With God All Things Are Possible
DATE: November 15, 2009
SCRIPTURE: 1 Sam 1:4-20
On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the LORD had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?"
After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the LORD. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the LORD. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: "O LORD of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head."
As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, "How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine." But Hannah answered, "No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time." Then Eli answered, "Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him." And she said, "Let your servant find favor in your sight." Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.
They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the LORD; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the LORD remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, "I have asked him of the LORD."
It is an honor to be with you this morning. This will be my last sermon to you as President/CEO of Homes with Hope/IHA. I will continue to live in Westport after retirement so I am certain that we will continue to interact and perhaps I will even do some things for you as I used to in the late 80s and early 90s.
This morning I am basing my sermon on the reading from 1 Samuel. It’s a familiar story. Hannah is barren, wants a child. Eli is a priest and probably also a local king. They meet at Shiloh.
The background is perhaps not so familiar. Moses and the generation of the Exodus are long dead. God’s chosen people have lost their inspiration and long for a king like the other nations. We have been through the books of Joshua and Judges. Samson has come and gone along with many other colorful figures and Eli is in charge.
No one disputes that Eli is a powerful figure but he also seems to be a very poor father. His sons are exploiting the people with their selfishness. Eli is beloved but apparently ineffective. However he has all of the power when he encounters Hannah. She’s a woman, she’s barren, she’s mistaken for being drunk, and she’s the epitome of powerlessness. However, she’s about to upset Eli’s world and that of his sons. She will give birth to Samuel and he will eventually anoint David as King.
God likes to work with the unlikely to bring about change. With God all things are possible.
Who knew on Christmas Eve 1984 when the Westport Emergency Shelter opened that nearly 25 years later the agency known until recently as Interfaith Housing Association and now as Homes with Hope/IHA would not only still be around but would be in 9 different buildings in Westport, would provide shelter and housing and be an example of what can happen when a suburban community seeks to solve its problem of homelessness.
Members of this church will remember that originally homeless men were sheltered in this building. Ted Hoskins believed that the church needed always to be open. They weren’t sleeping in the Meeting House, but they were sleeping on 7 bunk beds and 1 cot elsewhere in the building.
It is dangerous to name names, especially because in 1984 I was the rector of a church in Southern Maryland and not here. But Saugatuck Church was perhaps the Hannah in the story of ending homelessness. The saints who made this happen were your pastor, Ted Hoskins, the late Jim Gillespie, the late Ed See, Austin Doolittle and many others. You petitioned the 1st Selectman for permission to establish the shelter in the Vigilant Firehouse and you prevailed. We have provided shelter every night since Christmas Eve 1984 and we have provided permanent housing every night since October 1, 1998. Your work has changed Westport and lower Fairfield County.
Hannah only asks for a baby. She doesn’t know or suspect the profound impact that baby will have on his people as he becomes priest and prophet.
You only wanted to meet the challenge of men, and it was mostly men, being homeless at this church. You only wanted to bring dignity to their lives. In 1984 and 1985 you had no idea that the tiny organization you opened would still exist 25 years later much less do the work it does. But you had a vision that something needed to happen and with God’s help it did. You overcame the opposition of the 1st Selectman, opened the program, merged it with the community kitchen and it has evolved. With God all things are possible.
With your continued support both with the politics of our work and the financial underwriting of it we have worked to solve the problem of homelessness in Westport. I appreciate your continued involvement with us and the opportunity to be with you today. You still support us financially, John Walsh continues as our board chair and you cook in the Community Kitchen.
We are entering a transition period. The work is not done. Your active support, vocal support, spiritual support will all be necessary if the mission is to continue and more permanent affordable supportive housing is provided. To perhaps overwork the analogy with Hannah and Eli, the baby is born, but still needs a lot of help. Are you willing to provide that help? When we go before the P&Z for the Linxweiler Supportive Housing Project, will you help us?
