The current issue of the ELCA’s magazine Living Lutheran showed up in my mailbox this week, and as I skimmed its pages, I saw a familiar face. Pastor Emily Norris who once was my daughter Emma’s youth leader at Augsburg in Winston-Salem was ordained a little over a year ago, during the pandemic, on Zoom and the magazine was telling the story of the community she leads now.
The community, called The Dwelling, is a collaborative effort between the Lutheran and Moravian churches in Winston-Salem to create a community designed for people experiencing homelessness. When Emily was serving at Augsburg she was part of their ministry of providing overflow shelter in the winter, accommodating people when the other shelters filled up. And now the Dwelling provides free mobile showers as its anchor ministry but they also provide clothing and toiletries and now they are also helping renovate affordable housing units in the city for those in need. And in 2020 they rented a space where they now have regular Sunday worship. (Read more at Living Lutheran.)
It’s a great story, but it was a story I already knew. I had participated in Emily’s ordination online and have watched the ministry there grow.
What was new to me was John Whitely’s story. Johnny had been one of the men who stayed at the overflow shelter and he had met Emily there. And when he was found in the shelter’s restroom after an overdose and revived, he thought he’d burned yet another bridge and he wouldn’t be welcomed back.
As an aside, I hear this a lot from people in our community right here. Sometimes they have behaved badly and for the sake of good order and boundaries, they are banned from returning to the feeding ministries or shelters, but not always. Sometimes soured relationships with others create barriers that keep them isolated. Sometimes shame cuts them off from the very places that might provide a meal, safety and maybe even a community.
Anyway, when John saw Emily the next winter she asked if he’d be back at the overflow shelter, and he was surprised he was welcome, or even wanted there. But he was and since the Dwelling opened, he’s been involved there, even serving on their council, and John was baptized last year. As Pastor Emily says in the article, [The Dwelling] is creating a community that accepts the messiness of being human.”
The welcome that John found at the shelter and at the Dwelling was a welcome that he wasn’t entitled to have by birthright or by his own efforts. He hadn’t earned it. In fact some places would have written him off. Instead, what he received was unmerited grace born out of the ‘spirit of adoption’ that Paul writes about in our reading from his letter to the Romans.
There he says,
you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (Romans 8:15-16)
The desire for belonging is universal. God created us for relationship and forms us for community, and by faith, baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are joined into God’s family, becoming God’s own children, co-heirs with Jesus Christ, God’s Son. We no longer see God as a distant deity, or an aloof clockmaker who has set the world in motion and watches from afar. Instead, I imagine that God watches us like we watch a beloved child riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time, playing a sport they love or reading a poem they’ve risked sharing with us. God delights in each of us.
In addition to belonging in God’s family, Luther said in his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, that “calling on God, our Father” means we “come to believe God is truly our Father and we are truly God’s children, in order that we may ask God boldly and with complete confidence just as loving children ask their loving father.”
Love doesn’t always mean saying yes, but it does mean listening. God promises to hear our prayers - our rejoicing and our sorrow. We are not crying into an empty void. When we pray, out loud or silently, with words or with sighs, we are in the presence of a loving parent who knows us and wants good for us.
And not only us, but also for our siblings in Christ, in our congregation and also in the world around us.
The community, called The Dwelling, is a collaborative effort between the Lutheran and Moravian churches in Winston-Salem to create a community designed for people experiencing homelessness. When Emily was serving at Augsburg she was part of their ministry of providing overflow shelter in the winter, accommodating people when the other shelters filled up. And now the Dwelling provides free mobile showers as its anchor ministry but they also provide clothing and toiletries and now they are also helping renovate affordable housing units in the city for those in need. And in 2020 they rented a space where they now have regular Sunday worship. (Read more at Living Lutheran.)
It’s a great story, but it was a story I already knew. I had participated in Emily’s ordination online and have watched the ministry there grow.
