Pilgrimage of Joy …

THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR
W. Carl Ketcherside

I come now to the place where I must recount a life-changing experience which was destined to completely re-orient the whole philosophy of my relationship to the kingdom of heaven. I apologize to my readers for the time to be spent in narrative, seeing that nothing is ordinarily quite so boring as listening to another recount what happened to him. I must preface what I shall say with the statement that I am a pragmatist, and not a mystic, by nature, although all of us are combinations of both. I suspect that every wholehearted follower of Jesus is confronted sooner or later with a sense of the great gulf which exists between what he believes and what he really is. For some, the confrontation with the Living Lord is gradual and almost academic. For others it may come as a flash of light in a crisis situation. That the latter should have been my lot is as unexplainable to me as it will be to those of you who now read about it.

It occurred on the afternoon of March 27, 1951. I know where it took place and I know the moment it took place. I am convinced now that if I had never left America it would not have happened at all. Before I went to Ireland I conveyed to the brethren there my hope of visiting the little village of Ahorey, and the meetinghouse in which Thomas Campbell had ministered. William Hendren and Joe Hamilton made contact with Mr. T.S. Hoey, secretary of the little Presbyterian congregation, and he graciously suggested that we conduct a service in the quaint little place. Arrangements were made for Easter Monday, which is a “bank holiday” upon which all business places are closed and workers are free.

Sixty-five of us met at the little Berlin Street meetinghouse early in the morning of a dark and dreary day with the rain pouring down. After a time of prayer we boarded the two chartered buses and set out upon our trip. Fortunately, by the time we reached Ahorey, the rain had ceased. The little village where Alexander Campbell spent his early boyhood was small indeed. Only three Irish farm cottages could be seen. One of them was used as a post office. The meetinghouse sat back in a yard which could have been the setting for Gray’s Elegy. We made our way along the path which was flanked by the moss-covered grave markers to the door of the lovely little building where we were warmly greeted by the Presbyterian welcoming committee.

In the entrance hall was a bronze plaque of Thomas Campbell inscribed with the words Prophet of Union. He was the second pastor of the congregation, assuming his charge in 1798. When we entered the place of meeting its quaintness and old-worldliness struck our attention. It was lighted with paraffin lamps. The pews had to be entered through little gates which had first to be unlocked. When the brethren had filed in and our Presbyterian hosts were seated, I unlocked the door leading to the speaker’s platform and took my place behind the stand containing the same large pulpit Bible from which Mr. Campbell had often read.

The audience stood and sang “The Lord’s My Shepherd” to the haunting melody of the tune Crimond. William Hendren led a prayer for the unity of all believers in the Lord Jesus. I turned to Ephesians 2 and read the chapter. I was moved to speak, as never before, on verse 14. “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” I must have spoken more to myself than to the others, because all the rest of the day the expression “He is our peace” kept rising to the surface of my consciousness, to be repeated silently.

We were taken on a tour of the manse which had been completely refurbished in anticipation of the coming of the new pastor a fortnight hence. Then a gentle elderly woman who lived in a low whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof, sent word asking if the American visitor would grace her humble abode for tea. Five of us readily accepted her invitation and sat down for a country repast in a dark little room where chunks of peat glowed in the tiny fireplace. Legend had it that when the Campbells resided in the manse, Alexander often stopped at this ancient cottage while returning from Armagh, which was about four miles distant.

We went to Armagh, which dates its existence from 300 B.C., and to the great library established by Primate Robinson in 1771. We walked across the city to the observatory, founded on “The Hill of Honey” in 1790, to be greeted by the present director, Dr. E. M. Lindsay, of Harvard fame, and now recognized in astronomical circles throughout the world. Dr. E. J. Opik, driven from his home in Estonia by the Soviet invasion, explained to us at length his research into the nature of solar eclipses. We ended our visit in the area by exploring Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, more than six centuries old, and now the headquarters for the Anglican Church of North Ireland.

As we boarded the buses for the return to Belfast the weather became nasty and bad, and soon the rain turned to snow which took the form of a sweeping blizzard by the time we reached the city streets. Because of the long and tiresome journey of the day, those with whom I lodged went on home, while I lingered with the George Hendren family for tea before the cheerful fireplace. Later, when I stepped out into the night to begin the more than two mile walk. I was engulfed in swirling snow. I had to make my way from one faint street light to another as I trudged along through five inches of accumulated snow.

I have never experienced a greater sense of loneliness. It was as if I was walking through a universe devoid of all life but my own. The only sound to be heard in a great city was that of my shoes crunching the snow beneath them. The activities of the day came surging back into my mind and mingled with the reveries were the images of the noble souls who dared, in the midst of division, to dream of a united church. I thought again of the text which came to me as I read the Word, and of how it had also stirred the mind of a Presbyterian minister in such a rustic setting. I recalled the message I had recorded in the home of Mr. Hoey to be played at the next meeting of the Synod in Belfast. In that talk I urged that if they had others of the caliber of Mr. Campbell, that they send them to American shores to encourage unity among the frightfully-divided heirs of the movement launched by their gentle minister of yesteryear.

I was smitten with the hypocrisy of a plea for a humble peasantry to provide another apostle for oneness while I was among them as a factional representative. It came home to me with force that I had never really labored for the unity of all who believed in Jesus. I had actually, in mistaken zeal, contributed to the fragmentation of the very movement which Thomas Campbell had launched with such high hopes and great promise. Instead of furthering the noble “project to unite the Christians in all of the sects,” I had absorbed and sometimes even gloried in a sectarian spirit.

