They packed their worldly possessions and a black mutt named Midnight into the back of a taxi and moved to a Motel 6, where they paid by the day and, when Darius could get work, by the week.

We spent the next few months working to overcome the barriers they faced. We helped them get a George Foreman grill and a microwave, so they were no longer at the mercy of the fast food restaurants. I used my discretionary fund to get them some work clothes and bus tickets, so they could find meaningful work. Along the way we got Midnight the wonder dog to the vet, because when you feel all alone in the world, I’m not going to be the one to say your dog is an unneeded expense.

After several months of this, Sonya was hired at Waffle House, and I put out a cry for help. You responded in a big way, enabling them to get a used car and move into a new trailer on the outskirts of town. Darius was still working day labor, but got on a series of long term tickets, where he was assured of a paycheck for weeks at a time – as close to security as you come in the world they live. They were regular attendees at our small chapel service we do on Sunday afternoons. Life was good – or at least, as good as it had ever been for them.

It was July of last year when things got… interesting. Sonya, after a lifetime of being told she was infertile, became pregnant. While we all agreed that while keeping the baby was hardly the right economic choice, now that they had a community of people around them, it was do-able. She was glowing – life could get no better.

Over the next nine months, she was the model mother-to-be. She was militant about her appointments, took her pre-natal vitamins and planned the layout of the nursery. At four months, they painted the nursery, at six months, they started stocking up diapers and wet wipes. If you went to their house, you would be subjected to photos from the last ultrasound, including her pointing out the “man parts” (she would always blush after saying that) that proved he was a boy.

Darius’ street name (in a former life, he was a gang-banger) was Chi (pronounced ‘shy’), so they decided to call the baby CJ, for Chi Junior. Today, March 2, 2012 was her due date.

On the 18th of February, my friend and volunteer extraordinaire Sarah got a bunch of ladies from our chapel and the various congregations that support our work and threw her an over-the-top baby shower, with games and decorations and cupcakes and gifts and on and on. Sonya was elated.

The following Monday, I had a crazy day and got home about 8:30, exhausted. My battery was dead on my cellphone, so I put it in the charger and changed into sweats, gearing up for a long night of returning email and getting caught up on several writing commitments I had made. Then I got the call.

It was Darius, who had been trying to reach me for several hours. They were at the hospital, because Sonya had noticed earlier that day the baby was no longer moving. They rushed to the hospital, only to have their worst fears confirmed – CJ was dead.

I got to the hospital 15 minutes later, where I would spend the next three days or so. Late Monday night they induced labor, and she endured more than 30 hours of that, knowing the reward at the end was a baby she could not take home. Those three days would be the longest I have ever experienced in five years of doing this work. While waiting for CJ to be delivered, Sonya and Darius experienced the full range of human emotions – they cried, they ached, they moaned, they cursed God.

And I sat with them, telling them it was ok to curse at God, as God was big enough to handle it. I talked them down when well-meaning friends told them it was all part of God’s plan; over and over I gave them permission to be angry, permission to hurt, permission to scream. I told them that God had no part in this – that CJ had died because bad things happen in this world – no one plans it, and certainly not God.

Wednesday morning, Sonya delivered CJ – 5 pounds, 7 ounces, 18 inches long. The next few hours are a blur – holding the baby, taking pictures of them holding the baby while tears streamed down their face, saying prayers for them, saying prayers with the nursing staff, holding Darius in the hallway as heaving sobs came from his chest. And in the midst of it, planning what happens next.

Over the next three days, Sonya stayed in the hospital due to minor complications, Darius sat by her side and I made the arrangements with the funeral home- filled out the paperwork, wrote the checks to the crematorium, picked up the ashes, bought a small marble box to hold all that remained of the hopes and dreams of a couple for whom nothing had ever went right.

Had everything went according to plan, today would be CJ’s birthday. Instead, I am busy planning a memorial service for tomorrow, where with family and friends, we will commit the ashes of CJ to God and seek some sort of meaning to this tragedy, and along the way, try to find some way to move on. And on Monday, they both have to go back to work since the bills don’t quit coming just because your baby dies.

