Hobos in Faith

Originally presented June 14, 2026

Today was the Zach and Pete show

In light of the commission given in today’s gospel lesson, I’d like to start this off with a version of the Prayer of St. Francis that we use in our weekly vigil for peace:

“Lord, make [us] instruments of your peace:

where there is hatred, let [us] sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

The great Nelson Wilbury once wrote: “Well it’s all right, doing the best you can.

Well it’s all right, as long as you lend a hand.” In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is giving a commission to his disciples. He’s asking them to go out, spread the good news, heal those they find needing, etc. He’s asking them to do the best they can, to lend a hand. The way that he tells them to do this leaves them vulnerable, and leaves them needing to trust in the generosity of strangers. Like hobos heading down the tracks with only their bindlesticks, He sends the disciples out to do these things with minimal resources and maximal faith.

Jesus is asking a lot of his disciples: they are to go into a town, figure out who will welcome them, ask in their humility to be taken in, then heal people and declare that “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” He tells them that they may be flogged, or run out of town. But note also that he tells them not to go out into the wider world. He wants them in their home range, so if they are kicked out, they can pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and go to the next town. Newcomer hobos in faith that they are, this is a useful limit since Jesus has more that he wants from these guys, and can only afford them getting in so much trouble at this point in their ministry.

Quoting again from Nelson Wilbury: “Well it’s all right, even if they say you’re wrong. Well it’s all right, sometimes you gotta be strong. Well it’s all right, As long as you got somewhere to lay. Well it’s all right, everyday is Judgment Day.”

Humility is key in two different aspects of this situation: it is necessary to be served, otherwise you won’t be able to communicate your needs, and it is necessary to serve, otherwise you proceed from false assumptions about what is needed. If you come into a place thirsty, don’t ask for water, and are given a blanket instead, both the one seeking help and the one seeking to help are at fault for not communicating. This brings me back to something I’ve discussed before: the two types of charity, where one is giving someone a thing you’d want yourself and hoping it will be enough, while the second is giving them what you have left over that you don’t want and expecting them to be grateful. It’s about having sufficient empathy and desire to connect on the donor side, and realizing that humbling oneself to ask for what’s really needed takes work on the requestor’s side.

Speaking of empathetic giving, let’s talk about the small south-west African country of Namibia. Did you know that more than half of the population are Lutheran? Proportion-wise, this is the largest fraction of a country that’s Lutheran anywhere. According to what Pastor Lena told me of this situation, it partially derives from the work of Lutheran World Relief. Of course, being Lutheran, the emphasis is more on World Relief. The missionaries there are bringing necessities to people in need, and in doing so with humble hearts, have made an impression. The question essentially being asked was, “Why are you doing this? What are you getting out of helping us?” While the answer was, “This is what our faith commands us to do: to serve selflessly, to be living witness to the love that God has for all.” The response was mainly along the lines of, “Wow, how can I do that?” Evangelism of the hands is better than evangelism of the mouth, mainly because the hands can’t help but be honest in their intentions.

The answer is in our denominational motto: “God’s work. Our hands.” We’re good at jumping in and offering help. We’re good at what’s known as ministry of presence. We do what’s needed, but don’t necessarily need to tell people why we’re doing it. To borrow from another denomination, General William Booth of the Salvation Army said it as the “Three Ss: Soup, Soap, and Salvation.” Following a reduced version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you feed the person, then help them recover their dignity, then offer information and understanding if and when they ask you why you’re doing what you’re doing.

I’m going to say something that may make you a bit uncomfortable: you’re doing really well at this. You know what you’re doing, and you’re showing up and doing not only for each other, but for our larger community within and beyond Port Jervis. The amount that people in this church sign up and show up to serve others is proportionally phenomenal. You heal one another, and help one another.

See, the thing that’s left unsaid in this gospel lesson is that this isn’t the great commission, it’s just the first one. This is Jesus saying to the disciples, “Go out there and see what you can do. But we’re going to leave the training wheels on this time. I don’t want you evangelizing to anyone in a culture you’re not familiar with. You still need the assistance of shared reference. I don’t want you going too far from home, because if I send you out even just a week’s journey away, you won’t have a safety net.” In teaching, this is similar to the Montessori approach, or what we call structured environment learning. This is the concept that you can create an environment for your students where, even if they fail at achieving the primary objective, they will still have learned several secondary objectives, and so you’ve created a safe space to fail. Of course, being flogged isn’t exactly safe, but there are limits to the punishments for restricted speech in the space in which the disciples are limited to move in, so it’s safer than just sending them out into the wider world. And notice Jesus’s emphasis on empathy: he wants his disciples to speak to people, sure, but most of all he wants them to listen to people. He wants them to hear what the needs of others are, to observe what ills they hide from the outside world to just survive and get by. He wants them to revive the poor in spirit and the literal dead. He wants them to forgive the sins of any who repent.

Another bit from Nelson on this: ”Well it’s all right, even if you’re old and gray. Well it’s all right, you still got something to say. Well it’s all right, remember to live and let live. Well it’s all right, the best you can do is forgive.”

So what about the other part of this, the asking for help? I was talking to a friend from this congregation recently, and she said that she never thought of herself as being one who would want to ask for help, but that when she needed it, we all made it so easy. I can only agree, and mention again how mutual aid always starts by looking like charity: how we’re building a community that can afford time and effort to both give and take help. Wearing down individual pride to the point of not just accepting but asking for help is a long difficult process, and involves trusting the people around you, but of paramount importance is that somewhere within our couple of dozen members, we’ve managed to get that right. Warts and all, we still gather together (the literal etymology of the word congregation) and show each other love.

So we have within our membership people who push to help others and people who are willing to ask to be helped. Here’s the key thing: they’re the same people. We’re not just a social club, we’re a community. We have achieved Jesus’s first objective of this commission, and are showing love to one another, trusting one another with our needs and to help with those needs. And we are working together to address the needs of our larger community, moving out of the safe space of those we’re familiar with, and addressing the needs of others.

I’m going to close with a last quote further belaboring the hobo metaphor in this sermon from that great theologian Nelson Wilbury (which is actually the pseudonym used by George Harrison of The Beatles when he was in the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys): “Well it’s all right, even when push comes to shove. Well it’s all right, everybody’s someone to love. Well it’s all right, everything’ll work out fine. Well it’s all right, we’re going to the end of the line.”