he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted,
and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:2-3
My volunteer slot at today's Welcome Table proved to be a repeat of last month. I had to tell people the bad news that we were at the building's capacity. If they waited for an hour or so, we would give them some food, but we had used up all our gifts cards, 290 of them.
I began to get more and more depressed as I told person after person, many with young children, that they could not come in. I'm sure that some had been counting on a few of those $10 gift cards to get groceries for the coming week. Most of them were very understanding, but I'm sure that many were brokenhearted. According to the psalmist, that the sort of thing that stirs God, and so surely it should stir God's people, the body of Christ.
The existence of Welcome Table says that the people of Falls Church Presbyterian have been stirred to action by this situation. (This ministry actually began during the interim time between my predecessor's retirement and my arrival.) The huge numbers of hungry and homeless in the very well-to-do area has moved people to do something, and Welcome Table is a tremendous ministry. It is, however, only a band-aid. It does nothing to solve the underlying problems that lead to the huge numbers of people who need such assistance.
Diane (the other pastor here) and I were talking the other day about the ministry of the Church, speaking beyond just this congregation. She noted that the Church is called to ministries of compassion such as Welcome Table, but we are also called to ministries of justice that address systems that lead to poverty and suffering.
Unfortunately, it is much easier to do compassion. Ministries of compassion are immediate. There is an obvious good that is done, and doing it often feels good. Justice is much more complicated. It usually means taking on entrenched systems, speaking truth to power, and long efforts that do no bear immediate fruit. Almost everyone will compliment ministries of compassion, as they well should. But people will often criticize ministries of justice. I wonder if it isn't at such moments that we truly experience what Jesus meant we insisted we must take up our cross. Jesus says that following him will cause others to hate us and work against us. Never is that more true than when attempting to doing ministries of justice that challenge and change the world around us.
As someone who was raised in a comfortable, suburban setting and is totally at home in a consumer culture, there is something in me that chafes at the notion that following Jesus will lead to personal discomfort and suffering. That somehow feels backwards. Jesus is supposed to make my life better.
To the degree that I am in any way typical, it's no wonder that our country has lots of shelters and food pantries, but struggles to tackle the deeper problems of affordable housing, education, living wages, and more. I do, however, take some comfort in the statement by Martin Luther King, Jr. one that seems to reflect Jesus' teaching on God's in-breaking kingdom. "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
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