Church

I shift awkwardly in my chair. I feel out of place, a little alien. The service starts in five minutes. I’m seated at a round table, sound friends around me, we chat over the noise in the background. Someone yells something unintelligible, and I twist to see who it was, glancing over my shoulder, trying not to stare. The aide wipes up the face of the woman, maybe in her mid-forties, unable to talk or walk.


There are kids running between the tables, laughing with each other. No one seems to care, just as no one cares about the cacophony of grunts and ‘HO’s and that awkward breathing-in sound that only the disabled seem to be able to make.

A youngish guy with an old beaten-up guitar steps to the microphone in the corner of the room and launches into a worship song. No one quiets down; it’s hard to tell if anyone is even listening to him. On either side of him are two middle-aged women in wheel-chairs, microphones in front of them, volume turned on. They don’t have nice voices, the words can’t always be made out, but it is the sweetest sound I have ever heard.

The head pastor switches the overhead as we go into the next song. No digital projectors or computers or expensive equipment here – like the guitar, the projector has seen better days, as have the speakers and mikes. the screen lickers and turns off intermittently, and sometimes the pastor gets ‘distracted’ praying with someone or caring for them, and doesn’t change the slide in time. No one cares. Most know the words by heart anyway. I sing from my chair, and as I sing, I notice what is happening around me. The noise level hardly drops, the children do not sit still and listen intently, but all are worshipping. I look behind me at the wheel-chairs in a row, and see serene, contorted faces beaming as they mumble along with the words displayed on the dingy brick wall. To my right, families with little kids and young couples are singing along, some are dancing, all are coming before God in their own way. No one goes to the man mumbling too-loud in the back and tries to quiet him; no one goes to the kids and asks them to stop running around and sit still. I am crying, in Church, for the first time in years.


The songs end, and the pastor, an unshaven man in an unassuming sweater and jeans, stands at the front and speaks words of peace. No deep theology here – not much to wrestle with. God loves you, you are fogiven. Come, eat of His body, drink of His blood. We do, from little plastic cups and eat of torn up pita bread from a styrofoam plate. Some need to be helped. Some spill their grape juice on the way to their mouth and others must clean it up, because they can’t themselves. Then there is a psalm, some announcements, the introduction of a family and some prayer, and then it is time for soup. I remember why I am in Bible College, what this is all about.
The Spirit of God is in this dingy high-school cafeteria this Sunday morning. Jesus lives here, in this sloppy, broken, unattractive group of sinners that love Him very, very much.

I am home.