Church & Soap

I’m interrupting my immigration stories with something important from today: 

On the way to church this morning, my friend called saying, “Sarah, I can’t make it to church this morning. I don’t have soap, so I won’t be clean, so I can’t come.” She doesn’t have a car, and even with one, she won’t have money to buy soap until next week. She felt stuck, and so she wasn’t going to come.

My first, immediate, gut response - and I’m sure yours too - was to declare, “We don’t care at all about soap! Come as you are!” Come without soap, come without pretense. Shower as best you can with what you have, and come right exactly as you are. You are welcome here, we want you here.

If there is any place in the entire world you should be welcome to come with your smell and your baggage and your stench - it should be church. If there is any place in the entire world you should be able to show up in your humanness and frailty and not-put-togetherness, it should be church.

We want YOU here too. Come as you are!