Anyone who says the Bible is boring, is not reading the Bible I’m reading.

The birth story of Moses is a great example of intrigue, jealousy, and conspiracy. We have an angry and jealous Pharaoh whose slaves are multiplying and getting stronger than he is comfortable with. Infanticide. A couple of midwives who are sneaky and deceptive but loyal to God. A brave mother, a hidden baby and a tar-coated basket.

If that’s not enough then we are introduced to a compassionate princess, a sister who is watching out for her brother, and the mother who is at the ready to be of service to the newborn.

In any great story, you can’t leave out any pieces because all the pieces matter. In this story, every detail, character and twist, adds up to a central theme: God will use us in the great story of redemption and reconciliation.

The midwives are so important to the story the writer gives them names, lest anyone forget the part they played in the saving of baby Moses. Shiphrah and Puah. Not unlike the political climate today when you have a leader terrified of losing his position of power that he has people doing terrible things to the people of the land to hang on to that power, Pharoah was so scared of the Israelites and their strength in numbers that he asks Shiphrah and Puah to kill the boy babies when they are delivering the babies of the Hebrew women. Shiphrah and Puah are Hebrew. There is every reason for them to be terrified of their king and blindly do what he is asking them to do. But they don’t. Instead, they decide to engage in a quiet, courageous act of civil disobedience. And then lie about it when Pharoah asks why they have allowed the boy babies to live.

They do this because the story says they “fear God.” In this setting, the word fear doesn’t mean terror or dread, it means awe, reverence, and moral seriousness. In other words, Shiphrah and Puah, chooses to do what God requires of them, to save the boy babies, and not what the Pharoah demands of them, to kill the babies. They are instruments of God’s goodness in the world.

These two midwives change the course of history for the Hebrew people. What if they had done what the Pharoah commanded. There would be no Moses. No struggle with his own complicated identity, and no leading his people out of slavery.

Then there is the mother who hides her son and the sister of the baby who just watches. The Pharoah’s daughter who finds the basket where the baby has settled amongst the reeds. Then the sister takes her turn in playing her part in the story of God’s salvation of God’s people; to find a wet nurse for the baby and return the baby back to their mother. Even the basket has a back story, a vessel, like Noah’s ark, that carries people through danger and into freedom.

God brings salvation through ordinary people, ordinary decisions and ordinary objects. Each action in the story is but a small piece of the whole, but each piece is essential.

Just like we can’t see the whole story while we’re living it, neither could they. We can read the story in the nice and tidy way it’s told because we know what happens. But they didn’t. For the midwives, the mother, the sister, and the princess there was fear, ambiguity and real sacrifice. It’s hard to be human in a broken and damaged world.

The midwives show us that we aren’t responsible for the whole story and certainly not the ending. We aren’t in charge of redemption, God only asks that we do our part, in our corner of the world, toward the realization of the kingdom of God on earth. By the grace of God, we aren’t in charge of the ending of the story, God just wants us to stay faithful, courageous and active in doing our part.

A thousand years later, Paul says something like this in Romans. Every human has their own unique gift and place in the story of God’s relationship with us and redemption of us and the world. We can’t do any of it alone. We need each other. And where two or three are gathered, God is right in the middle. We each have our part to play in the story, and only we can do the part that God is calling us to do. Which means that this path, the path of the midwives, the mother, the sister, the princess are paths of surrender. It’s only when we surrender that our part becomes clear.

In the Gospel reading we are reminded of the people who played parts in the story of the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?” Some say Jesus is John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. All voices crying out in the wilderness. But Jesus isn’t a side character in the story of reconciliation for the Jewish people or for us. He is the main character.

He says to his disciples, “But who do you say I am?” And Peter says, “The Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” This is a very bold statement Peter makes in the city of Caesarea Philippi. Even the location plays a part in the story. This is a city where there are temples and shrines to Ba’al, to the Greek god, Pan, god of the wild and shepherds, and a temple to August Caesar, who it was thought was the incarnation of Zeus. The city itself is another character in the ongoing story of the redemption and reconciliation of the world to God, and Jesus is the one who teaches a whole new way of being in the face of power, greed, and violence.

Just like the story of Baby Moses, the story of God, Jesus and humanity does not end with a tidy ending. Jesus is arrested, tortured and murdered. Peter denies ever knowing Jesus. His friends all scatter. But lucky for us Easter Sunday follows Good Friday.

We live in a world just as complicated as the one in Exodus, marked by fear, oppression, and violence, but also by courage, compassion, and grace we didn’t see coming. Even now, there are midwives among us choosing the fear of God over the fear of man.

It’s frustrating that we can’t see around corners, predict what is going to happen, or control how the story ends. But we can be sure that God has a place for each one of us in it. And around the corner, regardless of what might happen, or how the story ends we all have parts as midwives, mothers, sisters and princesses.

Amen

No gossip, or rowdy clients talking about to the facilitator. No jokes, no swearing, no bad coffee and powdered creamer. No getting to know the other clients in the room. No smoking in the parking lot with friends (nothing like smoking and drinking coffee in early sobriety), which would totally be my favorite part if I was 25. But it’s not all bad, the therapists seem to really care about the well being of the clients, and we all keep coming back to class.

Last Monday was my fourth IOP class. The topic was trauma and resiliency. What I don’t have in boundaries (another topic we covered) I make up in spades with trauma.

The therapists are giving us a lot of handouts. One of them explained the trauma ice berg. What pray tell does the thing that destroyed the Titanic and trauma have in common you ask? Well, the top of the ice berg are all the ways a person who has PTSD act out, what their family, friends, co-workers, teachers, etc., see. Anger, lying, self-harm, lack of focus, self-destruction, hypervigiliance and hyperindependence.

My mother said to a therapist she saw once during my teenager years that our house was the house of the living dead. We were numb, walking around like zombies. She’d married her violent, alcoholic psychologist how did she think that was going to turn out? I was getting high, and drinking a lot so her description was apt. A teenage mess who was also angry, lying, had no focus, self-destructive, hypervigilient and hyperindependent.

That was in the late 1970’s. I wouldn’t understand how I was affected by trauma until 2013, when my now ex-husband picked up empty plates my kid had left on the patio table and smashed them on the ground, screaming furiously, “This is my house! It’s chaos! I can’t take it anymore!”

Stunned, I got in my car and on the way to therapy, which was where I was going when this happened, pulled the car over and started to sob. The memory of my violent, alcoholic, psychologist step-father throwing the glass he’d been drinking from on the driveway, shattered glass scattering in every direction at my feet, screaming, came flooding back. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I imagine it was something like: This is my house. It’s chaos. I can’t take it anymore.

Sitting in that car, crying, sobbing, hyperventilating, it occurred to me that I had PTSD. When I started reading everything I could get my hands on about PTSD and Trauma the pieces of my life started fitting together. There were finally names for all the things under the tip of the ice berg.

I circled on my Trauma Iceberg handout the effects of trauma that I recognized in myself. Isolation, dissociation, excessive fear, panic attacks, avoidance, chronic depression, shame, body memories, and added a few more from the slide the therapists put up on the screen: rage, feeling worthless, feeling unloved, detachment, low self-esteem, addiction.

From 2013 on this was great news! I finally had names for the feelings and behaviors I had engaged in and experienced from my teenage alcoholic years into adulthood.

One of the affirmations framed on the wall of our IOP classroom is “Name it to tame it.” It’s so stupid and so true. Being able to name all of the effects of trauma I experienced freed me from decades of the false belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that could never be fixed.

Turns out, we can be fixed. That the things we think are wrong with us are the effects of trauma like natural disasters, historical trauma, physical or sexual abuse, serious accidents, loss of a loved , combat or war exposer, living through another Trump administration.

IOP isn’t so bad. I’m being reminded of all the tools to use for managing symptoms of PTSD. I did EMDR in 2016 when the symptoms were scary and debilitating and it worked. I continue to pray, meditate, do yoga, walk the dogs, journal, go to lots of 12 twelve step meetings, get enough sleep, eat well, catch negative thinking and reboot. I’m working on incorporating more fun into my life. Now if I could stop getting myself into toxic work environments, I’ll be golden.

Jesus shows up in the region of Tyre and Sidon with his friends. Tyre and Sidon were extremely wealthy port cities just north of Israel, the land of the Gentiles. Jesus is walking down the street, and the writer says, “…a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” This woman is not only an outsider, but she’s a disrupter. She’s loud and brash. She is also a Gentile and a pagan, and her daughter is demon possessed. She represents everything Jesus should run from. Women, Gentiles, and the impurity of being possessed by a demon.

But she will do anything to save her daughter, heal her daughter. She honors Jesus and his reputation as a healer by bowing down in front of him. Then she asks Jesus to cast out the demon that has a hold of her daughter.

Jesus tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Instead of retreating in shame, she says, “Lord, help me.” He answers her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Right there, hear that? Jesus basically calls this woman a dog.

But the woman is smart, unwavering and bold. She says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” This badass woman talks back to Jesus.

My dog is so spoiled. The only scraps she gets are finely chopped and put in her food dish. We love our dogs, but in the ancient world, dogs were scavengers, dirty, wild, and offensive in every way. To call someone a dog was a horrible insult. Yet, the Canaanite woman does not flinch. She persists and has a comeback at the ready. Again, from The Message: She says, “Of course, Master. But don’t dogs under the table get scraps dropped by the children?” Essentially, don’t even the dogs get what is left?

Fr. Christopher Alt writes: “This unparalleled “besting” of Jesus, by a woman no less, is a revelatory experience for Jesus that causes him to reconsider his own ministerial mission. It is a key passage that compels Jesus to expand his teaching ministry to non-Jews. How appropriate that shortly hereafter Jesus is found “feeding” the 4,000 Gentiles.”

“Thus, strangely enough, the woman teaches Jesus to remember what he has just exhorted others regarding what constitutes a person clean or unclean. She confronts Jesus and gives him the opportunity to practice what he has just preached.”

