Sunday’s Message

A WAVE THAT NEVER MADE IT QUITE TO SHORE

TWO DAYS later David stood at the pulpit in his new chapel and looked out at his eight-thirty congregation. Face pale. Eyes burning in sadness. Not one empty seat, not even the folding chairs he’d set up because his heart told him that all three services would be full.

His parents were there. Nick and Katy and the kids. Andy and Teresa.

Karl Vonn and Ethan, out from Florida. Stone faces. Black hair slicked down. Somehow darker than the people around them.

Congressman Roger and Marie Stoltz in from Washington. Assemblyman Hennigan from Sacramento. The mayors of Tustin, Orange, and Anaheim.

Press all over the place and news crews from Los Angeles outside with video cameras and microphones.

David began by making the worshipers see that Janelle had been just like them. Beautiful and flawed and human. He told them how he had first met her in an orange grove back when he was just a boy and she a very little girl.

And how their families had become acquainted through the death of Janelle’s mother. How the Vonns were the first family in need that he had ministered to as a young divinity student at San Anselmo’s.

He told them about some of her troubles as a young teenager. The way she’d fought and changed and held on to what was good inside her.

He spent a long time on all of her good qualities, her humor and her creativity and her gentleness. Her generosity. How it pleased her to help people less fortunate than she was. How she’d always take the underdog. Some of this David knew from personal experience, some examples he had gotten from her family and friends.

So when he told them what had happened to her, even though every single person in the room knew already, the recognition issued through them all. Janelle was the wave that didn’t make it quite to shore.

Then to the dangerous part of his message. The part that David believed but had trouble expressing.

He stated that what had happened to Janelle was a blessing for every person in this room. Maybe a miracle. Because it did not happen to anyone else. Because God had chosen Janelle for this work. Just as God had chosen Noah and Moses and Jesus, verily every one of us, for some special work on earth.

Throughout all this David sensed the doubt within the worshipers. Chosen? Me? For what? Not for something like that. He could see them recoil, each person just a fraction of an inch, but the inches became a communal mile of retreat. He looked out at them, said nothing. He let them think. Let them wonder what God would choose them for. He didn’t tell them it would be for something glorious or grand, because not everything God did could be glorious and grand. Sometimes it was small and humble.

So when David suggested that for right now, for this specific moment, God had chosen for them to be here to worship Him and love one another, he could feel the relief wash through the room in one huge exhalation. The worshipers moved forward fractionally and the mile of retreat was reclaimed.

Then he moved into the heart of his message: that in God’s hand a tragedy was a tool used to make a shape for love. The sculptor’s chisel. The painter’s brush.

“And we are the raw material,” he said. “The rock and the canvas.”

He had never heard a more inspired rendition of “Amazing Grace,” not an easy song for a congregation to sing.

“Let us bow our heads in prayer.”

When the prayer was over David heard the chorus of car horns from outside. The car worshipers were for the most part a younger and occasionally rowdy crowd. Sometimes the honking would last ten or fifteen seconds.

One minute later the last horn stopped.

David stood outside the chapel and shook hands with the worshipers.

“You healed my heart,” said a white-haired man.

“God healed your heart.”

“They hit us with mustard gas outside Calais and I saw half our men get cut to ribbons by machine guns. Now I know why they died and I didn’t. I’ve been going to church and praying for sixty years. You healed my heart, Reverend Becker. You did.”

He took David’s right hand in both of his, held tight and shook.

The woman next in line shook his hand and wiped a tear from her eye. “Mine, too.”

Then hustled away.

THE SERVICE drained him. They all did, but this one was almost exhausting. Took the spirit right out of him.

He was lying on the couch in his new office, rearranging his thoughts for the eleven o’clock worship, when Barbara knocked and cracked the door.

“Nick’s here, honey.”

“Terrific,” he said softly. Sat up. Nick didn’t look terrific at all. He looked tired and hungry. “Come in, Nick. Where’s Katy and the kids?”

“Outside at the playground.”

David stood and offered a tired smile to his wife as she softly pulled the door closed behind her.

“Sorry, David. But just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Your sermon made my scalp crawl. It was that good.”

David smiled again, more energy this time. “Hard to do, get a cop’s scalp to crawl. How are you holding up, brother?”

“Fine. Katy’s fine. Everything’s fine. So, you know Jesse Black.”

“Janelle introduced us.”

“Yeah, he told me. I talked to him yesterday. Nice touch, using his lyric as a title.”

“I didn’t think he’d mind.”

“Think he’s got any violence in him?”

David plunked back down to the couch. “None whatsoever.”

“When do you mail the worship programs?”

David turned to face his brother. “Wednesday mornings. Why?”

“Janelle had today’s program in her house on Thursday morning. But even if the U.S. mail got it there in twenty-four hours, she wasn’t alive Wednesday to bring it in from the mailbox. So she got hers on Tuesday.”

David’s heart shuddered but he lay back down on the sofa. “Then she got an early copy. They print them up late on Tuesday afternoons.”

“Who picks them up?”

“Well, this last Tuesday it was Deacon Shaffner.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“I understand. You’re trying to catch the bad guys. I’m trying to help the rest of us. Ask Barbara for his number. Better yet, here…”

David labored to his desk, consulted a book, and scribbled down a name and number.

“Rest up for round two, David. You were great.”

“Nick? You won’t find a killer in my church.”

“How do you know?”

David studied his younger brother. Even in his own exhaustion David was alert enough to see the change in Nick. Janelle? The pressure to find who killed her? This was Nick’s first case as lead. Scary.

“Are you okay?” David asked.

“Yeah, I’m perfect.”

David had the thought that Nick and Katy weren’t right. With married men, it presented as dull anger. Married men became resentful in looking for something that had vanished. Looking for something they used to love but couldn’t find anymore. Being married with children was hard. David knew that, all right. Sometimes it seemed like everything in the world conspired to make you lose the love for what you once loved most.

“You and Katy all right?”

“Same old.”

“I’ll pray for you.”

“Thanks, brother.”

Nick walked out and David prayed. A short one for Nick and Katy. Let them enjoy each other and find each other again in this busy…but fell asleep halfway through it. Lurched awake six minutes later to rewrite the sermon just a little for the eleven o’clock.