Second Sunday

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  Perplexed as they were, the pro–George Wilson faction on the committee relaxed. They trusted Bert—but even more, they trusted the Lord to “handle the rest.”

  VII

  The next Sunday Cleavon walked up into the pulpit after the morning devotional, pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, wiped his face like he was a preacher, and announced, “The search committee has chosen a pastor. As soon as we can straighten out our differences, we will be hiring and installing Rev. Earl Hamilton as the new leader of Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church.”

  Nearly every woman in church sat up in shock. Cleavon Johnson must have had a lobotomy, they thought, to remove what little bit of his mind he had left.

  “We’ll just see about that,” Katie Mae’s grandmother said, and wrote a note on her program instructing her church sisters to keep their money in their purses at collection time. The secret message spread like wildfire through the sanctuary. The women ushers took the note up to the balcony, where they passed it from pew to pew; and to make sure nobody was missed, they took it down to the basement, the kitchen, the ladies parlor, and even the bathroom.

  All of the offerings that Sunday—regular morning offerings, tithes, sick-and-shut-in and benevolent funds—were pitiful. Because a lot of the women gave the money for themselves and their husbands, the church’s earnings for the week dropped 73.5 percent.

  But Cleavon Johnson was unmoved. The next Sunday he took to the pulpit again to proclaim, “Many of you have been calling the members of the search committee, worrying us about our decision. You need to know that the decision has been made, and it will not be changed.”

  At that point, the women pushed the matter further, by not only withholding their money but also shutting down the after-church dinner. They went right downstairs when service was over, divided up the meats and other dishes among themselves, and wrapped them all up in packages to take home. The guest minister—one of a string who had been filling in during the pastoral search—had to go away unfed, and was so appalled that he put out the “bad-mouth” on the church.

  The next Sunday was Communion Sunday, and still the women’s boycott continued. None of the men knew where to buy the crackers and grape juice for the service, but Cleavon claimed that he had it under control. He went to one of his stores and got some loaves of a white bread from the day-old section—instead of his more expensive crackers—along with some cheap imitation grape Kool-Aid. The bread was hard, dry, and stale, and the grape drink was terrible—weak, chemical-tasting, and bitter, even though the package was clearly marked, “No added sugar necessary.”

  As soon as Mr. Louis Loomis chewed on that bread, he winced and reached for the juice, which puckered up his face.

  “You alright, Mr. Louis Loomis?” Bert whispered.

  “What’s in that juice?” Mr. Louis Loomis asked, through watery eyes. “It’s the nastiest stuff I’ve ever tasted.” He coughed and then said, “Forgive me, Lord, for saying that at the Lord’s Supper.”

  Bert swallowed his juice fast, trying not to breathe. As he did, he heard Nettie’s mother, MamaLouise, praying, “Father, forgive us our misdeed this morning. We are trying so hard to do Your will, and we need some heavenly help to get this nasty stuff down and keep it down. Amen.”

  The service itself was equally dispiriting. Now that word was out on the strife in the church, their expected guest preacher had bowed out. On such short notice, all they could do was ask the one ordained minister in the church to lead them in worship. He was an elderly man, long retired, who had grown tongue-tied and hard to understand. He was also prone to sleeping in church, and an usher had to wake him up when it was time to preach.

  Collecting himself, he rose creakily to deliver the sermon. Lifting up his hands, he proclaimed, “Leh uz aw tand up in gi fro awergifs ufdu udnez ufdu yaw,” to the puzzled stares of church members. One of the schoolteachers in the congregation decoded the sentence phonetically and wrote it out to be passed down her pew. Her note read: “Let us all stand up and give from our gifts of the goodness of the Lord.”

  The entire congregation, men and women alike, was getting fed up. Many decided that as long as the search committee remained silent, allowing Cleavon to continue to maintain that he was hiring Earl Hamilton, they would forgo attending church on Sunday and meet privately for prayer and Bible study in members’ homes. They made it clear to Bert, Wendell, Melvin Sr., and Mr. Louis Loomis that they were not coming back to church until the committee got sense enough to hire Rev. George Wilson.

