I went to seminary in New Haven, Connecticut. As one of my friends puts it, that city is neither new, nor a haven.

The largest landowner in New Haven, by far, is Yale University. This means that the largest landowner in the city is exempt from paying property taxes, so the city budget is never sufficient to pay for all the public services that are needed.

Over the years, the university has donated money and has helped with city renewal – but it’s not nearly enough to make up for the poverty of New Haven.

Due to zoning restrictions over the years, New Haven has become a very divided city, with several ghetto areas – neighborhoods that are physically separated and isolated from the surrounding areas.

For example…

I lived on a street a couple of blocks from the Divinity School. At the end of my block there was a vacant ammunition factory that took up an entire block – the name of one of the adjacent streets was Winchester Avenue, but Winchester Arms had closed that factory years before.

Kiddie-corner to the deserted ammo factory was a large community garden. You’d think that a community garden would be a nice addition to a neighborhood, but in this case it served to divide the nicer student housing from the depressed neighborhood nearby.

At the end of the community garden was the city’s largest cemetery, completely walled in. Once you got around the cemetery, you were on university property, which created its own barriers from the adjacent neighborhood.

You get the picture. Along one whole side of this neighborhood was a wide divided highway, completely isolating the area from the rest of the city.

A no-man’s-land had been established, to keep the poor neighborhood totally separate from the rest of the city.

There are several neighborhoods in New Haven with borders like this.

One of the isolated poor neighborhoods is called The Hill.

That’s where I went to church while I was in seminary.

Resurrection Lutheran Church is located in the Upper Hill neighborhood of New Haven. 

The pastor there, Ruth Drews, was a graduate of Luther College and Yale Divinity School, just like me. I figured I should check out her church when I got into town, and once I did, I loved it, and Ruth and I got along well and worked together over the next few years. She gave me a church key, so I must have been an important member of the community!

A few years ago, the city decided to take control of three blocks of property right behind Resurrection Lutheran Church.

This was entirely residential property, and the city claimed eminent domain over it so that they could put an elementary school in that location.

Now, at first glance, putting a new school in a depressed neighborhood seems like a good way to renew the area.

But building this school required demolishing over 100 homes, most of which were worth very little money, but many of which had already been paid off by their residents.

So, these folks had lived there a long time, and they couldn’t really afford to move anywhere else.

Even if the city were to give them a fair price for their homes, they wouldn’t be able to buy anything in any other neighborhood. New Haven has a shortage of affordable housing.

So, these people might have benefited from a neighborhood renewal plan, but they had nothing to gain by selling their homes to the city and trying to find somewhere else to live.

Additionally, these three blocks were at the edge of the neighborhood.

Yale-New Haven Hospital was close by, which in itself served to create a barrier between The Hill and the rest of the city. Building a school in this particular part of the neighborhood would lengthen that barrier, and increase the no-man’s-land that isolated The Hill.

Now, if there was overcrowding in the schools that affected the children in The Hill neighborhood, you might think that replacing homes with a new school was a good idea. But the new building was going to be a magnet school.

For the most part, students would be bused in from elsewhere.

This wouldn’t be a neighborhood school.

Why should a city be allowed to demolish the homes of 90-plus families in order to build a school that wouldn’t even serve the children of the immediate neighborhood?

Pastor Ruth Drews didn’t think it should be allowed.

She saw this as an unhealthy way to deal with poor people in a poor part of town. She didn’t want to see the church’s neighbors be forcibly relocated. So she, along with several other community organizers, contacted the residents and listened to their concerns, and eventually helped to facilitate the filing of a lawsuit against the City of New Haven and the School Board.

Pastor Ruth has a passion for social justice.

This was not the first time that she got involved in a community cause because she felt compelled to do so based on her faith.

Ruth firmly believes that God is with poor people, that God turns our power structures upside down, and that Christianity isn’t just a creed, it’s a way of life.
Ruth was a role model for me when I was in seminary.

I didn’t want to be her when I grew up.

But wow – what I wouldn’t give for a double portion of her spirit!

