A familiar stranger

We were just about to enter the sanctuary with the paschal light when the pastor carrying the Christ candle turned around and said in a stage whisper, “Aaron is here.” At first I thought he’d said, “Karen is here,” which I already knew—she came to church on Easter even though her mother had died two days before. I must have had a weird look on my face because he said again, “Aaron is here.” And I knew that our second Easter service of the day would now be up for grabs.

Aaron is a familiar stranger around our church, a man who is in his forties, maybe, who struggles with addiction and schizophrenia and homelessness. He shows up now and then during the week, sometimes on Sundays, and then we don’t see him for months, or even a year, and then he makes his way back to us.

So as I processed in behind the acolytes, my brain started going into overdrive. Some of our regular folks would want us to invite him to leave. Some of our regular folks would insist that he stay. Who knows what the Chreasters or the first-timers would think. During the passing of the peace, he moved from the side transept to the front row. He had plucked a big daffodil from somewhere, and it was pinned to his big winter coat.