Mark 10: 17-27
One of my friends in the internet world, the Rev. Judy Boli, posted this story from her sermon for today:
- A fifteen year old came bounding into
his house screaming, "I have a Porsche! I have a Porsche!"
His horrified parents looked out the window and sure enough, there in the driveway was a brand new Porsche. They demanded, "How did you get that Porsche?"
To which the boy replied, "I bought it for fifteen dollars."
"Who would sell a car like that for fifteen dollars?" they challenged.
He replied, "It was the lady up the street. I don't know her name--she just moved in."
"Oh, no!" moaned the mother. "She must be a child abuser. Who knows what she will do next."
And turning to her husband, John, she said, "John, you go right up there and see what's going on."
So the boy's father walked up the street to the house where the lady lived and found her out in the yard calmly planting petunias. He introduced himself as the father of the boy to whom she had sold a Porsche for fifteen dollars and demanded to know why she did it.
"Well," she said, "This morning I got a phone call from my husband. I thought he was on a business trip; but it seems he has run off to Hawaii with his secretary and doesn't intend to come back. He asked me to sell his new Porsche and send him the money. So I did." [from Jokes WareHouse.com]
He is slick in his self-introduction to Jesus, tries to flatter Jesus by calling him, "Good teacher." Which Jesus rebuffs by saying, "Only God is good." But then Jesus plays along with him by engaging him in a recital of some of the Ten Commandments. But, cleverly, Jesus omits all the commandments pertaining to the relationship between God and humanity and instead goes for the human-human interaction ones like no stealing, murder, lying, adultery, or fraud (actually a gratuitous one possibly relating to no coveting, but in terms a rich person would understand). And he throws in honoring one's father and mother, to round off the list as the man had seemingly introduced the concept of "inheriting", perhaps alluding to how his riches came to him in the first place. And the man quickly jumps into the trap. But Jesus lovingly notes that he did not mention any relationship to God, and he challenges the rich man to part with the actual god of his life, money, money, money. The man is shocked and slinks away grieving, for his money god has complete control of him.
It is strange that the liturgical experts include this little story to be told to us middle class folks, isn't it? Maybe they are telling us that Jesus was not only thinking of the upper class. What do we have to do with giving our money to the poor?
Thursday and Friday I attended an environmental presentation in the Meadowlands, the big thirty-two square miles of garbage dumps and marshes not far from here that have been sought by several developers in the past few years. Now with the help of a US Representative, a sizeable portion of the marshes will be set aside as a nature preserve, and six of the thirty-four big dumps on the land will be capped and used for four new golf courses.
However, here comes the controversial part: nearly 3,800 new housing units, very upscale, will be placed beside the golf courses, this using a lot of federal and state funding and permits. What is peculiar is that the state law that has been upheld by the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Mount Laurel decision, is being completely ignored. That decision requires a proportional part of the land of any new development to have an affordable housing component. There will be over 12,000 new jobs in the area once the commercial part of the development is completed. Many of the jobs will be modest paying ones, and the current plan is to bus in people to carry out the more menial tasks like front desk clerks, room and grounds cleaning, laundries, and the like. The needier people from Jersey City, Kearny, Newark, and perhaps Elizabeth can find some employment but no nearby housing. It seems rich people do not want to look upon poor people's homes, and that contact can be minimized if there are no affordable housing units there in the new development.
You maybe can see where I am going with this. A group of churches have come together to try to get the state law recognized. The opposition to us is saying that the Mount Laurel decision does not apply since the property is under the jurisdiction of a Commission rather than a city or town government. But of course the land actually belongs to fourteen cities and towns. It will be quite a legal contest, and a political one as well. The concession will probably be to place the affordable housing in areas already saturated with affordable housing--towns that are desperate for income will again take up the burden of affordable housing--Elizabeth has 21 percent already and Newark has even more.
But of course the jobs to go with this so-called affordable housing simply are not there, or here, but over there in the Meadowlands. The outcome should be interesting--we are having a rally around this issue and a few other issues on Thursday evening, October 23, 7:30 PM at Ascension Church in Paramus. You are invited! There could be fireworks, I don't know. But keeping the poorer people invisible is quite the thing in most new developments in New Jersey.
It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate between the Meadowlands scenario and today's gospel reading. All of us are uncomfortable with selling what we own and giving it to the poor. We challenge, "Does Jesus want simply to create more poor?" To which Jesus might reply, "What do you have that I don't have?" He might cite houses, families, cars, and the like, and we would quickly be on the defensive.
