The Kingdom and Awkward Turtle

Today at Rising Hope I was having a pleasant conversation about football over lunch. Yes, it was off season--the woman across the table from me was wearing a Redskins shirt--and no, it didn't involve much actual knowledge of the sport. We were having this conversation when a woman with long brown hair and a slightly vacant expression sat down and introduced herself as K. She opened her Bible on the table and told us she wanted to share some things from Luke.

Oh God, I thought. The woman in the Redskins shirt, who seemed to know K, rolled her eyes at me from across the table. I was careful not to return the look.

K began reading about earthquakes and persecutions. And then she kept reading. And then she kept reading some more. Gradually almost everyone at the table left while I listened politely, feeling a little trapped.

Finally I found a breaking point and said--a little desperately--"K, what does this mean to you?"

She stared at me for a second, surprised, and then said, "I can hear the earthquakes. I can hear the persecutions." I wasn't sure quite how literally she meant that, but wasn't about to ask.

Not really knowing what to say, I ventured, "I think this passage is about how hard it is to follow Christ, and about the challenges we'll face, but how God is with us through that."

K stared at me again and then repeated, "I can hear the earthquakes..."

I waited for her to finish, thanked her for sharing, and then excused myself to go back to the office. "You told her what she wanted to hear," said the woman in the Redskins shirt as I walked past her. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.

I've often found myself in that kind of situation at Rising Hope and other places--listening to someone who's mentally unstable or just not quite with it--and not knowing what to say. I really want to know what to say. Or at least how to listen. I want to know how to take people seriously as people without always being able to take what they say seriously. I want to know how to love people without getting stuck in an endless stream of doomsday prophecies. Of course, there probably aren't any right answers, and most people probably don't know what to do any better than I do, but I do wish I knew some way to make those encounters less wrenchingly awkward.

But when I think about it--usually after the fact, but on better days during, too--I remind myself that I'm thankful for those awkward and uncomfortable encounters, too. Partially because it's good experience for me to get used to them and learn different approaches. But mostly because I am honestly thankful that K has a community where she can come and hang out, doomsday prophecies and questionable mental health and all, and I'm glad to be a part of that community.

A few years ago at Trinity I remember thinking something similar, when a probably-homeless woman got up during Joys and Concerns, walked to the front of the church, and began singing a song she appeared to be making up on the spot. Kathy, up front, had an expression that clearly said, "What on earth is going on?" No one knew what to do. We all listened politely. That was awkward enough, so imagine the awkward-turtle moment next week when the exact same thing happened again. And I thought--as uncomfortable as the whole thing was--how glad I was to go to a church where that kind of thing happened, because that woman could come in.

I fear--and laugh at--the thought of things like that happening in my own ministry down the road. But I hope those things do happen. I hope they happen all the time. Otherwise I'll have to wonder why the people who create those moments aren't around. I don't think the Kingdom would be the Kingdom without those painful-at-the-time, funny-in-retrospect, awkward, uncomfortable moments.