DAY 7

By the time my son was beginning grammar school, nearly all the original parishioners in my elderly congregation had died. It was an honor to have known them, to have held their hands as they passed, and to have presided over their burials. They were called the greatest generation for just cause. Their nobility was poured into everything they did; you could even taste it in their baked goods and garden fresh vegetables, all grown and crafted with their own hands. Yet, these offerings would soon be replaced on the fellowship table with the likes of pizza boxes and buckets of fast food chicken. It was the dying, not only of individuals, but of an age. The Great Ignorance had descended and this was never more clearly revealed to me than the diminishing effort I saw appearing on the tables of our Wednesday church buffets.

I remember every piece of meatloaf, every whip of mashed potato like it was yesterday. The memories sent my body into a crazed frenzy, and it is here on the seventh day of this last fast, that I can find no Sabbath rest. In an attempt to relieve the pain, I wandered through the old church of my youth. It was smaller than I remembered, hollow now from years of neglect and abandonment. No one came here, not even the local gangs or the bored teens. It was empty brick, warmed by the sun and cooled by the brisk night air. The glow from people singing and sharing hugs had long passed.

I looked over to the platform where I had delivered so many messages, where I had exchanged my vows with my wife, where my son would tug my trousers after services as I chatted with members and guests. I looked down the aisle and remembered the countless processions of Christmas candles, ushers, and offertory plates. I stared intently as the memory of my wife walking down the aisle toward me illuminated the room. Her beauty almost lost and forgotten to me suddenly reappeared, wrapped in a white wedding dress like a friendly ghost; her mouth curled up in the dearest of smiles as she moved toward my nervous fidgeting. And so it was here that I finally dropped to my knees and wept.

Such it is with all things gone by. Time and memory swirl like water in tub’s drain, dissipating our lives in a great circle. At the center, there is nothing but the porous hole of death; at the edges are the things that spin too quickly, and we cannot slow them down or examine them too closely. Everything we are and everything we have been orbits around this center, caught in the tug of its wake as the level of each liquid memory lowers to our final gurgles and gasps for air. Only then does the drain go silent. It has nothing more to take from us.

Gantry had much to take from me, but as the great drain sucked him down, he would be forced to leave his work to other men. Within a year of our conversation, he would pass. He had embarked on his crusade almost immediately, buttering up board members and writing letters to my superiors. Although he would die without seeing the fruit of his labor come to pass, they would not bury his crusade against me alongside him. Gantry was the ‘me’ I could never become: an adversary who understood that all great battles are won inside the hearts and minds of others, while all great warriors simply pull puppet strings from affluent places of safety. Lackey was his chief puppet and upon Gantry’s death would assume control of the show.

All first attempts to remove my credentials failed, in that many who knew me could see clearly what was going on. Both Gantry and Lackey worked the board behind the scenes and appealed to my superiors to remove me. Even though their attempts were repeatedly thwarted, they kept moving. It only took sixteen short months from the time Tooley was elected to the Senate to the time the IRS started knocking on our church doors. They began pouring over every deduction we had ever claimed. That was followed by a personal inquiry into my tax status. The witch hunt proved to be a dead end, but not before it cost the church thousands in legal fees.

Still determined, they moved to more sinister tactics. One summer morning, a substantial group of them led by Lackey himself showed up for a Sunday service. At the end of the message, they all came forward as a group to transfer their membership letters and join the congregation. Their numbers didn’t quite rival our membership at the time, but they would certainly have had the power to sway votes if accepted to the fold. Thankfully, I still had a group of ardent supporters among my elder body who denied them membership at my behest. Word of this spread quickly and placed the entire congregation on the hot seat with my superiors as being “an unwelcoming body of believers.” It didn’t matter that the whole lot of them were wolves in sheep’s clothing. All that mattered was the bad taste it left in Lackey’s mouth, so he complained most ferociously to the denominational leadership. Accusations of heresy soon followed, and I confess that from that moment on, I never knew if a church visitor was a denominational plant sent to evaluate my messages or if they truly wanted to check us out.

