Nobody had to break into Compton Heights Christian Church. Our doors were wide open to everyone all week long and on Sundays, too. You never knew who would show up for worship. Take Grady, for instance, who bore a resemblance to Redd Foxx’s friend named Grady on Sanford and Son.

Grady would amble in from time to time, help himself to some coffee, and talk to whoever happened to be nearby in an unintelligible gibberish, the product of misfitting teeth or none at all, I could never tell. He also had the rather disconcerting habit of kissing peoples’ hands, or trying to anyway, in a manner that in nowise resembled the chivalrous gesture initiated by a woman of royal class offering her hand to a kneeling knight. Jennie and I were in the checkout line of the grocery store one day when Grady entered. Our cashier spotted him and said to a compatriot, “Oh no, not him!” Apparently, his reputation preceded him.

So it was that when Grady showed up for the Christmas Fellowship Dinner on the fourth Sunday of Advent, I saw a lot of hands shoved into pockets. People smiled at Grady, but they weren’t extending the proverbial right hand of Christian Fellowship lest said hand be greeted by a not-so-holy kiss.  

That Sunday, however, I watched as Grady used his own hands for a constructive purpose. He went from table to table, bussing people’s plates. Working alongside him, bussing dishes five-at-a-time, was a member of Compton who had retired after years of waitressing. Think of Flo from Mel’s Diner fame. Side-by-side with Grady, they bussed tables, their cumulative ages pushing one hundred and fifty years.  

Flo asked, “Are you done with your meal?” “May we take your plate?” Whereupon Grady reached out, took the diner’s plate, and walked it to the dishwashing area in the kitchen where Mary, Ella, and the Compton kitchen crew, aproned, hands elbow deep in suds, received his offerings with gratitude.

That morning in worship, we presented Bibles to Fentachew and Atseda, Ethiopian refugees who had fled to a refugee camp, then resettled in a neighborhood north of the church. The Bibles were in their native language of Amharic. Another Ethiopian family had been attending for several months. Millie and the Five Church Association staff had helped Assefa, Sinafkish, Behailu, Lydia, and Ayenew get settled months earlier with groceries and winter clothing. Cliff searched for jobs. We put out a call for used furniture and household goods. Raymond, a Five Church Association staffer whom I baptized, delivered the goods in FCA’s van. Church members set up the apartment. I got my first taste of Immigration and Naturalization Services red tape helping Assefa apply for  a visa for his wife so she could join him in St. Louis.

Lynwood, our choir director, donned a red elf’s cap that drooped over his ears. He was playing Christmas carols when jovial Jim Clayton, decked out in a Santa outfit, entered with a bulging pillowcase slung over his shoulder. He was followed by several kids wearing brown construction paper antlers. Santa Jim pulled gifts wrapped in white tissue paper out of the pillowcase and handed them to the multiracial antlered reindeer who in turn placed them in front of the dinner guests.

One of the gifts got placed next to Fentachew and Atseda, evoking their second beaming smile of the day. Grady got one. Cathy, a developmentally disabled young woman befriended and brought to church by one of our young adult members received her gift and beamed. Four of our church’s newlyweds, Tammy and Bill in their twenties and John and Ruby in their seventies were there, anticipating their first Christmas as husband and wife. They got gifts. Meanwhile, all three of the babies born that year, Nicole, Jessica, and Kira, were passed down the rows of seats from arm to arm, from one member of their church family to another.

Black and white, young and old. Refugees from Ethiopia and lifelong St. Louisans. Lynwood in his elf cap, Jim in his Santa get-up, and the construction paper-eared reindeer. Flo and Grady bussing tables and carrying dishes to the rubber-gloved kitchen crew. Everybody went home with a gift that day, and not a one with a Grady hand kiss, which was a gift unto itself.