The Gospel according to Matthew 22:1-14

"Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.  When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.  But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.  Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'  But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance."  So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"  They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."  Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?  Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.  The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."  When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.  They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.  

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I think it would be impossible for me to be with you this morning and not talk about the profound experiences Ruth and I had last week. As most of you know, we went with a group of nineteen clergy from the Diocese of Atlanta to Long Beach, Mississippi to help with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. We slept on cots in the gymnasium of Coast Episcopal School. The school is a few miles from the beach, and Katrina had blown away some of the walls and parts of the roof, but the structure was quickly repaired and pressed into service as “Camp Coast Care,” which we all called “Camp Katrina.”

Camp Katrina features three main areas of service. First, there is a supply tent, known as the “Store.” This is a large tent that houses all kind of supplies that are distributed to the thousand or so people who show up daily. These are folks living in the nearby Red Cross shelter, or in FEMA trailers, or on the concrete slabs that used to be their homes. (Ironically, if your home was reduced to a slab, you can camp there. If it was left standing, you can’t. It’s full of contaminated mud and the stench alone would keep you away.) Folks coming for help register (Ruth was usually at the registration desk). They are asked to indicate whether their loss was “mild, moderate, total, or,” and this sent a chill down my spine, “family.” Ruth would welcome them and give them a shopping bag. They then walk through the Store (which didn’t actually sell anything) taking what they need — diapers, water, soap, bleach, gloves, tools, canned goods, peanut butter (we had lots of peanut butter and they were so sick of eating it that we couldn’t get them to take it!), powdered milk, cereal, bug spray, pillows, linens — the list goes on and on. Part of our job was to staff the various areas of the Store and to keep them stocked. I wasn’t assigned to a particular area, so I’d go in and say to someone who was, “What do you need?” “Diapers — sizes 3 and 5, and formula,” she’d say. So I’d go search our storage areas for diapers and formula.

Occasionally, the “Boss of the Tent,” a young man named Michael who got the job by having one day of seniority over us when we arrived, would announce, “A truck’s here.” For “freelancers” like me, that meant “all hands on deck.” If the truck was loaded with pallets, the forklifts did most of the work. Many trucks were not. We learned how much labor is required when people send miscellaneous items that are not sorted. One day, we unloaded nine trucks. I’m still sore, but it’s a good sore.

The second area of service was the medial tent. Other than the fact that it was white, think “MASH,” and you’ve about got it. They didn’t do surgery, but these volunteer doctors and nurses from all over the country saw about a hundred and fifty patients a day. Some of you have chronic diseases. If you don’t, imagine that you do. Now imagine all your medicine ruined. Now imagine your pharmacy destroyed. Now imagine your doctor gone. Now imagine a whole population that had been severely traumatized. These medical folks had lots to do, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

The third area of service was work trips. People in the area had asked for help cleaning out their houses. I went on a work detail my last day there. You weren’t allowed to go unless there were enough volunteers in camp to keep it running. “Our first priority has to be to meet basic needs,” the director told us. But reinforcements from South Carolina and Texas arrived, so I got to go out.

When I heard about flooded houses, I used to wonder, “Why can’t they just dry them out?” I was thinking in terms of a house with a broken water pipe. I don’t think that way any more. Maybe you could just dry them out and replace floors and carpets and things if they had been flooded with clean water. I won’t belabor this point, but imagine your house filled with seven feet of sewage. Everything, everything, has to go, and you don’t go in those houses unless you have a strong stomach — and you’ve had your shots.

What makes Camp Katrina such an amazing place is that it’s not a creature of FEMA, or the Red Cross, or even Episcopal Relief and Development (which is very helpful, but didn’t start it). The people in the area, spearheaded by the rector of St. Patrick’s Church (which is now a slab) just saw a need and started responding. There was never a feasibility study. There was never a long-range plan. There wasn’t even much of a plan at all — just a response steeped in anguished prayer.

