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The Sunday Zoo

For the last couple of Sundays a new young couple has been attending our church. Not just on Sunday morning but also on Wednesday nights when she isn’t working at a local store. In conversation with them,  the young man shared that he has recently been feeling a need for church involvement. A feeling just out of the blue. It set me thinking. Thinking about the folks who fill the pews on Sunday mornings. 

That reminded me of some of the characters I have told you about who have been in my congregations in twenty different pastorates in my decades long ministry as a pastor. You remember Prince Mongo, I’m sure, who would turn up in church every so often sans shirt, painted on chest and face like an Indian. And there was “Balls of Fire” Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis’ kin, who was in the balcony from time to time. And the oddest of all was the ugly little man who sat on the back pew one Sunday. I couldn’t see him well enough to describe him except as mighty ugly. I found out after the service was over that he was really a pet monkey some folks had dressed in suit and tie and brought to church!

And that got me thinking about the people who turned up in the congregations who listened to Jesus on the mountainside or in his off-the-cuff wayside encounter teachings. Folks like the Rich Young Ruler who traded eternity with Jesus for a bag of gold, the little boy with his five brown ’n serve rolls and two sardines who gave them to Jesus, Zaccheus who was up a tree and was called down by Jesus, blind Bartimeus who wouldn’t stop hollering for Jesus, and the poor sick woman in the crowd who dared touch his robe. What dreams filled their minds? What need possessed them? What did they think of Jesus? Did they still think of him years later? Were some of these folks in the early church? 

And wait, there’s Paul’s congregation. The young man Eutychus who fell out the window when Paul preached too long, Lydia the seller of purple in Philippi and the jailer who listened to his prisoner Paul at midnight, not to mention the tent makers Aquila and Priscilla who followed Paul around the Mediterranean basin.

Which brings me to an observation about all of us human beings. We were created for fellowship with God. It may seem strange that God would want our fellowship, but that’s exactly what the Bible is about. But from the start, we humans—the glory of God’s handiwork—felt we could run our own lives and find fulfillment. Of course, we’re wrong in that assumption. We seek the wrong goals, we feed our bodies on junk and our souls on husks, we too often fail to ask ourselves who we are and what we are doing here until we are face to face with our mortality. 

Isn’t that what every preacher sees each Sunday when he looks out at his congregation—a mixture of folks, some of whom who by the grace of God have somewhere along the way discovered their relationship to God, and others who are there like the folks in Jesus’ congregation. Folks with hopes and fears, questions about God and themselves, people who seek a patch for that hole in their heart and life, folks who have found a fellowship of pilgrims following Jesus.

Next Sunday look around you as you sit in church and think about the various stories of these folks. And think about your own story. Why are you here in church? Will you be open to hearing a word from God? What changes has it made in your life? What are you receiving and what are you giving because you are here today. 

The raccoons say I better stop or I’ll be asking myself the same questions.