Called to Controversy (14 page)

As he and Ceil climbed up the front steps of the old red brick building, Moishe felt a sense of bewilderment. Ceil was carrying the baby, wondering a little anxiously how she would behave during the service. They were relieved when a man met them at the door to extend a welcome. Smiling at Lyn, the usher explained that the church had a nursery, and Ceil followed as he led the way.

That left Moishe standing alone in the lobby. The usher returned soon enough with Ceil and said, “Let's get a good seat for you.” Moishe thanked the man, silently noting that unlike the Orthodox synagogue, he could sit with his wife. Yet he wondered why or how a good seat had been reserved for them. In the Orthodox environment of Moishe's youth, the synagogue president held a discreet understanding of what each family could afford, and annual dues to support the synagogue were set accordingly. In return for these dues, the men of each family were assigned numbered seats. Higher dues meant seats closer to the front. The elders sat up front against the eastern wall in seats of honor. Less affluent men sat in the back of the sanctuary.

The usher led the couple out of the economy section and into what Moishe recognized as the first-class section of the church. Finally the usher motioned for the couple to be seated in the second row, handing each of them what Moishe assumed was a program. Moishe felt honored that the church would assign him and Ceil such special seats. “Now if there is anything I can do to help, let me know,” the usher concluded. Moishe thought how wonderful it was that the church could afford to hire ushers.

The program, which he later learned was called the bulletin, had several words that he didn't know:
invocation, prelude, doxology
, and
benediction.
Sometimes a few words were followed by a mysterious number: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God—347” or “Just as I Am—583.” Presumably, their meaning would become clear during the service. But when Moishe got toward the end of the bulletin, the words
Prepare for Communion next week
caught his attention.

Communion?
Moishe did not want to be unprepared. The organist had begun to play, and Moishe had no idea that this was to signal a time of quiet reflection. He looked back at the usher who had said to let him know if there was anything he could do to help—and made a beckoning gesture. The usher made his way down the aisle. Moishe pointed to the bulletin and asked, “This word, what does it mean?”

The usher whispered, “I'll tell you later,” and turned to leave.

Moishe grabbed his arm. “If I wanted to know later, I would have asked later.”
The insolence of this usher!
he thought.
Why do they pay a man to insult the worshippers?
Little did he realize that church ushers were volunteers, and that this usher taught part-time as a seminary professor.

The usher, somewhat taken aback by this response, nevertheless remained composed. He replied, “You know what Passover is, don't you?” Moishe nodded. The usher continued, “Well, Communion is for Christians what Passover is for Jews.”

Finally
, Moishe thought,
something I know about
—because he certainly knew all about Passover.
*
It was a family reunion where people got dressed up in their best clothes. There would be a big meal prepared especially for the holiday and (in his home) a little bit of a ceremony. There would be unleavened bread,
matzo
. And some fun songs and games. Communion sounded like it was going to be pretty good, but there was still the matter of preparing for it.

The usher had managed to slip away, but Moishe sought him out after the service. “This Communion, how much does it cost?”

The usher replied, “We don't charge for Communion. You can put something into the offering if you want.”

Moishe continued, “Well, should we bring anything?”

“No.”

Moishe couldn't think of anything else to ask about preparing for Communion. Probably it meant to bring a good appetite, or maybe it was a reminder to allow extra time for the event.

The following Sunday, Moishe arrived at the church with a healthy appetite and a sense of anticipation. Ceil headed straight for the nursery like an old pro. When she returned, Moishe led them to their seat, bypassing the usher. He'd noted the location carefully the previous week and assumed they would be expected to return to it whenever they attended.

He'd expected to be greeted with the savory aromas that signaled a Jewish holiday meal. But as he and Ceil approached their seats a shocking sight awaited him.

Down at the front was what he recognized to be a funeral bier. When a Jewish person from Moishe's synagogue died, the
chevra kedushim
(holy brethren) washed the body and left it covered with two shrouds. The dead were to be buried within twenty-four hours. Yet what Moishe saw at the church appeared to be something or someone prepared for burial. Under the white cloths, there was a lump where the head should be and a lump where the feet should be.

He thought,
This is terrible taste, to have a funeral and a meal in the same place
. But then, he didn't see any meal or any indication that there was to be a meal. As he kept thinking about the body at the front of the church, the idea of the meal grew less and less appealing.

The service seemed to go according to the previous week's routine. The congregation sang a few hymns (he now knew that the words and numbers in the bulletin were the hymns and pages on which they could be found), and the choir performed an anthem. Then the pastor, Donald MacDonald, spoke. His message was longer than most rabbis' homilies—about forty minutes—but Moishe didn't mind. MacDonald was an excellent teacher and preacher. Moishe appreciated the way he explained the background of the time and place pertinent to whatever Scripture passages he used in his sermons. He even took notes, soaking up information with characteristic interest and intensity.

Following the sermon, eight men dressed in black walked down the center aisle. Moishe later learned that they were the board of deacons, but they seemed to him more like the Trinity Baptist Drill Team; all their movements seemed coordinated. They arrived at the table where two deacons were deployed at each end, the others stood on the sides of the table, and the pastor was in the middle. With perfect precision, they grasped the ends of the shrouds.

