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Like everyone walked in carrying something different, but for a little while they all decided to lay it down in the same place.

I used to know what that felt like.

The last song fades and people begin sitting.

Pastor Jack walks onto the stage and he looks like he always does. Dark jeans, simple shirt. Bible tucked beneath one arm.

He shakes hands with someone near the front before stepping onto the platform, completely unhurried.

Like he has nowhere else he’d rather be.

“Here’s what I want to know today,” he says. “I don’t want to know what you believe. Anybody can tell me what they believe. I want to know what your faith actually costs you.”

He lets the question settle over the room.

“Matthew twenty-three.”

He opens his Bible.

“Jesus is standing in front of the most religious people in the room. The ones who knew Scripture backwards and forwards. Who showed up to every service. Who did everything right from the outside.”

He looks up.

“And He calls them whitewashed tombs.”

The room stills.

“Beautiful on the outside. Empty on the inside.”

He closes his Bible and walks closer to the front of the stage.

“He’s not talking about people who don’t believe. He’s talking about people who believe just enough to perform it. People who have gotten so good at looking faithful that they forgot to be faithful.” He pauses. “And the scary thing, the thing that keeps me up sometimes, is those people didn’t know that was who they were. They thought they were doing it right.”

I think about the church I grew up in.

Not this one.

A different one, about the same size.

Same feeling.

I started going my junior year of high school because a friend invited me. Somewhere between church camp and Wednesday nights, Jesus became more than religion.

He became my savior.

Then things started changing.

The girls who worshiped on Wednesday mocked people on Thursday.

The leader I trusted most, living a life that looked nothing like the one she taught.

Grace on stage.

Gossip in the parking lot.

I was seventeen. I didn’t know how to separate broken people from a perfect God.

So I didn’t.