Housed, unhoused

Dear Saints!

Sometimes, important voices aren’t being heard. Voices of people with real knowledge about the topic at stake. Often, those voices are voices of women. And our bible isn’t an exception. While I had theoretically known that for a long time, it became much more evident when reading “Mary Magdalene Revealed” with our book club during the past 2 months. The book shares the story of Mary Magdalene, the woman Jesus loved dearly. And it explores the reasons why we know so little about her when she was so important to Jesus. Plus, what we know doesn’t seem to paint her in a favorable light.

The answers are the ones one might expect: It’s all about power, even among the earliest apostles. It’s about controlling the narrative. It’s about Peter’s envy that Jesus told Mary more than him. As a woman there was not much Mary could do back then. She tried telling her story, she even wrote it down. Just for her Gospel to be mostly destroyed in the centuries after.

As most of you are aware, there are many voices in our neighborhood right now, many opinions about who is a neighbor, who can be trusted and what a church should do. In the past 4 weeks we have received many angry emails by neighbors infuriated that we want to host unhoused neighbors in their cars overnight for one month. Others wrote to us in support. Yet, there are some other voices that haven’t been listened to as much. The voices of our unhoused neighbors. One of them reached out to me via phone. She shared how hard it is to read the hateful comments on Nextdoor about “people like her". How important it is for her, as a single woman, to have a safe space at night. Most times she lacks that. Most importantly, she shared that she has been a neighbor in our area for many years. First housed, then unhoused. Always a neighbor. “We are already here,” she said. “We are just invisible to most people.”

As lent comes to an end and hope and resurrection will hopefully take over our hearts, may we listen to the voices that often aren’t heard. May we open our hearts and souls to the marginalized and listen to their hopes and needs as we proclaim our hope to them in words and deeds.

Blessings,
PASTOR TIA!