A Voice in the Wilderness: Shelters Are Not Homes

 

Adsum House is shelter. For 40 years their focus has been housing, supporting, and advocating for women and children. A recent social media post stated in bold lettering: shelters are not homes.

For you, what is a home, as in a physical dwelling to live in? Is a tent sufficient housing? A cot in a gym? A room in a shared living environment? A camper? A tiny house? A bachelor apartment? At what point, for you, does shelter become a place you would volunteer to live in and call it home?

 

Like a prophet shouting in the wilderness, Adsum House cried out, “Shelters are not homes.”

 

The voice cries in the wilderness of our time. Biblical wilderness symbolizes a vast area where human’s find the climate and environment harsh, where there are unknowns and chaos, angels and demons. There is constant change and in that there is possibility. A few years ago (2015), The New Yorker had an article that identified the wilderness of our time as distraction. The writer, Joshua Rothman wrote, “distraction is now a universal competency. We’re all experts.” One theory to distraction’s desertification of society is that city-living and digital devices breed distraction, providing short-term gratification and reprieve from gulfs of stress, mountains of anxiety and peaks of emotional distress; in the process creating a desert of loneliness. Distraction has become a way of asserting control, in a world where things are out of our control.

 

A voice cries into this wilderness, “Shelters are not homes.” The voice, via John the Baptist, cried out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Preparing the way was described by Luke as a reversal, where the valleys are filled and mountains made low, the crooked is made straight; last year we heard Mark describe preparing the way as repentance, a turning around. In a world where the voice in the wilderness cries, shelters are not home, how do we attend to preparing the way of the Lord?

 

This past week our mayor and city councillors had a discussion around the list of possible sites for tent encampments. The mayor continued to state that no new tent encampments are needed and non will be needed. Whether one agrees or disagrees, through the mayor’s various roles and speaking opportunities over the past few years he has advocated for permanent housing solutions, permanent solutions that are a reversal, a turning around of what currently is. He is casting a vision of future days without tent encampments, because everyone is housed. We are in a wilderness, and we are distracted by finding and providing shelter, - we are distracted by finding shelter- now I don’t want anyone to die on the street, however, when our energy and resources are spent on the impermanent or temporary, band-aid actions, this distraction hinders the harder work of building adequate, permanent, and affordable homes.

 

The voice in the wilderness is addressed to a people, a society, that is mired in busyness and wandering about in distraction. Luke places John the Baptist in the context of powerful and important people – all levels of government – the Roman Empire with Emperor, Governor, and Ruler, with an added layer of Hebrew government in religious high priests and the Sanhedrin. One could get distracted in the details of this history, the personalities of the characters, and fail to hear or attend to the voice calling for a reversal of the known to a pathway for the salvation of God, God’s coming.

Distraction is easier: to cope by minimizing emotional distress with current circumstances and to busy ourselves in what seems important and so avoid that which is daunting. We get distracted in history and in politics. Take for example, what is it about Trump that gets votes and followers? – an over-the-top distraction of sensationalized politics. Distraction breaks the thread of argument, or thought, sabotaging the ability to discuss things logically or sensibly. Current distractions in politics allows a means for governments and peoples to appear and feel busy while avoiding facing difficult issues and seriously attending to, and working on actual crisis, like climate and global warming. Distractions are used as false protection from serious consequences and the fear of the incredible amount of work and sacrifice required to address big-whole-world problems.

 

Have you ever wondered if John the Baptist was a simple distraction from the political upheaval, living in an occupied territory, and the widening divide between rich and poor? Perhaps entertainment to go and see, an adventure into the wilderness to stall monotony? Or was John a voice in the wilderness that people heard and accepted as a focused concentrated passion that was the beginning of reversing what currently was? A prophet in the wilderness reminding and inviting individuals and a people to look beyond the distractions and get to the hard and sacrificial work of preparing the way for God, God’s kindom?

John was both  -  a distraction for some and voice drawing others from distraction.

Business consultant, Nir Eyal, wrote: A distraction is something we do that moves us away from what we really want. Traction is an action that moves us towards what we really want. The difference seems obvious, but distraction has a sneaky way of tricking us. A distraction is only a distraction if you know what it is distracting you from.

What are we being distracted from? This is prophet territory. Prophets call us to remember the coming of God’s kindom, the reversal of what is and the work and sacrifice it will take to prepare the way, to make room for God’s kindom.

 

To make room…

 

The New York Times article I mentioned earlier, talking about the root cause for the growth of distraction, says: “The second big theory is spiritual--- it’s that we’re distracted because our souls are troubled.”

 

The article suggests that a troubled soul comes from an inability for a person to be comfortable with themself, to be able to sit alone in a quiet room; that it is too hard to befriend oneself and sit side by side in silence; so people avoid being uncomfortable through distraction. When I talk with my friends or with you, you know when I am excited about something. Taking time to be in a room alone with yourself allows you space to discover your thoughts, where your heart is sad, how your passions are bubbling from what causes you sadness. Being with yourself is pausing to make room – to prepare the way- for the Holy Spirit to come and engage you, to absorb all of you and your resources into making room for God and God’s kindom.

Distractions aside you embrace grace, experience grace, and most importantly act on grace. Our baptismal commission is bringing about God’s kindom; making room for God’s kindom.

 

Acting on grace you make room. 

For God.

For the hard and sacrificial work of reversing what is.

You prepare the way for God’s kindom.

A voice calls in the wilderness, “Shelters are not homes.”

And you say, “Amen to that.” And freed from distraction you get to work, creating one room, creating another room, and another, until all are housed and have a place they call home.