In the beginning of this chapter, the Pharisees and Scribes are beside themselves with indignation because Jesus and his disciples are eating without washing their hands first. The tradition of the Elders is you must wash your hands before you eat. Jesus brings them up short by explaining to them that it’s not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out of them, that is, how are they speaking, how are they treating others, how are they caring for their neighbor. They are more concerned about tradition than keeping the commandment of loving their neighbor.

It’s almost like Jesus forgot what he just told the Scribes and the Pharisees when he has this interaction with the Canaanite woman. She reminds him that it’s not what goes into your body that is sacred, but what comes out of your mouth. She is bringing to his attention that the Gentiles need his teaching, healing, and miracles, too. The Gentiles are looking for spiritual healing, because if their own rites and rituals were enough, why would this woman come to Jesus in the first place?

“Then Jesus says to her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”

Jesus might have well just said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Sometimes the most painful thing is to admit we were wrong, acknowledging that someone else is right. People go lifetimes without ever acknowledging they have made a mistake here and there, or were wrong about some things, never making amends, never changing their behavior.

The fearlessness of the Canaanite woman made Jesus see that his teaching and healing was needed for everyone not just the Jewish people. She changes the trajectory of his mission. How much would change in our world, if we all could admit when we are wrong, say we are sorry, and change the way we walked through the world, loving our enemies and our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.

It’s a sterile conference room with no windows. The therapists stand on either side of the screen at those standup desks you can make go up and down with a flick of switch. No windows. I’m more depressed in that room then I was before I walked into that room.

Tables in 3 rows all facing the front. They’re like school desks, all steel and composite, compressed laminate tops so our greasy fingerprints can be wiped off easily, accept no food is allowed in the room, but you can bring non-alcoholic drinks. Do they have to make that one of the rules because someone brought a cold, frosty, Tallboy to IOP?

The room holds 24 people but on my first day there are 12 women and one man. Which says so much about what is wrong with our culture. Women are falling apart and getting help. Men are falling apart and joining ICE.

I was looking forward to IOP. I’ve worked in recovery off and on over the years doing substance use disorder (SUD) counseling, (we refer to it as SUD because any other way might be offensive to the people getting help. Which is crazy, because addicts and alcoholics are often offensive to everyone around them until we get help). Hoping it would be a group of people sitting in a circle talking about our feelings, I was a little disappointed that we would be talked at for 2.5 hours. Granted, the therapists are very nice and respectful, but any feelings processing should be done with our individual therapist. We do get short videos on radical acceptance and anxiety, we meditate for 10 minutes (skill building) and we get to check in with a couple of feeling words (sad, defeated, and self-care activities (walking the dog, yoga) we have engaged in since the last time we met and what if anything did you get out of the last session (face reality, accept what is).

If it sounds like I am rolling my eyes as I write this, because I leave class more depressed than when I walked in. A job I cared about doesn’t pay me enough for the work I do, and the people in charge told us we were doing a terrible job.

I’ve written about some of my clients over the last months, but there are 25, sometimes 26, 27, or 28, more whose stories I haven’t shared. Stories that include major facial reconstruction for skin cancer that wasn’t caught because he was unhoused and never went to the doctor; her mental health deteriorated because she wouldn’t go to her psychiatrist anymore; clients overrun by cockroaches, no fault evictions, too many dogs, rental arears, utility arrears, not enough money for food. There are clients that are doing well, and my heart bursts with happiness for them, but my heart is heavy with how little we can accomplish as case managers in a political climate of conspicuous cruelty, greed, selfishness, heartlessness and evil.

So, I had an emotional breakdown in the parking lot of my work after walking out of meeting with the leadership of my organization telling a group of case managers, we were not meeting expectations. Oh no, it was worse than that. They were humiliated and ashamed of our poor performances as case managers and…

Excuse me? I promised myself I wouldn’t say anything during the meeting, but ask anyone who knows me, I can’t help myself. If there is injustice, if the information you’re feeding us is wrong, if you are trying to gas light me, well, I don’t put up with that shit anymore.

Um..excuse me…I raise my hand…What you are saying is shaming, humiliating and degrading to us. You are making a sweeping generalization about all of us, that we are doing a terrible job. I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, and I can’t speak for the others here, but I know I do a great job with my clients. I show up for them, spend hours with them solving problems, helping them get their needs met…Tears come to my eyes. I look at my colleagues, I’m sorry I can’t stay. I look at the two directors, I can’t stay in this meeting, to the vice-president in charge of programs, I’m sorry I have to go, I can’t stay. I gather my things and walk out of the meeting.

Everything that happened to you as a kid, not being seen, heard or valued, being beaten, berated, sexually abused, told you are stupid, fat, and ugly, no matter how much therapy, sobriety, recovery, or God you have, that stuff is in there. Because it happened when you were young, vulnerable, impressionable, it imprints on your DNA and no matter how much manual scrubbing you do to your DNA, it doesn’t go away. We can learn to love ourselves better than we were loved, value ourselves where there was none, take care of our body, minds and soul, which is a full time job, and show up to life with all the support and love we can gather around ourselves so we can love and support others. But when someone sits at the front of a room and says they are ashamed of my performance, I completely fall apart.

I left that crazy, toxic meeting, got in my car, called Kaiser to start the process of taking a leave of absence, which meant IOP for 9 sessions, 3 times a week for three weeks to be reminded that maybe the people who were telling us we were doing a terrible job are the ones doing a terrible job. They are scared, frustrated, and under a lot of pressure too. But that doesn’t give people the right to treat other people like garbage. And then I went to work. I took a mother of 4 a food box and some household items. I went to visit my client that just had major hernia surgery that saved her life, and I dropped off a food box and dog food for another client.

I met with my psychiatrist the week after the terrible meeting, who confirmed that yes, I was having a mental health crisis, and it was time to take care of myself. IOP, back to talk therapy, more AA meetings, more yoga, more walks, and try and have some fun. Homeless services is merely a band aid for a greater systemic problem; the lack of this country caring for its people. And that, IOP doesn’t fix.

Jesus gave the 12 disciples a simple direction after feeding the 5000. You guys go ahead; I’ll catch up with you later. How many times have we said that to someone. I’ll be along in a few. I need a short break.

Jesus needed a break. He’s been busy. Teaching in parables is a rigorous way to teach. It’s exhausting to explain what you mean if your students don’t get the message. And we know from experience that the disciples ask Jesus to explain to them what he meant by the parable of the weeds or the Sower, or being asked why he teaches in parables in the first place. Jesus was dedicated to imparting the gospel to his followers. He couldn’t spread the message of the Kingdom of God, God’s radical and abundant inclusive love, all by himself. He didn’t have time. He needed to teach his closest followers so they could go out and preach, teach and heal people themselves.

He needed a rest. Besides the teaching, preaching and healing, he had heard the news of his cousin, the John the Baptist’s, John’s death, and had shown the disciples that 5000 people could be fed with some bread, some fish, some gratitude and generosity.

He took that break and asked his friends to go on ahead without him. He would catch up with them on the other side. He needed some quiet. He needed some solitude and some time to pray by himself. Time to be in the presence of God.

His friends got in the boat. That’s what we do, we get in the metaphorical boat, don’t we. The boat of life, love, work, family, community. At first everything is great because we’ve learned some super cool stuff, we found a job we love or tolerate pretty well. We found a spouse or partner we love or tolerate pretty well. We had some kids that we love or tolerate pretty well. Or got some amazing fur babies that stole our hearts. And life was going along all right.

Until. The wind kicks up, the sea boils over, and the waves toss the boat like one of those small rubber balls you’d get at the grocery store as a kid. Because life is never perfect.

I had a 19 years-old child standing at the stove after he graduated from high school. His anger was dense, consuming. Tears flooded his eyes as he said, “I never asked to come here. I don’t want to be here. I can’t stand being here anymore.”

He didn’t mean in my kitchen making scrambled eggs. He meant here, on this planet, in this body, living this life. I picked up the shattered pieces of my broken heart and stuffed them in the back pocket of my jeans, out of ideas.

God gathered the waters of the deep and gathered them into one place, separating the land from the sea, creating boundaries the ocean cannot cross.

God stopped the rain, the flood began to subside, and a dove was sent out, and finding land, flew back to the ark with an olive branch in its beak. A rainbow broke over the land and sea, a symbol of God’s covenant to Noah to care tirelessly for all the people of the earth.

God parts the water for the escaping Israelites, led by Moses, pursued by the Egyptians, and saved by God, when Moses then holds his staff over the Red Sea. Once the Israelites walk on dry ground to the other side, Moses drops his staff and the Egyptian army is flooded by the waters closing in over them.

The boat is being tossed around on the sea made turbulent by the wind. Jesus sees his friends in the boat out in the distance and begins to walk to them on the water. Because God commands the water and the seas. At first his friends think they are seeing a ghost, because in the first century, most people believed in ghosts, nocturnal spirits and disembodied apparitions. They cried out in fear but this time, it wasn’t a dead uncle, it was Jesus.

And as he does so many times, Jesus calls out to them, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” So, Peter asks Jesus to call him to him again. Just as Jesus called him from his life as a lowly, humble fisherman to be the foundation of a church that didn’t exist yet. Jesus does so, and Peter, like all of us at one time or another, steps out onto that water, and begins to walk.

It is only when the idea that walking on the water is impossible that we begin to sink. Our fear breaks the bond of trust we have built with God. We falter and doubt that we will be taken care of. We try to save ourselves, our loved ones, the world, and all the time, God is whispering in our ear, “Do not be afraid.”

Our fear is often louder than our faith or trust in God. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, that again God has brought us through the worst storm we thought possible, we can step out with the deepest trust and forget that Jesus reached down and caught us the last time we began to sink.

The thought came to me in a moment of quiet, offer this grown man that I gave birth to an opportunity to do something different. An idea I had never had before, allow him to pick a place on the globe and enroll in a volunteer program of his choice. He did. He chose the farthest place he could go. He taught Buddhist monks English for 6 months in Laos. He came back a changed man. God reached out, caught us both, and settled us down back in the boat.

