Something or Someone

This is a sermon that I preached at St. Paul's in New Orleans on August 5, 2007. The text for the day was Luke 12:13-21. In the sermon I talk about two possible interpretations of the parable that Jesus tells the crowd. I got the idea from R. Alan Culpepper's commentary on Luke in the Interpreter's Bible, referenced on Crossmarks. Curious about the original language translation, but being a rather pitiful Greek scholar myself, I started poking around for a free, on-line biblical Greek translation tool. What I found was The Resurgence Greek Project, an excellent resource for all wanna-be translators. It features mouse-over parsing and possible word translations, as well as links to lexicon entries and word frequency in the Bible. A huge help!



Two friends of mine were discussing a difficult situation. One said to the other, “I wish Jesus was here. I’d just ask him what I should do.” The other replied, “A whole lot of good that would do you. He wouldn’t answer your question. He’d just tell you a parable.

Such is the case in today’s gospel reading. A man in the crowd asks Jesus to resolve a dispute between his brother and him and, true to form, instead of resolving the dispute, Jesus tells him a story. But, what seems to be one story at first glance is actually two, a pair of parables, if you will, whose meanings are intertwined. The problem is that you can’t read one English translation and preserve both of the stories. In order to get the whole story we have to look at the text in two different ways, so stick with me.

Both stories start out with the same introduction. A rich man has what seems to be an enviable problem: He has too great a harvest to fit in his barns. After pondering his predicament for a moment, he comes up with a solution. He says to himself, “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones…And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” Now we get to the part where the stories differ. We heard the first story from Fr. Hood when he read us the Gospel just a few minutes ago. God says to the rich man, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” End story number one.

This version of events teaches us something that we heard in the other readings for today. In the end, the material possessions of the rich man don’t have any value. He will die and be unable to take his earthly treasures to the other side of the grave with him. Someone else will inherit and use the possessions that he prepared. Because of the fleeting nature of life, the rich man should have spent his time on earth becoming rich toward God instead of rich with things. This is a valuable lesson, to be sure, but there is more to the story.

Let’s rewind the tape and hear the end of the passage in a different way. The rich man says, “…I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your goods are demanding your soul from you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

This ending to the story is similar to the first, but provides a second intensifying lesson. In the first version, the possessions that the rich man had treasured up did not matter, since he would be unable to take them with him when he died. In the second version of the story, however, the possessions of the rich man matter a great deal, both in his life on earth and in the life to come.

The rich man put all of his trust in earthly things: the harvest, his goods, and his lands. Through this material abundance he thought he had found a sense of rest and peace for his soul. The irony of the situation is that his soul has no use for possessions. Instead of giving him the rest and security he sought, the rich man’s possessions took control of his life and his soul. He was so worried about having enough stuff that he couldn’t relax or be merry until he had goods laid up for many years. By the time that he had accumulated enough possessions to satisfy himself, they had gained an inordinate sway in his life. The things that he thought he owned wound up owning him instead.

Unfortunately, the problem of being overly concerned with material possessions is not one that we left behind in ancient Palestine. Those of us in this country have a particular habit of accumulating more than we need. Storing up our possessions has become a big business, a business that grosses over twenty two billion dollar a year. We have moved beyond building newer, bigger barns and on to self storage. The Self Storage Association represents over 51,000 storage facilities in the United States. These companies control more than 2.2 billion rentable square feet of space, an area larger than the city of New Orleans. By taking advantage of the services that these facilities offer, we can say to our soul, “Soul, all of the stuff that won’t fit in the house has been laid up behind double pad locks at the storage center. You can rest easy, knowing that if you need your old collection of eight track tapes they’ll be right there waiting for you.”

The problem is that, no matter how much stuff we pile up, or how much money we make, things aren’t what we need for our souls. Many of the people of this community here at St. Paul’s, as well as others around New Orleans, experienced this first hand in the aftermath of the hurricanes. The possessions that people gripped so tightly were pulled out of grasping hands by rising waters and raging winds. Afterwards, however, something curious happened. Some people came back and started trying to pick up the pieces. Why? If our lives are simply an accumulation of material things, why return to this place at this time, where so many things have been taken away, where the threat still looms that they might be taken away again? What nourishes peoples’ souls and gives them the strength to rebuild their lives?

