Black, White, and RED All Over, Epilogue 2

For those of you who have been following my tale built around Captain Ironwood Hamilton, the detective who can solve any crime in five minutes -- or at least as part of a five-minute #freewrite, this is the end of the line ... epilogue 2, and the whole tale is done! Thank you one last time to the #freewritehouse for the adoption three weeks ago, and the endless inspiration (although this tale IS done)!

One last loose end: Captain Hamilton's old church gave permission for the bad guys to meet, greet, eat, and dress for their evil deeds in the church ... so what happens, the Sunday after, and the next Sunday? Find out after my dividing graphic... the summary, this time, is part of epilogue 2 (and, if you want to read back, here are parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and epilogue 1)!

For any pastor, a last sermon is always a difficult task, but if you and the congregation in that situation are both being put out, that is a real challenge.

This was the challenge in the wake of the Gilligan House Burning that Rev. Theodore Willborough had to face at Roadside Baptist Church.

Roadside had certainly been through its struggles already. It was the product of the collapsed Baptist churches of both Tinyville and Littleburg in Lofton County, VA, merging together with difficulty after the leaders of both churches found themselves bidding on a big plantation house that was halfway along the country road between the two towns.

Neither church had money enough to make the purchase, but they had been hyping the purchase to their members and encouraging to them give while the Lord made a way, and each church saw the other as the Lord making that way.

Never mind that each church had collapsed before that because they had refused the leading of the Lord to reach out to the community as it existed – 39 percent Black – and was changing. A growing number of Latino fieldworkers had been settling in since the 1980s, and the county was becoming younger in all racial groups.

Never mind that each church had fiercely clung to its own traditions and resisted all change both within its doors as it did in its towns, meaning that once a merger took place and the two churches had to change to accommodate each other, that, too, would be resisted or the new church would be abandoned by many members. Its ability to exist would be tenuous at worst and eventually compromised by attrition unless the Spirit of God took control – but He, too, was still being resisted.

Thus, the perfect storm had hit Roadside Baptist Church on the day of the Gilligan House Burning. The change to be resisted was the coming of the Lofton County Free Voice, a new and confrontational Black newspaper that had called out the entire county and all its police departments in its first issue.

The Free Voice also had its plans to fill future issues: its Freedom of Information Act demand for records about how the police departments had been treating Black citizens in the towns, big city, and county over ten years.

The Free Voice would have messed up the lifestyle of a lot of the members of Roadside Baptist Church. Somehow, in the same decade which the FOIA covered, a whole bunch of police officers had been improving their standard of living for themselves and their families – and improving their offerings – in a manner beyond their salaries. It was just called the favor of God. Yet the favor of God would not at all have been endangered by the Free Voice.

Roadside's legacy was the combination of two churches that had been a haven for those who resisted change – in the context of Tinyville and Littleburg's churches, there had been many occasions in which old terrorists like the KKK had met and found comfort and shelter in the trappings of church.

Thus, it was new and not new to Roadside when the 119 men who would participate in the Gilligan House Burning met there the very day for fellowship and a potluck. It was new and not new to Roadside that the men at last, when the sun was down, went up into the choir room to change into the white pillowcases and sheets their mothers, wives, daughters, or girlfriends had lovingly tailored for their weekend moonlighting as domestic terrorists. Everyone expected these men to remove their sheets, rest on Saturday, and put their church clothes on Sunday and return, as if nothing had happened.

What was new to Roadside was its new young pastor, Rev. Theodore Willborough, who did his best to preach the whole counsel of God including what the Scripture speaks of in the Epistles concerning Christian conduct, Scripture that denies the Christian any liberty to righteously participate in any kind of racist behavior.

Rev. Willborough spoke against pride of face and pride of race, and of malice of all kinds being of the flesh and not of the Spirit. He spoke of the oneness all Christians enjoyed in Christ without regard to race or background, and of the affront to Christ it was to mistreat one's Christian family and the neighbors to the Christian family outside the church.

