Alice watched the Vangs through the opening benediction and opening hymn. They were familiar with the order of worship, and even recited the Apostle’s Creed without having to read it. At least Mai and Nickson did. Their mother kept looking down.
After the long congregational prayer, after the church offering with two collection plates going around—one for the General Fund and one for Christian Education—and after the follow-up hymn, Rev. Prunesma’s sermon began. His text was Psalm 23, the familiar “The Lord is my shepherd” passage. Alice knew Psalm 23 as well as she knew the Lord’s Prayer. She knew it as well as “Little Bo Peep.”
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he began. “Brothers and sisters in the Lord, what does that familiar text mean to you? ‘Shepherd.’ What does that mean to you? Do you see a large bearded man with a heavy staff ready to strike you down? Does a shepherd strike his sheep? Does a shepherd beat his sheep into submission? No! No! That is not what King David is saying in this passage. Shepherds do not strike, they do not whip, they do not poke, they do not abuse. No, shepherds guide their flock lovingly.”
He opened his arms as if to embrace the whole congregation.
“What about that big long staff we see in pictures of shepherds? you ask. Does that thing look like a bullwhip? Does it look like a cattle prod? No! This staff is used for giving direction, not for beating. The shepherds of David’s time only used their staffs aggressively to ward off lions. For you, His people, the Good Shepherd uses His staff to ward off the lions of temptation. With you, His sheep, He uses His staff as a gentle prod to keep you moving down the path to glory.”
The Rev paused, rubbed his hands together, and stepped to the side of the lectern.
“But. But,” he went on with sentences that he chopped into questions: “Does this mean?—that He is a cozy companion? Does this mean?—that He is someone?—who has no expectations?—from His people? Is this what it means?—to think of Jesus?—as the Good? Shepherd?”
He shook his head slowly but emphatically. “Oh no. Oh no.” He raised his right hand and wagged his forefinger. “Jesus is not your chum! Jesus is not your pal! Jesus is not your buddy! Jesus is the Lord God Almighty, ruler of heaven and earth!”
His voice bounced off the ceiling and reverberated through the sanctuary. Alice loved that energy, even though what he had just said contradicted the soft image of God that he had been extolling a minute earlier. Rev. Prunesma was showing his true colors: he was no softy. He was proclaiming the majesty of a fearsome God. A gentle shepherd and an almighty God—not exactly a Holy Trinity, but a Hefty Duality.
Through the brief silence that followed the reverend’s exclamations came the sound of beating wings: the Rev’s voice had startled and launched a starling from somewhere in the back of the church, and it flew in short, urgent bursts over the congregation, smacking into one window and then another. When it landed on the baptismal font and started drinking, the Rev continued his sermon as if nothing had happened. The starling sat still, seeming quite content with its current situation.
Thrilling as Rev. Prunesma’s exuberant digression and the flight of the wayward starling had been, the duller truths of the world sat next to Alice. Aldah was bored. She may have been the only person over ten in the entire congregation who did not know Psalm 23 by heart. Rev. Prunesma’s loud exclamations did not stir her, and, to Alice’s surprise, neither did the starling. Her mother had given Aldah two pink peppermints to get her through the sermon. Aldah put them in her white handkerchief and chewed on the prune-sized bundle until sweet pink juice oozed into her mouth. Her mother pretended not to notice, so Alice wasn’t about to stop her either.
Rev. Prunesma was going through Psalm 23 line by line, explicating every sentence. It was mostly a dull walk through references to the Hebrew and Greek, but when he got to the “still waters,” he had Alice’s full attention again.
“‘He leadeth me beside the still waters.’ When we think of still waters today, we think of tepid water. But here, David is contrasting ‘still waters’ against the alternative of tempestuous, dangerous waters. This water, we should believe, is clean and calm. Clean and calm.”
His repetition and emphases were puzzling. Rev. Prunesma worked at making the Old Testament relevant to the present, but was he hinting that the clean waters of Psalm 23 were everything that cattle feedlot runoff holding tanks were not? Was the Rev suggesting that farmers were at odds with the message of Psalm 23 by turning calm waters into stinky polluted waters? Was he about to lecture the farmers in the congregation that they were polluting the clean earth that God had created?
She turned her head to catch her father’s profile. In church, she could never tell what he was thinking. He had on his stern church look. She wasn’t sure what look her mother had on. Maybe it was her let-the-end-come look. Aldah kept chewing on her bag of pink peppermints, and some of the juice ran down her chin and onto her white blouse.
“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .’” the Rev went on. “Here again, we should turn to the Hebrew,” he said. “A translation from the Hebrew might read, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of bottomless darkness.’”
He started pumping his arms. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of disgraceful behavior from our leaders! Yea, though I walk through the valley of falling cattle and hog prices! Yea, though I walk through the valley of self-doubt and mental turmoil. Yea, though I walk through the valley of not knowing what the millennium will bring! People of God!” he shouted. “We are all in the valley of darkness as the millennium creeps toward us like a devouring beast in the night! Are we ready?”
With that, the starling came back into the worship service, this time by plunging into the baptismal font and bathing itself in a furious fluttering of wings and splashing of water, some of it landing on the floor and some of it splattering onto the carpet of the pulpit. The reverend stopped preaching. The starling launched itself energetically into the large open space over the congregation’s head, flying even more desperately, as if energized by its recent refueling and bath.
Everyone, including Alice, held their breath. The Rev nodded. Whether this was his acknowledgment that some great Forces of Evil were at work in God’s House of Worship or whether it was a signal to the ushers, several men did get up to open all the doors of the sanctuary as a way of showing the starling the light it was probably looking for. The Vangs had their own response to the renegade starling: all three of them held church bulletins over their heads.
Alice’s mother stiffened, grasped Aldah’s wrist, leaned over to whisper harshly in her ear, then stood up and tugged Aldah to follow her out of church. Alice pulled her knees back in the pew to let them get out. Alice assumed her mother was using Aldah’s stained dress as an excuse to get away from a situation that she couldn’t bear. Alice hid her alarm at her mother’s behavior, and so did her father.
The open doors let in traffic sounds from the busy street outside, along with the distinct and ungodly smell of truck diesel fuel. The starling was still flying aimlessly through the sanctuary, bouncing through the air and against the windows. Then it flew to the front of the church and perched on the right arm of the wooden cross. Its chest was panting madly. Finally, as if in despair, it fluttered to the floor, edged itself between the long cylindrical pipes of the pipe organ that stood next to the wooden cross, and disappeared.
The men closed the doors.
Rev. Prunesma looked down at his notes and picked up where he had left off.
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