The Reverend

Part I

It was a small space. Just a few vacant lots where a business had stood before the internet and big box stores killed it. Evolution is uncaring and relentless. The building became unsightly and, because it was located downtown, the city pressured the owner. In the end he deeded it to the city for $1 and back taxes. The building was demolished and the lots became a pocket park. A few planters, some gingko trees, benches, trash cans, and concreate picnic tables. A garden club tended annuals in the planters. When the weather was nice workers from the buildings and shops would eat lunch there or drink coffee and people watch. A life raft of color in an ocean of asphalt, glass, and steel.

Three days per week the reverend came to the park and preached the Gospel. He was a middle-aged man of medium height and weight. His clothes were worn but clean. The elbows and seat of the pants that made up his suit were shiny. His shoes were polished, but if one watched closely as he walked away, they would see the holes in the soles. He never preached fire and brimstone. He talked of an all-loving God who cared for everyone. Those who looked at him closely would see caring brown eyes in a face that had seen much, been battered, broken, stared into the abyss, but never became hard.

The path that led the reverend to the pocket park had not been direct. In years past he had been one of several pastors at a large church. He was paid a generous salary, lived in a home owned by the church, driven a church car, and wore tailored suits. His parishioners found him engaging, caring, and charming. On a Sunday after services he had been playing volleyball with the youth. He had jumped to spike the ball and landed on his ankle hard. He and those near him had heard the bones crack. The spiral fracture required screws and plates to mend. The church and the parishioners had covered all of the bills. The pain had been intense. The doctor was generous with the opiates during his recovery. The physical therapist pushed him to sweat and hurt telling him that it was for the best long term.

The warm cloud that the pills wrapped him in at first became elusive. When his doctor refused to refill the prescriptions, he had found pain clinics up and down the interstate that were more accommodating. The pills let him function. Without them he hurt and shook and vomited. Every Sunday there were collection plates filled with checks and cash in tithe envelopes. He was trusted to count the offerings and make the deposits. A database and investigations shut down the pain clinics. He found another option. Driving an old car into the bad part of town he would buy heroin and needles. He needed his medicine to do God’s work, so it was alright.

Eventually the board noticed a slump in the offerings. It was a close call, but he was not caught. Because he was a regular customer, his dealer told him how he could finance his needs. He began to sell heroin to the invisible addicts in the gated communities and at the soccer games. He was providing a service to good clean people who just needed a little something to cope with their complicated lives. It wasn’t like he was a criminal. Eventually a soccer mom in a minivan rearended an off-duty police officer at the drop off in front of their private school. Both vehicles had children in them. Blood and urine tests were done at the hospital and the results were subpoenaed. Soccer moms are terrible criminals, and she gave a detailed statement. She had been using heroin for 18 months, injecting into the dolphin tattoo on her ankle and between her toes. She wore a wire and made buys to avoid a felony conviction.

The interrogation was conducted by well-trained detectives who showed him the text messages and played the videos of the buys. He admitted the obvious. He could help himself by cooperating against his supplier. He was taken to his cell to think about it. The supplier had many associates. He was convinced to shut up and do his time by an associate in the cell block. Convincing took the form of facial fractures and broken ribs. He reached out to his church for help with a lawyer. His call went unanswered. No one came to his court appearances. His bank accounts were forfeited as drug proceeds and facilitating money laundering. In the end, his public defender was able to negotiate a plea bargain. With good behavior he would serve three years of a ten-year sentence.

In prison he saw groups of people he had never known existed. The broken, the mentally ill, and the psychopaths. He had time to think and read. He attended church and became active in the prison ministry. He read the Gospels with new eyes. He finally grasped the magnitude of the acts and message of an itinerate Rabbi preaching to societies’ cast offs 2000 years before. He would continue to spread the message.

He was paroled with strict conditions. He found a menial job doing gut wrenching labor loading produce onto trucks at 4 in the morning. The workers were paid daily in cash. He rented a 10 by 10 room in what was euphemistically called a hotel. Every day he walked past the dealers, the whores, the alcoholics, and the others that formed the flotsam of the city. He began to talk to a woman who worked the corner near the hotel. She was feeding a habit and had a dream of reuniting with a daughter that had been taken by the state. He told her that 2000 years ago a man died for her sins and that there was nothing she had done that could not be forgiven. The charisma that had allowed him to rise in the church had not left him. As time went by a few people would be waiting on the corner as he walked home. He preached to them and then in his room. He was beaten by pimps a few times, nothing is worse for business that a whore who gets religion. He came back and preached harder.

