Category: Word on the Street

On his 18^thbirthday, a young man found himself scouring the wooded areas of Fredericksburg for a campsite.

His relationship with his adoptive parents had never gone well, but now that he was officially an adult they no longer had legal responsibility for him. More complicated, however, was his myriad of medical issues that were about to get much worse.

Six months later, he waited patiently in a hospital emergency room. The look on the nurse’s face in review of his symptoms said a lot, but we still had another excruciating 20 minutes before the doctor would come to make it official. Finally, the curtain screeched to the side and a white coat appeared in the doorway. As a very young man, our friend was experiencing kidney failure.

Dialysis, three times a week, would begin immediately. But he had no insurance.

The treatment would make him so exhausted that getting to and from on the public bus system was impossible. Cabs were an option, but he had no income.

He had dietary restrictions, but nowhere to cook a meal and barely enough food stamps to buy a few days of the high dollar items he required. Plus, healthy eating habits were about as much of a priority as that of his other teenage peers.

Then, there was the sanitation of his outdoor living situation—not a great mix with frequent blood draws and IV infusions.

Like many Micah supports, this fellow would be housed and helped to secure income enough to pay the rent. But if there is anything we have learned about people’s needs over the years, it is that tangible and structural solutions to human problems will never be enough.

Practically, how could we expect any different? Don’t all of us need the accompaniment of others in the throws of complex medical issues? Aren’t our transitions to adulthood far more stable in the context of supportive communities?

Spiritually, it is how God relates to us and what he expects of our relationships to others. Consider the ways that original Christians offered hospitality, especially to strangers and the most marginalized. People were not sent to the local social service agency, professional or system guru in town, they were welcomed into community homes, offered food, shelter, healing and protection. Shared meals, chores and spaces brought about a relational reciprocity that left no person they encountered without something to carry with them on the next steps of their journey.

While we didn’t exactly take this young man home with us, the people God brought into his life made a big difference in creating home for him where he was.

Volunteers came out of the woodwork to offer rides until his insurance got in place to cover transportation.

Two church friends entered his life and hung out in the messiness. Like any good support system, they navigated bills, coaxed him to do his laundry and battled through the grocery store. But they also took on the more personal things. He was included in family gatherings, invited to church picnics and even earned a buddy to make difficult selections in the video game store.

Most telling to the value of these supports, however, was the moment it came time to help our friend pursue a new kidney. Getting the doctor’s approval, finding the resource responsible for the transplant list was only part of the requirement. Without a guarantee for transportation, after care and follow up support they would not put him on the list.

“Surely,” I asked of the woman in charge of the transplant list. “Surely, this is not the first person who has ever needed a kidney, but did not have support system.”

Certainly not, she explained. But those who could not meet the requirement usually stayed on dialysis the rest of their lives or died.

Not interested in a death sentence for our young friend, the community that had built up around him began to strategize. Rides could be arranged. Care could be provided. People would be there, for whatever it took to get this fellow to the next phase of life.

It would be nearly three years later that the plan would be called into action. A kidney came available in Richmond, and he was sitting in the hospital awaiting the transplant before the rest of those who had prepared to assist even knew it was happening.

On a Saturday evening, our friend went under the knife. By Sunday, coincidentally an Easter morning, he arose with freedom from dialysis and new hope for his journey forward.

While past experiences had challenged this young man’s faith and compromised his trust in support systems, he was not deprived in this moment of an encounter with the risen Christ. He saw it in the man who channeled the kidney transplant experience of his own grandchild, and cared for him as if he were his own. He saw it in the friend who helped with laundry, the grocery shopping and many other small tasks that his physical condition would never have allowed. And he continues to see Jesus in so many others who have stepped up to love him through the trips to Richmond, post-operative care and ultimate realization that he finally has a normal chance at life.

In Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Christine Pohl describes what has happened in our abandonment of this kind of hospitality. Professionals and service systems may have made society more efficient in its “caregiving” or effective in social response, she says. But it has taken us away from the connectivity that makes healing possible.

Christ’s call to hospitality is a “fundamental expression of the Gospel” story. If we believe in it, Pohl says, our lives and our communities, not just the structures we can afford to set up, will become and remain an equal, if not greater response.

