“Who needs an angry God to burn up the planet
when as mature, self-sufficient
human beings we ae perfectly capable of
doing the job ourselves.”

–Terry Eagleton 

I warned you from the pulpit, on Facebook, X, Instagram, on Today, Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Fox and Friends. I made a TikTok video wearing a camel hair robe. “On December 11^st, at 11:59 Central Standard Time, God will reveal Herself.” 

I’m Reverend Ezekiel J. Stalworth, Jr., but then you know that. You’ve read my hastily posted bio on Wikipedia. Curiously the ridicule heaped on me made believers of my own prairie parishioners, something I’d been unable to accomplish in the two decades I’d served their tiny church.  

I never aspired to be a prophet. But then last June, Jessica and I moved our twins into a condo in Northfield. Our daughters had enrolled in the summer session at St. Oaf prior to their senior year. On the way back home to Mendota Heights my wife announced, “The nest is officially empty.” 

Jess took her right hand off the steering wheel and gently stroked my leg. “Let’s  invite some friends over Monday for a quiet supper.” My senses went on high alert. Jessie served as lead pastor of a megachurch in the Twin Cities. She’s never fixed a quiet supper in her life. She is all cocktail parties and banquets. 

“But it’s our wedding anniversary.”

“All the more reason.”

I should have suspected what was coming but I wasn’t a prophet then.

Jessica and I met in hermeneutics class at Great Lakes Lutheran Theological Seminary. She was J. Jessica Clayborn. Top of the class. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek. Conversant in Russian, German, Latin, and Swedish. She descended from seven generations of pastors. Her father served on the seminary’s board of directors. She attended on a full-ride scholarship. I worked my way through school repairing computers, tablets, and cell phones.

When her computer crashed, she needed tech support. After a five-minute lecture on the need regular data backup, I retrieved most of her files, including a lurid folder full of selfies. 

“There must be some way I can repay you,” she purred. 

“I have to preach a ten-minute homily in Chapel this Thursday,” I told her, “I’m scared spitless.”

“Let’s rehearse on Wednesday.”

I trembled at the lectern that evening: part fear of public speaking, part Jessica’s mere presence in the chapel.

“Imagine your audience naked,” she told me. Before I dismiss the trite suggestion, her blouse and bra dropped to the floor. “Let me help you visualize it.” She stripped off her slacks and panties and took a seat in the front pew. I don’t remember much after that. The next morning the homily went well. Easily my best work.

I graduated from seminary at the bottom of my class. I found a position as pastor of St. Thomas Lutheran, a tiny rural congregation outside of Apex in rural Minnesota. My wife graduated at the top of the class and was snatched up by St. Matthew’s in Apple Valley. 

My first Sunday at St. Thomas I was brutally honest from the pulpit. “Each of your last two pastors lasted less than a year, forced out because neither was Pastor Peterson, your spiritual guide for three decades.” 

Heads nodded in agreement. An Amen! came from the back pew.

“Well, I’m not Pastor Peterson either.” Amens drifted down from the choir loft. “But here’s the thing, if I don’t work out, the synod won’t send you any more candidates. It’s me or nothing. That’s the deal.” There was an awkward silence. “And if this doesn’t work out for me, I’ve got a standing offer at the Apple genius bar in Rosedale.” 

The head of personnel committee sitting in the front pew said in a stage whisper, “That job pays more than we do.” 

“I’ll do my best. That’s all I can promise. Help me out.”

My first sermon was a variation on the homily I’d preached for Jessica. Reviews were mixed. The next day I decided I would visit every congregation member on their farm or in their home. I learned about corn and soybeans, the difference between a Jersey and a Holstein cow, and the finer points of storing silage. I repaired their computers, cell phones, and internet connections. I prayed a lot.

Still my status at St. Thomas remained shaky until our twins were born, Samuel and Ruth. My wife cut her maternity leave short, returning to work after three weeks. Jessica was uniquely unsuited for motherhood, so I assumed the childcare duties. The classroom next to my church office became a playroom and their second home. Waves of teen babysitters, farm wives, and grandmothers adopted them. 

As Samuel and Ruth grew, I scheduled play dates, made sure they were vaccinated and that their backpacks contained school supplies and healthy snacks. I drove them to 4H meetings, county fairs, and summer bible camp. I handled the ER visits, and taught them how to drive. Seeing the father I’d become, my parish embraced me. Pastor Peterson faded into the church archives. My place at St. Thomas was secured.

Within a decade Jessica, unencumbered by motherhood, rose to the position of lead pastor at St. Matthew’s with a congregation of 5,500 baptized members. She also inked a six-figure book deal for The Sex Life of Modern Saints and hosted a popular podcast offering dating advice for Christian singles.

