seventeenth sunday in ordinary time

i can see my pain reflected in the sides of their cars and sometimes in their faces:

I AM
OUTCAST
FROM THIS CHURCH

it's the usual collection of people, the middle aged ladies passing by, the young men with facial piercings, the road cyclists, the quebecois motorcycle riders, the families dressed for other churches.

some people look at me, and look past. some look, and there is kind of a short conversation with me in their eyes. the ones that make me cry are the ones for whom my message holds, i can see too plainly, too much personal resonance.

some wave, some give thumbs up. a very few are tight lipped with disapproval. people from the williston federated church, people with whom i have shared meals and prayers and workdays, people who hugged me tight and called me a gift, people who were my church family, they pass right on by, not even looking at me, but looking through me.

most of them.

there are two men who look right at me and laugh derisive laughs, meant to be seen and absorbed. i do not understand how those men can look on that sorrow with such apparent retaliative glee. didn't they learn anything in church?

the people who look past me, they are uncomfortable. it is a difficult thing to say the words of welcome in the church and have the evidence that not all are welcome right out on the streetcorner. it is a thing of embarrassment to look at someone you have turned away.

today i catalogued the things people said to me, and i will tell them to you, all of them.

or nearly all of them, because what the young man said was lengthy and personal, and you don't need to know all the details.

why are you outcast?

thank you.

why are you outcast?

when it happened to my mother in law, the whole town blamed her. she still has trouble living in that town.

how uncomfortable are they now?

they SHOULD be uncomfortable.

(an unintelligible thing of unknown intent)

WE SUPPORT YOU!

i do not know what to think always. sometimes i think with a clear and rational head, one that does not cling to faith in a world where faith does such damage.

and sometimes i think with my heart of faith, like i had before the assault.

it is a tragedy, i used to think, when even one soul is lost. it is a tragedy when even one soul is made a stranger from God's Own Table, because, i used to preach, no matter who you are or what you have said or done, you are all welcome at God's table, in God's Grace, in God's Time, eternal and infinite.

i believed those words when they said them or words very like them in the church where i had made my home.

i do not know anymore what i believe. i know that my presence on the streetcorner exposes them as liars on the inside of the church.

"we practice radical welcome", they said every week on the inside (do they even still say it?), but here i am, the permanent reminder that it is a lie.

jesus may love you, but the williston federated church throws people away.