Cigarette smoke wafted the air and was visible through the windows approaching the basement entrance. Our members bitterly complain about the cigarette butts inevitably littering the lawn and walkways after our nocturnal guests’ visits during the week. Coffee stains, sugar residue, disarranged furniture, and minor theft are constantly brought to the attention of the management council. I opened the door to enter and observe their meetings for a week - ostensively to determine if it was worth the increasingly difficult and divisive effort required defending their continued use of our facilities.
From the back I noted that the small group of guests this night numbered 25-30. After some introductions and organizational announcements the members began to go from person to person relating in thirty second outbursts ranging to five minute monologues on what was ‘eating’ them. Foul language was common, even from the more sophisticated and astute of their party. Being licensed by the state I noticed that several misdemeanors and a few felonies were discussed.
“One young lady began falteringly to discuss her problems and she disclosed she was a prostitute “…in wretched straits, homeless, sick, and unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears she told she had been renting out her daughter – two years old! – to men interested in kinky sex. She made more in renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it – she had to support her own drug habit.”
Barely maintaining composure from hearing the sordid details; what to do? Alert the state child and family services department? Get her name and address – identify her to the police? Take the child! What would happen next?
The group members began to counsel her with patient concern. They told her that under no circumstances could this continue – that she was sick and needed help. Several suggestions of state support centers were given, people gave her their names and telephone numbers and agreed to take her food and give her transportation to counseling.
Upsetting my sensibilities I realized the people in the room actually
identified with the woman.
That’s when I asked her if she had ever
thought about going upstairs and asking those in the Church for help?” A look of pure, naïve shock crossed her face. “Church!” she cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”
Suddenly a wave of realization passed over me. Gone was the question of whether our messy Alcoholics Anonymous guests should be allowed to continue their weekly visits. In its place was the soul clearing question of where Jesus would be –
upstairs in the pews or downstairs in the smoke?
Excerpted from Philip Yancey’s books “The Jesus I Never Knew” and “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”
