Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
November 24, 2002
The Last Sunday After Pentecost

Do What You Can, Where You Are,
With What You Have
The Rev. Dr. Bob Hansel

Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46
(This sermon is also available in audio)

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

In 1985, a friend of mine gave me a copy of a book that literally changed my life, at least the way I look at life. And the book was Words to Love By by Mother Teresa. To live in Christ is to love, to reach out to others. This book is an interesting book, and I became so enamored of it that I bought 50 copies. I gave them to everyone within arm's reach of me for the next year. I think people, after a while, got tired of seeing me coming. Here's another copy of this book. (Laughing). I want to read one page of this book and it's easy to read, because in order to get a book, they had to put it in 20-point type.

To say the least, Mother Teresa is a person of few words. They sent an interviewer and they had hoped to get a full-length book out of this. She never stopped moving. She never sat down long enough to do that interview. And so they simply had to record and take what she was saying as she went about doing her work. Well, anyway, here is the piece I want to read to you:

"If you are preoccupied with people who are talking about the poor, you would scarcely have time to talk to the poor. Some people talk a lot about hunger, but they never come to me and say, 'Mother, here are five rupees; buy food for hungry people.' But the same people can give you a beautiful lecture about hunger. I had the most extraordinary experience once in the city of Bombay. They had convened a big conference about hunger, and I was supposed to go to that meeting, but I lost my way. Suddenly, I came to the building and right in front of the door where hundreds of people had just entered to talk about food and hunger, I found a dying man. I took him home. He died there. He died of hunger. And the people inside were still talking about how in 15 years we would have so much food, so much this, so much that, and the man died. You see the difference?"

I think you can see why this had such a profound effect on the way I look at life. It's like we're standing on a beach, and there is a person who's drowning in the waves and trying to signal to us, and we're talking to our friends; we're saying, “How deep do you suppose the water is there? The guy looks like he's pretty strong. Wonder if he knows how to swim? Why did he go out there in the first place? What a dumb thing to do. He deserves whatever happens to him. I suppose there must be a lifeguard somewhere.” Do you see the difference?

And that's not an extreme case. A couple of weeks ago, right here in Memphis, I was up the street at the cathedral book store, and I was picking up some books that we had ordered for use here at Calvary Church, and as I completed this transaction with the manager of the book store, there was a well-dressed man standing there who was observing this conversation. He said to me after we finished, "Are you the new man down at Calvary?" I said, "No, I'm not. I'm sort of a place-holder, and the new man will be there in about a year, but I'm just really glad to be associated with Calvary in the meantime." He said to me, "I'm glad I ran into you, because I have a question. Every time I go past Calvary Church, it seems like there are a bunch of vagrants and homeless people wandering around down there. Don't your members find that very disturbing?" And I said, "Well, I certainly hope so." Because if they don't, they're wasting their time.

Another straw in the wind. Just two days ago I got a message from my son, John, who lives in Cincinnati. John was writing in an e-mail that he had been surfing the TV networks, and he had in two consecutive channels on the TV experienced two incredibly disparate things. On the one, he had heard about the famine and hunger in the subcontinent of Africa and the absolute epidemic proportions of AIDs destroying a whole civilization. The very next channel that he turned on had a bunch of anorexic, bulimic models working for Victoria's Secret, showing us the latest in lingerie. And he said to me, "What's wrong with our world?"

I think I know what's wrong with our world, and I'm not saying any of this to make anybody feel guilty, or at least no more than so than you already do. It's just that as we come into this holiday week and anticipate Thanksgiving, and all of us will sit down to wonderfully laden tables of delicious food, and our friends will be around us, what's happening out there on the street?

I don't have any quick and easy answer to that, and I don't expect you to have one either. But what bothers me is this: That we are in great danger of these people becoming a sort of ethical invisible group of people. Ethically invisible. We simply don't see them. We assume that this is always going to be a problem; that there is simply a group of people out there who are always going to be hungry and in need, and it's overwhelming, and who can do anything about it. We throw up our hands, and say, "Well, that's just the way it is."

Throughout all of Holy Scripture, the assumption is that every human being, every child of God, has a right to expect food and shelter and a decent burial. Food, shelter, and a decent burial. And it's simply not optional; it is a responsibility. It is our responsibility, the responsibility of Memphis, the United States of America, the world over. And you can say to me, "Well, what about people who are just freeloaders?" What about them? They are children of God. They may be mistaken about what it is to be responsible. They may need a lot of support. They may come to understand that. But not if they've died of hunger before they get the message.

Every Sunday that we have a baptism, we bring new members into the body of Christ, and we promise on their behalf, and we promise on our own behalf that we will respect the dignity of every human being. Respect the dignity of every human being. Food, shelter, and a decent burial. How can we do that? I don’t know the answer to that. And what I'm talking to you about is that we need to keep working at it until there is an answer. And we need to do what we can do where we are with what we have. Each one of us, where we are with what we have where we are, we need to do what we can do.

This morning I walked through the rooms where we were feeding our homeless guests as we do each Sunday. And I talked with those people, and I talked with the people in the kitchen. You can be a part of that ministry. You are a part of that ministry every time you come here and you place an offering in the plate. Out in the hall you'll find a tree which has ornaments on it, and each of those ornaments is marked, and it asks you to make one small gift, to make Christmas something that's joyful for a family that otherwise would not be able to do that.

There are so many opportunities. Just next door to us we have an important ministry of this church that offers educational services to young people who are from troubled families and often are not able to be in a normal school setting. You can be a mentor and a tutor. We're about to gear up under the leadership of Cap Pinkham to build a Habitat structure for a family that is currently homeless. You can be a part of that. You can help to fund it. You can help to get out there and drive a few nails. This morning you're going to have an opportunity as you go out of the building to sign up as a blood donor--the Lifeblood program.

What can I do about it? That's up to you. The question is not whether; it's how. What can I do where I am with what I have? Hunger, adequate education, fair housing, health care, fear, injustice, oppression . . . all the things we pray about. In the prayers of the people, they're all the same. We have to do what we can where we are with what we have. We, each one of us, and Calvary as a congregation, represents an island in the midst of a vast ocean of despair and hopelessness. Maybe we can't do everything, but we can do something. This Thanksgiving, as you feast, and appropriately so, God wants each of us to know that extraordinary extravagance of love, but take a minute and think about what you can do to make a difference. Isn't it curious that as we feast, the words of our Old Testament lesson in Ezekiel surely are there speaking to us in this still, small voice. God says, "I will feed them with justice."

Let us pray.

Copyright 2002 Calvary Episcopal Church

Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46
31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”a 41Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” 44Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” 45Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’ NRSV

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