"a poor man in vile raiment"

This morning, a scruffy old stranger wandered into the Eucharist during the first lesson. He noisily found a seat in the front row. After a few minutes, he came up to the Rector (during the second lesson), knelt before her and started talking loudly to her about something that was important to him. She got him to stand up and quiet down, and go sit back down.

Two of our young choristers and their families were sitting across the aisle from the man. It was obvious that the children were frightened, and they had no idea how they should react.

On the one hand, this fellow is a child of God. We are specifically enjoined by St. James to have no respect of persons:

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? (2:1-4)

On the other hand, the children are right to be cautious around strangers. There are a lot of unstable and sometimes dangerous people roaming the streets of our community.


This is not an isolated event. For about a month now, we have had another homeless man (one of the long-time regulars in our city) come to our church during the early service, sit himself down in one of the two red easy chairs in the narthex (which serves as the entry point to the worship space and the location of coffee hour), fall asleep and snore loudly, and stay all morning through the three services, until he is run out when it is time to lock up (about 1 pm). He is gross and disgusting, especially with the snoring. He smells. And he too is a child of God.

For several weeks, we had panhandlers on the public sidewalk in front of the church. Parishioners had to “run the gauntlet” past them to get into the building. This has passed, for the present. But I expect it to recur, as our city decays – as our nation decays, continuing its path toward Third World status.

The first time I visited the City of Detroit was about thirty years ago. I remember walking by the First Presbyterian Church, a historic landmark on Woodward Avenue. The fine old building was in disrepair, with drunks asleep on the sidewalk and in the doorways, windows boarded up where they had been broken, graffiti spray-painted on the walls. The stench of death was in the air for that congregation, so it seemed to me. Indeed, the congregation is no more: as the Wikipedia link describes, the building is now the home of the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, after the Presbytery of Detroit leased them the building in 1996 and gave it to them in 2002.

How many people are going to stop coming to our parish because they don't want to deal with smelly old men taking the best chair in the narthex and snoring away the morning, unstable homeless people wandering into the service and making a commotion, and panhandlers outside on the sidewalk?

If I were the father of a young family, I would think twice about bringing them here. Almost any other church in town – the ones that have moved out to the nice residential areas – would be free of these issues. No one there but nice well-dressed clean People Like Us.

But by going to one of the Nice Churches, I would be denying my children some important lessons. I think they may have observed one such lesson this morning by watching their parents and the other adults. At the Peace, many people greeted the old man. One of the young fathers, with his two elementary-age children with him, invited the man to come sit beside him and he did. As the service continued, he was less agitated. I heard him trying to sing the songs, and he carried on a conversation (during the Eucharistic Prayer) with the man that had befriended him, chuckling and having a good time, it seemed.

He wandered out before the distribution of the Sacrament. But in some manner, I think and hope that he received spiritual benefit from Going to Church today.

And the children? They got a demonstration of the Body of Christ, which has no respect of persons. Which does not fear or shun or despise someone because he is Not Like Us. I do not think that they will find such a spirit anywhere else in American society, anywhere other than the Church and its sister congregations of other faiths (e.g., synagogues, mosques).

I do not know where we go from here. I know that we are not alone in facing such issues and I expect them to get worse. I know that, if we are to be faithful to the Gospel, we have to figure out how to stay here and minister to this community.