part0024

I was 23 years old when I took the reins of our family church. No one should have listened to me. I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. Neither my life as a pastor’s kid nor the short time I would spend in seminary would prepare me for reality. I was telling adults how to live parts of life I had not yet experienced and could have even imagined in my worst nightmares. But there I was, in charge nonetheless and doing the very best I could with my limited abilities and unlimited faith in the goodness of mankind. I made it work with Rebecca and our girls by my side.

The very first sermon I ever gave, I wrote down notes on a little yellow legal pad. I carried it around with me on the stage. I was awkward and green with fear. I never even looked up or made eye-contact with anyone. I just stared at those little yellow pages, turning them carefully and tripping over the words I had written over the course of two weeks of preparation. Nothing I said really made sense. People were gracious to me as they left that afternoon. I think people would have grumbled more had it not been potluck Sunday. The second sermon I gave was three days later at my own father’s funeral. How was I supposed to properly eulogize someone I hated so much, someone I despised so fully? I had no choice. This was my new life. So I attempted to do the best I could and, over time, those memories faded back into the recesses of my mind. When that week was over, I was suddenly thankful that I had to leave for seminary. What I once dreaded now seemed like a welcome break from the reality I was facing. One of the deacons would have to deal with the actual transition. I eventually grew into those big shoes my forefathers had left for me. I learned to leave that legal pad behind and began to speak from my heart. I memorized theology and anecdotes and over those years I found my own style.

It was a great life I was blessed to live. As much as I might have complained in the moment, I loved every minute I got to spend with Rebecca. There is not a minute I would have erased. Not even a single fight we had. I cherished them all now so deeply in my heart.

I didn’t know we were writing a love story. As we set out on this adventure together I certainly didn’t know, and never could have imagined, I was writing a story where the love of my life would die at the end. I guess the disciples didn’t either. When they chose to follow the bridegroom, they didn’t know He would one day die, even though He told them in so many words on more than one occasion.

I didn’t know this story would end in death, even though we promised each other that one day our vows would break when at death we did part. We said it with certainty right then and there with such conviction, holding our young hands together, promising forever. But we weren’t thinking of the end then; we were just thinking about that evening when we would finally be made one. But at twenty years old, promising love to each other, you feel invincible. We didn’t look down the road to the children that would come and the bills that seemed like they would never be paid and all the little moments of checking little foreheads for fevers. All the beautiful little pieces of the story that make up a whole life.

What a life I had been honored and blessed to live with her, one with love and warmth, good food and happy stories. We brought three wonderful daughters into this world. Little girls, so much like their mother but also so very different. Unique little spirits. I could say with certainty it was all worth it. I just wished she had been there to see it.

Now, as an adult, I could see the future. Wedding days that would come and grandbabies who would be born and heartbreaks that would happen. All of these moments would have her memory hanging over them, but she would be forever painfully absent. It was now a new and very different life than I had once foreseen. I would now have to follow down this road alone. It would be in my hands to have to be both mother and father. Fortunately, God, in Their providence, had brought someone into my life who could show me, through friendship (and not teaching), what it was like to embody both the masculine and the feminine, what it would take to be the mother-father that my babies would need to carry them through. And they would also have a beautiful friendship in our blessed Mary, one who would give them direction very different than Rebecca would have but would be able to teach them what it meant to respect themselves and make sure that whomever they chose to love respected them too.

And then there was Michael Green.

In the instructions that Michael Green left for me about his funeral, I had to make sure everyone knew he thought this was all very amusing to him that he would be buried here and that he was in the house of God, whom he, “had more money than.” I was also to make sure that everyone knew what a rotten liar I was. I was to confess all my mistakes, big and small, and it would be my responsibility to be my “truest authentic self” and hope for the best.

“The worst that can happen is they will run your ass out of town on a rail. And,” he said in his letter, “you’ll be in pretty good company from what I understand. All the best people were hated by the establishment. Damn The Man, my man.”

Finally, I was supposed to have a legitimate healing, whatever that meant. Oh, and Christian was supposed to sing “Amazing Grace” from the stage in their high heels.

