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“Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things…….Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” Romans 14:1 & 4

The Sunday after Christmas, the last Sunday of 2013, I went to church, and I coaxed my friends into going along with me. The previous Sunday’s worship had been “church” to me, complete with all the items that are supposed to be on the agenda: prayers, scriptures, sermon, Lord’s Prayer, communion, benediction. But this Sunday was different, and I knew it right away because nobody put a bulletin in my hand, and there were no hymns listed on the board at the front. (That’s right old timers- have one of those walnut boards with the slide-in numbers to list the hymns. And, because we have 1964 hymnals, we even sing big “Aaaaaaaa-mennnnnn’s” at the end of each hymn. Remember that?)

We started the service by singing “Amazing Grace,” a peculiar choice for Dec. 29 since the church bell tower had been playing Christmas hymns as we gathered for worship, but nevertheless, always a solid song for worship. That was the only hymn of the day.

Then Brother Gruff took over the service. It was to be an evangelistic service and Brother Gruff looked the part. Suit and Tie covering a stocky body. A lapel mic and Bible in hand, which he never opened but shook around a lot. A downward smile that made his face look constantly perturbed. But every now and then he would flash a quick smile and show off his teeth before letting his jowls sag again to reflect the seriousness of his message.

He was a Baptist, as you may have guessed, from a Baptist Temple in the area. Not a church- but a temple. And he gave us his brief testimony of alcoholism, divorces, nights in jail, and then getting saved. He was sincere. There was no doubt about that. He was part of his Temple’s prison outreach ministry, and told us all that we were welcome there when we were released. And I have no doubt that he meant it.

Then he started into his message, which focused on John 8 – the story of the woman caught in adultery. Verse 2 says that Jesus was in Jerusalem and was teaching in the Temple. Brother Gruff added, “to a group of people who had been saved, and baptized, and now were sitting at Jesus’ feet learning, like all saved and baptized Christians should do.” I wanted to call a timeout and question his soteriological anachromism, but he was moving fast because he only had an hour to preach, and “Amazing Grace” had taken up a good 4 or 5 Minutes.

Brother Gruff, who believed in the inerrancy of God’s word, said that when they brought the adulteress woman to Jesus, he stooped and wrote in the sand. And although the Bible does not say what Jesus wrote, Brother Gruff could fill in the blanks of God’s perfect word for us. Jesus wrote, “Where’s the man? The adulterer?” Then came a very good exhortation on how men make life hard for women, with references to pregnancy, child support, and stupid decisions that get us into prison, leaving our women out there to weep and fend for themselves.

He was rolling now, and he knew it. He could see people squirming. Two men got up and left. Brother Gruff moved onto, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And he said that if we stoned all the people caught in adultery or fornication……(I cringed. I thought he was going to say,”There’d be a lot less of both,” thus advocating death by stoning as a correction for bad morals. But that’s not where he went. Big sigh of relief!)……then most of us in this room would likely be dead and buried in the dirt.

This was his segue into sin and the penalty of death and hell that was meted out to all “mankind.” He was quoting scripture by chapter and verse, and never opening his Bible. I was, however, And I discovered that Brother Gruff was getting about 50% of his references wrong. Some were close, off by a verse or chapter number. Some were way off.

Then came John 8:11, where Jesus tells the woman that he does not condemn her, and to go and sin no more. And, you guessed, along came the message of God’s forgiving grace and mercy and offer of salvation and eternal life.

There were a couple of odd moments about what “Jesus said in Isaiah”, and why the King James Version is the only true word of God because the Dead Sea Scrolls prove it to be so. I again wanted to call a timeout and point out some problems with the KJV raised by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I also wanted to point out that John 8: 1-11 is probably not original to John’s Gospel, as most Bibles note. Some early versions of the New Testament even have this passage in the Gospel of Luke, But I figured that I’d probably get thrown into the hole for 30 days.

We ended with the altar call. But since that would mean people getting up and moving in a disorderly way, Brother Gruff simply asked people to stand and pray a sinner’s prayer with him. To let this be the day that they got saved.

I looked at the 3 friends I had asked to come to church. I wanted to tell them I was sorry that I had dragged them out for this. That this was nothing like it was last week. And then they stood up! Stood right up and bowed their heads and prayed the sinner’s prayer right along with Brother Gruff. So I bowed my head and prayed for my friends, that the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ would come into their lives and give them newness of life and hope for the future.

I had made a mistake. I had judged anothers’ servant. We are all out in the deep water, and I’ve been swimming around so long that I forgot that some of these guys are drowning, and have never learned to swim. The previous week’s service had been more for me. This one was more for them. I was humbled, and ashamed of my petty disection of Brother Gruff’s sharing of the good news. His message was not delivered in my idiom, but I had sat there nitpicking it into meaninglessness, while God had been working on the hearts of my friends.

It turns out that each of them had heard something different that moved them, proving once again that there is more at work in preaching than simply speaking words and hearing. Something – God, the Holy Spirit, convicting grace, had stirred a response in them. One signed up for a beginner’s Bible study class. All said they would be back again next Sunday.

I don’t pretend to know how God works. All I know is that I learned my lesson – that God works in mysterious ways. And also that there are many ways to express and share one’s faith. I am not advocating sloppy scripture citations, dogmatic statements that divide the body of believers, dictating one’s personal preferences for Bible translations, or adding to the Gospel stories in a definitive way, as though we were there firsthand. But I did learn that there may be more going on at the church ( or temple) around the corner than I was giving God credit for.