Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
Looking Under All of Our Bridges
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Diocesan Life, November 1998
"The law, in its magnificent equality," according to a French
saying, "forbids the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under
bridges." I recently met a man who knows the bitter truth about
sleeping under bridges.
It can happen to anyone. This man had gone from fairly comfortable
middle class life to being homeless and on the streets in a short
time. It takes only a few bad breaks. How many Americans are more
than a few paychecks away from financial collapse and destitution?
The difference for him was that a church reached out to him. He
not only got his life back, he also got life with God. When he
was once again doing fairly well, he kept thinking of the other
people sleeping under the many bridges of his city. His prayers
were interrupted by thoughts of them. It eventually occurred to
him that perhaps God wanted him to visit his former neighbors.
He is ordained now, but this came considerably later.
From his experience and his prayerful distractions, an incredibly
effective ministry has been built in his city. He has seven people
working with him. They go to the bridges, cardboard boxes, and
abandoned buildings where the poor shelter themselves; they are
with them to give material, spiritual, and educational assistance.
Most of the worship services they conduct are held under bridges,
although they have been recently given a church that serves some
of their needs.
This deacon's vision involved going to the poor, seeking out the
dispossessed, giving them what he could to restart their lives.
It is the seeking out part that troubles me most.
Our society is structured in such a way that the rewards of doing
well include living and working in places where the poor are not
to be seen. The all-too-real "red-lining" in the mortgage and insurance
industries makes sure that the have's and have-not's are kept at
arm's length from each other. The church will have to go to the
poor.
Ours is a country where much "charitable" giving goes to the arts
and already-wealthy institutions. It continues to be up to people
(of all income levels) who dare to look under their communities'
bridges to make the unglamorous gifts that seek and serve those
who are in want of life's basic necessities.
I am grateful that in what historians are beginning to call the
most selfish period in American history, our Diocese is seeing
more rather than fewer opportunities for you and me to care for
the poor and needy. Let me give just a few examples.
In the north, St. Stephen's in Wilkes-Barre is adding to its health
clinic and other services a priest with the specific job of bringing
the gospel to the community. In Bethlehem, the vestry of the Cathedral
Church of the Nativity has plans to begin a street ministry on
Bethlehem's south side in 1999. Episcopal House in Allentown is
seeking ways to serve elderly people beyond the community of its
residents.
New Bethany is undergoing an invigorating revamping with greatly
increased involvement of our diocesan Trustees. Gilead House is
up and running in its new location, serving those with AIDS. There
are many more examples of specialized ministries, and the vast
majority of our parishes participate in some local effort to fight
hunger.
One of my goals for 1999 is to have the social ministries in the
diocese, including our many Jubilee ministries, coordinated in
such a way that we are all reminded of the opportunities we have
to put our discipleship into practice.
Poverty, loneliness, illness, illiteracy and so on are not exclusively
urban problems, and there are ministries for all of our parishes
to undertake even as we support urban ministry.
I write this to you now because in November we observe Jubilee
Sunday, Thanksgiving, and, in most parishes, the gathering of pledges
for 1999.
I hope that our thankfulness to God can be expressed by personal
involvement in the care of others and, through our pledges, in
financial support of local and diocesan social ministry. In our
fourteen counties, may there be no bridges we have not looked under
in 1999.
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