In the second grade, I wrote an award-winning story entitled “The search for the sky’s end.” It began, of course, with a princess sitting on her balcony.

Some birds flew by and, of all things, she began to wonder where the sky ended.

She called her guards who set out to find the answer.

They climbed a tree, sought out a fortune teller, went to a wiseman and even the royal ministers, but they found no answers.

By this point, the princess was very sad. She was royalty. She had given an order. Yet no one could find an answer.

In Mark 8: 31-38 we find a similarly impossible question. Why would God send a messiah, his son, only to suffer, be rejected and ultimately killed at the hands of the very oppressors he was supposed to be saving the Jewish people from?

To further capture the profound depth of this question, let us remember that the dominant religion of gospel times was Judaism. At the center of Jewish theology is a promise that God made with a 99-year old Abraham way back in Genesis 17.

“I have made you a father of many nations,” God told him. “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you and kings shall come from you.”

Abraham would, at 99, become father to Isaac, who later conceived a number of sons whose families, the Jews, would become known as God’s chosen people. With this covenant came an understanding that, no matter what happened, God would see to it that they eventually regained possession of “all the land in which they had become a stranger.”

This covenant would evolve as it was reiterated through Moses and eventually David, from whom God promised to select a descendant to reign over this long-awaited kingdom.

The Messiah that the Jews came to imagine, however, looked quite different than the Jesus that showed up. The Messiah was supposed to be a political-military deliverer, anointed like a King and elevated in such a position that he might judge according to the commandments of Jewish law.

He was to dominate, not serve.

He was to rule, not die.

And for at least some of the disciples, that was what they thought they had signed up for—a religious movement that would ultimately overthrow an empire.

Matthew 8:31 is the first heart to heart we see on what this “messiah-ship” not only means for Jesus, but what it means for those who follow.

Suffering, rejection and death is so far from what Peter had in mind that he pulls Jesus aside for a one-on-one.

To which, Jesus pushes back, “Get behind me Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

The things of men—domination, power, deliverance.

The things of God—suffering, rejection, death.

The kingdom Jesus described to his disciples is about as upside down as the elf who finally appeared in my princess story to say, “I hear you want to know where the sky ends. Follow me, and I’ll help.”

“Follow me” into the unknown of suffering, rejection and risk of death, is exactly what Jesus asks of those closest to him and all who seek a similar closeness in subsequent times.

“Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it,” Jesus tells the disciples in verse 34 and 35.

Leading up to that moment, the disciples had witnessed the healing of blindness, deafness and paralysis and much more.

But as much as they want desperately to be part of this story, this moment in Mark 8 is their first realization that it was not achievable without a cost.

As we know, the disciples would have great difficulty following Jesus to the cross. Yet, the hope Jesus walked them through paralleled with the process of his own suffering changed them, such that they could become the next generation in pursuit of the kingdom God described in the new covenant. They would go on to carry the message and the miracles to many nations. Some of them would be imprisoned, have moments of their own suffering or even die in pursuit of the mission.

Perhaps then, God sent a messiah, his son, to suffer, be rejected and die so that we might truly know what it was to be loved and show love for one another.

I know that in my almost 11 years of working with the street homeless in our community, the suffering of our neighbors in need has taught me more about my own humanity, that of others and the love of our creator, in spite of it.   In the last month, I’ve shared some of those stories.

There’s the woman whose paranoid mind drove her away from family. It was a shared table at the community café our churches have put together that set a course for a new start.

I shared the lady whose years of homelessness and abusive relationships had left us wondering about her well-being. The opportunity to help those who found themselves where she once was brought her back into our lives as a pizza donor and employer of another homeless guest.

I talked about the man whose previously productive life was extraordinarily disrupted by a massive stroke that left him paralyzed. He found healing in those who stopped long enough to notice he existed and get him the help he needed.

I told of young man who found himself on the street after his mom passed away. After years of getting in trouble and feeling lost without a family, he rediscovered wholeness, a support system and a permanent job within the bounds of the community café’s job training program.

And then there’s the lady who pushed shopping carts around the Massaponax corridor for more than a year. With relentless efforts of the community, she was coaxed indoors, helped with an income and is gradually learning to trust people again.

