Volume 29, No.23                                   
June 13, 2004

The Saving Grace

   Clutter kills.  The story of Homer and Langley Collyer is proof.  

   The brothers, sons of a rich New York doctor, grew up in a three-storey mansion in Harlem, which was then a wealthy neighbourhood.  But in the 1920s, while Homer became a lawyer and Langley studied engineering, Harlem began a slow slide into decay.  The boys gradually withdrew from the world.

   When the Collyers stopped paying bills, gas, water, and hydro were cut off, so Langley got water from a nearby park.  The reclusive brothers were so afraid of intruders, they barricaded doors and windows with piles of junk and booby-trapped the house with massive, trip-wired piles of newspapers.

   Then Homer had a stroke.  For years, Langley fed him 100 oranges a week, with black bread and peanut butter, confident it would cure his brother.  Late at night, Langley would leave the house, pulling a cardboard box on a long rope, scrounging for food and junk.

    But on March 21, 1947, police got a tip someone was dead inside the Collyer house.  When they pried open the front door, they were met by a solid wall of boxes.  Entering a second-floor window, they found a maze of tunnels through room-after-room of floor-to-ceiling clutter. Sixty-five-year old Homer was dead.  Langlely was missing.

   After Homer’s funeral, workers started clearing out the house.  They removed a horse’s jawbone, 14 pianos, dismantled parts of a Model T Ford, stacks of telephone books, tin cans, chandeliers and tons of newspapers.  Langley had collected a copy of every New               
York City paper each day for 30 years, so Homer could read them when he regained his sight.

   After 18 days, Langley’s body was found under a huge pile of those newspapers, just  feet from where Homer died.  It seems he was delivering supper to his brother when he triggered one of his own booby-traps.  With no one left to feed him, Homer starved.

   Over several weeks, 140 tons of junk were taken from the house.  Today, the Collyers are immortalized by two things that bear their name:  the park where their house once stood, and Collyer’s Syndrome, a disorder also known as “compulsive hoarding.”

   There’s spiritual version of Collyer’s Syndrome, too, and it’s potentially fatal for Christians and entire churches.  It takes hold whenever people of God withdraw totally from a world that seems to be changing constantly for the worst.  When beleaguered believers stop even trying to oppose evil,we turn from salt to saltpetre   Yes, we’re to live “as citizens of heaven”, but we’re also told, “Don’t be intimidated by your enemies!” (Phil. 1:27,28).  We’re to raise the blood-soaked banner of Christ, not a white flag.  Each of us is called to be a radical, not a recluse.  The holy are rarely meant to be hermits.

   Besides, whenever we give up on the world, we tend to retreat into homes and churches that have no light, warmth or power.  We barricade ourselves behind walls of fear, or pride or ecclesiastical clutter that makes us feel safe against anyone who might threaten or question what we do.  At that point people see us as eccentric, not Christocentric. We become increasingly irrelevant as we fill our lives and churches with spiritual junk, including pointless controversies, religious division and the traditions we collect out of habit or a need for security.  Before long, when people look at us, they just see the jumble instead of Jesus;  the mess instead of the Messiah.

   The alternative is love, the ultimate clutter-buster.  Paul tells us to make sure our love, knowledge and understanding keep growing.  “For I want you to understand what really matters so you may live pure and blameless lives... May you always be filled with... those good things produced in your life by Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:10, 11)

   Otherwise, we’ll be stuck behind the walls of our own making, feeding each other an unhealthy diet of religious nonsense until we’re crushed by our own irrelevance.  It’s time to get rid of the clutter.  Let Jesus do the saving.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca