The first time I saw her she was standing at the side of the road, a forlorn, waif-like creature, wearing a back pack, a light thing like a day pack. Actually the first thing I noticed was the red hair, not a natural ginger hue but a dyed bright fiery red. She raised a hopeful hitchhiker thumb when she saw my car approaching. There was not much traffic on the road, even though it was a state highway, especially on a Sunday morning, so her chances of getting a ride were not good. She was smoking a cigarette, which she tossed onto the road when she saw I was slowing down.
I stopped and opened the door for her. “I’m not going far,” I said, “but I can take you as far as town. Where are you headed?”
“Where ever my journey takes me.” She hopped into the passenger seat and dropped her bag on the floor between her feet. Her arms were liberally inked with tribal tattoos. She had a pretty face, though a rather sallow complexion, and a gold nose ring that, at a glance, looked like a streak of snot. Her eyes were big black dots of dilated pupils and I guessed from her agitated demeanour she was under the influence of some sort of substance. I asked her to buckle up the seat belt and drove on. “You sure you don’t have a destination?” I said.
“No, I don’t, really.”
“Are you running away from something?” I asked her.
She ignored my question and asked me, “Where are you going?
“I’m on my way to church,” I said. “Maybe your journey is taking you to church. You’d be welcome.”
“I don’t think so, thanks all the same. I’ll just carry on my way.” All quiet for a moment and then she asked, “You going on your own?”
“My wife’s coming later, with the kids”, I said. “I’m the pastor and I go early for a prayer meeting before the service.”
“The pastor,” she repeated, fidgeting in her seat. “You don’t look like a pastor. Shouldn’t you be wearing a dog collar or a suit or something?”
“We’re not a traditional mainstream church and we don’t dress up.”
“Is that your church?” she said, pointing to the pitched roof with the cross, clearly visible from the road where I stopped to let her out.
“Yes, that’s it. Good luck with your journey,” I said, as she got out of the car. I left my passenger at the side of the road and drove up to the church, hoping she wouldn’t get picked up by some predator. She seemed like easy prey. I even gave her a mention in the prayer meeting, a quick prayer for her safety and for her salvation. It was an accustomed prayer for salvation for the lost, and she really did seem lost.
The first half hour of the service was devoted to music and congregational singing, after which I took the stage to deliver the sermon I’d prepared. As I looked over the auditorium my gaze was immediately drawn to the bright red head in the back row, like a beacon. My hitch hiker must have tired of waiting for a lift and decided to join us after all and slipped in during the praise and worship.
I was preaching on the Gospel of John and focusing on chapter four, where Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, a chapter that has always intrigued me. As I said in my sermon, it was such a significant and remarkable event. Jesus approached the woman and asked for a drink of water and, in the course of their conversation, he told her that he was the Messiah. It was the first time in Jesus’ ministry that he publicly disclosed to anyone that he was the Messiah. Why her? A Jewish rabbi, as Jesus was, would not normally talk to a woman in public, let alone a Samaritan woman, as Samaritans were despised by Jews and a drink given by a Samaritan would be regarded by Jews as unclean.
As I neared the end of my sermon I signalled for the musicians to take the stage again for a final upbeat song of praise, as per our usual format. To finish I invited anyone and everyone to join in a prayer of salvation for the benefit of the unsaved and the backslidden who needed to rededicate their lives to the Lord. I asked for a show of hands, “while heads are bowed and eyes closed, if you are saying this prayer for the first time, to invite Jesus into your life.” There were usually one or two. I looked hopefully around the auditorium and particularly to the back row but there was no response from my hitch hiker.
Finally, I invited everyone to hang about in the church café for a coffee and a chat, a bit of fellowship. Miriam and I were enjoying our cappuccinos while our kids were running around with their friends, when Scarlet joined us. It was then, when I introduced Miriam that I learned the name of my hitch hiker. Scarlet. How apt. Then I wondered if that was her real name.
“No rides, eh?” I said.
“Not many cars,” she said, “and they all seemed to be coming here. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you I enjoyed the story. I never knew all that about Jesus, about how he really honoured that outcast woman even though he knew she was such a sinner.”
Scarlet recounted some of the story as I had told it: how the Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well own her own in the middle of the day instead of later in the cool of the day with the other women, how Jesus knew she was ostracised by the other women because she had had five husbands and the man she was living with now was not her husband.
“Yes, and because of her testimony, Jesus was welcomed into the Samaritan village and by his preaching salvation came to the people,” I said, to emphasise what I considered the real import of the events. Scarlet seemed more interested in the plight of the Samaritan woman.
“Where are you from, Scarlet?” Miriam asked. “Are you a local?
“No, I’m from Auckland.”
“Are you staying somewhere local?”
“No, I’m just passing through.”
It was then that Travis joined us. Travis was one of the young musicians on the worship team and he came to ask me about the following week’s roster, though I suspect this was just a pretext to come and meet Scarlet. I had noticed him casting glances in our direction. I did the introductions and Scarlet said she enjoyed the music too. “Good work on the guitar,” she said to Travis. We talked about the music for a bit, Travis obviously emboldened by Scarlet’s compliments, and then Miriam and I went off to round up our kids. We said our farewells to Scarlet and Travis, who were still engrossed in conversation.