I’ve asked this question to quite a few people over the course of the summer, and I’ve been surprised by the recurring themes I’ve discovered. People have told me that they have strength to rebuild because they know that God will be with them during the process. They are able to rebuild the things that are a part of their lives because God has already started rebuilding the parts of their lives that matter most.

What the people I talked to discovered is that when the path that we’re walking reaches one of those dark, desolate stretches we find out that those eight track tapes in storage, or the new car, or the old money aren’t what we really need. We find out that we don’t need something, we need someone. We need someone that will stand by us in our times of trial. We need someone that will stand up for us when we are facing our greatest fears. We need someone that will stand firm when everything around us has been shaken into disarray. In short: We need a Savior.

God, in His infinite love for us, has given us a Savior in the person of Jesus Christ, someone who is able to satisfy our souls. While other things are passing away, Jesus is everlasting. While other things promise to distract us from our lives, Jesus offers us a life worth living. While other things are demanding our souls from us, Jesus is reaching out to embrace the image of God imprinted at the core of our being.

Experiencing and returning the love of the divine is what I think being rich towards God truly means. What could be more valuable, what could be more treasured than knowing that you love and are loved by the one that made you, that knit together your inmost parts, that hides you under the shadow of His wings? This richness towards God, this divine love, is the core of the Gospel story. God’s desire for a relationship with us, you and me, broken and sin-stained as we are, is greater than anything on earth. God’s love is more earth-shaking than any storm or flood, or disaster, more valuable than the finest gold, greater than Death itself. Christ is all and in all, and that, my brothers and sisters, is all that we need.

Broken

This is a sermon I preached at St. Paul's in New Orleans on July 29. The text for the day was Luke 11:1-13. References to the image of a broken car and an interview with David Farah come from Chris Rose's Times-Picayune column, "If I had a hammer," originally published on July 1, 2007. If you've never read Chris Rose, I commend him to you. He has a page on the Times-Picayune site and a newly expanded version of his Post-Katrina collection titled "1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina" due out August 21.

Picture, if you will, the following scene, a scene so prevalent in this city at this time. A house stands in ruins. The roof is falling in and the shutters are off of their hinges. In front of the house is a car. This car may have run before the storm, but now it can only be described as a wreck. Dirt and grime have built up on the windshield so that you can no longer see the automobile’s interior. Into this layer someone, presumably the car’s owner, has written the following sentence: “Jesus, I did nothing wrong.

A broken car, a broken house, and, one can assume, a broken person wondering why this awful disaster has befallen them. “Jesus, I did nothing wrong.” The words on the windshield of their car are a wail of grief and a shouted accusation. They also tell us a couple of things about the person who wrote them. This is a person who knows Jesus, or at least knows of him, and feels let down by him. God is supposed to care for His people, but, in this case, all outward signs seem to show neglect rather than nurturing.

I bring up this story today because it stands as a challenge to what we heard in the Gospel lesson. After instructing his Disciples on the subject of prayer, Jesus assures them, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Tell that to the person with the broken car, the broken life. How many, just like that person, ask God for relief, either aloud or in the silence of their hearts? How many search frantically for this God who is supposed to provide and care for them? How many knock, pound, claw at doors that have been slammed in their faces and drop, finally, into despair?

This disconnect between the Scriptures and our lives would almost be easier for us to deal with if all requests made in prayer seemed to go unanswered. If that was the case, we could say that God didn’t listen at all. We would know that we’re on our own. However, we also have examples of God’s overflowing compassion and abundance. Instances of grace that could only be work of a loving God. We here at St. Paul’s are living proof that sometimes you get what you pray for.

