A Poem That Reminds Me of Church (Dialogue Column 4.8.08)

The Dialogue is the newsletter of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in St. Joseph, MO. Often, I'll post here on the blog my columns for the weekly newsletter. I mention it just so that folks who read the snail-mail version can skip this post if they've already read it.

I was going about my normal morning routine when I realized Garrison Keillor was preaching the Gospel. The brief daily radio program, The Writer’s Almanac, was on in the background, and I was only vaguely aware of his words about today being the anniversary of the WPA Writer’s Project’s beginning, the birthday of Seymour Hirsh and other stuff I should probably know more about. Then for some reason my ears perked up for the poem of the day, and that was when I heard the Gospel.

He read a poem by Matt Cook entitled The Waitresses, from his book Eavesdrop Soup.

The waitresses

At the restaurant
Have to keep reminding
The schizophrenic man
That if he keeps acting
Like a schizophrenic man
They'll have to ask him to leave the restaurant.
But he keeps forgetting that he's a schizophrenic man,
So they have to keep reminding him.

I don’t know a lot about poetry, and I have never heard of Matt Cook before, but his poem seems like a parable that the church needs to hear—the church in a universal sense and our church in a particular sense.

In the poem, the waitresses expect their customer, who has a mental illness, to act like a good customer—or at least what they understand a good customer to be. Yet, the man in question cannot help but be anything other than a man with a mental illness. Those whose job it is to serve have decided that only certain people—people that meet their expectations—are worthy of service. Do you see where I am going here?

How often do churches, including our own, preach and teach the hospitality and grace of Jesus while they practice a form of warped Christianity that only welcomes people like themselves? Our culture is filled with people who are not welcome at church; the list includes people like the man in the poem who suffer from mental illness, people who struggle with addictions, people who have made past mistakes, people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered, people who hold unpopular political views, people who ask too many questions, people who are poor, people who are homeless, people who speak a different language—the list goes on and on and on.

I believe that First Christian does a better job than most churches of welcoming new people of all different kinds, yet our standard cannot be what other churches are or are not doing. Our standard must always be Christ who welcomed all to his table even though his fellow diners were far from perfect. We must continue to struggle with our own prejudices if we seek to be the community of faith that Christ intended us to be. Such a struggle involves change—which is often frightening—but oftentimes the most difficult changes we make are the best ones.

I am proud of the welcome that First Christian offers to those who enter our doors, but I also believe that God is far from finished when it comes to stretching us and making us into a community that offers the grace and acceptance of Christ.

Grace and Peace,


Chase