Blood Sugar Sex Magik

In 1991 Red Hot Chili Peppers cut a CD with the title Blood Sugar Sex Magik; that could have been the title given to my weekend at Comfest this past weekend.

Friday afternoon started off pretty innocuous as I manned our booth with my friend, John, We were giving out free Frisbees this year with our church’s name and logo emblazoned on them. It was pretty cool tossing a disc fifteen or twenty yards to somebody you made eye contact with as they moseyed through the park.

It was a swelter summer afternoon; high humidity and in the upper eighties. Mid-way through our shift I walked over to the Lemonade Shake Up shack that sat on Park Street and bought us a couple of drinks. HOLY COW! I couldn’t recall pure sugar with a drop or two of real lemon juice sloshed around in some water tasting so good—that’s where the SUGAR part of the weekend came from. By the time my shift ended around 5:30pm I felt like a piece of chewed gum somebody had just spit out, I was so sticky and hot.

When Saturday rolled around the weather had turned much better; the humidity was down, as was the temperature. My shift at our booth started around 6:00pm and another friend named John manned it with me Saturday night. There was an utter mass of humanity that filled the Park and the adjacent streets Saturday; at one point the beer tent on Park Street was lined with twenty-five people wide, stretching completely across the street and about twenty yards into Goodale Park, there were two other, bigger tents on Goodale Boulevard.

The sidewalk in front of our booth reminded me of the conveyor belt walkways they have at some airports; so many people were passing by that it was difficult to make eye contact with them. The scene on Park Street and Goodale Boulevard was elbow to elbow. I had a sense there was something in the air that I couldn’t put my finger on— sort of an oppression, but not. I don’t really know how to describe it, maybe a feeling of uneasiness?

I spent about forty-five minutes talking with Heather. I attempted to hand her one of our small buttons that said “Don’t Waste Your Life” on it. As I extended my hand I mentioned we were a church in the Short North, and when I said that she withdrew her hand. “I’m not really into church” she said. She was a nice girl around twenty-five years old, but with a walker. I didn’t ask why she had to use a walker, but for the next forty-five minutes we had a really intelligent, polite conversation about our differences.

Heather had some bad experiences with church; her dad was Jewish and her mom was Presbyterian. Some years ago she’d abandoned church and God and took a position as an atheist. She told me she had a sister who is Christian. Through our discussion I discovered that she wasn’t really atheist but agnostic; she left the door open that there was a possibility that there was a God. Our conversation was proof that intelligent people can have reasonable dialogue about something they differ on, without getting their panties in a bind.

Just before 8:00pm the police came down the sidewalk clearing people out of the way; they were followed by a golf cart ambulance that had a young dude stretched out on it; he wasn’t moving and was ashen white. We learned that he’d been stabbed about seventy-five yards from our booth. That was the BLOOD part of my weekend. I learned Sunday morning the guy had died; he was just eighteen years old. However, by Monday word was circulating that his own friend had stabbed him—ten times in the chest. But, by Tuesday I’d learned that his friend was trying to protect him from himself; evidently the guy was stoned out of his head and was stabbing himself.

After the excitement of the ambulance rolling by I had another forty-five minute conversation at just about sundown with a woman named Peggy. She was pleasant, gregarious, and slightly drunk. My friend, John talked with her friend, Matt while we talked. Peggy identified herself as a practicing pagan. During our conversation I discovered that meant that she was very in tune with nature, had ESP, had premonitions about things that would happen, she said she had the ability to cause tornados and stuff like that; she said she could bend the flame of a candle to a 45 degree angle with her mind.

That was the MAGIK part of my weekend. To speak with Peggy one would think she might be a Christian; she talked with God a lot, believed in Jesus, was very generous, and didn’t speak ill of people. She used very colorful language—but that’s to be expected at Comfest.