In the months after Katrina, most people who looked at St. Paul’s probably thought they knew how our story would end. A few members would come home and try to rebuild. A concerted effort would be made but, eventually, the parish would have to close its doors. Some disasters are simply too much for us to recover from on our own. St. Paul’s, however, has surprised everyone. By the grace of God and the power of prayer, we have been given the resources that we need to rebuild and the parish is on a roll. God has strengthened us for the struggle of recovery and provided for us along the way. Now we are able to gather here, back in our own restored building; to give thanks to God for answering our prayers. Yet, the prayers of others still go unanswered.

This inequity leaves us to struggle with the following question: How can we affirm the providence of God, His divine care for His creation, while still acknowledging that there are faithful people, both here and around the world, with needs that aren’t being met? A difficult question, to be sure, and one that I can’t claim a definitive answer to, but I think there are a couple of places that we can start our search.

We can turn to the second chapter of the Book of Acts. In this account of the early Church, we read that, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” The followers of Jesus saw that some of them had more than they needed while others were barely scraping by. To solve the problem, they redistributed what they did have, so that all would be provided for. Of course, this strategy worked better when all of the Christians were in the same place. As the mission of the Church expanded, new means of distributing God’s blessings among the faithful were needed. We read about St. Paul taking up a collection from the churches he planted in order to support the needy in Jerusalem. As the shape of the church changed, so did their strategy for providing for those in need.

In both cases, the common property and the collection of funds, the Church was doing its best to bring about the vision of God’s Kingdom on earth. They were acting as Christ’s hands in the world, distributing his blessing and providing for his people. They were answering the prayers of the faithful. The folks here at St. Paul’s are continuing that work today. By providing resources like the Washateria and the Homecoming Center those who have little are able to experience God’s blessing. By “paying it forward” to other communities around the US that are suffering from disasters, we have been able to give in response to what we received.

The idea behind the services we provide at St. Paul’s and the collection taken up by St. Paul himself all operate out of a sense of community. We pray as a community to our one Father that we night have our daily bread, and our Father provides for us as a community. We, in turn, make sure that God’s blessing reaches all those in need.

In this broken world, however, all of those in need are not provided for. Some folks who have the means to help don’t feel like sharing. The blessings that they receive are kept for themselves. Others who want to help lack the resources to reach everyone. Due to one reason or another, the prayers of the least of our brothers and sisters seem to be unanswered.

In many ways, they are like the Disciples of Christ who were faced with the bleak reality of the Cross. Jesus, the one that they thought was to be the Messiah, had died as a common criminal. They were left adrift, wondering how their prayers for salvation could be answered. Three days later, an answer was given to them greater than they could have expected. Jesus was not dead, but risen. The Messiah that they had hoped and prayed for was victorious. A symbol of shame and death was forever transformed into sign of God’s grace, giving hope to all who are hopeless.

Jesus' conquest of the powers of this world was competed on the Cross, yet we are still waiting for that victory to be fully realized on earth. We live in the tension between the resurrection that has already happened and the coming of Christ in glory that we await. We live in the tension between the world of the Church and the world of the Kingdom. We live in the tension between acting as the hands of Christ in the world and having our needs provided for by Christ himself. Then no prayer will go unanswered.

So, until that day, we Disciples of Christ are given gifts by God to do His work in the world. We are blessed with resources to distribute. We are given power to build up God’s kingdom. We are granted strength to wait for Christ’s coming in glory. In closing, I want to return to the image of that broken car, its message, and the words of David Farah, a volunteer interviewed by Chris Rose. In response to that image David said, “You could feel the power when you saw that picture but it also made me finally feel like I had to get down [to New Orleans] and help whoever it was that wrote that.” God give us all the grace, like David, to answer what prayers we can.

Terms and Conditions

This is a sermon that I preached at St. Paul's, New Orleans on July 1. The text for the day was Luke 9:51-62.

