What Happened Around The Table

They all three had battled drug addiction; Connie, Jay and Cecil. Throughout the evening during our Bible study the conversation was punctuated with details of horrific struggles.

I met Connie during the late autumn of last year; she is a black woman, pleasant with a wide smile and an effervescence that is as contagious as whooping cough from a 2-year-old. One Sunday morning shortly after Connie began to show up at our church she spontaneously shared a song; something that started somewhere deep in her soul that had to have release.

The song was verbal brushstrokes of travail emanating from a life of excruciating gratitude to the Savior. With anguish Connie seemed to tell her own story in a song that somebody else had written. Those in our gathering were lost for words with the only response being profound hugs. They were lingering hugs, the kind one might receive at a funeral home or in a hospital.

Connie’s voice is a stout soprano; stout like my sixth grade basketball coach, Mr. Dent whose voice was a controlled command that demanded attention. Connie’s voice demands you crack open your brain and heart so that God can show you what’s really inside of each.

A few weeks after Connie sang she brought her friend, Jay to our church gathering with her. Jay is in his mid-fifties but looks like he could still play full-court basketball with 15-year-old punks in the Hilltop or dance for 8 hours straight on a Saturday night at a club where the dj is spinning Funky Town and Get Down on It.

I think Jay’s probably lived 7 or 8 life times already; he’s got enough stories to tell, that if recorded would probably fill up the hard drive on a MacBook Pro.

Jay has his own baritone voice that by itself could carry a ’68 Volkswagen Bus. Last night Jay, Connie and I had arrived for our gathering and Jay was belting out a few lines of Gene Chandler’s 1962 hit Duke of Earl. He mentioned how as a teenager he used to stand on a street corner near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco with a group of his buddies and sing doo-wop. The words dripped from his lips like a brick being dropped into an empty 55 gallon drum; deep and piercing.

Connie and Jay were regulars in our gathering for 6-7 weeks then Connie disappeared as quickly as she had arrived. Jay continued to come and when I asked about Connie he mentioned with sadness in his voice that she was using again. It was the kind of sadness you speak when your grandma dies.

The last I’d seen Connie was a couple weeks before Christmas when she sang a beautiful song during the Christmas meal we were providing for the community in which a hundred or so barren souls came in from the cold to feast on ham, potatoes, pie and trimmings.

Cecil had first shown up on a Wednesday night during one of our gatherings in which we were serving a meal to the community. I didn’t know much about Cecil except that he was riding a bike in the middle of winter. There seemed to be a welcoming spirit in Cecil, welcoming in that he was ready to receive whatever God might have for him that night.

The first night Cecil stayed for a Bible study I had taken a minute or two to break down the meaning of a particular passage of the Bible and it was as though I’d given him a St. Gauden’s $20 gold piece. A smile broke across his face, placed there out of pure gratitude.

Cecil too continued to come for about a month, then as quickly as Connie had disappeared Cecil disappeared. I was beginning to wonder if it was me, or, if I had bad breath or a booger hanging from my nose or something that was repulsing people.

I had conversations with some people in our church about beginning to disciple Cecil when he disappeared. To be honest it was all a bit deflating.

In late January I sensed that our church had lost focus on God during our Wednesday night gathering in which we served a meal to the community, which included many homeless people. I attempted to re-direct us to an expression that seemed more like family; a time, in which we had a meal for us, prayed for one another, worshiped God together and studied his word.

Instead of a hundred people gathering on Wednesday nights we now had about twenty, including Jay, but Connie and Cecil were nowhere to be found.

About three weeks ago I stood in the silence of the empty building our church gathers in, it was a Wednesday night. There was an emotional volleyball match going on inside of me. On one side of the net the ball was lobbed and I questioned the decision I had made to eliminate feeding the community on Wednesday nights; the returned volley would catch me thinking about how Jesus had great compassion for hungry people, but they weren’t the focus of his ministry.

I recall Jesus’ response to some of the 5000 people he had fed with the miracle of the loaves and fish in the Gospel of John. The day after Jesus fed the 5000 some followed him across the Sea of Tiberias and his response to them was, “…you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Jesus’ point was…you don’t want me, you want the food.

After the ball had been batted back and forth across the net in my mind for 4 or 5 minutes the door to the building opened and in walked Connie. Connie’s heart was tender, tender like a really good kid who had lied to their parents for the first time.

I gave Connie a hug and welcomed her back when she began to softly pour out her heart to me. She said that she had gotten mad at God, had been disappointed with God and had turned back to the same vice she’d lived in for a long time. I listened as she told me about her struggle and how after a month or so she had come to her senses in a way similar to the Prodigal Son that Jesus taught about had come to his senses.

Connie confided in me that she had been diagnosed HIV positive and she spiraled into using. She spoke of waking up one day after feeling sorry for herself and trying to blame God, to realize that this is the only life she has and she wanted to live it as full as she could in spite of her diagnosis. I audibly sighed when Connie told me she was HIV positive. My heart ached because I’d never wish that on anybody.

About that same time Cecil showed back up again. In talking with Cecil I discovered that he’d been attending a small church that was closer to his house. His first week back we prayed for Cecil; his son is in jail awaiting sentencing for his crimes. I found out that his son was looking at possibly 35 years in prison. Cecil cried.

We gathered last night; our little church has been on a nomadic journey since we began two years ago. Nothing really feels like home.

One by one people filtered in last night with hands full of trays of food. Connie and Jay were there, and Cecil showed up too. We sat the food on a long table in the conference room waiting for others to arrive. By 6:50pm there were 11 of us. We decided to sit in the conference room around the table and have a meal together, worship together and study the Bible together.

I like intimate gatherings like we had last night; they’re so small you can touch the person next to you physically and emotionally. I kind of get the feeling that’s what Jesus did with his 12. Jesus wasn’t so much interested in the 5000 as he was the 12. I’ve been thinking for some time…how could Jesus be content with investing all 33+ years of his life in just 12 people? Content is a powerful word.

So often, we in the Church, and especially we pastor-types get focused on the 5000 to the neglect of the 12. Jesus intentionally did things to thin out those who thought themselves to be his disciples. On numerous occasions the scriptures tell us that disciples turned away from Jesus to never follow him again because of something he’d said.

We had hot wings and scalloped potatoes and corn and split pea with ham soup and cornbread and sour cream cake with whipped cream and huge strawberries last night. My friend, Delphine had brought her guitar and led us in beautiful worship; very simple, but sweet worship, and her husband, Tom led us in the study of the book of Mark and the demon possessed men of Gadara.

I had the feeling that Jesus might have done something like this; this was the church. It was during this time that Connie and Jay and Cecil shared some of the horrors of their struggles with addiction. Evidently, the demon possessed man had many of the same manifestations that Connie, Jay and Cecil had had at one time. There was passion and pain in their voices. It was a privilege to listen. I had prayed earlier before the meal that the Holy Spirit would give us ears to hear what he was saying. He was speaking through Connie, Jay and Cecil, and really everybody else who was seated around the table. He was speaking in song and testimony; he was speaking in prayer and the Word.

Toward the end of our Bible study Connie described part of her hellish childhood. She spoke of her mother practicing witchcraft, and how her mother used to bring dirt into the house from the graves of people. She spoke of things her mother used to do and how she knew the Devil was real and demonic possession is real. I thought to myself…you never know what somebody experiences that make them what they are today. It’s a miracle that Connie loves Jesus.

The volleyball landed on my side of the court in that moment; I realized I’d never hear Connie’s story with a hundred people around, people only wanting food. That story could only have been given birth in a family, a family that sits around the table and eats together and prays together and worships God together, and who have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying.