Sometimes on a Sunday

I love ordinary Sundays. For me this begins with coffee and a newspaper with my family, followed by worship and social time with my congregation. It’s a cozy arrangement, a comfortable pattern. Usually.

But sometimes Clive comes to church, and then the dynamics change. Clive is not his real name, but it will work just fine for this story. Clive lives on the streets and can look pretty rough. But a gentle soul survives inside that swollen, mottled body and grungy clothes. He comes to worship with us from time to time, respectful in his own way. He joins right in with our rituals and makes a beeline for the coffee fellowship downstairs as soon as the service is over. It’s his favourite part. Sometimes he brings friends.

A couple of months ago Clive showed up 15 minutes after the service started with seven visiting cousins in tow. Two sat in the back row on the left, three sat in the row behind me, three, including Clive, sat a row ahead. We were still in a singing phase of the service and with varying degrees of fervour they joined lustily in. Clive turned to me with a wink and a nod. Reverently he removed his toque, and then chastised his seatmate with a glare and a glancing, backhand slap to the side of the face to remove his ball cap.

“Welcome,” I said, even as I wondered how the rest of the service would unfold.

After the singing we moved into a sharing time. The pastor began with an anecdote about a well-deserved speeding ticket. “Preach the word!” came an admonishing voice from the back. “Preach the word!”

After another worshiper mentioned a book with “archangel” in the title, one of Clive’s friends in the pew ahead of me spoke up. “I wish I was an archangel,” he said. “Then when they nailed Jesus on the cross I’d have come and beat them back.” My pastor thanked him for the comment, adding, “Jesus could have called 10,000 angels” but chose to die instead.

“I know, I know,” replied our visitor. “But if I were there I’d have taken them and really given them some rrrrrrrrrrr!” Here he took his right fist and pummeled it against the palm of his other hand. There was no way this man would stand by to see Jesus suffer abuse at the hands of others. The service continued.

It got a little interesting once the sermon started. Clive later told me they’d rented a house for the week, but it was rather obvious they’d been out all night partying. They were very tired, and the pastor spoke only a few lines of his message before the snoring began.

Behind me, a large man snoozed oblivious to the proceedings. Ahead of me, Clive’s head rolled back. When he began to snore, his neighbour gave him a swift chop to the neck with the side of his hand, and they both broke into giggles. Two minutes later they were both slumbering softly.

The sermon continued, punctuated by an occasional “preach the word” from the back of the sanctuary. After the service they crowded the coffee line and piled their plates with the goodies laid out for our fellowship hour. One man discovered guacamole for the first time, and kept coming back for more of that “green stuff.” He liked it a lot.

None of our church members were rude to our visitors. Not visibly, at least. Most sat at their own tables and carried on their own conversations. A few sought to befriend our visitors, to sit and speak with them. Some of us went through the routine of declining to ante up bus fare.

Sundays like this are two parts troubling and six parts satisfying. They are not particularly comfortable. Something about me loves predictability on Sunday mornings. I respond well to orderly reverence. I like my coffee fellowship with my kind of people. I like my comfort zone a lot.

Clive and his friends challenge my easy contentment. They make me confront the fact that not everyone enjoys the same set of privileges. They live with a much harsher set of realities. They are poor. They are not healthy. They make some bad, bad choices. They sleep in hard, cold places. Their ways are not my ways.

But Clive’s friend would fight to keep Jesus off the cross. His friends sing to God with joy on their faces. They beckon us not only to preach the word. Their very presence encourages us to also live the Word—those frightening words of God that challenge us to recognize the image of God in unexpected faces.

Clive came to church alone a week or two later. He slipped quietly to a pew near the front as the sermon was winding down and communion about to begin. He looked as clean as I’d ever seen him. In fact, he seemed positively radiant. As we sang, he lifted his face and arms in gentle acts of worship. He came forward for communion and took the elements with gratitude beaming from his face. I know at least one other person who was moved to tears by the blissful sight.

I don’t know if Clive spoke to anyone that day. He slipped out quickly and I’ve only seen him back one time since. This time he asked us to pray for another relative, a woman who died two days earlier. He wanted us to sing “Amazing Grace.”