No surprise was expected on the Sunday before Christmas, not even to the moment of the people’s sudden 9:28am arrival time. Yet as the members slid into the pews, their eyes shot straight to the front of the church house. Hanging directly over the pulpit, just out of reach, was a piece of greenery. Active neck turning and a drone of airborne “S”s broke the usual patient silence of snoozing before the first song. It was at first dismissed by the church elders as an unnecessary seasonal adornment in the sanctuary, no doubt placed by some amoral young married man. So the trinket was ignored, at least by the elders, and the service began. It was not until women’s Sunday School class that Timothy’s grandmother Betsy took one long look at it and identified it as mistletoe.
Word of this development spread through the church like a spoonful of prune juice in an old man. As the junior class was dismissing, Emily Kauffman caught sight of a spontaneous ministerial meeting at the end of the hall, and dutifully reported this to her classmates, who all carried word back to their parents. Norman Zook was scheduled to give the message of the morning, and Andrew Peachy to moderate. Both were faced with standing directly under the mistletoe, the subject of perpetual, irreverent jeers.
“Well, what would you have done then?” Dad asked me over Sunday dinner.
“I dunno.”
“I know what Andrew would have done with it if he had a say,” Beth pounced, mouth full of potato. “He would have hung it over the young people to get them to exchange the greeting more.”
Mom and my younger siblings giggled, but dad addressed me with no thought to Beth’s comment. “You wouldn’t have chust ignored it, would you?”
No, I wouldn’t have ignored it. But I don’t know that I would have brought it to every one’s attention either. Norman first suggested that they be done with it all together by getting a ladder to take it down while the congregation sings a couple songs. However, our burly, middle-aged bishop, heartthrob of the Beachy ministers’ meeting, Bradley Miller, advised his co-ministers that he be allowed to stand and address this matter.
And so the congregation passed the offering baskets, their right hand not aware of what their left eye was looking at, as Brother Bradley left his co-ministers’ company on the front amen bench and planted his feet beside the pulpit. As the song ended, his eyes made a quick swing across pews of young men, searching for a trace of hidden smirk. With his full body exposed and veiled with black from shoe to neck, he dripped an admonishing silence on the congregation. We felt the guilt of sins long forgotten, ones we thought went unnoticed until now, even sins we hadn’t committed, but might be thinking about.
He spoke. “We would have it in the Lord’s house that God’s people watch their foot, walking circumspectly. With this thought in mind, we shall proceed with the service, and the brothers are welcome to use either side of the pulpit for their exhortations.”
And so, a nervous Andrew gladly moderated from the side of the pulpit, but an unfettered Norman took no thought to the heavenly ornament, and delivered his message directly beneath it.
“I don’t know,” Beth said after dinner. “It could have been Marvin. But I think it was Jeremy.”
My sister was probably right on this one. While Marvin had a wry, witty side, he was much too much of a straight-walking suburban stallion to do something that would be so blatantly offensive. I kept my eye on Marvin while Bradley addressed us in church. He looked more sheepish than the one that went astray from the 99, but this may have been his submissive expression of guilt, whether he had committed a crime or not.
Jeremy on the other hand was the troubled loner. It was Norman who suggested removing the ornament, and it was in his son’s interest he was probably thinking. But if Jeremy did do it, Norman would never know. Jeremy, of course, wasn’t even at church that Sunday, making him just as suspect as not.
Jeremy was unpredictable, esoteric, and insecurely cool. During the week, you’d occasionally see him driving off by himself at the time of day when everyone in church was going the opposite direction. He seldom showed at youth activities, especially not after he started dating. His girlfriend, Bree Knepp, was daughter of the deacon at Valley Hill Amish Mennonite, but she was a member at the Beachy church just down the road, Ship’s Harbor Fellowship. The youth there went to football games and Christian rock concerts, events chaperoned by their parents and the pastoral team.
Bree rarely came around to our church. Jeremy usually went to see her, or they met by rendezvous at some interstate exit chain restaurant. She visited Jeremy during the middle of the week, not weekends, and if there were mid-week services, they didn’t show. Strangely enough, they both showed at the youth Christmas caroling the week before.
It was an unusually warm evening, so much so that the youth only had light jackets on. As prearranged by the youth leader, all the neighbors were called to forewarn them of our visit so that there would be no surprises, and no dogs on the loose.
Three years ago, the youth leader forgot to call Mr. Whitaker, so Ed, always bubbling with misguided enthusiasm, led the youth to Mr. Whitaker’s property, not leading into battle so much as not looking before leaping. Opening the latch of the chain link gate ahead of the youth leader, he took two skips into the yard only to be met by a look-and-leap Doberman. The fiasco that ensued finally ended with Ed frantically clinging to the railing of Mr. Whitaker’s porch, feet barely over the second highest rail with bottom hanging low and swinging like the butcher’s choice cut, and Mrs. Whitaker from the porch beating back the dog with a mop. What little we knew about Ed’s taste in undergarments was then common knowledge. Where other youth would shy away from the events of that night in years to come, Ed as a martyr retold it at all Sunday dinner invitations, which we all would have grown quite tired of soon had the course of events not been slightly different on every retelling.
