Raymond Rutledge
traced the vein on the back of his left hand with his right thumb, slowly,
carefully, almost as if the vein had been his lifeline. He looked up only
when the waitress asked him if he wanted any more coffee. He caught her
gaze only for a second, shook his head, “No,” and turned back to his left
hand. Eighty-two years he had had that same thumb and same left hand, but
now, somehow, he was alone and adrift like he never had been before. If
he went back home, he would have to listen to Velma shout nasty insults at him
from the other room. He loved her still, knew that it was just the
Alzheimer’s, but winced every time she started in on him. If the “cold
nasties” Velma shouted did not come laced with so much personal information,
Ray might shrug it off. But these were like someone had taken the words
that were his worst nightmares and put them into Velma’s mouth.
“Hypocrite! You’ve lived your life only for yourself! You leave me
in this room because you know I’ll tell people!”
Co-vid had made it even tougher. For a time, it was only him and Velma. Hospice had stopped coming to be
safe—ProMedica unaware that he might not make it without them. They finally relented and sent a caregiver
for a couple of hours once a week.
So Ray took more time at the restaurant than what he should. He knew the
hospice provider would stay a little longer.
At one time he had a whole cohort, “Comrades in Arms” they called themselves in
seminary, who bucked up against the establishment, asked the church to be who
it said it was, and moved mountains together. The ones who really meant
something to him, had now either gone before him or were too feeble in mind to
cause any real trouble. Sam had died of a heart attack in his mid-40s. Pearson
had the tragic car accident on the way to a march. Betty had made the
most noise, dying from machine gunfire
in Uganda. Jackson was in some clergy nursing home
in Tennessee. Jackson did not even recognize Raymond the last time
he came to see him. Even if they could not have prevented the church from
doing this to him, they would have fought in a blaze of glory that would have
let him know he was alright. They would have talked to him about Jesus’s
walk to Jerusalem, the cross, and how that was the faithful story. How
else could this end?
All of his colleagues, at least the ones he trusted, were not there when the
church decided to run him out of town. It’s not that he valued the Rev.
in front of his name all that greatly, he had just lived with it for so
long. Now he could not legitimately carry it around with him.
“Probably had to happen,” Raymond said to himself, “we had been causing a
stomachache in the belly of the church for so long that it finally had to crap
us out.” As he continued to rub the vein with his thumb, he snorted and
shook his head. Nobody during the proceedings seemed to blink when he
quoted Scripture: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murdered the
prophets!” They all acted like he was quoting some Marxist tract.
But if he had had one of those tremendous colleagues around, somebody would
have been there to make a mockery of the proceedings with several Scripture
citations (maybe even some the lugheads recognized) and someone else would have
been there with the champagne to celebrate a life well-lived.
The final straw was when he was asked
where God was, if God was in the church.
He lifted up his favorite Psalm, “I think of you on my bed. I meditate on you in the watches of the
night.” Ray had meant it as a way of saying
that God could not be confined to the four walls of the church. He knew what they would do with it. “There!” the Conference Ministry Chair said, “There! See? He
doesn’t even think God is in the church!”
And without clarification, he was expelled without his community,
without his great defenders.
As it was, he was alone. Pearson would have brought the champagne.
As it was, he was alone, betrayed and broken by his own faithfulness.
Betrayed and . . . broke. He would have to let the hospice nurse
go. His pension was now gone. Fifty-seven years he had faithfully
created a church belly ache. Gone in one morning. Marching,
protesting, feeding the poor, screaming to high heaven about where government
funds should go. It was Betty who had told him that it’s quite easy to go
after the government. But see what they
do when you go after the holy of holies. That’s when all the trouble
started. When Ray started critiquing his own church, every blowhard with
a bully pulpit started going after him. Rev. Raymond Rutledge had been
called plenty of names by plenty of people, but now the attacks started in
earnest.
Seemed like seminaries were weeding out any future “Comrades in arms” for these
wussy little, feel-good leaders whose greatest critique of the church was that
it did too much “navel gazing.” First time he heard “navel gazing” used
at a clergy gathering, he suggested that maybe the church was a little too
consumed with critiquing the navel and below and needed to focus on heart and
head gazing. Jackson laughed his head off. The kid who
used the phrase, still a kid, Rev. Michael Cotts had been the one to tell him
he had been defrocked.
Jesus was right, Raymond Rutledge thought, human nature seems to dictate that
the high, holy places are defended with the most human violence—almost as if
God was so weak and so frail—that somebody needed to spill enough blood, purify
the place, and exclude the troublemakers so that nobody would disturb the Holy
One’s slumber. Don’t dare wake up God, they must reason, because God is
awful grouchy when aroused. Tough love had come to be discipline for your
kids rather than hanging in with the people harmed and hurting. Compassion
had come to mean a God of every color rather than a God who wore the colors of
those destroyed and left for dead. The first time Betty called their god
a wuss, Raymond spit back up his coffee before he whooped with the rest of the
group. Betty was right.
He had always been Rev. Raymond Josiah Rutledge. Who would he be
now? The church had always been a cloak, a cape, a cover of decency for
what some folks thought was amoral activity. Maybe it was time to remove
the artificial cape and figure out how he could build the Beloved Community
they all agreed was the worthy project. Or maybe it was time to realize
that the church might own the wearing of his stoles but not the cape. And
it was time to see who would join him in the League of Justice he and God might
cobble together.
He and God. Outside the four walls of buildings that were more invested
in civility and decency than justice, peace, and compassion. Maybe Jesus
had already left the building . . . following the God who lived in a tent.
Why would he expect any less? God always got antsy when asked to stay in
one place for too long. Tent stakes pulled up, not carrying any baggage,
God had always been on the move far sooner than he had.
As the waitress left his bill, Ray realized the hospice nurse had been at his
house now a full hour past the time she was supposed to stay with Velma.
Ray pushed himself up with his cane, steadied himself, and fished out his
wallet. He put enough on the table for his lunch and the tip and then
wryly smiled as he wrote his customary message on the bill, “Jesus is
coming. Hope this is enough to get you out of town.”
Ray ambled for the door, stopped to button his sweater, and then set his face
toward Jerusalem. He had a long walk ahead of him. He had to
get back to Velma. He had to figure out where God was calling him
now. He was an old man who had lost his place in the world. The
church was no longer his lifeline. As Ray walked, he realized that
perhaps the church never was his lifeline. Perhaps, he thought, the
proceedings today confirmed what he already knew—the church never was his
lifeline.
Raymond Josiah Rutledge leaned hard into the wind, pulled his sweater around himself a little tighter, and smiled. Eighty-two years old was a darn good time to see if he could find a new Sam, a new Betty, a new Pearson, and a new Jackson. Jesus had left the building. He knew God would not leave him alone. And he knew he was faithful enough to follow . . . even to Jerusalem. His faith renewed, Raymond Josiah Rutledge, unordained, with the same hands, same heart, and one good leg, set off to make trouble again. Amen.
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