  With no offerings coming in, the church coffers grew so depleted that Cleavon had to pay for gas, electricity, phone, and water out of his own pocket. He had never conceived of the possibility that the women in his church would turn on him and the search committee with such a vengeance. Finally he had to acknowledge that he couldn’t win this battle—at least not right now.

  So Cleavon temporarily threw in the towel, conceding to the hiring of Rev. George Wilson, using the split vote to his advantage to only hire him as the interim pastor. According to the dusty church bylaw Cleavon invoked, interim pastor was a temporary, six-month position. Once the six months were up, the church could install the interim pastor as the permanent one, or hire somebody else. It was the “hire somebody else” part that Cleavon liked so much.

  Bert sat back at that meeting and let Cleavon put on a floor show. As much as he wanted to see George Wilson installed as the permanent pastor, he had peace to let the Lord work it all out. He knew in his heart that if they put George Wilson in that pulpit as the interim pastor, he would win such a following that it would be virtually impossible to remove him in six months. And Bert felt that, for some reason, Cleavon just hadn’t been able to figure that out.

  Rev. George Robert Wilson was installed as the interim pastor of Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church on Christmas Day. It was a beautiful morning—sunny, crisp, and cold, with soft falling snowflakes cleansing the air. The church looked magnificent, for the women were so happy with their victory that they had gone all out with their Christmas decorations.

  The entire sanctuary was trimmed with fresh-scented evergreen boughs laced with red and gold ribbons and bows. There were vibrant poinsettia plants on all the windowsills, and two large bouquets of rich red roses stood at the foot of the altar leading to the pulpit. The dark walnut pews with their red velvet cushions and the deep red carpeting on the floor looked more warm and welcoming than ever against the background of green branches and red and gold satin. The men had found a lush, perfect cone of a Christmas tree, which everybody at church, young and old, had decorated with homemade ornaments, strings of popcorn, and candy canes. And on top of the tree, Rev. Wilson had placed a beautiful black angel wearing a white, gold-trimmed African robe—his gift to his new parishioners.

  Ushers were posted at each door of the church, holding large red baskets tied with white ribbons. As members filed in, they got a hearty “Merry Christmas,” along with an orange, a candy cane, and a small bag of pecans—a reminder of times when these were the only gifts many people were able to give.

  The first person George Wilson saw that morning, when he took his place in the pulpit, was Sheba Cochran, with her four children. He smiled when he caught her eye, not missing the blush that spread across her cheeks. George thought that Sheba looked awfully pretty in a red velvet suit that matched her children’s, over a white lace blouse with ruffled cuffs that flopped out from under her jacket sleeves, and shiny black patent-leather boots with slick-looking red heels. Her face was made up right nice too—not too much makeup but just enough to look good to a man—and her hair was fluffed out in a new, very becoming Afro puff.

  Watching Sheba Cochran and her four children, George was struck by the thought that he had definitely done the right thing in accepting the interim pastorship of Gethsemane and that he had very good reasons to fight to stay on—at least five that he could think of right offhand.

  When Sheba saw Rev. Wilson smiling so warmly at her
and her children, she felt a little wheel a-turning in her heart. But that moment of connection was just one small ripple in the wave of fellowship that was sweeping the church that morning. Most of the members were feeling good and very blessed. The perfect sweetness of the Holy Spirit was so strong in the church, it was almost as if they could stick out their tongues and taste it.

  Rev. Wilson wasn’t one to suppress the Holy Ghost when it was running like a current through a congregation. He told the members, “I guess my first day here gone be kinda hot and sweaty. Because y’all looking like you ready to cut loose and have what a bishop’s wife once described as ‘crazy church’ to me.”

  “Now you talking, Pastor,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, as the pianist, who could barely keep his fingers still on the piano keys, signaled to the rest of the musicians to start playing. Sister Hershey Jones broke out singing, further fanning those sweet, hot, Holy Ghost flames. Then Sister Hershey, a very substantial, well-built sister, picked up the hem of her choir robe and started in on the dance she was so famous for. As she claimed a spot at the front of the church and started moving her feet—which were tiny in comparison to the rest of her—at the speed of light, the whole church was set on fire.

