#3: Where the Gospel Meets Homelessness

#3: Where the Gospel Meets Homelessness

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: I’m standing in the welcome area of where Michael attends church. This is the spot where Michael placed a wooden box. Small. Open at the top. But for Michael, what looked like a simple wooden box turned out to be a big mystery. Michael is an artist at his church. And when he did a gallery exhibit on homelessness, he wanted to have a way for the folks in his church to participate. And that’s what the wooden box was for.

MICHAEL WINTERS: We just put a simple sign on the front. The sign said, ‘socks for homeless.’

JESSE EUBANKS: People could donate new socks by putting them in the box when they came on Sunday. And the idea was, at the end of the month, Michael would take all the socks to the homeless shelter. Except he never got the chance. Something weird kept happening.

MICHAEL WINTERS: Like on a Sunday, I would look in the box and, oh, we’ve had five bags of socks put in the box. And then I would look later, and there would be zero socks in there.

JESSE EUBANKS: There were socks, and then somehow there weren’t. The socks were just disappearing. At first Michael thought maybe one of the pastors was emptying the box and storing the socks somewhere for Michael. But they all said, no they weren’t. Then Michael thought, is someone stealing the socks? Maybe trying to play a practical joke on him? He asked around, and no one knew where the socks were. As he stood staring at the box, trying to solve this mystery:

MICHAEL WINTERS: It clicked all of a sudden. Oh, it’s socks for the homeless.

JESSE EUBANKS: That sign he had put on the box? The one that said “socks for homeless”? Most of us would take that to mean a place to donate socks for the homeless. But if you’re homeless, that phrase means something else entirely.

MICHAEL WINTERS: The homeless people are taking the socks.

JESSE EUBANKS: And in hindsight it seemed obvious. Michael’s church has people who are homeless who are also attending on a regular basis. But the reason it took Michael so long to realize all this? Is because we tend to think of the homeless as removed from us. They’re over there. Not in close proximity.

MICHAEL WINTERS: We had the people who had, and we had the people who had not all in the same space, and it was just a matter of making that connection.

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Every episode we hear stories of social justice and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode – where the gospel meets homelessness. I’m sitting here with our producer, Rachel. And this topic is actually very dear to both of us because the first time Rachel and I ever met, we were actually working together at Louisville Rescue Mission.

RACHEL SZABO: Louisville Rescue Mission is a homeless shelter in downtown Louisville. Jesse, you and I worked there together for a couple years.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and nothing says bonding like doing drug screenings and urine tests. And our story today actually comes from Louisville Rescue Mission. It’s the story of one young man’s attempt to no longer see the homeless as “those people over there,” and how that attempt lead him to the most unusual friendship he would ever have. Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.  

You’re driving in your car. Maybe on your way to work or school or your kid’s soccer practice. You come to a stoplight, and all of a sudden, you start to feel really uncomfortable. That’s because standing about three feet outside your window is a man holding a cardboard sign that says, “Homeless. No money. Hungry.”

RACHEL SZABO: For a lot of us, that’s our experience with homelessness. The guy flying the sign on the street corner and asking us for money. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And now your peaceful commute has become a moral showdown inside of you.. Should you give this man money? How do you know what he’ll use it for? Would Jesus give him money? Maybe if you just stare straight ahead it’ll look like you didn’t even notice him. Should you offer to buy him some food instead? But you’re already on a tight schedule. Besides, shouldn’t he be out looking for a job instead of standing at this stoplight? And why has this suddenly become the longest stoplight in the world?

RACHEL SZABO: On any given night in the United States, more than 560,000 people are homeless.  

JESSE EUBANKS: So, what do you do? How do you decide the moral showdown going on inside of you, and what it means for the guy standing outside your car?

RACHEL SZABO: It’s the age-old question: What would Jesus do? And here’s the reality. On the one hand, Jesus didn’t perform miracles for everybody.  In his hometown he didn’t do many works because they weren’t receptive to him.

JESSE EUBANKS: But on the other hand, sometimes he gives freely to whomever, like in Luke 17. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and he’s met by this group of ten people. And these ten people were all lepers. And all ten of them ask for Jesus’ mercy and healing. 

RACHEL SZABO: Now, if we were in this situation, we would probably start running through our imaginary checklist of how we’re going to decide who we should heal. Things like, who’s been sick the longest? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Who’s been trying the hardest and been most proactive to get well? 

