Hands

 

It is written: “…fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” (II Timothy 1:6).  When I was in college, I fell under the spell of a brand of Christianity that lured me away from the more careful, conservative Southern Baptist denomination in which I’d been raised and ushered me into a church where flesh and spirit fused together in a holy roller fervor. People raised their arms and spoke in unknown tongues; they swayed and stretched their bodies toward heaven as they sang the songs of the Spirit; and, they sometimes fell to the floor from the overwhelming power of a holy encounter with God. Often, these experiences came about through the laying on of hands, a physical conduit for the flow of the Spirit. We touched when we worshipped; we touched when we prayed, sometimes so close we could feel each other’s breath across our faces. It mostly happened in special services where we believed God would show up in unusual and memorable ways and miracles would happen. 

In the spring of 1982, the Abundant Life Tabernacle began its “Days of Power” services in the converted chicken hatchery everyone called the chicken house church: a one-story, white, cinder block building with a low-pitched roof and high-pitched windows, and an old refrigerator room with a large metal door that served as the church office. It sat in an oversized, treeless lot next to a neglected warehouse on a back road off the interstate highway heading west toward Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A local businessman with contempt for organized religion, liked the notion of an independent church that “cut through all the bullshit and got right to the heart of the matter,” and had donated the building, rent free, for the church to use. The congregation was a religious gumbo of Baptists, Catholics, Mormons, and Methodists. They were schoolteachers, state workers, housewives, blue-collar men, and office women. And young people. Lots of young people. 

On the first night of the “Days of Power” meetings, the small cinder block building was packed with church members and visitors from other churches seeking from this non-denominational church a fresh touch of God on their tired, denominational souls. Unlike the more meditative atmosphere in traditional churches, the room could barely contain the clamor of conversation among the expectant worshippers. Soon the chatter merged into handclapping and swaying bodies as the worship team swelled into a vigorous rendition of This Is The Day That The Lord Hath Made. This was not a dispassionate pipe organ hymn that echoed in the quiet churches so many of us had left.  Instead, here was a Yamaha drum set, a Gibson 12-string, a Fender electric bass, a Hammond electric organ, and a used Baldwin baby grand pounding out the simplest of tunes, inviting God to show up in the chicken house and dwell among us. I stood in front of the band, microphone in hand, “Let’s stand and worship the Lord tonight.” 

And with that, the festivities began and the music coaxed us to sing, praise, and dance in the Spirit. For the next forty-five minutes, the congregation sang its way deeper into the shadow of the holy, a place where the outside world tumbled away and the faithful were lifted from the ordinariness of their lives into a magical place of secret words and holy visions. Soon, the energetic shouts of praise gave way to the tender murmurs of worship. 

“Thank you, Jesus. Praise you, Jesus,” I whispered into the microphone. 

Similar sentiments echoed throughout the congregation, “We worship you, Lord. Bless you, Jesus.”

Eyes closed, hands raised, I felt something warm ooze through my chest. My face flushed and the warm spot in my chest began to rise through my throat into my head, across my tongue and over my lips, shooting out a song in words I didn’t know and had never spoken before. 

“Londiabakonopdandoshilaninamontoshallalamoyaconda……”

The congregation took their cue and spontaneously, unrehearsed, fanned into flame the gift of God in them, singing melodies not their own. Their individual songs blended into one harmonious chorale that filled the room like the smoke of the Lord in Isaiah’s temple. As if carried on wings, we were all lifted off our feet to float in a sea of gentle benediction, a grace beyond the reach of our daily lives. Soon, the song subsided. For a moment, no one stirred while we waited for God to invade the stillness with some divine word. 

Brother Benny Blanchard, the guest preacher from southwest Louisiana, took his place behind the pulpit. He was a dumpy man with slicked back brown hair and pasty cheeks that melted down his face and into his neck. Holding his thick, black, Thompson’s Chain Reference Bible in his left hand, he began. “Tonight the Lord will show forth His deliverance in this place.” He spit his words into the cheap microphone. “In Acts, the followers of Jesus carried His power within them. Everywhere they went, they were vessels of that power, through the laying on of holy hands that bestowed the fiery gift of God!” 

He preached on for another half hour, working up a sweat and pounding the pulpit with his palm. His eyes flared as he hurled his words at us in hypnotic rhythm, “The transforming power of God will flow tonight through holy hands.”

