A good half inch of dust built up on the pew
There were pieces missing from the stain glass
There was a broken lock on of the basement doors
You could open it if you pushed hard enough
It was winter time, the streets were cold as hell
The layed their sleeping bags along the alter rail
It was holy ground
As the word got out the sanctuary filled
of folks who had no other place to call their home
Tonight they'd share a meal, pass the bottle around
Something they were all acustom to alone
The piano was out of tune, some keys don't even work
One guy could play a song out of the hymnal book
It was holy ground
The local priest soon got word
Of the vagrants in the empty church
He was told to go the house of God
Clear them out cause after all
It was holy ground
He was met at the door by a man with open arms
Saying, "Welcome to the one place we belong"
He saw the shiny floors beneath the sleeping bags
He could hear the sound of laughter down the hall
Later on that night as they broke the bread
He asked them if there's room for an extra bed
Because it was holy ground
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This song makes you rethink many things. What is the church really for? What does the building that the church meets in really symbolize? What makes a moment holy? What does this say about how the church views it's mission now? I think many Christian's think their job is to rid the world of sin instead of being the person that reaches out to the sinner so that they can see and know God - the one who rids the world of sin. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the moto everyone uses knowadays. I agree with this in principle, but I don't know if we need the second part. To love a sinner is obviously not to love the sin no more than loving my brother means I must follow and love everything he does.
Beyond this, what makes a man who is without a home a sinner anymore than you and I? In the book, "Under the Overpass" two men decided to experience what it was like to be homeless so they went to live with the homeless for a summer. They found a lot of them were Christians who just never had someone believe in them and encourage them to get out of the hole the are in. Isn't this typical too? Christians go to "not-so-nice" areas of their town to witness to the homeless and get them saved. What then? We leave them with their Christian homeless shelter. This attitude and practice is unbiblical. We focus too much on the eternal that we forget that Jesus came to give us life now, not one day. The New Testament focuses a lot more on cultivating our new life in Christ than how to get people saved. Discipleship is what we need, not evangelism.
"Holy Ground" nails one main point: what makes holy ground is community with the Godhead and his believers or even just community amongst man. I could say so much more, but this is enough for now.
2 comments:
Sitting in one of my psychology classes one day we talked about how many of the homeless have psychological disorders that prevent them from leading productive lives without the help of medicine. However, my professor also said, that if many of the homeless people had family, friends, neighbors, anyone in society really,to support them emotionally there would be a drastic reduction in the number of homeless people. She reminded us to not write people off because of their social status, but rather seek to know a person's story and help them any way we can. My professor made the point that even if we gave medicine, money, food, clothing, etc. to each homeless person who needed it, without the support and encouragment of someone else in their lives, these people would often simply return to the life they now view as comfortable. I think this is true also in a spiritual sense. We may hand people the tools, give them a Bible, lead them to Christ, but if they have no one to follow up with them, to encourage and support them, they will often slip back into the life of "comfort", where things are familiar. Discipleship seems to have been placed on the back burner while evangelism has become the anthem from our churches.
Yeah Rachel! I wish my professors were more like that! There is much value in giving a hungry man bread, but also we need to understand that handing him the bread as established a relationship that we would be wise to fulfill. It is difficult to balance but it needs to be struggled with.
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