In St. John's long past people actually would include the church in their wills. Are you doing so? The cost of keeping up this big facility is staggering. It was built and attended by executive types right up to the end of the Newark riots, but now those people have moved away and died off. And we the remnant are left with big bills and little income to keep the ministry here alive. It will take a series of miracles to keep afloat. We now have no parish secretary and a very part time sexton, and that is the gamut of the weekday staff. We have a few others helping on Sundays, so we look like a prospering parish, but in reality we are constantly struggling to make ends meet.
We feed hundreds of hungry people each month. And now we are challenged by the burgeoning numbers of homeless sitting on our doorsteps. I counted at least nine last week at about 2 PM on Wednesday. And they were begging me for food, not money, when I went out to mail a letter. I must say, I think their poverty is at the danger level, and it is not even cold here yet. Two churches in more wealthy suburbs are sending over bread and groceries, but housing is squarely being ignored. We are about to get our first Habitat house built over on Catherine Street--come to the Walkathon Saturday, October 25, at 1 PM to help us with the funding of another house on the other side of the two lots. Or you can at least pledge to help us by signing our pledge forms and making a donation. But still we are not making much of a dent in the seemingly perennial housing shortage.
Over 2,000 people are on the sign up for Section Eight housing this year as has been the case for the past ten years. The city can't seem to make a dent in the number - about 150 homes are rehabilitated or built each year, and about 150 new people are added to the list of those needing subsidized housing; it is an unending problem. And this year we have already seen all available shelters both here, Plainfield, and Newark fill up before the end of August.
So our clergy group here in town have been challenged to come up with ways to help with the crisis once the temperatures hit the "Code Blue" level, temperatures below 29 degrees or 32 degrees with precipitation where people will simply begin to freeze to death. The first person died last year living on the steps of Epworth Methodist Church. We are wondering how many more we will find dying on our steps right here at St. John's. So we need your help. Any warm clothes would be a blessing; layers of clothing protect a person for a while. But eventually the body's heat will be insufficient to ward off the cold.
If one is already living on panhandling, about five to ten dollars a day, the extra cost of housing will be impossible--the cheapest hotels around here cost at least $45 per night. So we are at a junction. Our insurance premiums will go up if we begin to act as a shelter, in the range of a thousand dollars per person. That is nearly what it will cost to put a person in a cheap motel. So we are in a bit of a quandary--how to house freezing people who will be right outside our doors. If you have any good ideas we are listening. But selling what we have and giving it to the poor seems to be the best alternative so far.
Martin Luther said, "God divided the hand into fingers so the money would slip through." One suggestion has been to ask for extra cash donations every say second Sunday of the month such as today. So if you wan t to help right today, just put your cash donation in the plate in addition to your pledge envelope and we will see how much that will bring in over the winter. It may or may not be enough to spare a life, but it is at least worth the try.
Rev. Chris Lockley, a Presbyterian minister in Australia, passed along a story set in India from Anthony de Mello's book, "Song of the Bird". It seems a holy man reached the outskirts of a village and had just settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone." "What stone?" the holy man asked. The villager said, "Last night I had a dream that if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk I should find a holy man who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich forever." The holy man rummaged in his bag and pulled out a stone. "This is probably the one," he said, as he handed over the stone to the villager. "I found it in a forest path some days ago. You may certainly have it." The villager gazed at the stone in wonder. It was a diamond, probably the largest diamond in the world, for it was as big as a person's head. He took the stone and walked away. All night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep. Next day at the crack of dawn he woke the holy man and said, "Give me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give away this diamond so easily."
If you have more than ten dollars a day to spend, you are probably in the top ninety percent of the world in income. There are hundreds of adults and children dying somewhere each day of starvation and of diseases that could be cured for less than two dollars. It would be good for this level of poverty not to reach our doorsteps, but the key is how we respond today and for the rest of this winter.
Mother Theresa, in her book, "A Gift from God", writes,
"We all long for heaven where [God] is,
but we have it in our power to be in heaven with [God] right now,
to be happy with [God] at this very moment,
loving as [God] loves,
helping as [God] helps,
giving as [God] gives,
serving as [God] serves,
rescuing as [God] rescues,
being with [God] for all the twenty-four hours, touching [God] in [God's]
distressing disguise."
May our hearts be softened to the poor. May we give, advocate, and rescue as necessary. Through Christ I pray. Amen.
(Comments to Joe at joe.parrish@ecunet.org.)
Church Website: http://fm2.forministry.com/Church/Home.asp?SiteId=07201SJEC