Preaching to the homeless...

Ring. ring. [my cell - 9:30pm on Saturday night - location: Irish Pub]

Me - Hello.

Pastor - Hi Vicar. The pastor that was supposed to preach tomorrow afternoon at Rev. Lee's homeless mission can't make it. I have family in town, so...

Me - [said reluctantly] Sure. I'll do it.

Pastor - Great! Now make sure you are very "real" with them. And they're hungry and cannot eat until you're done with the sermon, so don't go too long - like no more than 10 minutes. Where are you? It sounds like a party or a bar?

We support a missionary pastor, Rev. Lee, who works with a homeless mission in downtown San Diego. Rev. Lee is a Korean Lutheran pastor that must be somewhere around 80 years old. He's faithful and hard working, and this ministry is hard. The area of the mission is a place where you typically will take the extra time to drive around rather than through to get to your destination, if you know what I mean. It is filled with tents and sleeping bags, smells of piss and feces, and needles are strewn about in the gutters. When I parked my car, there was about 150 people lined up around the building for their free meal. They have to sit through a worship service before they can eat, so you have a captive audience.

And the audience is every preachers worst nightmare. They've heard it all before. Some are on drugs; some are deranged; old and handicapped; young, strung out businessmen; hookers and pimps; and dealers, of courses. Some have been eating this free meal for years and seen preachers come and go like the seasons.

It was fitting that before I preached, we sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers" because I felt like I was marching on to war as I took the pulpit. I kept it real and I only spoke for 12 minutes using the John 2 account of Jesus cleansing the temple, emphasizing the fact that in this story Jesus defies our expectations of what our Savior looks and acts like, showing how often we domesticate him for our own personal desires. I ended as the passage does with the death and resurrection of Jesus calling them to believe in Jesus' word as his disciples did in the story.

There was a hearty amen afterwards, but I'm pretty sure that was to display how happy they were that they could get on with the meal, and not so much for my sermonizing. An elderly black man came up to me as I was leaving and said, "Nice talk, young man." Nice talk? Well, it is better than some things I've heard in church, so I'll take it. I have a new-found respect for those that minister to the homeless. To be frank, I didn't want to go. To be more frank, I don't really want to go back. It is scary and it smells. But I do believe that this is the type of place that Jesus would preach, and these are the type of people Jesus would sit and eat with, so I'll keep going as long as they'll have me. Why? Because these are the people that Jesus died for, too.