State of the Streets

Thursday, July 14, we held an event in Westport, our second State of the Streets, where we invited members of our community to share their stories of struggle and hope. These were my opening remarks:

Welcome to State of the Streets!

So, why are we here? I’d say we are here for three reasons:

First, because we have been talking a lot about Jesus and the Jesus movement. We have been talking a lot of about how, two thousand years ago, Jesus began a movement among poor and homeless people. How he said he had come to bring liberation to the oppressed. How he gathered up the battered and burdened and he built a movement with them. How he told them they would save the world.

In the 21^st century, we sometimes think of Jesus like the pictures we see of him on the internet. But the Jesus of the gospels was a man who grew up poor in Galilee, in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Who was friends with tax collectors and sex workers. Who was arrested himself, jailed, and eventually executed, giving his life, as he put it, “for his friends”. In other words, Jesus went through what many of us go through in poor communities.

Second, because movements begin with the telling of untold stories. Last time we held this event, people got up and told powerful stories. They talked about what it was like in this community to experience homelessness, to experience poverty, to struggle with the health care system, to be in jail, to be mistreated by police. Our stories are not usually heard. Too often, these stories are never told. It can be scary to speak up. But tonight, you are here to be heard.

All of you who are here to speak, all of you who have told your stories, all of you who struggle so hard to survive here in Grays Harbor, you are my heroes. I am honored to know you. We see your courage. We see your faith in the hard times. We see your longing for a better world. Thank you for telling your stories. Thank you for believing that another world is possible.

Third, because we want to talk from this place, at this time. We at Chaplains on the Harbor have been open here in Westport for a year and a half. We got permission to use this abandoned church building to open a community center and a worshiping center. In the last year and half, we have come together as a community. We have fed each other, and shared with each other, and learned to love each other. We haven’t done any of that perfectly. But we are learning. Here in Westport, we are taking a stand—in a little town in the middle of nowhere, we are trying to live the Jesus movement. 71% of our people are unemployed or out of the workforce—some of us retired, many of us just unable to find a job, many of us disabled. We are struggling to make ends meet, struggling to survive, and sometimes we are tired of it.

I want to say this and I want to say it loud and clear. What is happening in our communities is not ok. It is not ok for our disabled elders to sleep on the street. It is not ok that there are not enough jobs for our young people. It is not ok that people can barely survive and go hungry. It is not ok that there are immigration raids on our Latino brothers and sisters and families are split up. It is not ok that a young man I know was recently beat up by police and then, yesterday, when police came to arrest him, they threatened to sic dogs on him. This is not ok. It is not ok that we have the highest rate of juvenile detention for non-criminal offences in the country, here in GHC. It is not ok that we are living—in the richest country in the history of the world—we are living in dire poverty. This is a sin against God. It is not ok. 

And you—you who have come to speak, you who live with so much poverty and so much struggle—you can and you will save us. Your courage to tell your stories is a first step toward demanding real change. We really can dream of a better world. We really can come together—if we can find ways to come together as a community—to build a better Grays Harbor, a better nation, a better world. But we can only do it together. We can only do it if we listen to each other across all the lines that divide us—lines of race, lines of politics, lines of hatred, lines of language, lines of religion. Only if we learn to love each other—not in a sappy, emotional way, but in a way that protects each other and cares for each other.

I am so proud of all you. So proud to be your pastor. So proud to be part of this community. So proud to stand with you all today.

Liberation on the Harbor

"Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

170 years ago, Fredrick Douglas spoke those words on the 4^th of July. He spoke 10 years before the abolition of slavery, as a black man, to a group of women abolitionists in the north. He spoke during a time when about 15% of the American population was enslaved. He, a former slave himself, partnered with courageous people like Harriet Tubman and others to free his people.

This is a time of year in our nation where we talk a lot about freedom. When we quote the declaration of independence that says that all men are created equal and deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the passage we just read, as Jesus spells out his mission, his work, as Jesus delivers his first sermon in his hometown, Jesus talks about liberation, about being free.

He came to…

Preach good news to the poor

The announce freedom to prisoners

To heal and restore sight to the blind

And to “set the oppressed free”, or as the version we read this morning says, “to set the burdened and the battered free.”

The words that strike me most, in my work in this place, is that last phrase. “To set the burdened and the battered free.” That of course was the dream of Fredrick Douglas when he set out to free his people. It is my dream too.

