Joplin Work Trip "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"

Pastor Susan just returned from Joplin; this is an excerpt from her sermon last weekend with photos from the work trip crew:

Mark 12:28-34

Don and his wife lived in their home for 50 years, the small structure received major ice damage to its roof in 2007 and Don set about the frustrating process of rebuilding.  His wife, a collector of kitchen memorabilia supervised the careful replacement of her treasures as they restored their home and continued celebrating their large family through the years…Don loved to cook every Sunday…expecting any number of folks to show up to eat…when his wife died shortly after the renovation…Don was grateful to God for her life, for their home, for their family…at age 89, he would sit out on the porch swing watching the comings and goings of his beloved Joplin neighborhood.  

On May 22, 2011 Don’s grown daughters were visiting with their dogs…Don had cooked, of course, and his daughter, Beth, was preparing to head home with her two dogs….Beth put the dogs in the car and came back into the house….the weather was shifting and the radio said a tornado was imminent…just before 5:30pm, as Beth and Don disagreed briefly about her leaving they experienced the most devastating, shocking, horrendous moments of their lives.  As the monster tornado plowed through this solid sleepy Midwestern town the windows of the house at 2322 Pennsylvania were blown to smithereens…Don grabbed Beth’s arm as her body was lifted off the floor, hurling both of them back and slamming them into the crashing walls and each other…89 year old Don then held his 70 something year old girl by her ankles fighting the monster who would send her into the depths of rubble and debris if it weren’t for this old man, this father, this survivor…they can’t remember the next moments but upon waking Beth found herself confused and disoriented…they may have been in a cabinet? A closet?...they were alive…their family home was gone…all of it…the six dogs who were in the house then appeared, shaken and filthy but alive…Don shares that he has since heard that in an emergency we humans should allow our animal friends to fend for themselves…apparently the pups found holes and hiding places…shelter from the wrath and destruction which would come to form the new identity of Joplin.

         Across the street Ed argued with his wife about the safest place to wait out the storm…she wanted to get into the bathtub but Ed insisted they cower in a central closet…theirs was a beautiful home…before May 22, 2011.

Ed was firm, they huddled together, holding on to one another in a small closet as the windows and walls were sucked into oblivion…as the bathtub was destroyed by falling drywall and flying shattered glass and tree branches.

Within minutes this formerly friendly community became one large family…neighbors began to work side by side looking for those who were buried in the fury…there were portions of cars and buildings scattered everywhere…few trees remained and they had been debarked, skinned bare with haunting surgical precision.  The walking wounded wept and screamed and clung to one another… there were no strangers in Joplin anymore.

As dawn broke on May 23 it began to rain…the heat, humidity and rain

compounded the odor of death that permeated the city.  Sewers and refrigerators, dead dogs and birds, stench and decay added to the devastation as the quiet hum of chain saws and shouts of first responders filled the stifling air.

        And then…the spirit of life, of survival, of compassion, of Gospel fluttered down upon Joplin.  Now the chain saws were a symphony…steady and strong…now the possibility of hope teased at the street corners. Now our amazing God would pick these people up…would hold onto them…would very gently begin to restore their bruised spirits…

         God was there…Christians and Jews and Muslims…servants from around the world appeared almost immediately to set aside their own lives in response to the broken lives of Joplin.  Young and not so young…poor folks and wealthy sent supplies, money, prayers…the world lifted the formerly unknown, invisible city upon Her substantial shoulders and began to slowly slowly revive it.