# # #

This is what we do out here – we aren’t a feeding ministry or a clothing ministry or even a homeless ministry. We are a relational ministry. Your financial support made every part of the relationship with Sonya and Darius happen. Without it, none of that would have been possible.

In fact, without your support, I wouldn’t be able to be a minister to people like Sonya and Darius. That I get to do this work is an incredible gift from all of you. I love my job, and I love getting to be a minister to people everyone else has given up on.

So, if you support our work, Sonya and Darius and I all thank you. You have made so much good possible. If you don’t support us yet, I hope you will click here and consider doing so. And if you pray, I hope you will pray for Sonya and Darius. Truth be told, I hope you will pray for me too. God knows I need it.

Yay!

But now, the real work begins.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be painting, scrubbing, moving, furnishing and many other things that end in -ing.

And we are going to need your help.

Below is our up-to-date list with the things we currently need, along with scheduled work days.

(The list below is being constantly updated. Bookmark this page and check back often)

Things we need right now:

• Ace Hardware Gift Cards: You can get them at any Ace Hardware Store (or online) and mail them to the address on this page. 

Thanks for working with us on this. We want to be able to work with local businesses rather than national chains if at all possible.

• 10 metal folding chairs
• Got any church paraments floating around? (for our chapel)
• Cokesbury Gift Cards (or your willingness to buy us some church stuff on your church’s account).
• Microwave

Please click here to give us your name and email, so you can be notified of work days and volunteer opportunities (The form was not working properly, but has now been fixed).

Thanks, and again, bookmark this page and check back often for the list of the latest things we need.

So, the big news is… this week, we take possession of what will be the new offices of Love Wins Ministries .

It’s the result of a partnership between Hillyer Memorial Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Love Wins – we have been working on it behind the scenes for a few months now, but we finally got all the details worked out.

The building (that is it in the picture at the top of the page) is located at 707 West Jones Street (map), just a block off the R-Line and on three major bus lines. It is  a bit over 2200 square feet, with a fully built out attic and a basement with a concrete floor.  We will have space for storage, space for offices, a conference room, a small chapel for our worshipping community to meet each week and lots more. And, it will mean a savings of over $8500 in just the first year over all our current arrangements.

This is a big deal for us – it gives us permanence in the community, a place we can make long term plans and opens us up to many more options – most of which we haven’t even figured out yet.

Over the next month, we will establish a schedule of office hours (for which we will need volunteers to work the front desk – so keep your eye out for that). When that is settled, I will post it here.

We will need your help in so many ways – here are some off the top of my head:

• Moving stuff from paid storage to here
• Helping us move offices
• Painting
• Helping us find furniture
• Signage
• Volunteer signups to work our front desk
• Yard work

Thank you so much for all your love and support, and a big thank you to the good people at Hillyer Memorial Church.

Got questions? Put them in the comments.

He and I were to meet at the CVS at 9:00am. By 9:30, I gave up on him, but only after standing in the cold for half an hour. That Jim was not there when we agreed to meet is no reflection on his character, per se. When you are homeless, time is a fluid concept. He got out of the shelter at 7:00 or so this morning and so it is quite possible he sat outside the CVS from 7:30 until 8:50 and then gave up on me. 

Or maybe he found someone to hand him $4 cash yesterday after we talked. Or maybe he forgot. 

In any event, there are countless ways to have made the project called “Get Jim some drugs” more efficent.  Off the top of my head: 

• Have a volunteer take him yesterday to the 24 hour pharmacy and pay for his drugs.
• Have a $5 CVS giftcard in my pocket
• Agree to meet him this morning at the shelter and take him to the pharmacy.
• Develop a prescription drug program.
• etc.

Any of those would have been more efficent and, in fact, more effective at the project called “Get Jim his drugs”. 

But that is not the project I am working on. 

