Preaching to a
Naked
Congregation

A short story
by Tom Deiker

Father Louis Hilgard paused pregnantly to let the anecdote settle into his audience. He looked for and found scattered smiles, a handful of agreeable nods, one restrained chuckle. In preaching, this was the equivalent of a standing ovation. The priest was pleased. He lowered his head to the lectern as if in prayer, but in fact to make note of the last item on his sermon outline. Then, in a ritual performed hundreds of times—no, thousands—he raised his head slowly, eyes closed, and suddenly thrust them open to impale a single listener with his final admonition.

And found himself staring into the attentive penis of Marvin Stickney, director of the loan department at Meredith Bank. Sitting in the front pew reserved for the family that retrieves the offerings after ushers have gathered the collection. With wife Emily, son Marvin, Jr., daughter Becky.

The head of Marvin’s penis pushed against the cantilevered fat that was his stomach—a standoff between lust and gluttony.

Something was amiss. Whether glad-handing at his bank or after Mass, Marvin always presented a flat stomach beneath his vested suit. That phony, concluded the priest; he wears a girdle!

He looked to Marvin’s face for some answer. But Marvin’s face looked elsewhere. To the side altar. Rather, to the electric organ this side of the side altar. Where organist Eva Guthrie sat. Looking away shyly at the priest’s attention. Hands folded on her lap. Below her naked breasts. The weight of which breasts, the priest now knew, had somewhere along the way overtaxed the ability of exhausted skin and scant chest muscle to support, absent whatever devices she used to give them shape and carriage.

Father Hilgard scanned the congregation, relieved to find no more naked worshipers. Many looked nervously from the priest to each other as the silence wore on. He stared hard at where his finger still marked the last item in his sermon: Apply to our lives: charity +/- mercy. Like in his recurring dream of sitting for the final exam of a course he had never taken, Father Hilgard had no idea what these words meant, or what words had gone before, or what conclusion he had devised, or what moral needed to be advanced.

“And so,” he embarked, clearing his throat as he searched the choir loft for some shard of memory, finding none in its lone occupants, a world-weary mother consoling her lamenting infant. “And so—let us this week—remember—in our daily lives—throughout the coming week—to always show our neighbor—and the world—as Christians—both charity plus mercy.”

The priest hurried to the dais, where he eventually sat to ponder the matter during the collection. His first insight was that he had no idea if Eva Guthrie was married, though he saw her every Sunday for—how many years? As many as he had been pastor of Immaculate Conception Church. He knew she clerked at some store in town, because he once saw her at . . . which store was it?

Cheryl Festinger, the deacon’s wife, burrowed her way through the Intercessions: “That we may practice in our lives the Christian virtues of charity with mercy, we pray to the Lord.”

“Lord, hear our prayer.”

Eva Guthrie exemplified, the priest realized, a certain stereotype of church organist, one that found its way into religious jokes, usually involving a choir loft. Painfully shy. Socially stilted. Bovinely breasted. Naively debauchable. And like this organist, a face not to be noticed in passing.

“For those afflicted in mind or body, we pray to the Lord.”

“Lord, hear our prayer.”

Father Hilgard worried over the organist’s breasts as collection baskets wove their way to the rear of the church. How could a man in Marvin Stickney’s position risk security, social standing, family, self-respect—alimony payments, for goodness sake? A banker, if anyone, should know the consequences. And yes, of course, his eternal soul. For these, these—sagging bags of . . . !  Some hidden truth lurked in those bone-weary breasts which Father Hilgard could not fathom. Maybe if he grasped the truth he could salvage these—sex addicts? He’d read that phrase once in a pastoral counseling article, “sexual addicts.”

Eva moved her body from side to side as she played, with occasional arrhythmic lifts of her shoulders. Her breasts kept good time with the hymn as Eva caterwauled ahead of the lagging congregation:

“Eternal are your mercies, Lord,
      Eternal truth attends your word . . .”

Was that it, an addiction? If so, how do you rehabilitate an addict? They lock them up, of course, break the chain of addiction, squeeze the poison out of their system. Then the addict can reclaim his soul, store up resolve—“avoid near occasions of sin.” Father Hilgard contemplated Eva’s swaying breasts again. And if thy left breast offend thee . . . He shuddered at the image.

