Holy Ground Without Walls
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Reverend Kim Jackson’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Kim Jackson serves as a Georgia State Senator and is an Episcopal priest. After graduating from Furman University, Kim volunteered as an EMT and led her colleagues at Emory's Candler School of Theology to advocate for criminal justice reform in Georgia. Upon receiving her Master of Divinity from Candler, Kim commenced her vocation as an Episcopal priest.
Over the past 11 years of ministry, she has served as a college chaplain, a nationally renowned consultant and preacher, and a parish priest. As the Vicar of the Church of the Common Ground, Kim co-creates church with people who are experiencing homelessness in downtown Atlanta. Kim and her spouse live on a small hobby farm in Stone Mountain, with goats, ducks, honeybees, and chickens.
Well, first of all, thank you. It's such a blessing to be able to speak to what is now home for me and for my wife. We both come from the country, and so trees have been important to us since before we could walk. And so we've chosen to make home, despite living in an urban area, on an urban farm. We have 10 acres with a forest behind us, with animals that ground us. Animals that don't talk, which is really helpful when I live and work in a world with a lot of words.
And for me, homegoing has really been about being grounded and touching the soil and touching the earth as a way of re-centering after going out into the city that's a concrete jungle where it can be difficult to find life. I have this great privilege of being the church home for people who have to sleep outside, and I've also had the great privilege of being with those folks long enough, knowing them well enough, to be invited into their homes that they've made, that are under bridges, that are in tents.
And I think because of the intimacy that is church, I've become so clear and so inspired by my congregants and the way that they've located home within themselves. Particularly within the songs and the hymns and the verses that they bring with them from their varied histories, right? But I've had so many people say, “you know, no matter where I go, even if I get swept up and all my tent gets moved away because cities, you know, making us move. I still have in my heart all of these songs that, that give me strength, that give me courage, that, that give me a place of home, a sense of home.”
And a home church is, for them, I think the place of stability, right? The place that reminds them that things may get confiscated by police, but they can always come back to their home church and come back to what's in their soul that cannot ever be taken away.
We are a church without walls, and we tell people wherever two or three are gathered together, we don't tell people that. That's what the scripture tells us, right? That whether two or three of us are gathered together, God is in the midst of us and therefore this is church. And because we are saying that in the midst of human feces, and urine, and people sleeping in sleeping bags, and also amazing people who are making music because we're able to kind of declare it and people say it with us, right?
We have this saying together where we talk about how this is holy ground. People believe it, right? It becomes true. I think we are able with our words and with our body in that space to make a home church right there. Whether it's in the park or whether it's literally standing on a street where somebody has had to relieve themselves.
Collectively, we say together, this is holy ground. This is our church. And it is. And I think because it's so raw, people know that they're welcome. Right? Like if you're willing to make church in the midst of all kinds of mess, then people know they can bring their whole selves. And even if they understand themselves to be messy, they know it's a space that's welcoming.
And I think that's a part of what makes it home. And I think it does matter that Common Ground is run by queer black women who know what it's like to not be welcome in a church and know what is necessary to make someone feel welcomed in a church. When I was called to ministry, I was a very young person and I was really clear that my calling to ministry was going to have to exist outside of the four walls of a church.
I was really deeply inspired by my pastors who had been working in the public square. I had a pastor who was a school board member. I had, you know, a pastor who was this huge community organizer, and the very first march that I ever went to was with Jesse Jackson and all these pastors, right?
And so I knew that if I was going to embody this call, that it would be in the streets. And I knew that from, from the moment that God breathed that call into my ear, and I said yes, that my work would be to sanctify streets. And that my work would be to find community and to bring love and to receive love from people who've been often ostracized and literally stepped over.
Amen.
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