Trust is built one block at a time. One leap of faith at a time. One stepping out on the water at a time. One being caught by God as we sink, at a time. I don’t think God admonishes us for our doubt, I think God loves us so much that in our doubt his hand is always at the ready, when we falter, to catch us again and again

Amen.

Not posting the Sunday readings because they’re long but this is where you can read the First Reading and Gospel Reading that I am preaching on today.

It’s the middle of the day. The hottest part of the day when people, who live in very hot climates, where the peak temperature is inhospitable, do nothing. They rest. No one is outside. Except, today there is Abraham sitting, at the entrance of his tent. Just sitting, not napping or hiding inside. It’s as if he sits on the threshold of what is and what is to come. The threshold of his world and the spiritual word.

And three men appear. Abraham doesn’t know that God is among them, he just sees three visitors, and he runs and bows to the ground. He’s 99 years old. Running and bowing isn’t something that comes easy. Then he invites them to stay. “Please don’t pass me by,” he says. His super host takes over, the one who wants to please, impress, show them radical hospitality. He gets water to wash their feet, invites them to sit under the shade of the tree, and retrieves bread to nourish them. In fact, he tells Sarah to take the best flour and make cakes. He took the choicest calf, had his servant prepare it. Got the curds and milk and calf and set it before the visitors. The visitors ate while Abraham stood there. They had a feast.

Abraham did all that, not because he knew anything about the visitors, that’s just who he was. Generous, kind compassionate. Little did he know he was feeding and welcoming God. He ran towards what was there three travelers in the heat and God was in the middle of them.

The visitors ask, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And Abraham says, “She’s in the tent.”

And one of them says, and this is the Lord speaking now, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” Sarah, listening inside the tent, starts laughing. She laughs to herself, but God hears her laughing. She’s laughing because she’s like 90 years old and Abraham is almost 100 and it’s laughable to think that Sarah could conceive and bear a child. That ship has sailed.

Then the text says, “The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

God doesn’t shame her or discount her. He playfully says, “I heard you laugh.” Is anything too hard for God? Oh, I’ll be back, and when I do come back you will have born a son, the Lord says. The promise was still alive, after all this time. God hadn’t forgotten. And what seemed biologically impossible was about to become a baby boy.

Now fast-forward roughly 2,000 years and we find Jesus doing what Jesus does, going through cities and villages, teaching in synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, healing every disease and affliction.

And then the text gives us this little window into how Jesus saw people.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

The word for compassion here in the Greek is splanchnizomai. It refers to the intestines, the viscera, the gut. He felt it in his body. Jesus was deeply moved when he saw the tired, sick, and spiritually adrift people. It was like a punch in the gut. He saw them and it moved him.

This is the same God who showed up Abraham’s tent. The God who sees, the God who is moved by compassion, the God who meets the needs of God’s children.

Then he says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Just as he is finishing asking the disciples to pray that God send the workers out to the harvest, the lost sheep who need healing and care, Jesus sends those same disciples to do it. The answer to the prayer was the people doing the praying.

Jesus calls the twelve together. He gives them authority, the power over unclean spirits, power to heal diseases and afflictions. These are not impressive men. This list includes a tax collector, some fishermen, a political zealot, and Judas Iscariot. This is not the dream team. This is not a group that would have been selected by a search committee.

But this is who Jesus sends, and says, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay.”

We then get an economics lesson. Not of the economy of a capitalist superpower, but of God’s economy. Freely have you received, freely shall you give. You didn’t earn what you’ve been given. You can’t charge what cost you nothing. It’s called grace. The grace that has been gifted to you, will now flow through you, to others. This is how God’s economy works in the kingdom. You will be taken care of and have everything you need.

Abraham didn’t earn his guests. He didn’t know they were divine. He had an attitude of gratitude, openness and generosity, and in giving he received the impossible promise.

The disciples didn’t earn their authority. They didn’t graduate from a school of miracles. Jesus simply gave them power and said go give it away. The receiving and the giving were inseparable.

For a moment, Jesus looks on the crowd and for a moment his doubt gets the best of him. Let’s pray God will send someone to do this work. But then, he realizes, the answer is giving authority to heal to his disciples. They are going to do the work. Twelve ordinary, simple men, who have chosen to follow him.

Our problem is not the size of the need, but our faithfulness. We don’t earn our faith, healing, forgiveness or belonging in God’s family. Someone was there, with bread, milk and meat. Someone ran toward us to pick us up when we hit the ground. Someone looked upon us with compassion. Someone was sitting in the right place at the right place to meet our needs.

Nothing is too hard for God. All God is asking of us, is to have an open heart, generous spirit, and wide compassionate arms for the lost, the weary, the lonely, the sick. That is the joy of being part of what God is doing in the world.

Be Abraham, sitting on the threshold of the material and spiritual. Cultivate a generous and open spirit. Be patient and present. Be watchful of the need in front of us.

If it seems impossible, we might laugh at the absurdity of it all, but God is always there reminding us that nothing is too hard with God’s help.

Anything has been my primary addiction since I figured that a substance, person, shopping, sex, religion, spirituality, cigarettes, caffeine, could change the way I felt. First cigarettes, when I was 11 or twelve. In those days you could go to a hallway in a hotel or restaurant and there would be a machine, golden light illuminating the glass and each brand of cigarettes had their own little column where they snuggled in a perfect stack. You put your coins in, yes, coins, because the price of a pack of cigarettes in the late 70’s was under a dollar. Those coins always came from my dad’s coin jar, because I was also a thief.  

More on all the debauchery later. The point is I’m now addicted to helping people. Along with all my other Twelve Step programs, I’ve been a card carrying member of Alanon since the 1900s. If you don’t know what Alanon is and you love someone who is an addict or alcoholic my gentle invitation to you is get your ass to an Alanon meeting. 

I’m co-dependent giving my money, time and talent to taking care of others, husbands, children, pets, my mother, siblings, and now 30 formerly unhoused folks on my caseload.  Alanon has helped me separate my trauma from the trauma of the folks I work with, taught me to recognize where I end and another begins. Told me I was powerless over people. I can’t change or control another human being but I can change myself. And still that first year working in homeless services was exhausting and emotionally draining. Burnout in my field is like Chickenpox, stand next to someone and you’ve got. Then you have to spend the next 2 weeks taking oatmeal baths, slathering your body with cooling pink lotion while trying not to scratch the blisters which makes it worse and leaves a scar. 

The first year or so I thought about them all the time. They popped up in my dreams. I’d spend hours on the phone with one client listening to him tell the same story over and over. The work load was too much, they needed too much, how was I ever going to meet all their needs?

I couldn’t. I can’t. You can’t. You just can’t. 

The help my clients need far exceeds the 40 hours a week of work we’re expected to do. And that 40 hours is being eaten up by documentation to meet the expectations of funders. Assessments, goals, action steps, case notes. So, more Alanon.

I’ve stopped trying to meet all their needs now. In my third year, I’m a veteran on my team. Just behind my Gen Z co-worker who’s been there 3.5 years to my 2.5. 

What I can do is pick up the phone during business hours and only business hours. Say no when I can’t drop everything and take them to the store to buy water, because they only have 10 gallons left. Tell them they have to figure out another way to get that $5000 utility bill paid because my agency doesn’t have money to help and I’ve exhausted all my options. Take them to the store, help them make their doctors appointments, bring them some paper towels and toilet paper because everything little thing helps. And love them. Just love them, for the imperfect and scared humans they are. Just like me. 

Los Angeles had not seen rain like that on Christmas Eve for a very long time. It was a work day for me, but I had left my computer at home at noon to do a hot yoga class and get a few more things for my family. I wasn’t expecting phone calls because in my fantasy thinking it’s Christmas Eve, I shouldn’t be working anyway, so certainly there will be no crisis to manage, no needs gone unmet.

But I work in homeless services and there are always needs and often crises. My work phone rang, and D’s name popped up. I rolled my eyes and answered the phone. Rain was pounding my car as I parked near my local ATM.

I think I work with people who are so desperate for help because as a teenager I was desperate for help and no one was there. Oh, I had a family. A “nice” family with a big beautiful house, a beautiful mom, a beautiful step-dad, who owned another beautiful house on the Cape and one in Ojai. They owned a beautiful boat at one time and would sail from the marina to beautiful Catalina. They’d go on beautiful vacations and drag us along sometimes, but mostly we stayed home. Because our beautiful step-father had the ugly habit of terrorizing and beating his step-children, and our beautiful mother stood by, and didn’t intercede. Needless to say, I have a very overdeveloped sense of justice, empathy and sensitivity to the suffering and vulnerable.

But sometimes, when clients’ call, and they call a lot, it might be at a moment where it’s all gone. The justice, empathy and sensitivity have been drained from my cells and my impulse is to ignore them. That day, because I also feel that I have a moral obligation to work when they are paying me to do so, I answered D’s call.

I slumped down in the seat of my car, bone weary, and listened to D ramble. In the time that I have worked with D I have never been able to understand what he’s saying. He mumbles, runs his words together, says the same thing over and over again. This day, I listen carefully and I understand the gist of what he is trying to communicate.

What I heard was: he got kicked out of his interim housing facility. The facility that I worked with 3 other people to try to get him in. The place where it was dry, warm, 3 meals a day, the clients can come and go as they please, indoor plumbing, and he had his own room. I wasn’t clear as to when he got kicked out, that day, or the day before, but it was Christmas Eve, and pouring rain, and I had to go to CVS for something.

And it was Christmas Eve and there was nothing I could do. I encouraged him to go to Skid Row, to the Midnight Mission or another shelter and see if he could get a bed for the night. I told him there was nothing I could do. From what I gathered he got in a fight with someone and they had to ask him and his dog to leave. This wasn’t the first time. He got kicked out of the last place and maybe the place before that. What he wanted, to be inside, he couldn’t manage to maintain. He was not taking his medication even though he told me over and over again, if he’s inside and stable he would take his medication. He didn’t. He lives with schizophrenia and untreated means he is paranoid, delusional, impulsive and scary.

