Pastor Natalie's Big Contradiction

Pastor Patty is back in the pulpit of The Methodist this week, having finished her Romance novel, "The Preacher Wore Crimson," last Sunday morning while Pastor Natalie "filled the pulpit."

Pastor Natalie is a Presbyterian who is "between calls," so she is living with her parents in the town of Chronicle, 10 miles through the woods from Memphjus, the county seat of Periwinkle County. Pastor Natalie is not a tall woman, but what she lacks in height, she makes up for in breadth.

Forsythia Lutheran, out in the country between the electron mines and the persimmon bogs, has a young student from Discordia Seminary in Capitol City who comes down to preach for them on Sunday mornings. Last night, though, he had a date with a Japaenese Lutheran exchange student. To impress her, he took her to a sushi bar. This morning he woke up not sure whether he was in love or had food poisoning; the symptoms are very similar. Either way, he knew there was no way he could leave the bathroom for more than 20 minutes. He called Theodore and Norma Dillondorf, the unofficial but actual leaders of Forsythia, and told them they'd have to get along without him. Norma had overheard some women from The Methodist talking in the persimmon section of the Beaver IGA about Pastor Natalie being available on short notice, and so they called her.

Pastor Natalie has been working on a sermon she calls "Either Ore." In it she contrasts the Christian life as gold and the heathen life as fool's gold and challenges her hearers to make the choice, "either one ore the other." She is going to use it as her audition sermon the next time she gets an invitation to candidate at a Presbyterian church. So she was delighted to get the telephone call from the Dillendorfs. She could try out her candidating sermon on the Lutherans.

The first part went very well. She pointed out all the advantages of fool's gold--the highs from booze and dope, the thrill from gambling, the pleasures of a one-night stand. The Lutherans, unused to such a clear listing of the joys of sins, listened with rapt attention. Pastor Natalie became uneasy. Perhaps she was making fool's gold look too attractive. She decided it was time to segue. She stepped out from the pulpit. She leaned over and pointed to the other side of the chancel, and presumably to the other side of the sermon. She wanted to make sure everyone knew that she was switching to the other ore. She said, "But, and I have a really big but here..."

The Lutherans of Forsythia are sober people, not given to spontaneous outbursts of emotion, especially in worship. The ER was full of them that afternoon, suffering from constipation and gastic distress and lockjaw. Dr. Ryan was on duty. He said it looked like they had all held something in too long, like maybe laughter.