Town Motel

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: At the Town Motel

March 2, 2008

Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

Matthew 23, James 1:19-27

As much as I don't like to think about it, and in general I don't, it is a fact that the Town Motel with its tattered appearance and reputation is practically on our doorstep here. This is a downtown neighborhood, of course, it's a pretty good neighborhood. The Episcopalians across the street lend it some respectability, and the renovation of the Godshall Building brings us some style too. Things are a lot better now than years ago when there was a bar right out here, and some of its patrons from time to time liked to hurl beer bottles at our Tiffany windows. There used to be a gas station on the corner too - the church got a penny for every gallon pumped! So things have improved. But still, there it stands within eyeshot of our parking lot: the Town Motel.

Now, if Jesus had been the pastor of this church these past twenty years, I'm pretty sure he would have gone down there a time or two to see how the folks are doing. This pastor has not; nor has your other pastor.

So I'm no expert on who lives at the Town Motel. Fortunately for me, the Advance Titan paper did a wonderful story just last fall on some of the motel's residents, and I am indebted to that story for giving me an idea about some of the folks who call the Town Motel their "home."

There's 38-year-old Linda, single mom with one son. She's lived there a year now; the year after her husband died of a heart attack on his construction job. Linda worked then and still does in a kitchen 40 hours a week. But that couldn't pay the mortgage, and with no family around the Town Motel was her only refuge, at $140 a week. She calls it "home."

And there's Warren, now 53. He has a business degree, and was making good money out east when he made what he calls "the biggest mistake of my life" and was caught stealing from his employer. Fourteen months in prison, restitution, and fines left him penniless, and his wife gone. He moved here to start over. Works odd jobs to make ends meet, to have a "home."

There are others, I'm sure, who call the Town Motel "home" who are there for any number of reasons, from lost jobs to unpayable health bills, mental illness, addictions, bad decisions . . . It doesn't take much for a person to fall under a certain level of income where - if one has no support system, no family with resources - and you find yourself looking at a room at the Town Motel. A sudden rise in your mortgage payments, a lost job, a sick child, divorce, and there you are.

Now a minute ago I said that Jesus, if he lived here, would have made it his business to meet the residents. And he might have had to stay their himself; he no home of his own. He might have been best friends of Warren and Linda and her little boy. Why do I think that? Because he was so often criticized for being with the wrong people: the sick (he dared to touch lepers), the poor (he called them "blessed"), women (he talked theology with the woman at the well), and "sinners" like predatory tax collectors. His enemies called him "a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners" [Luke 7:34] because he hung out with them, accepted them, taught them.

John Dominic Crossan in his book Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography says that Jesus came preaching about the "kingdom of God," that is, about the way things would be if God were truly in charge of us and society. And the kingdom Jesus proclaimed - the way things should be, by God - was "a kingdom of nuisances and nobodies" [page 54]. That is, Jesus counted as valuable, worthy, respectable, important the people that the rest of us discount as "nuisances and nobodies."

"Nobodies:" the people you'd least expect, the uneducated, the unskilled, the poor; "nuisances:" people that get in the way, that need a lot of help: the old and the sick, the addicted and the mentally ill. Jesus seemed to have the greatest empathy not the strong, but the weak; not the well-off, but the poor, not the powerful but the meek, not the well but the sick. It's not that Jesus didn't care about the rich and the powerful, the strong and the well; he cared deeply for them - he cares for us! But he cared equally as much for the poor, the outcasts, the "nobodies" and even the "nuisances" of the world.

Which is why he is so hard on the clergy in that passage from Matthew.

"You tithe mint, dill, and cummin, (that is, you give a careful 10% on the littlest things, these spices) but have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith." You should do those first things - tithing is good, and pay attention to the details, to what may seem small. But don't forget what really matters: justice for the poor, doing what is right by them; having mercy even on those who have made mistakes; and faith - following God, living out the way of grace and of love.

