The Pew I Stopped Sitting In

She sat in the same place for twenty two years. Fourth row, left hand side, on the aisle, because of her hip.

Now she sits at the back on the right, and she tells anybody who asks that she likes to see the whole room, which is true, and which is not why.

The money was for his daughter's course. It came up after a service, standing by the noticeboard, and it was one of those conversations where the asking is not quite the asking, and she heard herself offer before she had thought about it. She had it. She has never had much but she had that, because of the way she has lived, which is carefully, for a very long time.

That was six years ago in the spring. Nothing has been said since.

He is a good man. She would say that. He does the sound desk and he cuts the grass round the back and he stood with her family through the worst week of her life. Whatever happened, and something clearly happened, she does not think it was ever deliberate.

But in the fourth row, on the aisle, she was two seats behind him, and she found that she could not stop looking at the back of his head. Every hymn. Every announcement. The back of a good man's head and a number sitting between them that only one of them can see.

So one Sunday she came in early and went to the back and put her bag down on the right hand side, and nobody said anything, because in a church that size everybody notices and nobody says anything.

And here is the part that costs. She has not sung properly since. She makes the shapes. She knows every one of those hymns by heart and has done since her mother taught them to her. But the thing that used to happen in her chest on the third verse does not happen back here, and she has begun to wonder whether it is her age, and she knows perfectly well it is not her age.

You know that bench. Yours might be a shift you swapped so you would not have to work with somebody. It might be a family gathering you now leave early. There is somewhere you used to stand freely and you have moved, quietly, and everybody thinks it is preference, and the cost of it is not obvious to a single soul but you.

Come and sit down here on the end. There is one old line I want to read you, and it is not about money at all.

There is no code, and there is a law about the lender

Let me say it plain first, because the name over this door promises a secret and I am not going to leave a good woman sitting here waiting on one.

There is no code. Nothing in Scripture makes a man pay back what he has not paid back, and nothing I am about to say is a way of nudging him into it. If letting go were a lever for getting money, it would not be letting go, it would be waiting with a smile on it, and God has never once done business with anybody in that way.

Here is the line, and I want you to notice who it is about.

If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.Exodus 22:25

That is not a rule for the borrower. There is nothing in it about repayment terms or dates or what happens if he does not. It is entirely about the lender, and it is not really about interest either. It says: do not be to him as an usurer. Do not become that, in yourself, toward him.

God is protecting something in the one who lent. He knows what money does to a person's insides when it goes out and does not come back. He knows that a woman can go on being courteous for six years and still, somewhere behind her eyes, be filing a man under what he owes. And the law does not say that is understandable. It says do not be that toward him, because you were never meant to carry a person that way.

You were never meant to hold a man as a debtor, and the law was written to protect what happens in you rather than what happens in your account. That is not a soft thing I am saying because I am fond of you. It is written into Exodus 22, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a line about lenders and lays it across the fourth row of a small church.

You have a God who cares more about your Sunday than about your money, and He has never once weighed the two the same. Scripture says He looketh on the heart, and His Spirit is the one who takes an old written line and makes it a thing a woman can act on rather than merely agree with.

Now I will say the true thing, since we are here.

It is not really the amount. It is that you offered it standing by a noticeboard, out of a life lived carefully, and it went into a silence. And silence, in a small church, is the loudest thing there is. Every Sunday for six years you have sat behind the evidence that something you did generously was never spoken of, and there is nowhere in that building to put that, so you moved your body instead.

And it took your singing with it. That is the bit I want to name plainly. The tally did not just cost you a seat. It has cost you the third verse for six years, and that is a real loss, and nobody has ever counted it.

You are not petty, and moving to the back was not a fault in your character. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a word like nigh and sits it down beside a woman who has lost her own hymns.

And now what I owe you about your mouth, because a bench does not change because an old woman said something warm. Jesus said faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, does what putting up with it never does. So say it out loud in your own front room. You have the standing to speak to a thing you have carried and tell it what it is not, because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and Scripture calls that yours by position and not by years of service, and the Holy Spirit takes a spoken word further than a chapel wall.