Instead, I am part of a project that could be called “Let’s Get to Know Jim”. And all relationships involve deliberate inefficency.

When you meet a friend for lunch, you do not go to the place that promises you the most efficent souce of high quality calories – instead you go to the place that makes hanging out with your friend the easiest. Things like quality of food, how fast the kitchen is and even cost take a back seat to things that make it easier to spend time with your friend. You are not working on the project called “Get Maximum Calories at the Best Price”. You are woking on a project called “Hang out with Mike over Food”. 

So, the project called “Get to Know Jim” took a hit this morning. It cost me a half an hour in the cold and fleeting frustration. And occasionally, on days like this, I am reminded why the projects other people are working on are the ones they are working on – because the relational way is hard and inefficent. 

That does not mean it is wrong, however. 

I have no idea how I first met Hugh Hollowell and was introduced to Love Wins Ministries but he’s become one of those friends that you swear you’ve known your whole life.  You know, the one who is SO MUCH like you but keeps you honest and real?  Yeah, he’s like that.  Awesome and meddlesome, all at the same time.

Growing up as a preacher’s kid at Central Baptist Church in downtown Miami, FL meant seeing lots of homeless folks…even serving them a hot meal on occasion from the mission at the back corner of the church parking lot.  But it never meant getting to know them.  Or seeing them as real live human beings.

Leave it to Hugh to make me re-think that old script.

I end up subscribing to the Love Wins newsletter and one day read this post about/from Tony.  Specifically, this:

“Please tell the people who give you this money that I am so grateful. That I could not have made it this long without you guys. And that while it may not seem like a big deal to them, it has changed my life. Hell, it probably saved my life.”

Damn it, Hugh.

That night, my family becomes a monthly contributor to Love Wins.  Hugh DM’s me on Twitter to say that we rock.  I tell him to shove it because it’s a pittance and I want it to be more.  I can almost feel him roll his eyes when he responds, “You don’t know what I can do with a pittance.”

In the next few months, I can’t get Tony off my mind.  Eventually, I email Hugh and ask if there’s any way I can get in touch with him.  Become his friend and let him know that someone other than Hugh cares about him and wants to know him personally.

Tony agrees and we start emailing.  Just getting to know each other.  When Tony mentions that he could use some dishes and kitchen supplies, I just smile and shake my head.  God’s sense of humor and timing continues to slay me…I have a ton of stuff I’ve “inherited” when a great-aunt passed away.

I had the opportunity to give these things to Tony in person yesterday.  I got to see where he lives, hug him, introduce him to my daughter, and talk smack about NC football teams.  I discovered that his birthday is close to my anticipated due date and promised I would email him when I found out the sex of the baby at the end of this month.

Hugh told me today that I have no idea what that short visit meant to Tony.  I told him that I know what it meant to me.

Because, you see, Tony is my friend.

* * *

It is only because of people like Christina that we are able to do this work.  If you would like to partner with us to make sure we are able to continue to work with people like Tony, you can click here to find out more. 

The religious leaders are trying to trap Jesus.

“What is the greatest commandment,” they ask.

Now, this sounds harmless. But, it is really a doctrinal test. A test to see if Jesus agrees with them or not, a test to see if Jesus belongs in their religious club or not.

Religious people like their tests, to see if you are in their group or not. Are you in, or are you out?

See, the rabbi’s had found 618 commandments in what we call the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – but they called the Law. They even broke them down into positive commandments and negative commandments. So, honor your parents was a positive command and do not commit murder was a negative command. They had it all figured out.

Some of the religious people of that day said all the commands were equal. Others said that the negative commands were the most important while others said the positive commands were what you really had to focus on. So, they are testing Jesus to see where he falls in this argument.

Jesus does something interesting here, though. He answers the question, but not in the way that they asked it.

See, they asked for the greatest commandment – what is the most important thing to do. But Jesus instead replies “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

See, the one thing pretty much all Jews agreed on was there one command above all the others. We find it in the book of Deuteronomy: “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. It was often the first verse they would memorize as children, and the one verse everyone knew. it was a lot like John 3:16 is for us today. If you were Jewish, you knew this verse.

