Once I opened my eyes during a prayer in church
and saw a man named Jim picking his nose. I mean REALLY picking it. Digging deep
for whatever he was hoping to find there. As if she sensed something, his wife
opened her eyes and turned to look at him. I watched her face to see if she
would laugh or be disgusted. She did neither. She simply stared at him with no
expression. Occasionally her eyes would move to some other part of his face, his
chin or his hairline, as if she was trying to evaluate the whole man and not
just this one embarrassing part of him.
Good for her. Isn’t that what we all need and
hope for in a spouse?
Jim was blissful and unashamed, apparently
confident that he was in his own private world now that his eyes were shut. His
hand moved back and forth as he worked the angles.
Finally, satisfied that she had seen as much as
she needed to see and knew as much as she needed to know, his wife calmly closed
her eyes and went back to praying. Jim kept on picking until the prayer was
over. He popped his finger out of his nose quickly after the amen and gravely
evaluated the order of worship to see what sacred event was up next.
So okay, Jim’s wife knows some things about him
now, doesn’t she? She knows the energy he will put into this earthy little human
task, and she knows how easily he can forget the world and get lost in his own
private place. Hey, there are worse things you can know about a man.
You might think I’m crazy here, but maybe Jim
picking his nose was a kind of prayer in itself. God knows we pick our noses.
Sometimes you have to. Jesus mentioned coming to the Kingdom of Heaven like a
child. Well, Jim was about as child-like as anyone I’ve ever seen, at least
during that prayer.
This is church. Sure the high and mighty stuff
happens too. People’s lives are changed in an instant when a gospel truth
somehow penetrates the tough armor that we have forged for ourselves. People are
healed physically or emotionally and are forever changed. Others are not healed
and are forever puzzling and seeking and sad about that. The human
stuff happens here - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Church is a human
place. It is a place where humans get together, right in the middle of our
humanity, and look beyond ourselves in praise of whatever created this flesh we
carry so awkwardly.
Ironically, it’s not the presence of rank
humanity at church that causes problems. Jim picking his nose didn’t hurt
anyone. No, people mostly get hurt at church when we start pretending that we
can be more than human – that’s when the bad stuff starts happening.
Because we can’t.
rlp