Rev. Willborough was tuned out because of his youth. Roadside would have replaced him if it could have afforded to do so, but it couldn't. He was the only pastor who would or could serve at that rate. So, the membership enjoyed when he preached on subjects that it liked, and tuned him out when he didn't, feeling that sooner or later he would mature into understanding that some things were just the way they were, and if the Lord had wanted them stopped, He would have.

Thus, Roadside was sent a man new to it and not new to it. Major Ironwood Hamilton, U.S. Army Reserve, whose family had attended Tinyville Baptist Church when he was a child, returned to Tinyville at the invitation of the town to become its new police captain. Captain Hamilton had immediately begun attending the successor to his old church, and when he had been able to move his family down to Tinyville, he had brought them there.

However, Captain Hamilton and others were discontent, resonating greatly with the less popular sermons of Rev. Willborough and grieving that the old problems that had destroyed the old churches were still alive and well in the new church. Captain Hamilton had begun to talk with some of those who were unhappy, and by the Sunday before the Gilligan House Burning, they had begun to consider founding a new church in Tinyville. The decision was made that they would seek God in prayer, and count on God to show them what they were to do, and when.

Then came the fateful Friday, on which night Captain Hamilton made his stand before the Gilligan House, and with those with him killed 46 and captured 73, accounting for all 119 men who had gathered at Roadside just four hours before.

It did not take long for Captain Hamilton to find out that there were 35 men from Littleburg and 10 from Tinyville among the dead and wounded, and that of those 45 men, 25 were regular attendees of Roadside Baptist Church, including the head deacon who had given permission for the 119 to use the church for a rally before coming out to burn the Gilligan House.

Those 25 men represented one-tenth of Roadside Baptist Church, one-fourth of its men, and 65 percent of its “anchor contributors.”

Those 25 men represented 25 families who were now bereft of their breadwinners by one means or another, in the worst way – overextended because of the bloat of the proceeds of police corruption and with absolutely no way to maintain the income necessary to maintain their lifestyle. Housing, medical care, childcare, education – all of it – became impossible in a single night for 25 families in Roadside. Funeral costs were equally out of reach for 12 of them.

Those 25 families represented the margin of Roadside playing its bills, month to month. With their support gone, Roadside was instantly insolvent, scarcely able to pay its bills through the end of the week, not able to make it through the month, to say nothing of being able to make the mortgage payment on the building.

No survivor in the church leadership even bothered to call Rev. Willborough, who was in Richmond with his family after the funeral of a great-aunt. Captain Hamilton had called.

“Pastor, I know you are with your family,” he said, “and you know you have my condolences and sympathy. I wouldn't call unless it was an emergency.”

An hour later, Rev. Willborough was tearing down the highway toward Tinyville, having caught up on the afternoon news after hearing what the captain had to say.

On that terrible Sunday, Rev. Willborough knew that a lot of members would be missing – Captain Hamilton himself was dangerously exhausted, for example, and more than 25 families would be in shock and grief. So, he decided to turn the entire day over to prayer, and prayed with hundreds of people from Tinyville and Littleburg who came to the church for comfort. Afterward, he visited every absent family he knew of, ending with the Hamilton family that evening.

The Hamiltons, one and all, made their pastor very much at home, which made the unavoidable conversation between the pastor and the captain easier after Mrs. Hamilton had directed the rest of the family to other pursuits.

“I need to know what happened here, Captain Hamilton,” he said. “Give it to me straight. I have to take it, so the Lord will enable me do so.”

Captain Hamilton had spared no detail, to Rev. Willborough's horror. He had finished with some chilling warnings.

“Legally, you are the CEO of Roadside Baptist Church, Pastor, which is a 501c3. Several members of your board of trustees and deacon board were involved in the rally before the burning, so many that it could be construed that the church, in contravention to its tax-exempt regulation, is a co-conspirator in a criminal act that resulted in the death of 46 men.

“I am not going to pursue that angle on the criminal side, but you need to prepare for the possibility for challenges to the church's status, and also civil lawsuits as the 25 families in the church who are now without their primary breadwinners look desperately for resources. People who would encourage the destruction of one house for something of little direct effect upon them might certainly destroy their own church house when their survival is at stake.”

