July 12, 2010
Stranger Testing
A few weeks back an older couple came into church just as the worship service was about to begin. They appeared to be visitors so I gave them a quick welcome while showing them different areas of seating that were available. With a curt, “We were here one other time and all the seats were being saved for others.” the woman forged ahead and found a place to sit. God does have a sense of humor. It just happened to be the 4th of July and our attendance was down by about 20 people, which gave her more seats to choose from. After the service I learned that last year when this couple visited us the woman’s critique was that we were, ‘the most unfriendly church she’d ever attended’. At first blush I wondered why they bothered to come back and then I thought about the strangers that we sometimes encounter. Maybe this is a test! “Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Heb 13:1-2 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Sorting through the scant evidence we have on this situation, I rather doubt your church failed at entertaining angels without knowing it. I have a particular problem with seat saving. If someone needs to use a restroom or get a cup of coffee, or something of that nature, it is maybe reasonable. But often a person merely wants a certain seat without desiring to actually be in it. That is quite different. Common courtesies look both ways. It is as courteous to occupy the seat you want as it is to understand someone may be soon returning to the empty seat you have chosen. Encountering a few reserved seats I would think is reasonable, but finding that most of the empty seats are being saved would indicate to me the particular group of regulars has lost its sense of balance in the flow courtesies, unless the room was predominantly full and all of the empty seats remaining were only a few.
-----Although your visitor’s attitude toward the saved seats may have had its propriety, making the curt comment regarding the former time while now being amongst many available seats strikes me as simple needling. One must exert considerable effort to be either the most or the least in any spectrum. Therefore, I am sensitive to superlative terms. When I hear them I consider both the situation being evaluated and the one making the evaluation. But I am more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the one being evaluated, because it is far more difficult for him to reach the end of the spectrum than it is for the evaluator to state that he has. In fact, it is rather easy and common to make such a statement. Therefore, I doubt the veracity of her categorization of your church as the most unfriendly she had ever attended, unless indeed she had attended only a few. But maybe she was an inexperienced angel.
-----”Outdo one another in showing honor,” (Rom 12:10b) was amongst the easiest scriptures for me to memorize. And not because it is so short. “Jesus wept,” has that honor. But because it is so reasonable, so fitting, and so natural to the character of the new life. It just makes sense. If everyone makes real effort to honor everyone else, and visa-versa, the bumps and corners of life begin disappearing. We are training in the character of the new life, but angels have been living it in perfection for eons. I would be a bit surprised to have relocated to heaven after my demise and find such curtness and needling amongst His angels. I understand their need to deliver pointed statements where pointed statements are due. And the scripture shows them so doing. But the scripture also reveals a certain flavor of honor in their speech instead of an hinting odor of complaint. If these strangers were a test for your church, I feel I would be safer in guessing they were a test for you to keep on loving one another as brothers than they were a test for your entertainment of angels.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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