Jackson Square is in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter. The spire of St. Louis Cathedral rises high above the well-groomed garden outside its southern entrance. Within earshot, the mighty Mississippi takes its last few twists before dumping its now-muddy, Minnesota stream into the warm, blue waters of the Gulf. This square has seen its portion of visitors, has welcomed its share of immigrants. The words of the Harbor Lady who stands far to the north echo in this beautiful and unique melting pot:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me…⁽¹⁾

These words remind us of the great promise which is America. And these words remind us of the legacy which is ours: for once we, too, through our ancestors, stepped off of some boat, wide-eyed and anxious, and made our home here, foreigners in a land of hope and promise. Jackson Square is a living picture of that promise, an enduring metaphor of our nation's open-armed greeting of hope to the masses.

Jackson Square is never quiet. Never dull. The sounds are many and varied: boys tap-dancing on the streets, the bellowing of a tugboat on the Mississippi; the "clippety-clop " of a horse-drawn carriage, the crescendo of a soulful trumpet, brassing out the blues. The smells of Jackson Square are also notable: there are fragrant aromas from flowers in full-bloom, spicy smells of Creole cuisine and Cajun Jambalaya, sticky-sweet essences of French Beignet's and flavored coffees, and the odors of a metropolitan inner-city. Jackson Square, on a busy day, is a banquet for the senses.

But the most interesting sights in Jackson Square, as with most places, I suspect, are the people who make up the frenzy. The faces are as unique and colorful, as creative and exciting year-round as are the masked faces of the famed Mardi Gras parades -- for the faces on Jackson Square are the masks of God. They are faces which make unmistakably clear the image of a God of wonderful diversity, of great imagination, and of unbounded love.

I saw him for the first time, as we crossed Canal and ventured down Bourbon Street -- complete strangers to the world which unfolded before our eyes there. He was sitting in a rather quiet section of street, crouched with his back against a wall. His feet were flat on the pavement, so that his knees were nearly as high as his head. His arms rested on his knees and his fingers dangled there in front of him, along with his long, black, greasy hair. His clothes were filthy from days and nights on the streets, and he carried nothing else in his possession. He stared out at the street, and I expected an outstretched hand or a entreaty for money, but we passed in silence and his stare never broke.

The next day, we encountered him again, this time asleep on a park bench. He slept with one arm over his face, blocking the intense heat of a Louisiana sun in mid- August. His now shirtless body was covered in beads of sweat and grime, and how he slept in that heat I can't understand. And later that afternoon, we saw him yet again, back at his original spot, holding that original stance, but this time mumbling a loud, nonsensical gibberish.

He was a vagabond. A homeless, hopeless, helpless burden on society. A Derelict.

Music has made New Orleans famous, and the sounds of Zydeco, Blues, Dixie-land, Progressive Jazz, and now, even Rock and Roll are inescapable as you walk its streets. Most of the music is wonderful, but...it takes all kinds -- and New Orleans has all kinds. After lunch, we headed back through Jackson Square, and I was captured by one of the street musicians there. We had already stopped to enjoy a Peruvian Folk band, a Dixie-land trio, and a Cajun combo, but I can safely say, I've never seen a musician quite like this one. He stood atop a two-foot concrete cylinder that was just large enough in diameter for his pair of black “Chuck Taylor” high tops. His gray jeans came just below the knee and were decorated with a series of tears, tears even through patches on patches, all the way up his thigh. His black "Grateful Dead" t-shirt was from the same fashion designer, as it was nearly shredded with the same horizontal cuts. He played a rattled old Gibson electric guitar, the strings of which were long and untrimmed beyond the tuning pegs, and they flopped carelessly with his every gyration. His head was shaven, except for a tiny band of black hair, which formed a complete ring around his youthful skull. The hair of this ring was about three inches long and was braided or plaited into individual strands, each standing at its own angle. A disturbing likeness of a crown emerged from this ring of spikes, and Amy asked, "A crown of thorns?" Completing his ensemble was a pair of hand-stitched cloth wings. (Yes, as in angel wings.) Large, red, cloth, angel wings which covered his back and flapped, keeping an uneasy time with his crown of thorns and his untidy steel strings. As we approached, we could hear him crooning, his scratchy voice projected over his ill-tuned "Les Paul," "Sweet Home Alabama, where the skies are so blue, Sweet Home Alabama, Lord, I'm coming home to you...."

I was mesmerized. Where had he come from? Where was he going? How much money could he possibly make standing there and playing -- like that!? Where were his parents? With that thought, Amy grabbed my arm and dragged me away -- "If Jackson ever..." She didn't finish the sentence. (Jackson is our nine-month-old son!)

He was a Rebel. An Alternative "Punker." A Black sheep. I call him the “Angel Boy.”

The most intriguing face that I encountered there on Jackson Square was a face of darkness. As we stood there on the street trying to decide where to go next, she approached from our left, moving quickly and smoothly, like some dim, ghostly apparition. She was tall and thin and her features were stark and eerie: long legs, thin frame, sharp cheek bones and a high forehead. She was dressed in black leggings and a long-sleeved black shirt, which was covered by a flowing pale-colored top, shredded at the waist. Her tightly-cropped hair accentuated her slender, almost gaunt shape. As she moved, I felt my eyes cling to her, and I had to force myself to not stare. Her eyes were deep pools of dark, and even against the blackness of her skin, the large bruises which scarred her nose and cheeks were clearly visible.

I really felt like I had seen a ghost, and as she glided down the street past us, I turned to Amy and we said in unison, "Did you see that!?" A strange and spooky shiver streaked through my mind, and I saw at once images of Witchcraft and Bayou Voodoo, of prostitution and abuse, of drugged-out despair turned to subsistence living, by any means necessary.

She was a Witchy Woman. My “Voodoo Princess.”