Just as Jesus shared parables with his disciples and gave them opportunities to witness the miracles available to the suffering, I share these stories in pursuit of a shared hope.

The challenge is whether we see ourselves, our own times of suffering, in those stories, as well.

As for my Princess, following the elf brought her magically onto the back of a bird, the creature who most understood the composition of the sky. They flew over mountains, valleys, lakes and houses. She had to see the whole world before she finally realized that the sky, in fact, never ends.

Sometimes I think that’s how we are with Jesus. We have to see the whole world and someone has to prove it to us before we’re actually willing to pick up our cross and follow. In the process, we miss the miracles and the answers God is manifesting within our very own lives and the people he brings in our path.

The community had watched a small African-American woman push shopping carts between three different corners of the Massaponax corridor for nearly a year. Passersby had showered her with so many sundry items that her load had grown from a single half shuttle to a train of three full-sized buggies.

To no avail, even Micah’s outreach team had tried time and again to lure her into services and coordinate help for her deeper needs. She always offered a gracious “no thank you” and encouraged that the help be given to the many others in need.

Then, she went viral.

A simple Facebook post unearthed the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who had seen or connected with this woman in their travels. One woman, however—the one behind the post—had rested her hope upon doing something more, brought the right people together and set a path for something significant to happen.

For months, the woman visited the shopping cart lady. Sometimes she would bring food. Other times it was an item she requested. Soon she earned the privilege of having the lady in her car and making short trips to the store or a local restaurant.

Each time, the woman would connect with Micah, strategize over the next step and go back to push the relationship a little bit further.

Eventually, enough trust was built that Micah’s team could join the visits and offer support toward housing.

The first time she agreed to a hotel, the shopping carts slept inside while the shopping cart lady stood on the nearby street corner contemplating what it would mean to be indoors. The next time she spent a few hours in the room and some weeks later she finally decided to stay.

As the shopping cart lady would later reveal, she wasn’t quite sure that going indoors would be a good thing. “When all of you decide to go away,” she said, speaking of us who had spent so much time trying to help. “It will be really hard to adjust to being outdoors again.”

Not only were we not going away, we assured her, but there was a whole community of people within the churches of Fredericksburg waiting to love her whenever she was ready.

A few months later, we handed the shopping cart lady a set of keys to a one-bedroom apartment. She and her carts moved in that day and slowly but surely she has allowed the addition of minor pieces of furniture.

The coat she wore all the time has come off. She no longer needs it in case she ends up back outdoors.

She sleeps at night. It may not be in a bed, but the recliner her community friend arranged for her makes an awful nice spot for a solid rest.

Her carts are less and less needed, as she has a bag for the important things and the rest stays safely locked indoors. Well—except for the one inconspicuously hiding behind a curtain in her room.

Sometimes people in need come to the village and it’s our job to welcome them in. In this case, the village had to find the person and find another way to unlock the door.

A young man showed up at Micah shortly after his mom passed away. As a senior in high school, he had been her primary caregiver, but when she died he was left without a place to live and no other support system. On the street, he quickly picked up life skills from others who had been homeless longer, but that also led him into trouble at times. For a few years, he managed to hold a job and an apartment with another homeless man. But the unresolved grief from his mother’s death kept sneaking up on him and his lack of coping skills often left him struggling to maintain employment and pay bills. He landed back on the street this year, but the churches had set up a new opportunity through Micah where he could learn to work in a restaurant.  He became part of the inaugural class at the new Community Cafe. He attended weekly empowerment classes, practiced his culinary skills and earned a Servesafe certificate and a job reference. Under the supervision of the cafe manager, He sharpened his skills, but he also gained a friend and mentor who pushed him to be better and helped him believe in himself. He now works full-time at a local restaurant and is looking for an apartment. After graduation, he continued to volunteer in the cafe because it became his community. It remains a safe place that he belongs, people believe in him, he gets to contribute and have meaningful relationships, which he says make him fell whole for the first time in a very long while.

It cost $600 to put this young man through the café training program.  You can help more people benefit from this program by designating your gift as a “café scholarship.”

Last summer, I came across a man who had curled up on a bed of mulch in one of the church parking lots because he couldn’t move very well from place to place between the cold weather shelter drop off and pick up each day.

