You might think there’s a special place in hell for someone who would steal the cross from an altar.
Members of Tacoma’s Epworth LeSourd United Methodist Church don’t.
They are praying for the person who entered the church three times, and each time walked away with something of meaning and value.
In mid-October, the thief took the church band’s cymbals and cowbell from the sanctuary. The value was small enough, it didn’t even reach the insurance deductible.
“We started making assumptions (about the thief or thieves),” the Rev. Wes Stanton said. “They probably got in when a group was meeting and the door was unlocked, or through the back door at our Friday night barbecue.”
The church values community outreach, and the weekly barbecue is an open invitation to a meal. Nobody liked being ripped off, but members understood that with openness comes risks.
Then, on Oct. 23, the congregation arrived for Sunday services to find an empty altar.
“The cross was gone, and the candlesticks were gone, and some floor-standing candelabras were gone, too,” Stanton said of the items he thought the church had owned for 20 to 30 years.
Disbelief, he said, was the first stage of what would be their journey through grief.
“Really? Us?” church member Leona Weltzer thought when it was clear the brass symbols worth about $3,400 were gone. “It’s the same as if someone entered your home. You feel a bit victimized. It’s not our stuff personally, but we feel a sense of ownership.
“Why would somebody do this?”
It was probably to melt and sell the brass, police told Stanton.
That’s a stinging shame, destroying sacred symbols for quick cash.
Next on the grief journey was an unpleasant spate of anger and blame.
People with keys to the building worried that they might have left it unlocked. Some without keys suspected that was the case. Stanton led them out of that.
“It was resolved into ‘We need to pray for security and pray for this person who feels so desperate they have to steal from a church,’ ” Weltzer said.
The affirmative response got them through the depression stage.
They backed prayer with action, including readjusting security cameras. That’s how they picked up images of a man Stanton did not recognize using a key to get into the sanctuary
Founded in 1889, the church at 710 S. Anderson St. has aged, merged and been reborn. Weltzer, who remains a member despite a move to Puyallup, figured they’d had the same locks for 30 years, and someone had found a new use for an old key.
It won’t work any longer. The church has installed new locks.
The members also have a new perspective on their altar.
“We decided that what was taken were symbols, and we don’t need symbols to worship,” Weltzer said.
“After all, Jesus didn’t say, ‘if you want to be my disciple, you must buy a shiny cross and put it up front,” Stanton told the congregation. “He said, ‘if you want to be my disciple, deny yourself, and take up your cross, and follow me.’ ”
Stanton placed a basket on the altar and invited members to fill it with “significant gifts of food, signs of the abundant love of our bountiful God.”
“Let’s use this as an opportunity to be about Jesus’ mission instead of looking at a pretty cross on an altar,” he said.
That has brought them to acceptance, and beyond.
They have filled the basket over and over, sharing food with members who need it and with My Sister’s Pantry food bank.
All because of a thief.
“He has been in the explicit prayers of the congregation,” Stanton said. “They think of him as somebody who is needing help, and probably arrest is part of that help.”
He’s broken, they believe, and needs to repair whatever fault led him to steal from a holy space.
If he makes that choice, Weltzer said, he will have a congregation behind him.
“I don’t think anybody has any anger left,” she said. “It’s my belief that everybody is hungry. They don’t necessarily know hungry for what, and they waste a lot of time trying to feed that hunger in the wrong places.
“Hopefully, if the situation came about, we could help that person. Feed that person.”
If the person who stole Epworth LeSourd United Methodist Church’s cross asks for it, he will continue to have a special place in its members’ prayers.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
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