I called his case manager at the building, also working Christmas Eve, also an angel walking the Earth, trying to help the sick and suffering. He told me D started a fight, and they had to ask him to leave. D’s dog was still in his room and he wasn’t sure what to do with the dog. Call animal control, I said. Or the local shelter. I don’t know.

That was all I had. I don’t know.

Calling D back, I had no good news. I was angry and frustrated that he got kicked out. He wanted to be inside, I got him inside with the help and care of a bunch of people, and he wouldn’t take his meds and he landed back outside, in historic rainfall on Christmas Eve. I’m sorry, I told him. It’s Christmas Eve. You’ll have to find somewhere to go on your own.

Guilt tickles my toes but if I open the door a crack to guilt, it will overtake me like one of the huge waves big wave surfers chase, and I will be pounded. So I say again, as I’ve said over and over during our conversation. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. I’ll call you Monday. I’ll refer you for another interim housing placement. I’m sorry. And hang up the phone.

The next I hear, D has been arrested and is being held at Men’s Central Jail downtown.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

A Zealot, a fisherman, and a tax collector walk into a bar… Just kidding. They with 9 others and some women are sitting with Jesus on the side of a mountain. Jesus is teaching them. You are the salt of the earth, Jesus says. If you are a 1^st century student of a rabbi who says you are the salt of the earth, you absolutely know what this means. This means you are invaluable. You are important to life, to people, to God. This is no ordinary metaphor. In the first century salt was life. It made bland food edible. It was a preservative for fish and meat. It drew blood out of the meat and fish so that the Jewish people could eat it. Blood being forbidden according to the law. Salt was used in purification rituals, healing and cleansing. People depended on salt for all its life giving and purification properties.

Not only that, but salt, a preservative that never decays, was chosen as a seal of the covenant between God and God’s people. Salt is permanent, making the bond between God and God’s people strong and enduring. But if salt ever lost its saltiness, what good does it do. If we forget who we are in Christ, if we forget that we are beloved, made new, forgiven and called, then we lose our saltiness.

You are the light of the world, Jesus says next. You are the light of the world. Just take that in for a moment. Breathe it in. Light is expansive, revealing, guiding, dispelling fear. Light is shared, light guides, light reveals what is hidden. You are the light of the world. The whole world, not just for St. Thomas of Canterbury at the border between Long Beach and Lakewood, but the whole world.

Salt and light, Jesus says, because you are chosen by God, as God’s beloved, to be the light and salt this earth needs. God needs us to be this in the world, no previous job experience required. Just embrace these God given qualities that Jesus declares we all have. Salt enhances flavor of what is already there. God’s people are meant to draw out dignity, truth and goodness in the world and one another. Whatever is corrupting our world, violence, oppression, racism, injustice, we are called to shine a light on it and stand against. We stand against what dehumanizes others. Salt promotes healing, it might sting, but it is essential to wholeness. For the people of the ancient world, salt was essential for survival. In telling his followers they are the salt of the earth, Jesus is saying they are necessary for advancing the kingdom of heaven on earth. And if salt loses its flavor, it is no longer useful. We are vital as the hands and feet of Jesus’s love in the world.

Jesus is reminding his followers what they have already learned from the prophet Isaiah:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law and the prophets. He came to turn the hearts and minds of the Jewish people back to them. Deuteronomy 6:5 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”. And Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

Rob Bell, in What is the Bible: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything, says:

Abolishing and fulfilling were common ways to speaking about the Torah in Jesus’s day. When people were discussing the Bible and trying to figure out what it looks like to live it out, if someone suggested a terrible or misguided interpretation, they would be told, ‘You have abolished the Torah.’ Or as we night say, ‘That’s missing the point.’ …but if you got it right, ‘yes, that’s what it means. That’s what it looks like to live it out,’ then you would say, ‘You have fulfilled the Torah!’”

Jesus wants us to take everything Isaiah said, and what he says, and bring it to life. We are human beings made in the image of God. God is light, life and love. Bringing all that Jesus showed and taught to all the people who followed him is shining our light in the world. It is retaining our saltiness. In our work, church, families, neighbors, with the stranger, the hungry, the unhoused, those who are suffering in body, mind and spirt every day, in every encounter we can shine our light. We can fulfill the Torah.

Amen.

Gospel of the day: John 1:29-42

John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

After the baptism of Jesus, according to John’s gospel, John sees Jesus walking toward him and starts telling anyone who will listen what he experienced the day before. Jesus and John were cousins, and as John’s gospel says this morning, John didn’t know that Jesus was the Messiah. We don’t really know if Jesus himself knew. And if he did know, how comfortable was he with the Messiah thing. That would be a heady responsibility. Especially the way the Jewish people thought their Messiah would enter the world. On a white horse, with swords, and an army, ready to fight Rome for power and control of what the Jewish people once dominated. But in front of John, to be baptized, was Jesus of Nazareth. A man from the same family, the same backwater town, a laborer and craftsman. No army. No horses. No swords. Just a dove, the sign sent by God, descended on the one whom God sent to save the world from its sins.

The next day, as Jesus walks by, John wants everyone to see Jesus, to know that Jesus is the Lamb of God. In the first century lambs meant sacrifice, blood and cost. Lambs were sacrificed at the temple altar every day. But Jesus isn’t a lamb we offer to God, he is the lamb of God. God is doing the offering. This is an image that the people walking by, hearing John shout out Jesus as the lamb of God, would have associated with the Passover. They would have known the lamb of God refers to the blood on the doors of all the Israelites whom God passed over and saved. This is God acting on the side of the oppressed and liberating God’s people from slavery. For the people who followed the crazy, wild-eyed preacher to the Jordan to be baptized, who witnessed the baptism of Jesus, who would save up every cent they had to bring the appropriate offering to the Temple, and longing for freedom, they would have heard this declaration of Jesus as the Lamb of God as strange, scary and intriguing. And the Baptist is saying that Jesus, is the one who will deal with the sin of the world. Not just personal sin. God is doing something big, very big, if he sent Jesus, the Son of God, to deal with the sins of the world. Sins like war, violence, domination, oppression, brokenness, murder, hunger, pain.

No wonder John’s disciples started to follow Jesus. We can all imagine John’s disciples intrigued by this Rabbi. Wondering, what does he have to offer us? What can he teach us? There are no introductions, they didn’t stop Jesus to talk, they just walk behind him. Jesus, finally noticing, turns around asks them a question.

Jesus asks approximately 307 questions in the Bible. He is asked around 183 and he answers fewer than 10.

“What are you looking for?”

“What are you looking for?”

I know what I was looking for when I started my spiritually journey as a teenager. The emotional pain I was in was greater than any solution I had to manage the pain. Sometimes we know what we’re looking for like relief, belonging, sobriety, healing, meaning, God. Or just a little less pain than we felt yesterday. But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes the motivation can be hidden. Either way, we all answer this question from our own lived truth.

John’s disciples seem to be caught off guard with the question. It’s almost like they skip right over the question. So, they ask another question. “Rabbi… where are you staying?” It’s a funny answer really. They don’t know what they’re looking for because they don’t know yet. But what they do know, is they want to follow Jesus. They want to be where Jesus is.

The text tells us: “They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.” Four o’clock. John is oddly specific. Because we remember moments like that. We have amazing recall when it comes to remembering when there was a shift, movement, awareness, opening, when something changes. The Greek word used here is meno, meaning to remain, to stay, to abide. John’s disciples stayed with Jesus in a deep, continuous and intimate sense. Abide is signifying a secure, lasting connection, as these first disciples had with Jesus that day. And then Andrew goes to get his brother Simon, to bring him into relationship with this new teacher, so that Simon, whom Jesus calls Peter, can also abide with him.

Again, no answers, only the invitation to hang out with Jesus. To abide with God doesn’t mean having answers. It means staying when it’s uncomfortable. Staying when you don’t know what God is doing. Staying when your faith feels thin or your heart feels tired. These first three disciples have no idea what is ahead of them, but we do. We know the story of what it means for them to abide with Jesus. It means hard work, pain, suffering, fear, challenges, great joy, lots of food and wine, a wedding, some dancing, miracles, lots of stories, conflict, confusion, betrayal and death. And then being witnesses to the resurrection.

Buddhist Nun and teacher Pema Chodron says it this way,

“To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.”

As Christians we can read this profound spiritual principle of staying, abiding in Jesus like this: To stay with Jesus in the pain of a broken heart, hunger, hopelessness, wanting to get revenge, that is the true awakening. Sticking with uncertainty, experiencing peace in the midst of the storm, learning not to panic, control, or run, this is what it means to abide with Jesus. Learning to live with an open heart, open arms and an open mind, this is what it means to abide with Jesus.

“What are you looking for?”

“Come and see.”

Amen.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

`And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

“In the time of King Herod,” Matthew begins, was not a good time for anyone, especially the Jewish people. Herod is a client king installed by the Roman Senate around 36 BCE. The people didn’t choose him, and God did not anoint him, he rules at the behest of Rome. He is a servant of Rome, a middle management oppressor. Herod is not Jewish by birth. His father converted and his mother was an Arabian princess. Herod was chosen to rule over Judea because he was Rome’s yes man, he was seen as a good administrator and for a volatile but strategic region he was able to maintain stability.

But Herod’s legitimacy is constantly under threat because of his tenuous tie to Judaism. He has no relationship to King David, the only way one could be King of the Jews. Let’s not forget his frail ego and that makes him violently paranoid. So much so, that he kills anyone he thinks might threaten his throne. He executes his own sons. He has his beloved wife, Mariamnem, a Hasmonean princess, a legitimate heir to the throne, executed because he suspects she’s been unfaithful. He falls into a deep depression, never recovering from his insane paranoia and grief.