RACHEL SZABO: Who’s been doing all the necessary requirements for leprosy in the Mosaic law?

JESSE EUBANKS: And typically, those are the people we help. The ones who show some sign that they deserve it. 

RACHEL SZABO: Or at the very least, show some interest.

JESSE EUBANKS: But the reality is that the guy we see holding the cardboard sign on the street corner? We don’t know his story. And that makes it really hard to decide what to do when you’re on the other side of the glass. And for Caleb Butler, who was a recent high school graduate in Southern Illinois? He wanted to do something about that. 

CALEB BUTLER: We’re a white, middle class family, and so the expectation was to go to college.

JESSE EUBANKS: Caleb had applied to a few private colleges, but they were too expensive. His parents wanted him to go to junior college, but what Caleb really wanted to do was this program called Love Thy Neighborhood. Now remember, Love Thy Neighborhood, we offer social justice internships supported by christian community to young adults. And specifically, Caleb wanted to move into a shelter in downtown Louisville and serve the homeless.  

CALEB BUTLER: Yeah, so I applied and decided to go do it after high school. 

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m guessing that was not in his parents’ five-year plan for him.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah so, you’ve gotta imagine that conversation. Caleb comes to his parents and says, I know you guys had a great dream for my life, I was going to go off to college and get a good job, but instead I think I’ll move into a homeless shelter.

CALEB BUTLER: And so, when your kid comes to you and says, I don’t want to go to school right now, that is a little strange or disconcerting.

JESSE EUBANKS: And that’s not uncommon. Many young people choose to do missions without the support of their parents.  So, the normal reaction would be for Caleb’s parents to protest and redirect him. But they were actually kind of ok with it.

CALEB BUTLER: Yeah, but my parents are super supportive in general.

JESSE EUBANKS: So while all his friends would be moving into dorm rooms and furthering their education, Caleb would be moving into a homeless shelter. Now, in the city of Louisville over 6,700 people were homeless last year. And homelessness, it’s really hard to count. You never really know exactly who’s homeless and who’s not. How do you count people that are sleeping on friends’ sofas or having to camp out in the woods? So this is actually just an estimate. And while the homeless population here doesn’t compare to big cities like Los Angeles or New York, among the homeless community Louisville is known as a sort of mecca. There are just so many services available for people who are homeless here in this city. 

RACHEL SZABO: At least 29 organizations specifically help the homeless with anything from food to clothing to shelter to case management. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And one of those 29 organizations, the place actually where Caleb would be spending the next year of his life, is a place called Louisville Rescue Mission. Founded in 1881, Louisville Rescue Mission is actually the fourth oldest gospel rescue mission in the country. It is childhood friends with the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument. When Caleb arrived at the mission, he wasn’t sure if he was going to come across men who were drunk or whether he was going to find a bunch of hardened faces. But instead, he found this woman.  

MISS JOANIE: Go to that window and check mail, hun. No, I’ll check you in, babe.

JESSE EUBANKS: This is Miss Joanie. A few years before I had started to work at the shelter, Miss Joanie had actually started to work there. She’s a lady in her sixties who is in charge of the Louisville Rescue Mission’s day shelter. 

MISS JOANIE: How’re you today? Where you been?

DAY SHELTER GUEST: I’ve been living in a tent. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Now, for someone experiencing their first time going to a homeless shelter, it can feel very scary. It conjures up ideas like maximum security prison or men who have knife fights on a regular basis. But when you come into Louisville Rescue Mission and see Miss Joanie? She kinda makes you feel a bit more at home.

DAY SHELTER GUEST: Now, I haven’t done this before. I can just go take a shower?

MISS JOANIE: Yeah, go over here and get you a towel and soap and whatever you need, okay?

DAY SHELTER GUEST: Thank you.

MISS JOANIE: Thank you, hun. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And one of the remarkable things that I always noticed when I worked at the shelter was that Miss Joanie knows just about every single person by name who comes in the door.

MISS JOANIE: Oh, Mr. Billy. He has really been sick.

JESSE EUBANKS: In fact, for some of the homeless guests coming in, Miss Joanie is like family to them.

MISS JOANIE: I have guys that’s moved away from here, and it’s not anything for them to call me around Mother’s Day to wish me Happy Mother’s Day.

JESSE EUBANKS: This is a woman that knows hundreds of people who are homeless. And this is exactly what Caleb wanted. He wanted to actually know people who were homeless and be part of their lives.