Now, if you want to know all the details about what happened to those houses in The Hill neighborhood, there’s actually a TV special that was released last week, and it chronicles the whole saga. It has been shown on PBS, but not on our local channel, as far as I can tell. You can watch the entire thing online, though. It’s called The Hill, and is available on worldchannel.org.

I will tell you this much more about the story – it didn’t have the outcome that Ruth or I would have wanted, unfortunately.

One of the criticisms made of Ruth and the other activists in the video is that they don’t live in The Hill, so how can they speak for the people there?

What they don’t mention is that Ruth and her husband and son used to live there. Ruth believed strongly in the importance of living among the people she served, when she first started at Resurrection Lutheran.

And then her young son got lead poisoning.

And she couldn’t get all the lead paint removed from the house.

And then she and her husband couldn’t sell the house, either.

Finally, after a lot of drama that I don’t think I have permission to share publically, they were able to leave the neighborhood and move to a better part of town, but with a lot more baggage than they ever would have expected.

         Ruth knows intimately what life is like for people in The Hill.

That is what makes her such an effective advocate.

Man, I wish I could be like her some days.

Where does she get her energy – her spirit?

I’m telling you this story partly because it’s an inspiring account of a Christian living out her faith in tangible ways – but I’m also sharing it because I hope it reminds you of people who you have looked up to in your lives.

         Who has been your role model?

         Who has mentored you in your professional or personal life?

For Elisha, it was Elijah.

I know, it’s confusing because they have names that sound similar.

These guys were two of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament. And even though Elisha did go on to perform miracles even more impressive than those of his mentor, the one whose impact we remember is the teacher, Elijah.

Elijah is the one who was taken up into heaven, and who provided a comparison for John the Baptist, and who showed up on the mountaintop with Jesus.

Elisha did inherit a double portion of his role model’s spirit – God did grant him that – and he did pick up Elijah’s mantle and carry on his ministry. Heck, we saw both Elijah and Elisha part the waters in today’s story, kinda like Moses!

But the one who really made a difference was the one who was the original inspiration, the one who encouraged the young prophet to begin with. Elisha would have done nothing if not for the inspiration and training of Elijah.

So who are your role models? Who are your mentors?

Most of us probably have more than one.

For the most part, we don’t want to be exactly like someone else – we may admire them professionally but be really glad that we don’t have their personal life, or vice versa.

Still, many of us would have done nothing at all in life, or at least nothing in one of the areas of our life, if it hadn’t been for the influence of our mentors.

We may end up going on to do bigger and better things than they did – like Elisha compared to Elijah – but we owe our beginnings to them.

So who has passed on their mantle to you?

Who would you like to emulate?

Who has shown you how to live a faithful life, using your God-given gifts and abilities?

For the disciples, it was Jesus.

They wanted to be like him.

And they did go on to preach and perform miracles in his name. The ministry of the disciples actually lasted much longer than Jesus’ own public ministry did. He was executed after just three years, but some of the disciples went on for decades – and their students and their followers have continued teaching and praying and sharing the ministry of Jesus to this day.

So the disciples did great things.

But that was only because of their role model, Jesus.

Jesus made the disciples excited about going out into the world and risking their lives for the sake of the Gospel.

         Elijah inspired Elisha to great prophetic ministry.

Ruth’s example makes me excited to be a pastor and to find ways to tangibly live out my faith and my calling in everyday life.

I hope that you have someone like that in your life – someone who challenges you, and who also inspires you.

Having mentors and role models is critical to our ability to live out our potential in life.

I also hope that you are able to me a mentor and a role model to someone else.

Whether it’s your children or grandchildren, a neighbor, a colleague, or someone you know only superficially, you never can tell when you will be making a difference in someone’s life and influencing the person he or she may become.

So let’s pray together now for the mentors that each of us have known, and that each of us may be.

God of Elijah and Elisha, thank you for the example of a great relationship of mentoring among your people. Help us to follow the examples of leaders in the faith. Help us to be that example for others. We pray for your Spirit to move among us, to encourage us to be your presence in this world. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

 

Transfiguration B, 2/8/15
2 Kings 2:1-15, Mark 9:2-9