Moishe's stomach lurched as he realized they were going to uncover the body. This was a sin and he felt he should not look—but curiosity overcame him. What he saw was a puzzlement: aluminum pots and pans. The pots had covers, each with a cross in the center. The pans were shallow, like plates. The pastor called on somebody to say a prayer over the bread, and one deacon prayed, thanking God for the bread that represented “the body of Jesus that was broken for us.”

They began passing the pans throughout the pews, and being so close to the front, Moishe was one of the first recipients. As a pan reached him, he saw that it contained matzo that had been broken into very small pieces. Finally, something that actually related to Passover! Moishe picked out a piece and ate it. Then he noticed that everyone else was holding his or hers, so he pretended to hold his matzo too.

The deacons returned to the front, and the pastor said, in a very solemn voice, “Take and eat.” Everybody ate a piece of matzo, and Moishe pretended to eat what he had already eaten.

Next the pastor asked someone to say a prayer over “the cup,” and another deacon prayed, thanking God for “the blood of Jesus that was shed for us.” Then they passed the big uncovered pots. Moishe knew that there wasn't going to be real blood; at Passover, the wine symbolized the blood of the lamb, just like the matzo symbolized its body. And sure enough they passed around cups of wine, except they were more like glass thimbles than cups. Moishe took one and this time, he held onto it. When everyone had been served, the pastor said, “Drink ye all of it,” and Moishe drank all two swallows of grape juice!

Then they sang a hymn about the tie that binds as the offering plates were passed. After that, people started filing out. Somewhat bewildered, Moishe went to his favorite usher. “Excuse me,” he said. “When will we be having Communion?”

The usher, equally bewildered, replied, “You've just had it.”

Moishe could feel his stomach rumbling as he nodded a polite acknowledgment. He thought,
They invite you to a Passover feast, they give you a crumb of matzo and a thimble full of grape juice, and then they have the nerve to make jokes about Jews being stingy
.
*

Despite the culture shock, Moishe dove into his new life of faith with zeal. This was not so much a sign of great spirituality. In large part he was so dazed and amazed by God's reality in his life that he couldn't stop thinking about it. Moishe later described being a new believer in Jesus as “a very heady experience.”

He had no family or friends who knew how to “do” Christianity, so for the first few years, Moishe was highly influenced by people and institutions who'd had a part in introducing him to Jesus. He learned by imitation as well as by instruction. He began each prayer, “Our dear gracious heavenly Father we come unto thee in prayer . . .” because that was how he heard other, more mature Christians pray. He also noticed that no one at church smoked cigarettes before or after the service. On inquiring about this, he was told, “The Scriptures say that one's body is the temple of God.” This was not a particularly compelling argument to Moishe at the time, but he decided he better quit anyway. It wasn't easy, because he had smoked heavily since he was sixteen, but he did quit—and put on forty pounds. Smoking had somewhat curbed Moishe's appetite, and without cigarettes he was hungry a great deal of the time. Moreover, as with most people, his interest in food went beyond satisfying hunger; he found pleasure in particularly good food. Ceil recalled, “He had been so skinny, he actually needed most of that weight.”

It wasn't that Moishe was enamored of Christian culture or eager to meet the expectations of his new mentors. Truthfully, Moishe often found Mrs. Wago irritatingly pushy with her Bible studies and her insistence that he and Ceil not only read but also memorize certain Scriptures. Still, he respected her and faithfully studied the Bible under her tutelage.

But there was more to this new life than acquiring information. Moishe recalled, “You have this impulse that you just want to tell people; you want to sing about what God has done. You don't always think through the order or the consequences of how you tell people.”

If there was one thing for which Moishe later felt remorse, it was that he'd told a great many people about his new beliefs before telling his immediate family. It was easy enough to blurt out to his cousins Donald and Dorothy, “Can you believe it? All this time, we've been wrong about Jesus. He really is the Messiah!” As far as his parents and brother, Moishe had every intention of telling them, but, as he recalled, “I was waiting for a good time to tell them about my faith, and I regret that they first found out about it from others.” By the time they did find out, about four months had passed, and Moishe and Ceil had already been baptized.
*

The family usually got together twice weekly, on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. When Moishe's brother telephoned one day to say that their father had requested that Moishe come over at a specified nonroutine time (Wednesday night), Moishe knew that something was up. He later explained that it was rare for his father to ask to see him and even rarer to be invited to talk in the living room. The living room was for insurance salesmen and other people who wanted to sell something. Moishe said,

I sat down, a bit tense, so my father broke the ice: “What's this I hear, that you've been telling people you believe in Jesus?” I couldn't have asked for a better icebreaker, so I stood up and took the family Bible off the shelf. It needed a good dusting. I sat down, but my father remained standing.

I began flipping through the pages, talking much too fast yet somehow unable to slow down: “Well, you see, Dad, over here it says that when the Messiah would come, he would be born in Bethlehem.” And then I was off, flipping to another passage, telling how it had been in our Bible all along and we'd missed it. Finally, looking somewhat bewildered, my father sat down.

Then his mother and brother joined them.

Moishe recalled,

My father was very patient. He didn't say anything as I rushed from one text to the next, sometimes fumbling to find the reference I wanted. Finally, I stopped, like a wind-up toy that had run down. At that point, my father reached over and closed the open Bible. He said, “This book has come between me and you, and until you can give it up, you can't be my son.”