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“Whatcha thinking about?” I jerk my thoughts away from that and force a smooth grin. “When to make you wear that plug again. Think you can do the real-deal painting with it in?”
“No.”
“Guess we’ll have to find out.” I kiss his jaw, then sit up. “Gotta finish writing a part of the sermon before our old friend the underwear prince gets here.”
Realization dawns on his face. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
I tap my temple.
“I don’t know if I can come.” He looks worried, which makes me laugh.
“Why not?”
“Like…sympathetic nervousness. What if you trip over a word?”
“I do. Rarely.”
“I might watch on TV.”
I shake my head. “Sleep in.”
He gives me a funny little smile before he slips out. “See ya later, preacher man.”* * *VanceHe doesn’t trip over a word on Sunday morning. Not one. I watch on the living room TV as he steps onto the stage wearing a flawlessly fitted navy suit, a pale pink tie, and an easy, Hollywood smile. It makes my heart thump because Skywalker, but for everybody else, I imagine that it’s almost soothing—that combination of his good looks and smiling face and affability, which I assume has gotta be at least a little calculated.
For the first fifteen minutes, I can only handle reading the subtitles. I’ve watched bits and pieces of his sermons on YouTube before, but never one from start to finish. In the past, it got to me too much—and it still does, for different reasons now. Sometimes the camera pans out and shows the entire audience. The sanctuary’s like an amphitheater. I don’t have a damn clue how he does it.
The service starts with music and some praying. He’s standing behind a podium. Then I watch as Luke walks to the front of the stage. If the text scrolling along the bottom of my TV screen can be believed, he says he’s had a busy week, and then he asks someone—the camera zooms in on a woman who looks my mom’s age—how her week went. She beams as she says her daughter just had her first baby. Closed captioning reports that everyone is clapping.
Luke takes a few steps back and starts to walk around the stage, the easy pacing reminding me of a comedian. He talks about how everyone is busy, and a lot of people have a lot on their plate. How we’re always looking for the thing that will make our gig easy. Maybe it’s more money. Maybe it’s a different job or a girlfriend. Maybe what’s under our skin is something even bigger than mundane stresses. Cancer.
We’re all petitioning God. He says that’s good—that God wants us to do that. Life is hard—a marathon—and a lot of it is uphill. I turn the volume up as he says, “It’s like that for all of us. At certain points along the way—at certain hard hikes—it gets tempting to say this is God’s fault. God’s not on my side. God is the cause of this pain. Maybe even God’s not real. Because I’m suffering, and why would a good God do that to me? I don’t want to engage with God. I don’t want to come to church. Life isn’t good. It’s just a place of suffering.”
The massive crowd is rapt as he does a slow about-face on the stage and, a second later, with his speech.
“It’s easy to feel that way—I’d say even natural. When you’re in pain, lashing out, looking for a cause, someone or something to blame, is what comes naturally. For me it does.”
I swallow as the camera zooms in on his face more.
“But this is an important moment—the moment that we start to feel that way. Because what we have to do—what we’re called to believe, as Christians—is that God is good. God is good during the hard times. God is more present with us, even, when we need him most. What do you think? Have you found that to be true?”
A loud round of applause moves through the arena.
Then the camera zooms in on a woman. She’s got long, blonde hair, and she’s holding a baby who’s got on oxygen tubing. Someone holds a microphone for her as she asks, in a cracked and teary voice, “How do you know? That God’s there?”
Now the camera moves to Luke’s face. It’s calm and unreadable. “It’s a choice.” He lets the silence linger after that statement—flawless theatrics. “Like benefit of the doubt, but on a grander scale. So let’s take spouses. Maybe your spouse has depression. Some days it looks like they’re just being a jerk. But you know the depression itself is beyond their control. You give them the benefit of the doubt. You trust that they mean well. Because, in many other ways, you’ve seen that your spouse cares for you. Loves you. And has good intentions.
“You could withdraw that benefit of the doubt. In fact…you’d be more likely to if you’re not spending time with your spouse and getting those other messages of love and caring. But if you keep the relationship between you strong by spending time together…I would say you’re probably not going to lose faith. You’ve got a strong bond. You trust your spouse’s intentions—based on evidence of their goodness. Evidence that’s visible to you and maybe sometimes only you…that comes from being in the relationship. From spending time alone together. Contemplative time, emotional time. Time where you have a need and your spouse is there for you. You’ve grown that relationship.
