Find Somebody to Love: Mission in Joplin, MO

Brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short… For the present form of this world is passing away.  ( 1 Corinthians: 29a, 31b)

Late in the afternoon on Sunday, May 22, 2011 an EF5 tornado swooped down upon the city of Joplin, Missouri, changing lives in that community forever.  Seven thousand homes and businesses were destroyed and countless others were severely damaged.  The death toll would eventually reach 160, with nearly 1,000 seriously injured.  The image that comes to mind as I think about that day is the closing scene from the Coen bothers’ film, A Serious Man, in which a giant tornado descends upon a stunned group of high school students to the pounding beat of Jefferson Airplane:

Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?

You better find somebody to love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week nine of us from LCM ventured down to Joplin with the express purpose of finding somebody there to love.  We found them in both the living and the dead.  Some where just ghostly reminders of lives lost or changed forever; the sad picture of Harley the missing Corgi stapled to a telephone pole in a neighborhood where all the houses are gone and there is nowhere left for a Corgi to hide; the pile of snow-covered toys left abandoned in a vacant lot next to a lonely file cabinet; the clothing and personal effects we were picking up from piles of rubble even eight months after the fact – a child’s backpack, a croquet ball, a smashed coffee mug, and a pair of cat shaped salt and pepper shakers virtually undamaged.  It was eerie.  Working side by side in the raw wind and cold we often heard a muffled groan of sadness that meant one of us had uncovered yet another piece of life gone missing.

But, there were also the living; like the young AmeriCorps volunteers with a can-do spirit, including Cory who graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 and who whooped and did a dance for us when we walked in.  There was the lady at the Fastrip whose store was just rebuilt and reopened at Thanksgiving, and the customer who was still sheltering homeless victims in her undamaged house and who kept thanking us over and over again for coming.  There was the checkout lady at Walmart who told us about that terrible day and how three customers died at the back of the store, but everyone else was saved, because the manager made them all move to the front where the building was the strongest.  A reporter from Channel 12 News came out and took video of us, asking why we would come all the way from Iowa City to help Joplin in the middle of winter.  (We had no idea that Extreme Home Makeover was airing its Joplin special that very weekend).  The next day everyone in town seemed to know us, honking and waving whenever they passed us in the church van.  We were both the lovers and the beloved.

Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love.

Brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short… For the present form of this world is passing away. 

-The above article was written by Pr. Rob Dotzel.  Pr. Dotzel is the campus pastor for University of Iowa Lutheran Campus Ministry in Iowa City, IA.