I see a lot of battered bodies and burdened hearts on the harbor. I too long for the liberation of our people.

And I think about what Jesus did. He gathered up the battered and burdened and he built a movement with them. He told them they would save the world. And he told the religious leaders and the upstanding citizens to join them, to accept their leadership. That was Jesus’ good news.

It was that movement that Jesus built that would inspire people like Fredrick Douglas years later. Perhaps that movement can still hold power now, for us, here on the harbor, here in Aberdeen.

Jesus is specific about what kind of freedom, what kind of liberation he brings. Freedom to prisoners, healing to the sick, liberation to the battered and broken. I think about the stories I hear here on the harbor every day—stories you know, stories you might live. I think about our own battered and broken people. Many of them have lost so much: family members, homes, jobs, health. We carry deep scars. We have lost children. We are in and out of jail or prison. We experience deep and constant trauma. So many of us are very young—did you know that 52% of Aberdeen is under 35?

A few months ago, we hosted an event here at Amazing Grace, offering people the chance to tell their stories. Because we believe that the building of movements begins with the telling of untold stories.

Your parish hall was packed to overflowing. We ate 80 lbs of fried chicken. And people started sharing their stories. They told about police beatings and jail stints, they told about losing children, they told about how hard it is to get jobs, they talked about daily assaults on their dignity, they talked about how hard it was to find social services, they talked about losing everything.

We clapped harder than we have ever clapped for the bravery of people telling their stories. We cried and we laughed.  In a community where nearly 50% of our people experience poverty and where almost 1500 are counted as homeless (in a rural county), this is the first time an event has been held like this. What struck me the most about this event was the amazing courage of the people I am privileged to serve and honored to know. They were my heroes—willing to tell hard stories out loud to those in power, willing to work for change at considerable risk to themselves. They dreamed of a movement. For a moment, we dreamed of freedom and liberation.

I see so much pain and trauma in this ministry, in this town, as so many of us have experienced, as people are cut off from access to basic needs and basic resources. But I also see such amazing courage. The battered and the broken, in the end, will inherit the earth as Jesus said. I see it in the courageous little family who are struggling for a decent wage job and home after piecing their life back together after baby came. I see it in the very young, very vulnerable woman trying to survive solitary confinement. I see it in a young street hustler who has lost everything and is still trying again to find a way out. I see it in the aging logger who tries to offer counseling to the young folks on the street. I see it in the elderly man who tried to offer safe haven for a young and vulnerable gay man.

There is a man in jail right now, looking forward in his life, dreaming of something new, not just for himself, but for his community. He dreams of creating jobs with a restaurant that would be open, not just for the town, but also for anyone who needed a meal. In the middle of great trauma, and so much struggle, there are dreams coming out of the jails Jesus says he came to open.

 In our community and church in Westport, aging surfers run the community garden and homeless kids cook meals for the whole community and we dream together of a better world. In the middle of a town where 71% of the adult population is either unemployed or out of the workforce, I watch people work to take care of each other. Learn to respect each other. Dream of a better world. Every Friday, we gather for our popular education program (the School of Hard Knocks) and we often skype with or exchange videos with poor people all over the country and the world—we talk with homeless organizers in Budapest and with Muslim communities in New York and homeless leaders in Salinas, CA. And we dream together.

I can’t shake off the feeling that this is the good news for the poor that Jesus is talking about. That this is what Jesus meant by building a movement of poor and desperate people, of bruised and battered people, so many years ago in Galilee.

That this is what it looks like in Aberdeen WA in 2016.

When I look over our room full of young people and elders, all struggling, all trying to survive, I think; “These people, these courageous, amazing people will save us. The church is not here to save them. They are here to save us.”

As we approach the 4^th, that holiday that we in the US talk so much about freedom and about liberty, I want to think about this liberation that Jesus brings. This good news for and by the poor. This liberation for the broken bodied and brokenhearted.

  And what it would mean for us, for the church, for us here and now in Aberdeen, to join that movement for liberation? What it would mean for us to sit at the feet of the folks brave enough to tell their stories here in your parish hall? What it would mean to have a movement for change led by the men and women who dream in jail cells that Jesus wants to open?

Nazareth was too afraid to do it. Too afraid perhaps of Rome, of Jesus, of the risk, of the possibility. Are we?