CALEB BUTLER: Most of my life, people have liked getting to know me and liked talking to me, and I don’t know why these grown men wouldn’t want to sit down and talk to me about their life.

JESSE EUBANKS: So, in addition to the day shelter, the Rescue Mission also runs a residential recovery program for men. And since Caleb was also living at the mission, he would have a lot of opportunities to spend time with the men living in the recovery program. It was Caleb’s dream, spending a year living with and loving the homeless. But what Caleb wasn’t counting on was a man named Joey Wilson. 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: So Joey comes in, and honestly I thought, there is no way. Joey does not have time for this kid. That man is gonna tear this little kid up.

JESSE EUBANKS: Tensions rise. A fight breaks out. And… football season. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

RACHEL SZABO: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Rachel Szabo.

JESSE EUBANKS: And I’m Jesse Eubanks. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets homelessness. We’re telling a story from when Rachel and I worked at Louisville Rescue Mission. It’s a story about a guy named Caleb. He’s spending a year serving at Louisville Rescue Mission. And one of the homeless men living at the mission is a man named Joey Wilson.

Now, we weren’t able to speak with Joey personally, for reasons that will become clear later in the story. But we were able to speak with a man named Ben Birkholz. Ben is a pastor; he is a board member for Love Thy Neighborhood. And Ben and I actually worked together at Louisville Rescue Mission during the time Joey lived there. So I asked Ben to share what he remembered about Joey.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: Joey had come from a very difficult family life, and lived most of his life fending for himself. Hard drugs, petty crime, and then culminated in armed robbery that had him in the penitentiary for a number of years

JESSE EUBANKS: After serving his time, Joey is given two options: get into a rehab program, or go back to prison. So Joey has his parole officer contact all the rehab programs in the area, and they’re all full. Except one. Louisville Rescue Mission. And while Joey wasn’t thrilled about the fact that everyone there was “religious,” in his words, he was even less thrilled about going back to prison. So he moves into the mission. But he makes it very clear he does not want to be there.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: He wasn’t gonna play our games. He wasn’t gonna take any flack from anybody. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And he made it very clear that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Joey was truly difficult. You knew that if you were going to have a conversation with him that he was going to argue with you. You knew that if you looked at him the wrong way, and he was in the wrong mood at the time, that you were gonna catch lip from him. He was just a difficult, difficult man to get along with. 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: And really wasn’t sure what he thought about this program and if it could help him.

JESSE EUBANKS: One of the things we do at Love Thy Neighborhood is we challenge folks to come to grips with their relational capacity. You can’t be best friends with fifty people. Choose a handful of folks and go deep with them. And Caleb came to me and he said, I’ve chosen Joey. I want to go deep with Joey. And I just thought to myself, you have the worst decision-making skills.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: Just a kid. Innocent, unassuming-looking. And Caleb says, alright, I’m gonna lean into this friendship. And it was fun as staff just to be able to step back and watch this.

JESSE EUBANKS: It was almost comical to watch Caleb trying to connect with Joey the hardened criminal. He would go and sit down next to Joey at dinner, and suddenly Joey would just get up and leave. Or Joey would be outside smoking a cigarette, and Caleb would go sit next to him, and Joey would put the cigarette out and say, I’ve been meaning to quit smoking. It was very obvious: Joey did not want this young kid coming around.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: You realize that there’s just layers and layers of difficulty and need, and these are folks that have lived most of their life under judgment of others and broken relationships. Yeah, loving on people a little bit isn’t gonna change their lives tomorrow. 

RACHEL SZABO: Which is why Louisville Rescue Mission puts so much emphasis on their recovery program. They want these men to have a stable living environment, yes. But wellness isn’t just about having a place to live. It’s about spiritual, mental and emotional stability as well. It’s all a package deal. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And not only was Joey difficult relationally. He also was starting to have some serious medical issues as a result of his years of drug and alcohol abuse.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: He had some significant diseases from the drug abuse.

JESSE EUBANKS: And the staff were concerned for Joey’s spiritual state as well. Caleb would try to talk to him about God or Jesus, and Joey just wasn’t interested. In fact he wasn’t really interested in talking about anything. 

RACHEL SZABO: Joey’s got to have had enough. Caleb is not very bright.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, he’s just this young, naive kid. He means well, but he’s just not getting it.

