Charity, Justice, and Love on the Gulf Coast

I got published again. This time writing about a recent service trip a group of us did to the Gulf Coast where rebuilding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, over a year past, still continues. There were some large cuts for the nicely edited final published version, but I'm posting the full original copy.

Charity, Justice and Love on the Gulf Coast

As we rolled into New Orleans we left the Interstate for a toilet stop. We stepped out of the vans in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn and were enveloped by an eerie quiet as stifling as the soupy Southern humidity. Even the couple of locals out on the street kept their words soft and sparse. Our group trickled through the hotel’s electric doors, looking for a bathroom, to find ourselves lost in a deeper silence and emptiness - there wasn’t a person in the building. The reception desk was bare and the rooms were locked. Make no mistake: Katrina is still with us. Her water line hangs defiantly over everything, haunting every effort to rebuild, reopen, and start living again. Only the rebuilt casinos seem untouched, like fast food that never decomposes.

Team Sojourners/Pilgrim Church, a collection of fourteen Sojourners staff and friends and family of staff, had set aside a week to make some small effort towards rebuilding. We were hosted, free of charge, within the lush landscaped grounds of a wealthy Mobile, Alabama, church. We stayed in their youth ministry building – a facility with classrooms, indoor basketball court, small gym, computer center, industrial kitchen, dining hall, showers, laundry, music room and rec room (complete with leather couches and projection theatre system). One team member called it an “embarrassment of riches” – perhaps a new collective noun like flock of sheep or school of fish. Yet as expansive as these facilities were we could not argue with how they were being used. From the moment Katrina hit, this church made itself available as a staging post for aid headed to affected areas. It opened its doors to volunteers and began hosting groups of ten to 50, often simultaneously, and in effect operated a hotel/restaurant, washing linen, serving breakfast and dinner and providing packed lunches. Teams had been coming for almost a year with little sign of slowing down.

Much of this effort was the work of one woman. Anne, a no-nonsense woman who dressed in suburban elegance, considered this work her ministry. She made sure the hospitality offered to her guests was second to none. It was surprising then, when she launched into an unprovoked political tirade that systematically checked off every one of the hot button social issues. It wasn’t her conservative positions that were startling as much as her unrestrained vitriol and the strings of colourful terms she used to express herself. Some things were “evil straight from the pit of hell” and others were “satanic,” while she held liberals in contempt saying, “the only thing that’s liberal about me is how often I quote the Bible.” Then, as if to deliberately heighten the contrast between her service to the poor and her hatred for all things liberal, she began talking about how she and her husband used to attend a church at which most of the members were homeless. Eventually she decided she wanted to go to a church where the congregants “showered regularly.” This managed to mix a more direct and regular experience with the homeless than I—and, I imagine, most members of Team Sojourners—could boast with more callous remarks about them than most of us would ever want to use.

Each morning we left the air-conditioned oasis of Anne’s hospitality for dust, sweat and infuriation with our inability to use a tape measure properly at our worksites in Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi. My site received frequent visits from the owner, Miss Eva, a quietly dignified African-American woman who looked decades younger than her 89 years. She would bring around ice-cold Kool-Aid at the end of each day (which I have never appreciated more), and on the last day she prepared a magnificent spread of Southern soul food. More touchingly, Miss Eva would simply watch us work, sharing her gratitude by her presence, her smile, and the pride with which she would sweep the floors of her gutted house at the end of each day. Somehow, though we were the ones hanging drywall, I ended up feeling grateful to her just for being there with us.

On Sunday, Team Sojourners made its way to a local, predominantly African-American church in Biloxi to worship among the community we were serving. When it came time for introductions our team leader, Jeff, got up to explain who the underdressed interlopers were and thanked the church for having us, adding “I want you to know that we know that we are all one family, and I want to apologize for taking so long to get down here.” The congregation nodded their agreement and punctuated Jeff’s remarks with amens, but nothing epitomized the fact that they already “got” family like a young girl who decided she wanted to hold hands with our other team leader, Robin, for no particular reason, just “because.”

The following morning it was my turn to lead devotions. On our two-day drive down from DC I’d been reading Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution in which he wrestles with questions of how best to live out our faith and, within that, how best to go about working for a better world. I took my lead from a throwaway reference of his to 1 Corinthians 13, “if we have not love.” I knew now that if we do great service work and rescue hundreds from poverty – even if we swing public opinion and government policy to benefit many more – if we “have not love” we are “a clanging cymbal” in the ear of God and our neighbours. We also read the last few verses of 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul emphasises the unity of the church, the “body of Christ,” suggesting that whether we live in Washington, DC, or Biloxi, Mississippi, we are, as Jeff said, “one family.” I also had to admit that whether we fall on the Left or the Right of the political spectrum we are still one family – sinners all, but sinners bound together by Christ. So if we win all debates and have flawlessly logical arguments; if we expose all bigotry and prejudice and use only politically correct language but have not love, we are still just a sounding gong and a droning talk radio host in the ear of God.

Team Sojourners/Pilgrim Church was led by Jeff Stinehelfer and Robin Fillmore. Members included Jay Whitcomb, Leigh Ogden, Mary Hamlin, Brian and Christine Kahl, Jim Stinehelfer, Ryan Beiler, Jackie Spycher, Geeyung Li, Nadia Stefko, Elise Elzinga, and James Ferguson.

James Ferguson is News/Internet intern with Sojourners.

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