A life on display: Homeless advocate, artist living in Hendricks Chapel to discuss life on streets
Three weeks after he became fully homeless — after he’d overstayed all welcomes and begun to sleep on park benches — Matthew Works walked into Boston Commons on a sunny Sunday afternoon and saw a woman preaching from behind a wooden, wheeled altar, holding a glass chalice of grape juice and a plate of bread. Surrounding her were 30 others without homes.
‘What a beautiful sight this is,’ Works said he thought to himself — a church ministering to the needs of the many homeless who resided in the city.
He began attending every Sunday outdoor service, along with the less-attended indoor Monday services. He immersed himself. He helped the organizers of the services, called the Common Cathedral, start an art program for the homeless, and a cinema program, too — anything to get the homeless indoors.
Over the following 13 years, Works became a well-known homeless activist, writer and artist. And for the past several days, he has slept on a small cot in the Noble Room in Hendricks Chapel as a special visitor invited by the chapel’s dean, Tiffany Steinwert. His art has hung on the room’s walls and will stay there until he leaves Sept. 30.
Works will be hosting ‘An Open Conversation with Matthew Works,’ a speech and conversation with students and faculty, on homelessness and the faith community Thursday at 8 p.m. in his humble residence. It’s free and open to the public.
Work’s inspiration
After Common Cathedral services and a following discussion session with food, the wooden altar would be wheeled across the street and put in a basement.
‘They would do that to give the altar refuge and protection, as well they should, because without that protective care, the beautiful altar could be damaged, it could be ruined, it could be totally destroyed by exposure to the elements or by exposure to vandalism out on the streets,’ Works said.
‘‘But what about us,’ I started asking later. ‘We’re human beings; we’re made of flesh of blood; we’re made in the image and likeness of God; we need refuge, shelter, protection and sanctuary, also. Because without protective care, we could be damaged and get frostbite, we could be ruined or destroyed or even killed by exposure to the elements or by violence out on the streets,” Works said.
Decades ago, Works was a college student, but he never finished.
‘I got halfway through,’ he said. ‘So I was like so many of you — that’s the thing, I think I’m as good at articulating these kinds of things as I am because I’m similar to the majority of college students today. I was just like you guys.’
A couple decades after leaving college, Works was fired from his job driving trucks for a Boston furniture warehouse. The managers had doubled the drivers’ workload, causing him, in his exhaustion, to drive within inches of crashing his truck into oncoming traffic. He, or someone else, could’ve died. And the law would hold him accountable, he thought. So he said something to the managers.
Within weeks, he was released. He fell behind on rent payments. He was evicted from his apartment. He became homeless. He slept on the grass or on park benches — which he swore were designed with arm rests in the middle to keep the homeless from fitting well — while trying to hide from patrolling policemen. He ate at charitable churches and soup kitchens.
As he became increasingly involved in Common Cathedral, he befriended the woman priest and her staff of volunteers and divinity school students. They, in turn, began to invite him to join them whenever they spoke about Common Cathedral at different churches and colleges.
At the events, the priest would speak, then the student interns, and then Works would speak for about 10 minutes. He was articulate and could recall quotes from the Bible and a variety of authors from memory — a different mold than the expected homeless person stigma.
He’d question listeners about what the implications were for people of faith, who themselves worshipped a homeless man.
‘Jesus, himself, was homeless,’ he would point out.
But despite his insight, after each speech and the following praise, he, the priest, the interns and the crowd would part — the interns and the students to their dorms, the priest and faculty and other bystanders to their homes, and Works to the streets.
He kept repeating the questions to church leaders in Boston about why they, in supposed good faith, kept their doors locked so the homeless could not seek refuge. He kept receiving unsatisfactory answers.
After a short while, a man was found frozen to death on a bench in the Commons.
‘That’s when it really hit me, how deadly serious this is,’ he said. ‘That there are all these churches, and every night they’re locked, leaving all of us, the homeless, outside. Locked out of refuge, shelter, sanctuary, safety, protection, totally exposed, vulnerable. It just seems that that’s not what the gospel is about.’
Works of Art
Works decided to make something to help physically illustrate his point. So he constructed a white cardboard and paper cathedral model. On the outside, he copied Scripture and other writings, including his own prayer and a story of the terrors of homeless shelters. In the model’s front tower, he built a space where he put a candle. On the top of the front of this tower he wrote, ‘JESUS WAS HOMELESS!’ and copied supporting Scripture beneath it.
On the front doors it read, ‘Come to me all who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.’ But in front of them, keeping the doors shut, was a large metal lock.
For years, along with his backpack of spare clothes and other utilities, he carried the model around in a cardboard box with a string handle. As he walked around the parks and alleyways or at speeches with the woman from Common Cathedral, people would ask him about what he was carrying until he’d show them.
Some people cried when they saw it. People began calling him an artist. And as he created more and more pieces, he began to believe they were right.
‘I was surprising myself that these things were interesting, eye-opening, thought-provoking — that’s what people were saying about them,’ he said. ‘It was always in me, I just didn’t realize that I was good enough at it.’
And so throughout the academic year, Works travels from a residency at one school to another, and he house-sits for accumulated clerical friends over the summer. He still considers himself homeless, in a way — he doesn’t own a residence — but his friends still on the streets or in shelters argue otherwise. But behind his own sort of mobile altar and in his own sort of way, Works continues to minister for both sorts of friends’ needs.
‘I see this as constructive criticism that I’m doing out of love for the church,’ Works said. ‘I love the church. I don’t want to see the church like this — this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.’