  Sister Hershey danced with her arms extended in front of her, feet moving and head bobbing in sync with the movement of her arms. Just watching Sister Hershey made folks want to jump out of their seats. As the music got hotter, they started hopping up to dance, as if the flames of the Holy Ghost had landed on them the way they had on the folks at Antioch in the New Testament.

  At first, Sheba just sat there and watched. But then the Holy Ghost hit her so hard, it felt like she had been smacked right in the back. She got up out of her seat and pushed her way past her startled children into the aisle. There she placed her hand on the small of her back as if it ached and started dancing so, she dropped her purse on the floor and would have come out of her shoes if she hadn’t been wearing boots. Nettie, Viola, and Sylvia rushed to her side in case the girl fell out. But Sheba simply slowed down to begin walking in a small circle, calling out, “Thank You! Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Lord. You brought me and my babies here to put our feet on the rock of Jesus. Thank You, Thank you, Lord. You a good God. You a good God!”

  The entire time Sheba was shouting, George was watching her from the pastor’s chair, with pure joy lighting up his face. It didn’t occur to him that he should go to her until he saw one of the deacons, Mr. Louis Loomis, leading Sheba’s children down to meet her at the altar. “Rev. Wilson,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, “I know this is not protocol and that I really don’t have a right to do this. But I believe that this young woman standing before us done got the Holy Ghost, and she really want to be saved. You understanding me, Rev.?”

  George immediately left the pulpit and joined them. He took both of Sheba’s hands in his and asked, “How long have you been without a church home?”

  “Since I got pregnant with my oldest, Gerald here, when I was seventeen and my mama threw me out on the street.”

  “You sure you want to make Gethsemane your church home and your children’s church home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, we gone oblige your certainty this morning,” George said. “Do we have any deaconesses in the congregation who I can assign this fine family to?”

  Louise Williams, Nettie and Viola’s mother, stood up and said, “Reverend, I’ll take this family.”

  “Thank you, Sister . . .”

  “Louise Williams.”

  “Thank you, Sister Williams.”

  “It’s MamaLouise, Rev. Wilson,” Phoebe Cates, Viola and Wendell’s daughter, hollered out from her seat in the balcony. “Don’t nobody call my grandmother Sister nothing. She MamaLouise.”

  Everybody was laughing now.

  “Thank you,” George told Phoebe, chuckling himself. “Well, Sister MamaLouise Williams, I will assign this fine family to you.”

  George squeezed Sheba’s hands. They were rough from hard work but had a sweet strength that touched his heart. He smiled into her eyes, thinking they were beautiful, simply because they revealed the true nature of her character. After meeting her at Pompey’s, George had picked up on some gossip about Sheba Cochran, but he didn’t care whether or not the talk was true. Before him stood a good black woman whose heart was open to the Lord. And she wanted to dedicate her life and her children’s lives to the Lord. What more could anyone ask of a person?

  “State your name and all of your babies’ names for the church,” he said.

  “Pastor, my name is Sheba Loretta Cochran. This baby standing next to me is my oldest son, Gerald. He is eighteen. Then, this girl right here is Lucille Renee, and she is seventeen. Next to Lucille is Carl Lee, twelve. And next to him is my baby, baby girl, La Sheba Loretta, eight.”

  “Are you all candidates for baptism?”

  They all said yes, as “Amens” rang out around the sanctuary.

  Then Rev. Wilson asked, “Would some deacons come forth to stand behind Sister Sheba and each of her children?”