As I would later learn, the man’s life had been rudely disrupted just six years prior. He’d spent much of his life running a flooring company and being responsible for himself, until he got sick. While he survived a series of massive strokes, his left eye went blind, wrist curled into a ball and leg went completely dead, such that he could only drag it slowly behind him.

Fiercely independent, he refused the most logical solution—assisted living. But his minimal social security left him grossly deficient on income enough to rent an apartment and manage his extensive needs. The longer he spent on the streets, the angrier he became and more he scraped a narrow amount of joy from the bottom of a liquor bottle.

Intervening in this man’s circumstances would eventually require a lot of everyone involved in our ministry. Volunteers would pick him up and bring him to us when he got stuck somewhere in the community. Many hours would be spent in the ER. The phone would ring late at night because he had fallen somewhere and ended up in the hospital.

He would make three laps through our respite shelter before finally landing in safe and stable housing. But do you know, the thing this man remembers most about his journey off the street is the people from the churches of Fredericksburg that stopped long enough to notice he existed and get him the help he needed.

It was one of the coldest days in close to a decade. The temperature at mid afternoon had hardly crested the teens.

Worse yet, just about every public location in town was closed for the New Year’s holiday—a miserable set of circumstances for people who have no home.

About 25 displaced people huddled in a church fellowship hall, gleaning the heat of a functioning HVAC system. Some claimed a few square feet of floor space for a mid morning cat nap. Others glued themselves to the television for the latest reports on how much longer the winter blast would last. Card games ensued and table conversations transpired, but when lunchtime rolled around everyone hoped for a warmth in their bellies to match their now heated exterior.

As we sometimes do on days that require a little extra emergency shelter, I made a plea to a local Pizza shop for some lunchtime goodness.

“I’m with a local ministry that works with the homeless,” I started out. “We have about two dozen folks hunkered down in one of our churches today and I wondered if you could work a deal with us on a few pizzas.”

“You are with Micah?” the lady asked. “You have no idea how much you helped me once before.”

To be forthcoming, I had no idea who I was talking to on the phone, but we made an arrangement, and thirty minutes later I showed up to collect the pies.

The woman who greeted me at the door was vaguely familiar. As I pulled away, I ran her name through my head again and again.

“How did I know her,” I pondered. She was not someone that we had housed. I did not recall any significant interventions on our part. I knew that she was someone whose journey we had been a part of, but could not place the story.

I was so stuck on the story that when I got back to the office, I proceeded to compare notes with my team.

“I know who that is,” one of them said, and then they reminded me of many twisted waters we had forged with the young woman.

For many years, she had been in and out of our lives, using the winter shelter, eating at community dinners, grabbing a bag lunch, showering in our building and picking up a tent and sleeping bag from time to time. The last time we saw her, we had problem-solved an abusive relationship. After connecting her to the right people and making sure she was safe more than a year ago, we hadn’t heard another word.

Now, here she was practically managing a local pizza joint, using her own power and influence to care for those who remained in a spot she once experienced herself.

As I had picked up the pizzas, the young woman had taken pride in telling me about her climb to leadership, her stable housing, the rekindling of relationship with her family and how another Micah guest that she had helped to get a job would be starting that afternoon.

Sheltering, in her case, had clearly been much more than a roof over her head and a safe place to be. It was the people of the Fredericksburg churches who surrounded her in the struggle with love, support and a few things she needed, even when she didn’t know what was next.

So transformative were those sheltering arms on her journey, that she knew to do the same for others when she reached a point in her own stability that she could do the same for someone else.

Pancakes. Why Pancakes? It’s Fat Tuesday!

In Christian history, Fat Tuesday has been celebrated because, at one time, meats, eggs, milk, and fats (sweets) were given up for the six-week season before Easter Sunday.

That season is called Lent. This year, Lent begins on February 14^th and continues to Easter Sunday.

Something is given up by Christians for a season of time to remember what they take for granted.

Believe it or not, the value of Jesus can be what Christians take for granted.

Food, even pancakes, can be taken for granted when we get to eat all the time.

Jesus, when we take for granted what he did for us on the cross, can be taken for granted, too.