As I stumbled along through the deepening snow, alone in a foreign city, I found myself weeping and praying and making promises to God of what I would do if my life was spared through His grace. The word grace came like a ray of hope and I rolled it on my tongue like a juicy morsel. What I needed to make life worth living, to overcome my frustration, to rise above the futility of my own efforts was grace. In all of my forty-three years no other thought had ever struck me with such force.

In my darkened room I lay awake all night wrestling with my own thoughts. The hours dragged on in the velvety blackness as I went back over every step of the day before. When dawn came I was empty, drained and helpless. Every dream of my life had vanished. Every ship of hope I had launched lay in broken pieces upon the rocks of my own past. I went downstairs to gaze out upon a world of diamond-flecked whiteness but even its scintillating beauty impressed me but a fleeting second.

I sat down before the little hearth with its one lump of coal (the last one of our ration) and picked up the Bible. My eyes were dim from weeping and from staring into darkness through a sleepless night.

Without design I began reading with verse one of Revelation. I became aware that thoughts were leaping from the pages which I had read so often and taking lodgment in my benumbed brain. It was fascinating to have words come alive and to see their souls separate from the characters which the typesetter had given them as bodies, and free themselves from the prison of print to take up abode in my mind.

I read until I came to the letter addressed to the community of the reconciled ones at Laodicea. I could identify with it as representative of our movement. We thought of ourselves as rich and increased with goods, and needing nothing. I remembered the oft repeated question, “What is there left to restore?” or, sometimes “What do we need that we do not have?” But I could also realize that we were poor, and wretched, and blind, and naked, as God saw us. I read on and came to realize what was meant by the gold tried in the fire which could be purchased only at the divine currency exchange by those willing to pay the staggering price. At last I knew what was meant by the white raiment which covers the nakedness of congregations which parade unashamedly, unaware that their garments of fig leaves and their masks are transparent, and they are wearing see-through apparel while the world looks and laughs. For the first time I also knew what was meant by the ointment which restores sight to eyes that are blinded by cataracts of pride, ambition and sectarian prestige.

And then I saw the answer to all of my longings, all of my loneliness, all of my lovelessness to others. “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door. I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” I had never once invited Jesus to come in. True, I had never asked Him to stay out, but I had never shared with Him the kind of intimacy He had promised, the warm glow of companionship at the supper table, the convivial atmosphere in which friends talk and laugh and joke together, and let themselves go in the firm trust that they perfectly understand one another.

I had come to Jesus thirty years before, and then some, but it is one thing to come to Jesus at His invitation, and a wholly different thing to have Jesus come in to you at your invitation. I came to Him out of a state of alienation, like a refugee fished out of the muck and mire who needs to be cleaned up in the bath of regeneration and given an abiding place. But the statement to the Laodiceans was not made to those outside. It was made to those inside. It was Jesus who was outside. Regardless of the state of the things in the congregation with which one was identified. that one could have a royal guest sitting at his supper table and gracing his abode with His presence.

He did not need to leave where he was. He did not need to look for another “church”. In the midst of poverty of spirit, wretchedness, misery, blindness and shameless nudity, he could be filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory. I had never really experienced that kind of joy. In fact, nothing had ever happened to me that I could not describe and glibly enough at that. I had been dubious of anyone who had been too happy. It did not seem right for a Christian who ought to be “walking on eggshells” for fear there was a minute law he might have overlooked and which would bring the wrath of God down upon his unsuspecting skull like the pagan temple which killed the blind Samson while the idolaters were laughing at him.

Now I was being tendered an offer of genuine, thrilling, life-changing association which could have been mine all along if I had not wandered in the fog boiling up from the dank and boggy marshes of legalism and tradition. All I had to do was to hear a voice and open the door. That was it. There was no other condition, no regimen of penance, no burden of regret about yesterday. There was no high-pressure selling, no arm-twisting. Loneliness would leave through the same door by which He entered, exactly as light must dispel darkness. Sorrow and sighing would pass away.

I heard His knock! I heard His voice! I am not talking about audible impressions or things like sound waves or reverberation. It was too deep “for sound or foam” as the poet said. So I arose and put on my overcoat and the borrowed overshoes which had been loaned to me by a kind brother, and walked the two blocks over to where the double-decker bus stopped to pick up riders bound for the heart of the city. I swung off of the platform at Shankill Road and walked up to the little meetinghouse on Berlin Street. Inside it was dark and filled with cold which caught warm breath and sent it swirling upward like a cloud.

I sat down in a pew selected at random and counted the cost of what I was about to do. I realized that I had been tracked down and brought to bay by “the hound of heaven”. It must have been an hour I sat there with the cold seeking the openings in the fibers of my clothing. At last I kneeled down and spoke, perhaps audibly, “This is it! I have come to the end of the road and I’m opening the door! Come in!” Immediately He did exactly what He promised He would do, and I knew it! There were no hot flashes, no hair standing on end, no goose-pimples, no spinal chills, no “speaking in tongues”. There was none of that!

But there was the indescribable feeling of the rightness of all things, the possession of a peace which transcended human rationality and understanding. I knew a part of me had died and that part would never be resurrected. It had been replaced with a new “me” who was not at all of my own creation. I was different and I knew that I was different. I also knew I would never be the same again. Never, regardless of what happened. And then there was that joy! Perhaps the most powerful thought which gripped me was that I had no further enemies among the brethren. They were all children of God! We had a common Father. It struck me like a flash that I could never again hate those whom He loved.

As J. B. Phillips put it, “We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren.” It was months before I learned that the love of God had been poured out in my heart by the Holy Spirit He had given me (Romans 5:5).