So, it was the "morning after" my prayer experiment. Still no voices from heaven. Still no thunderbolts. Still no relief from the questioning gazes of the Jesus freaks. Had anything changed? Had anything new happened? As far as I could tell, nothing had changed.
But, I did feel a little better having given the prayer thing a try. I had put it in God's hands, if there really was a God out there. I had left a message and now I would wait for God to return my call. There was a sense of having done something. You know what I am talking about—that satisfaction that comes of having done your part. Now it was up to God—if there really was a God and if this God was not some unflappable "Divine Mover" who had created the universe and left the universal processes to move at their inexorable pace.
My Jesus freak friends were convinced that God was much more than a Divine Mover. Indeed, they believed unswervingly in a personal God who delighted in interaction and personal responses to personal prayers. They were convinced that the traditional churches had lost touch with this "personal relationship" with God. These churches held firmly to ancient traditions that were based on the personal relationships of the disciples of Jesus and other ancient theologians. My friends in the commune consistently "testified" of their own extremely personal and daily, sometimes hourly, interventions of God on their behalf.
They believed that when they "witnessed" to me and others concerning God's personal activities that they were actually speaking the "living words of the living God." They claimed to be speaking for God in such a capacity. Well, that was not the voice from heaven that I was expecting. And I had asked God to reveal *Himself in a way that I could understand. Their stories were just not helping me.
*[As a Ph.D. in World Religions, I am well aware that it is a pretty big leap to assign male gender to God. Certainly, God would be neither male nor female. By using such terminology, I am simply reflecting the conversations and thought processes that I experienced in 1969. For a scholarly approach to this subject, see the first chapter of my book, Messianic Jewish Congregations: Who Sold This Business to the Gentiles? available on Amazon.]
It was Sunday, and even though the members of the commune rejected established churches, they did frequent a mission church located near the Santa Cruz boardwalk. I welcomed the chance to actually get to the beach and see the ocean for the first time since arriving a few days earlier.
The mission compromised two small rooms in a ramshackle storefront one block from the beach. One room was a small kitchen where snacks were prepared for the hippies and others who were passing through. The other room had a plywood pulpit and about 25 metal chairs arranged in rows. This is where they conducted their services. The mission pastor was a preacher from some small independent fundamentalist church. As I remember, he looked old and feeble to me. Of course, I was all of 19, so anyone over 30 was old and feeble in my eyes.
This preacher was not at all what I expected. I had thought that I would encounter someone who was also a Jesus freak, not some guy in a well-worn sports coat and tie with short gray hair. His sermon was nothing like what I had encountered with the commune members or even the Bible scholar the evening before. After whining through some hymns that sounded like they were straight out of the 1880s, he took a passage out of Jeremiah and began to talk politics! There was nothing about Jesus, a personal relationship with Jesus, or even discussion of God at all. He just went on and on about the dangers of Communism. I felt like I had wandered into a meeting of hobos discussing the McCarthy hearings!
As I squirmed in the folding chair, (I squirmed from the content of the message, not the discomfort of sitting on a metal chair), he wrapped up his anti-Communist diatribe with a prayer. Very strange! Then he asked people to come forward and to "accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior"! How he could expect a spiritual response to a wholly political message still befuddles me today. When no one budged in response to his invitation, he asked for testimonies as to the "great things God is doing in your life." No one said a thing.
Now, my mother raised me to be considerate of others, and although I had no reason to like this guy, I did feel sorry for him. He looked so pitiful standing up there with no one responding. The deafening stillness continued. Just to help the guy out, I raised my hand. Relieved, he recognized me, “Brother, give us your testimony!”
I responded, “Well, I am not sure I am a "brother," but I did pray to God yesterday and asked him to reveal Himself to me.”
The preacher shouted "Praise the Lord" and led the dozen people in applause for my "testimony." I would have been totally humiliated by the response, but I felt so sorry for the fellow. And, besides from being trained to be considerate, it has always been my tendency to take the lead in awkward situations. And this was the most awkward situation of my life.
Now I was considered to be one of the group, but I sure didn't feel that way. Other than that sense of satisfaction from having initiated a course of action by praying, I felt much the same as I had before. Now, instead of Jesus freaks constantly witnessing to me and trying to convince me that Jesus was my savior, they began to insist that I needed to "be discipled." Oy! I had gone from the pan to the fire.
For three decades I related this story as the beginning of a small seed of faith that introduced me to a relationship with Jesus. I tracked my "born again" experience to the beginnings of faith during these 7 days in May. I have given my testimony as I have travelled across the US and Canada, in southern Africa, and southeast Asia.
Looking back now, I have a different perspective, and see how I sold myself on the Jesus stuff. After all, I am a pretty good salesman! I am no longer an adherent to the Christian faith, having grown in my understanding and returning to a better-informed Jewish faith tradition.
Some hangover, huh? One that lasted over 30 years. So, now you know the story of how I wandered into Christianity during 7 days in May, 1969. I want to fast-forward a bit here and relate the story of how my wandering led me into a war for independence in southern Africa. But first we need to wander to Houston. My "California girl" wasn't in California—she was in Texas.
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