So, we stuff ourselves on Fat Tuesday to call attention to feeling full.

Then, we go hungry, giving up something and replacing it with feeling full in prayer and Scripture reading.

We spend the season filling ourselves up with knowing God’s goodness in Jesus.

When Easter Sunday comes, we feast again! We celebrate!

In the return of what we’ve given up for Lent and the prayers and Scripture readings we’ve done getting to know Jesus better, we realize that we have taken a journey with Jesus through our bodies and minds.

We have walked with him from his experience in the desert after his baptism, into his life with others, on to Jerusalem, then to the cross, leading to the tomb, and, finally, to resurrection.

So, that’s why pancakes.

Having pancakes today, then, invites you to go with us on a spiritual journey, getting to know Jesus and yourself better.

It’s your choice, but we welcome you to join us.

If you want to know more, if you want to participate with us, ask the meal greeter how.

Easter’s coming!

Throughout the Lenten season Micah’s collaboration of churches will join for ecumenical worship at noon on Wednesdays. A special gathering will take place on Good Friday and Easter morning as indicated below.

February 21 @12pm
St. Mary Catholic Church
Rev. Larry Davies

February 28 @12pm
Presbyterian Church
Rev. Aaron Dobynes

March 7 @12pm
St. George’s Episcopal Church
Rev. Anthony Parrish

March 14 @12pm
Shiloh Old Site
Rev. Kent Rahm

March 21 @12pm
Fredericksburg UMC
Father John Mosiman

March 30 @1:45pm

Joy did not even begin to describe the feelings I had the day an old friend walked back into Micah.

Many years ago, she had spent close to a decade on the street believing her family had been taken away from her. She was a college graduate. She had been a substitute at my local elementary school, and her children had played field hockey with my sister. But in her season of homelessness she was well known on the streets.

She could often be found crocheting hats to earn a little bit of cash. If you stopped just long enough to chat, she just might capture you in a mesmerizing tale of how her family would some day come and rescue her from the terrible circumstances she had been forced to live in for the sake of everyone’s protection.

Then one day, they did.

Her brother, who lived in another state came and got her, helped her get the treatment she had needed for a long time and she got well enough that she could return to the community, find a place to live and begin to rekindle a relationship with her children. She did so well that she even picked up a part-time job and started cleaning business.

But she got sick again, walked out of her apartment one day and disappeared.

It was more than a year later that she turned up again—homeless and refusing to speak to any of us. I had almost given up on our outreach attempts when I walked into the lobby one day, and there she was.

In our warm embrace, she told me of how tired, cold and hungry she had gotten. She knew that in her darkest moment, the churches of Fredericksburg could help, and she decided it was time to come back.

We had lunch that day together in the community café, a new restaurant-style eatery located that the Micah churches operate from the fellowship hall at Fredericksburg Baptist Church. Guests, whether they can pay or not, order from a menu, get served at tables and are invited to make a donation on their way out.

Over a Rueben sandwich and a glass of iced tea, my friend caught me up on all that had been going on—an expired ID, her hopes to re-establish income and plans to get back into housing. She asked about my family, our recent holiday trip and we reminisced how she made the sweet blue blanket that covered my newborn on his way home from the hospital.

A few days later, I sat busily typing away in my office when her sweet face appeared in my doorway.

“I just wondered,” she said. “Would you like to have lunch with me again today.”

A woman with no home, who sometimes did not even believe the people trying to help her were themselves, had been transformed over a meal and a little bit of company. When was the last time my friend got a chance to invite someone else to lunch, I wondered? Was it the food? Was it the quality time? Or was it simply a place she could finally belong?

In that moment, I gained a whole new appreciation for what feeding the hungry really means. Our meal that day was so much more than nourishment for our stomachs; it was a restoration of a relationship, sustenance for both of our souls.

The community Café is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11am to 2pm. All are welcome. Those interested in volunteering can attend one of our monthly volunteer orientations on fourth Fridays at 10am, 1016 Caroline St. or email [email protected] to schedule an alternate time.

My friend Carey says that loving our neighbor is not so different than a Sunday morning worship experience.

“Where else can all of God’s children show up, be fed and, as a result, be transformed?” she asks. “We don’t care what kind of car they drive, if there is money in the bank, what baggage they bring with them or if they can offer anything in return.”