Besides the violent paranoia and killing his family, he is known for being a prolific builder. He rebuilds Jerusalem after it’s been destroyed in a siege by Marc Antony. He expands the Temple Mount into one of the greatest architectural wonders of the ancient world. He keeps strict Jewish law in his household. He builds massively so his name will never be forgotten. And yet—his authority is always in question. Because the people want a king from the line of David. And Herod is not that.

It’s easy to sanitize the story of Epiphany, focusing on the star, three kings, and camels, and children in robes with crowns, from all the Christmas pageants we’ve seen. But the story Matthew tells is a story that is spiritually subversive, politically charged, and terrifying, if your Herod the Great. So it’s huge threat to the status quo, not a curiosity when strangers from the East arrive in Jerusalem asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”

Matthew is introducing us to two competing claims to kingships. One backed by Rome, violence, fear and bloodshed, and one backed by a baby. Herod represents the resistance of this world to the reign of God. He is what power looks like when it is terrified of losing control. And the chief priests, scribers and religious professionals and experts are the ones who help Herod.

The chief priests are the ruling priestly class, deeply invested in the Temple system. The scribes are not secretaries, they are trained interpreters of religious and civil law. They know the scriptures and the prophecy, they know where the Messiah is supposed to be born. And they do absolutely nothing with that knowledge. They don’t go to Bethlehem, rejoice or worship. Matthew is foreshadowing the resistance Jesus will face later in his life. The opposition doesn’t come from ignorance. It comes from people who know better and choose safety instead.

And then there are the Magi. The Magi are not kings. They were astrologers, and dream interpreters. Pagan priests from Persia or Babylon. Outsiders in every way that matters.

Astrology in the ancient world was considered a serious discipline, almost a science. There was a widespread belief that the birth of a great leader would be marked by a cosmic sign. A star. And for centuries people have tried to prove whether there really was a comet or a conjunction or a supernova. Matthew does not care because it doesn’t matter if the star can be scientifically verified. What does matter is that God uses the language the Magi understands to draw them into the greatest story ever told.

The Magi are searching for meaning, for truth. They don’t have a bible, or know who the prophets are, and they definitely aren’t waiting for the Messiah of Israel. In being guided to the place Jesus is born, they are being guided to God.

“A star shall come out of Jacob.” Numbers 24:17. Matthew knows the tradition of connecting the Messiah to a star and what he does with it is outside the box in every way. He shows Gentiles recognizing what insiders miss. The Magi don’t just admire the star or interpret its meaning or write papers about it. They follow it. Not to the palace but to the manger and the feet of a baby. Herod hears about the Magi searching for the child born king of the Jews, he has them brought to him. He wants all the information he can get on this newborn. If this baby really is the Messiah the king of the Jews, then he has to be disposed of, lest the Jewish people dispose of him first. The Magi find Jesus, and Mary and Joseph. In reverence they fall to their knees and offer the baby the precious gifts they have brought with them. Not practical gifts for a family with a newborn, but the best they have to offer.

Epiphany is the revelation that Jesus is not just for Israel but for all people. For the whole world. The walls that divide races, cultures, religions and worldviews begin collapsing at the very beginning of his life. Epiphany is not about having all the right things, being from the right place, or having the right background. The Magi shows us it’s about movement, trust, risk. It’s about following the light you’re given even if it leads you somewhere you never expected.

This story in Matthew is recognizing that the reign of God does not look like Herod’s kingdom. It looks like vulnerability, generosity, and outsiders kneeling in wonder. We have a picture of two kings. One that clings to power out of fear and the other who offers himself in love.

May we have the courage to follow the star, wherever it leads us.

May we resist the kingdoms built on power, violence, and control.

And may we bring the best of what we have, however imperfectly.

Amen.

Let me tell you about trying to get interim housing for unhoused people in Los Angeles. It sucks. It’s a nightmare. When what you need most is to get this person off the street, and what they want most is to get off the street, the stumbling block is the bureaucracy.

Submit the referral through the Department of Health Services (DHS) online platform. No, you have to submit a form by email to the Department of Mental Health (DMH). No, you have to submit a referral to God knows where through CLARITY, the online database of people experiencing homelessness. I did all three. And all I know is that I was so frustrated and pissed off by the time I got that shit done because it would seem that the departments of “we’re here to help you with stuff for clients” don’t communicate at all and make the process harder than is necessary. But, I finally got an email from someone, a cog in the homeless services wheel somewhere, that interim housing had come through for my client.

The email says I have 3 days to get my client into the program. 3 days. I hadn’t heard from my client for a couple of days and had no idea where he was. Last I heard he was in an abandoned house in Compton. Then I got a phone call from him saying a neighbor had called the police and he got kicked out of there with his dog. Then I got another phone call from the client saying his dog got hit by a car on the freeway. Then I got another call asking if I had gotten him a place to stay. Then nothing for a couple of days.

I respond to the ten people on the confidential email from DHS or DMH, or both and to the intake manager at the building my client is going into. Yes, we want the room. Yes, I will schedule the intake. Yes, I will bring my client. Oh, by the way he has a dog. Great, you will need a letter stating your client needs the emotional support animal (ESA) from his doctor. Dog needs all vaccines. Client needs meds, can only bring two bags of possessions, and information on his next psych appointment. I have 3 days to help get the dog vaccinated. I tell the intake manager we aren’t going to make the 3 day deadline, and I can’t find my client. This guy, Terry, an angel says, “No worries. Let’s aim for next Tuesday.” It’s Wednesday.

I call my client. He doesn’t answer. I text. I call the next day. I text. No answer. Finally, he calls me back. He’s agitated, mumbling incoherently, his dog got hit by a car on the freeway. WTF?! “D! We got interim housing for you! I’ll pick you up at 2pm on Tuesday for your intake appointment.” Mumble, mumble, maybe he’s drunk? “Can you take Queen to get vaccinated?” He says he can. He says there’s a place they will do it for $45. I exhale.

Tuesday morning. I call and text my client. No answer. No response. 11:30am. I call and text again. Nothing. Finally he calls back. His wife/girlfriend is in the hospital, she’s pregnant. He’s going to be a father. This is his first kid. He needs to call her, talk to her, find her. Queen got hit by a car. Again, I’m having trouble following his train of thought but it’s 12:30pm and it’s Tuesday, the day we have a 3pm intake appointment.

“D!” I’m talking over him now. “D! You have to stop talking. D! Stop talking! Listen, listen, listen.” He won’t do either. “D! We got you into interim housing. You can take Queen with you. Listen! I have to pick you up today. Your intake appointment is at 3pm. Where are you?”

He won’t stop talking. By this point I have no idea if he’s drunk or loaded, or if this is his normal state. He’s just rambling. Trying to get this guy to listen for a few seconds is so hard. I start talking over him again, “D! Where are you?” I have no idea where he is. I have to pick him up and the dog and get to skid row by 3. “119th and Figueroa.” I’m not sure that’s exactly what he’s saying, but ok, I’ll take it. “By the platform. The train tracks, the Metro. Under the freeway.” I map it and it’s going to take me 45 minutes to get to south LA.

I drove to 119th and S. Fig and got my client on the phone. “Where are you? Can you talk a little slower please I can’t understand you.” “Across from the metro station.” Ok. Just look for the metro station. I drove around the block and I found it! There was the Metro station, under the freeway, like he said. He was at an encampment across the street. I could see him talking on his phone, walking toward the sidewalk. I parked and walked over to him, to help him with his dog. Swaying, mumbling, apologizing for being drunk, with the help of his friend who had a crack pipe in one hand, trying to get Queen’s collar attached to the leash with the other. “Thanks for your help,” I tell the woman. My heart breaks for her.

“You got everything,” I asked D.

Jesus, he smells like shit. I have to put him in my car, with Queen, who is walking slowly and carefully. I find a big shopping bag and put it on the front seat, hoping the smell won’t rub off on my interior, tell him to get in and get Queen settled in the back seat. We go through McDonald’s for food, he doesn’t know the last time he’d eaten.

You might be asking yourself, why didn’t he go to a shelter? The shelter system in LA County is terrible. There aren’t enough beds to meet the demand. Often, the person has to stand in line for hours hoping a bed will be available, and maybe a hot meal. There aren’t usually showers in the shelters, so, especially on Skid Row, people depend on shower programs like mobile showers or the few shelters that provide showers like the Midnight Mission on Skid Row. Many empty motels have been repurposed for shelters but they are often full, people staying much longer than then intended.

D falls asleep on the drive back to Skid Row. Queen seems ok in the back. She was definitely walking slower, her puppy energy drained by all the changes that have been going on. She needs stability, too. I really hope he stays in the program this time. If he’s in one place I think I can get him into an apartment. Please God, help this guy just stay.

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

The birth stories in Matthew and Luke have been told so many times, read every December, reenacted by children in bathrobes, set to familiar music, that it’s easy to forget something essential. Mary and Joseph are people. Real people. Flesh and blood. Messy, complicated and flawed human beings.

Jesus was a flesh and blood baby that cried, fussed, and probably didn’t sleep as much as his parents would have liked. I imagine Mary, frustrated because Jesus wouldn’t latch on and her milk ducts were clogged, yelling at Joseph to stop leaving his dirty clothes on the floor. And surely, Joseph was not always calm, benevolent and patient. They were human. And it’s important for us to remember that.

Matthew tells this gospel story from Joseph’s perspective, which is refreshing because Joseph doesn’t get a lot of attention. But here, today, the fourth Sunday of Advent, he’s given a choice that will change everything.

Joseph is betrothed to Mary. Not engaged like we think of engagement today, not a long engagement with a Pinterest board and an escape clause. This was a contract. A legal obligation between families. Binding. Serious.

Then Joseph finds out Mary is pregnant. We don’t know how long they’d been betrothed, or what their relationship was like, or even if they liked each other. And Mary, we know, was a peasant, very young, and uneducated. Her future already mapped out for her: marry, bear children, survive.

And now she’s pregnant. How did she tell her parents, or Joseph? And what did Joseph say?