But this year, the dog was not on the prowl at Mr. Whitaker’s. And the porch light was on. But it was not the Whitakers who answered the door; it was someone different, which would explain the new doormat with “The Murphys” in Arial font. Mr. Murphy, we presume, opened the door, pressed his round, black face against the storm door, and cupped his hands around his eyes. His gut likewise made impression on the door, leaving the imprint of his grey “Barack Obama for President” sweatshirt on the fog.
“Hey, whats happenin?” he said, unlatching the storm door an inch. We all looked nervously back and forth for someone to lead a song, lest we become obligated to make small talk or respond to his rhetorical question. Before we had the chance, he leaned back inside, “Hey, Tenika, some of the plain people are here. Get on over.”
“Say what?” The lowered living room venetian blinds continued to dance with flickering colors of blue, then yellow, then blue, as a portly silhouette moved across the length of the window. For us Beachy youth, this was probably a new idea, being called ‘the plain people.’ Most of us just prefer to think of ourselves like everyone else in society, just Christian, too, with a couple strange things we do, but won’t likely in another ten years. To be numbered among the ‘plain people,’ the Amish, the black-shoed Mennonites, that was a new thought.
It was as we began singing that Jeremy’s truck grumbled up to the end of the driveway. Most heard it, few took notice, until after we chorused an overly rehearsed “Merry Christmas!” and turned around to head out. Standing behind, yet just beyond us, Jeremy nestled Bree cozily near him, not touching, but in position that would otherwise be different if we weren’t present. Bree, despite the warmth, was huddled under a polar bear-sized skin of a heavy coat, with the front open yet enough to witness a dress that would have been more modest had it been sprayed on.
The two mingled with the group down the driveway, mingled in space, though not conversation, as if having been with us the whole time, and followed our maxivan to the remaining houses. Nothing was said of this sudden appearance. It was accepted.
“But didn’t you notice the greenery hanging from his rear view mirror?” Beth said.
“Come to think of it, yes, that wasn’t there before. Wasn’t it just an air freshener?”
“Well, that’s the freshest looking air freshener I’ve ever seen.”
“But why would Jeremy go around with mistletoe hanging from his rear view mirror?”
“Well, you know what mom says: ‘Don’t expect to have a hands-off courtship when you dress like you want hands on.’”
“Beth—“ I sighed. She was still in her “have to obey the church rules” stage of late teens, and hadn’t moved on to the “none of this stuff is really going to get you to heaven” stage.
“You know what he needs that plant for. Don’t you?”
Okay—she got me on that one. And she didn’t need to spell it out. We were all pretty sure they were kissing, though none of us youth ever discussed it. Kissing was too far for many young people. The fellows mostly agreed that when we and our special other walk down the aisle after the vows, it wasn’t going to be the first time holding hands. But kissing seems different. There’s a border crossed there. And there are no virgin births today.
“But Jesus accepted a kiss from a woman. And we know he wasn’t married,” my sister protested, with an air of ‘gotcha.’
“What? That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah, well, if you don’t believe me, look it up. Luke 6 or 7 I think.” And that was the end of the conversation as she disappeared into her room for the ritual Sunday afternoon nap.
Somehow you don’t think about Jesus kissing. A brotherly kiss, maybe. But a woman? I looked around for my Bible. Not in the house. Not in my car. Come to think of it, maybe I left it at church.
Throwing on my coat and warming up my car, I drove down to the church, entering by way of the basement, thinking I left my Bible in Sunday School. Nope, maybe in the sanctuary.
As I opened the door from the basement, my eyes glanced in shock over the sanctuary. Papers upon papers upon papers were scattered carelessly throughout the large room, Bible pages, like autumn leaves on holy ground. I spotted my own Bible, intact, sitting under the church mailbox. But whose…? Who…?
Walking through the sanctuary was difficult. If it is irreverent to step on a Bible, it must be also to step on Bible pages. At times, there was a place for my foot. Other times, I picked up a few pages to make a way, a way to I knew not where. As I picked up pages, I read underlined verses.
“Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?” –Psalm 10:1
And another:
“Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him.” –Hosea 8:3
And another:
“My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore: and my kinsmen stand afar off.” –Psalm 38:11
Another:
“I was a stranger and ye took me in…” –Matthew 25:35
Another:
“And behold, a woman in the city which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisees house, brought an Alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” –Luke 7:37-38
I reread this last verse several times, decidedly keeping it at the top of the stack, no matter what verses I collect from there. What collection? I’m collecting?
The dim sanctuary was yet empty and grey. It was just filled with people this morning, and now I’m alone, by myself. Had I been mumbling aloud to no one? How did I get over here?
I was standing behind the pulpit, looking over the church house. Not a view I’m used to seeing. And, yes, it is still here, I ponder, looking directly above my head.
“…stood at his feet behind him, weeping, … wash his feet with tears, … wipe them with the hairs … kissed his feet, and anointed them.”
“Kissed his feet.”
I didn’t know where to drive. I didn’t know what I was looking for. But I drove west and drove west and drove west. At first the roads were familiar, but they became unfamiliar. The sun set as clouds chased from behind, anxious to set the sun before the horizon did the favor. Into the next state I drove, as flurries fell. No thought of calling home. No thought of the events of church that morning. No thought of whodunit. “Kissed his feet.” A demeaning cliché, now something different. “Kissed his feet.”
“And she brought forth her first born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and they crucified him, and parted his garments, and went into the Sepulcher, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself, and his face did shine as the Sun, and his rainment was white as the light.”