  Bert, Wendell, and Melvin Sr. volunteered and took their places with Mr. Louis Loomis and MamaLouise behind the Cochran family. At that point, George placed his hands on either side of Sheba’s head, and began to pray. “Thank you, Lord, for bringing this woman and her beautiful children to our church this morning. Thank you for shining Your light of salvation on them so brightly that it carved out a path straight to You. Now, I ask in Jesus’ name that You anoint this entire family, beginning with the mama, making them one with You, so that they will all be saved and sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost. Let this very moment signal a new life in Christ Jesus for them all. Forgive them their sins and heal all of their hurts and sorrows. Make them new in You. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

  The reverent hush in the church deepened as George whispered to Sheba, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior now?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  George lifted his hands off Sheba’s head and gave her forehead a featherweight touch. With that, the Spirit rose up so strong in her that Sheba was knocked back, with her arms thrown over her head, as she fell out, slain in the Spirit. Bert and Wendell, who were standing behind Carl Lee and La Sheba, moved to catch her before she hit the floor.

  Everyone in the congregation was still and quiet. They all knew about getting slain in the Spirit and had seen it at some revivals held at Gethsemane, but it had been years since a pastor did this at a morning service. Rev. Wilson went on to ask each of Sheba’s four children if they wanted the Holy Ghost. When they said yes, he touched their heads, and one by one, just like their mama, they all fell out. There they were, the whole family lying on the floor, side by side, slain in the Spirit.

  Melvin Jr. was sitting next to Phoebe and wondering, like Bert, where her cousin Bertha Kaye was. He whispered, “My mama always said that Miss Sheba’s children love themselves some of ‘they mama.’ And she’s right. Even Gerald, with his almost-grown self, falling out ’cause of his mama.”

  “Well,” Phoebe whispered back, “Miss Sheba never did do anything all plain-and-boring like. Stands to reason she would be the first one to fall all out in church under the new pastor.”

  Melvin Jr. chuckled and then got serious as he studied his new pastor. On the surface, Rev. Wilson was low-key and unassuming. But underneath, there was power in that man—the power that comes with an anointing from the Lord.

  Why had there been so much fighting, Melvin Jr. wondered, to keep a pastor like Rev. Wilson out of this church? To put him in as interim pastor didn’t make much sense, especially after this morning’s service. “But when,” Melvin Jr. thought, “did Mr. Cleavon Johnson or any other member of his family put anything, including the church, ahead of themselves?” It took a women’s revolution in the church to get even this far toward hiring a good pastor. Melvin Jr. closed his eyes in prayer. It was going to take a whole lot of prayer and effort to keep Rev. Wilson in that pulpit.


  Part 2

  The Devil Is Very Busy in Church

  I

  The New Year, 1976, rolled right in, giving Gethsemane less than six months to get the anniversary celebration going. With George spearheading the planning, committees began to form, including the History & Archive Committee, selected to document the rich heritage of the church; the Flowers Committee to handle both the landscaping and the interior decoration; and the Food Team who claimed it would create the most lavish spread ever served in church, along with a special cake big enough for the entire congregation to share. After all the conflict over choosing a pastor, folks seemed happy that they could finally settle down and work together in peace. But as Katie Mae’s grandmother always warned, “When the saints are caught up in the business of the Lord, the devil gets mad and gets busy in church.”

  Gethsemane was a special church, Bert Green thought as he drove past it while running a Sunday morning errand for Nettie. Its deep red brick, if a little shabby and cracked now, still had a warm glow, and its stained-glass windows, with their simple scenes depicting stories in the Four Gospels, were beautifully vibrant. Later that morning, a hot new choir, the Holy Rollers, was going to rattle those windows. Even the scent of the church was beautiful, thanks to the spicy potpourris the women’s auxiliaries sprinkled over the soil of the potted plants in the sanctuary.

  Gethsemane was such a warm and loving church that you felt good just being there. That’s why it troubled Bert so much that Bertha Kaye, his only child and namesake, had been missing for so many Sunday mornings. The girl had stopped coming to church on a regular basis shortly after Rev. Forbes’s death. She didn’t even show up for services Christmas Day—just brought herself by the house to eat and collect her presents. And when Bert got on her about it, the girl had the nerve to burst into tears, run to her old bedroom, slam and lock the door, and then, from the sounds of it, throw her spoiled self on the bed like some petulant rich girl in the movies.