“Well, there's not much to destroy,” the pastor said wearily. “We are two years into a 30-year mortgage, and, although I will not know until tomorrow, we are probably insolvent as of the end of the month. Those that would profit from it would have to move very fast for very little.”

“The people who did the Gilligan House Burning decided on their course of action and coordinated how they would carry it out in 18 hours,” Captain Hamilton said. “Those who they have led and molded intimately, and who encouraged them in their murderous ways, are still part of Roadside. You had better have a plan to deal with that reality as quickly as the Lord will illuminate your mind with that plan.”

Rev. Willborough could not sleep that night, so he got into his car and drove up to Big Loft to the Wide Eyes Diner, famous for its 24-hour service and their midnight pancake specials. It also had great coffee, which was not really a good thing if you couldn't sleep, but if you had decided to utilize the time and go to sleep later in the morning, the coffee was just right.

Rev. Willborough was doing something he had liked to think real ministry would never involve: crunching numbers. He knew the numbers for the church: no point in playing with those figures. They were hopeless.

What the pastor wanted to know was what could be done for the membership. 25 families would be facing their own mortgage payments, some on houses bigger than the church, and 12 of them would be facing funeral costs. No provision could be made for indulgence, but $5,000 per funeral already led to $60,000 in expenses.

Back to those mortgages: guesstimated average? There were massive outliers. Captain Bragg's widow had a million-dollar mortgage to deal with, for one example. One could not leave the outliers out, for those widows needed provision too, but again, there was no money for extreme indulgence. Assume $2,500 to manage those mortgages, per person, for just one month. That was another $62,500.

So: just to get through the next two weeks, the 25 families needed at least $122,500 – make it $150,000 for contingencies. Nobody had that kind of money to give – no group of people in the church could pull that together.

There was, however, a way the church could do it. One last way.

“They're going to kill me either way, Lord,” the pastor said, “but I can't do this any way but what You tell me, and there's just this one way that only You can make happen. Guide me, Lord. I know we have a duty to care for our brothers and our sisters with our resources, to meet their needs as You meet ours without basing Your grace and mercy on our sins. I'll do whatever You tell me to do, Lord – just confirm for me that this is what You want. I'm not seeking a way out of doing this. I just want to be absolutely sure. In Jesus's precious name … .”

“Amen.”

The amen was harmonized; Rev. Willborough's light tenor had been met by a fuller, more mature one from the other side of the booth.

“Thank you, brother,” the pastor said. “I can't see you, but I appreciate you joining in.”

“I was not trying to eavesdrop,” said the soft but full voice from the opposite side of the booth, “but it is my practice to pray with all saints I encounter who are seeking God's will earnestly, as I so often must do.”

“Thank you, brother,” said the pastor. “I needed that help.”

“May I intercede for you, sir?”

“Please!”

“Father, in the mighty name of Jesus, I come to You first giving honor to Your holy name. May Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and let us be mindful of our responsibility to be the agents of Your will on this earth. Thank You for Your gracious provision of daily bread even past midnight, and we rely on You to provide for us today and tomorrow, trusting in Your promise to meet our every need.

“Father, my brother, whose face I have not yet seen, has come before You in prayer asking for clarity upon Your will, and what direction You would have him to go. Bless him, Father, with the clarity He seeks, the courage to walk the path, and protection from the enemies who would oppose You and what You want done in the situation. Help him to walk in Your Spirit, every step of the way, and to know his victory is assured by Your power.

“Also, Father, please grant my brother, and all those who know You and are seeking Your will, peace, peace in knowing You always lead us right, and will continue to lead us until we have come all the way home to You.”

“We thank You for hearing all that we pray that is in Your will, and we praise You for your endless grace and mercy upon us. We place our trust in You, and rest in Your promises. For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen.”

“Amen – thank You, Lord, for seating me opposite a brother in You, and I pray that you will touch him in every situation that is causing him to have to sit up on this long night, and bring him all the things He is in need of. Thank You, Lord, for Your perfect provision to all Your children, Your grace and mercy. Thank You! In Jesus' name, Amen.”

Silence, except for two men so moved by this unexpected moment of earnest Christian fellowship that they were both working to control their weeping.

