I told the folks at MCC that in the old days, I was so isolated and disgusting on the inside that I had to run around with my glass empty, hoping other people would have extra water sloshing out of theirs that they would share with me. I thought their glasses were special, while mine was a grape jelly jar with the Flintstones stamped on it. Lots of people gave me water. But what quenched my thirst was the spirit that animated their kindness, and telling the truth, which was that they had grape jelly jars, too. That we all do.

I told the people at MCC how blown away I was by their hope, against all reason and odds, in their love. I told them that just by showing up, they were making a difference. Of all the services MCC provides, I love the shower program most. The community offers hot water and soap and clean clothes to the poorest of the poor every week -- people living on the street. It's so democratic. I mean, I don't even like my son using my shower. I asked Penny, from the pulpit, if maybe Sam could start using the showers at MCC.

My friend Margaret Milton preached a few weeks ago on salvation, which is a word that normally makes me want to run screaming for my cute little life. It's a word I suspect John Ashcroft uses all the time at his perverted little home, with all his hidden cameras and electrodes. But she meant salvation in the sense that we are given clean clothes to wear every single day. We get to keep starting over, you, and me. And so do the people to whom we will offer water and soap and fresh clothing.

One last thing I know for sure is that God always comforts the disturbed, and disturbs the comfortable. A lot of us feel very disturbed, but not alone, because we are on the phone and out in the streets, and in prayer and classrooms and libraries. We're singing the tribal songs of freedom again. Two weeks ago at my church we sang "Wade in the Water," and our pastor said that even as we now find ourselves in deep, frightening waters, there's no solution in focusing on the chaos. She said confidence begins when we focus on those who have led us out of hate and madness, people who never gave up hope -- Dr. King, Nelson Mandela, Corazon Aquino. Veronica also said that when the slaves in the American South sang "Wade in the Water," out in the fields, the slave owners thought they were singing wistfully of the River Jordan, or the Red Sea. And maybe that's true, but this song, like most African-American spirituals, was also subversive, instructional. It urged people to seek freedom in the North, on the other side of the Ohio River -- and if you left dry land, and waded in the water, the bloodhounds couldn't pick up your scent.

And my sermon seemed to know exactly how to end itself, because I skipped my planned ending and told this story from the Sufi tradition instead: A holy woman sat outside the temple watching a tide of people pass, a river of need, the destitute and the wounded, the drunk and the lame and the outcast, and during her prayers, she cried out to God, "How can a loving creator see so much suffering, and not do something to help them?" And God said, "I did do something. I made you."

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