Locking the Church Doors

Blessed are those who throw the church doors open wide.  –Kathleen Norris

Last Sunday I headed to church in Girvan.  I remembered that it began at an unusually early hour, but I was still late, dawdling the morning away.  I kept dithering about whether to even go or not, as I well knew the doors would most likely be locked when I arrived 5-10 minutes late, depending on my walking pace.

Photo by Dennis Behm at Creative Commons

But I went.  And sure enough, the front doors were locked tight.  I could hear singing inside, so I knocked, hoping to be heard, but alas, I was not.

I went around back and found the door to the choir room and the youth room in the separate building both open, both empty.  I went into the choir room and sat down.  I went back around front and tried the door again, thinking that perhaps it was unlocked but heavy to open – wrong.  I went back to the choir room.  I thought about leaving.  I stayed, knowing that the children would come out after the children’s sermon for Sunday School and this was their only route of escape.

A few minutes later, the Beadle came out with the kids following and with his reassurance that all was well, I scooted in to a side pew and joined the worship.

But as I had wandered about trying to get in to the worship space, I was, as I always am, struck by how difficult it can be to actually get inside a church.

This time, however, I vacillate between Kathleen Norris’ benedictory command to fling the doors open wide and wondering whether it might not be better somehow to have to struggle to gain access.  But even as I ponder, that doesn’t feel right.

I am lucky enough to ‘belong’ in the sense that as a minister, church buildings are innately familiar territory to me – going in back doors might feel a bit intrusive, but I’ve no compunction, really, about doing it.  I’ll wander in the kitchens, stand in the pulpits, look under, over and around things as if I have a right to.  I think we all do, but familiarity of landscape makes it a lot easier for me.

Which brings me full circle in my ruminations that particular Sunday: I was wrong to be late.  But many of us come late to God’s party one way or another.  Now there may come a time when it is too late, as the parable of the bride’s maids suggests.  But that is for God, and not for the likes of me, to decide.

In the meantime, I feel blessed for all the church doors I’ve come across, those closed tight and those open wide; but I have to admit – I see the arms of God in the church more clearly when the doors are flung open into the morning sun.