“Wait. You’re what? How did this happen?” Clearly, she was fooling around? And then comes the flood of very human emotions: Shock, heartbreak, fear, anger. That particular kind of pain that happens when the person you thought you could trust hurts you beyond repair.

Joseph is described as “righteous.” And that word is tricky, because we tend to hear it now as judgmental or hypocritical. But that’s not what it meant. Righteous meant faithful. Good. Someone who took the law seriously. And according to the law, Joseph had options. He could expose Mary publicly. He could tell everyone that she had betrayed him and was carrying another man’s child. And if he did that, Deuteronomy is very clear. Deuteronomy 22 says if the charge is true and evidence of her virginity is not found, she could be brought before the town and stoned to death.

That was one option.

Or Joseph could dismiss her quietly. He could end the contract and mitigate the shame. Protect her from public retribution and spare her life. He chooses the second option. Which tells us something important about him. Joseph is not only faithful. He is kind, merciful and compassionate.

If Mary had cheated on him, and that is exactly what he would have believed, Joseph had every right to be furious. To protect his own reputation and throw her under the bus. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he takes the high road. He chooses mercy over punishment. Which already makes him a pretty remarkable human being.

And then, in the middle of the night, Joseph has a dream. Dreams mattered in the ancient world. People believed God could speak through them, guide individuals through dreams. The angel says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid…” Can you imagine, an angel of God appears to you in a dream and tells you not to be afraid? I’m not sure, but I think I’d be a little freaked out. Don’t be afraid? Ok. Great! Is that all?

The Angel goes on, “…to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Now Joseph has another choice to make. At this point, there are three roads in front of him. He could pursue the law to its fullest extent. He could stick with his original plan and dismiss her quietly. Or he could take Mary as his wife, adopt the child in her womb as his own, name him Jesus, and participate in something he cannot understand.

And that last option goes against everything he’s been taught. It defies logic. It risks shame, ridicule, and danger. It means trusting God more than the law.

Joseph chooses trust. Joseph chooses God. Joseph chooses truth, that what the Angel is saying to him in his dream is true. This child is supposedly coming to save us from ourselves, from sin.

Sin, in the biblical sense, doesn’t mean breaking rules, doing bad things that make you bad. Sin means missing the mark. Separation from God. It looks like addiction, greed, power, ego and fear. The ways we harm ourselves and each other. The child in Mary’s womb, says the angel, is going to save us from all of that.

Surely there were moments, over the months, over the years, when Joseph freaked out. When he doubted. When he questioned whether he had misheard God entirely. Because that’s what it means to be human. And this is where the story gets extraordinary. God does not enter the world through a clean, uncomplicated, morally tidy situation. God is born into a messy love story. A disrupted engagement. Scandal, fear and uncertainty and risk.

Emmanuel. God with us. Not God above us or far removed from us but
God with us. And that means God is really with us. In all of it. What it doesn’t mean is that things won’t go wrong, our hearts won’t be broken or terrible, tragic things won’t happen. Because that is life.

Mary and Joseph will eventually lose their firstborn son in one of the most brutal, humiliating, and painful ways a human being can suffer at the hands of other human beings. God with us does not mean immunity from suffering. It means presence. It means God is in between and through the shattered pieces. And it means we always have a choice just like Joseph.

We can scream and shout and kick and punch, we can quietly look the other way and try to forgive or move on, or, like Joseph, we can get quiet enough to listen for the messenger of God, and choose, against every instinct, to do the thing God is calling us to do. And trusting God is Emmanuel. With us, in all of it.

Amen.

I left him on a patch of dried grass in front of a house in Compton. He was using the hose to fill his dog, Queen’s, water bowl. I leaned out the window of my car and gave him a pack of the cheapest, shittiest cigarettes and small $12 bag of dog food from the corner liquor store that sells booze, cigarettes, dog food and baby formula. Cuz it’s Compton and there isn’t a Ralph’s right down the street.

We first met at Denny’s behind Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It wasn’t hard to recognize him. We had never met, but I’d seen his picture in the database where all the information used to identify someone experiencing homelessness is stored. If they haven’t been identified as homeless yet, I can assure you, there is an exhausted out reacher worker tramping through the LA river bed where scores of unhoused folks pitch tents and create community. It can take years for outreach workers to build enough rapport with an individual before that person will trust the worker enough to let them actually help. It’s a long, slow process from entering someone into the coordinated entry system (CES) to getting them housed. Very long.

But there was my client, sitting in a booth in the back, all 6’2” and 175 lbs of him, wearing black, with his black backpack, stuffed with his most important possessions, and Queen, a black lab mix puppy, curled at his feet on the cool tiles under the table.

At 4pm in the afternoon, I make my way to Denny’s with my laptop and an intake form to meet a man I have never met, with no information on his mental health or substance abuse history. I read some of the notes, but hadn’t done a deep dive. I have to do this intake form and ask a lot of personal questions, but I walk in there with all the confidence in the world, that nothing bad is going to happen and we are going to be just fine.

He’d ordered a cheeseburger and fries and a refill on his coke and it wasn’t long before the waitress brought the double cheeseburger and he was breaking up pieces of it, putting the pieces on a side plate and putting the plate on the floor for Queen to gobble up. Queen is a beautiful dog, and so sweet. She’s thin, and dirty. She probably hasn’t had any shots, or been spade. My impulse is to take care of the dog like I would her human. Get her a case worker who will get her to the groomers, to the vet for her shots, find her an apartment, where she can live in peace with her human who is devoted to her. The state her human is in, it’s going to be like climbing Mount Everest to get this guy housed. Oh, and the current Administration has cut funding so severely that there may not be Section 8 money to get him and Queenie housed anyway.

He’s mumbling to himself with his face turned away from me, drenching his fries in ketchup. I think he’s saying something about clothes, covid, the hospital, being on the street and needing a place to sleep. I ask him if he has a diagnosis and he says yes. Schizophrenic and bipolar. There are no mental health reports on a client in the database. You have to ask them if they have a diagnosis or figure it out by observing and talking to them. Case managers are not psychiatrists or therapist or psychologists. Most of the people I work with have a degree in something other than what might qualify them to determine mental health status like political science, film, and english. But we do it anyway.

He is the guy, when I see him walking down the sidewalk, dirty, mumbling to themselves, eyes fixed on the invisible someone the person is talking to, pushing a grocery cart filled with an assortment of stuff necessary for their survival: blankets, clothes, cans of food, water bottles, gatorade, toilet paper, and any random thing they find on the street that they find indispensable, I cross the street.

Now I sit across from him, asking him questions needed to fill out this ridiculous forty page document, personal and invasive questions, while he drowns his fries in ketchup and eats them with his dirty fingers. He continues talking, mumbling, to the past, present and future. I can’t make sense of any of it, I keep redirecting him back to answering my questions, while he sneaks Queen a ketchup soaked french fry under the table.

There is no where for him to go this night. He’s on his own. From his rambling I was able to discern that someone managed to get him into a psych hospital but somehow he left and in his hurry left behind all his clothes. He said something about someone wanting to keep him in the hospital. I heard conservertiship, his mom, leaving the hospital, they had him in a tiny home, out in the valley somewhere, fighting, people being scared of him because he’s a big, black man, needing a place to live, having his dog, Covid, motel vouchers, being so exhausted being he hadn’t slept for a few days.

That first night, I paid for his meal, because I can’t help it. I don’t make much as a case manager, but I have more than he does. What’s $30 for a cheeseburger, fries, and coke. I drive to a 7-11 and get him cigarettes and a cup of coffee, I wasn’t paying $12 bucks for a very small bag of dog food. Next stop Food For Less, because it’s Highland Park, and there are lots of grocery stores around since gentrification took hold. I get him a small bag of dog food for $7.50. He says he thinks his friend will pick him up and take him to her house. She called while I was driving and said if he could get to Arcadia she would pick him up. I drop him at the Metro station, give him assurances. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” “We’re going to find you a place.” “I’ll put in an interim housing referral first thing tomorrow.” And, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happening.”

The next morning he calls. His friend never picked him up. Somehow he got from Arcadia to Compton, to an empty house with boarded up windows, in a quiet neighborhood, and he needed dog food and cigarettes.

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How are you doing? No, really, I want to know. Tell me how you are really doing in the comments section below.

Me? Ok. Not great. Over greasy, cheesy, charred burgers last week, my daughter, Lily, started talking about functional freeze.

Functional freeze? What the fuck is that? I’m a sober alcoholic who medicated pain with alcohol and drugs for a long time. I’m the victim of all kinds of trauma. The very bad kinds. I’m a trauma informed person. I read books, I’ve gone to therapy for 30 years, and done EMDR. I was not surprised to know, during one of our morning dog walks around our neighborhood, that my mother and father had left me with my paternal great grandmother Governale for an afternoon while they went to the Santa Anita Racetrack. (That opens up a whole other story about my father gambling away his life and our life week after week, year after year, but a story for another time.) My mother, thinking Grandmother Governale was just a sweet, large bosomed, Italian grandmother who spoke no English, made her own pasta sauce out of the tomatoes she grew in her own backyard in East LA in 1964, and hosted Sunday supper for the family each week. She didn’t know that Grandma Governale was a broken hearted, shut-down, angry woman who lost, first her son-in-law in a tragic car accident, and then her beloved, beautiful daughter, in a hit and run, 6 months later. My father’s parents. So, she left me with her, only to find me, at 4 months old, on the bed, where she had left me, screaming for someone to change my diaper and give me a little something to eat, and maybe a cuddle, for 5 hours. Oooohh! I thought to myself when she told me this, that explains soooo much.

So, functional freeze. According to Google: “Functional freeze is a state of temporary emotional and physical shutdown in response to overwhelming stress or trauma. It is a survival mechanism that allows the body to conserve energy and avoid further harm.”

And what does functional freeze look like?