But Jesus messes with their head here. He says that there is not one greatest commandment – he says that there are two equally great commandments – to love God and to love your neighbor. Loving God is good, Jesus says, but it is equally important to love your neighbor. In fact, they are not just equally important: They are equal – to love your neighbor is to love God. In fact, it is how we love God.

My friend Bart Campolo sums up this passage as “Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters.”

Some 2000 years later, not much has changed. We still have tests to see who is in and who is out. Sometimes, we stake out claims about God. We say “In order to serve God, I have to exclude this person”. We say “In order to follow Jesus, we have to offend or hurt this person.” But Jesus says that when we do that – when we say this person is outside of love, that this person or that person is not worthy of our love – when we do that, we are not loving our neighbor, and thus we are not loving God.

And for the many times that we do that, may God have mercy on us all.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and The Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have to admit – I have some big problems with today’s parable.

I think it is partly because I love so much a similar story that Luke tells in his Gospel.

Here is Luke has to say:

Jesus replied with this story: “A man prepared a great feast and sent out many invitations.  When the banquet was ready, he sent his servant to tell the guests, ‘Come, the banquet is ready.’  But they all began making excuses. One said, ‘I have just bought a field and must inspect it. Please excuse me.’  Another said, ‘I have just bought five pairs of oxen, and I want to try them out. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I now have a wife, so I can’t come.’

“The servant returned and told his master what they had said. His master was furious and said, ‘Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ After the servant had done this, he reported, ‘There is still room for more.’ So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full.  For none of those I first invited will get even the smallest taste of my banquet.’”

I love this story. And this is a story that tells us what God is like, because God is like the man who welcomes everyone at the table, with no one turned away.

But this is not the text we are looking at today.

Instead, this text is not about a man, but a king. And to be honest – this is not a very good king.

This king tries to force people to come to his banquet. And when some of them kill his messengers, he not only kills the ones who did it, he burns down their entire town. Then when he invites the common people, the good and the bad, and when he comes to the feast, he sees one guy dressed wrong, and has him tied up and cast into “outer darkness”, whatever that means. It does not sound good, regardless.

The crazy thing to me is that the king in this story is almost always interpreted as God. I guess I get where they are coming from, but I just can’t see God that way.

In the 11^th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence at the hands of the violent. But the king in this story does not suffer violence – he dishes it out. The quiet guest – the one who wears the wrong clothes, the one who does not belong – this is the one who suffers violence. He is accused; he does not respond to the accusations and is then punished and killed at the hands of a violent government.

Sounds a lot like Jesus to me.

And it sounds like what seems to me to be the normal experience of those who reject power and violence. The Kingdom of God experiences violence at the hands of the violent.

So maybe it is just me, but the way I understand Jesus says that I have to be on the side of the one who is rejected for not fitting in, instead of being on the side of the King that uses violence to get his way.

In the name of the Father, and The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Amen.

A friend told me one time that you don’t get to pick your family.

Sadly, this is true. I love my family, but if I could have picked a different family – one with better metabolism, say, or one that was genetically pre-disposed to living to 110 years old or maybe even one that was filthy stinking rich – that might have been better for me.

But you don’t get to pick your family.

A lot of us have family members we wish we could gloss over.  Like that cousin who creeps you out, or the Dad who is just a jerk to you, or the sister who tells you at every available opportunity that Obama is the anti-christ and you are destined for hell because you don’t attend her church.

As we say in the South, “Bless her heart. “

A lot of us in this room have felt what it is like to not be able to get along with your whole family.

And it hurts more to disagree with your family than it does someone outside the family. So what some guy you never met thinks your ideas are silly. So what?

But when your Mother says your ideas are silly, well, that hurts. And it can make us angry, and bitter, and before long, we don’t want to talk to them, or even be around them.

