A Battered Guitar Shall Lead Them

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and a good crowd was gathering inside the confines of the Mill Valley Church of Christ. The crisp clean morning air blew into the windows allowing a nice comfortable and cool breeze to accomodate those in attendance. No need for air conditioning today, God and Mother Nature were providing natural air conditioning of their own.
Mill Valley Church of Christ was a very formal church, following a strict schedule each week, song accompaniment always provided by the church pianist, Martha Graves and the church organist Harold Marvin. The songs were always sang the same, nearly in a monotone, and the same deacons each Sunday passed the collection plate and provided the Lord's Supper to those who wished to partake of the loaf and the wine. The deacons always walked the aisles in unison, forming a line, two abreast, and marching five deep on each side as they approached the pulpit to place the collection plates on the table in front of the pulpit and to return the trays of eaten unleavened bread and empty glasses of grape juice to the same spot.
Week in, week out, the same format, the same schedule, and always, before the minister came out and delivered his sermon of the week, someone came up, presented a song or two of special music. It was generally the same people, who normally sang twice each year, about six months apart. Occassionally someone would be invited in to provide their own music, usually bringing along either their own pianist or organist, and occassionally someone would bring in an acoustic guitar and accompany themselves while they sang. Never, ever, at the end of any presentation, would their ever be any applause, only a few utterings of "Amen" from the older men in attendance. To someone who attended Mill Valley for the first time, it would no doubt appear to them an almost rude finish to a song or two of praise to the Lord. But such was the case in Mill Valley Church of Christ, and nothing, but nothing would ever change the pattern, because it was a matter of heritage.
This particular Sunday morning, at the close of the observance of the Lord's Supper, a young man rose from the audience and walked toward the stage behind the pulpit. He had long, unkempt hair, looked badly in need of a shave, and wore a pair of badly torn and worn out blue jeans with holes thoughout the legs and both knees exposed.
Cold stares from the attendees followed him as he walked up onto the stage and picked up a battered electric guitar. He cautiously placed the guitar around himself with a leather strap that simply read: "Christ died for me!" He plugged his guitar into a rather large amp, turned it on, and immediately the halls of the Mill Valley Church of Christ were filled with feedback, which the young man quickly got under control by turning himself and the guitar away from the amp.
He walked up to the microphone rather nervously, head down, barely looking out at the crowd, and announced to the congregation, "I'm going to sing for you this morning and play my guitar, and would like you to know that my accompaniement this morning is a pre-recorded tape of a background band, but I will be providing the lead guitar and my own singing. I hope this blesses your heart."
Somewhere offstage someone was in control of a CD player, which was going to play thru the church's PA system. And whoever was in charge of that music, had the volume really cranked up loud! As the music started, someone who had been around in the year 1970 would recognize the heavy strains of Frijid Pink's psychedelic version of the Animals classic hit "The House of The Rising Sun." The fuzz tone of the guitar work and the wah-wah sounds which had died out in popularity three decades earlier filled the sanctuary of the Mill Valley Church of Christ, and the young man standing on the stage went wild with his accompaniment, slamming his hand across the strings with his pick and his fingers moving expertly, sending out a driving riff of a song from so long ago, a song no one would have ever expected to hear on the Sabbath in such a strict and holy church such as this one.
As he finished his opening instrumental, he walked to the microphone, and began singing different lyrics, MUCH different lyrics...
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me...
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind
But now, I see..."
His voice, though overly driven by the volume, was breathtaking, and to hear the words of such a beautiful spiritual song being sang to such a heavy metal sounding song, was almost too much for those in attendance.
People looked at each other as the young man sang the second verse, many in disbelief, trying to envision why this young man, dressed so shabbily would be singing such a sacred song to such wicked sounding music. Such sacrilege was unforgivable, yet there was nothing anyone could do to stop him as he played the middle instrumental, again his fingers moving magically across the guitar strings. The sacred halls of the Mill Valley Christian Church sounded like the hall of a heavy metal concert, but the young man never wavered from his playing, and began singing the last verse.
"When we've, been there, 10,000 years,
Bright shining, as the sun.
There'll be no less days
To sing God's praise,
Than when we first begun."
And after a short riff, he went back to verse one and sang,
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now, I see..."
He finished with a dramatic solo on the guitar, faced his amplifier and got the utmost volume and feedback that he could, and just as quickly as he started, he was finished.
He turned off his amp, took the guitar from around his neck, set it down, and headed back to his seat on the front row.
No applause, no comments of "Amen" followed.
Only utter and complete silence.
The young man never looked at the crowd, whose eyes bore deeply into him. If he had, he would have probably simply walked out the door, because those looks were looks of anger and hatred, and certainly not the looks of crowd of Christian's gathered on a Sunday morning to worship the good Lord.
As the good Revererend Paul Michaels stood and walked to the pulpit, there arose from the congregation whispers suggesting of their outrage and shock and displeasure and what they had just witnessed. Just how he was going to get their attention and calm them down he wasn't sure, he just knew he had a challenge facing him.
Revererend Michaels said a quick prayer, "Lord give me the words, YOUR words, to get me thru the next 20 minutes and to keep peace in this church."
As Revererend Michaels opened his Bible to read his opening scripture, he opened it to the wrong page, but looked down at where he had turned to in his Bible, and smiled.
The Lord works in mysterious ways, he thought, and began reading from the book of Psalms, Psalm 100.
"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord He is God, it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth to all generations."
Those words seemed to have a calming effect on the entire congregation. Faces that had been twisted into anger and disbelief, now relaxed, and smiles replaced those looks of anger and resentment. Several members of the older generation in the church erupted into a chorus of "Amens." A few members even began to laugh, despite how they had felt just a few moments before Paul had read his scripture.
It began to occur to those in attendance that this young man who had just performed a very strange version of "Amazing Grace" had been singing his praises unto the same God they all worshipped, and he had done it in his own way, and it had actually been done with a great deal of talent.
Reverend Paul smiled, thanking God for the words, His words, and looked down to see how the young man was reacting to all this.
But his seat was empty.
Later on after the service, people commented about the young man, wondering who had invited him to sing and how gutsy a move that had to have been, but no one seemed to know who had asked him to sing. Even more remarkably, no one had seen the young man get up and leave, either. There were many who wanted to thank him for coming and "waking" up this congregation and setting them on the path to a more upbeat and more modern look at the way they conducted their worship services. But again, he was nowhere to be found.
All that was left behind was his much used guitar and amplifier.
No one could be found who had run the CD player offstage, and no one could find either the CD player or a CD, either.
No one had gotten his name and no one could ever remember having ever seeing the young man before that day.
However, and never telling a soul, lead Elder Dave Ritchie had noticed that the young man had scars on both hands, like something had been driven thru them, and he had a series of scars that resembled puncture wounds around his forehead. He wasn't sure anyone else had seen them, but he knew that he had.
Besides, if he told anyone, did he really think anyone would believe him?
Better to keep still than to make others in the congregation think he was losing his mind.
But he knew who had performed that day, and he knew that a miracle had indeed been performed as well.
Mill Valley Church of Christ had just been reborn.