Why had he never felt this lemming-like lust for fatty tissue? Not that when he was young he did not admire the beauty of a woman, did not feel physical attraction. But like an athlete in training—let’s say an exhausted swimmer halfway through the race—you must take charge of your defiant body, push away the temptation, push through the obstacle, push on to the goal. There was a sermon in there somewhere, one that might help Marvin and others like him.

Out of the corner of his eye, the priest noticed the Stickney family heading down the aisle to fetch the Mass offerings. Marvin walked behind his wife and children. His puffy back sprouted patches of wiry hair. The banker’s lumbering body was a puzzle of disproportionate parts: bulky back, narrowish hips, beefy haunches, skinny legs, floppy feet. His buttocks looked like their substance had been sucked into his belly, leaving two flaps of flesh to wave at the priest as Marvin nodded agreeably to friends along the aisle.

Here was an even greater mystery. How could any woman tolerate that brutish body against her own—pawing, poking at her, chafing those breasts, invading her, crushing her? Rising from the dais, he was grateful to leave that a mystery as he returned to his priestly tasks.

Father Hilgard got through the Mass somehow; somehow got through taking the Stickney’s gifts of water, wine, wafers—relieved to see when Marvin handed up the collection basket that his penis had retreated to its nest of pubic hair; got somehow through the Communion service—Marvin’s little nestling reawakening as he looked past the priest to Eva on his way to Communion; Eva the last communicant—scooting over with mousy steps after the hymn, her pale nipples stretched into ovals, staring conspiratorially at him over Eva’s outstretched hands; somehow after Mass got through the greeting line on the sidewalk outside church—the Stickneys the last to stop, Marvin delivering his prepared joke: “Wonderful sermon, Father. I will try as you suggest to show both charity and mercy this week.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Though the bank does have rules which limit the mercy I can give to delinquent loans.” His wife laughed dutifully as she clung to his hairy arm.

Father Hilgard bypassed the customary walk through church, with its ritual praise for the choir, deacon, ushers, lector, nude organist. He fled instead to the rectory, where he swallowed three or four aspirin and a cough-inducing cup of bourbon. He kept alcohol in the rectory only for guests. Never drank alone. Never on Fridays or Sundays. Never for surcease of pain. But sometimes in life, in rare moments of sudden chaos . . .

All week long Father Hilgard horripilated over the approaching Sunday. As they put on their vestments, Deacon Festinger touched his arm. “You okay, Father? You look a little feverish. Here, let me take that, you’ve got my surplice, it’s much too small for you.”

The priest drew a courageous breath as he looked out the sacristy door to the electric organ, to where Eva Guthrie sat ruminating over music sheets, rechecking numbers on the hymn board, grazing on her fingernails—fussing with the bow on her blouse! A sheer lilac blouse made maidenly by a half-slip and whatever device gave her breasts shape and carriage. He walked to the sacristy door and dared a peak. There sat Marvin in his usual pew, with his usual family, clothed in his usual dark suit with red tie and matching handkerchief.

The priest let out the breath he was still holding, sucked in another, a deep cleansing breath.

Father Hilgard had typed out his sermon this Sunday. Just in case. He regretted it as he ascended the pulpit. He could do better than this canned homily plagiarized from one of those guidebooks for uninspired preachers. As he thought over the gospel parable of the wise and foolish virgins, he considered developing the notion of planning for various futures, from the merely material—say the stock market—to personal security: a retirement plan, everybody will relate to that; to family security—life insurance would be the best example there; finally to the eternal. Our investment plan for paradise; yes, that will be the theme. Maybe compare the parables of Jesus to a financial advice column. Jesus’s personal planner for us, stockholders of heaven’s mutual fund.

While he put these thoughts together, smiling and nodding agreeably to his parishioners, he spied for the briefest moment a bare breast to the right of the second pillar on the left side of the church, about ten rows back. Whoever’s breast it was sat behind one of the columns holding up its fair share of the vaulted ceiling. In the pew in front of the breast, a stout woman wrestled with her dyspeptic child. Their scrimmage first hid, then exposed the breast behind them.

The owner of the breast herself moved from side to side behind the pillar, like someone stuck behind a ten-gallon hat at the movies. As squirming mother and child came to a truce and settled lovingly into their pew, the priest could see now the side of a head to the left of the column, now a face and arm and breast to the right.