New Orleans is not often described as a spiritual center, a holy place, a "City of God." In fact, as you well know, the opposite is usually the case -- New Orleans is a city of sin, a "modern-day Sodom" some say, a mecca for carousing and sleazy living, for gambling and drinking and prostitution and all manner of evil pursuits. But as I thought about the sights and sounds and smells of this place, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps New Orleans is the quintessential "City of God," for where better to comprehend the great, great Love of God than in a place filled with such human diversity, and such human need. Let us be assured, we who walk the "straight and narrow," that the Compassionate Love of God is broad enough to encompass, to accept, to welcome with open arms even Derelicts, Angel Boys, and Voodoo Princesses.

The question is: What about our love?

The question is: What about our church's compassion?

I am dreadfully afraid that the strongest message that today's Church is sending to today's society is that we love condemnation more than compassion. We castigate the homeless and the poor for being lazy and shiftless. We say, "They've gotten what they deserve." We judge the value of a human heart based on the value of a material fashion. Earrings, tattoos, body-piercing, alternative hairstyles and clothes become the object of our scorn, and the basis for alienation. We look on those whose lifestyles and values differ from ours, and are unable to separate culturally-determined "norms," from absolute moral or ethical imperatives.

We often condemn, yet we seldom know even a name.

Now if you think that the Jackson Square crowd that I have described for you is a little odd, just imagine the multitude that followed Jesus. Without indoor plumbing for daily hygiene, with no "Mary Kay" makeovers or designer wardrobes, with no doctors to set broken bones or remove warts and moles, let alone cure terminal diseases, can you imagine what that crowd of Galilean peasants must have looked like? That crowd that followed Jesus, the "miracle man," around the countryside? They were strange looking alright, and filled with superstition and pagan beliefs of every variety, and yet Jesus, "when he saw the crowds," Matthew says, "had compassion (not a word of condemnation) for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." Christ assumed no stereotypes, called no names, passed no judgments, because a shepherd's first priority is care for the sheep; a shepherd's heart knows no other method.

Throughout the pages of our scriptures, God is known to the people as a God of Compassion. For Matthew’s hearers, who were people of the land, the image of God as a shepherd was an appropriate representation of God's character.⁽²⁾ The Shepherding of God is conferred upon Christ, who says in John, "I am the good shepherd...who lays down his life for the sheep."⁽³⁾

But just as true and important as the picture of a shepherding God, is the scripture's exhortation of God's people to be bound to that same holy calling. Ezekiel sharply criticizes the leaders of his day for fattening themselves and failing to tend the sheep.⁽⁴⁾ The election of the New Testament church's first officers was a selection of servants (they called them deacons -- but the word means “one who serves”). Their whole purpose was to feed the poor, to take care of the elderly and the widowed and the orphaned.⁽⁶⁾ Deuteronomy explains that wealth is given by God, but "for the purpose of meeting the needs of the poor."⁽⁷⁾ And Paul says in Ephesians that we should work, in order to take care of the poor, and not to accumulate wealth.⁽⁸⁾

The compassion of Jesus, whose heart was intertwined with the very heart of God, was a heart-rending, gut-wrenching emotion. The Greek word for compassion (splachnizomai) is derived from a word describing the bowels. Even in the midst of a stewardship campaign, I can tell you without hesitation that God doesn't want our money. Not a dime of it. God wants our hearts, our hands, our guts -- moved at the very sight of humans in need. (The old, tired joke says, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach!" God knows that there is some truth there, for men and women alike, because when our stomachs churn with compassion, God won't have trouble getting the rest of us -- hearts, hands, even checkbooks to follow.)

            There is a city, a great city in great need that is much closer to you today than New Orleans. In fact, you will drive through it on your way to lunch. And in that great city there are Derelicts, and Angel Boys, and Voodoo Princesses. And in that great city there are good, decent, hardworking, honest men and who men, who simply cannot make enough to get by. And in that city there are single mothers with multiple children living on dwindling welfare checks, not because they are good for nothing, but due to chance and choice, and because of a system that is so complicated and a cycle of poverty and violence that is so oppressive that even the best and brightest among us would be hard pressed to claw ourselves out of that mire. And in that city there are children of God, from all walks of life, who are desperate, afraid, broken, overwhelmed, alienated, hopeless… Children of all means, from all places, children of all ages who feel that life has left them alone.

            But there is good news: they are not alone.

For in this very city, God is at work.

If the Church will not do the work of God. God will call someone else.

But I believe that God is calling Park Road Baptist Church. Calling us to be God’s own eyes, that recognize need; God’s own hands of tough love and tender care; God’s own voice that advocates for the poor and the needy; God’s own heart of compassion and unconditional love.

Your Vision Team has no delusions of grandeur, but we believe that God is calling today, calling to remind us that our purpose is to be light, not light only unto ourselves, but light to the nations.[2] To remind us of the demands of Jesus, that the purpose of the Church is to bring about the kingdom of heaven – on earth – that our reward will be found through reaching the needs of the “least of these” who are among us – the poor, the outcast, the helpless, the hopeless.[3]

It is no call of grandeur. It is a calling of hard work and small, but intentional steps in the service of God’s good news. It is a call to “become disciples through worship and service.”[4]

The Vision Team will be asking you to sign on. In the coming weeks, and over the coming years, to sign on, by giving of yourself: your time, your talents, your passion, and even more of your hard-earned money. For only by so giving of ourselves will we truly become the church – a sanctuary for derelicts, Angel Boys, and Voodoo Princesses.

I hope you will pray with us. I hope you will dream with us. I hope you will respond, with us.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Charlotte: City of God!

May it be so!

PASTORAL PRAYER

We have sought your vision, O God.

Give us now the courage to find our voice

            In this great city of God.

Amen.