He closed his Bible and his voice ebbed to a whispered prayer, which was my cue to assemble the worship team and begin the undercurrent of music that would help usher in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. At this point in the service, the atmosphere was charged with expectation that the power of God would be displayed in visible and supernatural ways. The congregants stood to their feet and begin to softly worship to the tune of a simple gospel chorus.  “There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place…” 

Brother Blanchard stood at the front of the sanctuary, joined by the pastor and elders of the church. The congregants streamed down the aisles to stand before one of these holy men and receive their blessing. The ministers took the women’s hands in their own, and laid their hands on the men’s shoulders. Leaning their ears in close, the ministers nodded their heads in earnest as they listened to the seekers make their requests known. Brother Blanchard met the slim figure of Sarah Reese as she slipped gently into the space before him, like a deer approaching a stream. He grabbed her hands, leaned in close to her mouth, and listened to her slight voice share a secret that brought out her tears. Leaning back from her, Brother Blanchard guided both of her hands high into the air. He put one of his palms against her forehead and raised his other one overhead. 

“Precious Jesus,” he began, “this blessed sister has come tonight to be delivered of her depression and get filled with the Holy Ghost. Dear Lord, she wants to feel Your power this night.”

His upraised hand slowly made its way to her stomach, just below her breasts. He spread his fingers across her stomach and began to press in on her. His voice amplified. His hot words bellowed across her face. “You foul spirits of depression, in the name of Jesus, I command you to come out of her this night. You have no power here, for she belongs to the Lord.” 

As he began to pray in tongues, his hand shook and he pulled it back from her stomach, as if he could literally rip the demon right out through her skin. Sarah started to weep, the tears smearing the mascara down her face in long black lines. Laying both hands firmly on her forehead, Brother Blanchard began to push her head back and commanded the Holy Spirit to fall. 

“In the name of the Jesus, baptize her in your Holy Ghost, Almighty God!” 

Sarah’s body began to tremble all the way out to the ends of her fingers as she suddenly burst into a primitive babbling sound.  Two of the elders stepped around behind her and lightly touched her back while Brother Blanchard continued to push. Her body stiffened and she fell backwards into the arms of the two elders, who gently guided her to the floor. She lay there with hands still raised, tongue still babbling. 

“Hallelujah! The Spirit of the Lord is in this place, brothers and sisters!” Brother Blanchard railed, as beads of sweat dripped down his face. He stepped over Sarah and moved to the next person in line, a tall, lean teenager with shaggy brown hair and dark eyes, wet with tears that dotted his sad face. We knew him as the central target of his mother’s relentless prayers for his deliverance from the demons of homosexuality. At every service and Bible study when prayer requests were given, his mother asked in whispered, apologetic tones that we pray for her only son, Wyatt, to be freed from his sin. He had always been a sensitive boy, she said, and when his father left her, the boy had no strong male figures in his life. She was sure the devil had taken advantage of this to plant deceptive thoughts into his unsuspecting soul. When she caught him having sex with another boy from school, she knew the devil had built a stronghold in him. When he refused to forsake his homosexual lusts and repent, she knew he could only be freed by the deliverance of the Holy Spirit. Maybe the persistent pleas of his desperate mother finally wore him down. Or maybe the mysterious moving of the Holy Spirit finally overpowered his resistance. Whatever the reason, Wyatt had finally darkened the doors of the church that night and now stood face to face with the sweaty evangelist. 

Wyatt’s lips quivered. Hands clenched together in front of him. His head hung toward the floor. “I think I need prayer,” he mumbled.

Brother Blanchard smiled and looked toward the ceiling. “Praise Jesus. Hallelujah.” He lifted his hands above Wyatt’s narrow shoulders. “Son, this night the Lord will deliver thee from the perversion that has gripped your soul. The thief cometh to steal, kill, and destroy, but the Spirit giveth life.” His voice grew louder. Deeper. Falling into a measured cadence. 

I turned away and signaled the musicians to modulate into another song. When I turned around, Brad Ashton made his way toward me from the back of the sanctuary. Bypassing the evangelist and the elders, he approached and aimed his vivid blue eyes directly at me. I put my microphone aside and leaned in to him. 

“I need to pray with you, man. I feel the Lord doing something in me,” he whispered. 

He was a beautiful young man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a brawny torso. He had become a project of mine. Not long before, someone had laid their hands on me and spoken a prophecy from God promising that I would minister to teenagers that no one else could reach. Hard cases. Bad boys. Brad fit that category well. Like me, he had been raised in the Southern Baptist church, made a “profession of faith,” and been baptized at a young age. But, Brad fell away from the church as a teenager - a backslider with a proclivity for pot and whisky; a weakness for women, many his own age, some much older, a few even married. He also bore the scars of a young man with a quick temper and the inability to avoid a fight. But when he was not high or horny, he demonstrated remarkable prowess on the baseball field, winning honors in high school and grabbing the attention of minor league scouts. He had sporadically attended the chicken house church and we had spoken in private on many occasions about his life and spiritual condition. Once, at the end of the previous summer, I gave him a ride home after one of his baseball games. We stopped outside his house and rolled down the windows to let in the sticky twilight air. The cab of the Ford pickup became our chapel and for nearly an hour we talked. He asked questions. I gave answers. He confessed. I listened. Then we prayed. I laid my hands on his shoulder and his knee and asked God to hear his prayer. While silky moonlight splashed across his face, Brad rededicated his life to Jesus and prayed to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Not much changed after the Amen. He continued to drink and fight and screw around. But, he also kept coming to church and asking questions. I remembered the prophecy and kept on hoping. 

