On precious treasures

I worshipped in Clermont on Sunday.

There are several notable differences between Hillcrest and Clermont. Clermont is in a traditionally black area, which made me the only white person in about a ten kilometre radius. It is a popular Methodist church – you could term it one of our flagships, I suppose – so the service was well attended. Also, the services in black Methodism tend to go on for a lot longer than white churches; this is the most telling difference in our churches, at least for me. This particular service was also a communion service and as such was setting itself up to be a three hour extravaganza of singing, liturgy, notices, choir offerings, actual offerings among other things.

For a person used to a one hour and ten minute service, three hours is tough to endure. Even when you see it coming, it is tough to endure.

So you set about psyching yourself up. You slap your face while looking in the mirror and yell, ‘You can do this!’ before collaring up and heading out. It isn’t that there are too many boring bits in the service, it is just that there are too many bits full-stop. Also, in a three-hour service you can’t actually ask the question, how did you find it? You have to be more specific than that because, in three hours, you tend to ebb and flow - three hours can be broken into stages: well one hour in, halfway through the Siyakudumisa, with the last English word having disappeared off the horizon, morale began to dip, by 10.30 I nipped out to the toilet and felt markedly better, probably because of hymn 11 – my favourite – the sermon was okay but I had to serve communion to all three hundred people by myself and chronic back pain set in, I began to limp, lost the will to live - 11am to 11.30am; the benediction rocked.

 

Any event whose duration can legitimately be tracked on a sun-dial deserves more specific recollection.

So it goes.

Through the fence. Midlands.

I always stand incredulous at the reading of the notices. I have a window period at Hillcrest of about three minutes; there is this kind of unwritten rule that notices should be done quickly – more than three minutes and the chickens get restless, more than five minutes and open rebellion is fomented normally starting in the back row, more than five minutes with needless repetition and they’re building scaffolding while hanging a noose on the Plane tree outside. So watching this steward meander joyfully through the notices for more than twenty minutes without a care in the world, was actually quite spell-binding. As communication breakdown is routinely mentioned as an area HMC ‘growth area’ (meaning, in translation, we’re really rubbish at it) the thought did cross my mind to hire this guy to do it for us.

One and a half hours in and I was yet to preach. Now I love preaching. I’d prepared for it which really translates, come hell or high water, a word is going to be spoken, and probably more than one word. But even I – after an hour and half – begin to review my sermon notes to decide what is absolutely imperative to speak and what is padding, with the padding ruthlessly chopped.  You begin to wonder how short a sermon can be and still legitimately be called a sermon – can a strong opening illustration sprinkled liberally with select adjectives, spoken slowly, pronounced carefully, accentuating each and every syllable count as an illustration and two points? 

So it goes.

It was while I was editing my sermon notes in this fashion, about twelve minutes into the notices – so about half way through - when the most interesting thing happened.

One of the ‘great unwashed masses’ walked through the door, and not the back door, reserved for the great unwashed masses but the door next to me, up front, in front of the church, there where the holy people are seated, a stone’s throw from the sacraments, and within touching distance of the magnificent Aids-Remembrance Candle.

This gaffe I could see dawned on the interloper as he entered sacred space. Even in his mind, which was clearly compromised by drink or some recreational drug, the faux pas occurred to him; he stood there, alternately scratching his belly and head. The stewards performed one of their less celebrated functions, ushering the confused gentleman out of church.

He had on a moth eaten t-shirt with the message ‘Precious Treasure’.

Clouds and hills. Midlands.

In ministry (and I suppose, life) you get used to misnomers. At Hillcrest we have two people who periodically walk off the street and harass our caretaker and her family. Their names? Innocent and Blessing. Two people less innocent and more devoid of blessing I have yet to meet.

When we were selling our car in Pinetown we were very nearly ripped off by a local car dealership. Its name? ‘Shalom Motors’. This is in fact a workable rule of thumb: if a secular enterprise advertises itself as overtly Christian, put on your rubber gloves and prod it carefully with a stick. Whatever you do, don’t throw money at it.

What happens when our hapless world interjects itself so forcibly into the corporate act of worship? Numerous ministers in the MCSA have experimented with this. One guy, new to his church, dressed himself as a street urchin and sat in the front row; needless to say he was given a wide berth, his smell forcing the congregation to occupy the side the benches – he the centre,  they the circumference. Well, they were berated warmly for not embracing the ethos of Jesus – to love the unlovable and hug the un-huggable. I appreciate the lesson, though the act itself whiffs rather of self-righteousness.

Another colleague staged a robbery in his church. This is no joke. He recruited balaclava-clad youngsters to storm the church and demand money, watches, wallets. I presume to offer some lessen on violence and trauma. I say presume because, as I recall, he never got around to teaching the lesson, with the congregation being actually traumatised and all. I think he was beaten to an inch of his life with hymnbooks and Bibles; they used language on him that not even the most liberal parameters of ‘speaking in tongues’ would be willing to accept. Rightly so. What an idiot. He may have been used as an object lesson on what not to do as young ministers – okay, before we teach you oversight of sacraments, hermeneutics and church polity we are going to ask you, right up front, please never stage a robbery. It won’t go well for you.

God forgive us the stupid things we attempt in God’s name.

Black bird on a table. Midlands.

Well, back to the story. You would have to be some advanced sort of smarty-pants to grab for the nearest drum with the intention of banging on about how the church is self-absorbed and how this guy wasn’t allowed in to worship. Why? Well, there probably should be guidelines in worship – not pitching up smashed out of your bracket being one of them. Entering with due reverence for the gathering with the intention of actually worshipping being another.

All the same, his presence does serve to rattle the conscience of any follower of Jesus. That unless we are in some way attending to his needs, helping him, starting with the ability to see him as a human with needs, we really aren’t, in any meaningful way, fulfilling our calling. If all we did was strong-arm him off the premises and drop-kick him to the curb without offering some hope, some help – well, shame be upon us. If what starts in the pew does not end at this man’s doorstep then it must be back to the drawing board for us.

Steve Earle has this glorious lyric in I am a Wanderer – a song full of glorious lyrics:

I am a labourer, sign round my neck:
"Will work for dignity, trust and respect".
I stand on this corner so you don't forget
I haven't had mine yet.

I may not have been the most switched on of members at yesterday’s service; not understanding a word of what is going on will do that to a worshipper. And I may have been slightly distracted taking a red pen to my sermon notes and all. But when you read the gospels and you try (and fail very often) to follow Jesus, you learn to see the signs; when you follow Jesus, the first thing this Holy Thief will take from you is the ability to see through people simply to assuage your conscience.   I don’t really have a problem with the thief who will come in the night, it’s this thief who robs me during the day that truly unsettles me. It is a terrible yet necessary thing to lose.  This man wasn’t some guy who just lost his way, he was a cry to the church, a call to hold before us what is happening in the world as we could be tempted to bury our heads in the sand.

You see, contradicting popular sentiment, in the eyes of God he is indeed a Precious Treasure. When you follow Jesus a T-shirt like that is never ever a misnomer.