“Thank You, Lord – You have strengthened me, this night, to know that I am not alone in this world, in my struggle to deal with the responsibilities upon me, and to grant that I might be of help to another of Yours – thank You!” cried the fuller tenor, at last unable to control his emotions.

“Thank You, Father – yes, amen, I also am strengthened, and know now what I am to do. I have my answer, to do what You have made possible for me to do for the brothers and sisters in my care all that I can, even as this brother, in his own struggle, did all that Your Spirit moved upon him to do for me in my struggle – thank You!”

The fuller tenor did just what Rev. Willborough expected it was capable of – he burst into quiet but lovely song.

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood!

This is my story, this is my song!
Praising my Savior, all the day long!
This is my story, this is my song!
Praising my Savior, all the day long!”

Rev. Willborough added his higher tenor to that, and a woman's voice joined in from nearby, and another man, and then another man, and another woman – five-part harmony, soft and sweet, and eventually everyone in the diner had stopped to listen to the spontaneous outpouring of joy from people who knew nothing about each other, but somehow shared the same joy, in Christ. It was brief, as no one was trying to disturb anyone else, but no one there would forget it.

Rev. Willborough heard his new friend, at the end, burst into tears – a full release, a moment of catharsis, after which there came the sound of soft snoring. Rev. Willborough carefully got up, and went to the counter.

“Here's $50,” he said. “My friend has dozed off in the opposite booth, so here's for me and him, and if there's any over, I'll be back tomorrow to pay it.”

The waitress at the counter smiled.

“Your new friend is a good friend,” she said. “While you were praying, Harry had your bill put on his card.”

“Tell Harry that Theodore thanks him,” said the pastor, “and that if I'm not broke in the next four weeks, I've got the next one.”

The week flew by for Rev. Willborough – all kinds of meetings, all stages of grief – denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance – and a final, half-reluctant but settled movement toward the only way forward there was to a productive outcome.

There then remained, for Sunday, that task that only he could do: that last sermon, and the announcement that went with it. Rev. Willborough took the pulpit with his usual studied calm, and looked over his sad, sad congregation. Sorrow, and guilt, and fear were thick. Captain Hamilton, wisely, had decided to be absent – nothing good could have come from him returning after that fateful Friday.

“Good morning, brothers and sisters in Christ. Please stand for the reading of the Word of God, and turn to II Chronicles 36, verses 14-16.”

That caused some eyebrows to be raised – that was not a common passage of Scripture for a sermon. Little wonder.

1. Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.
2. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:
3. But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.

Those who knew, knew – there were few who did not understand the import of the pastor's selection.

“In context, this passage is the explanation of why the Lord allowed the kingdom of Judah, ruled over by the chosen Davidic line that would led to the Messiah, to be taken out of the Promised Land into Babylonian captivity. Despite their having the law, and the prophets, they had chosen their sins and rejected God's compassionate attempt to lead them from their evil way – until at last, there was no alternative than judgment.

“We of the church of European descent often like to think that we have displaced the Jews, and so all the promises to Israel to inherit the earth have passed to us. If that were true, then there is another corollary: if we were to behave as the heathen behave, then the promise of God's judgment would also belong to us. We never think of that part, but because God ever is intolerant of sin, His judgment of it is ever inevitable.

“Yet I do not speak of some future date of God completing the present age, or even of Israel's sad past. I speak of only two weeks ago, Friday, in which day, this church, after three years of teaching of the Gospel, and the duties incumbent upon its believers in terms of how they are to treat brethren and neighbors in light of all racial and cultural divisions being subordinated to Christian unity and duty to the dying world, chose to become a rallying point for domestic terrorism, in a complete and final rejection of God's will.

“For ancient Judah, the Chaldeans arrive in verse 17. Two weeks ago Friday, 25 men of this church were given into the hands of Captain Ironwood Hamilton and the law enforcement agents and community members with him who made their stand at the Gilligan House. They want not a man of their number; they have no serious injuries.