While we were there, the volunteers numbered between 70 and 140. We had cots to sleep on, three very good meals a day (you can imagine how much effort went into that!), air conditioning (thank God!) and showers (thank God, thank God!). There were forklifts, tents, medical supplies, medical personnel, a portable kitchen, satellite telephones, a steady stream of volunteers from all over the country (and Canada), and, as I said, truck after truck after truck of donated supplies. It is a massive logistical operation, and I marveled at how these people with no background in any of this pulled all this off.

And I knew I had to talk to you about it this morning. I knew I could not not. But I also knew that this is the kickoff Sunday for our centennial year. And I can’t not talk about that. And, frankly, it wasn’t clear to me how these things related. Then I washed dishes with Dick Smith.

I volunteered to wash the lunch dishes one day. (I hesitate to say that because I’ve tried for years to convince you and my family that I’m genetically incapable of washing dishes.) It was all by hand, and it took about an hour and a half. I washed; Dick rinsed, dipped in disinfectant, and dried.

Dick is an Episcopalian from the Diocese of South Carolina. South Carolina is an extremely conservative diocese, and I knew we were probably on opposite sides of some big issues. Sure enough, after a few minutes, Dick asked me what I thought was going to happen in the Episcopal Church and how I felt the Church should relate to homosexuals. So we talked about it for a good while. I didn’t get mad. Dick didn’t get mad. We totally disagreed. But we talked about other things too, and when we were finally finished, we were both glad we had had the time together and that we were both Episcopalians.

I remember thinking, “Now, how did that happen?” In an era when so many conversations like that degenerate into, “I’ve got the truth!” “No, I’ve got the truth!” “You’re going to hell!” “No, you’re going to hell!” we didn’t do that. And then it occurred to me. We didn’t do that because our mission wasn’t to solve the issues of the day. I wasn’t threatened by his position, and he wasn’t threatened by mine, because our mission was to do the dishes. That’s what needed to be done at Camp Katrina. And when we finished, we had accomplished our mission, and it felt good. And, amazingly, in that context, we could leave the divisive issues of the day to God. We had done our job.

And I realized that an intense focus on mission was the key to how Camp Katrina came into being and organized itself. At evening prayer one night a young man who was leaving the next day spoke. He said, “This place works because everyone here is so focused on the need, on the mission, that they check their ego’s at the door.” He gave the example of a man who was assigned to garbage pick-up detail and performed it admirably all day long. Only later did they learn that he was the CEO of a large corporation.

An intense focus on mission is the link between Camp Katrina and St. John’s. One hundred years ago this month a small group of Episcopalians met with Bishop Nelson and held a worship service in the cramped hall over the old Post Office, in the building that now houses Fina Restaurant. That was the beginning of St. John’s. From that meeting of about six people — that St. John’s would be here one hundred years later, was, to say the least, a long shot. This is an area that has taken it on the chin in a lot of ways, and St. John’s has been given lots of good excuses to go out of existence.

And it hasn’t been easy. You know I don’t believe in sanitized views of history, and I’m not going to give you one. There have been lots of times of strife, disagreement, hurt feelings, disappointments, bad matches, factionalism, pouting — make your own list, it will all be true.

But here we are. And I am convinced that we have overcome — not only survived but prevailed — for one reason and one reason only. If I may borrow a phrase from the Blues Brothers, we are on a mission from God. There are lots of ways to describe that mission. Here’s one way that comes from a book written by former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. Men and women formed by the church, he writes,

are now found to be identified with Christ’s death in such a way that they think of themselves no longer as separate and self-sufficient units, but as centred in Christ who died and rose again. They used to think of Christ as an isolated historical figure. . . ; now they think of Him as the inclusive head and centre of a new humanity, wherein a new creation of God is at work. The implication . . . is far-reaching. Christ is here defined not as the isolated figure of Galilee and Judea but as one whose people, dead and risen with Him, are His own humanity.

Another way to state our mission is this:

If we stay focused on that mission, tightly focused on that mission, I’m convinced that like Camp Katrina, we’ll serve against all the odds. And like those folks crowded in the hall over the old Post Office, we’ll be beginning another exciting hundred years of service to our amazing Lord. May God bless us in that holy work.

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