The goings-on at church

The place wasn't jammed, but it was full. A few empty pews sat dejectedly right up front in the old-fashioned way, but they weren't swinging from the rafters--as if they ever did in the old First CRC. The back was deeper. The ushers had set up more chairs so there were worshippers where they hadn't been in recent memory. 

My chair has a reserved sign up top on back, which is nice. It's got arms, and I need arms if I'm going to get up and down with any convenience. You might well say I had a reserved place in church last night, because, after a fashion, I do. And it was open, which was a relief because I wouldn't have wanted to walk around much longer looking for an open space.

I'm not sure how it was that I glanced up to my left, but I did, sometime during the opening hymn. Shockingly, the balcony must have had a  couple dozen people in it--shockingly, because it hasn't had residents, not for years, at least that I remember. It was half-full in semi-darkness, which, to my imagination, made the balcony-ers a bit ghostly--not ghastly, but spirit-like.

A story of mine features a gallery--a balcony, First's balcony--full of spirits who've wandered in from the cemetery up the hill. They're not ghastly either, but they most certainly are ghosts, I suppose, some sort of population from the spirit world with the ability to wander to and fro on a terrain they once populated, including the church. So last night our evening service was a combined service, all four Christian Reformed churches in town, meeting at our church, a place a good deal smaller than could accommodate all four congregations should all of the members of said congregations show up, which they didn't.

I'm normally in absentia myself on Sunday nights. I'm not as particularly faithful as I once was, but I decided to go last night because we live here now, in town, not a half-hour away in the country ("as if that were a sound excuse," my mother would chide). 

I loved that story. It's in a collection called Up the Hill, a series of stories set in a cemetery not far away, a cemetery where all the good souls are residents, awaiting the Day of the Lord (or something like that--eschatology isn't the point). The spirits are free to wander, and they do; their only constraint is they are incapable (just about all the time) of meddling, which is powerfully difficult when their own children are involved in the truly difficult stories we all have to live through.

Anyway, that story came back to me as if I'd written it on Saturday, not the plot but the setting--the balcony at First Church full of spirits watching the goings on going on right there beneath them in a sanctuary which happened that fictional  Sunday to offer someone no sanctuary at all. 

But there were other spirits at play last night, spirits from a half-century ago, in real life back then. It was, once again, my very first weekend in the little burg that's been my home for that long now. I dressed up in the suit my mother insisted I wear to church--it had a vest, the whole thing was a shade or two darker than baby blue. I donned it, feeling quite dandy, then left the dorm with a gaggle of other young men, all similarly dressed to the hilt. We walked to First CRC, where, being somewhat late, we took the highest pew in the balcony. It was the morning service, I remember.

It's likely a good idea not to judge the strength of a church by way of the behavior of its balcony dwellers, but, strange as it may seem, I remember two large families who actually came in after these handsome college boys. 

Down below, and way, way, way to the front, stood the pastor, who back then happened also to be the President of the college, a man who'd once been a firebrand, but at this point in his career of holding forth was far more grace-filled than I'd learn later he once was. He was a good preacher who could sometimes--and with regularity--be great. 

I wish I could tell you his text for the sermon that first Sioux Center Sunday. I wish I could tell you what the sermon was about. On both scores, mark me a failure. What I've never been able to forget is the relative inattention of those families up there in the balcony. They weren't delinquent, weren't a bit naughty, just tuned out. There we sat miles and miles from the front of the church, sort of numb--both those families and, at least, one brand-new college kid, the one with the vested blue suit. Fifteen minutes later, no one, I swear, could have repeated the major points of the sermon.

One of the kids just in front of us was, as we used to say, retarded. He wasn't a bit out of control, didn't attempt any shenanigans, seemed, in fact, super-straight. But I couldn't help wonder, in all honesty, what he or his siblings really got out of worship that night.

Last night's combined worship in our church was wonderful--nice musical mix, lively sermon dissecting the text thoughtfully. When, finally, the congregation started into "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow," a capella, I slipped out, but waited at the front door until the beautiful music ended. It was soul-enriching, but, cane in hand, I wasn't the swiftest thronging worshipper, so I avoided the madding crowd.

I don't know what all of that means, but when I rethink the geography of that worship service last night, I can't help thinking I haven't changed much since that first Sabbath in Sioux Center. I still dream. I still wonder about the local spirits. I still see visions and dream dreams. I still ought to listen more closely, pick up more than the cute cat jokes.

When I got home, my wife asked me how it went. I told her it was really quite wonderful.

And it was. Revelation comes in a gallery of different flavors.