As the music began to play, I didn’t dance down the aisle this time. There were no fancy dressings or ways to spruce this up. “No lipstick on a pig, business, my boy,” Michael Green instructed. In spite of the fact that I was a dirty rotten scoundrel, or maybe because of it, we had the largest attendance we had ever seen. We had to start nearly thirty minutes late for the elders to figure out the additional parking and to argue with the fire marshal. The screens were set up outside. Hundreds of thousands of people were streaming it online. Some were true believers; some just wanted to see in what miraculous way I would screw all this up … again.

As I walked past the front row, Christian reached out and held my hand and squeezed it tight. “Give ’em Heaven, honey!”

I knew what Rebecca had asked me to do in the woods in my vision, or dream, or drug-and-alcohol-infused fantasy. Whatever it was, be it a miracle or a memory, she asked of me a simple thing, so simple it was really, really complicated to do. It was just the very same thing God has always asked of us. Even down to the Ten Commandments, they can be summed up in one simple thing: Love.

There was a hush over the crowd as I finally reached the front.

“I can’t lie to any of you. You have all seen the ways in which I have failed. It’s been heavily reported. I won’t deny any of it. I’ve done everything I was caught doing and absolutely much worse that never even made its way into the general consciousness. I have failed each and every one of you, at least according to the things I had taught you to believe. If I am expected to live up to the same standard that I taught from this pulpit, just as my father and grandfather taught, then yes, I have failed every step of the way.”

Some looked at me sympathetically; some still wanted blood.

“I am not here to ask for your forgiveness, at least not for what you think I should. You probably want to hear me say, ‘I’m sorry for the drinking and fornicating and popping pills.’ I am not here to ask for your forgiveness for those things. Those are only between me and those who I actually hurt by them. The people I used and took advantage of. No, what I am here to do is correct my way of thinking. I am here to lay to rest a dear friend. Someone I would not have met had I not made all of these mistakes. I’m not sure if that means that my mistakes were ordained by God or if God is just making order out of them. I do not know those answers. I think, in many ways, we can debate the finer details of that theology until we die and then someone will just come along and unravel what we have woven together. But how can I apologize for the steps that led me to meeting the people who changed my life so wholly and completely for the better? I cannot do that. I won’t do it.

“When I lost our First Lady, right here on this very stage, I thought I had lost everything. I thought I knew what true suffering was in that moment. So I looked for every way I could to drown out that pain, but nothing would. There was nothing that could make it go away. What I needed to do was face it head-on. But I was too afraid to do that because I was afraid that, by doing so, I would have to face the reality that I was wrong.

“I told you that she was healed because God gave me authority here on Earth to heal. I told you I was able to do it by the power of the Holy Spirit infused into simple cloth.”

Mary walked out, right on cue. She was holding The River in her arms. It was folded and tied closed with ribbon. She held it tight against her chest. I didn’t want to look at it at first; it was too full of pain. But I made my way down there to her, to that cloth, and I held it in my hands. It didn’t feel electrifying or like it had any power. It just felt heavy, too heavy to carry.

“I put all my faith into this. Many of you did too, believing that this could heal us. We believed that because we saw something we thought was true. We had seen someone we loved healed right before our eyes, or so we thought, and so we had to hold on to that belief. We didn’t ask for a second opinion, we didn’t question, we just blindly followed. I asked you to follow my feelings instead of teaching you to use your own God-given intelligence and wisdom. But it turned out to be a misunderstanding, a simple mistake that caused a whole lot of pain. And deception.

“Many of you gave into this place, believing God healed her and also believing that you would be healed too. So you told your friends and your loved ones, and so many of you traveled far and wide to touch this cloth, hoping that what you had seen happen to Rebecca would happen for you and the people you love and are entrusted with. That turned out not to be true. No one grieves that reality more than me because we all found out the truth at the loss of my beloved’s life.

“I am not certain, or not completely certain, where to go from here. Some of you may not be able to stomach a pastor, an apostle, like me, knowing all I have done. Today could be my Homecoming, it could be the day that we all start afresh and find a way to create a new normal from here. You could choose to love me, as I love each of you. It could also be the day that I have to look for a new home. Only you can really decide what you want in a man who stands up here and preaches to you. I cannot decide that for you.

