It starts with a heavy sigh;
“In 2012, Sage Stallone, son of actor Sylvester Stallone,
died suddenly of a heart attack. Shortly after Sage’s death,
his father said, “It’s very, very tough. It’s a horrible situation,
but time hopefully will heal, and you try to get through it.”
In a brief pause, eyes turn up-met with deadpans and expressions of great unhappiness of his congregation. The sermon, written well into the even prior is full of fucked metaphors that are hardly believable-at best, half assed drunk scribbles the p r e a c h e r reads only half coherently. There is already a dreadful buzz from the Texan heat filling the wooden slant windows, to cook his congregation alive. A tongue darts out to wet dried lips. The sound of a cellphone vibrating to his left can be heard.
“In 2016 The New York Times featured an article on
Sylvester Stallone’s role as an aging Rocky in the
film Creed. The article noted that when filming began,
the actor was “still paralyzed by the devastation of losing
his son.” Stallone said, "You just feel responsible. That
you weren’t there. Here you save all these fictitious people,
and you can’t even save your son.”
Another pause, this time, to shuffle papers. He’s reaching the end of the teaching, though barely begun. It’s not as if there is anyone really listening to him, a fumbled, gracious mistake of a r e v e r e n d . A free hand reaches for a grip against the edge of the podium, the bleary face upturned-perhaps two of the twenty or so people are looking at him.
“ God the Father and God the Son were in perfect control,
and yet God the Father chose to not to save his only Son
for our sake. God the Father let the hands of man destroy
what he had created and held dear. Three days he spent
in a deep mourning, before rising up the man from the grave.
In the Holy Monday after Easter we must remember that grief
is not a constant state, that the loss of a loved one changes
in time, the same way God’s love has changed for his son. Christ
died for our sins, and we must live through his kindness and
mercy.”
A barely contained heavy sigh threatens to escape the preacher’s nose, crinkling the edges of the sermon up and offering up his sign of peace. There were no new church announcements, as there never are, and he signals for the pews to empty in p e a c e -that the after-sermon church lunch had begun outside. It takes less than two minutes for the small town to file out into the dusty courtyard, the doors open just long enough for Jesse to taste the stenchous heat of the day.
The footsteps he hears are not heading towards the door, but rather towards him. A bite to the inside of his cheek, he does not recognize the gate. A s t r a n g e r, perhaps, or someone he knows vaguely. Still, one can never be too cautious of him. Voice thick, the drawl heavy, he drags his eyes up.
“–How can I help you?”