In the universal church, today is World Communion Sunday. It is the day when, all over the world, churches remember that we are not alone – that we are all members of the same family, scattered around the world, with differing views on various things, but still, family.

You know that crazy uncle you have that, every time he speaks, you shake your head and just wish he would be quiet? In the Christian family, we have one of those. In fact, I think we have a lot of those.

That abusive cousin who never says anything good and just pisses off everyone who he talks to? We have lots of those, too.

And we have our criminals, and those who ought to be criminals and the child abusers and the prosperity pimps and the people who spiritually abuse people.

And they are all family, and we don’t get to pick our family.

The early church liked this idea of family to describe the connection of all the believers. It is out of that new understanding that they came to call each other “Brother” or “Sister”.

I went to Nashville last weekend, and was only three hours or so away from where my parents live, so they came up since it has been a year or so since I have seen them.  And, of course, we sat down and ate together. Because that is what families do – They eat together.

Today, on World Communion Sunday, we have the opportunity to remember that every week when we gather and we eat the bread and drink from the cup, we are in fact sharing a meal with all those who have come before us and with all the church, scattered all around the world.

We don’t just share the meal with those in this room, but with the Christians hiding in basements in hostile countries and the Christians in the big steeples Downtown and the Christians in mud floored shacks in central America.

Our giant family is dysfunctional, but it is family, none the less. And today is the day we remember them and pray for them and they pray for us. And then they pass us the bread.

In The Name of The Father. And The Son. And The Holy Spirit. Amen.

Things have changed a lot since Jesus told this story. I mean, there are the obvious things, like cars and phones and the internet, but there are more subtle things too.

The biggest one is that most of the people who followed Jesus back then were the ones on the wrong side of the tracks. He spoke to the poor, the frustrated, the beaten down.

Today, those people still follow Jesus, but most people who claim to be Christian in this country are pretty comfortable. I mean, all you have to do is look at the big steeples and the elegant stained glass of most churches to know that not many of the people who gather there are poor.

The message originally spoken to the poor has been taken by the rich – and as a result, it is easy to miss what Jesus was trying to say. The scripture today is one of those stories – it means something a bit different, depending on who you identify with, with the assumptions you bring to the table.

As an educated white guy, it is pretty easy to identify with the land owner. I like to think I am kind, like the landowner in this story. And in the way we usually understand this story, the landowner represents God, and we all like to think of God as basically like us, only nicer.

But the story reads pretty different if you are reading it from the perspective of the first Jesus followers – people who were poor, people who were struggling to get by, people who worked day labor.

Yeah , that’s right– this is the story of the labor pool. This is a story about people who sit and wait for rich men to come and hire them, to do back breaking work at a rate that will barely pay their bills.

And so the farmer goes to the labor pool four times – first thing in the morning, at lunch, at three and again an hour before quitting time.

But when it came time to settle up, he paid them in reverse order – he paid the ones who worked one hour, and then the ones who worked three hours, and so on.  But, and here is the kicker – he paid them all the same.

The people who had been there since early that morning, who signed in at the desk, who sat in the diert room, who waited for their name to be called and who went out at 6 that morning – they got paid the same thing that the ones who had only been out there an hour did.

And the people who went out early – they were hot about it.

Even though they did not suffer at all. They got paid exactly what they were supposed to get paid. And yet they were mad.

The people who worked all day got what they deserved. The people who worked one hour, yet got a whole day’s pay,  they got grace.

Last week, we talked about how there are two ways to view the world – the way of grace, or the way of power. Jesus invites us to live in a world of Grace, and here we see another example of what that looks like. The Farmer extends grace – rather than give people what they deserve, he gives them what they need.

The folks who worked all day – they have a chance to be graceful – I mean, they worked all day for the pay that they had agreed to, and the farmer’s generosity cost them nothing. But instead, they felt cheated. They appealed to power instead of embracing grace.

Yes, when we read this story, it does tell us that god is gracious. But it also tells us that we have a choice to decide which world we want to live in. And to follow Jesus means to choose grace.

In the name of the Father, and The son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.