Remarks of Gary Charles, Pastor of Central Presbyterian Church

Georgia House of Representatives - January 13, 2009

To Speaker Richardson, all elected representatives, and Representative Kathy Ashe who invited me today, welcome back or if you are here on a first term, welcome to the neighborhood. 

My name is Gary Charles and I am a pastor at Central Presbyterian Church, the church immediately across the street from the Capitol. Central has long embraced its responsibility to be a good neighbor.  During this legislative session, we hope to be a good neighbor to you. Please feel welcome to walk across the street and pray in our Rand Chapel. During the season of Lent, please worship with us at 12:15 p.m. every Wednesday and at 12:15 p.m. every day during Holy Week. Again, welcome or welcome back to the neighborhood.

Some of my favorite stories from the Old Testament and the New involve neighbors and our call to provide hospitality to neighbors, even for, and maybe especially for those neighbors who are strangers and strange to us. In Genesis, Abraham and Sarah extend hospitality to three total strangers, feeding them and giving them drink, only to discover that they were entertaining envoys of God. In Luke, Jesus tells the story about a neighbor whom all the important people neglect because they are too busy getting to meetings with other important people. It is only a despised alien in their midst, a Samaritan, who spends the necessary time and hard-earned money to be a true neighbor.

As you begin your deliberations, I invite you to remember the story of Abraham and Sarah and the parable that we Christians know as “the Good Samaritan.” I invite you to be sensitive to the well-positioned neighbors of Georgia, but especially sensitive to those neighbors who are in the most tenuous positions. I invite you to come across the street and spend a night in the Central Night Shelter for homeless men, a shelter at our church and the Shrine next door that provides hospitality for 90 men each night and if space and resources allowed, we could fill the shelter 5 times over. Come over Monday through Friday and assist one of 150 guests a day in our Outreach and Advocacy Center as they receive computer training to enhance their vocational skills. Come spend a Saturday driving our van to the Milledgeville and Oglethorpe prisons and consider ways to help reclaim the lives of these men and women and near children are also our neighbors. Walk just down the street to Hope House where our neighbors with drug addiction are recovering and are moving from street and shelter into their own home and work. Have conversations in each of these places with hard working citizens who cannot maintain a home because they cannot earn a living wage.

Over the past few weeks, when I have asked some of you what the major issues of this session will be, I have received a common bi-partisan response:  “the budget.” I will pray for you to judge wisely in this time when almost every decision you make will have a profound impact on countless neighbors from downtown Atlanta to Tifton to St. Simons. Your work will be exceptionally hard this session, so please know that there will be faithful believers just across the street praying that you will be open to the wisdom of God and compassionate toward the needs of our neighbors.

In the weeks ahead, I will pray that “the budget” will not be a mantra to hide behind to neglect our most needy neighbors, but will be a clarion call to provide for the ones whose lives are most vulnerable in a devastating economy, and are ones for whom the Judeo-Christian and Muslim faiths call us to provide special care. In the weeks ahead, I will give thanks to God for your sacred calling and ask that God give you ample wisdom to listen first to God’s voice and the courageous vision to see and provide for all our neighbors.