St. John the Evangelist Church is a large Catholic parish one block away from the former Good Shepherd buildings. Msgr. Meagher, the priest at St. John’s, graciously offered to host Good Shepherd’s Thursday night soup kitchen,the Shepherd’s Bowl, temporarily while we are transitioning from one location to another. Last week, having already vacated the buildings, we hung signs on the former Good Shepherd property directing Shepherd’s Bowl people to St. John’s where they would find a good warm meal and free loaves of bread.

This Tuesday our attorney handed the keys to our former building over to the Diocese of Central New York. I considered taking the signs down, but thought better of it. Surely, I thought, the Diocese of Central New York would not want to make it difficult for poor, hungry people to find a soup kitchen.

Silly me.

There were only about 10 people at the Shepherd’s Bowl last night. We could not understand why there was such a steep drop-off until we passed our old building. The walks had been shoveled, the locks changed and all the signs had been taken down.

It has been very cold here in Binghamton this year…colder than it has been in at least six winters. It’s difficult to imagine hardened criminal thug gangsters tearing down soup kitchen signs, its beyond my capacity to understand why a purportedly Christian organization would do so.

The mission slogan of the Diocese of Central New York is “To be the passionate presence of Christ for one another and the world we are called to serve.” Somehow I just can’t imagine Jesus doing that.