AProp5-2008

Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:1-12; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

June 8, 2008

I thought I’d share a little with you about where the ten of us

will be on our youth trip – called Urban Adventure – this coming week.

We’ll be staying at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Jacksonville, Florida.

With St. Mary’s as our base, we will visit three different houses of worship:

Bethel Baptist on Wednesday night for their youth bible study.

Bethel Baptist is a huge downtown African-American church.

Friday morning with us females donning our burkahs, or scarves,

we will attend a Muslim worship service at the Islamic Center,

a service that usually has about 500 people in attendance.

Saturday, at the Jacksonville Jewish Center,

with our guys donning their ‘yamikas’ (sp?)

we will attend a Bar Mitsvah.

In addition to these visits, we will work and take part

in the weekly rhythm at St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church was built in 1920,

a sweet white carpenter gothic church

in a turn-of-the-century neighborhood.

The sidewalks are made with the old octagonal pavers,

pushed up every which way by old tree roots.

The houses in the neighborhood range from Victorian ‘gingerbread’

to Craftsman homes.

From large homes with verandas all the way around and turrets on top

to tidy row houses lined up together.

During the depression and then World War II the neighborhood declined.

The mansions became boarding houses,

the town started to spread south across the river.

And so, by the 1970’s St. Mary’s parish was in the midst of

derelict empty houses and low-rent boarding houses.

It was home to homeless people, drug addicts, prostitutes, and the very poor.

It was a neighborhood where Jesus might have been

sharing a meal – with tax collectors and sinners.

Namely, those who, in the eyes of his religion, were unclean.

From Abraham and Sarah on through their descendents,

a people was forming and beginning to understand themselves

as the people of Yahweh, the people of God.

As they went through generations of formation,

and as they lived among peoples of other gods,

they developed customs by which they could adhere to Yahweh

and keep their identity and purity as God’s people.

The Jewish purity code was very specific

about who was clean and who was unclean.

And a Jew was to take many precautions to remain pure,

untouched, untainted by all that was not within their understanding

of themselves as the People of God.

For example:

If a cup holding liquid was touched by an unclean person

or put on an unclean surface, the cup was considered unclean.

However, it was possible that the liquid was still clean

and could be poured out if it didn’t touch the outside of the cup.

But I wonder who could touch the cup to pour it out!

If a Jew came within five feet of an unclean person,

He or she would be considered unclean.

If you touched a dead person, you were unclean.

and then there were rituals of purification to restore you.

Tax collectors, like Matthew in our gospel reading today,

were not only despised because of the money they leeched from people,

but they were also unclean

because they entered unclean homes, touched and confiscated unclean items.

The woman suffering from hemorrhages was considered unclean

and was not supposed to be near or touch anyone.

And, the dead daughter of the leader who sought out Jesus was unclean.

And so, in our gospel reading we have Jesus,

reclined at the table in an unclean house,

and sharing food and dishes with unclean people.

Jesus is touched by the unclean woman.

Jesus takes the hand of the dead girl.

When challenged by the religious authorities,

He said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician,

but those who are sick do.”

“I have come to call not the righteous [and the respectable]

but sinners [and outcasts].”

In 1982 a young teacher at Episcopal High School in Jacksonville

shared a vision for St. Mary’s with the Bishop of Florida.

And St. Mary’s opened back up to the people of the neighborhood.

So, for 26 years Sue Carmichael has run St. Mary’s.

Sue is very clear that St. Mary’s is not an outreach center

to meet people’s material needs.

St. Mary’s is a church in a neighborhood, there to build up the body of Christ.

The people of St. Mary’s are

the chronically mentally ill, the mentally challenged,

addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, high-risk youth,

and, Sue says, the ones in most need, the most helpless and hopeless –

are schizophrenics who are drug dependent.

I used to preach at St. Mary’s once a month.

When you go there, when we go there this week,

until you get to know the people and their stories,

what you see and smell are unclean people.

Rotten teeth, dark circles under eyes,

greasy hair, weathered skin,

clothing that has absorbed a combination of

sweat, tobacco, alcohol, spills and stains.

But because Jesus seeks out the ‘unclean’, the outcast, the sinner,

and because Sue follows Jesus,

many, many people have been touched.

St. Mary’s now has about 80 people in church on Sundays.

About 25 children.

Coffee, punch and cookies are served after the service.

You can keep your own coffee cup there

and it will be clean and waiting for you each Sunday,

hanging on a peg on the wall by the coffee pot.

There are 40 to 50 people who attend a mid-week bible study.

St. Mary’s helps people manage their finances and their medications.

They give out food, clothing, and money when they have it.

They help people find places to live, ways to earn money.

They run a summer program for kids in the neighborhood

and are able to send some kids to the diocesan summer camp,

like our Camp Mikell.

They collected and distributed over 4,000 Christmas gifts last year.

They baptize people and confirm people and train acolytes.

Through the United Thank Offering, they received a grant for a 25 passenger bus,

which, Sue says woefully, only gets 4 miles to the gallon.

Wanda was a big time drug dealer whose life finally went down the tubes.

She has her child back now, owns her own house, and has full-time work.

And Mary Rose – a schizophrenic woman has been drug-free for three years.

She volunteers at St. Mary’s every day and is in charge of intake,

having people sign in to see Sue or get food or clothing.

Men, women and children being touched.

Jesus redefined who the people of God are.

Jesus showed that the purity of God’s people is best accomplished,

not by shunning the ‘unclean’, noting their flaws,

keeping a kind of meticulous score of who is in and  who is out.

But God’s purity and perfection is best protected by

the extravagant embrace of flawed people and unsettled scores.

I expect that we’ll see a lot this week on our Urban Adventure.

I hope we each will be able to see Jesus

Sharing food and fellowship with and through God’s people at St. Mary’s,

touching, laughing, teaching, working…loving those he came to save.