RACHEL SZABO: Right, but here’s the thing. Joey is a convicted felon charged with armed robbery. At some point, Joey’s got to get fed up with this little kid.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you could totally feel the tensions rising on a daily basis, until finally one day it all just exploded. So one day there’s an emergency call over the staff radio. The person making the call says there’s a heated argument in the day shelter downstairs, and it sounds like it might turn into a fight at any moment. So the entire staff rush downstairs. We walk into the room, and we see two guys, and who is it? It is Joey and Caleb. They’re in each other’s faces, loud and aggressive. But then we notice there’s a slight grin on each of their mouths. And what are they arguing about?

BEN BIRKHOLZ: Miami Dolphins.

CALEB BUTLER: He was a Miami Dolphins football fan, and I grew up watching sports all the time, playing sports all the time. So, if somebody wants to talk sports I can do that really easily.

JESSE EUBANKS: But they weren’t just talking about sports. They were trash talking each other about sports. Which team was better. Who should’ve won that game last night. 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: At the time that was kinda Joey’s love language. If you could trash talk with Joey and hold your own he had some respect for you.

JESSE EUBANKS: That trash talking argument became a turning point for Caleb and Joey. We started to see Joey sit next to Caleb more often at dinner. We started to see the two of them sit outside and talk football.

CALEB BUTLER: Talk about the Dolphins and how they’re doing, and what he’s seen on tv. Maybe we’d talk about Dolphins from previous years.

JESSE EUBANKS: And slowly, their conversations became about more than just football.

CALEB BUTLER: He opened up and started talking to me more about his personal life and his relationship with his brother growing up and with his parents and what that was like.

JESSE EUBANKS: No one in his family would talk to him anymore. The only person that would speak to him was his brother, and his brother was in prison. But no one else was willing to speak with him.

CALEB BUTLER: When he started talking about that, I knew that there was more than just some sort of surface relationship about sports. That he was actually willing to trust that I was someone that was going to listen to him. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Now, they seemed to spend all their time together. It was rare to see one without the other. The homeless convict and the high school grad.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: What an awkward couple. Joey was talking about how good of a guy Caleb was, and how others-oriented he was, and how kind he was and how committed to Joey he was.

JESSE EUBANKS: They would eat meals together. They would spend the afternoon at the park together. Once Joey wanted to visit his younger brother in prison, and Caleb offered to drive him there. 

And while their friendship was growing, there was this one thing Joey couldn’t figure out.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: So, Caleb is loving Joey. Joey is trying to figure out why.

JESSE EUBANKS: Why was Caleb at this homeless shelter spending a year of his life around guys like Joey instead of getting a college degree, or chasing girls, or going to parties or seeing the world?

BEN BIRKHOLZ: Yes, I know he loves Jesus, and that’s great, but why in the world would a young kid love a guy like me?

JESSE EUBANKS: One day, I’m in my office. Joey comes in, and he plops down in the chair. And he says, “I just don’t understand why this kid is spending his life here with guys like me. It doesn’t make any sense. The only way this could ever make sense is if this Jesus that Caleb keeps talking about is real. And if this Jesus is real, then I want this Jesus too.” Y’know, most of the time when someone believes in Christ, the change in their life isn’t immediately noticeable. It takes time for that fruit to grow. That’s why the scriptures call it the fruit of the Spirit and not the chia pet of the Spirit. But every now and then you find someone who meets Christ, and the change is immediately like night and day. And Joey was one of those people.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: This guy who has lived his life getting what he can, admittedly conning people, manipulating people, a getter, that now has transitioned into pursuing the Lord and now wanted to be a giver.

JESSE EUBANKS: But not giving in the material sense. Joey didn’t have anything. He was a homeless guy living in a shelter. But he learned he could give of himself. There was one morning when some of the ladies from Love Thy Neighborhood were serving breakfast in the day shelter downstairs. One of the homeless guests got really mad and started yelling and cussing at these ladies. They went upstairs, they were upset and crying. And the old Joey, first of all probably wouldn’t have even been there because he would have been isolated in his room. And if he had been there, he probably would have just beat the snot out of this guy because he was annoyed. But that wasn’t who Joey was anymore. He came in quietly and gave the Love Thy Neighborhood ladies a hug and told them it was going to be alright. And when I saw this, I wasn’t looking at a homeless convict and a twenty-something middle class girl. I was looking at how a grandfather would love and care for a granddaughter. 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: He was always talking about the fact that he couldn’t believe, of all the people out there, that the Lord had intervened in his life at this stage.