Sometimes we don’t know what we’re signing up for. For example, I’m sure that all of us have received an invitation in the mail that reads something like this: “Twelve CDs for the price of one! Nothing more to buy ever! But hurry: this is a limited time offer! Don’t delay: order today!” Dazzled by the combination of both music and savings, we select our CDs, send in the order form, and start jamming out to our new tunes. We throw away all of the information that the company mails us since we were assured that there was nothing more to buy ever. A few weeks later, however, we discover that the offer we signed up for wasn’t as straight-forward as it seemed. It turns out that if we don’t mail in a card each month we get charged big money for CDs that we don’t want. “That’s not fair,” we cry. “You didn’t tell us the whole story! If we knew all of the details we wouldn’t have signed up for this deal in the first place.”

This is the type of complaint that Jesus tried to nip in the bud in today’s reading from Luke. He knew that a lot of the people living in the area he traveled through had heard about his ministry. He also knew that what they heard came in a format similar to that CD club advertisement. The word on the street might have sounded something like this: “Here comes Jesus of Nazareth! The man is filled with the power of the Spirit. He’s teaching the crowds, curing the sick, and raising the dead! Sign up today and become part of the Kingdom of God, but hurry, this offer expires soon!” Jesus knew that, given this description, folks would be chomping at the bit to follow him, ready to have their sickness healed and reserve a place for themselves in the Kingdom of God. Later on these CD club disciples would have cried foul when discovered that they would have to take up their cross daily and loose their lives in order to save them.

So, while Jesus was on the road to Jerusalem, he made sure that all of his would-be disciples knew exactly what they were signing up for. He was upfront about the demands of being one of his followers. There’s no guarantee of a place to live, there’s no time off, even for funerals, and you don’t get a chance to say goodbye before you ship off. Nothing trumps the urgency of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

I imagine after hearing all of these details, some potential disciples decided that following Jesus wasn’t really what they were looking for. At first they might have thought that they were getting involved in a self-help program, where all of their problems would be solved by God. Perhaps they were seeking a fast track to worldly success once this new Kingdom was established. Whatever their reason, it seems safe to assume that, once all of the details were laid out, not everyone was ready for the demands that come with discipleship, even those who really wanted to help spread the word about the Kingdom.

While this reaction to an unpredictable and possibly dangerous lifestyle was to be expected, what is amazing is the number of people that did want to become Jesus’ followers. Even the crucifixion couldn’t stop people from taking part in his Kingdom-building work. A mere fifty-three days of after Jesus was nailed to the cross people were flocking to the life of discipleship by the thousands. It didn’t matter to these early Christians that they were being persecuted for their beliefs and thrown in jail on account of the name of Jesus. But what could possibly give someone the strength to put the gospel message in front of everything else, to sacrifice everything for their beliefs?

The source of their strength was in the crucifixion of their Lord. These disciples knew that Jesus’ death redeemed them, won their lives back from death and granted them citizenship into God’s Kingdom. In response to this loving self-sacrifice, they gave their whole lives to the building up of his Kingdom and were given gifts to help them in their work. Filled with the power of the Spirit, they sought to do all that they could to bring about the reign of God on earth. They overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles and faced death without fear. This isn’t to say that the members of the early church were super heroes. In fact, they weren’t responsible for their strength at all. Their witness was one of ordinary people made great by the power of God’s Spirit working through them.

Unfortunately, much of the radical nature of Jesus’ message has been lost over time. Many churches these days have taken the Kingdom-building movement of Christ and turned it into something else, something less than it was meant to be. Our focus has been shifted from transforming our lives to fixing our problems. Our mission has changed from standing with the marginalized to maintaining the status quo. Our prayer has changed from “Thy will be done,” to “Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory…”

In short, the Church has come dangerously close to offering the CD club discipleship that Jesus tried to get us to leave behind on the road to Jerusalem. “Come visit us this Sunday at St. Swithun’s! We’re doing Church for the new millennium! Our sermons are short and the lessons are painless. Try us out today! No obligation required!” We are trying to ignore the parts of the Scriptures that trouble us instead of wresting with the message that they give. We are compromising the gospel in hopes that a watered down Christianity might entice more members. We are giving up on transforming the world to focus on maintaining our individual parishes, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can revitalize the Christian movement by doing what Jesus did: Letting people know exactly what to expect from a life of discipleship. Would-be disciples need to know that living the way that Christ taught us to live will not win us any popularity points with folks who like things the way that they are. Christians follow a God who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” Nobody at the club likes to hear that God “…has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty,” but that is the message that we are to deliver. The world that we live in doesn’t understand how someone can be strong by making themselves vulnerable or lead by being servant of all. No, folks don’t understand at first, but there is nothing that they need to hear more.

