Dedicated to T-bone and Velma. May they rest in peace.
C
Lent 3 (OL 2) BFC 2016
February
28, 2016
Luke
13:31-35
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!”
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 string him up. 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 stomach ache 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 here with the champagne to celebrate a life well-lived.
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’s 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 this 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.
So 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 start practicing his independence.
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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