Later in the week I got a call from Ross, our youth pastor. He said he had some concerns about Travis. That red haired girl that turned up at church is staying with him, staying at his flat.
“Have you talked to him about it?” I asked.
“Yeah, he acted as if he was doing something noble, taking in a homeless vagrant. He even quoted scripture, quoted Jesus: ‘I was a stranger and you took me in… inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’”
“Well maybe he is just being charitable and hospitable,” I said, somewhat doubtfully.
“I asked him if he was sleeping with her,” Ross continued, and he said, ‘We’re both single, consenting adults.’”
“Well, that’s a definite yes.”
“I think we should both talk to him together,” Ross suggested. That was the protocol for such matters. As we prayed together to seek guidance and prepare ourselves for the meeting, Ross was spontaneously quoting scripture. He quoted from Isaiah: “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
We met in the church café in the guest lounge corner with the couch and the arm chairs, and Brigette brought us our usual coffee orders, and her friendly chit chat. As soon as she went back to her barista duties, we got straight down to business. Travis continued to take the same line. The usually unassuming, principled Travis was assertive and adamant that he was within his rights.
“Legally yes,” I agreed, “and perfectly in line with the world’s standards but as Christians we adhere to a higher standard. I’m asking you to reconsider and pray about it.”
Travis sipped his flat white, set his cup on the saucer, looked up and met my gaze with an expressionless face.
“In the meantime I’m also asking you to stand down from the worship team. This is not meant as a punishment you understand. You’re a talented musician but talent is not the only requirement. It’s not just a band. It’s a worship team. As a worshipper you need to be living a godly life, in accordance with our statement of beliefs.”
“So be it,” Travis said flatly. “Is that all?”
Ross and I looked to each other. There seemed nothing more to say.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Travis said, and left the café.
“I’m beginning to regret picking up that hitch hiker,” I said.
“Good may come of this yet,” Ross said, always the optimist.
“By the way, did you know the girl’s name?” I asked. He assured me he didn’t.
*
“How did it go with Travis?” Miriam asked when I got home.
“Not good,” I said. “He’s being defiant. He’s going his own way.”
“That doesn’t sound like the sweet, innocent boy we know.”
“I know. He seemed like a different person.”
“I fear a Jezebel spirit at work.”
“You mean Scarlet?”
“Yes and witchcraft.”
“Nah, come on.”
“I don’t mean like covens and spells and flying broomsticks and all that stuff. But, you know, manipulation on an emotional and spiritual level.”
“Maybe he’s just… We had a crude word for this when I was a teenager… cunt struck.”
“I’ve certainly never heard of that disgusting phrase.”
“You’ve had a sheltered life,” I said. “It’s strange isn’t it, that cunt is our dirtiest word. It’s our favourite female body part and we use it as a term of abuse for men we don’t like.”
“I can’t even bring myself to say it and I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from dredging up such coarse language from the gutter of your disreputable youth. Anyway, I presume you mean he’s infatuated with sex.”
“Yeah.”
“Well then, that’s part of the witchcraft.”
“Another thing that worries me is I’m pretty sure Scarlet’s into drugs. I don’t know what sort of drugs. Maybe methamphetamine.”
“More witchcraft,” Miriam asserted.
“I’m concerned for Travis.”
“Worried he’s being seduced into the dark side?”
“Well, seduced into taking drugs anyway,” I said.
*
It was disappointing but not really surprising that Travis stopped attending church. I was also disappointed to hear that he’d gone to Auckland. It was Tommy Larsen who told me Travis had left. “Hard to replace a good worker like that,” he said. “I don’t know what’s got into him.”
We had always lost some of our youth from the church when they went to the city to go to university or for job opportunities and I always wished them well. I was sad to see them go but I wouldn’t want to hold them back. They usually ended up in another church but sadly some had lost their Christian faith in the humanist environment of university life. Ross’ younger brother, Josh had made the move to Auckland to attend university and thankfully was still ‘going on for God’. In fact he too had become a youth pastor in our sister church in Auckland. Josh and Travis had been good friends and I was pleased to hear Travis had turned up at church with Josh. All was not lost.
“I’ve got a bit of news about Travis,” Ross confided at our informal café meeting after our church service. “Travis is playing gigs in a rock band in Auckland. Scarlet was a singer for a popular band that broke up acrimoniously and she disappeared from the scene. Now she’s back with a flash young guitarist and a couple of the former band members, and they’re killing it.”
“Killing it.”
“Those were Josh’s words,” Ross assured me.
“The boy’s certainly got a gift,” I said. “Now he’s squandering it.”
“Some would say he’s exploiting it.”