 On Monday morning, Jessica was already in the kitchen when I woke up. “I’m fixing French onion soup tonight, coq au vin, and dauphinoise potatoes.” She’d dusted off her Julia Child cookbook. This was food to feed her libido, not that her libido needed encouragement. She WAS the platinum standard of libidos. “Dress for dinner.” 

That afternoon when I got back from a hospital call, I found one of my white dress shirts laid out on the bed. I told her, “I’m going with the blue oxford.” 

“The shirt is for me.” An unusual choice, I thought, until the doorbell rang, and she came down the stairs wearing only the white shirt, a garter belt, thigh-highs, and four-inch heels. A braided leather belt was cinched around her waist.

“You’re dressed like a harlot.” 

She beamed. “That’s the look I was going for.”

My wife’s best friend Cynthia Hovden was a commercial real estate broker and the president of the St. Matthew’s church council. She and her husband were tonight’s guests. I suspected Cliff, a cardiac surgeon and avid tennis player, was the target of Jessica’s wardrobe choice. 

“That outfit could get you arrested.” The doorbell rang again. 

“Trust me. Arrest isn’t what I have in mind.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Polyamory.” 

Polyamory, a noun, from the Greek word “polloi,” meaning many, and the Latin “amor” meaning love. The term polyamory suggests an open romantic relationship, usually sexual, with multiple partners with mutual consent. 

When I opened the door I found Cliff dressed in chinos and a silk shirt that exposed his hairless chest. Cynthia wore in a tiny latex dress and high heeled boots that came up to mid-thigh. They were obviously onboard. 

I wasn’t.

The next morning I moved out of our house and into the small parsonage adjacent to St. Thomas and behind its 150-year-old cemetery. The church used the downstairs for Sunday school space and mid-week meetings. Upstairs there were two small apartments. One had been recently vacated by our parttime janitor. The other apartment had been rented to the new high school football coach whom I’d yet to meet. Jessica, of course, was sorry to see me leave, if for no other reason than my IT skills, plus I did laundry and all the cooking. 

Within a month of my departure, Jessica, Cynthia, Cliff, and a half-dozen other St. Matthew’s members founded a new church, Jessica’s House of Joy. She’s persuaded Netflix to make a documentary on it and its mission of polyamorous worship.

My first night at the parsonage, alone after twenty-three years of marriage, I took a lawn chair and a bottle of Writer’s Tears out to the cemetery to watch the sun set. After I finished the Irish whiskey, I fell asleep. I woke up to an amazing display of stars on a moonless night. In rural Apex there were no city lights to block out the stars. And before me burned a brilliant light.

“Is this a sign; a burning bush?”

I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until I heard the response. “No, Pastor, it’s a campfire. I’m Frankie Horn, the new football coach. Want an marshmallow?” 

Frankie was diminutive, 110 pounds of pure muscle. I learned she’d wrestled in high school on the boys team and advanced to the state tournament where she was eliminated by the eventual champion. Frankie was also equipment manager for the football team her father coached. 

At the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, she scouted opposing teams and was eventually promoted to graduate coaching assistant. Our high school, the newly opened Interstate-35 Consolidated, was her only offer for a head coaching position. Frankie invited me to the first game, promising me beer and pizza if I’d pray for the team. “We need all the help we can get.” 

It was supposed to be a joke, but that Friday night I drove to the stadium.

In the locker room, as I prayed, I saw a vision. “This year,” I told the boys, “you will not know defeat.” 

There was nervous laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No.” Coach Frankie stepped in. “Pastor Stalworth is God’s prophet. Listen to him. He’s saying what I’ve already told you on the practice field, and what you know in your hearts. This team is a winner.”

It didn’t hurt that in the school consolidation the best players from three former small schools were now teammates instead of rivals, or that the senior quarterback had a passing arm like a rifle and a scholarship offer to Iowa, or that the defensive line had played together since third grade and communicated through an elaborate system of snorts and grunts. Plus Frankie’s playbook was brilliant, quirky, a quick study, and unlike any on the regional high school scene. 

After the game (Consolidated 52, Prairie 3) I joined the team for pizzas. Later back at the parsonage, I got the promised beer, but called it a night before things got awkward. 

On Saturday the church youth group came out for brats and burgers. As part of a bible study on the prophets I had each teenager write down their own prophesy, then we went around and shared them. Finally it was my turn. “St. Thomas won’t worry about money anymore.” Everyone knew the parish was financially struggling. 

“That’s cheesy,” those teenagers groaned. 