Oh, it looks like all the things I’m experiencing: emotional numbness, feeling stuck, brain fog, feeling disconnected, lack of motivation. It’s “functional” freeze, because despite feeling weirdly disconnected, shut down, with lack of emotion and motivation, you continue to show up to life, fulfill responsibilities, and do what needs to be done. I thought I was just a cold-hearted bitch, veering off into sociopathy, (like I said, I read a lot), because of my lack of feeling, and desire to ride many roller coasters just to feel something.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that no, I am not a cold hearted bitch, I am experiencing overwhelming stress and trauma.

Did I tell you my father displays many of the narcissistic and hateful characteristics of the person who is not the president but some bizarro cretin who people elected to live in the White House? Yeah, so the constant chaos and crisis that guy creates day after day is wreaking havoc on my nervous system because that’s what Frank did (dad.) Wreaked havoc on his children’s nervous system.

I know, everyone is talking about being triggered or activated and having to take care of themselves, and disengage, but stay engaged enough because we don’t want to be the people whose privilege allows them to disengage completely, even though we are. So, I’m doing both. Engaging when I can, because, frankly, I’m feeling such deep sadness about this whole fucking mess, that one or 4 episodes of the Gilmore Girls seems to alleviate for a minute. And doing all that stuff that people in recovery do. Pray, meditate when I remember, eat well, get at least 7 hours of sleep and lots of exercise. When I say exercise I mean walk my dogs and hot yoga. Yes, I am that person.

So, that’s all. Just an update. I’ve been absent from this platform because, you know, functional freeze. But I’ve decided to face it head on, do all the stuff I need to do to stay engaged with the crazy, but also the joy and beauty of life.

I hope you are doing the same.

With love, Holly

Five kids with number 6 on the way. Bad credit. $4000 in rental arrears. “She doesn’t understand that her credit and the rent she owes is going to make it really difficult to get her into a new place,” my coworker who had been this client’s case manager before me said. The client fired him. He was pretty devastated. When you get fired by a client at a job where you’re making $24 an hour, it’s humiliating. It happened to me. Then I passed that difficult client to another case manager and my co-worker passed his former client to me.

The ones that fire you often need the most help. We don’t know what’s going on because we don’t have all the answers. I know you don’t want to hear it. I know you want to blame the people I serve as being lazy or irresponsible drug addicts, or crazy, and some of those things might be true. They were for me: alcoholic, irresponsible, crazy. But first came the trauma. The people that my co-workers and I serve every day, their lives have been a fucked up mess. Generational trauma, parents addicted, abusive, unable to break the cycle of violence and poverty. The kids, my clients, hung out to dry. No support, no stability, no love, no care, no graham crackers and milk after school. No food. No home. Kids. Babies. The adults I serve were those kids

.Gabor Maté, renowned physician who specializes in the effects childhood trauma has on brain development and the impact on our mental health and physical health that manifests as addiction, mental illness, and physical disease says we can trace our fucked up (my words, not his) adulthoods, if you struggle with mental illness and addiction, to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES), childhood trauma, like physical, sexual, emotional abuse, and neglect. Moreover, just living in our culture is traumatic and the lack of support can contribute to a myriad of physical and mental health issues.

If you’re lucky, like me, and were born into a white, middle to upper middle class family, you may have had some support. I was aware enough when I was 16, pregnant, living in Lubbock, Texas, waiting tables at Sambo’s across the street from Texas Tech University working the graveyard shift, in a relationship with a mechanic with greasy fingers, who always smelled of motor oil, and smoked cigarettes on the toilet when he was taking a shit and liked to backhand me every now and then to keep me in line, to get on a Greyhound bus and hightail it back to Pasadena to get an abortion. Three months pregnant, with no insurance, I applied for emergency Medi-Cal at the Department of Social Services (DPSS) office in Pasadena, and went to my local Planned Parenthood where I was able to terminate the pregnancy, and start over. This was ‘81-’82.

I’d gone to Mayfield Jr. School of the Holy Child where I‘d had a good education. I learned to read, really the only education I could claim that actually did any good, considering I dropped out of high school. But I could navigate some stuff in the world and the people I serve can’t. When we say to her your credit is going to be a problem and those rental arrears are going to be hard to work around with the housing authority, her mind is stuck in the here and now. She’s focused on surviving the day. There is no space in her mind to be able to see the situation with clarity because she’s barely hanging on. And when we’re barely hanging on as it is, it’s hard to make any decisions, much less a good one.

Severe childhood trauma lowers the functioning capacity of the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s control center for decision making, and high-order thinking like reasoning and planning. It’s supposed to help in regulating our emotions but trauma reduces the neural connection between the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus and the amygdala. So, when someone who has not had the resources and opportunity to heal their childhood trauma reacts to something you said or did with a response that is way over the top, a fight, flight or freeze response, it’s because their pre-frontal cortex and hippocampus, the memory center of the brain, go off line, and the person is dysregulated and in full reaction mode. Not because of what you did or said, but because they are transported to the original traumatic experience and doing everything they can to discharge that moment.

Oh, I have all kinds of judgments about my clients. I get angry and frustrated and all the terrible things that many people say out loud about people who are unhoused, mentally ill, and addicted pop into my head. Get a job. Just pay your bills on time. Don’t let the abusive boyfriend back in your house. Open your mail. Call the social security office. Make that appointment with your doctor. And it’s a fine line between taking care of them and caring for them. Not doing every little task for them even though I know their ability to do stuff on their own is impaired. Reminding myself every day that I am walking alongside this person as they learn how to navigate their life and the world as a person now housed. I can’t make them do things that could improve their lives like see a psychiatrist, therapist, get help for substance abuse issues, or get a job. But we got the first big hurdle covered, they have a home. Now we can start on the road to recovery.

I am a case manager for Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena, CA. Union Station is always in need of support. To support the work of homeless service providers and our clients please consider giving a donation by clicking here. Or if you’re in the area we can always use household items like toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning supplies, laundry soap and dish soap. Thank you for your kindness and generosity. Some laundry soap can make a newly housed person’s day.

M called me first thing in the morning. I don’t start working until 8 a.m., but M, if she needs something, will call or text at 7:30, 8, 8:30.

“Are you taking me to wash my dogs today?”
“Oh, I can’t today. I’m sorry. I’m supposed to meet another case manager with a client we share.”
“You always cancel. You never do anything for me. Never mind.” Click.

I sent her a text:
“I know it’s disappointing, and I’m sorry. I’m doing my best, and sometimes things come up and I have to switch my schedule around to accommodate the most pressing thing. I’ll let you know if my afternoon frees up.”

A week before that, I went to M’s house to help her connect with her psychiatrist by video chat. Like many of my clients, keeping up with the latest technology wasn’t her first priority when she was living on the streets, in the riverbed, or under a bridge. She was occupied with staying alive, getting food, finding a shower. We didn’t end up connecting with the doctor that day—I had the date wrong—but I helped her change her sheets and set up a little remote camera so she could keep an eye on her dogs when she’s not home.

As I was getting ready to leave, she said, “Wait. I have something for you.”
She came out of her room with a little box. Inside was a bottle of perfume from Victoria’s Secret. She had bought a few boxes during a sale to use as Christmas presents—because that’s what she does. She thinks ahead.

“You do so much for me. I just want to thank you.”

The week before that, I had picked her up to take her to the dentist—miles away—and then to her mental health appointment. We’d been together for about three hours by that point, and lunchtime had disappeared into the wind. She was hungry and knew the best fish taco spot in LA. I had already eaten—I knew it was going to be a long few hours and had packed my lunch. However sad and pathetic my little lunch was, I was proud of myself for doing it. I saved some cash and ate while she was in the dentist’s chair.

But I told her we’d stop somewhere, and so we did. A taco stand in a strip mall that bragged about being there since the 1970s. Yes—since the 1900s.
She ordered a full plate and really wanted me to get something. I usually say no when clients offer to buy me lunch or give me a gift.

“Come on,” she said. “Get something! I want to treat you. You drove me all over the place. You’re the only one who will take me to these places.”

So I ordered a fish taco—which was huge, and amazingly delicious.

The people who have very little are always the most generous.

M is a 55-year-old woman of an ethnic background that makes her vulnerable—to profiling, to assumptions, to violence. She fears masked men might snatch her off the street when she’s walking her dogs. (Though Peppa, her chocolate lab/pit bull mix, might mess someone up if they even touched her mama.)

Health issues plague M, as they do many of my clients. According to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC), over 60% of homeless individuals experience chronic physical health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, or respiratory illnesses. Roughly 25–30% have a serious mental illness like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression (SAMHSA). Around 50% have some form of mental health issue. About 38% are dependent on alcohol, and 26% are addicted to other drugs (SAMHSA). If you’re living on the street, your life expectancy is somewhere between 42 and 56 years old.

Since she’s been housed for the last few years, M is getting to all of her doctor’s appointments, seeing her therapist and psychiatrist, and going to the dentist. Health-wise, she still struggles—with GI issues, exhaustion, depression, anxiety—but she’s better.

The day I told her I couldn’t take her to wash the dogs, I called the client I was supposed to meet. No answer. So I called his in-home support worker, who told me he’d gotten up, eaten breakfast, taken a shower—and then gone back to bed with a bottle of vodka and passed out. It was 11 a.m.

So I texted M:
“Hey. My afternoon client canceled. I can pick you and the dogs up at 1.”

We spent two hours at the pet store that has a dog-washing area—four large baths, tiled floors with drains, towels, and a hose that lets you switch between shampoo, warm water, and air. The dogs were thrilled, of course—being clean is the best feeling ever.

M’s mental and physical health impedes her ability to work. Her GI issues leave her bound to a toilet some days. She gets about $1,100 a month from Supplemental Security Income and $292 in food stamps. She can’t work—and Trump is trying to take away her Medicaid.

Homeless services is a shit show. The work is demanding and the pay sucks. We do it because we feel responsible—for the marginalized, for the most vulnerable in our communities. We do it because we have enough, and they have so little. And when we see the depravity of Trump, Miller, Musk, Noem, and the others—those who have too much—taking what little our clients have left, we are depressed, sad, frustrated, and furious.

