When reading The Ark Newspaper this week, the paper with the news of our local peninsula area, I came across the following letter to the editor written by one of our neighbors here in Tiburon. Maybe you saw it. It read:

"Dear editor: While on my bike ride through Mill Valley/Tiburon, I happened to notice the beggar at the stoplight (off the 101/Tiburon exit) pushing the "cross" button, causing the light to stay red longer so as to increase his chances to beg for more money. Next time you find yourself precariously perched atop 101 waiting to get off the Tiburon/Mill Valley exit trying to prevent your car from being rear-ended or cut off by others exiting, remember it is the guy with the hungry sign repeatedly pushing the "need to cross" button who likely caused more frequent and longer delays."¹

Imagine the nerve of some hungry person standing by the side of the road all day long with a need to push the "need to cross" button in hopes of getting some help with a meal. The young man there on Friday afternoon was Matthew, interestingly the name of the gospel that asks, "When did we see you hungry and feed you?"² Imagine Matthew delaying the writer a minute or two from getting home for his own three-course meal or the Giants game or to check his email messages! A feeling of embarrassment and shame came over me when I read this letter. Is this who we are in southern Marin? Maybe we need to install a different sign at that intersection, one that flashes red letters rather than written with crayon on cardboard. What do you think of instead of a "need to cross" button, we had a lighted sign that said, "Need to eat," or "Need to work," or "Need to live?" For those of us who are busy going about our business stressed out with all the things we try to accomplish each day it can be irritating to have someone in our faces reminding us of how hard it is to live in Marin if you are unemployed or even if you are working as a clerk in our stores or a cook in our restaurants or a pre-school teacher for our children.

As the popular bracelet lettering says, "WWJD?" What would Jesus do?" Jesus was a great storyteller. During the dinner Jesus was attending in today’s gospel reading, one of the guests who were gathered around the table and feeling quite satisfied, said to Jesus, "Blessed is anyone who will share the meal in the kingdom of God!" Unfortunately for him, Jesus responded with a story that probably made him a bit uncomfortable. It was a story of people who led busy lives and felt compelled to set their own priorities about what they needed to do. Jesus began, "Someone gave a great dinner and invited many." Now the social custom of the day was to send out an initial invitation to let guests know of the coming dinner date. Then, the day of the meal, a second notification would go out as a reminder. The party-giver sent a slave to say to the guests, "Come, for everything is ready now." Unfortunately, things had come up for most of the guests and they couldn’t make it to the dinner. These things happen and, when we are the host, we try to understand though after all the planning and cleaning and cooking to have people cancel at the last minute is a big disappointment. The guests weren’t just making excuses, of course. They all had acceptable reasons. One needed to go see the piece of property he had bought. Another needed to try out his new oxen to be sure they were all healthy and strong. A third had just become married and it was certainly understandable that he and his bride would want to be alone and not in a crowd at a big dinner party. Property needs, economic needs, romantic needs: they were not excuses but all valid reasons honored by most societies. However, God’s offer, God’s invitation has priority over our weakest and our most important agendas. The owner of the house became angry and he said to the slave, "Go out and bring in the forgotten of our society, those who can’t carry their own weight working a stress-filled forty-to-sixty hour week. Bring in the crippled, the blind, and the lame. Bring in the sick, the mentally ill, those with AIDS, those battling alcohol and those weak with cancer. They are all invited. The meal is for them." They all came in and still there were a few seats left at the table. He said to the slave, "Go out and bring in those traveling the roads and the lanes, those who are forced to beg for food along their way, the stranger, the non-citizen, the transients and the refugees who have left war or drought or famine and are searching for a better life for themselves and their children. Compel them to come in so that my house may be filled."

