I think our natural tendency is train ourselves to see only the material, and not the spiritual. We pray for the cure of a suspicious “mass,” and when we’re told we do not have cancer we say, “Whew! That was a close one! I almost thought I had cancer. Turns out it was nothing but a shadow on an X-ray!” And in doing so, we implicitly deny the reality of the activity and power of the greatest Spirit, God Himself. Have you ever noticed how loath we often are to consider a spiritual explanation of things, but instead we cling to either purely materialistic (“there’s got to be a good, scientific explanation for this!”) or magical (“it’s a mystery—there’s no explanation!”). But the Bible teaches that there are spirits, not away out there sailing through the heavens, but here, on earth, among us at all times. There are good spirits, evil spirits, and one divine Spirit of God. The older I get, the more certain I am that we are far outnumbered, and incessantly surrounded by spiritual beings, even in church.
I was sitting in the front pew of our sanctuary, waiting for the service to start. We were about two minutes from things getting going, when my daughter Hannah sat down next to me and scooted in close to me.
She whispered, “Dad, there’s a tall guy in the back whose wearing a long white robe with a big beard. Who is he?”
“Where is he,” I asked.
“In the back of the church. What’s he doing here?”
“What do you mean, “What’s he doing here?” He’s in church.”
“Okay,” she said. “But why is he wearing the robe. He’s dressed like the Bible.”
“I don’t know. We get a lot of very interesting people here. Don’t sweat it.”
“Okay.”
The service started, and I forgot about our white-robed visitor, but afterwards I heard the story of his visit.
He had entered our church just a few minutes before the service, dressed in regular clothes, and then he disappeared for a few minutes and reemerged in his toga-cloak-prophetic garb, a long, flowing white robe, along with some sort of garment that partially covered his face. He went into an empty Sunday School room, where he sat, talking to himself. An usher gently suggested to him that he join the worship, as our safety policy is that we do not give people free reign of the empty rooms of our church during worship.
“I’m here to worship” he had snapped.
The gentlemen got up and walked into the back of the sanctuary, and sat down. He fussed and fidgeted for a few minutes, and then got up and stormed out the back of the church, tossing a bulletin in the air behind him. I heard the whole story only after the service.
Later, I thought more about this strangely costumed, angry visitor. What was he thinking? Why the costume, and why the costume change? What was he planning or hoping to do? I assume that as he had the forethought to pack his robe his actions were not completely spontaneous. I imagine that he was not interested in relating to people, as he chose to sit alone in an empty room. And yet, the costume argues that he was planning/hoping to be, in some sense, noticed. At best, he got what he came for and left satisfied. But the angry exit leads me to suspect that there was more on the agenda. There was perhaps a plan or desire that had been thwarted. I wonder if he had an underlying goal of disturbing the church, upsetting worship, perhaps intimidating people. Whatever the plan was, it was frustrated. I don’t think it was frustrated by a courteous usher questioning his actions—wear a white robe to church and you can expect to get noticed… He certainly wasn’t frustrated by me—I didn’t even see him in the church, and I don’t know at what particular point in the service he left. No one asked him to leave, or even questioned his 2nd century AD attire.
I believe that perhaps it was something unseen that led him to come to church that morning with his costume, and to get up and storm out of worship once he’d arrived there. Ministering in a close-in, packed, downtown environment, there is an endless parade of varying types of people who come through our doors, and often we are visited by people with very deep emotional-behavioral problems. I often wonder to what degree the mental and behavioral problems that plague our neighborhood are physiological conditions, and to what extent they are spiritual, even demonic. I believe the root of these problems, being unseen and immaterial, is often a spiritual phenomenon. The visitor’s spirit wasn’t comfortable in our church. It was in some way restrained or hindered from its intended expression, and so he left in a huff.
I recall that in the days of Jesus’ ministry, He often encountered demonic activity—even in the synagogues He taught in, of all places. Once He visited the synagogue in Nazareth, His hometown, and found a demon possessed man in the pews (i.e., Luke 4:31ff). The demon was tortured by the mere physical presence of God Himself. It hadn’t gone to synagogue that day expecting to find a stronger spirit; it had been carried to the service that day with the plan and intention of continuing a public ministry of misery and hopelessness, dramatized in the damaged life of the man it inhabited. Instead, on that day, it found a voice of authority commanding that it come out of its victim. And come out it did, without doing the man the slightest harm. The spirit left, the man stayed.
I’m grateful that whatever spiritual phenomenon was at work on Sunday, it was unable to disrupt or discourage the worship of our dear church. I’m intrigued by what might have been, and wish that the spirit alone would have left the building, and not the man with it.
downtownpastor