Dear Dennis,

It is a rare thing indeed when you pass a defining moment in history, even if it's only your own history. It is rarer still that when you enter such a moment that you know it. When our session determined to care for the widow in our midst, we didn't realize we were entering uncharted territory. We didn't think people would notice, that some would rage against us, and some praise us out of all proportion. We simply thought we were doing the right thing. We still think we were doing the right thing.

Your story, however, snuck up on us. You asked, via email, if you might visit for a time, to see if you might like to stay here. That wasn't the slightest bit unusual. We get asked that all the time. Next, you asked if someone could pick you up at the bus station, noting that not only did you not have a car, but that, should you decide you wanted to put down roots, there was nothing left for you back home that you needed to retrieve. Such was a first for us, but hardly anything of historic proportions.

We housed you for a few weeks, toted you here and there, gave you opportunities to work, invited you for meals, and joined you in conversation. It was during those conversations that we began to piece together something of your circumstances prior to coming here. We found that you made ends meet through disability payments from the Social Security agency, this despite you have no discernible disabilities. This, of course, troubled us. On the other hand, however, we had no authority over you. It only became an issue when you determined that you would like to join our church.

Joining Saint Peter Presbyterian Church is rather an easy thing to do. All it takes is that you affirm the Apostle's Creed, that you credibly profess your faith in the finished work of Christ alone, and, if you came from a Reformed church, that you left that church either via a move, or with the blessing of the local session. All of that could have described you, and so you were told. But you were also told that this concern of ours, that you were not working, would eventually become a matter of discipline in the church. You asked for a week to prepare an explanation of why it was appropriate for you to be living on a state social subsidy. You were given that week, and you made your argument. And it fell under the weight of Paul's simplest of injunctions, "If a man doesn't work, neither let him eat" (II Timothy 3:10). You left that meeting having committed to seeking work. Instead you began the work you have continued to do since that time, maligned and gossiped against those who only sought to help you. You determined that you could not covenant with a congregation that would hold you to your responsibility to work, and then began the bad-mouthing.

And so we crossed this Rubicon, becoming in the minds of many Saint Peter of the Paradox Church. We meet all the needs of the widow and orphans in our midst, but treat the able-bodied with cruelty and a lack of compassion. The truth is your situation wasn't a historic event; it was instead simply the other side of the same coin. We minister to those who ask God for their daily bread; we prophesy against those who ask the same of the state. We do this, however, not because we love the former and hate the latter (that is, these two people, for indeed we do love God and hate the state) but because we love both. We wanted you off the dole not because you might bring government cooties into the congregation, but for the sake of your soul, because it is a part of our job of caring for the flock. And we thought it only fair to tell you into what kind of fold you were seeking admission.

Sloth, you may remember is one of the seven deadly sins. Those sins got that name not because they so forcefully created the worst conflagrations, but because they are the fertile ground of so many other sins. It is not a coincidence that gossip and slander are sins that seem to beset you, right alongside your problem with sloth. They are all cousins. Bitterness tags along for the ride.

Dennis, when a man works, it is good for his soul. Work reminds a man of the weaknesses of others, that there might be a judgment of charity. Work, perhaps most importantly, keeps us from an idleness that gives rise to those conversations that become gossip. Work instills humility, as we remember the curse upon the ground that we earned in the garden. But it likewise flavors the very daily bread He gives us. For we are told, "Go and eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has accepted your works" (Ecclesiastes 9:7). It wearies such that it gives the gift of rest, for God commands not only that we observe the Sabbath, but tells us, "Six days shall you labor."

This is all we wanted for you, that you would be a free man. It is true that we don't know all your sorrows and your hardships. We don't, and can't pretend to know. Neither, however, do you know ours. For you don't know the sorrows we feel when sin begets sin in the ones whom we love.

Nothing has changed. Your calling is the same. We just have less opportunity to call you to it, and no opportunity to enforce it. We pray for you, not that you will stop the innuendo, not that you will stop calling us a cult, but that you will go to work, that you will exercise dominion, that you will build up rather than destroy, that you will be fruitful. The work is hard, but that's what free men delight in. May you join in the celebration not just of a job, but of a job well done. Let him who is stealing steal no more, but work that he might have something to share.

In the King's Service,

The Session of Saint Peter Presbyterian Church