On a November night back in 2019, Owen and I drove into the United Church of Jaffrey Parking Lot. It was late – 9 or 10pm, I think. The forecast had called for rain, and it was not wrong – the air beneath the parking lot flood light trembled with mist that was quickly turning to rain.
A man was standing under the awning of the Parish Hall.
That man, standing at the edge of the floodlight’s pale halo, trying to keep out of the rain… it was about the loneliest thing I have ever seen.
We knew about the man. Owen and I had come with the intention of having a word with him. The cold weather had come in earnest, and he had shown up with it, taking advantage of our open door policy to sleep in our pews.
The stir of reports about him began the day before. Brenda was the first to stumble on him asleep in the pews – June Sheldon came across food waste left behind in the parlor. Kathleen spotted him sitting alone in the Gazebo in the middle of the day. I admit that, at first, I was not overly concerned about it. If a homeless man came into the sanctuary to survive, that felt right to me. In the scheme of things it’s worth a little inconvenience in order to save a life.
This was not the first time such a thing had come to pass. I had heard stories of homeless people taking refuge in our pews in the past, during Em Preston’s ministry. In a way, I thought of it as part of the calling of our church. We were committed to leaving our doors open, I thought, not only to provide a sanctuary for people in spiritual crisis, but also for people seeking shelter to survive the sub-zero nights that are frequent in these parts during the cold months.
That said, I knew that we could not keep such a guest for long. And, sure enough, it wasn’t very long at all before the situation turned into a very real problem.
The man was a little scary.
So as we drove up in the rain, I was torn.
I wanted this homeless man to survive the cold nights, but at the same time, I knew that, without a doubt, my first responsibility was to the safety and well-being of my parishioners.
That fact was, I didn’t know this man. What if I was indecisive and he did harm one of my people? If that happened, I would be held responsible. If I let my desire to be a“good Christian” blind me to a possible threat, I might leave my people exposed to a very real danger. Being a “bleeding heart” do-gooder is all very well until someone gets hurt.
Clearly my allegiance, and responsibility to my people was paramount.
But it was also true that, as fellow human being, and more to the point, as a Christian, I also had an undeniable responsibility to my unfortunate neighbor – a man who, but for the grace of God – could easily be myself.
I imagined myself in his worn out shoes.
If I was outside in the cold rain and snow, was in danger of freezing to death, and I came upon an open church door, wouldn’t I go in?
Yes, I would.
Owen parked and we got out.
This was an ethical dilemma – a problem that has no morally acceptable response. No matter what course of action I chose, I was certain to violate my sense of what is right.
**
Each year the New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness publishes a document that is called “The State of Homelessness in New Hampshire.” I looked over the 2024 report, which was released a couple of weeks ago, on December 16th, 2024.
A statistic that was frequently discussed in this document was something known as the Point-in-Time (or PIT) count. The count is named “point in time” – because a specific night in January is chosen, when New Hampshire (and a number of other states too) records the number of people who are “experiencing homelessness” in the state.
In January 2023, the results of this so-called PIT count were upsetting.
The number leapt up from 1,605 in 2022 to 2,441 in 2023. This was a 52.1% increase.
Other states also registered PIT count increases – but the average increase was 12%.
It’s a data snapshot, but it’s alarming. Between January 2022 and January 2023, the number of homeless in New Hampshire increased at a rate that was more than 4 times the national average! “In terms of annual percentage change, the report concluded: NH’s population of people experiencing homelessness is far outpacing national growth.”
**
But you may be wondering why I am preaching about Homelessness this morning.
What does all this have to do with worshipping God?
It’s an excellent question.
Religion, I would argue, becomes urgently real to us when it strikes at our deepest most essential human concerns. This deep, essential humanity is, in turn, most urgently felt when we are in pain.
This is manifestly the case when it comes to our Christian faith, which follows the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, who was, as Isaiah prophesied “a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.”
If someone is in pain, Jesus is there. Against all odds, Jesus feeds the hungry. He walks the long and dusty roads of Galilee healing the afflicted along the way. His parables tell of a man being beaten and left to die in the gutter; of a prodigal boy reduced to eating pig slop in the middle of a field. Jesus breaks all social and political barriers in his effort to bring sight to the blind, comfort to the downtrodden. Jesus offers hope to the meek, forgiveness to the sinner, grace to the undeserving. He weeps for the dead.