The band, known simply as Scarlet, went on to achieve some success and notoriety. But it eventually went the way of Scarlet’s previous band, and many others for that matter, especially where drugs are involved: different personalities, inflated egos, jealousies, different agendas, disagreements, conflict, meltdowns. According to Josh, Scarlet’s substance abuse and her promiscuity were the main problems. She’d had a partner in the previous band and an affair with another member, and now she was cheating on Travis with the other guy again. Travis was heartbroken and disillusioned. He left the band but would probably get picked up by some other band, having made a name for himself in the local music scene. In her despondency, Scarlet had become more and more addicted to crystal meth.
In a later update, Ross told me Travis had started playing for another band, but had left them too. It was a rock band that did a lot of old covers of the Rolling Stones and they were looking for a guitarist that could play like Keith Richards. They figured Travis was the man. Travis started practising with them but then he told them they’d got the wrong guy. They were playing the Stones’ song Sympathy for the Devil, when Travis packed up his gear and said, “I’m not playing the devil’s music,” and just walked out.
“The devil’s music, eh. Did he really say that?”
“That’s what Josh told me.”
“Good on him.”
“Yeah, there’s hope for him yet. Josh wants him to join their church band, but Pastor Stuart says he’s got to sort himself out first and come to church regularly.”
Meanwhile, Travis had got a job in an Auckland construction company. I hoped he would come back to us but it seemed unlikely. I hadn’t seen him for over a year but I thought I might see him again soon if he was still going to church. The churches in our federation had occasional ministry exchanges and I was invited to be a guest speaker at our Auckland church.
Pastor Stuart introduced me effusively as a dear old friend and colleague and, rather hyperbolically, as a great man of God and a hero of the faith, and prompted applause as I took the stage. I prayed silently that I would live up to the billing. I wondered if Travis was there but it was a large congregation and difficult to spot any individual.
For my sermon I returned to the book of John, my favourite book of the Bible, and focused on Jesus’ healing ministry.
I recounted the miraculous healings in John’s gospel: where Jesus healed the son of a royal official when the boy was at the point of death, where Jesus healed the invalid at the Pool of Bethesda who had been paralysed for thirty-eight years, where Jesus healed a man born blind, where Jesus raised Lazarus back to life after he had lain dead for four days. “And what was it that motivated Jesus to heal?” I asked rhetorically. “Compassion,” I answered, with dramatic emphasis. “He was moved by compassion for the suffering of the people.”
I kept it relatively short as I wanted to offer some ministry and, I concluded my sermon by saying, “The same Holy Spirit power by which Jesus healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and raised the dead is here to heal, the same Holy Spirit power that resurrected Jesus himself is here to heal. Only have faith. Let faith arise.” I had prayed for sick people many times and sometimes seen people healed, even when I didn’t particularly feel any Holy Spirit anointing. But here I genuinely felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Stuart joined me on the stage and thanked me for ‘that encouraging and inspiring message’, and together we invited anyone who needed healing to come forward and we and the ministry team would pray for them. Anyone who needed healing from sickness, depression, addiction. There were always plenty of sick people and increasingly people with addictions. A few people responded immediately, then more and more made their way to the front. This would take some time, I thought, but this is what it was about, no matter how long it takes. Meanwhile the band returned to the stage and played ethereal worship music in the background.
I came down off the stage to start praying for people and there, front and centre, was Travis and a girl at his side. I didn’t recognise her at first. The red hair was gone and in its place was her natural black hair. The fire was gone. It was burnt out. Her eyes were glazed. Scarlet was barely recognisable. She looked terrible. “Please help her Pastor David,” Travis pleaded. In these ministry situations I always asked what the prayer need was but now I just said, “It’s addiction, isn’t it.” Travis nodded.
I raised my hands above Scarlet’s head and prayed fervently for healing and restoration and for the curse of addiction to be broken off her life. Scarlet fell to the floor with a shriek and lay in a faint. Travis looked frightened but no less caring. He knelt on the floor next to Scarlet and I left her in his care and moved on to the next person. Someone else fell back from Stuart’s touch as he prayed for him. I could feel a surge of faith arising from the evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit. Many were prayed for. A few were healed instantly. I think only Jesus himself had a perfect strike rate.
I came back to see how Scarlet was doing. She was sitting up and looking dazed but relaxed and life had returned to her eyes. “I don’t know what you did to me,” she said, “but I felt something come out of me, something dark and oppressive.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Jesus who healed you. It was the Holy Spirit who drove out whatever was in there harassing you.”
“Well I don’t feel that nagging urge for another hit, another pipe, or another…” She demurred from finishing her sentence.
“Praise God, I believe your addictions have gone.”
She looked around then and said, “Where’s Travis?”
“He’ just over there with Josh. They’re praying together. So are you and Travis back together?” I asked.
“No, he won’t have me now,” she said, “and I don’t blame him. I used him and abused him, and he still did this for me, bringing me here. I’m sorry I took him away from you. You can have him back.”
“That’s if he wants to come back,” I said.
“He said he’s had enough of the big smoke and he’s hoping to get a ride back with you, if you’ll have him.”
“Well, I guess I could pick up another passenger.”