I stepped off the makeshift platform and led him a dozen feet away to the other side of the room. We sat side by side in two metal chairs on the front row of the sanctuary.  Brad rested his forearms on his muscular legs and dropped his head between his knees. 

“What is it, Brad?” 

He sniffed and wiped a tear from his dazzling blue eyes. “I just can’t keep going like this,” he said. “This life of mine, it’s killing me. I can’t control things anymore. I’m tired of this shit.” He began to cry softly.

I slipped one hand around his shoulders and lightly gripped his knee with the other. At that moment, I felt an intense rush down my face and into my arms. A familiar sensation that I believed was the anointing of the Holy Spirit. I jerked my head toward the altar as Brother Blanchard’s loud rants rumbled through the room.

“Dear Lord, you tell us the devil is like a hungry lion seeking whom he may devour,” he roared as he pushed his sweaty palm against the brow of the trembling teenager. “Tonight we claim this boy’s soul for you in Jesus’ name!” The noise of the congregation surged in waves of clattering tongues and cries of Hallelujah, Jesus. Some stood with eyes closed, their yearning faces turned upward and their open palms framing their cheeks, as if awaiting God’s lips on theirs. Others thrust their stiff arms high above them, swaying their bodies back and forth and crying out in tempo with Brother Blanchard’s intensifying prayer. Everyone in the room had been snatched away by this holy fervor. 

“It’s ok, Brad,” I whispered close to his ear. We turned our bodies slightly. Our legs touched each other, our faces only inches apart. I held out my hands as if holding a package. He grabbed them, interlocking thumbs, wrapping his palms around mine. I held his with sturdy tenderness. “Let’s pray together.”   

The agitated beating of his heart pulsated through his fingers and pressed its rhythm into my palms. The faint beginnings of my prayer language spilled across my lips. As I prayed, my thumbs rubbed back and forth across the back of Brad’s calloused hands. 

“Lord, I just want to lift up my brother, Brad, to you right now. You know his heart, how he wants to be free of his sin. You know how he wants to walk in the light of your love. I just ask you to touch him right now, Father.” 

In the intimacy of the moment, a different passion began to steal its way into my spiritual anointing. My face flushed. My heart beat stronger. My lungs inhaled faster. There was a tingling in my groin, a warm stirring that threatened erection. These unwanted but unavoidable feelings disturbed me. The sexuality I tried so desperately to deny had found its way to the surface yet again. I had recognized Brad’s raw, conspicuous sexuality on many occasions, but had never felt a compelling lust for him. My appreciation of his seductive charm had never been a catalyst to sexual longing. But at this moment, the spiritual and the sexual within me met in the sensuality of our human touch. 

As we prayed, Brother Blanchard’s voice bellowed still louder across the room into our quiet space. From the corner of my eye, I saw Wyatt’s shaking hands rise toward the ceiling as if he were about to touch something that might burn him. His wet face lifted slightly.  The evangelist pressed one hairy hand against Wyatt’s perspiring forehead. “I rebuke you spirits of homosexuality, in the name of Jesus!” The music got louder and the movement of the congregation coalesced into a harmonious chorus that rippled through the room as if to fortify the preacher in his spiritual battle with the demons.

My racing thoughts pulled me away. Can it really be demons that make him that way? Is it demons that are causing these unholy passions in me, too? Can one prayer banish them for good? Can it really be that easy? But, I’ve prayed so hard, so long, and it hasn’t worked.

The tightening of Brad’s grip on my hands focused my attention back on him. I released his hands. Laid mine on his head. The downy curls of his hair felt soft against my skin. His arms floated upward. Weightless. Free. 

“Jesus, deliver my brother from his pain and fill him afresh with your Spirit.”  

Brad’s battered lips mouthed unspoken sounds that gave way to murmurs of petition and praise. Like a crack in the face of a dam, his trickling prayer escalated into an emotional outpouring of unknown tongues. The Spirit of God fell on him. His body shook as he surrendered to heavy sobs that erupted from somewhere deep inside him. 