Who wouldn’t accept God’s gracious invitation? Only those who set their own priorities or who want to be in control of the company they keep. There are many people in Marin who should be pushing that "need to cross" button to slow us down and help us see others. The gap between rich and poor grows greater all the time. There are many people who receive our suits and blouses at the dry cleaners or receive our children at day care or check our groceries at the Safeway or accept our credit cards at Macy’s who are surely feeling that they aren’t invited to the table in Marin County and its getting worse. For a family of four, two adults and two school-age children, to be self-sufficient having enough income to cover the basic needs of housing, food, child care, transportation and medical care, $50,000 a year is needed or $25 per hour in salary. The fastest growing category of occupation in Marin is salesperson who makes on the average of $8.90 per hour. Its not surprising that some families earn only about $20,000 per year and the poverty rate in the county is increasing, especially for children. In Marin, ten percent of the children under the age of eighteen are living below the poverty level. That is a lower percentage than across the state of California but it is inexcusable in the county whose median family income is the highest in the state at $80,000.³

So I often think about, wonder about, pray about what it is that we should be doing about this? Here we are a Presbyterian congregation of about 500 people called to be the body of Christ in southern Marin along Tiburon Boulevard just a few blocks from the freeway off-ramp where hungry people stand daily. We are only a few miles from apartment units that house multiple families trying to get by, to find and keep their jobs, to educate their children, to survive without attracting too much attention to themselves. Maybe you have some ideas. What do you think? Through the Prophet Isaiah in today’s reading, God calls to all, "Come to the water all you who are thirsty." To some God says, "Though you have no money, come! Buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk without money, free!" To others who have income God says, "Why spend money on what cannot nourish and your wages on what fails to satisfy?" To all, God says, "Listen carefully to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy. Pay attention, come to me; listen, and you will live. I shall make an everlasting covenant with you." If we as a community would truly let God set our priorities, if we would let ourselves be in everlasting covenant with God, what would that mean to the choices we make? It is very possible that if some of us chose not to spend money on what cannot nourish or our wages on what fails to satisfy, then there would be enough money for all to have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy or at least the basics for human survival. God’s agenda is not survival of the fittest but a passionate love and concern for all humanity.

Most of us don’t have direct control over the income levels of other people here in Marin but there are things we can do, of course. We can seriously think about the balance between our need for open space and the affordable housing shortage in Marin. A lingering factor is the property value of our existing homes. More housing means higher supply which could lower the value of our own home and our potential for income at resale time. Are we willing to give up some of that profit so that others can live and work in our community? We need to be proactive with tax measures to ensure that those who provide the important public services have the income to call this community home. We must also encourage our elected officials to support the important health and human services that are critical to all of us especially those of low income remembering Homeward Bound which provides housing and job training to those who are anxious to gain the skills to be self-supporting.

From a personal prospective, however, our most important task is to help all people know that each and every one is invited to the dinner. — that we are not "us" and "them" but we are "we," the guests called by God to come to the table together. We have all been in some place at some time where we felt an outsider, where we felt invisible though there were many people around. In that situation, the encounter that made me feel human was just one person feeling the "need to cross," the need to cross over from a stranger to a welcoming face and speak to me. In our community, it is the best way to learn about how people live who are right around us and how our lifestyle affects others. Come by the church sometime and meet Joseph who likes to read the Bible and pray and somehow frequently finds a way to get into the building at night to sleep on this red carpet. Or come and meet Brian who attends the Thursday hot lunch program and asked me on this week if he could sleep under the overhang at the front door if it started to rain. Or meet Kristen who is high energy and doesn’t have a regular job but has an incredible gift for playing the piano by ear and will spend hours in Findlay Hall sharing her talent with us. Have you met the Vila family, nine people who escaped from the war in Kosovo three years ago and resettled here with the help of this congregation? They live in one apartment in Corte Madera, are in school or working and most have learned English. They somehow get by on three minimum wage salaries and a donated car. They would love to meet and know you and share their experience with you. There are many families in the San Rafael Canal area who would cherish a relationship with you and a chance to practice their English.

Sometimes it is scary to "cross over" and risk that our lives might be changed. Pushing that "need to cross" button might open our eyes to God’s nudge to question our own priorities, our own agenda. We, as a church community and as individuals may find that the "need to love" is more important than the need to get off the off ramp first and get home to a big meal alone. We may have been uncomfortable thirty years ago to be the county known for hot tubs and peacock feathers but I certainly prefer that to a reputation of treating hungry people at stop lights as non-persons, as irritants. May we, as the body of Christ, remember his words, "Go out into the roads and the lanes and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled."

1. The Ark, October 9, 2002, p. 3, "Notice The Guy Pushing The ‘Cross’ Button"

2. Matthew 25:37

3. Healthy Marin Partnership: Economic Issues — Marin County Indicators 2001