I spoke with Ed See about this project some months before he died and received his blessing provided we maintain the Linxweiler House. We will do this. However, there will be neighborhood concerns about putting permanent affordable supportive housing on this site. The nadir of my tenure as President/CEO was the P&Z hearing in 1997 to build permanent affordable supportive housing on this site. We discussed that failure numerous times in a series of meetings led by Frank Basler in Hoskins’ Hall as we sought to understand what happened. I can assure you that the best hope we have for a different outcome would be your vocal support at hearings and in the press.
Recently John Walsh, another board member and I met with a state representative from Newtown who was being lobbied to support permanent affordable supportive housing in the legislature. They brought him to the Westport Rotary Centennial House so he could see that this housing was possible in a suburb. He was impressed.
He listened to me, John and the other board member as well as a group from Hartford that coordinated the effort. The real impact of the housing was made clear when a tenant spoke about the work.
This tenant had been a Gillespie Center client, a Linxweiler House client and then became a father. He is from Westport. His mother and brother still live here. In 2004 he became a father and moved with his infant son into a one bedroom apartment in what we called Homes with Hope on Saugatuck Ave. This fall he and his son, now 5, moved into the Westport Rotary Centennial House. We have solved homelessness for this family. The tenant has not enjoyed as much stability in his adult life. We have put community around him. We have provided him with a safe place to live. We have taken seriously the command in Matthew 25 to find Jesus in the least. We are only able to do this because of you. I am leaving, you are staying, please help us continue the effort to end homelessness.
Many of our clients are unlikely successes. Those who were members here in the 80s may remember the men who conducted the hunger strike. I heard from one of them in the summer. I used his story in my September fundraising letter. He is dying and wanted to get in touch with us one more time.
He used to occupy a bunk-bed in this building. He stayed at the Vigilant Firehouse. He stayed at the Gillespie Center. I remember him doing Tai Chi in the Gillespie Center courtyard while smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t addicted but he suffered from what we now know as PTSD.
At that time the Veteran’s Administration wasn’t accommodating to Vietnam era vets. But we and the other shelters in Connecticut lobbied hard for change and the VA came around. By 1992 they were offering him meaningful services and he moved into affordable housing in Westport. He left for parts unknown a year or so later and I lost touch with him until this summer.
He emailed me to let me know that he had married, held down a job and become the part-time mayor of the town he lived in, in the Pacific Northwest. I went on the town’s website and there he was.
You rescued a life. There are countless more lives out there to be rescued. My tenure as CEO is over but your work is only just beginning. I hope that you will not lose your vigilance until we solve the scandal of homelessness. If we can’t solve it in Westport it can’t be solved anyplace.
In the succeeding chapters of 1 Samuel the Lord will call to the youthful Samuel and it will take Eli a while to realize what has happened. Eli’s sons are about to be displaced and Samuel will displace them. In chapter 1 Hannah is believed to be drunk and in chapter 2 Samuel is believed to be hallucinating (hearing voices). In both cases God is about to do something unheard of in Israel.
I have enjoyed this work because I am utterly convinced that if we want to find God we find him with the poor. In our reading from 1 Samuel God uses a barren woman as the instrument of his salvation of Israel. In Matthew and Luke God uses a poor unwed virgin as the agent of his salvation to the world. God tells Israel that he selected it for the Exodus and to be his Chosen People precisely because they were insignificant. Israel only got in trouble when it considered itself to be significant because at those times it forgot that its very existence was dependent upon God.
Harvey Cox1 has recently written that the church is in trouble precisely where it is most certain that it is important and its hierarchy must be respected and it is growing precisely where authority is dispersed and the poor feel the spirit, that is in Latin America and Africa!
The work at the Gillespie Center, Hoskins' Place, Bacharach Community, Saugatuck Apartments and the Westport Rotary Centennial House is work with those God has a preferential option for. It is holy work. I have been privileged to do it for 22 years. This congregation has been doing it for at least 28 years. I pray that it will continue to be one of the most important things you do.
Peter R. Powell