The Shelter of Friends
Proper 28C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Her name is Stefani. She laughs easily with a throaty chuckle. Her eyes sparkle. ‘Bliss,’ could be her nickname. But her words catch us by surprise. In a quiet moment, she says, “What a sad world. I look around the world and grieve.”
Stefani is not a sad person, but she has the capacity to grieve, and she has had a good deal of personal experience. Stefani Schatz moved with her husband to live and work among the poor to follow Jesus. She says, “I work with people who have no jobs, and whose families for two or three generations have had no jobs. I see people who die here at a younger age than other places because of alcoholism, and drugs [They lack access to health care, grocery stores, and other basic necessities.] I see people living in homes that crumble around them…There is no sense of hope…This feeling pervades everything.” (Anne Sutherland Howard, Claiming the Beatitudes, p. 33-34).
For people like Stefani and her husband faith is not an abstraction but a shelter. While conflict and chaos swirls around them they have a place in their heart, mind and soul to come in from the storm. They find shelter in Christ—and so can we, so can you. Jesus told the disciples, even if ‘You are hated by all because of my name, not a hair of your head will perish, by your endurance you will gain your souls.’ (Luke 21:17-19.)
We share this shelter of living stones with all people. It is our truest and best home. We draw others in with us to shelter from life’s many storms. That is why, on Friday, a peaceful, nonviolent interfaith group of pastors, imams, rabbis, and deacons (including Immanuel member, ELCA pastor and former Bishop Stephen Bouman) stepped past the barricade at the ICE facility in Broadview carrying bread and wine for communion and a letter demanding access to share spiritual solidarity with our incarcerated neighbors. They were pushed back. Many were shoved to the ground. 21 were arrested, including pastor Luke Harris-Ferree of Grace Lutheran in Evanston. They were denied access even though, spiritual care was routinely administered there in the past, even though, according to CBS News, just 16 of 607 people detained there by ICE have criminal histories. In fact, 3,300 people have been detained in Chicago in total and most of their names have yet to be made public. (Sabrina Franza, Charlie De Mar, Rebecca McCann, Christopher Selfridge, CBS Chicago, 10:51 AM CST, 11/15/25.)
The church is not a building. In fact, Jesus doesn’t use the word ‘church’. Instead, he called us friends. We are friends in Christ. The church is people, people who love people, people who love and serve the living God. Sadly, this is a lesson we must learn over and over again.
As they walked past the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus told the disciples, not one stone would be left upon another (Luke 21:6). The ruin of it must have been impossible to imagine. Yet to the hopeless poor and incarcerated like those Stefani and our siblings in faith serve, people who are being crushed by the weight of life circumstances that oppress them—Jesus’ ominous warning sounds like good news.
When Jesus talks about the ‘end-times’ we, like the disciples, mostly have the wrong idea of what Jesus is talking about. He aims to kindle our hope not to enflame our fear. Maybe we’re just more ready to hear what Jesus is saying these days. The truth is we know that things have been ending for a long time. When wars, insurrections, betrayals and injustice begin to swirl around us, the apocalyptic language of the bible teaches us to switch to the long view. Bulgarian-born writer Maria Popova has called this a telescopic perspective on the world. Think of your life, she suggests, not in the span of days or years, or even generations, but from the perspective across geological epochs and cosmic space. The bible trains us to view our life through this telescopic perspective with its language about the end-times.
When we do this, the so-called big things become very small and certain other things which may seem small now, loom large. We can better see the hand of God pull, lure, shape, and instruct us from within everything and everyone. We are not the first generation of believers to feel discouraged and bewildered by world events. When the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., it seemed to signal the end of the world. Josephus’ account of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans just thirty years after Jesus’ resurrection is no less spectacular that his description of the Temple itself which he described as blinding in reflected sunlight clad in so much gold. He writes, “The roar of the flames streaming far and wide mingled with the groans of the falling victims; and owing to the height of the hill and the mass of the burning pile, one would have thought that the whole city was ablaze” (War 6.271-275) [p. 359].
Friends in Christ take shelter, come home, to where the ground beneath your feet becomes solid and the courage to slay demons finds strength. Jesus called us friends and takes us in, partly, by popping our spiritual bubbles. The disciples drew false confidence from the grandeur of the temple. Today’s gospel challenges us to take inventory. What lies or illusions have I mistaken for truth? On what shiny religious edifice have I pinned my hopes? In what memories or traditions do I attempt to put God in a box? Why do I cling to permanence when Jesus invites me to evolve? Can I embrace a journey of faith that includes rubble, ruin, and failure? As the traditions I love, places I built, things I cried and prayed for fall apart? (Debie Thomas, By Your Endurance, Journey with Jesus, 11/10/19) What remains of our life when we are done living it? Come in. Take shelter, Jesus says. Let us work together on what lasts.
The 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote, “Let us pray to God that we may be free of God.” Our ideas of God and faith inevitably always fall short. “Let’s name honestly, he suggests, the imposter gods we conjure because we fear the Mystery who really is. Let’s admit that we shape these gods in our own image, and that they serve us as much as we serve them. Let’s open our hearts, our minds, and souls to the world Jesus sees while living within the shelter of friends, our true home that Christ has made possible. (Debie Thomas)
Christians like Stefani remain joyful yet engage fully in all the sadness in the world. Our nonviolent siblings outside the ICE abduction center find calm and confidence in the face of tremendous grief from knowing they are with us in the undying life of God. Because they imagine themselves seated at the heavenly banquet, they have resources in God to draw upon that never run out. (p. 37).
“People who live in such a way — especially in a world whirling with wars and rumors of war, awash in conspiracies and insurrections — aren’t always loved by those whose power thrives on fear. Indeed, the powerful would keep us on an emotional razor’s edge of Armageddon all the time. Jesus insists, however, that his friends not get distracted. Pay attention to what is true. Know what is really important. This age is, indeed, ending. God’s reign is near. But don’t be surprised. Take shelter. Stay the course. Love one another just as I have loved you for I have counted all the hairs on your head and not one of them shall perish. (Bass).