On Sunday, at the end of my sermon, I stepped out into the congregation and announced, “You are burdened by financial woes.” I scanned the pews. Nothing. “Worry no more.” Nobody believed me….

… until a week later Amazon offered to buy the 15 acres of pasture land the church owned just off the I-35 exit. They suggested the going rate of $10,000 an acre plus a $30,000 bonus if the sale could be closed by the end of the month.

Two weeks later I abruptly cancelled our youth group’s participation at a gathering in Milwaukee that October. The teens grumbled, but we all stayed home. The charter bus they would have been on crashed in heavy fog when a stalled fuel truck jackknifed on the interstate. Reluctantly I became a local celebrity,Ezekiel, the new prophet.

By the football team’s eighth straight win, Frankie and I had become an awkward and unlikely couple. In addition to the age difference, I was almost a foot taller than her and decidedly unathletic. She loved to wrestle. “Think of it as God wrestling Jacob in the bible story.” That, of course, would make her God, but I had no problem with that. She excelling at wrestling, even better than my soon-to-be ex-wife.

By the time the team reached the playoffs, the story of my prophesy came to the attention of a local television station. The sports director at WXOW in La Crosse planned a 30-second spot about my prophesy. At the end of the filming he joked, “Any new predictions?” 

I blurted out, “On December 11^st at 11:59 Central Standard Time, God will reveal Herself.” 

That last sound bite, not the football story got picked up by other media. The church switchboard was flooded with calls. The YouTube video got 670,000 views and more than half million likes. Every media outlet and third-rate podcaster tried to book me for a live 11:59 interview, assuming I would fail like the Millerites. 

At the chosen moment I sat in the jade green Adirondack chair overlooking the cemetery, a cold pint of Dorothy’s New World Lager in hand. It was an unseasonably warm December day. In the adjoining chair sat Frankie sipping on a Long Island iced tea. She was on lunch break from school.

At 11:58, I set down my beer and leaned back. At 11:59 I closed my eyes and surrendered my body. A soothing warmth filled me, beginning with my toes and moving up my torso. Finally my ears burned and the world stopped. I felt a gentle pressure on my chest above my heart. I was at peace. At noon my eyes opened. I knew I’d been touched by God. Frankie felt it, too. Everyone in the world felt one minute of warmth. God’s touch. Peace. Everyone. Everywhere. At the exact same moment. 

Surveillance cameras captured those sixty seconds: vehicles paused on interstates, planes suspended in mid-flight, surgeons’ hands grasping their scalpels, bullets paused in their trajectory. Everything arrested except the cellphones globally documenting the miracle. Every human body–believers and nonbelievers alike, Christians and Jews, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Quaker, Scientologist–was touched. Of course I knew none of this until the calls started coming in. God had touched me. That was enough.

Frankie spoke, her face flushed. She was bathed in light as if she had been transfigured. “That was awesome.”

“You felt it, too?” I asked. “I didn’t imagine it?” 

She struggled for words. “The warmth….” Her cheek was wet with perspiration. “God’s touch….” She was breathless. 

Our eyes locked. “Now what?” 

My phone started dinging as texts flooded in. I read off the callers: “Times of India, Reuters, Forbes, China Daily, CNN, BBC News, CBS, Russia Today, People Magazine….” 

“You need an agent….” 

There was something in the way she said it. “Are you available?” 

“As soon as the championship game is won.”

My ex-wife was a prophet in her own right. Before The Touch she’d warned me, “Even if your prophesy comes true, nothing will change.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but milliseconds after the first texts appeared praising the divine healing Touch, the trolls rose up. With millions of one-minute surveillance videos documenting the time arrested, everyone acknowledged something happened. Pundits proclaimed it was mass hysteria. Fundamentalists claimed it was the work of Satan. Hindus acknowledged they’d been touched, but left God out of the equation.  The Southern Baptist Convention dismissed unequivocally the distinctively feminine nature of the embrace.

I made another round of talk shows, podcasts, and roundtables but with a difference. Even self-proclaimed disbelievers, treated me with deference. In crowds people touched my clothes, hoping to be healed. And, of course, they were. Not by me. She did all that. God. After Consolidated won the state championship, capping an undefeated season, Frankie accompanied me to the interviews and served as my agent.

It was the Late Night with Stephen Colbert appearance that changed everything. Stephen, a good Catholic, was restrained but curious. “What about the deniers?”

“She will disarm them.”

“I beg your pardon….” 

