Lettuce In

I don't know how the idea of Treasure Hunting first began. A church in Redding, California started going out a few years back, and it's seemed to have caught on worldwide. I really thought that the dignity and honor of evangelism was finally being restored to the church. That is, until last week.

It's a perfect set up, really. All one has to do is sit down with a few friends and ask the Lord for some clues. It could be anything: an apple, red trousers, blue blouse, green turtleneck, suspenders, a manikin wearing the bare essentials, a woman with a cowboy hat, anything! The first thing that comes into the mind's eye, releasing a shrill down your spine, the clue that induces pride at just-how-creative-I-am-but-not-really-so-creative-because-it's-actually-God-speaking. That one. Write it down. Make a treasure map. Ask God for a location. Fred Meyer? Taco Bell? The local gay bar? Where does God want to reveal His love to His people? What diseases and infirmities does He want to heal today? Where does a man wild at heart fancy a novel adventure?

Waking up early on a given Saturday morning, I open up my text messages to the question “Are you gonna do some peter and john loving on people today?” Sam has a way with words, keepin' it real. I'm grateful for how well he seems to know what I'm thinking every day. It's like he has ESPN or something. My fingers punch out the reply, “ya I think im gonna”, and next thing I know I'm leaping off the couch, into my coat, and arriving at the church.

I slide into my chair with my empty treasure map. My eyes gaze off into space, then close, then alight. After some hasty scrawling, my paper says it all: meth addiction, medication, Luckies, John, red scarf, message in a bottle, lettuce in. Sometimes having a relationship with God is like watching Family Guy reruns. I, of course, volunteer to drive, and as the new team captain, select my eligible crew: Sam of course, a man I hardly know named John (ha), and his twelve-year-old son. All aboard!

John wants to go to Fred Meyer, and I figure they will probably lettuce in at their produce department. We make our way to a parking spot, shuffle out of the car, and I immediately begin scanning the parking lot. There may be employees here. There may be a giant dinosaur roaming the sidewalk. Hell, there may even be some hot girls walking around! But my Terminator eyes are already programmed to see only red scarves, people carrying lettuce under their arm, and older people that are obviously on their way out of the pharmacy. And of course wheelchairs, canes, and crutches. This goes without saying - injured people are just asking for it.

We pray for a few people here and there, nothing exciting happening yet. Last week two people got completely healed of pain in their body at the mall – our expectations are high! As we pass through the door, phasers out, ready to go kung-fu amongst the frozen pizza, I spot my prey: the woman with the red scarf. She was middle-aged, shopping for God-knows-what. She's a ways off, but she's my Divine Encounter, my Target of Love.

I approach with caution, “Uh, hi, is that a red scarf?”

“Yeah...”

“Nice! We're on a treasure hunt, and I have red scarf, look right there!”
“...Well I'm not gonna give it you...”

“Oh no no, sorry, this is a very different kind of treasure hunt. We're not looking for things, we're looking for people. We asked God to highlight certain things because He wants to bless His people that He loves, and you're God's treas-”

“Oh, I'm an atheist. You're talking to the wrong person.”

At this, she pushes her cart away from me. I stand in the same position, eyebrows up, stammering for words. How could I just let her go? I mean, she was the red scarf! Eventually I yell after her, “Well, can we pray for you for something anyway?”

“You need to get away from me, right now!”

I'm a frozen statue that wants nothing more than to come to life. “Okay,” I say, and start walking past her to the end of the aisle. As I pass her, she turns and begins talking again – evidently she wasn't done with me yet.

“I know what you're doing and what you stand for.”

“What?”

“You hate people. You wear your faith on your sleeve. You hate gay people. You hate gay marriage. You hate-”

“What? No we don-”

She puts up her hand, “Don't. I know what you're about and what you believe.” She closes her eyes, her lips forcing the words forward into the air, sealing them in blood, “You hate people. You hate gay people. You hate gay marriage.”

For the moment, I have nothing to say. I guess I hate people. Even if I didn't before, I now did. A tag was now stuck to my Hollister shirt that said, “HELLO! My name is I Hate Gay People. I Hate Gay Marriage.” All sorts of thoughts cross my mind, just like the cross she puts up to me and my twelve-year-old companion with her index fingers as she walks off and tells the manager about our supposed preaching in their store, getting our whole party promptly kicked out of Fred Meyer. They “can't have that” there.

I went back to the church and cried that day. I was balled up in the corner of the corridor, wanting so badly to suck my thumb and have my mommy come and tell me it's gonna be okay. The nagging thought of “Where were you, God? Why did you let that happen?” had to be deflected over and over again. My friends huddled around me and held me, telling me how brave I was and how proud they were of me. I cried all the more. I was waiting for my time machine to come in that would've stopped me from jumping off that couch.

I cried that day. I cried for the lady. I cried for the American church. I cried for myself. I felt the tears of heaven, the tears of a creator that so desperately wants His children to know Him. I cried as God walked into a dance club, wrapping his warm arms around a man dressed in a pink, skin-tight shirt, piercings in his left ear. I cried as Jesus whispered in that ear that he's home, that he has a place in his Daddy's house, that he will never be abandoned or taken advantage of, and never has. I cried as the being that transcends the universe holds the world in his hands. I cried as the beautiful woman in the red scarf in Fred Meyer opened her heart to the reality of a non-existent God, those expressionless eyes softening, her lips curling into a cheeky grin. I laughed.