How ya doing? We hope you're doing well and smiling and thankful for this day, a day of hope and opportunity. We've got some great news . . . Although we've not been getting the financial support we need to keep paying the Our House bills, many of you have been doing what you can to keep us supplied with the basics. Two groups we'll mention this week are our good friends at the Cornwall Presbyterian Church in, you guessed it - Cornwall-on-Hudson. They've been regular providers of food and fellowship and have now committed themselves to delivering $100 worth of socks every month for the next five months in the name of Stephen - Steve - Shearer, a long-time member of their congregation who passed away in July of 2011. With winter coming on, the timing couldn't be better. Then, on
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Leslie Offut-White of 1st Cong UCC surprised us Sunday, delivering an assortment of wishlist items donated by her church.
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Sunday afternoon, came a call from our friend Leslie Offut-White, an energetic member of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Poughkeepsie where Steve did his student ministry. Leslie took the wish list we published a couple of months back and ran a "stuff" drive at the church. On Sunday, she and her husband, Tim, packed everything up and brought it all down. So far she's collected two big boxes of everything from hotel soaps to toilet paper, paper towels, and bleach. "I'm not done yet," she said. "take these boxes back and fill them up again . . ." 0 0 0 0 0 Speaking of UCC churches, Steve will be spending his Sunday mornings leading worship at Middletown's North Congregational UCC as they continue their search for a permanent pastor. Located at 96 N. Beacon St., NCUCC is the church called him to be their Associate Pastor, agreed to pay him a dollar per year and sent him off to Newburgh where he and a merry band founded this ministry of yours. 0 0 0 0 0
Registration officially opened last week for the October 18th one-day workshop - What does it mean to be holy today? - which will be led by Br. Don Bisson. Seats are filling fast . . . click here to learn more. Reservations are also rolling in for the Dorothy Day Dinner we're hosting on the 18th over at the Ritz Theater here in the Burgh. Yes, it's a fundraiser for Our House, the drop-in center that makes a big difference in the lives of dozens of folks each day. But, more than that - the dinner is a celebration of the commitment of ordinary people who do extraordinary and selfless service among the least of these. We hope you can make it.
If you haven't yet sent in your reservation - what's that about?
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Justice and desperate measures
(I confess that the following is not fully formed, but it will have to do . . . makes you really wanna read it, huh?)
"Bill" is doing 30 days in the county jail. In a moment of weakness, he stole a candy bar from a neighborhood store. It was during a bout of homelessness. "I couldn't help it," he said. "I was homeless and hungry and so I took it. It wasn't right, I know."
Who knows. I might do the same thing if I found myself on the street with everything I owned stuffed into a shopping bag, sleeping in a vacant building or a shelter or at Our House, and looking for a meal where ever I could. With a roof over my head, a bed of my own, a full fridge and pantry, a house full of stuff, and a car in the driveway, it's hard to imagine the life of a person at the bottom of our economic order. It's easy to judge the Bills of the world who take what is not theirs . . .who can't  seem to get out of the hole they're in.
I think it was a little bit like that for the tenants in the story Jesus tells in Sunday's gospel lesson - Matthew 21:33-46. They were desperate and refused to give up what was not legally theirs. The situation got ugly in a hurry. There were no winners in the story.
The church leaders knew Jesus was talking about them because they were among the wealthy elite, the one percent, if you will. You see, in Jesus' day, people were experiencing major shifts in the economy. Families who had owned their land for generations were losing it because of debt and unpaid taxes. The land was ending up in the hands of a ruling elite who would then rent it out to the former owners and other landless people who paid the rent with crops. As was true in the American South, paying the rent often meant going without enough food to get through to the next harvest. So, occasionally, tenants revolted, refusing to give up the fruits of their labors. And, so the religious leaders knew exactly what would happen - "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."
They had walked into Jesus' trap. He indicted them on charges of being part of an unjust system that was as far from God as it could get and sentenced them to great misery.
I wonder what justice has been served by putting Bill in the slammer for 30 days because he lifted a candy bar. Obviously, he needed to be held accountable; people can't go around pilfering candy bars and get away with it. But, maybe spending $4,000 or more dollars to incarcerate him for a month is a bit much. . .
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