I want to be clear: Christ does change our lives, he does help us get through our most trying times, and he does help us build Christian communities. He does this all on his own, asking nothing from us. What is up to us is how to respond to this abundance of grace. We can keep it to ourselves, offering it to the people that worship with us on Sunday mornings, or we can offer it to the whole hurting and broken world that we live in. I have had my own spiritual life refreshed by seeing all of the kingdom building, community restoring work being done here at St. Paul’s When we do that, when we use the power given to us by the Holy Spirit to reach out into the world around us, Christ is truly present.

So here are the facts, laid out plain: discipleship isn’t a bargain and you can’t cancel your membership at any time. Discipleship holds power and pain, rejection and rejoicing, agonizing crucifixion and glorious resurrection. True discipleship takes all of your life. Knowing all the details, one question remains: Who still wants to sign up

The Road Home

I sat in on a lunch meeting of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response (ODR) last Thursday. The folks who attended are each in charge of directing some aspect of the Office's business, and each person reported on the work being done in their area. When Mr. Anthony Johnson, Director of Case Management, had his time to speak he informed the group that he had a new addition to the Case Management Department: a waiting list. As of June 14 the case workers of the ODR were averaging over 100 active cases, twice their normal load. When they received over 100 calls asking for help on Monday, June 10, the waiting list had to be started. The summer rush was on.

Many of the people who evacuated New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have been looking for an opportune time to make their return. Folks I have spoken to have given two reasons for this summer being particularly auspicious. First, it is difficult for families that have children in school to move during the middle of the academic year. The summer months are much more attractive, since their children can start at a new school in a new grade, rather than having to change schools in the middle of a course of study.

Second, more and more people are closing on their settlements from the beleaguered Road Home program. When a Road Home application is submitted the applicant can choose one of three options:

1. Stay in your home.
2. Purchase another home in Louisiana
3. Sell your home and choose not to remain a homeowner in the state.

Of the 48,970 applicants that have chosen an option, 96.9% have chosen to remain a homeowner in the State of Louisiana and 85.7% have chosen to return to their homes. As of June 11, 2007 Road Home has 3,133 closings scheduled. This means that a lot of people are ready to get back and start rebuilding. A lot of people getting ready to rebuild also means that there are a lot of people coming back to New Orleans who will need help getting their road home cleared. As I mentioned above, many of the resources available to folks on the road home are stretched to the limit with no sign of demand for the services decreasing any time soon.

So what can the Church do to help? While it may be our instinct to try to tend to the spiritual needs of those coming home to rebuild, we need to realize that root of their problems lie elsewhere. When we only address an individual's spiritual issues we are perceived as irrelevant or unhelpful. A Lakeview resident that I spoke to yesterday summed this point up nicely: "When I first came back I would go to the Church for help and they would pray over me. After going to them a couple of times, I got tired of just getting prayed over. I lost everything in the storm. I need some help with that. I lost my house, not my soul." This present day New Orleanian echoes the writings of St. James, "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." (James 2:15-17, NRSV)

So what, then, are we to do? Are we destined to become a club for spiritual people, seen as ineffective by those outside of our circle? Certainly not! Rather, we should take the advice that St. James offers to the recipients of his epistle, "I by my works will show you my faith." (James 2:18, NRSV) We are stirred from complacency by the compassion shown to us by a loving God. We are empowered to go out and help people travel the road home by the Holy Spirit. We are transformed from social activists into kingdom agents by the One who is the Kingdom come near to us. In short, the only reason that we are able to do works is by faith.

