the one about the smelly man in the tattered coat

There’s a small congregation like this one and one Sunday the Pastor is ready to begin worship with a prayer and a new hymn when a man walks in the back and starts down the aisle. He is a visitor, never been in there before.  He sits down about halfway up next to an older couple.  He sits down, but says excuse me in a normal speaking voice. This draws the attention of about 80% of the gathered congregation.  He’s wearing dirty boots, sweat pants, an old brown sweater, and---despite the frigid temps outside--a windbreaker with a hole in the back about 3” round, looks like a burn hole.  He looks to be about 40 or 50.  He settles in.  He seems fidgety and uncertain, maybe a little anxious.  He coughs.  A lot. The kind of coughing that makes you want to get out of the way.   He takes out the hymnal and bible in his pew and thumbs through them, not looking for anything at all.  He looks at the bulletin.  The couple next to him slide down and smile when he looks their way.

Also, they notice right away, he smells bad.  Like cigarettes and liquor and body odor.  His hair is dirty but combed.  But the odor is foul and distracting. And not just to the people sharing a pew. Behind him and across the aisle, he is noticeable.  The pastor notices, too.  But worship begins.  He stands when the people stand and sits when they sit.  He doesn’t look in a hymnal or read the bulletin at all.  He just stands and sits, stands and sits. He stays for about half of the service, gets up, walks out, uses the bathroom, and exits the building.  No one speaks to him. He speaks with no one.  He comes and he goes.  What remains is the odor.  And the concern of others in the congregation.  Who was he?  What did he want?  Why was he there?  Would he come back?  What should they do if he does?  Was he homeless?  Drunk?  Did they have a policy about how to handle such occasions? The pastor did not know this man either.   His visit disrupted, startled, confused, and concerned a few people.  Afterward, there were conversations heard about those people hanging around.  And safety concerns for the church building.  And what they should do if he comes again. He seemed needy.  But he didn’t ask for assistance. They don’t want to seem unwelcoming or unfriendly, but his presence was a distraction from worship.  Even for the Pastor, who wondered about the smelly man in the tattered coat. 

Why did you come here today? It’s Sunday.  And the pre-game show has already started.  On Sunday we attend worship; we go to church.  It’s what we do.  It’s a habit and a primary way to express faith.   Maybe you come here to see friends.  Or to enjoy hymns.  Or to hear God’s Word, read and interpreted.  Maybe you came to pray for someone.  Or for your kids.  Or because your spouse told you that you were going to church.  For thousands of years, people faithful to God have gathered on a fixed day to devote themselves to God; to make an offering of time, treasure, prayer, and song.  For the most part, they and we do not expect a whole lot to happen to us here.  Maybe enough happens to us all week and we hope for a place of solace, refuge, peace, and comfort.  Maybe we need an encouraging and affirming message; tell us that it’s going to be ok, Pastor.  But what if God’s promise to us is more invasive and far more challenging than that?  What if you come to church and a prophet shows up. 

Jesus enters the synagogue on the Sabbath to teach, effectively serving as pastor to the gathered congregation.  And on this particular Sabbath day—a day of rest, mind you, when people are hoping to have a break, a refuge, a moment of peace—a man with an unclean spirit emerges.  He interrupts and disrupts. He is agitated and cries out: “What are you doing here, Jesus of Nazareth, I know who you are.  Holy one.  Have you come to destroy us?”  My eldest son, avid reader and literary critic would call this passage “Creepy and weird”.   This man was a mess.  Bad habits and bad behavior led to poor health and alienation from community life.   Declining health made him vulnerable, weak, and unstable.  But he came there to the gathered religious community to encounter Jesus, the holy one. So that God might destroy the deadly pestilence at work in his soul and his body.  Nothing could save him but the grace of God.  And so he comes to challenge Jesus.  And Jesus casts out the unclean spirit and sets him right.  Jesus uses his power to engage the man, confront the demons, and get him clean.  The man is changed by the encounter,the new teaching.  This was not the old teaching; about how God had once, in the past, liberated and rescued their ancestors and how one day God would fulfill the promise to them to liberate them, to set to right all that was wrong, to destroy the enemies, and give them everlasting peace. NO—this was not a history lesson or dreams of a better future.  This was an opportunity for radical change right there and then.  Unexpectedly the power of God to change a man’s life was present in the room.      

What if we came here expecting God to arrive and take action with decisive power?  What if I came here with the hope and anticipation that I might leave here better than when I came in?  That I might actually hear God speak the words that I need to hear, so that I might tell others what God said to me and they might hear.  What if we came here believing that in this room is a confrontation between Jesus and the powers of this world that are threatening to hold us hostage to a false way of life.  A way that privileges some and impoverishes others; a way that guarantees abundance for some and scarcity for others;  a way that favors some and rejects others; a way that is filled with anxiety and fear, addictions and self-destructive violence; what if you are here now so that God can speak to you.  What do you hear God saying to you?  Because maybe something about you stinks, needs cleaned up, needs repaired, needs cast out.  And maybe you can’t do anything about it yourself.  You’ve tried. But you can't shake it off.  You need God to rip it out, cast it out, destroy it.  A little death of the self can lead to new life, you know.   Maybe you are experiencing that Kairos moment as a time in your life in which God is saying to you, “Receive my holiness, my love, my forgiveness, my Spirit.  Come clean.  Now.  And live.  Forever.  For me.  Amen.