Hungry Hearts

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. — Simone Weil

“I wish the church could be more like an AA meeting.” The statement came from a friend and colleague over lunch last week as we were both kind of bracing ourselves for annual meetings in our denomination. It was followed by a sigh.  The sentiment is not exactly a new one, but it’s no less important for its familiarity. It’s an expression of longing for the kind of vulnerability, honesty, community, and deep existential need that one often finds in twelve-step programs. And which is sometimes lacking in more institutional settings.

The meetings were, well, meetings. A few good and inspirational moments. The necessary business. Some studious avoidance of important issues. A few nervous eyes cast at deficit budgets and shrinking churches. Warm gestures of community and fellowship. It was not unlike the many conferences that I have attended over nearly two decades of pastoring. But that conversation kept popping back into my brain. I wish the church could be more… well, I don’t know, “urgent?” “Existentially relevant?” “Alive to the good news of the gospel and its claims upon our lives?”

It’s almost certainly apples to oranges, I know. AA meetings are not church denominational meetings. Different goals, different callings, different kinds of things. Yeah, I know. But I can’t shake this feeling that the institutional church can and should feel somehow more vital than it often does. At the very least it should maybe feel more like an AA meeting than a diversity seminar. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way.

I got home from my meetings, and it was straight off to the jail Monday morning. My first meeting was to visit a guy who had just learned that his mom had died. He was a sobbing, convulsing wreck, brought low by grief, guilt, helplessness and pain. His mom had been his rock amid a hard life. He thought he might get out in time to see her again. He couldn’t believe how fast the cancer had spread; she was so young. She’s with God, right? She’ll be ok? I gotta believe she’ll be ok. I awkwardly put my arm around him. The tears and snot ran like little rivulets of sorrow down his chin on to the floor. We prayed, “Lord Jesus, you promised that one day you would wipe away every tear and dry every eye…” He crossed himself as we said amen, as the tears continued to fall.

The second meeting was a young woman who was scared she might be losing her faith. She wanted to believe so desperately, but she didn’t know if she could anymore. She been kidnapped, raped, treated like a piece of meat. Where was God when this was happening to me? Why didn’t he stop it? Christ have mercy. We talked about freedom, about a God who suffers, about how none of us are defined by the worst things we’ve done or the worst things that have been done to us. We talked healing and redemption. And the God who promises to wipe away every tear. We talked about the nice tidy answers that elude us this side of eternity. And we prayed for hope, for God to show himself to this poor young woman who had suffered so much.

My third stop was a guy I had met before. Rough looking customer, gang history, time spent in Satanism (and the ink to prove it). A history of casual violence. But he was turning the page, he said. Wanted to make a new start. Another not-exactly-new sentiment no less important for its familiarity. He’d been doing some bible classes with his cellmate, he said, and he was wondering if I could help him. I knew from my previous encounter with him that he was basically illiterate and needed to get help for any task involving reading or writing. “Sure,” I said. “What do you need help with?” He pointed to the study questions at the end of the first chapter. “Can you read those for me?”

There were two questions. The first one was, “What does the story of the Lost Son tell you about what God is like?” I read it to him and looked up. “So, what do you think?” I assumed he had read the story with his cellmate. He looked at me blankly. “I’ve never heard that story. I guess I can’t answer the question.” I looked at my watch and thought about the stack of papers waiting on my desk. “Well, do you want me to read it to you? I’d be glad to do it. It’s my favourite story in the whole bible.” He grinned. “Sure, man.”

He handed over his ratty old red bible. A bible that he could not read but carried around with him in the event that someone else might be persuaded to read to him. I opened it to Luke 15 and read the story of a guy who blunders off to the far edges of ruin, who comes crawling back for scraps only to be dragged into a party thrown in his honour. The story of a father who lingers by the gate, scanning the horizon for the son who scorned him. The story of a love that, to quote Francis Spufford, “never shudders at the state we’re in.”

He sat quietly throughout the story. At the end, an impish little grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “So, what do you make of that question?” I asked him. “What does the story tell us about what God is like?” His smile grew broader even though I had caught him glancing regularly at the door where the guards were preparing for lockup. “Well, I guess it means that there’s always a way home, that with God there’s always a second chance.”

As he walked back to his cell, I just shook my head incredulously and whispered a prayer of gratitude to God. Suffice to say I did not wake up that morning thinking I’d be dealing with tears and snot, with deep pain and holy longing. I certainly didn’t imagine that I’d be reading the story of the lost son with a former Satanist. Thank God for souls that remain hungry. Thank God for spaces and places and opportunities to make contact with our deepest need.

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The image above is taken from the 2023-24 Salt of the Earth Christian Seasons Calendar. It’s the image chosen for the season of Lent, and is called “Conviction of the Spirit.” The artist is Maryann Leake.