This woman’s marital status Father Hilgard did know. Her husband sat on the Parish Council. Nathan Ackerman—though he didn’t know the wife’s name. He remembered Nathan saying she taught school, but he couldn’t remember the grade or the subject or the school.

At least this breast was normal, even shapely for a woman he guessed had used up most of her forties. Maybe on the small side as breasts go. Though breast sizes was not a topic he ever studied at a statistical level. Not an unpretty face. Nicely groomed hair—perhaps a bit longish compared to the younger women around her—stylish, though, in apparel and cosmetics. He looked to his organist; Eva fell frumpily short by comparison. Now if Marvin . . . ? But that wasn’t the point, of course.

The Ms. Ackerman to the right of the pillar looked his way noncommittally over the top of reading glasses. To the left of the pillar, her head presented an oblique angle. The priest scanned up one row and across, stopped at a young man almost a head taller than those around him. The Laveau boy. Attending college in Sioux City. Home on weekends. His acne scars, finally fading, allowed his boyish features to show through. A face that matched his hairless, naked chest.

The next Sunday it was a young man and woman, married, but not to each other, preschool children separating them from their respective spouses. During his sermon the two sat with their naked knees touching, kept them touching until the faithful rose for the Apostles Creed.

Each Sunday the contagion fell upon a new pair, randomly regardless of age or sex or pulchritude. The most disturbing, a rheumy-eyed man who leered at the shapeless, eleven-year-old body of Becky Stickney. She fidgeted one pew removed, close enough for him to touch. But the leerer was content to touch instead his stubby penis as he stared at Becky. After Mass, the man followed the Stickneys and their naked daughter to their car, then disappeared. The priest had never seen him before, would never see him again.

The days between Sundays were more wearisome than the Sundays. Like some Father Damien living in a colony of lepers, Father Hilgard felt impotent to stop the spread of infection, or to make whole those infected. His rituals, his novenas, his rosaries, his sermons, his Mass intentions, his renewed fasting and penances and prayers—all too puny to safeguard them.

Even those closest to him. This week Deacon Festinger’s wife, Cheryl. Next week his loyal altar boy, Damen, who he had watched grow from a child to not-yet-a-man. Even Marvin, that saintly usher who never missed a Sunday despite the pain and stiffness in his knobby, naked knees.

And now, this Sunday, with his hand raised for the final blessing, he wondered if, hoped that, the shadow might have finally passed. He scoured the entire congregation one last time from front to back. Nothing!

As he began his blessing he looked down at the choir assembled below him. And with a crippling sorrow, his eyes met the plump buttocks of Ann Tolman. His director of religious education. With her back and buttocks to the priest, she gestured to the final number on the hymn board, holding for emphasis an open song book toward her tiny choir: Edith Wamsley, about to leave for the convent, the first vocation from his parish in twelve years; Janice Dupre, retired nurse; Mae Dupre, her reluctantly religious grandchild; and Jefferson High’s social studies teacher and tennis coach, the only good voice in the choir besides Ann Tolman. And the only man. Rupert Heidsieck.

The priest’s raised hand fell to his side in a sudden exhaustion not unlike despair. And along with his hand, whole rows of hands, raised to make the sign of the cross, hesitated.

Not able, not even able to shield this one good woman. Who now with all her other crosses to bear must also bear this added shame. But somehow Father Hilgard knew, knew with a certainty, without knowing how he knew, that the plague had finally run its course with this last, saddest victim.

As she waited for the organist’s cue, Ann looked across the congregation. Searching for someone? Father Hilgard followed her gaze, searched with her. The priest was still searching when he became aware that Ann had turned to accept her blessing with the rest of the congregation, fingers on her forehead, charity plus mercy in her eyes.

With a sudden shock—like that from diving too soon into the lake in a springtime full of warmth, a lake with stored-up cold beneath its surface, welling up its reminder to the lone athlete in training, an athlete trying to push through the obstacle—with just such a sudden chill Father Hilgard discovered he stood naked and defenseless before the one person he would never harm.

And next he observed that his naked hand, with the same impregnable passion and absence of thought that defines every human impulse, struggled against the obstacle, lifted itself to continue its naked blessing. And Ann Tolman, his director of religious education, along with his choir and his organist and his altar boy and his ushers and his congregation, all mirrored his naked blessing on their minds, their hearts, their bone-weary shoulders.

Copyright © 2007 by Tom Deiker