I sat up straight in the guest chair as Frankie had instructed me. I took a cleansing breath. “There is no room in God’s creation for weapons.” I outlined my proposed gun buyback program administered by a loose network of congregations, temples, mosques, and other holy sites around the world. People could bring in their AR-15s, Glocks, knives, IEDs, and surface-to-air missiles, and exchange them for cash and a blessing.

Stephen hadn’t seen that one coming. He improvised. “Where will the money come from?”

“I have no idea. Not a clue.” Actually money had started appearing in the bank accounts already. My church was one of the first. The Altar Guild set up a buy-back site in a neighbor’s barn.

The studio audience became quiet. 

Stephen tried to lighten the mood. “What about tanks, armored personnel carriers, rocket launchers…?” 

“They will be arrested.” 

“Arrested?”

My vision cleared. “Rendered useless as machines of war.” 

Stephen cut to commercial. His producer called the CBS news division and the Pentagon. After the show Frankie and I retreated to a remote cottage on Southwest Harbor in Maine. The next morning over lobster rolls we watched the news unfold. 

Reporters from CBS, CNN, Sky News, Pravda, at thousands of locations, captured the arrest of the machines: tank tracks unspooled, rocket launchers shorted out, engines in troop carriers seized. The machines of war–military, paramilitary, law enforcement, guerilla, rebel, war lord, and terrorist–rendered useless in a blink.

Powerful people blamed me. Maybe you did, too. Don’t be stupid. I was the messenger.

The gun buyback program picked up speed. Armaments were turned in faster than foundries could melt them down. A movement formed to forge the weapons into gardening tools and give them away to anyone with a patch of land. Thousands of patches of land turned into gardens. I had no idea where this was going.

I was summoned to appear before the Armed Services Committee.  Senators asked about the gun buyback program. “It ends at midnight,” I told them.

A particularly smug inquisitor leaned down and asked, “What about the guns people have refused to surrender?”

“She told me they won’t be a problem unless someone pulls the trigger.” 

The committee Republicans had a good laugh.

Senator Joni Ernst asked, “Why do you keep referring to God as ‘She’?”

“In Exodus 3, Moses is told the name of God, Yahweh. The first part in Hebrew, ‘Yah,  is feminine, and the second part, ‘weh, is masculine. God told me her preferred pronouns: She, Her, They.” 

Curiously the initial news stories focused on that sidebar. Then gunshot ER admissions dropped to zero. Burn admissions skyrocketed. Firearms melted in their owners’ hands when they touched the trigger. Eventually guns began spontaneously melting in holsters and purses, display cases and gun safes, in crates being smuggled to flashpoints around the globe, in survivalist bunkers, arms caches, law enforcement armories, and government arsenals. 

“Now what?” Frankie asked. 

“I need to talk to my ex-wife.”

“Why…?” There was more than a hint of jealousy in her voice.

“The absence of weapons leaves a void which gardening is insufficient to fill.  Touch is the answer.”

“You mean sex?”

“This goes beyond intercourse….”

“The Right Reverend J. Jessica Clayborne Stalworth and her House of Joy, specializes in sex.”

“She wouldn’t frame it that way….” I hesitated. “When they do a healing service, after they make the mark of the cross, they touch the penitent by the heart….”

“As God touched the world….”

“And believers spontaneously orgasm.” 

Frankie studied me. “You’re serious?”

“That’s what she told me.” 

“House of Joy. It fits.”

“Actually, the name came before The Touch.” I didn’t try to explain. Jessica has always connected to God in ways I could not. 

Frankie and I drove her weary Prius to the Twin Cities. Jessica met us at the main entrance. “Let me give you a quick tour.”

The House of Joy Worship Complex was impressive. Donations from the broadcast and online ministry financed the purchase of a bankrupt suburban mall. The Touch had led to a boom to membership and a flood of cash. 

The sanctuary was a skating rink that converted to worship space after the 8 pm Saturday night Service on Ice for Teens. Worship continued on Sundays at 9:00 am for the traditional Lutheran liturgy, the 11:00 contemporary worship (nationally broadcast), 1:00 pm service signed for the deaf, 3:00 and 5:00 worship with Christian rock liturgy, and, of course, the notorious 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. R-rated services, adults only, streamed with a paid subscription. 

“A lot happening here,” Frankie commented, keeping her tone neutral and nonconfrontational.

“God connects us in many ways.” 

The complex housed a rescue animal adoption center, petting zoo, and low cost daycare facilities. Hatha, vinyasa, ashtanga, tantric, and hot yoga classes rotated hourly 6 a.m. to midnight in the old Sears store. The long defunct Chi-Chi’s restaurant had been repurposed into a school for chocolatiers, a premium chocolate kitchen, and outlet store.