“Yet we are mortally wounded. Without those 25 men, Roadside is at this moment insolvent. We cannot pay our bills to the end of the month, and certainly the mortgage is unattainable. More importantly; we have no resources to help the 25 families facing funeral costs and mortgage payments. There is no remedy, church. Roadside is finished, and, economically, so are many of you.”

That settled like the pall of death over the whole assembly.

“If God did not spare ancient Judah, why did we assume He would spare us, when He does not change? Is it because for so long, we were able to put other families in the situations we now are in, in order to live a lifestyle we have not earned and did not deserve? Is it because over our long years of such sin, we became more and more deaf to God's voice warning us? Do we yet hear now?

“Yet, know this: the grim chapter which I have spoken of ends with hope, for the sin of Judah did not end the purposes of God with the nation, and after 70 years, God raised King Cyrus to the throne of Persia in order that the Jews might return home, and there be as the time of the Messiah drew near and at last dawned from Israel upon the world. As ever, God tempered His judgment with mercy, a mercy rooted in His plan to redeem mankind to Himself.

“This mercy of God, and His love, is best expressed in John 3:16 – for God so loved the world that He gave Himself, in the person of His only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish – not be forever condemned in their sin – but have everlasting life. That it is to the world should tell us of God's regard for every family, tribe, and nation – each and every was worth the shedding of His precious blood – and should tell everyone in this room that salvation, or forgiveness for the saved in sin, is available to all. Even you. Even me.”

“For us: the wideness of that mercy provides that there is an investor who desires to purchase this building, for enough to pay off the bills, the mortgage, and provide around $175,000 left. This will be enough for us to make a grant to the Lofton County Emergency Fund, in the name of this church, to provide those of you who sign up for that grant to get help with your funeral expenses and your mortgage for the next month. After that, Roadside will have disposed of its assets, and will close down, orderly. Today is the last day, therefore, of services.”

At this point, the silence had been broken by many people, weeping – many, many people. Many people sat with angry faces, others were just shocked. Rev. Willborough could not restrain the tears of his own.

“What benediction shall I say over you, in this my last sermon, and the last in which we shall be together? I offer you the only comfort that will do you good. The wideness of God's mercy still is available in forgiveness for all. The work of Christ, in that He died on the cross for the sins of the world, was buried, and rose again on the third day, is effective and available to every one of us.

“It is necessary, however, to agree with God about our sin, and come to Him with no thought of dragging our favorite sins behind us. Do not bother to insult God and waste your time if you seek a salvation or restoration of good standing with Him if you intend to cling to the prideful, malicious, wicked racist ways that have brought us all to this terrible end.”

Rev. Willborough took a deep breath.

“Instead, go directly to the devil, racist Christian, that he might sift you as wheat and inadvertently arrange for God to add whatever chastening is necessary to get you ready to confess and repent and return to Him. Racist unbeliever – savage unwashed heathen – if you will not turn, then go the devil and declare your allegiance to the devilry that you love, and cease to trouble the church of God.”

“To the rest: come to God, in repentance and faith, and He will receive you, as sons and daughters new and old. With that, I leave you. You are dismissed. Anyone who wishes to speak with me about the path to salvation, or restoration, I will be at the Tinyville Diner for the rest of the afternoon.”

Rev. Willborough closed his Bible, sat down, and watched his congregation, looking stunned and drained, file out for the last time. There was no postlude: the musician was in the Tinyville jail, and the church certainly could not afford to hire another one.

When the building was empty but for the trustees and deacons, they and the pastor went out, and the locksmith they had hired stepped out of his truck, was paid out of the deacons, trustees, and pastor's pockets, and then changed all the locks. Then, it was done. The organized church history of a combined 180 years thus ended.

That night, Rev. Theodore Willborough cried until he had no more tears, and then got up and spent the week completing all the details to release the last resources of the church to the Lofton County Emergency Fund, and thus to the widows and orphans of the Gilligan House Burning. The former pastor would again cry on the day the new owners of the building that had housed Roadside dismantled the building, in about the same amount of time it had taken the Gilligan House to burn.

"Lord, Your justice is heavy, but Your mercy is equally wide," he said, through his tears. "Grant us, please, the mercy to learn from this tragedy and walk in your Spirit by the right path, away from destruction."