Most dramatically Jesus – who was somehow both human and divine – allowed himself to be executed in the most brutal, torturous way that can be imagined.
He shared our suffering.
Our faith has this symbolic crucible at its core – this painful truth that strikes us to our very essence…
God came to us,
God offered us love and forgiveness,
and in return,
we killed him.
Biblical scholars are quick to compare the opening of the Book of John – which Liesie just read for us – with the opening of the book of Genesis. When, in Genesis 1, God creates the the world out of the void, God does so by speaking:
God said , let there be light.
John intends for us to understand that the Word of creation, is the Word that appears in this passage.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John brings this Word into the world again – giving it flesh. This is God’s son…
Jesus
And then there is verse 14:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
The Greek word that is translated here as the word lived is eskēnōsen a version of the Greek verb skenos. This word has a sense that is similar to the English word encamp – it suggests that the person who lived among us, has pitched his tent among us.
Hence, an alternate translation of the verse might be:
And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us,
When God arrives, God does not come in a castle. The eternal Word that becomes flesh doesn’t even get a shack!
God pitches his tent among us!
We know already that Mary and Joseph were turned out of doors, and sent around back to the barn.
We know already, that the Son of God was, for this reason, born in a barn, and that his first bed was a feeding trough.
We know already, that at the end of his life Jesus would suffer the demeaning death of a criminal, nailed to a cross.
Now, with this passage, we are presented with another surprising notion.
…the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us,
For much of his life Jesus was what we might describe as homeless.
Tired out, at the end of a long day, Jesus describes himself, in the 8th Chapter of Matthew, saying:
“Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
**
The man, who I will call Tom, was an Iraq vet. He actually had a job – he worked down at the local McDonald’s. When his girlfriend threw him out, he had nowhere to go after his shift.
Could he go home to his parents?
No. He couldn’t.
He’d found different places to sleep, but soon he would be seen, and each time this happened, the homeowners or the business proprietors would call the police and place a “No Trespass” order against him.
So he came to the church.
Owen and I motioned Tom over to the Gazebo. Owen gave him a sleeping bag that Sarah Ellis had contributed to the cause.
“You can keep the sleeping bag,” I said.
He thanked me.
“You can stay here tonight, and we will talk again in the morning.”
He agreed.
Let me be clear – I am not romanticizing homelessness. I am not saying that you should leave your home in order to follow Jesus. Nor am I saying that homeless people are closer to God than you and I are.
So what am I saying?
I’m saying that as the Messiah – as a person who is God among us – everything – everything about his life has symbolic significance. Everything about his story moves quickly to the core concerns of our humanity.
Incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God was not fooling around.
If God is all powerful, surely God could have arranged for a house to live in…
No?
No.
No house.
God pitched his tent among us.
If Word was to become flesh, the Word was going to have the full experience of being human.
This brings Christ’s life into urgent significance for you and and me.
If he wanted power, sure, he could’ve arranged for a Florida estate.
But his goal was not power – his goal was to be among us completely. To show us the way to the love of God.
Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, said:
Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton… remember, there is the face of Christ.
I believe that Christ chose homelessness because it confronts us with a depth of pain. Religion, when it is relevant, is not shy to place us in an ethical dilemma.
Are we willing to risk our own safety for the safety of the stranger?
In our society this is, in reality, almost impossible.
Ultimately the United Church of Jaffrey, like everyone else in town, took a “No trespass order” against Tom, and sent him on his way. I went down to the police station and did it myself.
I have no idea what happened to him.
But this, I know…
The full human experience contained two things — suffering, and love.
In every instance, when Christ was confronted with suffering, his answer was love.
This is both awful and redeemingl.
It is awful because love got him killed.
It is redeeming because his horrible death was not the end of the story.
God would not let the story end there.
Because death does not answer anything.
When we are struck to the core with suffering. When we are confronted with ethical dilemmas… the story does not end until it finds love.
Love is the only meaningful answer.
Amen.
Amen.