I would like to issue an appeal to those of you who might want to help, particularly those who have those specialized skills so desperately needed: electricians, plumbers, social workers, mental health professional. Take time in prayer and ask God how He can use you to help your brothers and sisters in New Orleans. Pray on it. Pray for guidance on how you can make a difference. As for me, it is my prayer that God will continue to kindle our hearts and empower our works. I pray that God's work may continue in New Orleans and all of the Gulf Coast until the road home is made clear and all who wander are able to make their return.

Building the Kingdom, One Home at a Time

This Saturday morning I took a trip out to the warehouse. The warehouse is where the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana stores all of the supplies that they use to do gutting, restoration, and relief work. As you wander down the rows of storage you see foam mattresses, Sheetrock, insulation, pallets of bottled water, and the list goes on. Perhaps, if you come on a weekday, you'll also get to see Deacon Hackett scooting around on the forklift, complete with clergy shirt and collar.

On this Saturday morning the occasion for my trip was not Deacon watching, but to meet with Katie Mears whose office is located in the warehouse. She originally came down to New Orleans with a volunteer crew but decided to stay on and help the diocese with its relief efforts. After a while they decided to hire her on as their site coordinator. I met with her to find out how the Diocese goes about doing disaster response work and to see how that plan works itself out on the ground.

Katie explained that the Diocese began their work by gutting houses. (To date they've gutted more than 800.) After that effort was under way for some time they decided to move into offering rebuilding assistance. The plan was to help people use the money that they received from the federally funded Road Home program (http://www.road2la.org) to obtain building materials at cost. The diocese would then provide volunteers to help do the work that needed to be done so that homeowners could get the maximum value for their dollars. As it turns out, the Road Home money has been slow in coming, so the diocese is fixing the houses now and homeowners are repaying them as their checks come in. They are committed to offering real choices to the homeowners instead of taking a cookie-cutter approach. This attention to the needs and concerns of the individuals permeates that work that they do.

After our conversation, Katie offered to take me out to one of the sites so that I could see the actual work that was being done. When we arrived the crew was hard at work. I was anxious to see the progress that the volunteers were making, but Katie suggested that I let the homeowner show me herself. We walked up to the FEMA trailer parked in the front yard and Katie knocked on the door.

"It's open baby! Come on in, " called a voice from inside.

We entered and sat down with the homeowner. She was a congenial, middle-aged black woman, seated at her kitchen table. After offering us refreshments, she told us about her situation. After evacuating during Katrina and moving through five shelters, she was finally able to make it back to New Orleans. Her house had been under seven feet of water, so she had to move into a trailer. She said that she was overwhelmed with what she was supposed to do and disheartened by how far she had to go. One night, at her wits end, she cried out to God and asked Him to show her how she could start rebuilding her life. As she prayed, she looked up at her television and saw the number for the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response. She wrote down the number and called them early the next morning. She was able to get in touch with someone who put her on the path to recovery. The crews of volunteers sent by the diocese helped her gut her house, get the plumbing and electrical work done, hung Sheetrock, laid tile, talked, laughed, and cried.

"I just thank God for what the church has done for me. I don't know what I would have done without them," she told me.

After our conversation, she walked with me around her house. Inside volunteers were painting the walls with bright, cheerful colors, such a marked contrast from the drab interior of the trailer. The bright colors of the room were mirrored in her eyes and a smile split her face. Watching her house being resurrected before her eyes transformed her as well.

"Doesn't it look so good?" she asked.

That the house looked "good" was an understatement. In the midst of the decaying lots that lined the street, her home looked like a little slice of heaven.

Finding a High Cliff in the Swamp

I was reading over the Daily Office today and I came to this passage from the Psalter: "I waited patiently upon the LORD; he stooped to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay; he set my feet upon a high cliff and made my footing sure." (Psalm 40:1-2, NRSV) These two verses of Scripture jumped out to me because are packed with meaning for the citizens of New Orleans these days.

In a post-K New Orleans getting your feet set on a high cliff is the name of the game. I was walking around the neighborhood by St. Paul's with some other volunteers and saw my first newly raised houses since I came back to the city. Folks are jacking their houses up and setting them on pillars in order to avoid flooding should the waters rise again. Other folks haven't gotten to that point yet. They're still stuck down in the mire and the clay, searching desperately for a way out.