But we stay. I stay.
Because serving “the least of these” is what Jesus did.
And as an ordained clergy person and follower of Jesus, that’s what I’m called to do.

I am a case manager for Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena, CA. Union Station is always in need of support. To support the work of homeless service providers and our clients please consider giving a donation by clicking here. Or if you’re in the area we can always use household items like toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning supplies, laundry soap and dish soap. Thank you for your kindness and generosity. Some laundry soap can make a newly housed person’s day.

https://www.facebook.com/stwilfridsepiscopalchurch/videos/429067500301930/

Sunday’s gospel reading: Luke 8:26-39

Jesus and his disciples arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me" -- for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" He said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

Welcome to Ordinary Time.

In the liturgical church—the Episcopal Church, like the Methodists, Lutherans, and Catholics—we follow a calendar with colorful vestments, candles, sometimes incense, and lots of standing, sitting, and kneeling. Our church seasons help mark the movement of time in sacred ways.

We’ve just ended the season of Easter—death, new life, resurrection. We celebrated Pentecost, the birth of the Church, when the Holy Spirit descended to fill the disciples with the courage and energy to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ: the gospel of love, justice, compassion, and mercy.

And now… we enter Ordinary Time.

But Ordinary Time isn’t ordinary. It’s extraordinary. Where Easter is dramatic and dazzling—resurrection in three days—Ordinary Time is slow, quiet growth. It’s the time of spiritual cultivation, when transformation happens underground, unnoticed at first. It’s the season of long, faithful plodding. A time to walk with Jesus. To let roots go deep.

This year in Ordinary Time, we walk through the Gospel of Luke, with its themes of justice, mercy, and God's love for outsiders—the poor, the sick, women, foreigners. In Luke, God turns the world upside down. Think of The Magnificat, Mary’s song: “He has lifted up the lowly and cast down the mighty.” Over and over, Jesus heals: a man with leprosy, a paralyzed man lowered through a roof, a bleeding woman, a blind beggar. Healing, yes—but today’s story is different.

Jesus and the disciples cross into Gentile territory—the country of the Gerasenes. It’s unfamiliar, unclean, spiritually risky. And right as they arrive, they’re confronted by someone terrifying.

A man, possessed. Naked, chained, howling among the tombs. Cast out of society. Dangerous. Disturbed.

This is not a tidy miracle story. It’s raw and unsettling. But Jesus doesn’t recoil. He doesn’t try to control him, subdue him, ignore him. Jesus sees the human being underneath the chaos. He sees someone who is sick, not shameful. Someone who is tormented, not disposable.

And what’s the first thing Jesus does?

He asks the man, “What is your name?”

He doesn’t diagnose him. Doesn’t define him. He asks him to speak his own name.

The man answers: “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

That’s not just poetic. It’s chilling. A legion was a Roman army unit—about 5,000 soldiers. Ruthless, organized, oppressive. So when this man says “Legion,” it’s not one voice—it’s a horde. He’s no longer speaking with his own voice. Trauma fragments identity. This isn’t just a name—it’s a diagnosis. A confession. A cry for help.

In the ancient world, naming something meant you had power over it. But Jesus doesn’t name this man. He asks the man to name himself—not to control, but to restore. To give dignity. To begin healing.

Anyone familiar with 12-step recovery knows the importance of naming. “Hi, my name is Holly, and I’m an alcoholic.” We speak our name and our wound. That which once brought us shame becomes the doorway to healing.

Liberation begins when we name the thing that has held us captive.

“My daughter was raped.”
“My son is an addict.”
“I am a sexual abuse survivor.”
“I drink too much.”
“I hit my kid.”
“I don’t want to live anymore.”

Naming isn’t about theatrics. It’s about telling the truth. And truth-telling sets us free.

This man’s suffering isn’t just mental illness or spiritual possession—it’s a portrait of domination. It’s what trauma looks like. It's how pain and violence take over and won’t let go. But Jesus doesn’t attack the man—he casts out the demons. He doesn’t respond with more violence or fear. He simply tells them to go.

Into that storm, God speaks a new word. Not with a sword, not with a legion of angels—but with a presence that is calm, rooted, and unafraid. Because the Kingdom of God doesn’t occupy. It restores.

Afterward, we see the man again—clothed, sitting with Jesus, in his right mind. Whole. Human again.

But not everyone rejoices.

The townspeople are terrified. They ask Jesus to leave. And honestly, I get it. They had successfully exiled this man—kept him out of sight. Managed him with chains and distance. Now he’s back, healed. And his healing is not convenient. It cost them something. A herd of pigs, for one. But more than that—it disrupted their understanding of who belongs and who doesn't. Healing disturbs the system. Liberation changes the story. And some people would rather live with manageable demons than be transformed by a disruptive miracle.

Some communities are more comfortable with people staying broken than being made well.

The healed man begs Jesus to let him come along. But Jesus says no.

He tells him: “Go home. Tell your story.”

Jesus sends him back to the place that had rejected him—not as a victim, not as a cautionary tale, but as a witness.

Because Jesus has a way of giving us new names.

And friends—many of us carry the name “Legion.”

We don’t say it out loud, but we feel it deep in our bones:

“My name is Addiction.”
“My name is Grief.”
“My name is Failure.”
“My name is Not Enough.”

But Jesus asks:
“What is your name?”

Not to shame you. But to call you out of the tombs. To call you back to life.

We worship a God who doesn’t just save souls—God restores identity. God gives us back to ourselves.

So I’ll ask you—on behalf of Jesus:

What is your name?

Is it the name the world gave you?
The name shame whispered in your ear?
Or is it the name spoken by grace?

Because when Jesus names you, it is not “addict” or “unworthy” or “too much” or “too broken.”

It is:

Beloved.
Whole.
Sent.

And that name—your real name—is the beginning of resurrection.

Amen.

Sermons are meant to be heard. So check out the video on Facebook from St. James South Pasadena. Sermon starts at 17:36. Click this link to take you there.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. 3 in 1. The Trinity is foundational to our Christian faith, yet we don’t do a lot of talking about it. Maybe because it’s too hard to talk about, much less understand. There’s God and Jesus and God is the father, but God is also incarnate in Jesus and we know the nature of God through the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. But then Jesus says to the disciples, John 16:7 “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate, or helper or comforter will not come to you, but if I go, I will send her to you.”

Then we have this story of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit fills the disciples and they’re speaking in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. People gather around and see and hear what’s going on and come to the conclusion that they must be drunk. But they’re not drunk, they are having a Holy Spirit moment. The culmination of their resurrection experiences of Jesus after his brutal death by the empire after spending 3 years with their rabbi who they believe is sent by God. Who preached, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” Who was almost run off a cliff by people of his own home town. Their rabbi performs miracles, and teaches as no other rabbi teaches, and does things no other rabbi does. Their rabbi loves throwing dinner parties where so many people are invited, sinners, sex workers and tax collectors, men and women. Their rabbi breaks so many rules and laws and drives the Pharisees, the keepers of law, crazy.

So there’s God, and then there’s the son of God, the rabbi, Jesus, and then there is the Holy Spirit that the rabbi says will be of help to his disciples who will go out and help a whole bunch of other people because that’s what the disciples were taught to do, by the rabbi who is the son. See what I mean. It’s a weird story. And I can tell you even as a theologically educated cleric, it can be very challenging to wrap my mind around it.

Because we can’t wrap our minds around it. Not our dualistic thinking minds. Not the minds that say there’s a right way and a wrong way. Or there is only black and white, us versus them, good and evil, mind and body, winner and loser, success and failure.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, 3 in 1, is a relationship. It’s not meant to be perceived by our rational mind. The Trinity is meant to be experienced. Richard Rohr says the very nature of God is a dance and God is always inviting us into this dance. The dance is a flow of love, an outpouring of this love toward us through the Holy Spirit and back to God and Jesus is our dance partner, holding his hand out to us inviting us to dance with him. A dance of love, peace, justice and compassion.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans this morning, Paul is writing to a fractured community in ancient Rome, but he is also writing to us today.

He writes, …Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God…because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

True peace with God is not passive acceptance, it’s active. This peace heals wounds of all kinds. Yet it is in collaboration with God, demonstrated by Jesus, in which the Holy Spirit is moving, affecting, and animating us, that activates this healing. When Paul says in Romans 5 that “we have peace with God,” he’s not saying it’s up to us to keep the peace, or that we have some detached serenity that elevates us above the world. He is describing a reconciled relationship with God that changes everything. The peace we have with God, is the peace we bring to all we do in the world; the peace that infuses our relationships with everyone and everything.

My 90-year-old mother and I joint the No Kings protest downtown yesterday, and there was music, and flags, and smiles, and signs, and 1000s of people walking together in solidarity to protest the way brown skin Angelenos are being treated by immigration officials. We were a peaceful gathering of humans disrupting the injustice that we see in our backyards. When we engage in nonviolent action and protest we are reminding ourselves and everyone else who is watching or participating that there is no peace without justice.

God is not neutral. God never has been. Despite what many nones, non-religious or no religious affiliation folks think, God is not an old man in the sky who floats above us in divine detachment. In fact, scripture draws a picture of a God very much involved with human kind. A God who takes sides so to speak, the side of the oppressed, the exiled, the targeted. The God of Abraham and Sarah, of Hagar and Moses, is the same God who says, “Let my people go.” The same God who hears the cries of the prisoners, the refugees, the hungry, the wrongfully accused. A God who becomes incarnate in human form to show us what love in action in the world looks like and then sends the Holy Spirit to us to help us in our quest for equality, peace and justice.

So when we take to the streets or raise our voices or challenge systems that crucify the vulnerable and protect the powerful, we are not stepping outside of our faith—we are stepping deeper into it. We are saying yes to the dance, with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We are claiming the peace that has already been given to us through Christ, and we are joining the Spirit’s work of pouring love into a world that desperately needs it.