JESSE EUBANKS: Even some of the other residents who used to avoid Joey at all costs were now seeking him out for advice. He had almost become this sort of respected elder in his community of people. Which for Joey was huge because he still didn’t talk to anyone in his family other than his brother. They refused. Because they knew the old Joey. But like the book of Psalms says, “The Lord places the lonely in families.” Joey’s family had become the people at Louisville Rescue Mission.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: He underestimated what he meant to others.

JESSE EUBANKS: And Joey ended up impacting more people than just those at the mission. So, Caleb’s year serving at the mission comes to a close, and he decides to go to college. He still keeps in touch with Joey, writing him letters every week and talking with him on the phone. And one day Caleb calls Joey to tell him about a leadership opportunity he’s been offered. 

CALEB BUTLER: I had just been asked to join on as a student leader for campus ministry at the school I was attending. So, I let Joey know, hey they asked me to become a student leader, and before I could even tell him the details of what it was about he was like, so happy and like, they got the right one. He was super proud and all of that.

JESSE EUBANKS: Caleb didn’t know it at the time, but this proud moment was actually going to be the last conversation he would ever have with Joey. Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome back to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s story is where the gospel meets homelessness. We’re telling a story from when Jesse and I worked at Louisville Rescue Mission. It’s the story of Joey and Caleb. Without knowing it, Caleb has just had his last conversation with his friend Joey.

JESSE EUBANKS: So, all throughout Caleb’s year serving at Louisville Rescue Mission, Joey’s health was not in great shape. All the years he had spent doing drugs and alcohol were taking their toll on his body.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: He was in and out of the hospital a lot. It was kidneys were shutting down, liver was tore up. The doctors were giving him medication. He began to have complications with the medication, wandering around the mission aimlessly, losing track of where he was and what he was doing. 

JESSE EUBANKS: After Caleb went to college, Joey continued to be in and out of the hospital regularly. It was sort of normal for him. And Ben and the other staff at the mission would go visit him.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: I would pop in once a day just to check in on him, see how he’s doing. As I continued to pop in once a day, it did, it became very clear that he wasn’t coming out. He’s fighting for every breath. He was weary, he was worn. I mean, he really did, he looked like he was at death’s door. And in talking to the nurses at that point, they were saying things don’t look good, and we’re just trying to keep him comfortable. As Joey was digressing in the hospital, struggling with the fact that he had kind of wasted his life, and he had wished and hoped the Lord would have given him more time to be able to live a life for the glory of God, essentially. So, there was that discouragement and that regret, but then on the heels of that, always saying, I can’t believe the Lord has done this in my life. I can’t believe he’s changed my life.

JESSE EUBANKS: Ben continued to go to the hospital and visit Joey on a daily basis. On one of these occasions I actually went with Ben. I remember going to see Joey, and by this time he was so frail. It took a lot of energy for him to even raise his arm or to speak. Even with his weakness and lack of breath, he took the time to tell us, “The Lord has been so good to me.” And do you know the other thing he shared with us? How great this 18 year old kid, Caleb, was. “Caleb’s such a good friend. I’m so thankful for him.” 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: And then he slipped into a state where he was semi-conscious. So we didn’t know if he was processing what we were saying. It was maybe a week where he was semi-conscious into unconsciousness.

It was the next morning that I checked on him, and the nurses were saying, “We’re not sure he’s gonna make it through the day.” So at that point I said, “There’s something going on at the office. I gotta get back to the office. I’ll be back here within an hour or two. If anything happens let me know.” So I go back to the office, and it was within an hour or two that the nurse did call and said he had passed.

JESSE EUBANKS: Ben and myself and the other staff had been keeping in contact with Caleb during these last days of Joey’s life. It was this same morning that Caleb had packed up his car and started the four hour drive back to Louisville to see his friend one more time. But after only an hour on the road, he received the phone call, letting him know Joey was gone. After Ben hung up the phone, he went back to the hospital. 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: The door was shut. A couple nurses were standing around. I remember looking at one of the nurses, and she was just crying. She was one of the nurses that had been in and out over the weeks with Joey. And Joey was just kind to the nurses and giving to the nurses. So this nurse had developed this little relationship with Joey in that short time. And I said, “Are you alright?” And she said, “Yeah, it just, it can be hard.” The theme toward the end of his life was to give and kind-hearted and looking out for the nurses, and they appreciated him. Yeah, you could see that it was difficult for them to see him go.

