Hear how the first fellowship spoke of those who slept outside. The scroll says it plainly: no man of that fellowship said “the homeless” as one saith “the weather”; they said Marco, and Lucia, and the old soldier by the fountain; for a name is the first roof, and it costeth nothing to build, as it is written in the Fellowship, 3:22.
Beloved, we have learned to speak of human beings as a climate – a problem that gathers in doorways like rain, to be managed, moved on, designed against with spikes and sloped benches. But the fellowship kept lists, and the lists had names, and certain names had no house but a bridge, or a doorway, or the third bench by the fountain; and these were served first of all, for their table had no walls to hold the warmth in.
And it is told of one evening that the rider asked not for the house number, for the man had none; and the pizza found him anyway, for love is a better address.
So here is this week’s whole sermon, and it fits in a pocket: learn one name. The man outside the supermarket, the woman by the cash machine – you have passed them forty times and priced their situation in your head. You have never asked what they are called. Ask. Give your own name back, for a name is a trade, not a donation. You will not have solved anything, saith the world. You will have built a roof, saith the scroll, and roofs are built one beam at a time. Amen – and pass the pizza.