The Renewal of the World

       When I was in seminary, I worked one summer in Washington, D.C. out of a Lutheran church at  16th and V Street.  It was in the upper 14th street area that was burned by arson after the assassination of Martin Luther King.  The arson spread all the way to DuPont Circle, where St. Thomas Episcopal Church was torched.  It was a terrible time for the whole community and the devastation was evident as I walked the streets learning how to do pastoral ministry.

The poverty and the lack of proper housing was almost overwhelming.  I had one white family living on a street of mostly abandoned homes.  Social workers visited and tried to help.  The father stayed in his room most of the time and his wife and kids lived their lives trying to make do with whatever came their way.  The community developed a beautiful scheme to get food at the end of the month when the checks ran out.  They would take turns going to the relief agencies to get help.  They would then come back to the neighborhood with what they were able to obtain and share it.  It was remarkable to me the way that underneath all of the poverty, that community found a way to work.

The father lived in a sea of depression.  The pastor of the Lutheran church where I worked asked me one day what my plan was for him.  I told him that I wanted to get him to come out of the room, talk to me, somehow alleviate his depression and then set him on a path to getting a job.  The pastor was a remarkably wise man, who then said to me about my plan, “And finally by your grace, he will achieve everlasting life.”   That put in perspective for me the limits of my ministry and the probability of my success.  Ultimately, I don’t know what happened to that family.  I was there for the rest of the summer, but I left before there was any resolution to their problem.  As always, they taught me much more than I was able to provide for them.

I was reminded of all of this because of the reading from the Book of Jeremiah.  In the 33rd chapter, the prophet says:

                              The days are surely coming, says the LORD, 
                             when I will fulfill the promise I made to the
                              house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In
                              those days and at that time I will cause a 
                             righteous Branch to spring up for David; and
                             he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

  The people in those neighborhoods were certainly yearning for righteousness,   but they could find it nowhere.  Their lives were full of poverty and distress.  There was nobody to change what was so oppressive outside.

Change was what I thought I was there to do, but it wasn’t up to me.  Ultimately, the work to effect change came from many organizations that brought wholesome change to that neighborhood and brought many people out of poverty and brought hope where there was only despair.

My work in Washington was forty years ago.  The pain is still felt.  I saw an article yesterday that said that Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire who created such a stir when he was chosen because he is a gay man living with and married to his partner is planning after his retirement to go to D.C. to be Bishop in Residence at St. Thomas Church.  There is another chapter in the healing of the pain of the world that will begin.  I thank God for that and know that the renewal of the world can’t be far behind.