Everyone comes to the church with hands out, she often continues, whether it is worship they attend or a need they hope to address. Some seek the spirit with their empty palms. For others, it is grace, forgiveness, hope or mercy. And yes, there are physical needs like food, shelter, medical care, income or housing, to which Christ’s body responds.

Whatever the reason that any of us come to the altar, there is a profound parallel in each of our stories. They all begin and end in the very same way, yet the space between can be a treacherous journey.

We all come to anticipate the joys, rewards and memories that any trip might bring. Hurts, sorrows and disappointments, however, should equally be anticipated. Through such experiences, we come to understand God’s wisdom in setting us on the path of life together.

Consider for a moment, the Samaritan story. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a twisted and rugged pass, labeled “the way of blood” because of robbers’ frequent attacks on travelers. It was a main thoroughfare journeyed for centuries by travelers, merchants, pilgrims and soldiers. Each person who set out to conquer this landscape began and ended their expedition at the same points of entry and exit. Not everyone, however, fared equally well along the way.

As Jesus explains in Luke 10: 25-37, a particular man was attacked by a band of robbers, left for dead, and ignored by at least two others traveling on the very same road. Another man, also on his way to Jericho for the very same reasons as hundreds before him, did not pass by the injured man. Instead, the man turned to see his fellow traveler, perhaps, even seeing himself.

As a Samaritan, the most unlikely hero in Jewish custom given a long-standing ethnic and racial divide, the man who turned to the injured traveler on the road knew the sting of indifference. Therefore, he chose to respond as he might have others do for his own struggles.

In the Samaritan’s eyes, the man on the side of the road is not just another unfortunate soul destined to succumb to inefficient infrastructure and lack of public safety on the ancient passageway. The injured man is another human who began and sought to end his journey at the very same place as others, including himself. Some difficulties along the way disrupted his journey and disordered his progress. Yet, he could continue on the road with the rest of the travelers in the caring company of another member of God’s creation.

All those who traveled from Jerusalem to Jericho had a destination in mind like each of one of us who comes to God in worship with our hopes, dreams, fears and needs. Just as trouble along the path disrupts the pursuits of the man in the biblical story, it is important to keep in mind that the person is not born broken. It is the struggles of the journey that can break a person. The journey of life is truly “the way of blood.”

Yet, when all seemed lost and the man on the roadside was hopelessly written off by two-thirds of those who encountered him, the Samaritan changed the story. He dressed the man’s wounds, hoisted him onto his donkey, carried him to an inn, and paid the innkeeper to care for him for as long as it would take.

While loving our neighbor isn’t always quite so simple, the Samaritan story suggests that the road may be hard, but our journeying together makes all the difference. The first step is seeing our fellow travelers as neighbors and friends of God. The next is seeing the divine creator’s image within each of God’s creations, including ourselves.

Beyond all external differences, we are one in the breath of God. That spark of goodness, love and spontaneous care that erupts from us, like the Samaritan’s actions, is the essence of our being like the God who has made us. When we pay attention to the life of God in us, we can do no other than care for the life of God in the neighbor before us.

Jesus, as a brother to the human race, noticed all humanity as neighbors in need and called them family. When those on the roadside are seen as sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters or even mirror images of ourselves, it is much easier to accompany them on their journey.

This is why my friend Carey has spent the better part of a month going to doctor’s appointments and sitting at the hospital bedside of a man who others might reject because of his past incarcerations.

It is why Bob, a volunteer, spends his free time teaching life skills and navigating the kidney transplant process for a young man whose parents kicked him out at 18.

It is why Peg, Micah’s housing leader, continues to support the housing independence of a man whose physical limitations could easily qualify him for assisted living.

It is why I start my day with a phone call or a text to two recovering alcoholics—one a sex offender and the other who is on her third apartment this year.

When you truly love your neighbor, no one is a lost cause. Everyone has a story as to how they got thus far on the journey. And when those stories are shared, we realize we are all en route to the same destination—the final home that God intends for each of his creations.

As we help each other get there, we are being transformed into friends of God and one another, a new family that cannot help but stop and see and lift and carry those who are bruised and bleeding along the way.