The hope of the world rests on the shoulders of a homeless man

I just figured out that I'm homeless. I don't have one. Nada. No way. No home. A house I have, have I, but no home to be found if a home is somewhere you live for a long period of time and put up pictures of the grandkids so often the walls have more holes than sheet rock.

Home is an interesting thing to pastors. I listen to some this week talk about their short stays at some churches and even their parsonages and I get twitchy. I'm still getting used to this notion that home has to be where the heart is because we, like our Lord, have no homes. We have houses, and we stay there a while, but home is somewhere down the road.

My man Rich Mullins on his last album wrote this: Oh, you did not have a home. There were places you visited frequently, you took your shoes off and scratched your feet Cause you knew that the whole world belongs to the meek, but you did not have a home....birds have nests, foxes have dens, but the hope of the whole world rests on the shoulders of a homeless man.

Maybe that's the way it should be for all of us. Mary and I have a house in Lacombe, a burg down the road, that we are renting for less than the mortgage. That means, I've been told by more than one, that we are losing money each month. I read recently that home prices in the area have gone down quite a bit since we bought it, which means, I've been told by more than one, that we are losing money each month.

I'm not sure where we will be living come July, since that is the way of the United Methodism, and I am really, really not sure where we will be living when or if I actually retire some day since basically we will exist on small pensions and social security unless that too goes away in the manner that my bigger pension did.

But I've learnd that the hope of the whole world rests on the shoulders of a homeless man.

We pastors are a strange lot. I watched many closely, as is my way, for three days. I heard someone say at one point that when they walk in the room they do not see colleagues, they see competitors. For the fact is that the bigger house, the bigger salary, the better schools for the kids and so on, lie down the road at the bigger church.

Souls for soles of shoes, I guess the formula might be called.

I'm blessed in that I'm basically committed, seems to me, to a small church. Don't see a lot of folks coming asking if I will be free to talk to them about taking over that big ol' church down the road. The freedom that comes from that isn't the freedom they're fighting for in Libya today, but there are some similarities. We have the capability of simply being, doing our best, and having not a lot of stuff above us keeping us from hope.

See, the hope of the whole world rests on the shoulders of a homeless man.

Jesus said this to begin his "career:" God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, 'This is God's year to act.'

It's come to my attention that I'm never going to be a best-selling author, I'm never going to pastor a large church, and I'm invisible in a crowds of pastors. It's just who I am, and I'm darned privileged to be allowed to do what I do because I surely didn't earn the position. I'm not as educated as my peers. I'm certainly not as smart. Heck, I'm homeless by choice, which is just plain foolish to the world I live in.

But the hope of the world doesn't rest in riots, for freedom or anything else.
The hope of the world doesn't lie in goverment, good or bad.
The hope of the world doesn't lie in banks, or in retirement packages or anywhere that money is the prime worry of the day.

No, no, no. The hope of the whole world rests on the shoulders of a homeless man. Come, Jesus, Come.