One such person is an older woman I met in the Lower 9th Ward yesterday. She told us that she just moved back into her house about one month ago. She needed to get her plumbing fixed and her gas lines inspected before those utilities could be turned back on. Her son recommended a contractor that claimed he was working out of a local church. He assessed the situation and gave her an estimate of $9500. The woman was unsure if this was a fair price (it wasn't), but she was so desperate to get the repairs made that she paid the man what he asked. He, in turn, never finished the job, took the money, and hasn't been heard from since. Now, out almost $10,000, this poor woman's life is looking a lot like the desolate pit that the Psalmist spoke of.

So, how does she get out? Luckily for us, God is willing to kneel down. He gets down and works in and through His creation and creatures. God has taken his followers up in his hands and breathed the breath of the Holy Spirit into their mouths. He has given them the determination and desire to come down and volunteer, to help their brothers and sisters in need. The Spirit has blessed these volunteers with the gifts of faith, hope, and love, and they've come to New Orleans to give these gifts to those in need.

In the case of the woman above, a group from Manhattan has taken her under their care. This evening, after putting in a day of work mucking houses, they're renting a plumbing snake, returning to her house. This woman was a complete stranger to them yesterday, but today they're getting her ready to help her get the water turned back on. Will an act of compassion by these Christians set to rights the wrong done to this woman? No, it will not. However, it is a start. Tonight, in one little house in the Lower 9th, a group with a plumbing snake will offer their hands. Their hands will be reaching out to lift one woman out of the mire and clay of despair to set her, if just for a moment, on a high cliff of hope.

Remember?

I arrived in New Orleans in the evening on May 29. WWOZ was playing on my radio, trumpets blared their sultry sound out of my speakers as I drove my car down Napoleon. Rain was coming down like crazy, not one of the daily afternoon showers, but a real deal rain storm. The water fell off of the branches of the oak trees that overhung the street and onto my windshield. Twilight was coming on.

Just like I had pictured it.

I had spent the last quarter of the semester at VTS anticipating my arrival in the city and I was finally here. That arrival shifted the gears in my brain from forward to reverse and the memories came flooding in. What is it about New Orleans that jogs the memory? (I have a sneaking suspicion that New Orleans, as a city, has forgotten more than it has remembered, so it seems rather counterintuitive.) Whatever the reason, whenever I come back to New Orleans my memory starts working overtime. I remember the people with whom I've shared the city, though most of them are long gone from these parts, and wish they were here. (I've started calling some of them, trying to coax them back. No luck so far, but I'm still hopeful.) I remember long nights, both in my lab at Tulane and out at the bars, and promise myself that I'll pay those old haunts a visit. I remember the music, and the melodies seem to float through air again: Galactic at Tip's on Lundi Gras, George Clinton at City Park for VooDoo, the Decemberists at Twiropa when the AC broke.

Your remember Twiropa? Great club. I think that it turned out to be my favorite in the end. Best thing about the place for my money: the parking cone lights. Don't know why. Or maybe how the loading dock door rolled up in the front of the warehouse to reveal the entrance to the venue. How bout O'Flaherty's Pub? Remember sitting in that upper room, all of us in one place and oblivious of our impending diaspora, listening to Mr. O'Flaherty sing to the patrons below? We told them it was a graduation party so they'd rent us the room.

You remember the storm? Everyone here does. In a lot of cases they don't have to do much remembering. They're still living with Katrina every day. They show up at St. Paul's, Lakeview, the church where I'm working for the summer, looking for help with something. Sometimes they need a caseworker to help them get a plan together to tear down, or repair, or rebuild. Other times they need to notarize a document, get help from some of the volunteers in residence, or do a load of laundry at the washateria.

Sometimes they just need someone to talk to. Used to be they'd just call up their neighbors, but a lot of these folks don't have neighbors any more. Lakeview was hit hard and it has taken a long time for folks to make their way back home. God knows it has taken me a while to get here myself, but I'll tell you one thing for sure: It's good to be back.