God was here. God is here.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about my new position is the chance to experience a wide array of worship services across northern Illinois. Last Sunday, I took the Red Line train to the 95th Street stop and then walked to Wesley United Methodist on the South Side of Chicago.

It was an inspiring service with amazing music and Rev. Dr. Charles Woolery’s rousing sermon. I walked out of the church practically skipping. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that worship. I walked back to the Red Line and noticed a message that someone had marked out on the dusty window. That’s the photo above. I’m not sure if you can make it out, but it read: “God was here” and then below that, someone wrote, “Is Here!” I was thankful for the person who made that addition. Yes, I thought. God is here. I sat down on a seat with a couple things in my hands: a palm frond since it was Palm Sunday and a couple bags of cookies. One of Wesley’s members passed out homemade cookies to everyone and I gladly took a bag. Later on, she came up to me and asked if I was married and I said yes and she gave me another bag instructing me to take it home to my wife.

The train headed north and I sat with my eyes closed and a little smile on my face as I relived the service and, frankly, didn’t want to be bothered. That was not to be.

“Is today Palm Sunday?” the woman across from me asked. I opened my eyes and saw a woman with a sweet smile and a curious look. I responded that, yes, it is Palm Sunday and that started with her asking me a lot of questions. What church did I attend? Where did I live? How long did I live there? Was the service I attended nice? Clearly, my quiet time of simply reliving the service wasn’t going to happen. But then we were jolted by activity at the end of the train car.

“GIVE ME YOUR SANDWICH!! I’M HUNGRY!!”

We both turned our heads to see a woman kneeling on the floor screaming at another woman. She kept saying over and over about how hungry she was and demanding this other woman to give her a sandwich. The woman with the sandwich crossed her arms and refused. This happened a few times until the hungry woman came down to our end of the car. She knelt down on the floor again next to my conversation partner and started banging her head over and over against the hard plastic seat.

I’ve had some intense train experiences over the years, but nothing like this and I simply had no idea what to do. The woman then stood up and yelled down the car, “Are you happy now? I’m hungry!” I noticed that the woman with the sandwich had a white paper bag and then realized that my two bags of cookies were also in white paper bags. The hungry woman noticed this, too. She turned her puffy face, looked at me and demanded, “Give me one of your cupcakes!”

I tried to explain to her that I didn’t have cupcakes, but I had had some cookies and I reached into one of the bags to give her some. The cookies I offered didn’t satisfy her and she reached out to grab one of the bags and then started to kick me. I did my best to give her more cookies, all the while trying to figure out how to defend myself against this poor woman who clearly had a serious mental illness.

The train came to the next stop and I gave the woman another cookie and she started to get off the train. But as she walked onto the platform, she stopped, looked at the cookie, decided she didn’t want it and then turned around to throw it at me. She glared at me and the train doors seemed to take forever to close, but they finally did.

I’m sure my eyes were wide open as my heart was wildly beating and the adrenaline was surging through me. What just happened?

“Are you OK?”

My conversation partner, the woman who I kind of hoped would just leave me alone, was now looking after me. She wanted to talk about what just happened and I now was grateful for her company as we tried to make sense of it all. I happened to have a couple cookies left and I offered her one. She munched on it, crumbs spilling on her jacket, while she continued to ask me questions and wanting to make sure I was alright. I soon got off at my stop, thanked her for company and wished her a happy Palm Sunday.

I’ve been thinking about these two women all week. I keep asking myself if there was something I could have done differently. I get angry when I think about how our society has utterly failed those suffering from mental illness. I feel slightly guilty for my wanting to tune out my conversation partner at first, but then feeling immense gratitude for her presence later on.

Commotion and confusion. Compassion and care. It all happened all in a matter of minutes. I wonder if on the Saturday between the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus’ followers were experiencing some of the same thing. “God was here,” one of them might have said. Perhaps one of them had the foresight to correct them. No. God is here.