“What I do know is that when I was first called, I didn’t want to come. This pulpit felt like a prison preventing me from reaching what I felt was my full potential. Now I don’t want to leave. I so desperately want to find a way to preach the Gospel, but I also need it to be Good News. I don’t want to rely on theatrics or parlor tricks or have the ability to weave words together in such a way that you follow. I want you to think and to be a people who use their intellect.

“My friend, who we lay to rest, said to me, ‘I want you to heal these people, really truly heal them.’ I want that too. I want to see sight restored to the blind and for the lame to walk, not because I have found some way to trick your mind for a few moments to override its programming but because you have received authentic healing.

“Today, we bury a man who was richer than God. He left us more than we could ever have asked for or imagined. With the money he has left to us, I have done two things. First, I have paid off all of the medical debt of everyone in the state of Alabama. But, even with all of this being done, we still have much more money than we could ever spend. Because of this we are, as we speak, developing a program that will pay off the debt of anyone who comes to us and asks for it. Anyone we can find, we will pay off their debt. So any of you at home, no matter where you are in the world, if you have sent in money to us in the past, believing for a healing: If you have medical debt, I want you to reach out to our team and we will pay your debt off in its entirety.

“But it is not enough to just pay off debt because tomorrow countless more will become sick and begin to incur new bills that will seem too great and overwhelming. For this reason, we are developing an action committee that will also work tirelessly to end this medical system that forces people to go destitute just to receive healing.

“The second thing we are doing is giving all the money you have tithed because of The River and placing it into this endowment our friend Michael Green has given to us. Yes, we will work toward building a better system; but that will take time and patience and finding the right people to lobby for the rights of those who are sick. And if we don’t do something, a lot of people will die who shouldn’t have to, lives that could be saved .

“So while we wait for a more just system to replace what we have in place now, we will be using these funds to bring healing to anyone who asks. If you are ill, we will pay for your care. We will walk through this journey with you. We will fight for you.

“Finally, we will be paying for college for anyone who wishes to go to medical school. Anyone who wishes to be a physician or nurse or study how to make others well again, we will pay for that too. We believe that if we raise a generation of “Great Physicians” and empower them to no longer have to worry about debt, then they can be innovators. They will become doctors and scientists who are free and empowered to seek out new medicines and cures to fight disease and viruses and cancers and prepare us to be a world that heals each other and fights for those who are unable to fight for themselves.

“Church, we can be the hands and feet of God. We can be His healers and we can restore people. And this is how we can do it. I make no presumptions of what kind of person you want to stand up here and preach to you each Sunday. I want to be that person. But I also know that you may not agree with me. Maybe the things I have said here today go against your politics or opinions. However, it shouldn’t go against your religion. We have been called, from the beginning, to, ‘Heal the sick and cleanse the lepers. Freely you have received; freely give.’ That is the mission of the Church. We have an opportunity to be the hospital, the place of healing, peace, justice, and equity. We can go to church or we can be the Church. The choice is yours.

“I choose to love them, as They have loved us.”

I sat down and watched as Christian gave a rousing lip-synching rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Amazing Grace”. And then I walked over to say goodbye to Michael Green for one last time; the three of us stood there and I placed The River into his coffin and closed it.

We carried him out of that little building, empowering the people to make a choice. Michael Green had given us all the tools, just as Jesus had all those years ago, and we had everything we needed. The Spirit had breathed on us that day and it was now up to us to choose whether we would debate over petty issues or we could lead the world into a revival of healing. Maybe not in as spectacular a way as some might have liked. We kept waiting for God to show up, not realizing that He had been there all the time, present in the least of these, which is you and me.

When I left the church that day, I didn’t know if I would be leading them further on this path .

Rebecca always said she wanted to heal people; that she wanted to be a nurse and make others whole again. She gave up that vision for the church and me and our daughters and each of those people sitting in those pews. We lost her far too soon. When I lost her on that stage, I thought it had no purpose or meaning. I had lost all hope. Instead, it brought me to Michael Green, Christian, and Mary. Her death taught me how to love everyone, not in spite of who they are but because of who they are, the literal image of God; a walking Eucharist, the living body and blood of Jesus.

Now, because of the lessons and friendships that were built because of my spiral, because of her death, countless hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people would live. We might even one day fund the cure for the cancer that took her from us. By her obedience, she would heal more people than she ever could have if she had followed what she thought was her dream to become a nurse because, as the scripture says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down their life for their friends.”