There was a vacant store in the neighborhood. A faint reminder of the time when the city had neighborhoods with distinct identities and personalities. Before. Before the outsourcing of factories. Before the mines closed. Before the world changed. If he would clean it up and keep it from being vandalized, the owner would sell it to his congregation for $10,000. They descended on the building, substituting determination for money. Cleaning supplies were donated by the few businesses still operating in the area. There was a surprising variety of skills among his small congregation. Basic carpentry, dry wall hanging, and a willingness to work for something larger. People who had never belonged came together into something powerful.

He preached to a half dozen people in a room where light fixtures hung from a water stained ceiling. They sat on the floor together. Grape juice served in shot glasses from the thrift store and stale oyster crackers from the soup kitchen served as the flesh and blood of Christ. He attended meetings with probation officers and social workers. He was present in court for bail hearings. He gained credibility within the system. The woman from the corner came out of rehab for the third time. The congregation went with her to the resale shop and bought her clothes. After services they practiced job interviews. They had a party with day old doughnuts and hand drawn posters when she was hired as a checker at a convenience store.

He reached out to his former church and was able to secure a meeting with the senior pastor and some of the board. The clerk from the convenience store went with him. He asked for a few simple things. Not money, he knew what the answer to that would be, but chairs, tables, Bibles, cast offs and surplus. They would start small but hoped to do more things in time. Literacy classes, day care, a food pantry, but those things were in the future. The board deliberated while he and the checker waited in the hallway. She told him that she recognized some of her former customers in the room. After half an hour the door opened. The senior pastor looked at his manicured nails or his Italian loafers as he spoke. They wished the reverend well with his work and would pray for him. It was all about optics. The church had an image to consider. It would be unseemly to be associated with an enterprise run by a convicted drug dealer and addict. The congregation was not a fit with the image the church had cultivated.

The checker spoke:

“This man gave me a book to read. It’s about a man who spent years associating with the worst people in his community. He spent time with sinners, tax collectors, whores, lepers, and other undesirables. He told them God loved them no matter what they had done. I guess he wouldn’t be a good fit with this church either.” Then she added: “I haven’t seen you since I changed jobs, pastor.”

They went back to their church.

A few days later, a retired couple walked past the building. They were downsizing their life and had dropped off items at the thrift store. Out of curiosity, they walked into the building. The pastor welcomed them. He told them they were starting a church. The couple looked at the people who were busy cleaning and fixing and saw prison tattoos, piercings, wild colored hair, and unity. The couple left and returned a few hours later with folding chairs and a pair of sawhorses. Everyone would have a seat. A door across the sawhorses covered with a bedspread was the altar. The couple stayed for the service. As they were leaving the woman told the reverend, “We saw something real here tonight. It’s a shame that people up town can’t hear what is being said here.” He began to preach in the park.

The reverend was mostly ignored by the people downtown. A few would stop and listen and even fewer gave money. He hadn’t asked for money, but it would help with the renovations. Eventually someone complained and the police came to the park and told the reverend to move along and not come back. He came back and was arrested. The reverend was released and immediately went back to the park. He was arrested again and again. A man who had been in prison and beaten had no fear of the county jail. His cases were called in court. The reverend said that he stood on the First Amendment and the word of God and would go back to the park. The courtroom was full. There were a few reporters. The Judge said she would dismiss the cases if the reverend would agree to time and manner restrictions. An agreement was reached. The reverend and two members of his congregation could be in the park three days per week. The reverend could preach for two hours, from 10 until 12. The reverend and anyone with him would not touch or approach anyone in the park or block the entrance. He could preach from the northeast corner. There would be no microphones or other amplification. The reverend agreed.

He came to the park with a bag lunch on days when the weather was nice, and sometimes when it wasn’t. He worked in a building downtown but took a break from people when he could. He had been a husband and father, until he wasn’t.