“Yes, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” A crescendo of voices from the front of the church grabbed my attention again. With his other hand now raised toward heaven, Brother Blanchard pushed harder against Wyatt’s head and screamed at the devil in him. “I command you foul spirits to release this boy from his perversion and fill him with the Holy Ghost!” 

The pastor and elders of the church surrounded the boy with outstretched hands, ready to catch him when the demons left. Two of them lightly touched their hands to his back as Brother Blanchard pushed harder still and railed in his own language of heaven. “Shambala killiala palabronda mantakalla…”

My hands, still resting on Brad’s head, slipped down to his neck and shoulders, where I felt his hot blood pushing its way to the surface of his skin. Flesh on flesh. Pulse to pulse. The fire of human passion burning together with the fire of the God. Again, my mind swirled: How can these feelings be in me, now, in this moment. Shouldn’t I be safe from them here? Oh God, make them go away.

In a convulsive gasp, Brad’s face fell into my chest. He threw his arms around my shoulders and continued to weep. I held him in my arms like a child and stroked the back of his head. Vulnerability now displaced his virility and I begin to feel the sensuality of the previous moments melt away into something more like fraternal sympathy. I glanced from the corner of my eye at the spectacle at the front of the room. 

With a final push, Brother Blanchard screamed out again, “In Jesus name, be gone!” 

Wyatt’s body shuddered, then fell backward like a cut down tree into the waiting arms of the praying elders, who gently led him to the floor and left him babbling and crying with hands raised into the air. The elders wandered back into the congregation.

Brother Blanchard moved to the side and the pastor stepped back on the platform to close the service. 

Brad sat back in his chair. 

“Are you ok?” I asked, with one final touch of my hands on his shoulders. 

“Yeah. Thanks.” He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt then looked at me. “ I love you, man,” he said.

I squeezed his shoulders. “I love you, too.”

Brad went back to his seat. 

I went back to the front of the sanctuary. 

Wyatt sat upright on the carpet. The pastor helped him stand then squeezed his arm around Wyatt’s shoulder. The boy looked frail and spent. His eyes darted about as if he didn’t know where he was. His hands still shook as he brushed away leftover tears. His mother ran from the back of the congregation and fell on her son’s sunken shoulders, sobbing, “Thank you Jesus.” She stood next to him while others reached from behind to pat him on the shoulder. 

As I stared at Wyatt, his eyes met mine for a moment and the uncertain smile faded from his face. His dark eyes appeared to open wider and it seemed as if someone inside him was looking out past his face at me. It was a look I recognized, a look of fear and uncertainty. I didn’t know Wyatt, but I felt I knew the boy looking at me from inside him.

“Praise Jesus,” the pastor murmured in soothing tones into the microphone. “We’ve seen the hand of God tonight.” The congregation applauded and raised a multitude of Hallelujahs. The pianist played softly. The pastor motioned to Wyatt. “Brother, come give testimony to what the Lord has done for you.” 

Wyatt stood next to the pastor and looked down at the floor. The pastor thrust the microphone into Wyatt’s blank face. “Share with us what the Lord has done for you tonight?” 

Wyatt clenched his hands together again in front of him. The air leaked slowly from his mouth. “I didn’t want to come tonight,’ his voice quavered.  “But my Mom has been praying for me and, uh...” He paused and looked at his mother. “I don’t know what happened but I feel really different now. I think I want to follow Jesus.” His voice faded, but the flutter in his voice made his words sound as much like a question as a confession. 

The congregation clapped again. 

The pianist played a bit louder. 

“Praise Jesus, son. You’ll be free now to walk in the power of the Spirit and serve Jesus instead of the lusts of the devil,” the pastor bellowed to the congregation’s Amens and Hallelujahs. 

I watched Wyatt fade back into the congregation until he turned and his eyes caught mine. 

I had a hard time believing that just moments ago a demon had inhabited his body and was now gone from him. He didn’t really look any different to me, only weaker and hunched over. Maybe the glory of his deliverance just hadn’t had time to sink in on him. I wanted to believe. For him. For me. But, my doubts wouldn’t let go of me. 

Wyatt’s unconvincing smile withered as he stared back at me.

I saw again that face behind his face. 

That look in his eyes. 

That look.

Then, it was over. The service ended as it had begun with the pastor handing the microphone back to me. As I stepped up to the pulpit to lead the congregation in a closing song, the music cranked up. Across the sanctuary hands began to clap and bodies began to sway. I pulled the music around me like a warm blanket and joined my voice with the congregation: 

Oh victory in Jesus, my savior forever,

He plunged me to victory beneath his cleansing flood.