No Place to Go

Published in the Catalyst, Vol. 32, No. 2 - Spring 2009

Last summer Grace and I took the scenic back country route to Merritt, British Columbia. A bit nerve wracking, it took us over rough, narrow, winding gravel and logging roads. The only signs along the road were huge yellow signs which drew our attention to the fact that all the property on both sides of the road was private property and that “Violators Will Be Prosecuted” – little comfort in this remote but beautiful landscape.

The signs certainly didn’t make us feel welcome or at home, perhaps a bit guilty for enjoying forbidden beauty. However, in our rickety old RV we had our basic necessities: food, a bed and a toilet. We didn’t have to worry about finding the nearest washroom, shelter or grocery store.

Most of us probably don’t think about it often, but North American culture is a culture of private property and of privatization; a society in which public space becoming scarce. Real estate is valued above all, and it seems that the acquisition of capital and private possessions is what life is all about. One must drive for miles to feel free of being on someone else’s property.

We see fences and hedges and implicitly know and respect the rules of private property. We certainly do have a right to personal property, to personal privacy and public safety. But in a time when poverty and homelessness has reached crisis proportions, and with fewer public services or spaces for the 21st century’s displaced to keep warm, to lay their head, where are the public places – where is their “place” – where can they go to satisfy their most basic human needs?

Imagine: no place

Imagine getting off the bus in a community with implicit and explicit private property signs on every doorway and street corner; you don’t live here and get the distinct feeling that no one wants you here, either. Where do you go? Every house and establishment has signs: “no loitering,” “no trespassing,” “for customer use only.” You have frumpy, mismatched clothes and you haven’t been able to wash for a week. It is impossible to hide your unkempt hair and bad teeth and you are getting nervous, you feel out of place.

Perhaps there are shelters in town, but these are usually closed during the daytime, and there are usually a lot of drugs around. Where do you go during the day? If you have enough money perhaps you can buy something to eat at McDonald’s and use their washroom.

Your feet are cold and sore, you are hungry and tired, and you have no place, not merely to lay your head; you have no place to go. Getting arrested for some vague reason may paradoxically be a “positive” solution; at least in jail you have a bed, can be warm and dry and have something to eat.

Creating a place, living radically

Jesus reminded some “wannabe” followers that they would find his value system to be different than the social/ethical values and goals of the leaders of Jerusalem and Judea. There was a radical cost to following him. Jesus with his statement, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Mt.8:20; Luke. 9:8), made a stand with, and for, the cause and situation of the sick, homeless and dispossessed poor of land. In status sensitive Israel, he took on the status of those of low or no status.

Jesus made a “heads-up” statement about true leadership to the false shepherds of Israel – leadership that leads to true well-being of all, especially of the most vulnerable and marginalized in the land. Multitudes were being practically taxed to death by those who owned the land and wielded political and economic power. Many of the crowds following Jesus were dispossessed, homeless, sick and poor, pressing in on Jesus on every side; and Jesus was harried, pained and burdened by their plight.

With his statement, Jesus took a stand which leaves an example for us to follow. Christ implicitly highlights the inherent right of human flourishing, of creaturely rights to the gifts of creation, and of rights of all to have a living wage, clean water to drink, and enough nutritious food to eat; to surely have a healthy place to live and to satisfy life’s basic functions. This is our Creator’s design for human life in his graced creation.

Speaking for today?

Does the text have anything to say about social political responsibilities today? I think so! There is a socio-economic cost to following Jesus; there are obligations to our neighbours in need. Following Jesus and what he stands for is not a natural personal pathway to unprecedented prestige, profit, and power. The dominant cultural values of the market place, and of social elitism, then as now, rule supreme.

But now, as then, those with resources and political power are also called to follow Jesus’ stand for the poor and homeless also. In Christ, they are our neighbours and all have a right to fresh air, to food, to rest, to use the toilet and to shower.

Following Christ’s example

For us to take a stand and champion the values of Christ’s health giving rule for the poor and needy, we need to get beyond mere charity and do justice. In memory of Jesus we seek to establish justice for the poor, sick, and marginalized. Thus we challenge and address the root causes of poverty and hunger, many of them structural and politicised.

Shelters are good, but they are only that – shelters – not housing. We are called to work collaboratively to create strategies to establish empowering communities that express God’s design for human life. In other words, we must ask our Members of Parliament and provincial and municipal stewards to get beyond a kind of minimal ethics of food banks, shelters and jails.

We must advocate, for instance, for policies that provide low cost and affordable housing, and call the government to establish living wages. The chronically unemployed need support, and structured housing is needed for those struggling with mental illness. The working poor need relief from fear of being one pay check away from homelessness.

We are called to address the root causes of poverty and the related issues of drug addiction, mental illness and crime; of high mortality rates of children and minorities; and of unhealthy, mouldy, living conditions on many of Canada’s Native reservations.

The causes are often not popular and not advantageous for politicians looking for votes. Too often a common adversarial stance is taken in addressing social issues with war metaphors, creating an us versus them polarity. War is declared on drugs, on world hunger, on crime, and on poverty. However, in declaring war on poverty and drugs, the danger is in implicitly “demonizing” resourceless human beings, virtually turning them into enemies of the state.

Another stance is looking at public issues from a detached, contractual distance; image bearers objectified as statistics or projects, as consumers. But the illness and sickness of the marginalized one affects us all; after all, these are our co-image bearers in the land God has given us. These are public health and wellness issues; moral and ethical issues on which we are called to take a stand. We are to be in compassionate solidarity with the people involved as Christ so closely identifies with us his people, our daily bread, our debts.

This is not a fight with abstract legislation from a distance, not merely random acts of kindness. As suffering servants, we actively call and stand for justice for those who live in poverty, too many without a place or fixed address, taking a stand for them, for they too deserve a place of dignity in the land.