"... For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me... Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25: 35-37, 40)In December 1997 Judith Whelchel was in the midst of a vocational discernment process. She was the mother of a 2-year old daughter, and an Episcopal priest with a masters degree in social work. Her heart burned with a desire to be among the Matthew 25 people, to become compassionately involved in the lives and struggles of the members of Jesus' family who were poor, sick, homeless and hungry. They were people who too often felt like strangers without proper dress when they entered the doors of a typical Episcopal Church.
On Christmas Eve 1997 Judith heard the call to go out among those people who are living on the margins of our culture and to take the church with her. It started with an invitation from a local social agency inviting Judith to offer the Christmas Eucharist for a group of homeless people. From this beginning on a night that celebrates the Holy Birth, a new church was born. It was my privilege to serve as her deacon at that evening and we have been working together ever since.
Judith
is today the Vicar of the Church of the Advocate. The Church is a spiritual
community of prayer, worship, safety, nourishment and support for those
who are seeking to find Jesus as they struggle through the painfully gritty
life of poverty and social injustice. It began with an every-other week
Eucharist in an Asheville park and in August of 1998 we started meeting
on Sundays for Holy Eucharist in the undercroft of a downtown Episcopal
Church.
The Church of the Advocate strives to be a Christian community of people who care for one another and who reach out beyond themselves to their community. We gather each Sunday in a circle to worship, dialogue and celebrate the Eucharist. It is also a work in progress. As the Church grew it added services such as a Sunday meal, foot care, and a transition fund to assist people who were seeking work and needed supplies. The additional services and programs soon began to dominate the time of Judith and her volunteers, and the church was slowly becoming a social agency.
Busy or Relating?
The dinner program is a good example of good intentions that went awry. It was started for two purposes: to provide a hot meal on Sunday, the one day that no other agencies were serving food and to bring people from the traditional church into relationship with people who live on the margins. Since then, two other programs now offer Sunday meals and, since 200 people were lining up for dinner, local volunteers were simply dishing out food and had no time to meet the people they were serving. Judith and I became hostess and host, rather than priest, deacon and friend. The worshiping community made the decision to terminate the meal service and instead invite the congregations to join us for church and a potluck supper afterwards.
Judith has also invited the congregations that were preparing and serving the meals to use the estimated cost of $400 to provide the first month's rent and deposit for a homeless person seeking an apartment. This idea came from one of the community members. He is a homeless man who was recently released from prison, and a single father trying to find a home for his two children. He earns enough at day labor to make monthly payments, but can not save what is required as a down payment for a place to live. There are shelters available for children, and for mothers with children, but not for a dad and his kids.
Our learning during the first year is that when people of means come into contact with people without means, our inclination is to stay busy serving food and providing services. The busyness becomes a shield that keeps us from forming a substantive relationship with the poor. We are able to feel good about giving our time and resources as we get into our cars and drive back to our comfortable homes . . . but our lives have not been graced by hearing the stories of people who have neither cars nor homes.
It is our conviction that the transformation of an unjust economic and social system depends as much on building community across economic and social boundaries as it does on programs. Change will come when we truly begin to live in harmony with the message of Matthew 25: enter into the lives of people who are poor, homeless, sick and in prison. Judith Whelchel has led our community into the heart of this truth.
Bill serves as president of the Institute for servant Leadership in Asheville NC.