Waiting rooms all over the world are the same. Those uncomfortable plastic chairs; dog-eared magazines piled on the table; information leaflets displayed in racks along the walls, looking like no-one’s touched them in years. This one was no different.
The venetian blinds were almost closed, but the glare of a perpetual noon still filtered through from outside, sending dust-speckled shafts of light into the room.
The occupants busied themselves with little nothings. A slight, elderly lady toyed with the strap of her bag; a heavy-set young man with a sleeveless denim jacket took bored interest in the posters around the room; and a somewhat older man, tanned of face and with thinning grey hair, sat with arms folded, and the kind of preoccupied smile people wear when they’re in company and waiting for something important to happen.
A buzz and a flashing light on the secretary’s desk punctuated the stillness. He lifted the receiver and nodded, before saying “James Chandler? You can go through now. It’s the door on your left”.
The older man nodded and smiled as he got to his feet, buttoning his jacket before making his way across the room to the scruffy panelled door, showing traces of turquoise beneath its present brown façade.
Before he was even half-way through it, he noticed the sudden change of atmosphere. The mild claustrophobia of the waiting room had given way to an airy lightness that seemed somehow familiar. Looking around, he realised why that was. The fountain; the bespoke furniture; the polished granite floors and tastefully arranged plants; this was just like the foyer of the church he went to in New York. Exactly like it, in every aspect but one.
In the middle, by the fountain, stood a tall woman, lithe and beautiful, and dressed in robes of purple and white. On her dark head she wore a crown of silver, or white gold, mounted with jewels of every colour.
She smiled her welcome and indicated a leather chair beside her. “Please sit down, Mister Chandler. I hope you don’t mind our little ways. We want you to feel at home here today”.
“No, no – this is great. It’s remarkable!”, beamed Chandler, taking his seat while looking around the room with bemused incredulity.
The lady sat down opposite him in a similar chair and took a businesslike, if not unfriendly tone “As you’ll understand, there are a few procedures we need to go through before we can progress with your repatriation”.
“Sure”, said Chandler, leaning forward. “Ask me anything you like. Anything at all. You can even hook me up to a lie-detector if you think that’d help” he joked.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mr Chandler” she said, humouring him. “After all, this is heaven; and I am an angel. There’s not much chance of avoiding the truth here…..”
“I guess not” said Chandler, the smile still present, but a little less certain than before.
“So how do things work here? Do I have to pass a test or something?”
“Well, yes and no” said the angel. “Not the kind of test you’re thinking about, like those multiple choice exams you had to sit in Secondary School. It’s more of a conversation, but a conversation that starts with a question. Would you like to hear it?”
“Do I have a choice?” said Chandler
The angel shook her head, almost imperceptibly, and then leaned forward and looked directly into his eyes for the first time. Her gaze was both beautiful and terrifying, like staring into the unfathomable depths of the night sky. Chandler felt as though his soul had been stripped of all pretence.
“You were given one command to obey during your lifetime, Mr Chandler. “Follow me”. How well do you think you’ve obeyed that command?
Chandler sat back in his chair, the smile replaced with a frown of concentration.
“I guess I’ve always been a follower of Jesus” he offered, choosing his words carefully. “I was baptised into the church, raised in the church, and I’ve given the best years of my life to serving the church as a member and then an elder”.
The angel made no move to affirm or deny any of this. “Go on” she said.
“I’ve been faithful in all my duties” he said, warming to his task. “I’ve tried to live a good life and be kind to people. I’ve been a regular attender since I was in my teens. I’ve visited the people under my care as often as I could. I don’t know what more I could have done to be a follower of Jesus”.
The angel gave a slight nod and said, not unsympathetically, “No-one’s questioning your commitment to the church, Mr Chandler. But I’m asking about something rather different. I’m asking about your commitment to Christ."
"You and I could go for a walk outside these walls today and I could show you any number of people who have been fanatically devoted to the church, but wouldn’t know the Spirit of Jesus Christ from the Ghost of Christmas Past. They tend to be the ones who start wars and organise inquisitions."
"And there are many good and kind people in the world who don’t believe in God at all, or are trying to follow him in a different way. We’re commanded to be good and kind to others, that’s true; but that’s only one facet of what God asks of us. And the words he spoke to you weren’t 'Be Good': they were ‘Follow Me’".
“I’m sorry”, said Chandler, looking puzzled. “I don’t get this. I thought that doing my duty for the church and trying to be a good person was all there was to it…?”
“Yes I know” sighed the angel. “That’s the problem. It should all have been so different”.
With that, she pulled a remote control from the folds of her robe and pointed to one of the flat screen televisions mounted on the wall.
“Take a look at this, she said”. The screen flickered to life, showing a picture of a lake shimmering in the morning light. A young man walks beside it, stopping every now and again to pick up a choice shell or stone. Out on the water, some fishermen are plying their trade, throwing their nets into the water. He shouts to them and seems to be recognised. And then – the strangest thing – he asks them to leave their nets and follow him, and they do exactly what he said, almost without hesitation.
“You have to understand, that wasn’t the first time they met him” said the angel, turning to Chandler. “They were followers of John the Baptist, and they got to know Jesus not long after he got baptised himself. I think they’d been building up to this moment for a while. You know who they are?”
