Flash

Jesus vs the Comfortable Pew

One Sunday, Jesus decided to attend church. In his sermon, the pastor told the congregation how much he was looking forward to heaven.

"A new body with no aches and pains!" he proclaimed. "I'll be able to go jogging with my dog and enjoy all the beauty of God's creation. All my relationships will be perfected in love. But the best part will be to look in God's face and worship him forever!"

When the pastor wound down and was about to announce the offertory hymn, Jesus stood up. "Excuse me," he said. "I was wondering why you are looking forward to what you already have. Your body is quite capable of painless jogging, but instead of getting into shape, you sit in front of the TV and complain about your high blood pressure. Your dog is tied up in the yard, longing to be taken for a walk, while you isolate yourself in your basement office playing video games. You write clever sermons about love, but you hardly know your wife and children. You fill your days with a lot of useless meetings where you try to impress others instead of taking your family on a picnic or playing ball with them. As for worship – you are free to do that any time wish, but you turn away from your Heavenly Father because you think your ministry is more important than He is. You have been given everything you need to enjoy a foretaste of heaven here on earth. All you have to do is live out the gospel instead of just proclaiming it!"

The pastor stared at Jesus, an artery throbbing in his neck. He waited until all eyes in the congregation had turned away from the outspoken visitor and focused back on him. Then, in his best tone of forceful authority, he trumpeted,

"Get out of my church!"

***

"Do you know who that crazy man was?" Jane asked her friends over their post-worship lunch.

"No idea," Charles grunted. "Never saw him before."

"I hope he's a transient," his wife Vanessa said. "It would be awful if he started hanging around here."

Jane's mother, who was hard of hearing, looked up from her soup. "Does anyone know who that strange man was? He had wonderful diction. I could understand every word he said."

Vanessa rolled her eyes. How much longer was Jane going to persist in looking after her mother? Anyone could see that she was overdue for professional care.

"I liked what he said," Jane's mother continued. "No gobbledegook. It's time somebody told Pastor Dullard to clean up his act."

Jane spoke slowly and distinctly, a little louder than necessary, trying not to giggle. "Pastor Cullard, mother. C as in Cat."

"Really?" Jane's mother said. "You could have fooled me." She turned her attention back to her soup. Since she had severe multi-tasking loss, she was oblivious to the rest of the conversation.

Charles cleared his throat. "That man did make some good points. Didn't beat around the bush. Straight to the point. Too bad he didn't stay for the end of the service. I would have invited him for lunch."

"Invited him for lunch?" Vanessa's voice was shrill with indignation. "What would Pastor C say if we did a thing like that? That man insulted him in his own church!"

Charles was not inclined to disagree with his wife very often. After all, she was the president of the women's group and chairperson of two committees. But some irresistible force in his gut pushed him on. "It was never Pastor C's church. It's God's church, and we need to remember that."

"Of course it's God church," Vanessa conceded, "but Pastor is God's spokesperson. He prays for us and tells us what's appropriate. He keeps us on track."

"Maybe it's time we started doing our own praying and our own thinking," Charles grumbled.

The discussion was interrupted by the server, who arrived with their bills and a supply of mints. Charles looked at him carefully. He had an uncanny resemblance to the stranger at church. The server smiled at him and winked.

After he got home, Charles noticed that there was something written on the back of his bill. Seek first the kingdom of God.

Charles used that piece of paper as a bookmark in his Bible until the day he died. He read scripture every night and became increasingly vocal about things that were important to him. Vanessa often bemoaned the inconvenience of her husband's mid-life crisis, but she was secretly proud of the courage of his convictions. She knew that she could depend on him to stand by her side through each and every the storm of life, even when he did not completely agree with her.

Despite Vanessa's most determined efforts to bend the universe to her will, nothing stayed the way it had always been. The dizzying dance of novel fads and fashions disrupted all her efforts to stay solidly grounded. In her times of doubt and confusion, it was comforting to have a partner who knew where he stood.

The last thing she said to Charles before the cancer took him was, "We should have found that man and invited him for lunch."

Charles smiled and used the last of his strength to squeeze her hand. "It's not too late."