(Read the whole poem here)
Rain and sheep? Maybe in the Irish countryside. Here in metro Boston they turn churches into banks (temples to capitalism, how fitting)—or housing. The church I served when I was first ordained is condos now. I try to avoid driving down that street when I’m back in town.
Lots of churches in these parts are are homes now. I can name half a dozen without trying, so there must be many more. It’s no wonder, with housing at a premium and real estate in short supply. Everyone needs housing (thus the Friday Café)… but church? who needs church?
And what do they need it for?
On opening day at the Friday Café, a man who stays at our Shelter is the first to arrive. The "café" is nothing fancy: a church hall with some round tables and chairs, an embarrassingly modest spread of refreshments, and a handful of kindly volunteers who welcome him and try to help him feel at home. There’s no TV, no computer—just some art materials and a couple of board games. Still he ends ups staying all day, sitting quietly at a table where guests and volunteers are chatting.
One of the few times he speaks is in response to an invitation to stay for church at 4:00. “I haven’t been to church since I was 16,” he says. He breaks his perfect record, though, and stays; then surprises himself by crying through the whole service. Later he tells me that he'd wanted to join in the community reflections on the teaching the kingdom of God is among you, but was too choked up to get the words out. Then he floors me by telling me what he had wanted to share: a connection that had come to him between that teaching and the story of Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. Lazarus! at the rich man’s gate! I know.
Forty or fifty years since he’s been inside a church, and he’s doing exegesis in his head like a seasoned preacher. What’s been going on with him all this time? And why did he stay away from church so long, if that’s the way he thinks?
I’m sure he had his reasons.
But now here he is in our church hall, choking back tears.
Who needs church?
And what do they need it for?
Maybe Philip Larkin was right, 60 years ago, that church in its old form was “going,” that church-going itself was on the way out. But he was wrong that there’s “nothing going on” in church any more.