“Yes, of course. Those were the first disciples. Peter and Andrew and then James and John”.
“I’m glad you used that word ‘disciples’ Mr Chandler. That’s one of the words we need to be talking about today. What’s a disciple?”
“Well, I guess it’s someone who’s trying to follow Jesus”
“And what would that have meant for Peter and Andrew and James and John?”
“Well they’d have left their nets and their fishing business behind, and even some of their relatives. James and John had to leave their father with the hired men and we know from elsewhere that Peter was married”.
“And did they know where they were going to?”
“No. I don’t think they had a clue about that. They probably didn’t know where they were going from day to day, let alone where all of this was going to end. It wasn’t all mapped out. They took each day as it came and learned from it as they watched Jesus going about his ministry.”
“And what do you think they learned from watching Jesus?”
There was a long pause as Chandler reflected on that question.
“They learned that God is here with us, at work in the world in ways we can’t even see. They learned that when you stay close to God in prayer you find strength to face whatever your day brings; but more than that, you begin to see opportunities that would otherwise have passed you by.”
“Opportunities for what?” said the angel.
Again, Chandler thought hard before speaking.
“Opportunities to help people move a little closer to God. Times when you say something that gets them thinking, or do something that makes them think well, not of you, but of the God you serve.”
The angel nodded. “That’s right. Do you remember what Christ promised as he asked these four men to follow him? He promised to make them….”
“…fishers of men” they said together, and Chandler smiled as he remembered the chorus he’d sung about that in Sunday School.
“So, did you do much fishing in this busy church life of yours?” she asked, catching his eye with the same penetrating gaze.
“I guess not” said Chandler, looking away. “Somewhere along the line we got so preoccupied with running the church that we forgot that that’s why the church exists in the first place.”
“Exactly” said the angel. “The church is busy with a thousand things, but rarely the things that really matter. Ministers run themselves ragged trying to fulfil everyone’s expectations, when they should be doing less, praying more and grounding themselves in Christ’s expectations.
Church leaders work themselves into the ground to keep all the different aspects of the institution going, but they never have time to stop and ask whether these are the right things for the institution to be doing.
Faithful members come along on Sundays, but how many follow Jesus into a life of prayer and committed action during the rest of the week, while many others, calling themselves members, might as well not be, for all that they contribute to the life of the church”.
“Following Jesus. You make it sound so easy” Chandler said, with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Maybe part of the reason we substitute running the church for being disciples is that it’s hard to follow someone you can’t see or hear!”
“I don’t doubt that’s true” said the angel. “But is it so very different for you than it was for those first disciples? Listen to what you said just a few moments ago.”
Again, she fished out the remote control, and on the screen Chandler saw an image of himself talking to the angel in this very room:
“What do you think they learned from watching Jesus?” she was asking
“They learned that God is here with us, at work in the world in ways we can’t even see. They learned that when you stay close to God in prayer you find strength to face whatever your day brings; but more than that, you begin to see opportunities that would otherwise have passed you by.”
She pressed pause.
“So what is there in that description that you couldn’t do?
Ok – you can’t see Jesus. But don’t you remember his promise to send his Spirit into your life to be your Counsellor and Guide? Hasn’t he given you his word to guide you, and an open door into the Father’s presence when it comes to prayer?
You had everything you needed, Mr Chandler. Everything. But you chose not to use it. You settled for less than discipleship because it was easier and less personally demanding. You settled for a cosy, shallow life in the church, when Christ was calling you to the risks and adventures of faith."
Once more she pressed the remote control, and images from Chandler’s life played across the screen. Images not of things that had been, but things that might have been if he’d approached his faith in a different way. Relationships that could have been deeper; experiences that could have been richer. Wonderful surprises and blessings that would have made his heart swell with joy and thankfulness if only he’d known them.
Beside what could have been, the life he’d lived seemed like a drab watercolour and as he watched, his head sank lower and lower with the weight of missed opportunities.
A hand touched his shoulder gently, and he looked up to see his wife and two sons smiling kindly at him. Through a door came several neighbours, and then some friends from work. There were folk from the church there, greeting him with a wave; people from his student days; people he’d met on holiday, children he’d taught in Sunday School; all filing into the room and standing behind him as he looked on, open mouthed.
And all the while the angel sat there, watching, until the last one took her place, and a pregnant silence filled the room.
Rising from her chair, the angel spoke for the final time, and there was a determined resolution in her voice.
“Mr Chandler, we follow a God who can make wine, even out of the poor water that we offer him. A God who can feed a multitude with the scant rations in a schoolboy’s backpack. He has taken what you’ve offered him, even in weakness and ignorance, and made something worthy of it. This is your catch. These are the people you brought closer to God throughout your lifetime.”
And in unison they surrounded him; patting him on the back, hugging him, blessing him and thanking him for what he’d been able to do for them.
And then, at the last, silence descended once more and a solitary figure no-one had noticed made his way across the room. He held Chandler by the shoulders for a moment so he could look him full in the face and then embraced him with nail-torn hands.
And as they stood there for those precious moments, Chandler swore that he heard someone speaking, though he couldn’t say whether the voice was in his ear, or mind, or heart, or Spirit. But the words were clear enough, and he never forgot them.
“It’s time James” the voice said. “Come, and follow me”.