What was new to me was John Whitely’s story. Johnny had been one of the men who stayed at the overflow shelter and he had met Emily there. And when he was found in the shelter’s restroom after an overdose and revived, he thought he’d burned yet another bridge and he wouldn’t be welcomed back.
As an aside, I hear this a lot from people in our community right here. Sometimes they have behaved badly and for the sake of good order and boundaries, they are banned from returning to the feeding ministries or shelters, but not always. Sometimes soured relationships with others create barriers that keep them isolated. Sometimes shame cuts them off from the very places that might provide a meal, safety and maybe even a community.
Anyway, when John saw Emily the next winter she asked if he’d be back at the overflow shelter, and he was surprised he was welcome, or even wanted there. But he was and since the Dwelling opened, he’s been involved there, even serving on their council, and John was baptized last year. As Pastor Emily says in the article, [The Dwelling] is creating a community that accepts the messiness of being human.”
The welcome that John found at the shelter and at the Dwelling was a welcome that he wasn’t entitled to have by birthright or by his own efforts. He hadn’t earned it. In fact some places would have written him off. Instead, what he received was unmerited grace born out of the ‘spirit of adoption’ that Paul writes about in our reading from his letter to the Romans.
There he says,
you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (Romans 8:15-16)
The desire for belonging is universal. God created us for relationship and forms us for community, and by faith, baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are joined into God’s family, becoming God’s own children, co-heirs with Jesus Christ, God’s Son. We no longer see God as a distant deity, or an aloof clockmaker who has set the world in motion and watches from afar. Instead, I imagine that God watches us like we watch a beloved child riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time, playing a sport they love or reading a poem they’ve risked sharing with us. God delights in each of us.
In addition to belonging in God’s family, Luther said in his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, that “calling on God, our Father” means we “come to believe God is truly our Father and we are truly God’s children, in order that we may ask God boldly and with complete confidence just as loving children ask their loving father.”
Love doesn’t always mean saying yes, but it does mean listening. God promises to hear our prayers - our rejoicing and our sorrow. We are not crying into an empty void. When we pray, out loud or silently, with words or with sighs, we are in the presence of a loving parent who knows us and wants good for us.
And not only us, but also for our siblings in Christ, in our congregation and also in the world around us.
I met a woman last week who shared a story of the one time she heard God speak to her audibly. She worked in Gaffney, and, like many of us, she drove a regular route to and from her workplace. She remembers seeing one man at one of the crossroads or intersections whenever she passed through. You know him. Well, maybe not him exactly, but he’s the person you see with the cardboard sign at the corner of Earl Road, the one who stands across from Chik-Fil-A at the corner of 74 where the traffic from Walmart comes out or the one who stands at the offramp from the interstate. Anyway, this man was always there when she passed by, and as she drove, she’d say a prayer for his safety. And then one day he wasn’t there. And she was worried for him, and feeling the burden on her heart for him, she spoke to God, asking, “God, why do I feel so anxious for this person I have never met?” and she said she heard God say, “Because he’s your brother.”
A person she’d never met, and never did meet, but a person loved by God all the same. In the same way we are called to love and extend God’s welcome to one another, seeing each other as siblings in Christ.
Let us pray…
God, our Father,
Thank you for making us your children, co-heirs in your Kingdom with your Son. Help us embrace this spirit of adoption and the belonging that comes from being in your family. Empower us by your Holy Spirit and open our eyes to see every person first as your child and our sibling. Place the burden of their welfare on our hearts and help us live our lives in ways that reflect your grace and mercy to the world. Amen.
A person she’d never met, and never did meet, but a person loved by God all the same. In the same way we are called to love and extend God’s welcome to one another, seeing each other as siblings in Christ.
Let us pray…
God, our Father,
Thank you for making us your children, co-heirs in your Kingdom with your Son. Help us embrace this spirit of adoption and the belonging that comes from being in your family. Empower us by your Holy Spirit and open our eyes to see every person first as your child and our sibling. Place the burden of their welfare on our hearts and help us live our lives in ways that reflect your grace and mercy to the world. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment