by Johnny Zokovitch
This past weekend, a visiting priest at my church offered a poignant story. He shared that as he was traveling to St. Louis (wearing his collar so visibly a priest), a man came up to him in the airport and wanted to tell him the story of why he no longer goes to church.
The man started by explaining that he was in church one Sunday, worshiping with his wife. The pastor was delivering his homily passionately when, all of the sudden, the man’s phone began to ring. He had forgotten to turn off the ringer and the volume was quite loud, so the ringing echoed throughout the church.
As he fumbled in his pockets trying to silence his phone, the pastor stopped preaching and glared at the man. He was furious. He singled the man out and ridiculed him from the pulpit. Others in the congregation turned to stare at him with contempt. The man felt thoroughly embarrassed.
As he left the church, no one approached him. His wife followed him sheepishly to the car and then also began berating him for his stupidity. When he got home, he received several calls from “friends” of his who went to the same church, mocking him after hearing of his mistake at the Mass following the one he had attended.
By the end of the day, the man had had enough and walked out his door and to a bar. At the bar, he ordered a drink. The bartender set his drink down in front of him, and the man, misjudging his grip on the glass, dropped it, spilling the drink all over the floor and sending shards of glass flying everywhere. He recoiled at his own clumsiness.
Immediately a waiter came running over to clean up the mess, telling the man, “Don’t worry, accidents happen! I’ll get it taken care of.” The bartender gently handed him a dry cloth to wipe himself off where the drink had splashed onto his clothing. The bar’s manager ran over to make sure he was okay, telling him not to worry about it and that he’d get the man another drink on the house.
All treated him kindly, in stark contrast to how he had been treated for his mistake at church.
The man finished his story and said to this priest: “It was at that moment that I decided to never go to church ever again. But I’ve been going to the bar every day since.”
After a few laughs, the priest shared the point of the story. He shared that few, if any people, reject Christ. What they reject are the Christians who purport to follow him.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this story and its telling in the wake of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America.
In most cases, it is Christians who are arresting, detaining and making the decision to deport immigrants.
Christianity is deeply intertwined with the white nationalist movement in this country, with crosses adorning the skin or around the necks of many of its adherents and its scriptures being quoted by its leaders.
Leaders throughout the current administration proudly trumpet their Christian bona fides even as they cut aid to the poor – in this country and throughout the world, support and even celebrate genocide, and summarily execute people without any due process.
Billionaire churchgoers file into their pews each Sunday even as they pay their employees less than a living wage, profit off of practices that are devastating to the climate, and funnel weapons used to kill women and children around the globe.
In a piece entitled, “How Would a Christian Celebrate the Fourth of July?”, Episcopal priest Adam Bucko wrote of what Howard Thurman, the godfather of the modern civil rights movement, implored Christians in the US to remember:
“Howard Thurman reminds us that Jesus belonged to a people whose backs were against the wall. The religion of Jesus emerged not from the center of power but among people living under occupation, humiliation, and fear. If we wish to follow Jesus, we must learn to see history from where he stood, from the perspective of those on the margins, those who have been forgotten, excluded, silenced, or crushed by the powers of this world.”
And indeed, for every Christian in this nation detaining an immigrant, there is a Christian protesting the policies that led to that detainment. For every white Christian nationalist there is a Christian working to dismantle racism. For every Christian celebrating the bombing of Iran there is a Christian teaching the way of nonviolence. And for every billionaire Christian making bank off a system that is unjust and cruel, thousands of Christians are staffing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, organizing unions, and working for a world where human needs have priority over the bottom line.
There is a Christianity which rightly should be rejected in this country. Like the Christianity of contempt and disdain that the man in the story above encountered from his fellow Christians.
And then there is a Christianity that more closely resembles the bar, a Christianity steeped in compassion, kindness, solidarity.
“Every nation has its flag, but Christians have a Cross. The flag tells the story a nation hopes to tell about itself. But the Cross tells the truth that every nation needs to hear,” Bucko writes.
“It reveals what happens whenever societies organize themselves around power instead of love. It reminds us that God is always found first among the crucified of history, among the enslaved, Indigenous peoples whose lands were taken, immigrants treated as disposable, workers exploited for profit, prisoners forgotten behind walls, refugees, the poor, and all those whom Howard Thurman described as having their backs against the wall.
“Whenever the Cross and the flag stand in tension, Christians know where they must stand.”
At least Christians who really understand Jesus.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.