While most of the original group of infiltrators gave up after realizing we would not accept them for church membership, Lackey and his wife stayed around. Each week, they would enter the service late and sit in the back. He never said a word to me, just sat there occasionally leaning forward during my homilies as if to feign interest. I seriously considered taking out a restraining order on him, but knew drawing that kind of attention to our spat would ultimately lead our fellowship being kicked from the Diocese. Lackey knew it too. That is what he was hoping for and why he kept showing up week after week.

Lackey had a foster child that he cared for, which was perhaps his only redeeming quality. I never asked, but being his only child I could only assume that he and his wife had trouble conceiving on their own. Ashley was her name; an extremely bright child given the home they took her from. She was only one year older than my own son and in a small church that meant the two of them would come to know each other well. I had no desire to draw my son into our conflict, but I was extremely disturbed to find out how close they had become in the children’s classes – “inseparable friends” I would hear. He even approached me one Sunday about having her come to the house to play, and I was instantly mortified by the thought. I refused; however, thinking back I wonder if it would not have been best to accept the girl into my home and prove every lie she ever heard about me to be untrue. Malice is never a friend to truth and in this regard I believe I erred on the wrong side of my son’s request.

In time, despite having never obtained formal membership with us, Lackey managed to pry a few parishioners out from under my care. I soon found myself having private conversations with a handful of people as to why he had been denied membership. He was creeping into the fold slowly enough to remain undetected by most anyone but a close circle of us, and I was forced to assume a defensive posture with an increasing number of our membership.

The stress was growing and the whole family felt it. I felt the kind of lingering anger that simmers, but never boils; a slow rise in temperature that can catch you at the most unusual times and only after a night of tossing and turning do you realize where it came from. The world seemed darker and the sweet smells and tastes of things I once enjoyed started to fade. I was sinking into depression and I knew it. They say that depression is repressed anger and that was certainly true in my case. I no longer enjoyed preparing for my sermons and I dreaded my time in the office, knowing that at some point during the day something would trigger a thought of a snake slithering among us.

Of my many flaws as a pastor, I believe the one that hurt the most during this time was the erroneous belief I could protect the flock from this man. That sort of thing is best left to God alone. By the time I had determined to take out a restraining order on him, it was too late. His poison had run its course through too much of the church body and the thought of dragging these sweet people through a massive ordeal was more than I could stand. With my wife’s permission, I formally announced that I would resign my position. There was some outcry, but not nearly as much as I suspected. I believe that the congregation was just as ready to move beyond this as I was.

Lackey’s jeering gaze from the back of the church during my final sermon was the thing that was etched the deepest into my memory. His jaw protruded as if in noble accomplishment while his eyes darted over me. He licked his lips and swallowed and I could feel the anticipation of a hunter looming over its prey.

My text was fairly simple – it came from the Gospel of Matthew and served as my parting shot to a kind of Christianity that no longer had room for the likes of me:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"

Although the text itself was rough and edged, my delivery was gracious. I was able to genuinely and sincerely relate all the congregants that I had witnessed over the years -- a great many souls -- who really did practice an authentic faith. I told as many of their stories as I could during those last thirty minutes. I honestly presented the congregation examples of people they knew who, at least in my estimation, really lived out what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And that was enough, for me and for them. I shook many hands that day, but quickly excused myself when I saw Lackey and his wife enter the line. He would have no moment to glory, no opportunity to gloat. This ordeal between us, while ending on this battlefield, was far from over. I was closing one door, but preparing my soul to open another.

We packed our things and walked out of the parish house like a family of itinerant craftsmen in search of work in a broken economy. We were refugees, both literally and spiritually, and I cannot say that we ever found a true home again. I remained a wanderer along the curbside of church politics the rest of my life, dodging cars, avoiding cheap and easy Jesus buffets, and lamenting the end of an era.