justly with one another, 
if you do not oppress the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow, 
or shed innocent blood in this place, 
and if you do not go after other gods to your own HURT, 
then I will dwell with you in this place, 
in the land I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.

Our lesson today, however, comes much later in Jeremiah (from the thirty-first chapter).  It takes place after the destruction of the City–when the People are far from home.  The Temple has already been destroyed.  And the People have been brutalized by an invading army.

In their displacement and exile, God turns to the People in love.  For God has heard their cries, just as God heard them in Egypt.  God still hears the cries of the People, and God still speaks to us today.  God still speaks to us in our loneliness, poverty, and alienation.  God still speaks to us in our selfishness, isolation, and sin.  God renews the covenant we have broken.  God teaches us to become better neighbors–to do justice for all God’s children.  

As God once did for Jerusalem, so too now, as our own cities fall into ruin, God promises us a new and better way.  If we turn from our wickedness, God will show us how to live as neighbors again:

See (says the LORD) I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth.  Among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here.  With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back…

For God will become a “father” to the People. In this Scripture, the images for God are equally maternal.  God’s love is shown to be the fierce love of a mother, who nurtures and strengthens and consoles.  God’s love is that of our shepherd and king, who fights off wolves and bandits–and leads us safely home.

Because too often the places we live and the communities we belong to are filled with indifference and contempt.  We live in the earthly city, which was founded by Cain–with all its injustice and violence.  But we long for the City of God.  We long for Jesus and the New Jerusalem.

Here at Trinity, we are an imperfect church.  (There has never been any other kind.)  But God has called us, through the life and ministry we share, to follow Jesus and anticipate the Kingdom.  For we are called to be a community, where healing and forgiveness take place, where mercy and justice are practiced–and where all people are welcomed for who we really are.  

God calls us to follow Jesus–to love him with our whole heart and mind and strength–to put his love first as we live it out in the world.  God calls us to do this, in season and out, until every last neighbor knows God’s love–and the fulness of freedom and joy.  God commands us to do this, until every last one of us has what we need to live–including safe and stable homes.

For thus says the LORD:  I am going to…gather them from the farthest parts of the earth. 

Amen.