I really believed Peggy when she told me some of the stuff she could do with her “gift.” I asked her if she ever wished she could be free of the “gift” and she replied “Oh God yes!” She mentioned there was an overwhelming responsibility with the “gift”. I shared some things about our church and my own faith in Jesus with her, but she indicated she could never be a Christian; I asked her why not and she said it was because she had that “stuff” in her genes.

What Peggy told me was that not only did she have the “gift” but that her mother had had it and her grandmother had had it too. She said, “couple hundred years ago they would have burned people like us at the stake.” I really liked Peggy—freaky—but I liked her. I mentioned to her about Mary Magdalene in scripture; even though she had had seven demons in her Jesus was able to free her from it. I told Peggy that Jesus could free her from what was in her genes too.

As our night was just about to finish on Saturday, about fifteen minutes until 11:00pm a young man and lady in their early twenties walked into our tent. They asked about some of our ministries and the things we were doing; then asked about a program we had at our church similar to Exodus International which helps those people who want to come out of homosexuality to come out.

I indicated to the guy and lady that we didn’t have a program like that, but we did have several individuals in our church who had chosen to come out of homosexuality—by their choice. This was the SEX part of my weekend. Almost immediately the guy and lady turned antagonistic toward us, even though I’d told them we didn’t have the type of program they were assuming we had.

The lady indicated she’d been raised Jewish and was now bi-sexual. We had quite a bit of conversation about the Old Testament, Jewish life and law, the scriptures, culture and we were miles a part in our beliefs. The guy wouldn’t divulge his sexuality nor his religious proclivities, but grew more antagonistic. I realized that they had come to pick a fight with us on the issue of homosexuality, knowing we were a church.

I indicated that my foundation for truth is the Bible; the guy indicated he had his own ideas about religion, but that they weren’t anything like mine. I told them I make no apology for what I believe, and made some very pointed statements to the lady about her heritage as a Jewish person. Our conversation ended abruptly, and maybe it was a good thing it did because the lady made some comments that I could have taken very personal.

Sunday was rather uneventful other than the fact that I was given five minutes on the gazebo stage to talk about our organization. I had nearly forgotten that I had signed up for the opportunity, and I was dead dog tired by Sunday afternoon.

I was at the booth for our 2:00pm shift change and once I got everybody settled in I headed home for lunch; I had just come from our church service a few minutes earlier. As I was leaving the Park I stood for a few minutes to listen to a pretty good reggae band jamming on the gazebo stage. As the band was finishing their last song the lead singer raised his arm and pointed his finger to the sky and said “glory to Jah.”

As I walked up Park Street to head to my car I heard one of the speakers on the stage as the reggae band was tearing down and the next band was setting up. The speaker identified himself and the organization he was with—a well known church in Columbus. A few people in the audience of several thousand booed the guy. In that moment Satan planted a seed of fear in me; I would be getting up to speak in a couple of hours and they might boo me too.

As I drove home I thought about the lead singer giving glory to Jah—Jah was the Rastafarian name for God. I thought, if he could give glory to God surely I could, even if some people booed me like they booed the other speaker.

My time to speak was 4:40pm and it rolled around really quickly. I was nervous, but talked to God about it. I took the stage as the two bands were setting up and tearing down; I introduced myself, mentioned that the organization I was with was Ekklesia Church just around the corner on Buttles Avenue. I mentioned that we were partnering again this year at Comfest with Camp Sunrise—a camp for kids ages 6-17 who are impacted by HIV/AIDS.

I went on to tell of other partnerships we have in the community; Wings of Hope a ministry to the homeless, Blood: water mission that drills clean water wells in Africa to help prevent the spread of AIDS and Project Open Hand an organization help adults living with AIDS/HIV. There were no boos to this point. I indicated we had a booth about a hundred yards to the south of the gazebo.

I finished my talk off by saying we’re trying to help people because we believe that that is what God would do. And, my last statement was “We want to make Jesus famous in the Short North.”

There were no boos and my weekend of Blood Sugar Sex Magik ended a couple hours later.