We're celebrating the Lord's Supper today. Here at this Table we invite everyone - "all God's people" as we heard in the welcome video earlier - to eat together, in a sacred "feast." The common Table, where all are welcome is for me the central symbol of our faith. To help you understand why I say that, let me share with you what scholars like Marcus Borg have told us about the importance in middle eastern culture of eating together, sharing a meal. In Jesus' time and yet today in that part of the world it is a great honor to be asked to sit at table, in someone's home. It is a sign of acceptance, of friendship, even, of equality. In Jesus' time there were rules about "not only what might be eaten, and how it should be prepared, but also with whom one might eat" (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, page 55). The religious leaders would refuse to eat with anyone that their rules declared to be "unclean" religiously or socially. So you would not sit at table with just anyone.

And Jesus we know got himself into trouble for eating with those wrong people, for breaking the rules of "Table fellowship." But he did it to make his point about the equality of all people - rich and poor, clean and unclean, men, women, old, young - all, he said were welcome. He ate with the rich, with the powerful; but he also dared to eat with nobodies and the nuisances too. By doing so he was making a bold, radical statement about the acceptance and dignity of all.

Because for Jesus our lives are to be shaped not by the constricting and dividing conventions of social or religious boundaries, but by compassion, freely given, grace with abandon [Borg, page 53].

For Jesus knew something that we two millennia later still haven't learned: that we are all - all of us - part of one another. We are not separate people, living in separate neighborhoods, as separate races and religions, distinct nations who have nothing to do with one another. What happens on the east side of town effects the people on the west; what happens north of the river effects people who live south of it.

And we ought to know by now too that what happens in China, in Kenya, in Iraq, in the Balkans, in North Korea effects us right here in Oshkosh. Hunger in Darfur, ethnic hatred in the Balkans, walls across Palestine, war in Iraq and elsewhere, pollution in Shanghai . . . all of that effects us because we are one human family. And when one part of the family suffers, we all suffer. And Jesus knew that when he ate with the outcasts, the needy, the marginalized of his day.

Have you ever had an infection in your little toe? You know that funny toe that's hardly there? What happens when it gets sore? If I have an infected little toe, my whole body knows it. And you know what else? When my little toe hurts the whole body comes to its rescue. My heart - that big, strong, independent, essential organ at my center which could work perfectly well without my little toe - could ask, I suppose, "who needs this ?nobody' of the body, this ?nuisance' that is draining us of resources?" But just the opposite happens. The heart, the brain, the whole body sends resources to heal that silly little toe of mine. Why? Because it is part of me. And until it is well, none of me is well, really.

The sick and the poor, the mentally ill and the addicted, the disabled and the disadvantaged, the down-and-outs, the people who have made poor choices, yes, even the just plain lazy - they're all part of Oshkosh, they are part of us. And until they are healed, we are all ill, we all suffer.

And that is the most fundamental reason I know for us as individuals and as a church to do what we can to minister to the financially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually needy of Oshkosh, some of whom find their way to the Town Motel. That's why we help with the Food Pantry, and with the Salvation Army meals. That's why we offer our building to groups who are working with at-risk families, or who seek to bring diverse people together. That's why so many of you serve on the boards of various service agencies in town. That's why with our benevolence dollars we have supported a broad range of agencies from WINR to Habitat to the Christine Anne Center to Casa Cara and the list could go on. We are called to serve - lest we neglect the "weightier matters" of the law: justice, mercy, compassion, faith.

But we know too that the needs we see here are multiplied around the world, in every nation. And while it is tempting to limit our ministry only to those we can see, here in this town, in this country, if we did we would be forgetting that we are part of the whole human family. And when part of that family suffers - in the Sudan, or Guatemala, India, East Timor, or wherever - the whole suffers. They are part of us, and we are part of them.

The Offering of Letters that many of you will be staying to write today assumes that we have a responsibility toward the poor not just of Oshkosh, but the world. As citizens of the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, it is our right and privilege to ask our legislators to use that wealth and power to promote justice, to foster healing in the developing world. We need to ask of ourselves why last year just .5% of the United States Budget was given to poverty-focused development aid globally. Half a percent.

But let's get back home, back to the Town Motel. Would you meet Jesus there? I think you would. Can't tell you what he would be doing, what his ministry would look like. The challenges that face the residents are many and complex and daunting. There are no simple answers to be had, I'm afraid, even for Jesus. But he calls us to look for some answers, some avenues of service to the needy of our town. Because they are part of us. And because the compassion of Christ calls us all to the Table.