If you follow this blog, you know that MDHA and Faith Forward Dallas at Thanksgiving Square (FFD@TGS) recently came out with a shared faith community homelessness initiative, within FFD@TGS’s Civic Engagement Committee.
As part of this initiative, we are asking FFD@TGS members, as well as other clergy to use their sermons during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, November 10-18, 2018, to educate their congregations on how they can help advance the goals of this initiative, and help end homelessness. I was asked to provide resources that could help one attempting to write such a sermon, but I thought an actual example of such a sermon would be helpful too.
I could have waited until closer to the event, but I was quite inspired by the words of some of my fellow FFD@TGS members, like Rev. Jonathan Grace and Rev. Ben David Hensley, at August 1, 2018’s Dallas City Council briefing, that I had to write something now. So, here goes…
Rev. Jonathan Grace, CitySquare
One of my favorite books of the Hebrew Bible is Deuteronomy, and Chapter 21 is, in my view, one of the most intriguing chapters in that entire book. It recounts a fascinating and detailed ritual (JPS 1985 translation):
If, in the land that the LORD your God is assigning you to possess, someone slain is found lying in the open… your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns.
The elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall then take a heifer which has never been worked… down to an everflowing wadi, which is not tilled or sown. There… they shall break the heifer’s neck, [and] wash their hands over the heifer…
And they shall make this declaration: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Absolve, O LORD, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.”
… Thus you will remove from your midst guilt for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the LORD.
The Ancient Rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud Sotah 44-46 have a field day (pun not intended) with this, and minutely dissect every aspect of it. I found two comments of theirs particularly instructive.
First, they say that the measuring is to be carried out by the Great Sanhedrin. These jurists of the high court, must travel from Jerusalem to that field, to carry out this task. Imagine in our day, the justices of the United States Supreme Court, traveling from Washington, D.C. to stand in a field and measure from the corpse to the towns around it, and you get the picture.
Why must this rather quotidian task be carried out by these national leaders? One reason might be to attract the attention of the nation. Obviously, this same task could be easily performed by anyone, but if done by a local official, no one would hear about it.
Second, the Rabbis wonder, why must the town elders declare that they didn’t murder the person. Would anyone think the town leaders had?! The Rabbis explain that the declaration really means, that they didn’t cause the person’s death through inaction, by not providing for their needs.
Wow. Do you realize what the Rabbis are telling us? They are (implicitly) telling us that this town’s leaders must have set up well functioning systems of social welfare. And, only if they have set up well functioning systems of social welfare, can they honestly declare that they are innocent, if a mishap occurs.
In fact, this entire exercise is meant to help this town examine its systems, and make the necessary changes to prevent such a terrible outcome in the future. As Charles Duhigg reminds us in The Power of Habit, systems change rarely occurs without a precipitating crisis event. However, even then, there must be a deliberate focus of all stakeholders on meaningful change. 
Viewed through the prism of systems thinking, this ritual is meant to, first, focus the attention of leadership and other town stakeholders on what went wrong, i.e. what inputs caused this output, and second, help them figure out what alternative inputs the system needs in order to generate the desired output, i.e. everyone in the town enjoying safety and well-being.
This is how I, personally, interpret the last verse: Thus you will remove from your midst guilt for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the LORD.
It is interesting to note, though, that the verse switches back from the third person (the town) to the second person (the nation). What is meant by that?
The fact is that quite often systems break down, even though everyone is trying to do what is right. Different actors, different jurisdictions, each try to do their part, however due to each of them having different responsibilities and roles, people fall between the cracks, usually the most vulnerable people, at that.
Scripture highlights this problem, by involving the town and the nation, local leaders and national leaders, and implies not only that they each have a part to play, but also that they must work in concert. Everybody must work together.
Interestingly, recently, when the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), wrote a new national strategic plan to end homelessness, under the authority of the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009, they called it Home, Together. Together: It’s right there in the name.
This is all relevant to our fight to end homelessness, right here, right now, in Dallas. We can’t end homelessness, if we, as a nation, do not recognize that it is a problem that we have a responsibility to fix. We can’t end homelessness, if we, as a community, do not recognize that the existence of homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties, means that we have a systemic problem; that we need to change our inputs into the system, if we want a better output. And, we can’t change the inputs into the system, if we, all the different actors, across all the different jurisdictions, don’t work together.
Right here, in Dallas, right now, in 2018-2019, we have an opportunity, in the words of scripture, to do what is right, for our homeless friends. The City of Dallas, Dallas County, the leaders of our homeless response system, and the leaders of the faith community, are all on board. Let’s seize this moment, and together solve this problem that has plagued our fellow citizens, for much too long. All we need is the will to act, and we can bring everyone Home, Together.
