By Revd Mark Ackford
Do you have a favourite pew or seat!
I often see it every Sunday when I look out across those in Church, familiar and loved faces who in most cases always sit in the same place, their favourite seat, their favourite pew. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with this and it has its uses especially for someone like me who is quite happy to putting his hand up as not being gifted at putting names to faces. As on those occasions when I would recognise the face but the name had escaped me would simply describe where they sat to those in the know in the church family and the reply would come back Oh that is Mr or Mrs X or Y!
Recently I came across this story related to this theme of a favourite church pew.
A father and son regularly attended a Sunday morning Communion service in a busy city church. Sitting in the same pew each Sunday it was their favourite pew, just like everyone else who also seemed to have their favourite pew in that church. Whenever the start of the Sunday service approached, everyone seemed to race to ‘their’ pew ready for the Welcome and Opening Hymn.
One Sunday they brought along an additional member of the family, son number two, who growing up had suffered from many demons, but suddenly decided he wanted to come to church with them that day. The father and first son raced into church to secure their usual favourite pew perhaps secretly fearful someone else might sit in their hallowed seats and when they got there noticed that the second son hadn’t entered the church with them. Confused and baffled as to where he had gone the father and the first son went outside to find him talking to a homeless man sat outside on the steps to the church.
In their rush to be righteous, both the father and first son had overlooked the homeless man at the door, whereas the second son, who had at one point in his life been homeless himself, saw a child of God and had stopped to talk to him, to show and offer this homeless man some of Christ’s love, care and kindness.
Today is Ash Wednesday and the Gospel lesson from Matthew 6.1-6,16-21 set for today tells us to act humbly, rather than boast of our righteousness. Matthew tells of Jesus speaking these words to his disciples: ‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven’. It is more than likely here that Jesus is referring to the Pharisees in the Synagogue showing off about how holy they were as being hypocrites. Upon reflection, perhaps that’s exactly what the father and the first son were doing in their rush to grab their favourite church pew.
I wonder how often we have walked past the homeless man or woman instead of being moved by Christ’s love, grace and compassion to stop and talk to them, for after all we are all children of God. As St John Chrysostom said, “If you can’t find Jesus in the homeless man at the door, you will never find him in the chalice.” So, this Lent, let us stay humble and live out Christ’s commandment to love God and love our neighbour.