Homes in the “Wasteland”

 I am sitting outside, watching countless pieces of heavy machinery push things, pick up things, scrape things, dig things up, and pat things down. Seen from a distance, it seems a bit chaotic. A tractor with a scraper is doing circles over here. Below him, a bulldozer is smoothing out the ground where they have just laid pipe in a cut in the trees. There is a backhoe digging a hole to uncover pipes that were laid there three and a half years ago—careful so as not to disrupt service to the existing building. A Bobcat is moving sand over the place where the concrete slab will be poured in a few days. A lone fellow is doing something with electricity. Just last week, Chip Taylor was knee-deep in a trench, laying the pipe and water lines which now only look like white plastic fingers jutting out of the ground. And somewhere in the middle of all that is the maestro, Charlie, the project foreman, whose quiet presence is somehow organizing these seemingly random parts into something like what will one day be a building. Don’t be fooled, everything here has a purpose and an order, even if you can’t see it.Spring is in the air; you just feel like change is coming. The dress is different; the conversations are different; some of our children have a faraway look in their eyes and all they can talk about is graduation, while the younger ones are talking about the last day of school and where they are going this summer. Parents are anticipating that, in about a month, the pace of life will graciously slow down for a bit, and everyone will breathe a collective sigh of relief. And in keeping with the social rhythms of the place where we live and what it means to be human, the schedule at St. Patrick will change drastically as well. But, just like Charlie, don’t be fooled: there is purpose and order in this lightening up of our weekly rhythms. In a few weeks, our Wednesday night ministries and Sunday School ministries will cease for the summer. Our Community Groups will, for the most part, not meet as often, and their gatherings will center more on feasting than anything else. All this is with purpose. We all need change. At St. Patrick, we are just as intentional about slowing down in the summer as we are about our more predictable patterns during the school year. Our purpose during the summer is as it always is: “To embody Christ in the everyday, as we make disciples who love God, love people, and love life.” It just looks different during the summer. Our vision is to make disciples who make disciples—all the time: summer, winter, spring, and fall. In season and out of season. In structured, intentional times and in times that are more fallow and laid back. What we embody in our lives is what we really believe, no matter what our words may say.So, this summer, ponder how your family will do that? Let me help you with a suggestion. Consider being intentional about hospitality, using your home as a place of ministry to displaced people looking for a place to be. Since we don’t have much programmed at the church, all of us have more time, and the best space we have for making disciples and giving people a taste of “family” is in our homes, scattered all over Collierville and Germantown. This is always how the church has functioned best. I am haunted by the prophet Jeremiah telling the people of God who were in exile in Babylon how to thrive in a place where they were a marginalized minority with no political or cultural power. Brian Walsh paraphrases the prophet’s words: “Build houses and live in them,” instructs the prophet. In the devastation of exile, create homes. When all has collapsed in an orgy of death, build and live. In the midst of a culture of widespread socio-economic, ecological and cultural homelessness, we are called to be radical homemakers. Move into the neighbourhood, create places of hospitality and refuge, advocate for the homeless, put down roots and engender a love and affection for this place because even Babylon can be a site of homemaking. (Brian Walsh)Walsh is right. Because of our rootlessness and the possibility of virtual community with its empty promise of friends at the click of a button as you sit alone in your living room, a vast number of people (even in suburbia) are left as widows and orphans—without social capital and meaningful community. How better to attack this kind of “homelessness” in suburbia than being homemakers for people who have no true home or family. The scattered homes of St. Patrick are the perfect settings for this kind of homemaking and giving people a family. We are always about the gospel and disciple-making; it just takes a different form in the summer at St. Patrick!So, here is to slow time. Three cheers for the beach. Here, here, for vacation and trips to exotic places for rest and refreshment. And here is to each of us building intentional rhythms around the grace-filled space of summer. And here is to making room for a host of people who are looking for a place to know and be known. There is no human thriving apart from that. The power of a redeemed community is unfathomable. As good as St. Patrick might look on Sunday, to many people this is just more words and promises. Yet in our various homes, scattered all around our parish, are places that should say, “Welcome, join the feast; you are always welcome at this table!” So, while it might look like our folk are thrown to the wind in summer and not as engaged at 710 West White Road, they really are, or can be, if you just have eyes to see, an open heart, and a bounteous table.