There is a look I have seen in sanctuaries for a long time. Someone walks in on a Sunday morning and starts counting. Checking the chairs. Tracking who is not there anymore. They are not trying to do it. They just do.
I have been on both sides of that look. In the pew. At the front. And underneath the counting, underneath the scanning, there is always the same question. People do not say it out loud because they would feel strange saying it out loud.
Has God moved on from this place?
I have asked it too. I asked it in a psychiatrist's office after my farm started failing. I asked it in a camper parked in my parents' backyard. I asked it in the parking lot of a church I used to lead before I could bring myself to go back inside.
Here is what I did not understand then: the question is the wrong question. It is built on an assumption that God moves on — that grace runs out, that there is a window and then the window closes. I do not find that God in scripture. I find a God who is already in the room before you get there, who has been waiting in the counting and the scanning, who is present in the fact that you even noticed the empty chairs.
The text from John 12 says a grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die before it bears fruit. Jesus is not talking about church growth. He is talking about the thing that has to happen inside a person — or a congregation — before new life becomes possible. The seed does not try harder. The seed falls. The seed lets the process happen to it.
What would it mean to stop gripping? Not to give up. To stop gripping.
I have watched people come back to a room after a long time away. They walk in the side door during the opening song. They sit near the back. They do not make eye contact with anyone who might ask them to explain where they have been. They are showing up anyway, which is the bravest thing.
If that is you, I want you to know: the bravest thing in this room is not the sermon. It is not the music. It is the person who came back when they were not sure God would still recognize them.
God recognized you. You just have not gotten to that part yet.
The seed falls. Then something else entirely takes over. That is the promise — not that we hold on, but that we are held.
This piece is adapted from a longer essay at Southern Legends.
Read the full essay →
Matt Headley
Founding pastor of Ecclesia Community. Ordained United Methodist. Flower farmer. Builder. I walk with a limp. That is why I can walk with you.
We discuss pieces like this in the Ecclesia community every Tuesday morning.