JESSE EUBANKS: So, in Louisville, the way that it works when someone with no money and no family dies is that the city of Louisville takes their body out to a plot of land right at the edge of the city limits. It’s a field; there’s nothing particularly special about this field, but it’s a graveyard. In this graveyard there’ll be a man waiting there who’s the coroner, and most of the time it’s just him and the body. The coroner puts the body in the ground, and that’s it. There’s no family, there’s no friends, there’s no loved ones. But on this occasion, there was this scene unfolding that the coroner found baffling. 

BEN BIRKHOLZ: I remember pulling up, kind of a dirt sort of area. It was raining and muddy. Out in the plot of land, this field, you have a white tent that’s covering the casket.

JESSE EUBANKS: All the people from Louisville Rescue Mission who had known Joey, we huddled together under this white tent and held a funeral service for him. We sang songs. We talked about Joey’s life. We talked trash about the Miami Dolphins. We talked about how thankful we were to have witnessed God’s saving power in the life of this homeless convict. And this whole time, the coroner is also standing there under the white tent.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: So, he’s watching this whole thing, and as I’m talking I have my eye on him thinking, I wonder how this guy’s responding to this sort of thing.

JESSE EUBANKS: Once the funeral service was finished and everyone was piling back in their cars, the coroner pulls Ben aside.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: And he said something to the effect that, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ So, here’s a guy who, yeah, caskets show up and bodies show up, and you put them in the ground, and nobody shows up. And yet this guy is observing us love and care for somebody who was a convict and in and out of homelessness and a broken life. And he’s puzzled at, how did all of this happen?

JESSE EUBANKS: And Ben tells him, in the kingdom of God, unusual relationships are normal. Relationships like Caleb, the naive 18 year old, and Joey, the homeless convict, they happen all the time. And while we all need professionals, and we need experts, and we need theologians and those are all good things, in the end, those weren’t the things that made the biggest difference in Joey’s life. What made the biggest difference was an 18 year old kid who just decided to care about him, and show up, and then keep showing up, no questions asked. Today Caleb is a PhD student. He’s moved several times and had many experiences since being at the rescue mission. But one thing he always keeps with him is a reminder of Joey.

CALEB BUTLER: I have this corkboard in my room that I typically just post receipts from movies I’ve seen or events I’ve attended,  just to remind me of things I’ve done in the last few years. But one corner of the corkboard, I have this card that he wrote to me a few months before he passed away. I think it was a Christmas card, and it literally just says, “Dear Caleb, thank you for allowing God to use you in changing my life to the best it’s ever been.” So, I keep that in my room on my wall. I look at that pretty often and think about him.

RACHEL SZABO: So, I’m thinking about that story from Luke’s gospel, where ten lepers asked Jesus to heal them. Jesus didn’t go through some criteria checklist. He went ahead and healed all of them. He gave freely to all ten. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and only one, one, received Jesus with a changed heart, where he wanted an ongoing relationship with Jesus. That’s one in ten. At Louisville Rescue Mission, people come in, they come out. A lot of folks get better, only to relapse later. But the work the mission does? They do it for the Joeys of the world. That ten percent who are going to respond to Jesus’ gift.

BEN BIRKHOLZ: We do, we underestimate the Gospel and the Lord’s work, and I think Joey’s a reminder that we ought to keep at it. We ought to keep moving forward in these things.

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JESSE EUBANKS: There’s a lot of different ideas out there about how we should respond when homeless people ask us for money. The way that God answered that question for Caleb was radical. And what we can expect is this: God’s answer to that question for us is probably going to be radical too. If you would like to learn more about Louisville Rescue Mission, you can visit their website at louisvillerescuemission.org. If you would like to gain more resources on homelessness or listen to past episodes of this podcast, you can visit our website at lovethyneighborhood.org/podcast.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thank you to our interviewees for this episode — Caleb Butler, Ben Birkholz, Joanie Williams, and Michael Winters.

RACHEL SZABO: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Rachel Szabo, who is also our producer, technical director and editor. Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Podington Bear, Blue Dot Sessions, and Wooden Axle.

RACHEL SZABO: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. Grow in your faith and life skills.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’