“We believe in feeding the body, soul, and psyche of our congregation. We are Christian focused, but open to all.” 

“Buddhists like chocolate, too,” Frankie offered.

The smaller stores had been converted into offices for free or low cost counseling, a suicide hotline, and pay-what-you-can cafés. There was an art house cinema, which also housed the House of Joy Burlesque Troupe and the Bow Wow Cow Clown School. A bowling alley, comedy club, and open gym occupied what had once been the food court. The south parking lot was carpeted with Astroturf and converted into an outdoor eighteen hole Frisbee golf course. A used book store and lending library featured books in equal parts theology, religions of the world, and all things sexual. 

“There is no pornography. The sex books are more how-to, health, and safety. Bondage made easy, that sort of thing.”

I made a mental note to check their catalogue.

At the tour’s end we sat down in the Cocoa Heaven Chocolate Shop and ate our way through an assortment of liquor filled truffles: rum. amaretto, old fashion, Irish coffee, lemon drop vodka, and a tequila-filled strawberry margarita. “This feels so sinful,” Frankie announced.

“We don’t focus on sin at the House of Joy.” Jessica suggested, “Stop thinking of sin in terms of fundamentalist or conservative Midwestern values. Neither applies to the totality of God’s world, or for that matter to world religions. In Buddhism there is no concept of sin.”

“Good on Buddha.” Frankie could be stubborn like that.

“Go ahead,” Jessica said after finishing her last truffle, “ask me. You know you want to.”

Frankie didn’t hesitate. “You once led the largest Lutheran congregation in the country. What happened? Why the sudden obsession with sex?”

I was tempted to point out that Jessica’s obsession with sex was neither sudden or inexplicable, but I wisely remained silence. God didn’t have to tell me.

“The Hebrew word ‘yada’ is usually translated as ‘to know,’ as in to have a relationship with or to know God. But it also means to have sexual intercourse.”

“So it’s that simple?”

“Of course not.” Jessica laughed. “But the connection is not accidental. Sexuality and spirituality are inexplicably linked.” She leaned in. “Tell me, Frankie, in your association with my ex-husband, now God’s prophet, have you questioned people about their experience with The Touch?”

Frankie glanced over to me. 

I shrugged. “The question sounds straight forward to me.” 

“I have.”

Jessica leaned back, confident of the answer. “And how many of them, when touched, orgasmed?”

I didn’t see that coming. That had not been my experience, but it did explain the expression on Frankie’s face that day.

“A lot. Most won’t admit it.”

“That’s a pity. The bible is filled with sensuality. Can you think of a more sex-filled book than Song of Solomon? At House of Joy we don’t hide the gifts God has given us.”

Frankie huffed. “So, Ezekiel struggles to bring peace to the world, while you urge people to fornicate.”

“The two are not unrelated….” 

The argument brewing had less to do with theology or the will of God than with territoriality and jealousy. I stepped in. “I need a favor.”

“Is that why you’re here?” There was disappointment in her voice. “What do you want?”

“A minute during next Sunday’s 11:00 service to say a few words.”

“What will you say?”

“I have no idea.” Honest. I had no idea. Frankie and I later brainstormed possibilities. Nothing.

When the moment arrived that next Sunday, I glanced at Frankie for reassurance, then at Jessica for…. Actually I’m not sure why I was staring at her. Somehow, robed as she was for the service, she managed to look both pastoral and slutty.

I opened my mouth and the words spilled out. 

“You have all been called. In the months since She touched you, She has demonstrated her power, yet you remain in denial. Now She will put you to the test. On March 15th at noon Central Time, gather as two or more. Let no one be alone in that moment. Unite. Break bread. Sing, play board games, confess. Then at the appointed time, stop everything else, and touch.”

The announcement caused quite a stir. I declined all requests for interviews. There is nothing more to say.

My ex-wife has invited us to join her and the congregation at House of Joy, thousands strong, stripped, and oiled. Jessica predicts a wine-fueled Bacchanalia. 

Frankie leans toward a Star Trek-inspired mind meld. She and I have opted instead for a simple wedding ceremony witnessed by my twins and the congregation at St. Thomas, a hundred strong. No one in our rural community will be excluded. The service will be at 11:30. At noon we will join hands.

“Then what?” 

“She hasn’t shared that…. I’m as curious as you are.”

…
Paul Lewellan retired from education after fifty years of teaching. He lives, writes, and gardens on the banks of the Mississippi River. His muse is his wife of forty-two years Pamela. In all things he’s advised by his 18-year-old Shih Tzu, Mannie. Find archives of his work at www.paullewellan.com